Work, friends, and a dog

That's what my life has been like lately.

Paris in August is somewhat empty, but my work life's been pretty full. I finally finished that paper I've been working on forever. Sometimes, to finish a paper and send it out, you need to cut off the end; I did that FOUR TIMES for this paper, so goodness knows I'll have enough to work on when I go back to write a sequel.

I'm also doing revisions on an older paper, based on a review I got back from a journal. Irritating at times, but potentially a big payoff.

As far as friends, last Saturday my friend Rm from LA came through, with her sweetie and her daughter. Fabulous to see them... really great. We had vegetarian couscous, because while on their travels they had all become vegetarians, having met a pig.

Some new friends: JD's friend On and her friend Pt. On is Israeli, working on a business degree or something like that, and an absolute hoot, and Pt is from India (speaker of a Dravidian language; yes, I asked), she has been to fashion school, and her goal is to start her own line of custom couture jeans. Oh, and she is also an absolute hoot.

Tomorrow my very dear friends Jo and Cn get into town. They've been at a wedding near Tours. Can't wait to see them! Hooray! Cn is many months pregnant, so I think we won't be biking around Paris, but that shouldn't be a problem.

Weddings are very popular these days; Tn and Mk (Roscoe's mommy and daddy) are going back to the states to get married shortly, so last night a few of Tn's girlfriends took her out for a little bachelorette party. We had three rounds at three different expat bars (you know, it seems to me that all bars worthy of the name in Paris are expat bars, because the rest are cafés). We just asked the bartender to make us something nice. So we had apple martinis at the Rhubarb, cosmos at the Bombardier, and sex on the beaches (sexes on the beach?) at the Hideout.

The point of the evening was to get Tn to get her photo taken with what she and her engineering friends call "standard dudes": striped button-down shirt, jeans, decently cute and clean-cut. Tn was great at this once she warmed up, though we did have to lower our standards a bit, to a "euro standard dude," where a black button-down was sufficient.

Oh, and we ran into my friend Js! That kind of thing always makes me feel warm and fuzzy, like I actually belong here in Paris.

Note to self: Wandering around with a group of girls makes groups of guys say hello and make passes at you. Who knew? Actually, it got a little dicey in the Place de Contrescarpe, because there were groups of guys there that kept following us around (including one that was escorting a groom-to-be). Things didn't get out of hand, but it almost started to be not fun. Eh, boys are weird.

We had fun, though, and afterwards I walked towards home with a French girlfriend of Tn's. We both craved a crèpe but it was 2am and things were shutting down. We spoke French because I felt bad that she'd had to speak English in noisy bars all night!

Work, friends.... dog. I told you weddings were very popular these days. Today, and also last Saturday, I've been hanging out with Roscoe, because Tn and Mk have had two weddings to go to. Right now she's sleeping on my sheepskin rug.