Sunday morning musings

Today Roscoe's mommy and daddy come back from Turkey. I'll miss Roscoe. I won't miss getting up early to take her for a walk, but she is a sweet dog. Sometimes a little too sweet (like when she wants to lick my hands when I'm typing). But very cute, and generally well-behaved. Also, it's been great to spend time in a different part of Paris; the 14th is more chill than the 4th somehow.

Yesterday I went to meet Rk in the Jardin du Luxembourg, while her 6-year-old daughter El played in the fabulous (pay-to-enter) playground there. El had just been on a trip to Normandie with 60 other first-graders. It sounded pretty fabulous: sandcastles on the beach, oyster farms, nature walks -- plus an opportunity to see that one can be all right when one is away from home for four days. It was nice to talk to Rk. We got gelato on our walk back down rue Vavin, which is a pretty chic street, in the sense of lots of boutiques, but has some brasseries and such that looked interesting and not too expensive.

After that I did a bit of work at Le Select, a café where famous writers used to hang out, on the Boulevard Montparnasse. Met JD there, and we made our way home to Tn and Mk's in the rain (yes, our good weather finally ran out). I learned that weather can be "merdique" while people can be "merdeux" (you know what merde means, right?). We got some nibbley food, and later Js came by to help us (finally) drink the champagne he had brought for my birthday more than a month ago.

It's cloudy this morning. I was going to get up and work but I haven't done that yet. Too sleepy! I'm still very pleased with the paper I'm working on, but I need to finish it by the end of this coming week. I don't know if I mentioned that I'm going to Jerusalem on Friday, for about five days, to give a talk there. The talk is about older stuff, so that's not a problem, but I'd like to finish the new paper before I leave.