Day Three: today, we decided to visit the other monuments in the Mall, and to spend some time at the Air & Space Museum (this was really my only mandatory activity for the whole trip–i wasn't about to visit D.C. without going to the Air & Space Museum).

we set out from the probably somewhere in the range of 10:30 to 11:00, and proceeded to the Mall. we made it back to the Washington Monument, then made our way towards the construction zone, avoiding touring school-children, gaggles of the elderly, and middle-aged couples walking hand in hand discussing whatever it is that middle-aged hand-in-hand type couples discuss.

one end of the lawn was boarded, roped, fenced, and otherwise closed off, but there were gateways through the fencing at the crosswalks to let onto the sidewalks that lead along the reflecting pool at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. now, if you've not been to D.C., or if you've been but have never seen the reflecting pool, let me just prepare you… it is a green festering dirty filthy mess. not nearly so "beautiful" as we may've been led to believe by the movies, photographs, and other images. that shit looks nasty, and, while i didn't walk directly along the edge of the pool, i imagine it probably stunk. it looked like it would stink. much like our society and especially our government, it looks pretty nice from far away, but once you get right up close, you can see that it's unkempt, rundown, dirty, and ugly. "reflecting" indeed.

anyway… before we made it to the Lincoln Memorial, i noticed the Korean War Veterans Memorial off to the side as we approached, so i detoured our contingent to go get a peek. i remembered ben and geoff talking about it at some point in the past, and remembered the images i'd seen from it, so i wanted to go get a real look at it. it was pretty cool, but i think this was really the point in the trip where i started wishing that i could visit these places without hundreds of other people. i couldn't "connect" with the memorial, or any of the memorials we visited, because i couldn't "disconnect" from all the people milling about.

next we went on to the Lincoln Memorial. it is huge. it was cool.

after that, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. my companions were all visibly moved by it, once we reached the other side, but once again, somehow i managed not to take it in or be effected by it. i have no immediate personal connection to that conflict, at least not through a familial loss, because though most of the male members of my extended family (who were of age) did serve in that war, they all returned.

after the Vietnam Memorial, we left the Mall and headed for the nearest Metro stop (10 blocks away or some crazy shit like that) and headed back around to the Air & Space Museum.

you've doubtless heard the old analogy of the kid in the candy store, right? well, that certainly could've been applied to me. rockets and manned space capsules and jets and… just all kinds of really cool shit.

probably my favorite of the exhibits was the Apollo moon shot exhibit, followed closely by the history of aviation exhibit. they also had the crazy ass space flight simulators or airplane simulators or whatever they were–the ones with the pneumatic chambers that shake, move, twist, and turn the little cabin that you're sitting in. i really wanted to do that, but the wait was over an hour, and we were only planning on spending 4 or so there.

the freakiest thing of the whole trip though, was when we decided to get some lunch after walking through a couple exhibits. there was a food court area in a sectioned off area of the building, and the restaurant was a combined McDonald's (ick), Boston Market, and Donato's Pizzeria. i can hardly describe the level of freakishness that this fast-food place has managed to achieve… think of a drive-through restaurant for race-car drivers, only there're no cars… think of cattle lining up to be slaughtered, and each being able to pick which particular shape of knife gets to be drawn across its throat… think of being shoved in a bright, metal & glass elevator car, going up at ridiculous speeds and having grease, meat, bread and french fries squeezed through a strainer in the ceiling above you.

ok, now think of something just a touch less freakish.

yeah. fucking packed… PACKED with people—scads, scores, gobs of people—in long lines where you first place your order with a disinterested person sitting in a bright metal chair, and then are told to go to the next person who will collect your money. then, after paying, you have to step up to the "counter" to pick up your "meal." each successive person looking like they give even less of a shit than the last, and the food you're handed, if hot, is only just barely so. hell, i'm freaking out right now just thinking about it.

so anyway, we ate the crappy food at the freaky food court, then went on back out to get some more exhibits under our belts before meeting ben & mary (who'd been sitting on a bench or in the planet-arium for most of the day).

after the Museum, we were dog tired (and still freaked out about the food court), so we went back to the hotel and crashed for a few hours, before going back out on the town for dinner.

this evening we kind of jazzed it up a bit. we walked out to this place that ben had found (we tended to leave the dining decisions to ben & mary it seemed, so we ended up eating at much more high-class establishments than i can imagine i would've picked) and checked in at the front table. there were actually two separate restaurants in the same… er… restaurant–one for the lower upper middle class, the other for the lower upper class. ben picked the one he thought was the former, and we proceeded downstairs to a nice big round table with all the accoutrements including the cloth napkins all folded and placed decoratively on the plate. we opened the fancy menus in the nice leather-bound folders, and stared aghast at the $15 asking price for a house salad. needless to say, we stared even more aghast at the $40 – $60 dollar entrees, then promptly told the waiter that there'd been a mistake and we needed to go back upstairs to the "cheap seats".

somehow, at this point, $5 for a Beam & Coke, and $15 for an entree didn't seem all that bad.

the food was good (thank god, or someone would've lost an eye or limb) and we were satisfied with our last day & night in D.C.

well, almost. sara & i decided to go back to the White House, as there was some issue of film not advancing properly in her camera the night before, and she wanted to make sure she got some night shots of the White House. we did, and we had a nice leisurely stroll through the streets of D.C., just the two of us hand-in-hand, talking about whatever it is that young hand-in-hand type couples talk about on their last night on their first vacation together.

we went back to the hotel and prepared for our early morning departure, and a day of potential chaos.

well, the washington trip was a huge success, despite the fact that we were all really insanely tired most of the time. it seemed like we did so much walking… i'm not sure if the distances we covered were all that great, but we were on our feet and moving for what had to have been 15 or 16 hours a day.

yeah, so maybe that's an exaggeration.

anyway, we all had a great time, and we got to see a large portion of the things we'd set out to.

Day One: we get up bright and early, but not as bright or early as ben & mary, who got to the airport before six (i think) in order to check in two hours before our flight. any way you slice it, six something is way too early to be up and moving in the morning.

we did manage to get to the plane on time, and had no trouble on the flight over. we also managed to figure out how and where to catch the Amtrack that was going to take us from Baltimore to D.C.

then, trouble.

as it turns out, it's fairly easy to get distracted at 10 something in the morning, especially when you only got 3 hours sleep the night before and have a new toy in your hands. so easy, in fact, that one might be susceptible to such an unlikely thing as losing one's luggage.

once i explained the situation to the conductor (or whatever he was) he told me that it'd already been picked up and would be on its way with one of the next trains.

after waiting for a few "next trains", and with the help of several friendly Amtrack employees, we managed to track down the guy i'd spoken to, and through him, the woman who'd picked up my bag at the train station… of course, my bag had never made it onto that "next train."

more arrangements were made, and this time enough to my satisfaction that we felt comfortable leaving the glorious confines of Union Station. we proceeded on to the hotel but couldn't check in yet as we were still early, so we checked our baggage with the concierge, and started walking towards the Capitol and our scheduled appointment with a Congressman's intern.

our tour of the capitol was conducted by a two-week-old intern, who seemed to have a pretty good grasp of things anyway. after the tour, we got to go with another intern to a subcommittee hearing.

after the capitol, sara & I parted from ben & mary, and proceeded back to Union Station to retrieve my newly arrived bag. considering the events of the day, and our still fresh "vacation legs", about all we did after that was have a little dinner at the restaurant/bar off our hotel's lobby. There was some kind of company party going on, and at some point, and extremely inebriated woman comes over to ask us for a light, then proceeds to tell us all about how she likes to fuck young men, but not get involved with them. she also took it upon herself to recommend mary ditching ben and finding herself someone "better." … a here i thought we'd find no-one with any class in D.C.

alright, well, i was gonna throw this all into one big post, but it was becoming a really big post, so i'm gonna break it up. don't worry it was only a four day trip, and only three of those were really spent in D.C…. so there's only two more to go. whiny little bastards.

my major project the last several days has been getting my php based gallery scripts that i've been using on lucifigousprick.com and old-man.net adapted for ye olde bipolar. eventually i'll have these scripts worked to such a fine polish, that only minor modifications will be necessary for moving them to new digs… if i do it right, anyway.

well, without further ado, i give you the Washington D.C. photo gallery.

sara & I, and a couple of her friends, are taking a little four day vacation to Washington, D.C. this weekend. i have been to D.C. before, but only when i was a kid, probably somewhere in between 7th, 8th, or 9th grades. pretty much the only thing i'm interested in site-seeing-wise is a visit to the Air & Space Museum. i do believe i went there before, but like i said, it was a long time ago. no matter what we do end up doing, i'm sure we're going to have a great time. and, i'm going to try to take an assload of photos with the hope of putting them up online here sometime after my return.

you'll notice that row of pictures over there on the right… well, it's all thanks to my lovely girlfriend who got me an early birthday and christmas present.—that's right, a brand spankin new fancy-ass digital camera . so, now i'm trying to get back into the habit of carrying a camera around with me everywhere and taking pictures whenever i see something good. we'll see how that works out, but rest assured, this weblog isn't going to devolve into *just* a fotolog.

a good friend is getting married this weekend (and like a dumbass, i forgot this fact until after we'd bought the plane tickets to D.C.), so we're going to have to fly back early early on Sunday to get to the wedding on time. especially imperative since i'm in the damn thing. would be in bad form for one of the "men of honor" to be late. hopefully the tux will fit, 'cause i won't get to pick it up until 12:00PM on Sunday. talk about cutting it close…

and to top all that fun stuff off with some really excellent news, lucifigous prick has been invited to play at the mom's music festival this year! so, we'll be taking the stage at some point on the 26th or 27th of July, along with about 140 other bands. it should be an awesome time, as we don't expect to fit in with the other bands, or even necessarily the crowd at all, so we're going to try to have as much fun as we can with it. there was even some talk of jim wearing a mini-skirt, though i think his wife put the kibbosh on that idea. nevertheless, it's going to fucking rock.

and speaking of fucking rocking, we've got another show lined up two weeks later with three other bands, all of whom have one or more members who work at Ear-X-tacy. we don't know for sure if the owner is going to let us use the store's name while promoting the show, but that was our original plan. promote it as some kind of Ear-X-tacy employee's show. Check the site for more info on the other bands playing, though i'm sure i'll post a link to the flyer once that's been put together.

g'damn. i think that's about it for today. i wanted to make sure i got a new post up before i took off for four days. i'll post more crap and probably go on about how great the trip was, once i return. so, you've got something to look forward to now, right? right.

well well well. can anyone here say "old habits die hard"? i sure can.

the biggest news since the last "real newsworthy" post is that sharon finally got herself hitched up. the ever-lovely sara and i went down to Princeton for another visit with my family and to go to the wedding. the visit with the family was very nice and laid back, as all good visits to family should be.

saturday evening was the wedding, and sara & i drove down to LBL, specifically Patti's 1880's Settlement, where the ceremony was to take place.

I'd never been to Patti's before, but heard about it quite a bit growing up (though even then the references were vague, as everyone pretty much assumed i'd know what they were talking about… it's the way of things in a rural community.) As you might imagine, Patti's is an approximation of a (significantly romanticized) old-time settlement… bunch of log cabins, flowers growing everywhere, streams flowing, waterfalls falling; pigs, chickens, and turkeys (all in pens, of course); and lots and lots of "antique" crafts and similar merchandise.

the ceremony itself took place in a large gazebo in the center of the "settlement", very elaborately decorated, very beautiful. unfortunately for some, the gazebo was not quite large enough for the assembled guests. i suppose though, that this was probably just a good indicator of how well sharon was loved by the people of the town. sometimes i feel i'll be lucky to get more than 50 (family & friends) at my eventual betrothal.

of course, as some of us know, i'm a complete and total sap, so it should come as no surprise that a couple times during the ceremony i came very near tears. it was very touching, and considering the past, i think i could hardly be happier for anyone than i was for sharon. of course, the most difficult moment was when, while attempting to recite her vows, her voice broke and you could literally hear the weight of her emotions in her voice. that was nearly the end of me. thankfully, sara was there and she managed to hush me up without resorting to pinching, hitting, or dragging me out by my ear.

after the ceremony, we waited for a chance to personally greet & congratulate the bride & groom, and the look of surprise (and happiness) on sharon's face when she finally saw me standing there was very gratifying. it was a very happy moment, to see her again, and to get to introduce her and sara. unfortunately, there were many guests for them to greet still, so we made our way to the back and out. on the way out, we stopped to say hello to the parents, and i have to say… the look of utter surprise on sharon's mother's face was quite entertaining. not only had she not seen me in years, but i'm sure i'm one of, if not the last person she expected to see there that day.

as i said though, the ceremony was lovely, and i'm incredibly glad i got to be there.

afterwards, the reception was held at the KY Dam Village Convention Center. it was an enjoyable time, highlighted by: a 15 minute (or so) slide presentation of sharon and grant growing up and meeting each other; and some crazy dance performed by the groom himself. we had a great time, and managed to get a least a few pictures that i'll hopefully be able to get online here soon.

the rest of the weekend was a bit compressed, as we had to get back to Louisville early in the afternoon on Sunday to get my sister to the airport for her trip back to France. as always it was good to get to see my sister, and to finally get to spend more than just a day with her before she headed back. especially considering that this may've been my only chance to meet the nephew (or niece) before s/he's born. nevertheless, on a least a couple of occasions, the baby gave me a hearty kick of greeting, perhaps to thank me before-hand for all the spoiling it's going to get under my generous uncleship.

this is too long. more later.

well, it's been a week since my last post, and wouldn't ya know it, today is bipolar's third birthday!

there's been so much stuff going on since the last post, i'm not even going to try to fit it all into this one, instead, i'm going to attempt to make a real quick skim of the last year (i'm under time constraints right now) and attempt a recap of sorts.

of course, as with years past, i've been in somewhat of a posting slump, so the pickin's are probably kind of slim.

fortunately, after the whole movabletype thing, access to bipolar has increased by leaps and bounds–the archives are all still there, but now we've got category access as well. (and individual entry pages, which you'll get to if you go through the category indexes.)

anyway, without further ado, the year in review (abbreviated version):

1. Lucifigous Prick has our first show.
2. The Puffin returns.
3. My car continues to give me trouble
4. I went to Paris for my sister's wedding.
5. I started dating a wonderful girl though i wasn't prepared yet to talk about it outright (i just mentioned it in the first paragraph).
6. I bought a new car!
7. Found out i'm going to be an uncle.
8. Converted the site to MovableType.

and… there ya have it.

that's the quick and dirty version of the last year of my life. some things i'm sure i probably skipped over (either didn't blog about 'em, or didn't catch them as i skimmed through my old entries) , but i think those are the major events.

of course, the most major event has proven to be #5, and i can safely say that i am one of the happiest men in the world right now. And who said fate was a cruel master?

so, there have been a whole slew of things i've wanted to post about the past few days, but i've been Biz-AY. i'll attempt to recap.

Sara's race went well… er… except for the whole knee-collapsing-almost-falling thing. but she was a trooper and finished the race anyway. she may not've gotten the time she wanted (it's not like she was really doing it as a competition anyway), but she finished, and that's the important thing. i'm really proud of her. she didn't even start training until January, and she did the whole Louisville Triple Crown. have i mentioned what a lucky guy i am?

our trip to visit the fam went well, also. the entire family, of course, was thrilled to see my sister (the frenchie) who gets to come home twice a year if we're lucky. i'd like to think they were thrilled to have me home as well, because they've probably seen my sister more recently than myself (she went with them to visit dad's side of the family at christmas, i believe). but this is, of course, because i'm just a bad son who never calls or writes or visits without some sort of prompting. i don't do it on purpose, really. i just allow my life to interfere with itself too much.

anyway, the trip went well. sara had a good time i believe, and likes my family, so that's good. they definitely like her, so that's good too. it was also very cool to get to take an extended trip (24 hrs, but still) with my girlfriend. i'm looking forward to many more road trips with her.

i was visiting sharon's site the other day, and she had a post talking about how some scientist in America was getting "boycotted" by a scientist from Italy because of his citizenship. basically, the italian scientist pointed to the questionable foreign policy of our government, and in fact, to the current American cultural climate as a whole as reason enough to entirely boycott American science. i many ways, i understand and agree with this Italian scientist. there is not much in our current political administration or in our current cultural mainstream that i would agree with or support in any way. our leaders are insane, greedy men. our people are needy, greedy, and largely self-centered. the "upper class" won't make an effort to raise the standard of living for the "lower class", and the "lower class" finds it hard to break out of the habits established by their predecessors. we all apparently want to be fat & lazy & get everything for nothing. (these are broad statements, probably too much so. there are almost always exceptions). anyway, go, read the post.

yesterday, i finally got the latest lucifigous prick demo tracks online. go check 'em out. these are definitely our best room recordings to date. we're really really pleased with them. they sound great for room recordings. i can't wait to actually lay some real tracks down.

today, i just uploaded and updated Old Man's site, for the sole purpose of adding their new demo track. they just got to play around with Pro Tools a bit over the weekend while i was out of town, and they really put together a stellar track for their first experiment with the new equipment.

i've a good feeling more tracks will be coming very shortly from both bands.

ok. i think that covers it.

woohoo! i finally found a plugin for WinAmp3 that will let me update the MP3 of the moment thing. (look at the bottom of the most recent post, and/or my webcam "portable"). i had switched to exclusively using WinAmp3 for a while, then i decided i wanted to do the MP3otM thing, realized there weren't any decent plugins to do that with WinAmp3, so i had to switch back to WinAmp 2.x. (which has just been updated to 2.91, for those of you still using the 2.x version). anyway, i finally found What's Playing today, and did some quick hacking to get it working with the existing javascript code. When i get a chance later, i'll probably move it totally over to PHP scripts, but it's working right now. yaay!

tomorrow (today, technically–the 26th) is the day when Sara finally runs the last leg of the Louisville Triple Crown–the miniMarathon. i know she's excited (mainly that it'll all be over soon and she can quit putting herself through hell) to finally finish. i just hope she doesn't hurt her knee any worse than she's already apparently hurt it. in any event, i'm sure she's going to do well.

and, (strange, this was supposed to be a quick update) my sister got in town on Wednesday night and has been staying at the house. it's been pretty wild to see my sister pregnant and to be talking with her about all this stuff, watching her, basically fawning over her to make sure she's got everything she needs. it's pretty cool.

later today, after the race and breakfast, we'll all (my sister, my girlfriend, myself) be driving down to my parent's. this'll be the first time Sara's met my parents, and though she's nervous, i know my parents are going to love her. plus, with my sis being in from France, and pregnant, i think they'll have bigger things to worry about than giving my girlfriend a hard time. i guess we'll find out though, eh?

ok. now that paris is out of the way, i can get on with the real business at hand here on bipolar, which is–or rather, should be–interesting and regular posts about inane facts of my life. in honor of St. Patrick's day–which i may or may not have any real right to celebrate (the question of the Rasnake wick having been dipped in an irish well at some point in the past has never quite been answered to my satisfaction)–i give you my first post Paris posts post.

this weekend i had the extreme pleasure of getting to see several old friends again, people who i don't see nearly often enough though some of them only live 30 minutes away. on Friday, after a lovely evening attending a catholic fish fry with Sara and family, and after leaving her at home so she could rest up for the Rodes City Run, the first leg of the Louisville Triple Crown. after getting home, i had planned to just eat some dinner (one piece of fish between two slices of bread not being sufficient), watch some TNG episodes on DVD, then go to bed myself before 1 in the morning so i could get up early and awake enough to go meet Sara at the race and be there when she crossed the finish line.

well, as luck would have it, Kenny, Christanne, Shawn, and their friend… Rosanne, i think… decided to come over after the show they'd gone to was over. then we all went out to wicks so they could eat and we could all hang out, drink, and have a good time. this is exactly what we did, and amazingly enough, i was still able to get up in the morning and go down to the race (though i didn't get to see Sara before-hand, as an ungodly number of people were there). i did end up meeting up with ben who was there to support his wife, and we palled around town down to the finish line where we waited for them to appear. both Sara and Kelly finished the race in good time, and none the worse for wear. afterwards, we went out for a celebratory breakfast at the cracker barrel.

by the way, for those keeping track (all… none of you) this whole race-day thing involved me getting up by 7:15 on a Saturday. the fact that hell has not yet frozen over still somewhat surprises me.

anyway, and to continue, later that day after showers and relaxing, we met up with Ben & Kelly again at the St. Patty's day parade. ben took some pictures with his handy dandy digital camera, a few of which were of sara & me. Sara was very excited by the possibility that there would be things (candy, beads) thrown from the floats, and i had to explain to her that in pretty much every parade in my hometown, most of the floats were well stocked with (at least) candy. i can't remember a parade where candy was not thrown. (finally, something my hometown does better than a real city!)

during the parade, we met up with geoff and his lady-friend, and geoff offered up a little of his stash of irish whiskey with which to increase the potency of the celebration. needless to say, it did the trick. after the parade, we all retired to geoff's girlfriend's house (i hesitate to attempt spelling her name, as i know i'll get it wrong), where more irish whiskey (bushmills, for those interested in that sort of thing) was consumed and a pleasant time was had by all until stomachs started grumbling.

we decided to walk homeward, and stopped at the newly re-opened Wendy's for a bite of dinner. this Wendy's has been closed for over three months… you have no idea what a traumatic experience this has been for me, but it is finally over, thank goodness.

now, it is shortly after this point that the carousing and consuming that i'd been doing over the past 14 – 16 hours started to catch up with me. once we got home, my stomach was expressing its displeasure with me, so we lay down for a nap–sara, myself, and my stomach. at some point a bit later, neither of us is sure because we both were out like rocks, paul called to let us know where everyone was (we were planning on meeting up with my friends again and having another night of revelry to celebrate Christianne's 30th, but no plans had been established or expressed to me), so we got up and went to meet the gang at applebees.

after applebees, we adjourned to the crapfest that is Jillians where we played several video games that cost way too much money, and otherwise sat around, drank, and hung out. after soaking in the Jillian's atmosphere (such as it was) for long enough (too long) we decided to again adjourn to a more familiar, more lively, less expensive locale–the backdoor.
we got there, got some drinks, hung out, carried on, had some fun, and then it was time to go home. All-in-all, it was a very enjoyable day.

Sunday i slept 'til three. PM. as usual.

in other news, i'm going to be an uncle! yup, my loving sis is finally pregnant. in fact, here's a picture of my little niece or nephew:

this wasn't too much at once, was it? sorry, it was a very eventful weekend.

One of my personal philosophies that I've developed and repeatedly referenced in the last 10 or so years is that "every place is the same." I suppose this is akin to the phrase "no matter where you go, there you are."

Essentially, the idea is that every place has the same components. They may be bigger, faster, older, or cleaner, but it's all basically the same stuff. The names may be different, but the story is still the same. This is becoming increasingly true with this whole global culture and corporate globalization thing that's going on nowadays.

I've noticed this in pretty much every city i've visited–you've got the same collection of bars and restaurants, churches and malls, tattoo parlours and trendy fashion boutiques. Every city has the same sections–the white trash neighborhoods, the ghettos, the ritzy affluent suburbs, and the bohemian avant-garde artsy areas. When you first get to a new city, either to visit or to live, it's always an exciting time of discovery and finding new places to spend your time. After living in a place for a while, you begin to think about it the same way you thought about all the other places you've lived–that there's nothing to do, nowhere to go, and that things just aren't happening the way or as fast as they should.

Anyone who's ever talked to me about moving to a new city, at least in the last several years, have heard the same comments and questions from me with regard to their reasoning. Quite often, the reasons for people moving are not things that are going to be effected by a change of location. In other words, it's not the place that's the problem, it's the person. If you're bored, unhappy, unsuccessful, or otherwise disenchanted with the current state of your life, the only way to make a change is to change yourself. Sure, moving to a new city will, at least temporarily, provide you with the impetus and fuel for a brief change of lifestyle and the introduction of unknown and exciting events. If you want real, permanent change, you have to make the change within first.

To bring this back to the subject at hand, however, i have to say that Paris is the first place that didn't give me this feeling–of sameness. I walked into Paris and perceived a very distinct feeling of difference. Maybe it was just the fact that all the language within my sphere was foreign, that nothing was immediately or easily understood… that i had to struggle to make sense of certain things that, in an American city, would have been more easily accessible. But there were also certain other subtle differences, not all of which were immediately apparent.

Thinking back on it now, it seems to me that people were not as interpersonally involved, they had no desire to know "my business." There seemed to be more personal respect there, the belief that my business was my own and that i, being there, must know what i'm doing there, and that that was good enough for them. I noticed on many occasions, as i watched the crowd, or singled out certain people with my gaze, that often-times that look would be returned with an equally intense look of perplexity–people who i was looking at were looking at me, trying to figure out if they knew me, and if they didn't, they were wondering why exactly i was looking at them so intently. Who must i be to be so blatantly interested?

And the differences didn't stop there. Another thing that struck me as interesting was the fact that Paris is the most pedestrian friendly city i've ever seen (this may not be saying much, considering the breadth of my experience, but no matter). Between the subways, the bus system, and the taxis, there is essentially no need to own or operate a vehicle in Paris. The only reason you might need one is if you frequently travel outside the city either on business or for pleasure. Despite warnings received before i left, i found the public transportation (and, in fact, most of Paris in general) to be quite clean and well-kept–it was not the foul, dirty, smelly place i'd been told to expect. The only exception to this was the fact that pets are allowed to shit on the sidewalks, and the owners are not obliged to clean up afterwards. Of course, i've been told there is an ordinance making this a punishable offense, but obviously no one was very concerned about it and the ordinance is not generally enforced.

Another telling expression of the pedestrian-friendly nature of Paris is the fact that in a large amount of the city (especially newer larger roadways) there is almost as much sidewalk space as driving space. In the states, it is not unusual to find sidewalks that will barely fit two people abreast, but in Paris it is more common to find sidewalks with seating for fifty that still have room for more than two people walking side-by-side. This, of course, leads to another of those subtle differences… in Paris, on pretty much every street, there are cafes that have outdoor seating, but not like the outdoor seating at American restaurants. In Paris, you'll usually find several rows of small–two person–tables outside, with all the chairs lined up in rows facing towards the street. Even the inside seating nearest the windows is often lined up like this, so that the patrons can look out at the world moving about them, rather than simply at each other or the walls or effects of the restaurant at which they've stopped. In America, however, you usually see large round tables with bench seating for 5 or more. More often than not, these tables are placed at the side of a restaurant, and also often with some protective barrier between the patrons and the outside world.

Parisians seem to be more generally involved in the enjoyment of and celebration of life than the typical American. There are many traditions and social conventions that i was introduced to that drove this point home–hand shaking and bisous on meeting/departing, ensuring that you meet eyes with the person whose glass you're clinking after the toast, serving food for your fellow diners rather than making everyone serve themselves, breaking the meal down into courses rather than throwing everything upon the table (and your plates) at once… these are just a few things i remember. This all points to the desire deep within the French soul, expressed by these social habits and expectations, to take things as they come, and to live and enjoy life to the fullest.

Above all though, for me, Paris felt like somewhere that i could call home–a place i could claim as my own, that would welcome and accept me. I've been to other cities and never felt that draw–that urge. Louisville is such a place, which is why i've chosen to "hang my hat" here. Paris is only the second city i've felt i could live in, and it's nice to finally have another option, should the need or desire to relocate ever arise. Of course, i've also decided that, when i retire, if it is at all possible, i'd like to retire to Deauville, or some equally quaint small French town, preferably on or near a beach.

So, to sum up, i absolutely adored Paris, and have become enamored with French culture in general. It will not be soon enough when i am finally able to return.