quickie

allo - this will be a shorty b/c the technological organization involved in uploading five photos this a.m. just about finished me. also it is nearly midnight yikes how did that happen.
first off HELLO to people who put comments - sorry i didn't respond to them before, but i, um, didn't realize they were there, but now i found the fun screen where you can read comments, and HELLO! :) to answer mallow's questions: the school is basically the attic of the teachers' house (the teachers are married to each other, and are a pair of thirtysomethings who are a litte terrifying for what they have managed to achieve. i found out today that prince charles apparently owns one (or more? we don't know) of teacher #1's paintings. although prince charles probably has a lot of paintings, so he might not spend that much time per se with her one.) when they started the school, they bought an old apartment building as well to house the students in, and that's where i am staying now - it's a four unit building, with two student per unit, and then a few people sublet other places off campus. but the school is basically the two of them - they are all-in-one faculty, staff, landlords, etc. - and artists as well, regularly mailing stuff off to their galleries in new york. they're probably working on a cure for cancer and more efficient interstellar travel in their basement as well, and i am pretty sure that teacher #1 leaps tall buildings in single bound (she is from seattle, btw, fun fact that i just found out yesterday).
so today was thouars farmers' market in the rain - fun miniadventures included the single most disgusting public toilet experience of my life (i am including all third world experiences, including india where there were some doozies, in this comparison), accidentally wandering into the 'club kiwanis de thouars' - somehow i thnk of kiwanis clubs as being a uniquely american thing, but i guess not, if it has made it to thouars) and an apricot tart from the patisserie stand (mmmmm). then an hour of the most brutal yoga session i have ever done, with a mellow-voiced sadist on a yoga dvd; i thought yoga was supposed to make you feel relaxed and at peace with the universe, but i limited myself to being at one with a bottle of naproxen, and that seemed to work okay too.
then i was such a good girl and i spent the entire afternoon painting (some progress on ann boleyn, but not as much as i'd like; i was hoping to have her done by the end of the day tomorrow, but don't think it's meant to be), followed by dinner with C (lemon pepper chicken that actually tasted like chicken is supposed to taste, to briefly get onto the soapbox of local organic properly free-range farm animals) et maintenant to bed. oh, and i had an etymological revelation today that will probably seem totally obvious to everyone except me: aujourd'hui is au jour de hui, as in, al dia de hoy, and hui must have been the old french (latin? anyone with an education out there?) for 'today'. too lazy to google it, so i will let my ignorance live to fight another day. p.s. if anyone has not read anthony lane's article in the august 25th new yorker about the olympics it is the funniest thing i have read in VERY long time, so find it and read it now. i have a literary couple-crush on him and his wife, allison pearson. sadly, i am limited now to patricia cornwall (i can't take anymore dick francis...)
love to all.