Getting on with it...

The Friday of museum week was wild. Five, count 'em, five monuments/museums in one day. Plus a long walk down les Champs-Elysées and gawping in Faubourg St.-Honoré. Not to mention the little bit of excitement at the beginning of the day.

That translates into a hundred or so photos to cull, rename, resize, and comment on; I've finally managed to upload them. As always, click on the name of the album below the picture to see the rest of the pretty pix.

I went to l'Arc de Triomphe, l'Orangerie, les Invalides and l'Eglise du Dôme, Musée Rodin,and the Panthéon. The pix start here:

From Paris 2010: Look Ma, Culture!

You can see the pictures of my strolling here:

From Paris 2010: Cityscapes and Walking Tours

There are still two days of museum week left! I've promised myself macarons when I finish the Paris photos. But I've also promised myself gelato when I get a certain set of physics tests marked, and so the photos may have to wait a little longer.

Pareidolia

I learned a new word this week, and I need to share it. To quote my friend Craig: "It's a situation where you interpret a random pattern as meaningful. Examples are seeing animals in clouds, a face on Mars, Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, etc."

This is about several random somethings. Is there a pattern?

Baby steps

I finally uploaded my Loire Valley and Versailles photos. You can see them here:

Loire Valley 2010	Versailles 2010

I'm a little behind on the rest of my Paris photos; the Loire Valley and Versailles pix only take me up to April 13th of last year. I still have a thousand or so photos to cull, name, resize, and comment on before April 18 if I'm going to stay on track. Somehow I doubt that will happen.

However, baby steps. Look! Pictures!

With all due respect to Mr. Eliot...

...so far April has been just lovely.

At the risk of bringing on another snow storm, I've thrown caution to the wind and done the annual shoe and clothes swap, whereby I pack my (freshly cleaned) fall/winter clothes into the bins under the bed and bring my spring/summer clothes out of hibernation. Tempting fate, I know, but I'm so happy to be done with the sweaters and see some new clothes. Okay, different clothes. Who needs a shopping spree?

(Well, actually, I'd love one, if you're handing them out; but this system does keep my wardrobe feeling fairly fresh. Mostly.)

I've even put my skates and winter boots away. It's on!

And the saints went marching in

Last night, my choreography class from Bees' Knees Dance performed at Dovercourt House. It was fun and I didn't mess up too much. I'm sick though, so I had to spend rather too much of today recovering.


Video credit: Bees' Knees Dance

As fun as it was, I've decided not to continue with the class for the next round. I've had to not do a bunch of stuff that happens on Wednesdays because as it turns out? It's a school night and I seem to have energy for only one extracurricular activity. I'd like to start attending the Corktown Uke Jam more regularly -- although that might lead to dissatisfaction with my pretty green uke.

Sigh

Hard to believe...

This time last year, I was sitting in a rather cramped plane, beyond grateful that I'd managed to make it onto the plane with all of my doodads, and starting to get really excited that the adventure I'd spent the better part of the year planning had actually begun.

Now, as I look over my posting lists, at all the half-written posts and unposted photos, I realize I really need to get a bit of a move-on with the write-ups. In my ever-shifting deadline target, I really want to get the photos up before the anniversary of the day I left. Some of them are done already: Amsterdam, my first week in Paris, Chartres, Mont St-Michel, Venice, and part of Provence. I'm finding my Paris museum week a bit... daunting. It's a lot of photos to label and then comment on. And marks are due next week!

I also have a quite few photos I've taken in Toronto as part of my being a tourist in Toronto scheme. The nice thing about being a tourist in your own city is that you have rather a lot of time to go places and see things. Once again, however, a lot of the posts are half-written and the photos need to be labelled, sorted, and commented before I will upload them.

However, I'm really going to push to get the Europe photos done by the target deadline, as well as trying to stay on more or less top of the new photos. Maybe I will reward myself with some macarons when I get the Paris photos finished...

Then I can get started finishing all the blog posts. Oy.

Suddenly, that big pile of labs I have to mark seems rather inviting...

I can quit anytime...

On the Cupcake Ride Saturday, we ended up at Bobbette & Belle, where (along with cupcakes and other yummy treats), they have macarons. Freshly baked macarons. I was on a bit of a sugar high after the cupcakes and hot chocolate, so I had to wait to try them. It was hard, but I did it.

They packed them in this cute box, but I was concerned that they might not survive the journey home intact.

Result? When I opened the box, one side had crumbled off each of the pistachio and raspberry macarons. About the flavours: the vanilla didn't taste like anything at all. It was much too bland, while the chocolate ganache was too intense and heavy for the texture. The raspberry was too delicate; I actually couldn't tell if it was raspberry or strawberry. The cassis was also delicate, but in a good way; it was a bit crunchy, though, which makes me wonder how fresh it, the raspberry, and pistachio macarons were. The pistachio, despite having lost some of the cookie texture, was nearly perfect. The hazelnut and chocolate had hazelnut meringues and chocolate ganache; it was the perfect intensity for the lightness of the cookie. And the salted caramel was just perfect. Mmmm.

I'm coming to realize that when it comes to macarons, I usually like anything with nuts and flowers (mmmm, rose petal). And salted caramel; it has to be salted because caramel by itself is too sweet. Chocolate and coffee flavours are fine as long as they're only in either the meringue or the filling; both on the same macaron is too intense. Delicate is fine for fruit flavours, but they can't be too delicate.

Holy cow, I'm picky.

Of course, I'm not so picky that I won't eat just about any macaron you put in front of me and think it's one of the best things ever.