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It is officially November 1. Let the wailing begin. I had planned to get a jump on this NaNoWriMo thing at 12:01, but I just got home about 15 minutes ago from a very long day spent meeting with Elodie about Pete's book and website, and then photographing Pete having coffee and croissant at a *very* trendy pastry shop in a pricey section of the 6th arrondissement...which we walked to from the 15th. Right past Tour Montparnasse. And let me tell you, that is one ugly skyscraper. They're not exaggerating. That thing is horrible. And it dwarfs everything around it. There's a shopping mall at the base of it, which is also ugly, but that tower really takes the cake and sort of redefines monstrosity. Like, when the Parisians decide to take the plunge and mix modern with the old, they really go all out to make sure the modern is as jarringly, horrendously clashing as possible. Tour Montparnasses looks like something straight out of 80's yuppy hell, all dark brown metal and black tinted glass, with convex sides and concave ends, with a sprawling complex of glass and concrete at its feet, and just generally horrible, all the way around. I would have taken a picture, but Elodie is a fast walker, and you damned near have to sprint to keep up with her at the best of times. When she's hungry and on her way to food, so trust me, you do NOT suggest a pause for pictures of the big ugly glass building standing in the way. I am the fast walker in my circle and always have to slow down for everyone except the housemate. Elodie makes me look like a snail. I'm serious, yo. She's 3" shorter than me (the girl once lovingly referred to by an ex-boyfriend as "Big Ol' Long Spidermonkey Legs"), and I still had to damn near jog to keep up with her. That was an interesting experience. After the photography and the meeting and stuff, we met up with her boyfriend at a bar called La Palette, which is a really cool bar expat and french painters used to frequent and had a bottle of Chateau La Fond (I think) Brouilly, which was really very yummy. Then we left there because tomorrow is a holiday here and the bar was full and screamingly loud, and we went to another more quiet place, and then we started walking the longass way back home. When we hit Tour Montparnasse, I left them and took the Metro home, as I'd been going since 10:30 in the morning, it was almost midnight, and I've had about 3.5 hours of sleep, such as it was. My back has been really hurting lately. It's had all it can take from the hard foam Ikea matress I sleep on. There's no support for the small of my back, and it just can't take it anymore, so I wake up every 30 minutes or so and have to change position because the muscle strain is too much and pain wakes me up. And the few times I have managed to sleep for more than half an hour at a time, the neighbors from frigging hell have woken me up. My neighbors - who I have decided are hands down the most inconsiderate human beings on the frigging planet - have taken up the lovely activity of hammering on the wall between our two apartments every single night beginning around 12:30. I think they have taken up renovating their bathroom and have decided that the hours of 12:30 - 6am are prime for renovation, because the amount of pounding, banging, and flushing of pipes that's going on in there every night for the last week is insane. They're frigging in their 60s. I don't know what the fuck they can possibly be doing in there, but it's unbelievably rude and inconsiderate. And apparently they need no sleep, because once they fall silent at 6, there's a mere 2 hours of quiet and then the door slamming and the loudass "uh" conversations start and the banging resumes. And people, I'm talking banging so hard, it reverberates through the floor. I have to sit on the floor in front of the coffee table to write this, and my ass is vibrating like I can't tell you from whatever the hell is going on over there. I'm sure the people who live under them are homicidal, at this point. One night all hell is gonna break lose and the police will be pounding on my door by dawn's early light, wanting to take a statement. Between all the renovation and the body it sounded like they dragged up the stairs and then dismembered in the bathroom whatever night that was at 2am, I fully expect to be reading about 304 rue Lecourbe in the papers any day now. And no, I am not kidding. They're obviously building a secret vault in the wall over there to hide body parts in. It's the Cask of the Amontillado all over again. Only, you know, with less screaming and more actual dismemberment. Wow, isn't that lovely? I have to go. Peace out, copyright 2002
- 2005 Katie Doyle; all rights reserved
In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
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