2 or 3 Days 'Til

2:37pm- Excusez moi, I know it's been a while since I last posted but now that I am back, things have gotten busy and bustling.

I would like to start off with something incredibly depressing:  it only rained here for an hour and a half (unless youo were downtown) for this entire month of October and it has been very sunny for weeks. San Franciscans don't know how address sunny weather and if you see one that does, most likely it is a tourist. Yes we are mistrustful of the weather due to microclimates.  Wait, could it be that I, Blank Esquire is actually missing the roller coaster that was Paris's weather in July? Nonsense!

It is 2 days until the most beloved holiday that everyone has to go to work on comes, Halloween. Yes, the East Coast indeed has Thanksgiving and Christmas but San Francisco's holiday is really Halloween.

Tis 3 days until I disappear for a month into my computer to participate in an event called National Novel Writing Month, where participants all over the country attempt to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Yes, I have done it every since my high school creative writing teacher introduced me to it.

This year my novel is about a human female, Jelena Volker and a faemon, Valentine are investigating and searching for a magical item that could help them solve a mystery connected to the death of a strange woman and the disappearance of two odd children as well for the human female to find out what happened to her family and herself and how she ended up with a faemon. Meanwhile, Logan Gillanders summons a faemon, Eike after messing with his grandrather’s stuff, not knowing his grandfather  isn’t all human and neither was the strange woman who died at the apartment complex where he worked. Concurrently, Jasper Dempster tries to prove that his sister Ambrosine’s boyfriend  Alasdair may not be human but as he gets close to what he thinks may be the truth, a whole other world opens, one that he didn’t think was possible. 

Now, I have done a prologue, an epilogue and an outline but I am not sure that I will actually stick to the outline since I allow an organic flulidty to my work, allowing the characters to grow as they see fit which begs the question who is writing this novel? I know physically it is me but sometimes I doubt if I'm putting together a story or if the story guides me.

I will miss some hours of NaNoWriMo due to school, at least 2 birthdays and some holiday where we eat a lot. But in between I may be able to distract myself with my novel.

Home again, oh Bittersweet

Time: 7:12am (Pacific Time Zone)
Place: An off street from Mission

So coming home was strange. In Germany, those with US passports were put in another line. WHo knows why and that made things a lot quicker. I arrived at the gate at 8:45! Our plane boarded supposedly at 9:34 but it was closer to ten, but I was just happy that I arrived early, considering the last time we had to take bus and then walk a mile through Frankfurt airport, oi me. Anyway, then we had a plane ride and as I predicted based on the departure time I arrived in San Francisco around one and at baggage claim I was very confused because it was very big and I didn't know where my flight was because I kept seeing Lufthansa pop up and then it would leave the monitor and pop up somewhere else and my bag was heavy. But it worked out, because remember "it will be alright in the end and if it's not alright, then it's not the end"

Dog is barking. Not my dog, some other dog who lives with my dog.

Anyway, I saw my favourite street, Valencia and the buildings felt oh so small compared to the ones in Paris. This morning I woke up around 5:30am and the fog is here but knowing my neighbourhood it will just burn off around noon. I do love the colourful buildings, the fog and the way the light hits the fog but I do miss stuff from Paris, especially knowing where the food is. I must have stared at the frige for fifteen minutes before getting something to eat. It was a hamburger, I like unusual breakfast food. Oh and I wearing mismatched socks! I missed that.

Thoughts from the Tired

Time: 21h15 (Paris)
Place: A small white room with a twin bed and two small tables put together. The bed has light pink sheets and salmon colour blanket... they're trying to drive me mad but I fooled them: I'm already there.

I was writing in my journal, a normal thing if you know me and I just invented a new word. Be prepared for it may mean something else in another language so I will look it up later when I'm less tired and have better connection to the internet unlike ici. Anyway, the word I wrote was voint: which apparently means point of view. It's a Lewis Carrol type of mishap, I realize but you know, POV is like two letters from PERV.  which is three from Pervert and Voint is so quaint. I don't think it will come into use anytime soon. Maybe a hundred years after I'm dead someone else will come up with the word Voint and it will mean something horrible. Right now, let's pretend it means Point of View.

By the way, does anyone know a word for a handwritten typo?  It could be just an error but that's not inventive or fun enough for Blank Esquire, methinks.

Two Days One Post, It's a Deal!

Juillet 27
Time 16h54
Place: A street off of Montparnasse
Listening To: Linkin Park, Eagle Eye Cherry, Have a little Priest (from Sweeney Todd), Jena Lee, Lorde, Nine Lashes, and Johny Hollow! (I love Johnny Hollow)

Hier, went to Versailles but I didn't go to the garden because feet were hurting and it was too much gold for Blank Esquire. There is a famous hall way at Versailles which I dubbed Hall of Chandeliers. It's a good name for it, methinks because they put way too many chandeliers and mirrors in the hall when they built it. There was three of us and we went to look for a friend of one of the three of us near the chateau/palais then we went to look for souvenirs and I bought socks because Blank Esquire doesn't want to do laundry before leaving Paris. It would be pointless. Why would it be pointless? Because everything except the chargers, electronics, hats, nightgown, make-up, and stuff I'm mailing is packed, and my purse, shower stuff, dental stuff and Bwhahaha.

28 Juillet, 2014
Time 16h54- I have returned the horrible mistake I made on Friday, I got bags, I mailed everything that I was going to mail and I felt so free that I started humming..."Kidnap Mr Sandy Claws" from Nightmare Before Christmas, I guess when I'm truly happy, I think of Halloween. At least, I'm consistently San Franciscan even in Paris.(Halloween is our holiday, let the East Coast overdo Christmas and Thanksgiving, we have Halloween!)  I accidentally called Paris homey, because I was trying to say Home-like but alas tis what it is and I'm not seeing that store clerk again, at least not for a long while. Paris is pretty and pretty beige. New York is grey and brick, Paris is beige and Dublin is all three, but all are very cool places to visit. I will say no more than that.

Someone was trying to dissuade me, Blank Esquire from mailing stuff at the post office! I have been saying ever since I first went shopping, "I'm going to mail it," "just mail it", "I'm going to mail it." And to convince me not to do so is a fool's errand. I said I didn't trust airplanes, which isn't true. I think most of the time, you will arrive in one piece, sometimes two if you are jetlagged (your mind isn't there but your body is, which reminds me of when I first arrived in Ireland, I'll tell you about it later) and I trust that my carry-on and purse will be fine. My luggage on the other hand will be sniffed, flipped, rolled, shifted,  bumped and maybe if I'm lucky nothing will burst like moisterizer.
You never know.

Ma Semaine En Ville

Monday was a weird day because, I knew it was the beginning of the week because in my mind, Monday is the first day of the week and yet I felt this incredible sorrow because I knew it was time to go home and I would miss the people I saw and talk to every day. You can say, "oh I'll Facebook you" or "oh I'll email you" but it's not the same. It would never be the same. It reminded me of a poem I wrote the first week I was here. I will share on Facebook aussi.

Ma Semaine en Ville

Stone  buildings of frozen cream
Cobble stone streets made from criss-crossed dreams
Bouncing umbrellas or powerful lunettes
Sandwiches with chicken in baguettes
Old history nods her head at thee
While being overrun with modern technology.
Critics are there, here, left and right
But the splendor of the beauty of the night
Is without contest of anything I've ever seen
And when you leave the city, "everything's so fucking green."*

Great authors and painters gathered here, to this very place
Inspiration not only comes to you, it hits you in the face
One day in the future I will return but perhaps at a slower pace.

I may choke on the smoke but
Who can breathe in such a beautiful town?
I shall not be too taken in, for want of pickpockets
So my admiration shall be quickly boxed and I will lock it**

Days go by too quickly
And there's still too much to see
I can't sit and wait patiently
I must go out and see everytheen!***

Fin.


*"Everything's so fucking green" is a reference from a British movie called, Death at A Funeral. And so, in Ireland (2011), I found myself saying it many times and when we went onto the bus the first time for the first weekend, not the three day one but the one before, mais I don't remember, I wrote this poem on the bus and I could see was: green, house, green, wall with grattifi, green, oh look a pedestrian bridge, green, green, green so I thought it was fitting.

**I know Pickpocket and lock didn't rhyme so I added it and what I truly wanted to say was, that here in Paris, it's a city but it has many pickpocket and I knew this because of the French film, Pickpocket about this man and he has a girlfriend, la, la, la, eh, eh, eh. but anyway, when you see something like, a beautiful dog (je ne sais pas pourquoi je went straight to chien but oh well), or you're at a monument taking photos, you have to be weary of everyone around you so you go "Ooh" and then walk quickly. "Ooh" and snap a quick picture and leave quickly. I mean some areas have less pickpockets than others, like anywhere.

***THere is no way to make Patiently and Everything rhyme. So, I use kind of an odd spelling here to make what is known as a slant rhyme and if you don't know what a slant rhyme is, I suggest... I don't want to be mean so I shall spare the snippiness for now but if you don't know what it is, ask your teacher or go to Wikipedia and look up "half rhymes" it should be there. Ouais, j'aime Wikipedia.

Catching you Up de Meaux et le Week-end

Time: 1:15 pm
Place: In a spot of worriment.

Pardonnez-moi, s'il vous plaît, j'ai être très, très occupé. I am not joking. I have a test today (about Paris), a presentation tomorrow (in French about San Francisco), and a final on Friday (about and in French). Aussi, je suis allé à Meaux oú il y a un musée, basically in the middle of nowhere and it's oddly shaped you can walk under this area where there are giant holes when you look up et  there's a map on the ground that you can see roads in. When you come up the road to cette zone, you can hear marching sounds and horses. Le Musée est pour le Première Guerre mondiale, so everything is about it. I took only trois photos but that is okay parce que je  veux retourner au musée, parce que moins de deux heures n'est pas assez de temps. Also we had a grand dinner in Meaux and then we watched this beautiful, exquisite show with about four hundred volunteers in the pouring rain. Oh I had to buy a poncho because my silly raincoat didn't have a hood and people behind me kept rearranging it which was very frustrating but even though it was raining, I still enjoyed the show. Maybe I'll see another at Meaux?

Sunday, I went to a restaurant called Cafe du Commerce because it's on Rue du Commerce... that was a nice salade with lettuce, fried goat cheese, tomates then I had fish, which was so lovely and then creme bulee for dessert. Heavenly, simply heavenly. But both samedi and dimache dinners were very loud so on  Monday, I found myself yelling at everyone, although I didn't mean to.  Then lundi, I witnessed someone making a flan cake. It was coffee flavoured flan and chocolate cake with butterscotch syrup. Delicious. we also had gnocci and debated how to pronounce it. I also discovered that I like sausages from Alsace! Aussi, I like viennoise de chocolat and today I had two mini pain du chocolat from Secco although they said it was viennoise but unlike the ones at Paul, they weren't skinny but look like mini pain du chocolat. Je ne sais pas.

Today, One of my classmates said that French was difficile and that I was good in it. I corrected her by saying, "no, I can read and write French but I can't listen and speak it." Which is why I'm taking this class which I may be doing not as well as I wanted... mais c'est la vie, I suppose. Also, I'm wearing a night shirt because I got tired of the buttons on my plaid shirt. I will eat more sausages but I will make my noodle soup with leeks, potatoes and mushrooms and add them in after I cook the soup. Or I will do it on Wednesday when I feel horrible after my presentation. Oh and apparently thyme tea is good for your throat according to the sister.

I will have to do more laundry when I get to San Francisco. Je ne veux pas.

Boxes and Bottles

Today, I opted out of walking around for four hours in 92 degree heat plus humidity which is too hot for corsets. What? Why? Because your Blank Esquire should be kept between 57 and 67 degrees for ideal serving. Today, not much happened. I also opted out of Rodin which has ice cream in the gardens. So you should go if you're trapped in Paris during the heat storm. Tomorrow according to the pretty yellow map of France that shows on the news, it's going to rain with thunder and lightning! ...and be 82 degrees. I'm going into a hole if I didn't have to go to Meaux tomorrow.

Laundry takes about 2:04 0r 2:08 hours, so I was very unhappy last night. I went to bed very late. Of course, going to bed to bed at 11:20 pm here is like going to bed at 2:20pm in California but still it's late when you have a test the next day. Speaking of the test today, I think the oral portion sucked and ecrivez and grammaire weren't bad. Today, I apparently wasn't being very clear because I got three pizzas instead of two which was what I wanted. I wanted two but she didn't understand me or I wasn't being clear so I gave up and agreed. SOmetimes the battle of comprehension isn't worth it.

Oh I stole a box today, it wasn't marked but it's stolen. You may think it's very weird to say "I stole a box" it's better than saying "I stole a tub" but I digress. In the dorm, you are supposed to have a box with your room number on it and a black key for the cupboard. It's truly brilliant because the box is for the fridge and you can put in fromage, lait, jus des fruits, saucisses, legumes, etc. in your box and it's yours and someone else can put in what they want so the fridge is nothing but boxes and bottles... and until today, my plastic bag. Because I didn't want to whinge but on the first day, I noticed I had no box. Now, apparently you can steal a box from someone else or an unmarked box or you can whinge or use a plastic bag like how I was because not everyone has a box but everyone has a cupboard. Je ne sais pas pourquoi. Perhaps it's because people with my room number were bad so they had their box taken away or perhaps they broke it? That's the only things that could possibly make sense. I did see a broken box but it was for 217. I don't know them. First rule of any fridge in a place that has more than two families or from different families, stuff gets moved around. No one says this but you should know I put my bag on third shelf from the top and it ends up in the second or the fourth from the top. I keep forgetting this but things will get rearranged and to think that everything has it's place in the fridge is selfish and probably will cause you to become isolated here and you don't want to feel isolated in Paris. No. Never.

Aussi, the Parisians get freaked out (they hate it)  with loud volume of noise on their buses and Americans talk loudly especially when excited or just normal. Yes your normal speaking voice is too loud, bwhahahaha. It's a bad thing when we ride in groups and there's always someone shushing them and it makes me feel like I'm on a class trip with a bunch of 17 year olds. I feel like I should act like I'm disgusted with the noise and shake my head at them but usually, I just stare out the window.
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