my brain hurts

and my eyeballs. just got back from palm drive. scary patient with scarred-up back from prior surgery and likely bacterial meningitis, made worse by a spectacularly unhelpful ICU consultant. but Dr. J. (normally infuriating ER doctor) did the spinal tap for me, for which i promise i will never ever be rude about him ever again, at least until the next time i get cross at him. if i can get through the next three days without killing someone, i will count that as a triumph. (my hospitalist week lasts three more days, plus three clinics and a 12 hour ER shift. wednesday night at midnight i will be a free woman, with nothing to do but pick my nose, think about food for christmas, work on my van eyck rip-off, and go running.
i made marzipan this afternoon. to make marzipan my way, first you make a pan of burnt sugar, filling the kitchen with thick grey smoke, and THEN you make something that sort of looked like marzipan but which is a little bit too dry, so then you slosh in some amaretto, which may contribute to subsequent texture problems (too sticky), but definitely does excellent things for the taste. delicious, slightly funny looking (i don't think i ground the almonds fine enough), but good enough for cake decorating. then i cleaned the house (it looks terrific, if i do say so myself), and then i went to M's house to play a board game (some variation of victory points, building things, trading in money/wood/coal/cattle/bricks/steel/ships... they all sort of start to run together after a while) and then out to sebastopol in the pouring rain to go see scary patients with meningismus and fevers up to 103 F. and now back, having showered to get the meningitis bugaboos off of myself, and into bed. i think tonight might be a harry potter night to get myself to sleep. i hate scary hospital stuff. it makes me feel totally impotent. blech.

red velvet cupcakes = bad idea disguised as good idea

ER shift last night until midnight; I am a ravenous food-hoover when I am in the ER, especially when it is late towards the end of my shift and I have been running around for twelve hours without time for a proper meal. I had two cupcakes, and oh, oh, oh I am paying the price in intestinal unhappiness now. Luckily it meant I was semi-awake anyway when the lab called with a critical bilirubin level on one of my babybabies - drawn YESTERDAY MORNING and they call me at 5 a.m. ?!? this morning - who is going to have to come in to the hospital to get light therapy. blech. i am waiting to call the mum until seven, as i decided that the scariness rating of a phone call from a doctor about your kid at 5 in the morning is a 10 out of 10, whereas a 7 a.m. call is probably only a 7 out of 10 but not significantly more likely to result in medical complications.
M. is coming over in an hour or so so that we can take the tandem for its official inaugural ride; i hope it gets warmer out this morning than yesterday morning. my nipples might actually fall off if i had to go outside in skimpy bike-riding attire now, if the temperature inside my house is anything to judge by (i am currently wearing two layers of polar fleece and a duvet). then a choir board meeting (not looking forward to that. will be first contact w/ choir since coming back from france, since we have had two cancelled rehearsals, and there will be mega-planning to do for this germany trippy deal), then another ER shift tonight, and then down to la cite to see A. in the morning - sunday breakfast at tartine... ooh la la - followed (hopefully, although i have not had confirmation) by lovely lazy hangout day wif moy li'l sistah.
all my paintings from france are now stretched and looking slightly more like proper paintings; a few of them had unpainted canvas around the edges, so i did a little touch-up job on them two evenings ago, thinking that early evening light and the lights on in the kitchen would be fine, fine, fine to see what i was doing. of course i got up the next morning and thought, oh DEAR, the colourblind painting pixies came in the night and were painting around the edges of my paintings... it's amazing how hard it is to colour match exactly if it's not northern-facing natural light at high noon (in the sahara at the summer solstice, etc.). will try again today during the day. i have yet to make a start on painting the van eyck arnolfini double portrait; that painting is definitely more of a nemesis at this point, after my abortive semi-attempt in acrylics this summer, than an eagerly anticipated sensory delight. eh bien. time to go call a patient and sit on the loo for a bit.

only one simulated patient away...

... from completing my board recertification thingymajig for 2008. won't THAT be nice, not to have to take the boards in 2012 but to have a luxurious seven more years of ignorance, malpractice, incompetence, etc. before anyone finds out.

complaints: i am ready to howl, i am so tired of my nose being stuffed up. i am officially a mouth breather. also i fell down yesterday while running and bashed myself up - i was leaping in what was intended to be sort of an acrobatic graceful way over a low fence that turned out to be about an inch less low than i had planned on, and splat! bruises on right leg, left hand, and ego.

celebrations: proud owner of a new dining room table and chairs, which i will go and pick up today. actually, i feel a bit ambivalent about this. it is Stuff, which in general i try and avoid accumulating, except i do accumulate it, and this is probably the largest heaviest Stuff i will have accumulated possibly ever, except for my house. and school loans, which weigh nothing in the material world, but carry some psychological heft. the last time i checked my loan balance online, the website listed it in british pounds (somewhere i had evidently put "UK english" as a language preference in my settings) which initially scared the crap out of me because i assumed that the website had been smart enough to do the actual currency conversion and that somehow my loans had doubled in size thanks to the crappy economy, but then i realized that the student loan website in't that sophisticated. i only mention it because it was sort of symbolic to see my loans expressed in weight terms. 20,000 pounds of loan. hm. better than 20,000 pounds of nuclear waste, that's for sure. anyway. my new table i think is very nice - i hope it fits in my house. the temptation will be NOT to start ripping the chair upholstery apart, because i have way better things to be doing with my time, like writing a blog at 4:30 in the morning.

devotion to blogging. and some insomnia.

typing this on the computer in the paris flat which has something wrong with the keyboard such that what looks like an "a" key for instance actually types an "f"; "b" types a "p"; and so on. i am getting faster but am still only up to about 15 words a minute...

my last day in kiel was very mellow; i said goodbye to kate in the morning, and then went for a run which turned into a walk around the botanical gardens because i was feeling lazy. then a trip to the art museum to go look at greek pots and heads and then to the train station to get to hamburg to catch my flight. i was ready for them this time; i shoved the laptop and my heavy notebook into the waistband of my jeans, umbrella and camera tied to my belt, books packed under my jersey... lo and behold, no overweight luggage charges. i unpacked myself into a dutyfree carrier bag, went through security and got on the plane. so silly. they are so strict about not exceeding 25 kg checked and 8 kg hand luggage and only one piece of carryon blah blah blah then you are allowed to buy as much heavy crap as you want in dutyfree. ???

anyway. i arrived safely at the flat in paris late last night; it is quite beautiful and very comfy and the only real downer has been the discovery that some artistic baggage handler stole all my paints which i am trying very hard not to care too much about (only moderate success so far). they also failed to close my palette box after taking the paints and an oil sanguine pencil escaped and wreaked havoc with several favourite items of clothing grrrrr but i have decided that i will donate the extra karma to the universe in thanks for the election of obama and call it a day.

today i went to the grand palais to see the two exhibits currently on there - picasso et les grands maitres and emil nolde. i was unwowed for the most part by the picasso and the nolde (although it was cool to see the nolde just days after having been in the exact part of denmark where he lived) but woweezowee les grands maitres were cool. i saw several velasquez paintings, goyas (incl. la maja desnuda), and ingres, including one i had done a master copy of, so that was fun. i also got to see french people being rude to each other, which is weird - argenton chateau was so gentle i sort of forgot about the whole paris thing - but at least so far they have been ruder to each other than they have been to me.

B&F arrived late tonight and we had dinner at a little pizzeria before bed. not sure what the plan is for tomorrow - make it up as we go along...

woohoo obama

screaming for obama

preparing for a nocturnal dip in the baltic sea, complying with vow to the universe

a little colder than anticipated

trip to denmark

mike

pew carving in danish church

danish street

lunch at the guildhall

lübeck main square

heiligen geiste hospital

k. playing the cello after 12 + years

last night in AC at the pub


allo allo -

so day 4 in deutschland, having had a lovely lovely three day weekend with K. sunday we drove to lübeck, which is a very pretty old town up in the north, and swanned around there for the day - highlight being a raspberry marzipan cake at THE marzipan shop of northern germany ooh la la. (we also had lunch at the old seamen´s guildhall, which was fun: you can´t really see from the pic, but it is an old room that does not appear to have changed at _all_ since, oh, 1400, except for the model ships that they have hung from the ceiling. long intricately carved wooden benches and trestle tables that you sit at to eat your potato soup and liverwurst, painted murals of the hazards of sea-going life on the walls, chandeliers, dim light. very atmospheric.)

yesterday (monday) we drove to the west coast of denmark, which is like another planet. nobody lives there, and the people who do are apparently all completely inbred, the landscape is really spooky, all flat marshy misty with dikes and canals everywhere, and then when you hit the actual coast there is grey sea and grey sky as far as you can see, except for the occasional boat (either medium size fishing boats or MASSIVE princess-cruise-size ferries to norway or sweden or somewhere). we came back via toldern, which is a bit of denmark which used to be german where M´s family is from, and walked around there for a bit, and it reinforces the feeling of total insularity. everyone looks the same, and although it is cute and picturesque, cobblestoned streets and thatched rooves and the whole bit, it is quite clearly a question of nobody having bothered to change anything since the 17th century rather than purposely preserved for touristic opportunism.

Last night K´s friend Gunter came over for dinner which was great; his English is slightly more limited than M´s (although still impressively good - everyone i have met here so far seems to be able to carry on a basic conversation in English), so by necessity more of the talk happened in german and i am amassing new words at a fast and furious pace. i can discuss apples, potatoes, broccoli, lead-free gasoline, gewurstraminer, mushrooms, nipples, sugar, quantum physics, driveways, cheese, furniture, dogs, water, snow, marzipan, colours, days of the week, and numbers up to 8 (for some reason i find nine and ten impossible to remember). lots of progress. by the end of my stay i should be fluent, i think :)

anyway. today is tuesday; K is at work, and Mike is at home studying for his board exam and letting heating repairmen in, so i am on my own for the day. i am going to go for a run, and then see what downtown Kiel has to offer, as i actually haven´t spent that much time in Kiel proper. this house is difficult to escape from, as it is crammed to the gills with books and pictures and and random things to look at (representative sample: a plastic R2D2 robot, four feet high, whose head opens up so you can fill him with ice and store beers in him during parties, a set of acupuncture needles and a fake silicone ear on which to practice, an extensive antique model train set, a wooden dinosaur model kit that kate is putting together to send to her niece, two motorcycles from (i am guessing from their appearance) the 1930´s, a sauna... etc.)

tomorrow i am going to take the train to hambourg and check that out as well, i think. fun fun.

okay, well, love to all, and fingers crossed for the election results.

safely eingang'ed into deutschland

allo allo -
so sitting at K's computer which is has a wonky german keyboard so there might be a few transposed z's and y's (ooh, and ä's instead of apostrophes, that's kind of fun) having arrived yesterday evening. M and i left AC at 7 in the morning after an insomniac night for both of us - i couldn't sleep because i was nervous about not waking up in time, and apparently he couldn't sleep because he decided he needed to drink all three of the really strong local beers that someone had given him rather than leave them in his fridge (not such a good idea as it turns out) but we made it one piece to angers (driving through torrential rain, which just seemed to validate the decision to leave), and onto the train to paris, where we went our separate ways. i got the bus to the airport, where i spent a tragic and semi frantic fortyfive minutes trying to decide which of my treasured paint-stained possessions to ditch, because lufthansa was going to charge me 150 euros in overweight luggage fees (as it turns out they are very strict on the intereurope flights). i finally winnowed it down to only 50 euros in overweight luggage fees, and put the rest in a shopping bag in the nearest trash bin, feeling _very_ pathetic and sorry for myself, duly checked in my main luggage and then realized there was absolutely nothing to stop me from pulling the shopping bag out of the rubbish bin and incorporating as much as i could into my previously weighed-and-cleared carryon bag (they have a limit of 8 kg carryon to start with, but then you are allowed to buy as much duty free booze as you want?? someone explain this to me). i decided if anyone questioned me that i would say i had bought the grotty tennis shoes, several paperbacks, and some extra canvas in one of the duty free shops. hey, it could happen. anyway. airline adventures. the really sad part was that in my frantic last minute reorganization of my bags, the little goodie bag of local honey, camembert, and olives that i had put together for K&M ended up in my carryon, and was deemed liquid by the evil security lady and taken away. i personally question all three of those judgements (creamed honey, still unripeish camembert, and olives? semisolid if anything) but i figured i was not in a position to quibble at that point.
kate met me at the airport in hamburg and it has been lovely lovely to see her again; we went out for dinner last night (with husband M) to a tapas place in downtown kiel and for a walk around (followed by a very satisfying sleep of nine solid hours without a break), and then today a lazy traditional german breakfast of rolls with mystery sausage, liver, quince jam, nutella, etc.

K and I went for a run together down by the port where they have seals (seals! so cute. seehund auf deutsch. i have now tripled my german vocabulary. i can say yes, no, and seal. i got K to write down on a piece of paper for me, 'i am so sorry i don't know how to speak german' 'one hot chocolate please' and 'do you speak english?' and with yes, no, seal, and my cheat sheet i think i can survive for a long time.). down by the harbour they also have submarines, which is kind of spooky, since you don't usually get much chance to see submarines in regular civilian life- they had two pulled out of the water for routine repairs - and also huge monster ferries which go to norway. we had lunch at a little pizzapizza place downtown, then wandered home for tea. so far it has been a fine balance between calorie consumption and expenditure and not much else OOH except we dug K's cello out of the basement and had a go at playing duets which was pretty funny since neither of us has really touched a cello since we were old enough to vote. it sounded horrible, but i have to admit it really made me want to try it for real again. there is a woman in my choir who is a professional cellist and occasionally gives lessons to adult students... hmmm.... wheels turning...

anyway. seeing K again is really nice; we are having a good time together, and it is so much fun to find how instantaneously the connection is reestablished and how little either of us has really changed since we were 12. eek - more later because M's sister has just arrived and i need to play hostess (M&K have run out to the grocery store).

last day in AC

apfels

lake

this will be quick b/c the etchasketch is being extra slow tonight and i am knackered oh my goodness. so quite a late night last night after the spectacular dinner at the chateau, followed by an early morning this morning to get in my last run ever around the lake (see photos above) and get the flat cleaned and my stuff packed blah blah blah. i had hoped to give my painting a couple of days head start to dry before i had to transport it, but it was still completely wet, so rather than rolling it up with the other ones, i have jerryrigged a cardboard and duct tape creation that hopefully will keep big smears of cadmium yellow far away from the rest of my possessions and that i will be able to sneak past the various railway and airline officials tomorrow.

i am very proud that i am leaving a) having successfully consumed exactly the food i had in the fridge (except for the creme fraiche. i was foiled by that, and donated it to the public good) and b) with less stuff than i came with (the local red cross donation station is getting a very valuable collection of semi-paint stained t-shirts. there are some classic gems in there, too, the oldest being i think my Paraguay Community Sanitation 1995 navy blue number, which at this point is 50% paint stain and 49% hole and 1% t-shirt. that one i decided even the red cross didn't need).

class today was unexciting - i drew pictures of hands and feet in my notebook. no works of genius, i am sorry to report - and then after class M and i sponsored a pub evening, which was quite fun in a fragmented sort of way (children having accidents, L. wanting to play pool and noone else wanting to, french speakers separated from each other by miles of table) but all good. afterwards M., P., and the travelling zoo came over to help me eat the rest of my leftovers, as well as some blood sausage, pear cider, and crepes that they contributed, and they have just left (SO SAD to say goodbye to those little girlies; A. drew me a picture with "i love you" on it and i just about CRIED) . C. came over to say goodbye as well; i feel the most confident that i will stay in touch with her out of everyone, as she and i really kept each other sane i think and i have been very glad of her company the last few weeks.

okay, i would come up with some Deep Summing Up Thought for the end of my Studio E. time, but it is frankly too cold in my bedroom to have any part of me outside the covers, so i am going to say goodnight and leave it at that. wish me luck for a safe arrival tomorrow evening in deutschland...

drunk sleepy and FULL. and with hiccups.

so the adults (for want of a less patronizing adjective) ventured out to maulevrier tonight to go to the chateau colbert for dinner oh my god so amazingly good. woweezowee. it's a very imposing 17th century chateau that has been done up to the nines and the food/service is absolutely top notch. we started with some BEEYOOTIFUL little amusebouches of various bits and pieces (some cheese carved to look like a rosette, a mushroom puree thing, a mini bruschetta sandwichy thing) then i had noix st. jacques with basil and a citron gelee for starters, with duck for main course with legumes vieux, which is something that i have seen a couple of places now, and it turns out it means old world vegetables, not just vegetables that stayed too long in the bottom drawer of your fridge. there is a funny little snobbery involved in excluding tomatoes, potatoes, corn, etc from your diet (although they seem just fine with tobacco and chocolate...) anyway. tres bon. a nutty cheese that i missed the name of for cheese course, a fig creme brulee with thyme icecream and some more little amusebouchey bits and pieces for dessert, and coffee - marie antoinette would have been proud. we staggered out four hours after we sat down, and food wise it was definitely the most memorable meal i have eaten in a while (excluding watching
L. eat a dinner of pate on ryvita crackers with gummy worms, which is memorable in a different way).

anyway. gluttony aside, today was quite a virtuous day: an hour long run in the morning, followed by beginning to sort, clean, pack, etc., and i finished painting today, as i think transporting slightly tacky paintings will be easier than transporting completely wet paintings. (oh oh oh cute story: M. took her daughter to go see an exhibit of Catherine the Great when she was about five, and the little girl was very taken with a particular portrait. she got right up close to the painting, and M. was afraid she was going to touch it, and said, no,no, don't touch! and A., used to playing around M's easel and paint set-up at home, rolled her eyes and said, i KNOW mummy, the paint's wet, you're not supposed to touch it.' (!) so cute). anyway. tomorrow will be final clean; i will do some drawing during class, finish laundry/packing, and then should be good to go.

holy shlamoley it is really really cold. i am going to say good-night and go to bed just so that i don't have to keep my hands sticking out from under the covers.

bonne nuit a tout le monde...

ran, painted, drew, walked, ate. now sleep.

two more days left - fingers crossed that i will get my painting done before i leave...

so lessee. run this morning was gorgeous - freezing cold and with rays of early morning sun coming through the tree branches, and spiderwebs with dewdrops shining on them etc. etc. very poetic. i stopped at one point to pee in a cow field, across the ravine from argenton chateau, and it was most scenic. moo.

portrait slightly slightly less dreadful. she still has racoon eyes. i can't figure it out. i get up close, and it looks like everything is quite reasonable, and then i back up and she looks like elizabeth taylor-as-cleopatra, with a spectacular hangover. i dunno. the funny thing about painting portraits of people i don't particularly like (i.e. sarah jane) is that i am not too bothered by the dreadfulness, because even if it were brilliant, i wouldn't want her face on my wall (in fact, the fact that my painting _doesn't_ look like her makes me slightly _more_ likely to hang it up somewhere). i should face the facts and admit that pretty much everything i am painting at this point is going to end up under my bed for the next ten years until i get tired of it and chuck it out...

lunchtime tarte alsacienne, salad (food mission going well, although i found a couple of parsnips that are going to be a trick to use up. hmm. a challenge. i'll see what i can do. mashed turnip surprise a la blackadder? (the 'surprise' being that there is nothing apart from the turnip...) and also a jar of olives.) more tali/pejmann/larine drama during lunch. closed doors, tears, the whole bit. it is like junior high school, except without as many zits.

afternoon painting blech. M painted two fingers of the horrible right hand for me, as an example, and then told me to paint the other two, and of course now every time i look at the painting, the two fingers that michelle painted just glow out of the canvas, like beautiful slightly accusatory little finger-shaped lighthouses shining through the murk of the grey soup that i painted. the left hand and i are still not on speaking terms. i keep my eye on it because i think it has a death wish against me and might try to reach out of the painting to throttle me (actually to achieve that, i would have had to paint it realistically, which i definitely have not, so perhaps i am safe). the whole project is also semi foiled by the weather at the moment, which is intermittently cloudy, and the clouds wait until you have looked down at your palette to pass, so that sarah jane changes colour every time you stop looking at her. it's messing with my head, man.

after class, a walk with C who is recovering from her bug. we went a way neither of us had EVER BEEN before (very exciting) and found a new little wooden bridge and a new cow path and a new section of river and even a new group of farmhouses we didn't know about. i don't remember any of the conversation but we laughed ourselves silly for the whole two hours we were walking; it always takes me by surprise how much i laugh with C given that she is a) just kind of a normal person, not fantastically smart or witty, just really chatty and nice and b) definitely not my generation (age 50, two fully grown up kids). on the way back we went into the church, which neither of us had seen (it's usually only open on sundays, when we have class) and had a look round. it is quite pretty old gothic stone etc. etc. but the original stained glass windows i am guessing got bombed out in one of the wars, because all the windows have been redone in 1960's old people's home craft project pattern stained glass, which is just a travesty and a half. if i were in charge of the world, i would put in plain glass until such time as i was able to recreate the original medieval windows. amen, brothers and sisters.

then portrait night tonight - P and his crazy curly hair - which was quite fun. he has a very distinctive face - i think he is half arab, half italian (?). boy's got some nose, in any case. haven't decided what i think about my drawing- i think the mouth might be all wrong. not his fault, though; he was a brilliant model and didn't budge an inch.

et maintenant home and in bed. just finished 'falling boy'; i think the portable mark twain might be next...

black monday grrrrrr

very beginning of a sore throat today... i hope it is not the evil cold, but i think i am one of the only people who has not yet had it, so it is probably inevitable. blech.
.
also i suddenly hate both my paintings, which is a total downer, because up until this point i was feeling quite encouraged. the portrait i took a look at from ten feet away at lunch today (you can't really get ten feet away from anything in the studio, but i had optimistically brought it home thinking it might be finished) and realized that i had given her a black eye instead of sensitively rendered nuanced eye socket shadows what i was aiming for. and the maja desnuda full figure painting has suddenly taken on an evil life of its own, in cahoots with sarah jane herself to drive me round the bend. yesterday was right hand day, and today was left hand day; she kept moving her fingers grrrrr while i was trying to paint, and i ended up with a left hand that was half the size of the right, with fingers pointing all different directions. so frustrating. we are allowed to call for pose checks, if we think something is slightly different than it was before, but i don't think i can say "pose check, please: STOP BLOODY MOVING YOUR FINGERS" (and i was the only one painting hands today so noone else cared/noticed.) it's similar to the universe-shrinkage that occurs when doing a surgery rotation as a medical student: your entire sense of selfworth becomes dependent on your ability to accurately predict how short or long the attending surgeon wants you to cut the suture when you are assisting in surgery. here my well-being is entirely dependent on whether the model does or does not twitch her index finger three millimeters to the right when i am trying to paint. also i spilled solvent all over myself. so not the best, as painting days go. but L has one more 'so you think you can dance' episode left which we are going to watch tonight and which i am hoping will restore happiness to my soul.

just a few more days left; tomorrow evening is portrait night, wednesday evening we are going to maulevrier to eat at a posh-ish restaurant for my going away; thursday night i have to clean and pack and i have invited everyone to the pub for a goodbye drink (hopefully people will come?? - eek), and then friday morning i leave for deutschland. my goal is to eat all the food i have before i leave - (a small tarte alsacienne, five eggs, some potatoes, two leeks, mushrooms, green beans, a bit of pont-l'eveque, some creme fraiche, two pears, two grapefruits, four clementines, half a packet of fusilli, and six dark chocolate orangienne sticks mmmmm) - with no leftovers and no emergency trips to shopi.

okay, time to unplug myself.

drunk! on a school night! tsk tsk

so much drama today; it has been quite exhausting (none of it, thankfully, involving me). T was jilted by P who is sharing a flat with G who has taken to going for long walks with L in whom T has been confiding her heartbreak, and somewhere yesterday there was a misunderstanding about something, and there have been people in and out of our flat all evening crying and upset and hugging and swearing eternal friendship and getting upset and misunderstood all over again and it is all making me very glad that i am not part of the drama. L & G are currently having dinner in her room with the door closed, so i suspect the drama has not yet found a resolution, but in the meantime i am going to boil some rice, cook some parsnips, and await M, with whom i am having supper in lieu of our planned drink because we both forgot it was sunday and the pub is closed.

OMG i almost forgot - in other class drama news: T shaved his beard. he has gone from looking like mr. unabomber al-qaeda mountain man to looking like a normal person, not to say a TOTAL HOTTIE. (no-one needs to get worried here; there are only four days of class left, he is only 23, and he still has a unabomber personality. i am just appreciating from a distance.). he didn't want to do it - he was trimming it and somehow the trimmer got stuck and made a bald spot, so he had to shave to keep it even. several people, me included, actually failed to recognize him when he came in this morning. funny. also C has come down with the deadly flu bug that has been getting everyone, which makes me think my days of good health may be numbered, but i will step up the obsessive handwashing, eat my vegetables, and hope for the best.

in vaguely related news, i am noticing a phenomenon that i don't think i have ever really come across before, probably because the majority of my friends have been vaguely medically-related for so long now: everyone here will be sitting around talking about some medical topic with a moderate to severe degree of misinformation ("i knew this dude who had totally bugged out eyes because he had like some nerve problem, called like exothyralmus or something, and they told him his eyes might fall out" or "when my dad was in hospital with colitis, they had this theory back then that morphine was bad for you, so they didn't give him anything at all for pain, but now they like know that it is better to give as much morphine as the person wants" or "jamie lee curtis has this thing where she's like a man from the waist down and a woman from the waist up") and no-one, but no-one, will ask me, 'hey, is that true?' or 'what is actually the deal with xyz condition?' i don't say anything when it happens (as it doesn't really matter particularly to me what people think jamie lee curtis looks like with nothing on), but it just strikes me as really odd that people wouldn't ask. as if you were discussing a weird deep sea diving phenomenon that you had vaguely heard of that sounded totally crazy and you had a professional deep sea diver sitting right next to you and it didn't occur to you to check in with them about it. i mean, it's not as if i am guaranteed to know the answer, by a long shot, but i can at least have a better crack at it than most art-students. does anyone else think this is weird? i think it is weird.

------
finishing this at 11 pm, after a very nice supper with M, who is SO ENGLISH, for lack of a more unifying descriptor. he is funny, terminally grumpy, and has a total tin ear for languages (he said, for example, that they had gone to 'sinky terry' in italy for three days, and that he had stopped off in 'vee-hers' for supper on the drive back; it took me a couple of minutes to put together cinque terre and vihiers out of that). he is still not happy, and is wanting to change his plane ticket to leave early; his problem, i think, is that he is very smart and not very social, so if he doesn't have the hypersmart part of his brain plugged in and lit up, he doesn't have a lot else to keep him occupied, and he gets cranky. he did maths, maths, and physics for A-level (in high school) and math at university, which he liked because he didn't have to study: you either get it or you don't. one of _those_ people, in other words. *cough that sounds like "my father" :) i am still totally intrigued by his dietary choices: he is not only vegan at this point, but is oil/fats free (his contribution to dinner was cabbage leaves stuffed with curried rice/peas - very good, fresh strawberries - very good, and a yummy syrah - very good, but hunh?? you're allowed to drink wine (we killed the bottle between us, hence the subject line) but no olive oil? don't geddit. he apparently stuck to plain pasta and boiled vegetables all the way around italy, which i think might be an imprisonable offense, but never mind. dinner was fun, and that is what counts.)

time change this weekend - a lovely lovely sleep in, with time for a morning run in full daylight for a change - which of course we then paid for by losing our afternoon painting light. i ended up with my nose about an inch from the canvas for the last hour, totally cross-eyed, and i suspect i shall have to repaint it all tomorrow, as i probably got all my colours mixed up. oh well, so much piss, as french plumbers say.
but apart from the fact that i can't see it, i am reasonably pleased with this painting; it doesn't look anything like S-J, but at least it looks human (ish) which is a significant improvement, i think, and there is a good chance i will be able to finish it by thursday. how i am going to manage to transport two still-wet paintings in the car, then onto the TGV, then onto the airplane, then into K's car without making a complete mess of everything (while also carrying a big pack and my rolly suitcase) is a whole different question. i may be reporting soon on the interesting toxic effects you get from trying to dry oil paints over the radiator in your room; stay posted. perhaps someone has a hairdryer. hmmm....

in political news, two items of importance:
1) i have taken a solemn oath to run out into the street screaming if obama wins on november 4th (please note i will be in kiel, a place where they are not used to screaming people in the street, so this is a big commitment on my part; i hope the universe is paying attention to how much i do not want mccain to be president) and 2) please spread the word to all california voters that it is reeeeeeeelly important to vote no on prop 4 (parental notification for abortions) which is a big pile of caca. most teenagers tell their parents anyway; those who don't usually have a really good reason not to (incest/rape/child abuse/dysfunctional parents); to have to get official notification is enough of a disincentive to many teens that it would drastically increase the number of unwanted babies and later term abortions (late term abortions = yucky, higher likelihood of complications); and it makes NO SENSE since once you get pregnant you are considered legally an adult able to make your own medical decisions whether you have turned 18 or not, and there is no reason for abortion to be an exception to that, except for the loony christian right wingers who want it to be. so vote no. please. please. please. and tell everyone you know to vote no as well.

many thanks to my sistah who made me larff with the funniest recipe for spanakopita i have ever read (and likely will ever read, given how infrequently i read spanakopita recipes), to J. for sending me my new yorker what is making me sooo heppy, and to B, who said my blog was brilliant (brilliant! me! thereby making up for some of the other things he has said about me ;)....)

proverb du jour

"it is better to have an opinion about socrates than to have actually read socrates."

so i am feeling exactly five million times happier at the moment than i was this time last week, without any real difference in my situation, which really just goes to show that the brain is a completely irrational peculiar organ with no rhyme or reason to it. well, that is not strictly true: material improvements since last week include my coffee-shop day in angers yesterday, a very long walk in the sunshine around apple orchards and cow pastures today, the arrival of a CARE PACKAGE!! containing a new yorker, a large picture of antonio banderas, and crystallized ginger, among other things; a long chat with J. (hello again J!) via gmail; and a very enjoyable dinner with M&P and M's parents. which just goes to show how easily well-being can be removed and then restored. i hope i am never captured by the CIA and extraordinarily renditioned off to guantanamo bay or somewhere for brain washing in an isolation cell because i would last a whopping thirty seconds.
i slept in, and then spent the morning slobbing around in my pyjamas catching up via larine's computer with all the various links for youtube videos people have sent me over the last few weeks. faves: the mp3 from H. about taking public transport to go to wilderness areas, the pro-obama sarah silverman video for thegreatschlep.com, and the movie 'zeitgeist', on google video, sent to me by slightly kooky friend L, which is a documentary purporting to prove several conspiracy theories, starting with christianity and ending up with 9/11 and the war in iraq. the christianity-as-giant-conspiracy was interesting without being particularly shocking, as i don't have that much vested interest in whether jesus as a historical figure did or did not exist, but 9-11 part was kind of traumatizing, to be honest, because there is i do think a real chance, albeit a small one, that it was at least partially engineered by cheney et al looking for an excuse to invade iraq and thereby involve us in a quagmire that had no solution but which would make bajillions for halliburton etc., and some of the evidence presented is a little spooky if it is true. i don't know which is the worse option: thinking that there are a group of terrorists in the middle east hell bent on eradicating western society as we know it, or that western society has become so immoral and decadent that we have leaders would be party to 9/11 in order to make a buck. anyway. C came over right after i finished the movie and was bouncing off the walls with paranoia, and she believes (being a midwesterner) that at heart everyone is a nice person and that democracy is functional, so she talked me down, fed me some tagliatelli with artichoke hearts mmmmmm and sent me on a walk.

i went out to sanzay again, a three hour trek, and it was really good to stretch my legs. i also went the long way home via the apple orchards which are in full fruitiness - they must be close to harvesting, as all the windfall apples made the air smell like cider. also i got chased by an aggressive cow - i have never seen a cow run, let alone kick and buck and jump and go nuts. luckily she was behind a barbed wire fence, so she couldn't actually get at me, but she was very pissed off at me about something. that was very exciting. and yes, it was a cow, not a bull. i looked. she had girl parts. my farming paternal grandparents would be proud of me.

i got back from my walk in the evening to find a drawing of me and six year old A. dressed as princesses in rollerskates on my door, with a note inviting me over for boeuf bourgignon, a pretty irresistible combination, so even though i was not really really in the mood for dinner i decided to go anyway, and am so glad i did. M's mum is a bookbinder and restorer of old books, so we spent the whole evening talking about fun things like gold leaf and embossing and different techniques to marble paper etc. i think i have a book somewhere about paper marbling - i should pull it out when i get home and give it a try. i remember we did it at summer school when i was about six and it was really fun. (a tribute to len eisenhood, art teacher extraordinaire: how cool is that, to get six year olds marbling paper?? i hope he knows how great he was). marina of course was very sniffy about paper marbling and how impossible it was to get right etc., but it turns out that when she did it she was trying to create (this is such a representative M thing) an exact reproduction of some 18th century marbled endpapers for some project she was doing, and it took several weeks to get it exactly right. "of course, if you are just having fun and making mess, buf, it takes maybe one afternoon, but to do it properly, buf, much time is needed..." i threatened to come and move in with them for a year to do an apprenticeship to learn bookbinding, drawing, painting, paper-marbling, etc., and P said, oh i teach you too to make windows. is very complicated. take ten minutes to learn, long time. four pieces wood, glass, bapbapbap, put together, voila. rest of year you learn paper with M.' he is so nice and funny and sweet i just can't stand it. after dinner M&P and i had a very fun conversation about religion as we were doing the washing up, both of them being atheists who had grown up in fairly religious families and me still buzzing from having watched zeitgeist.

i saw M's light was on as i walked home after dinner, so (true to operation sanity's prime objectives) i stopped by to say hello and see how his trip went - he had literally just walked in the door after a sixteen hour drive home and was knackered but we have a date for a drink tomorrow night so i can hear all about italy.

okay time for beddybyes oh goody i get to read my newyorker. it is REALLY COLD in my room - the same snails that run the internet here also are in charge of getting the hot water from the basement up the pipes into my radiator, and they are definitely slacking. voici the down side to socialism - no incentive for hard work (she says after her long day devoted to sloth)...

pitchers

cameron in angers

my artsy photo of castle reflected in moat
chateau azay le rideau. considering buying it as a summer home
J. & A.
J and hortense, second grade portrait drawing class

exhossted

so we did it, we climbed angers/everest via public transport today, and proved it can be done, although we did miss one bus/train connection and got stranded in cholet for an hour and a half between 8:45 and 10:15 (per the bus driver our own fault; we were supposed to tell him we had a train to catch so he would have known to go to the train station FIRST before going to the centre-ville station. whatevs, as krystle would have said). but cholet is a happening town; it provided a croissant and coffee, a tourist office with a very perky young thing with a map, a pretty cathedral, a public bathroom, and before we knew it it was time to get on the next train to angers. we shared all the buses/trains with hordes of junior high school students on their way to school (the rural public buses also double as school buses) which was a bit much at 7 am but it is more fun than being one of a horde of tourists.

in angers, we went to the castle to swan around the ramparts (fabulous view of the river) and also to see the tapestry of the apocalypse, which (straining to remember what the autoguide told us) i think is the biggest tapestry ever woven in western europe? is that possible? it is 14o meters long (that is a lot of tapestry) and depicts st. john's vision of the apocalypse, complete with horsemen, dead people, satanic fire, monsters with seven heads, rivers running blood etc. even if it isn't the biggest tapestry in the world, i think it might definitely qualify as the scariest. then we took ourselves out for lunch, and then a wander around the shops, another coffee, and then back to the train in the afternoon (which C. almost missed, a little bit of excitement).
i got my TGV ticket changed to next week as well, so now i am truly definitely leaving a week from today; all legs of my journey from AC to kiel are now confirmed.

back to AC in time for a 45 minute soak in the bath (i nearly fell asleep, but then the water started getting cold), a potluck dinner with the whole crew (out of the blue! a bona fide delicious brussel sprout recipe from S-J, involving lots of garlic and creme fraiche. will ask her for details in the morning), and then a bonfire out in the garden, with hula hooping competition, bad singing, and mulled wine. everything a bonfire is supposed to have. (and a few things it is not supposed to have, like about five minutes of rain, which luckily was only five minutes).

tomorrow i will try and load some photos - too tired tonight....
love to all and please please please let obama win.

end of penultimate week

funny thing, now that i know i am leaving in a week, i am feeling quite fond of AC and studio E. etc. brains are peculiar things.

alors, les updates: weather sunny but cold. mosquito bites getting a bit better. paintings crap but enjoyable which is what counts (M correctly pointed out that la maja desnuda was painted by goya, NOT velasquez; i was actually confusing two paintings, la maja desnuda and the velasquez painting of (i think) venus looking in her mirror on a red sofa, can't remember official title). exercise one hour run today wot a good girl i am. food: boring leftovers for lunch BUT dinner was chinese feast courtesy of larine with pears and chocolate for le dessert, yum yum. social activities: dinner chez M&P as marina's parents were visiting (favourite part: show of kids' drawings; miniM had done one of the whole family peeing, all four with very prominent belly buttons. awesome) and then a fairly raucous game of celebrity chez G&H afterwards. reading material: the economist that sistah sent me (thank you), the bear went over the mountain (dumb so far, but has such good reviews from reputable sources on the jacket that i will persevere). just finished 'pig' by andrew someone, sort of sweet but a little disjointed coming-of-age tale about a boy living in horrible council flat with his horrible family in the north of england in love with an indian girl. next is either the portable mark twain or falling boy, depending on what i am in the mood for. internet life: just reconnected via facebook with farina blueberry (not her real name and matt M (college roommates) and extended barcelona clan members. crazy, man. the percentage of the world with a facebook profile must be up to at least 1% by now, no?

tomorrow C and i are going to attempt the heretofore unattempted, to go where no man has gone before, a daytrip to angers entirely via public transportation. in theory it is possible, although it involves two buses and a train each way, and there are a couple of six minute connections in there, so there is a reasonably good chance will we end up stranded in some small town somewhere between here and angers with no way to get home, BUT courage! we will see how it goes. in all the years that studio E has been operating, apparently no one has ever attempted to get to angers without using the fifty euro taxi ride for the first leg of the journey. i feel like we are preparing to climb everest. mainly it is so C can get her hair cut and i can change my train ticket, and so we can both SIT IN A COFFEESHOP. (which is why angers is even _better_ than climbing everest. you can't do anything of those things on the top of everest. well, maybe you could cut your hair. but a shampoo and blowdry would be out of the question. navigating the french SNCF ticket bureaucracy may prove to be impossible from anywhere on earth, so i guess that doesn't count as a strike against mount everest until i have actually achieved it in angers). then tomorrow evening (always assuming we are _not_ stranded in some farflung outpost of rural anjou and did in fact make it back home) there are plans for another bonfire and a potluck dinner in the backyard of les sylvains. should be fun.

okay c'est time for bed. bisous a tout le monde.

more than fifty blog entries!

that is kind of scary. one day they will get collected and published, no doubt, in the anthology of great american blogs of the twentyfirst century, but until then it seems like an embarrassingly large quantity of hot air.

lessee. drawring update: horrible portrait drawing of s.j. became a degree less horrible this morning; i have started a poster study with a view to transferring the drawing to canvas and spending next weeks' mornings doing a painting of her head. afternoon painting (velazquez mirror red drapery extravaganza) also (i think? dare to say?) TWO degrees less horrible than yesterday, although still fairly horrible. the light changed lot in the three days that i have been working on it, working from her head on down her torso, which means that her face is wintry pinks and blues, her neck and shoulders are disconcertingly yellowy orange, as if she had accidentally fallen asleep in the tanning bed at the salon, and her chest and belly are sort of grey umber, as if she had been trapped in the tanning bed and tragically died and wasn't found for a couple of days. hmmm. may have to do some tweaking of colours. also her right boob is pointing off at a very peculiar angle, sort of torpedolike, and i am not sure how to fix it. however i am sure that tomorrow will bring gloriously fresh new insights, flashes of artistic genius, etc.. that will solve EVERything. hunh.

exercise update: half hour run and forty five minute walk. might possibly be enough to work off the boeuf bourgignon and apricot charlotte of yesterday's lunch, except for we ate at the pub aGAIN today (see below)...

social activity update: pub lunch with M&C; we were going to be restrained and have a salad at C's house and then we saw the plat du jour was bunny cooked in beer, and C (i don't know what they do for fun in the midwest, i really don't) had never had rabbit, so we had to eat at the pub. i was ever so restrained, however, as i split my creme brulee with M rather than having a whole one to myself...very good. i have noticed that M never ever asks anyone about themselves (nice as she is) which slightly bothers me; J. had a theory that this was a european thing (hello J/ if you are reading this!). any thoughts from anyone with actual french people experience? i wonder if she thinks all my questions about her work and kids and what have you are horrifically american and vulgar (she looked pretty horrified when i offered to split a creme brulee with her, but she did agree in the end); but if that's the case, what do they talk about when there are no vulgar americans around to ask questions? if a french person has a conversation with a fallen tree in a forest, can anyone hear him/her? clearly the answer lies in learning to speak kick-arse french and then installing hidden microphones all over the country so i can listen in on conversations and figure out the mystery.

evening's entertainment: a bit more done on my adoration of the green madonna and the distorted, malnourished and oddly coloured baby jesus; cup of tea with gustavo; finished armistead maupin's maybe the moon, which i liked better than tales of the city; and revelled in the fact that i am down to only two really evil mosquito bites.
and now ees time for le bed.

according to the surgeon general...

... consuming cannonballs for lunch can be hazardous to your health, or at the very least one's girlish figure. spontaneous group outing at lunchtime to the pub for boeuf bourgignon, salad, frites, a slice of apricot charlotte (and a coffee, just to keep my baby sister heureuse), and moving afterwards was really not such a happening thing. i was also a VERY BAD GIRL and skipped my run this morning (it was very dark and very rainy) so i will have to be extra lean and mean tomorrow to make up for my gluttony today.

i told Head Honchos that i was going to miss the last week of class; they were very nice about it and completely understood, which was good, as i was afraid there would be some funny feelings. i am such a trained little monkey that it is really hard to not see a school-related thing through, even when the school-related thing is supposed to be for fun in the first place, as if "going to germany to see K just sounds like more fun at this point" isn't a good enough reason to go. anyway. They said not to worry, both of them have left stuff early, people leave here early all the time, do what i need to do, no problem at all. so that's good. K meanwhile has been sending exciting emails suggesting things like daytrips to copenhagen, M meanwhile has been sending me emails telling me he can absolutely no problem get me to angers to get the train next week, and ironically i can quite cheerfully imagine myself sitting in K's kitchen painting during the day if she can't get all the days off work. so it's all sort of falling into place. meant to be, clearly.

i enjoyed class today much more as a result of having all this settled - i did a horrible drawing in the morning, and got a start on a horrible painting in the afternoon, but i really wasn't minding the horribleness, and the little voice that usually keeps up a consistent stream of patter about exactly how horrible everything is really didn't pipe up much at all today, very relaxing. Head Honcho 1 told us a story about a two day diatribe he went on several years ago when he got completely depressed about what a fraud he was and how he really couldn't draw at all and it was all a terrible mistake, and apparently Head Honcho 2's response was, i'm going to go paint now; call me when you're done.

i drew T at portrait night tonight - my drawing looks nothing like her, but looked about the same level of not-like-her as everyone else's, so at least i am in good company, and she is fun to draw because she has a big mass of sexy curly dark hair and very wide cheekbones. it is funny drawing people whose faces i now know reasonably well because you remember and compare much more, i think, than if you are just doing portraits of people you don't know. as i was drawing T, i was mentally comparing her face to G's, who we drew last week, and being surprised by how different they are to draw, not just obvious things like beard stubble/long dark curly hair or lack thereof, but shadows at corners of mouths that are really pronounced on one person, and almost invisible on another, totally differently shaped eyebrows, tall/short nasal wings, etc. i would still be rubbish at describing someone for a police artist, however; i don't know how they do that.

anyway; hope everyone is doing bueno and thanks to those what wrote. extra love for you...

plotting my escape...

so after a lot of dithering, i booked myself a cheapo flight to germany next friday, and i will just miss the last week of class. it was going to be prohibitively expensive to get to amsterdam/prague/brussels to meet K halfway and then get back here, so i decided to just go to hamburg, stay at K's house, meet her husband of FIVE YEARS oh my god, and then back to paris to hang out with B before flying home. i feel a bit bad about cutting out early here, but i have been feeling so stuck the last couple of weeks, that i think it is time to bust a MOVE. yeah baby. i will do a brilliant two week painting of S-J and her bony rear-end reflected in a mirror and then je suis out of here.

in other exciting news, my mosquito bites are now officially horrendous. they are starting to ooze. now on day three of sleeping with my legs packed in ice. these are not regular mosquitoes, these are mosquitoes that mean bidness with a capital B. i am so done with them, i can't even beGIN to tell you.

another episode of so you think you can dance tonight; L. asked me during one of the ad breaks "how you fall in love" which led to sort of an interesting discussion; she is engaged to the only son of an apparently very traditional chinese family, 'very nice' per L's report, but she wanted to know how to fall in love with him, a topic that has all sorts of absolutely impossible cross-cultural landmines built into it. i don't know who is more qualified to answer the question, L who has at least somehow gotten herself engaged to one person, or me, who has failed to get engaged to several people :), but it was interesting in any case.

everyone is coming down with a cold here. i do not want to catch it, i do not. no no no. no colds for me.

hope everyone is happy and well.

these mosquito bites are NOT FUNNY

my legs from the knees down are a pink swollen mess of bug bites and they are not regular bug bites but some sort of evil gallic mosquito that is wanting revenge for several hundred years of franco-anglo bad relations. perhaps i should leave my canadian passport out on my night table so they leave me alone. oh mein gott. they are really persistent too - usually if you leave them alone they are gone within a couple of hours, but this is night number two of going to bed with my legs packed in ice and they are showing no sign of letting up. tomorrow i am going to the pharmacy for some benadryl, that's all there is to it. and until then, mind over matter, they do not exist, if i don't pay attention to them, they won't bother me....argghhhh.

anyway. so today was the start of a Three Week Pose. very exciting. we drew lots for which easel we wanted, and i ended up with a reasonably well-lit centralish spot, which i am pleased about (although as the days get darker earlier, we are really noticing the difference- the studio is all natural light, pas de lumiere electrique, and by the end of the afternoon my nose was about an inch from my canvas trying to see what i was doing.) it's sort of a velazquez maja desnuda pose - she is lying semi-reclined on dark red drapery in front of a mirror, so we have the challenge of the mirror reflection as well and all the red reflected light bouncing around. i can also see from my seat a tiny little gary head that floats around just above her thigh in the mirror reflection, which i will have to decide whether i am going to paint or not. the real test of romanticism vs. realism.

for lunch, L, C and i brought our lunches down to the lake to join M&P and the girls for a picnic; it was gorgeous and sunny out although quite cold. C had her first fig ever at the age of fifty; a landmark occasion. it just confirms my impression of the midwest as a hard cold land of sensory deprivation (meanwhile miniM, the 3 year old, is happily shoving as much camembert as she can into her mouth; no problems with dietary paucity there...) i ended up going to their house for dinner tonight (four out of the last five meals half in french, not bad) as philippe had roasted a chicken and claimed they would not be able to eat it all, which was fun. the girls had painted an empty toilet paper roll with stripes and waves and stars as a present, which was SO CUTE it is hanging on my door knob now. truly a gift for the woman who has everything. they should put them in the saks fifth avenue catalogue.

okay time to go feel sorry for mosquito-bitten self. love to all.

mark busting out!

so M. is making a break for freedom - he went to angers today, rented a car, and is going to leave for italy in a few hours to meet up with his wife and daughter. he will be gone for a week. he offered to take me as well, and although i am tempted, i think i will stay put for the time being, BUT take him up on the offer of a ride to/from angers next week in order to get myself to wherever i can to meet up with K. we had a planning session tonight with maps and laptops and calendars and beer and tea, and totally felt like naughty children planning on cutting school. it was great. it has become obvious in the last few days that those of us who are not in the clique of longterm Studio E. groupies should not have been so tentative and respectful of each others' privacy for the last few weeks; i have not been knocking on M's door to go have a beer together on a regular basis because a) it's a little weird; he's a married guy and b) he is fairly introverted so i figured he wanted his privacy, but (duh) it turns out he has been going round the twist from loneliness and boredom. no more, man. i am starting a rival clique which anyone who feels like it can join, called operation sanity, and we are going to have a potluck dinner or pub evening every night of the week. that's my plan, stan.

anyway. activity du jour was an excursion to tours with M&P and the girls; it was fun except i got absolutely chewed to pieces by mosquitoes. currently in bed with an icepack on the back of my knees, which are huge and swollen pink and so itchy it is KILLING ME. i sat in the back of the car between the girls' car seats, and we had a grand old time, colouring in colouring books of princesses, telling riddles, playing handclapping games, etc. picnic on the river in tours, visit to the museum of craftsmen (where the various guildmembers submit their 'masterworks' to prove they are ready to become fully qualified carpenters/shoemakers/bakers/whatever. sort of a bizarre collection of objects: a violin constructed entirely of sugar, a shoe made for a (let's hope theoretical) person with four feet on the end of their leg, a birdcage carved out of a single piece of wood, etc.), a visit to the cathedral to look at what has been deemed the most beautiful stained glass in france (real purty), and then to the chateau azay rideau, a 16th century stately 'ome in the middle of a lake, paintings, four poster beds, peeling silk wallpaper, tapestries, the works, also tres jolie. then for supper (pizza, fries, hotdogs - very unfrench of them, both to be willing to eat pizza and also to be so subject to the kids' desires in general, but i had a sandwich and it was all good) and then home. oh crap i should get out of bed and put the rest of my sandwich in the fridge, speaking of.
anyway, so that's that. time for sleeping. will not scratch my mosquito bites, will NOT.

settling for a sanity:art ratio greater than 1

allo allo;
so a fun little glimpse into rural french life this morning; we went to the kids' school to do a little portrait drawing lesson for the second graders. main observation is holy shit second graders can make a lot of noise when you get twenty of them in one room. M brought a bunch of her drawings to put up, and you could hear this wave of little voices saying to each other "ohhhhh, look, it's so beautiful" in this very lovely unguarded way, (some of the drawings were extra exciting because they were of people the kids recognized - L, me, M's daughter who's in their class) and then she announced that they were all going to get to try to draw pictures which just about tipped them all over the edge into excited hysteria. the teacher got them divided into four groups of 4-5 kids each, and we each took a group, and went for it. i had carla, hortense (unbelievable name for a seven year old, but i guess the rules are different in french :)), charlie, mathieu, and another little boy on whose name i gave up after the fourth attempt at understanding him through a mouthful of missing teeth, and it was a hoot. they didn't seem bothered at all by my total inability to communicate ('look eyes mathieu. he are circular? square? where part more dark face? part clear face?). kids at that age really don't get the whole observational drawing thing; it's all completely symbolic representation, so i gave up fairly quickly trying to get them to really look at each others' faces and did a lot of, oh, tres BIEN for pictures of dinosaurs with really big teeth, which was mostly what they wanted to draw. (M was very strict with her group, making them decide about what part face dark vs. clear, and her group ended up with a hilarious series of vaguely cubist drawings in which the right side of the face (drawn with circle for eyes, triangle for nose, etc.) was drawn entirely in white crayon and the left side of the face done entirely in black charcoal. i did marvel afterwards at how quiet and peaceful and neat the other three groups were, compared to the total chaos of my group (most of whom ended up with faces, hands and clothes smeared with a rainbow of oil pastels; there're a handful of french mamas out there tonight who will not be happy with me), and M said she thought perhaps in general the style of the teacher had a lot to do with the style of the group. sweet M! making a joke at my expense! unbelievable. oh and so so so sweet when we left A (M's seven year old) came over and gave me a hug goodbye. i just about died.

anyway. L invited G&P over for lunch, which was nice, but a little strange. she has done this a couple of times, invite people over, invite me to join them, ask me to make something small to go with lunch (rice, a salad, etc.), and then have a last minute meltdown at her inability to make a meal, so i end up cooking for everyone. today for instance she had bought a frozen parmentier thing, maybe 1-2 servings at most, which she planned to split between four of us, and it said on the box that it needed an hour in the oven, and five minutes before they were due to arrive, she asked me how to turn the oven _on_. hunh??? it turned out fine; i had made a big salad, and made some ham and grilled cheese on toast, and the boys had brought some juice and flan for pudding, and we had a spoonful each of semi-defrosted parmentier, but i can't figure out sometimes what is going on in her head.

in the afternoon, M had a mini workshop at her house to show anyone who was interested her charcoal and sanguine technique thing; it is really quite astonishing what she is able to do with a palette essentially limited to black, white, and reddy brown; she has a complicated system of stomps and chamois that she rotates, which i would never be able to keep as immaculately clean and separate as she does, and which i suspect is part of her success, but i might give it a go at some point. the escape to angers is postponed until next weekend (if i can't make it to meet up with K), as M&P invited me to come out with them and the girls in the car tomorrow - they are going on a castle expedition. i have decided i don't care where i go (or with whom, really), as long as i can sit in a coffee shop. chateaux all have coffee shops, therefore i will go to a chateau with them. i did go with C for a big long walk around the lake (to make up for my pathetic half-hour-only run this morning) in the sunshine, which definitely increased the sanity to art ratio of the weekend (i have only gotten a tiny corner of my next master copy done, and according to the schedule i am supposed to be done and on to the next one by sunday night. not going to happen. standards are crashing down, but it is all in the interests of not stabbing myself in the eyeball with a charcoal pencil out of frustration, which i think is a good thing.) C luckily is 100% sane and very nice and very easy company as well. gotta hang out with her more often, man. the plan for this evening is to see if i can get H to play scrabble with me; we've been posturing and waving our scrabble antlers at each other for a bit, now, and it might be time to put it to the test.

ooh, but dinner might have to be first...

sanity vs art

zombie numero un (still wet, hence the halo)
zombie numero deux with fun trompe l'oeil post-its (michelle's cheat sheets for me)
truly horrible drawing of S-J
hola hola
so the End of the Two Week Pose today, a historic occasion; i think everyone was feeling a bit relieved, to be honest, as we are all sick of staring at our own dreadful paintings. cameron came over for dinner tonight and we ended up admitting that we had both been near tears during the afternoon session out of sheer frustration at the whole process. ennyway. rumour has it that great breakthroughs are often achieved during the last 2-3 weeks, so let's cross our fingers and hope that is the case. i ended up painting trompe-l'oeil post its on one of mine (see above); HeAD Honcho #1 has a very cute habit of being ultrarespectful of our work, and doing little demo sketches for us out of a desire to not paint directly on our paintings, and the studio ends up littered with her little scraps of paper with body parts on them. (although at this point my attitude is, hey, paint away, knock yourself out, if you can do anything at all to improve it i will be eternally grateful. i can't name my first born after you, as G already claimed that right for fixing the etchasketch, but perhaps a much loved family pet? perhaps i could name the etchasketch Head Honcho #1 - that would kill two birds with one stone).
lunch time i went down to the river with T & L and had a mini picnic; we ran into M, who has not only gone vegan but has also taken up regular lunchtime exercise. our lad's going to be quite svelte by the time he heads back to InZid (admittedly he was generously proportioned to begin with). the first part of the conversation with T & L covered the which-movie-star-do-you-think-is-cute, which i can do, whatever, although i really need to learn the name of the scottish actor in sliding doors who plays gwyneth paltrow's love interest, because i quite fancy him and have no idea who he is and i always regret not knowing his name when the which-movie-star-do-you-think-is-cute conversation comes up. (he also played simon callow's boyfriend in four weddings and a funeral, and read the w.h.auden poem at the funeral.) T & L, for the record, are fans of the matt damon/brad pitt/george clooney contingent. anyway. from there the conversation went seriously downhill to discussing astrological signs and how signs absolutely correspond with personality types. WHY DO OTHERWISE RATIONAL PEOPLE GIVE ANY CREDENCE TO ASTROLOGY??? WTF???T asked me my sign; i told her i was a virgo, which elicited a whole string of adjectives from L & T both, along the lines of "omg you are SUCH a virgo; you are x and y and z and blah and blah" which makes you think, well, if i am SUCH a virgo, why did you have to ask me? but i was well-behaved and didn't say anything. but still. don't get it.
in the afternoon i was in such a foul temper i did something i have never ever done before, which was to leave class early (only half an hour, but still). i went for a big long run to see the cows, and then came back and invited C over for supper, which was an absolutely brilliant move, because she is so nice and chatty and a good talker and a good listener and we had a good three hour yacker with wine and artichokes with butter and garlic and salad and chevre chaud on little bread toasties and mushroom and ham omelettes and by the time she went home i think we were both feeling somewhat restored to sanity. there is a possibility of a ride into vihiers tomorrow, which we might might might take in order to get the train to angers and have an overnight expedition into angers (either that or i will go with M and her family to saumur or somewhere on saturday). oh mon dieu a proper coffee shop i might explode from the excitement of it.
okay network once again trying to die so will post now before i lose everything (at least the network is considerate enough to occasionally give some warning - the little connectivity signal starts to flicker pathetically, so you have a little bit of time).
love to all. go obama!

can't be bothered to think of a title.

G
L



the cold weather is back: i am tucked up in bed wearing my thickest woolly socks and a google polar fleece (courtesy of doodle; if it weren't for google swag, i would have nothing to wear here) over my nightie (which is not google-brand - has google gone into nightwear yet?) and i am still cold. oh well. sun was nice while it lasted.

lunch today at the pub with C, M plus family, Larine, and Head Honchos; the kids ate nothing but frenchfries, ketchup, and chocolate icecream with whipped cream which is actually making my stomach hurt thinking about it (the rest of us had the plat du jour, which was curried chicken). i have also taken to drinking an espresso after lunch when i eat at the pub, in order to combat the afternoon somnolence that sets in after a 1500 calorie extravaganza such as provided by mme. therese (or grumpy husband jean-noel. not actually sure which of them does the cooking. i can't figure out what the grumpiness is about; sometimes he is totally horrible, slamming down carafes of water, cutlery etc., and sometimes quite charming. today he was positively flirtatious, undercharging me for lunch because he said i looked so jolie with green paint on my nose. um. actually i was competing with miniM, who managed to get chocolate ice cream into the back of her _hair_, by some twist of the regular laws of gastronomy and mechanics).

it was good to get out and have lunch with everyone; i am starting to go a little cuckoo from the isolation, i think. it makes me wonder how hildegard von bingen (age 8 to 38 in a single cell in her monastery) managed. i definitely used to be better at entertaining myself. i am staying busy, no question, but the last couple of days have been too much time alone in my own head for comfort. it makes you kind of get how old people who live on their own would get sucked into calling psychic hotlines for $5 a minute. here is my wish list: NPR, a nice coffee shop to hang out in rather than the pub (which has french TV blaring all the time and which smells of jean-noel who smells of cigarette smoke), a direct bus to angers, and the ability to teleport friends from anywhere in the world without jetlag or consequences to their inherent molecular structure. i would take a significant improvement in my painting ability as well, but i'm not picky. now, would that be so hard to achieve? really. ooh, and a cinema that magically catered to an anglophone audience with my taste in movies. there is a cinema here (it's very cute - it's entirely run by the students at the junior high school) but mon francais isn't quite up to cinema standards, at least not without the prop of subtitles, and the fare is either french or crap hollywood dubbed into french. quelle tristesse.

finished 'the portrait' - sort of a serious more simple version of 'the debt to pleasure' - i was right to suspect that all would not go well. the story of a painter living as a recluse on a storm tossed part of the coast of france who spends his time reminiscing about how his life was ruined, and plotting the downfall of the man responsible. this is evidently what happens when you are cut off from NPR, coffee shops, and teleportation services. now re-reading the midnight garden of good and evil, which i am enjoying and really wanting to watch the film of it again; am i hallucinating that it was kevin spacey and jude law? can't be bothered to google it as the network is too slow, but will definitely look it up when i get home and rent it if so. i think the only thing more enticing would be if javier bardem were also in it and there was a shirtless squirt gun fight that i had forgotten about the first time i saw it :) but alas, i think javier was probably still doing grotty repertory theatre in spain or something when that came out, as it was a while (ten years? ish) ago. like all those people who play fantasy football, i should start a fantasy cinema league...

paintings are crap, but never mind. started a drawing today (and also did another two square inches of master copy... - zipping along at breakneck speed :)). two days left of the poses, then a two and a half week pose before we finish. really i have no idea at all if i have improved - i have definitely acquired some vocabulary for how to discuss certain concepts (e.g. cast shadow vs form shadow, terminator, dark light vs highlight) which i didn't know before, and i am perhaps drawing more consciously than i did before as a result, but i dunno. hard to compare just because i have never done anything similar (i.e. have never tried spending more than 4-5 hours on a project before).

okay enough blather. bonne nuit a tout le monde and hasta manana...

joke of the day

man: doctor, my wife made me come today because she says i'm going mad.
doctor: why does she say that?
man: well, because i like sausages.
doctor: that's ridiculous. i like sausages as well
man: really? you must come round and see my collection; i have hundreds.

paintings are horrible horrible horrible, not to be discussed. morning pose now looks like a furious zombie with a bright purple knee; afternoon pose looks like michael jackson with a limb length discrepancy. it is all very disheartening. but i did a drawing of gustavo at portrait night tonight that i think makes him look quite dishy and rockstar-like, rather than his usual look of amiably stoned and zero sunlight exposure (not fair, he is actually a very nice-looking guy). i have decided that the clavicles are my least least favourite part of the body to try and draw.

M. is going to go to her daughters' school on friday to do a drawing demo for them and have all the kids try to draw portraits of each other, and L & I are going to go along as helpers, which i think should be a good time. i am also going to try and figure out a way to get to amsterdam (or somewhere in between) the weekend after that to meet up with K. - i wish it weren't quite such a pain in the arse to get anywhere from AC- just a weekend bus to angers would be AWFULLY helpful, for instance - but i will look at buses and flight times and taxis and see what i can figure out. M is considering renting a car to drive down to barcelona for three days next weekend (his family has just left for there, and he has now got the post-visitor blues as well). i would consider going with if i didn't have an inkling of how many million hours in the car that would be....

okay, must go for run before bed. insomnia last night -> didn't get up until 8:45 -> class all day plus portrait night tonight -> no time for run -> fully planning on eating last little piece of tarte au citron before going to sleep tonight: final conclusion = must go running. damn. the flow chart has spoken.

hope tout le monde is doing well...

etch-a-sketch is BACK in business...

girls in the class


so the laptop whisperer has gotten the etchasketch back to at least semi-operative (the gap in communication was due to the network being down for nearly 48 hours; we were all starting to twitch a bit there by the end, but we're OK now we are back online). it is good b/c i was feeling a bit bad about poaching time on L's computer (she had me logon as her cat instead of as her for the sake of computing hygiene; don't ask why her cat has a logon profile on her laptop. that's beyond the scope of helpdesk.) anyway. presumably if one of the many many people in the world who are more savvy about computers than me were here, i would have a flawlessly consistent internet connection, but as it is i will enjoy the surrealism of occasionally logging on at 2 a.m. as a cat.
i am just getting over the horrible case of anti-climaxitis that i developed about thirty seconds after P left sunday morning. after having had a fun weekend outside with the world's most energetic conversationalist, i was NOT in the mood to be inside hunched over an easel listening to Head Honcho's semi-waffle, staring at my zombie pictures. they are a tiny, tiny, tiny little bit better today, but i don't think the louvre will be calling anytime soon. i also managed to drop my palette butter side down on the floor (well, partly on the floor, and partly on M. oops) and had to spend the better part of our non-lecture time cleaning it up. curses! on the good side, intestines much happier yesterday; i ran at lunch time and it felt great.

by far the best part of the day sunday was watching another episode of so you think you can dance (Thane and Comfort got eliminated. sad about Thane. i wasn't that attached to Comfort. not one of my faves) and eating some of the tarte au citron that C bought me as a treat in thouars because she is incredibly nice and thoughtful and knew that i had both a) a thing for tartes au citron and b) a guest.
probably not adding to my lightness of spirit sunday was the fact that i finished reading aldous huxley's 'brave new world' (not the best pickmeup reading choice, but there you go); it's interesting how all the writers in the 1930's through 50's were worried about future dystopias in which everything was regimented and controlled by technology and without room for any individualism, whereas the vision of the future that scares me is nuclear winter with trash and landmines everywhere with what few survivors there are running wild. i don't think we are controlled so much by technology as by our continued desire to keep using it. is that the same thing? just started reading 'portrait' by iain pears, which is creepily interesting so far; it is written in the form of a monologue that a painter keeps up as he paints an old friend/rival with whom he clearly has had a complicated history. i suspect it will not end well.

anyway. last night G&H and L and i played rummy; the stakes were pretty high (winner to drown the loser in their pink bathtub) but luckily L won and decided she was anti-death-penalty, at least for white-collar crimes like losing at gin rummy, so we were ok, then to bed for another sleepless night (what is going on??!? this is totally unlike me. i used to be such a good sleeper...) and up this morning for another three hours of slogging away at "S-J: undead".

determined to put insomnia to use...

amazing sunset over the atlantique
loire view
at the beach
abbaye de fontevraud
eleanor of aquitaine's tomb!!

p in saumur
trying to steer us into a tree, la venise verte
sorry these all loaded back to front all out of order, but they took so long to load in the first place, i'm not going to go back and do it again :)

so a lovely weekend (once p actually arrived, three and a half hours later than planned, having driven in circles for an hour around a completely different argenton, one that is 100 km from here... oops). we have been INCREDIBLY lucky with the weather - it has been sunny and warm all weekend, t-shirt weather, and it was definitely a treat to get out and see a bit of something other than argenton chateau.

friday morning after breakfast we started off, going through thouars (can't miss market day, after all; weekly cheese purchase cannot be skipped) to the abbaye de fontevraud (beautiful, peaceful, and weirdly deserted), where i got to say hello to eleanor of aquitaine in person, which definitely felt like i was checking off an important item of some obscure list that had been in my subconscious since the age of about seven, kind of fun. then on to saumur, which has to be one of the prettiest towns ever (and has the extra bonus that the saumur castle is the same castle which appears in the background of all of the illustrations of duc de berry's book of hours what i have framed in my bedroom (another item checked off my medieval art nerd checklist! hooray!). we had a loverly lunch in an outdoor cafe, a wander round the town, along the river, some blackcurrant sorbet mmm.... and back to AC in time for a bonfire in the garden of les sylvains.

yesterday (saturday) we were much more ambitious; we drove all the way out to the coast, to the poitevin wetlands, near niort for anyone who feels like looking it up. we had a picnic at the ruins of the abbaye de st. pierre, very very pretty except for the scary disembodied french voices who start telling you things as soon as you cross a threshhold (presumably about the history of the abbey, but for all i knew, it could have been "aurore... aurore..." (for fans of the movie delicatessen).) major item of note here was that after i said hello and two tickets please to the lady at the ticket booth, she asked me for my postal code (to which i replied, hunh?), after which she said, oh, i see, you're not french. but HEY! i said five whole words before she figured out that i wasn't french, which i am going to count as a major linguistic triumph. (we managed to massively confuse the girl at the tourist office where we stopped for a map; p. had paolo conte on the brain, and so was pissing about talking to me in a mix of spanish, english, and faux italian, while i asked the lady in my horrible french if she had a booklet with a map in it. her hand was hovering over her stack of booklets while she tried to figure out which version she should give us, and every time we said something, either to each other or to her, her hand would go uncertainly to the italian stack... no, to the english stack... no, the spanish stack... c'est la vie in the 21st century european union, i guess.)

after lunch we rented a little canoe and paddled around the canals, a.k.a. 'la venise verte' ("green Venice"), which was SO PRETTY mon dieu. i didn't take many pics because pau kept trying to capsize the boat and i was afraid for my camera, but the canals are maybe eight feet across, tree lined, through fields full of cows and wildflowers, with a carpeting of what looked like green lentils on the surface of the water, and it's not like english canals in which the rubbish to water ratio is about 1:1, and you are constantly having to jump out and go around locks. the whole canal network is completely flat (no locks), completely rubbish-free, and i have to reiterate that it was gorgeously sunny tout le jour. p. flatly refused to sing 'o sole mio' to me as he rowed, which was disappointing, but we did get a herd of cows that followed us wherever we went, which was almost as good.

after that we drove out to the coast proper, to the beach, arriving just in time for a spectacular sunset and a quick run-around on the sand, and then back to vihiers to the scrumptious hole in the wall restaurant that we had missed on thursday night (a terrine of something, boeuf with some sort of complicated french thing that they do to boeuf, and creme brulee; neither of us could finish, and a kir cassis on top of all that food made my last remaining neuron flicker pathetically a few times and then conk out completely, which was difficult, because the thing about p. is that he is the debate-world's version of the energizer bunny. by the time we got to dessert (at which point i was slumped over my plate barely conscious) he was solving the problems of public education in catalunya, and of course demolishing with one blow of articulate logic whatever tiny last gasps of counter argument my poor brain could try and muster. what i really need to do is study for a week before he comes, social theory, economics, current affairs, etc so i can keep up. either that or get better at steering the conversation towards stuff that i know more about... :) hey, let's talk about medieval art and obstetrics! come on, it'll be fun!

anyway. the only bummer (no pun intended) of the weekend has been that somewhere along the way i ate something i shouldn't have, and have picked up a not-very-fun bug that has me running to the loo every two hours. blech. fingers crossed that it will be short and sweet. i love the fact that the french have self-cleaning public loos everywhere, however. i don't care how much people living in socialist countries complain about the taxes and the bureaucracy, it's all worth it for the immaculate and omnipresent public bathrooms. vive la france. liberte, fraternite, egalite, and a comfortable clean place to crap. love it.

okay, it is now three a.m.; week seven of class (eek! time is beginning to race by at the most alarming rate) begins in six hours, so i am going to give this sleeping business another shot.