I'm Baaaack!

It's been awhile, sorry. I think I used up all my words and energy with my guests - thank you all for visiting. We had such a great time. I can't tell all of you how happy I was to host you.

I also need to apologize to all the people I have ever stayed with, and say thank you, again. Living in a shoebox apartment, I rarely had people over for dinner, much less overnight - although the red sofa did see some action in my years at the Riv! But having houseguests is exhausting. I never knew how much effort goes into getting ready, showing the sights, and cleaning up afterwards. And I had great guests! I couldn't have made it through my first week without Amy, really, I might have flown home if she hadn't been here to keep me company. Kathy made a special trip from her U2 voyage to visit and taught me so much about Art Nouveau - we giggled like we were freshman roommates again. Steph brought me my mail and some special duty free items, bought more than her fair share of meals, and made me laugh for a week. Lauren and Lisa made me go out to clubs until 6 am - well, maybe I enjoyed it just a little - they only used one towel between them to keep my laundry pile from growing. And then Regina was a treat, we ate like kings and I got to show her Monet's Waterlilies.

So, now I am back to my usual self - watching The Love Boat in French, practicing my Rosetta Stone, trying to find even cheaper wine, and still on the hunt for postcard stamps. I went to a post office, too intimidated to go the counter which had a long line of French people, I thought I'd try the lonely automated machine. I fished out a postcard that I bought two months ago, wrote a month ago, and weighed it on the scale, told the machine that I wasn't sending it to Uruguay, and that it didn't need to be insured, and that I was paying cash. Nice thing about the Euro coins, you always have tons of change in your purse (that is why the men carry purses here). This wasn't a quick transaction, but I was working through it, and started to get my coins out when a hand came out of nowhere and pressed "Annuler" on the screen. And started to do his own transaction. Not that I shouldn't be shocked, but I was. He said nothing, just cancelled my hard-won postcard stamps and handed me the postcard I was weighing with a casual flick of the wrist. It is probably a good thing that I don't know any French curse words.

Ah, I haven't been back to La Poste. So if you are waiting for a postcard from me, don't hold your breath! But I am back on the blog wagon - School starts Tuesday!