Ten Little Chances to be Free

I'm alive, I've just had sort of a crap week. And boring, aside from the still-mysterious allergic reaction.

Proposal for CRAZY TRIP OF CRAZY to Digne and Montreuil-sur-Mer has been submitted! A little under €750 total, for two people. Don't know if we'll get fully funded, but might as well ask!

Have been working valiantly on a website update, mostly to the Mizzie Tour Guide. Those photos from the summer 2008 trip might see the light of day sometime, I swear! Currently dithering about whether to try to get it all done at once and have a HUGE UPDATE OF DOOM AND SHINY, or several updates as I finish things. So, flist, I turn to you!

[Poll #1527580]

HAHA so toi_marguerite and I put our devious plan into action today. We grabbed our program director and explained that we'd been tracking down Places Where Shit Happens In Les Misérables, and we'd been to almost all of the ones in Paris but you can't exactly get to Montreuil-sur-Mer or Digne on the RER. We quoted the book and rattled on about cultural patrimony and unique opportunities, then gave an approximate budget for Montreuil and sat there looking hopeful.

He laughed. He is familiar with our geeky shenanigans, and was probably pleased that we had the balls to ask. "Write me a proposal--half a page of explanation and half a page of budget--and I'll see what I can do," he said. "And don't ask for a fortune."

Promising, but inconclusive. So we sprang into action! toi_marguerite hinted that the trip might be vital to the development of her special-studies project on the evolution of the novel's rough drafts. I threw online/RL separation to the wind and showed him the Paris section of my website. Both of these things seemed to impress him, because he said, "Well, we do have a bit of money set aside for student projects, and this sounds like exactly the sort of thing it should be used for." Also, I think the words "serious academic activities" might've been pronounced at some point.

Conclusion: being in Srs Bsns Literature fandoms has its perks. I didn't have the heart to tell him that this was like bankrolling a trip to London so we could try to find platform nine and three-quarters.