GOOD JOB, SELF

I have been putting off reading my school email/going through my spam filter for days. This is not good, since one of my good friends from Smith is studying in Edinburgh and we've been plotting to exchange visits, and it turns out she sent me an email earlier in the week to say she found a last-minute travel deal and she's coming to Paris on Sunday. As in TOMORROW.

Dear self, get your head out of your ass and stop avoiding your email account. You also need to register for next semester's classes and do the housing thing.

This friend is awesome--throwing a Master-and-Commander-watching party on Trafalgar Day (Regency attire optional), helping organize steampunk invasions of school events. The visit is going to be awesome and probably low-stress. I'm just hideously embarrassed that if my issues had gone on one day longer I would've left her stranded in the airport.

Today I did get out and do things, which is probably directly related to me finally facing up to my inbox. toi_marguerite met me at the Musée d'Orsay for the Crime and Punishment exhibit, but the line was waaaaay too long, so we headed off to the Musée Victor Hugo for the Orientales exhibit. Which was awesome. And they completely rearranged the non-exhibit floor of the museum; there's now an entire room dedicated to Léopoldine Hugo, and it's heartbreaking. There's a famous portrait of her reading in a red dress, and right next to it is a forlorn-looking scrap of the fabric used to make the dress, which Hugo kept like a sacred relic after she died.

And we finished the day at Carnavalet, which is always refreshingly geeky. The more you get to know about the Romantic era and think "oh god I am crazy for reading 1300 pages of Eugene Sue just because," the more you appreciate that Carnavalet is made for people just like you. People who, like the two of us, see a period paper model of the Palais-Royal or the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville in July 1830, and immediately start trying to read the names on the shop signs. Who laugh at Eugene Sue's unfortunate facial hair. If we hadn't been categorically told that Parisian museums are not interested in interns due to the recession, I would totally apply for an internship there this summer.

GOOD JOB, SELF

I have been putting off reading my school email/going through my spam filter for days. This is not good, since one of my good friends from Smith is studying in Edinburgh and we've been plotting to exchange visits, and it turns out she sent me an email earlier in the week to say she found a last-minute travel deal and she's coming to Paris on Sunday. As in TOMORROW.

Dear self, get your head out of your ass and stop avoiding your email account. You also need to register for next semester's classes and do the housing thing.

This friend is awesome--throwing a Master-and-Commander-watching party on Trafalgar Day (Regency attire optional), helping organize steampunk invasions of school events. The visit is going to be awesome and probably low-stress. I'm just hideously embarrassed that if my issues had gone on one day longer I would've left her stranded in the airport.

Today I did get out and do things, which is probably directly related to me finally facing up to my inbox. toi_marguerite met me at the Musée d'Orsay for the Crime and Punishment exhibit, but the line was waaaaay too long, so we headed off to the Musée Victor Hugo for the Orientales exhibit. Which was awesome. And they completely rearranged the non-exhibit floor of the museum; there's now an entire room dedicated to Léopoldine Hugo, and it's heartbreaking. There's a famous portrait of her reading in a red dress, and right next to it is a forlorn-looking scrap of the fabric used to make the dress, which Hugo kept like a sacred relic after she died.

And we finished the day at Carnavalet, which is always refreshingly geeky. The more you get to know about the Romantic era and think "oh god I am crazy for reading 1300 pages of Eugene Sue just because," the more you appreciate that Carnavalet is made for people just like you. People who, like the two of us, see a period paper model of the Palais-Royal or the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville in July 1830, and immediately start trying to read the names on the shop signs. Who laugh at Eugene Sue's unfortunate facial hair. If we hadn't been categorically told that Parisian museums are not interested in interns due to the recession, I would totally apply for an internship there this summer.