Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Monday, Jan. 01, 2007 - 7:35 p.m.

Happy New Year, peeps! I hope all of you had a safe and happy night last night and are enjoying whatever activity you chose to pursue today. I myself had a very uneventful evening/day. I was gonna go to Jonny-C's for the annual NYE Boardgame Bash & Social Extravaganza, but I still have no brakes, so there was no driving for me. :( I spent it instead trying to get stuff done on Pete's new website.

Also, someone gifted me with a 3-month extension on my D'land Gold membership, and I want to say thank you very much to whomever that was. It took me a while to figure out that that was a gift and not a mistake on the part of Diaryland, so I'm sorry I'm an idiot and didn't say thank you sooner. It was very nice of you. :)

Aside from that, I got nothin', so here's the year-end review. Gathering the quotes for it, I was really struck by just how horrible 2006 was for me and how negative I got here. Here's hoping 2007 goes a lot better.

Katie Doyle, 2006 - The Year In Quotes

Where the hell is $500 million when you need it?

Chere Sofy -

Les verbes de francais sont fous. Il y a trop. Pourquoi avoir besoin de trop??? 6 formes de present. 6 formes de imparfait. 6 formes de passe compose. Pourquoi?! Ce n'est pas necessaire! C'est demente!

...I probably actually do a lot of stuff other people think is pretty weird that I consider perfectly fine behavior.

Clearly my own life needs help, that I am this involved in tv right now.

I got a piggy bank for Christmas from my friend Sofy in Montpellier (the one in France, not Vermont). It arrived today with the note that if I start saving now, perhaps I can be in France this summer. :) The funny thing is, I was just sitting at work today thinking the very same thing.

Until this experience, if you had tried to describe this kind of atrociousness, I would have said you were exaggerating. Over-dramatizing. Playing to the crowd across the street. Given to wild hyperbole and playing it for mad effect, because no one - not a single person on this planet - could possibly so stupefyingly hideous.

I would owe you a serious apology.

I wish life was the way I thought it was going to be when I was 17.

The problem with a duck & cover approach to life, though, is that you're so desperate to shut out the bad that you also shut out the good.

Why yes, you do feel an eyeroll.

ps. many thanks to those of you who have commented or written to show support while I work out a few demons. it's nice to know i am not quite the pariah i feel i have become.

The man has had a heart attack. You shot him in the frigging face.

SAY YOU'RE SORRY.

Jeez.

...no more Katie going ape over politics. No more boring, "I hate when this happens" posts. (well, okay, but they will be "je n'adore pas quand ce fait" posts about crazy French stuff, and won't that be infinitely more interesting then the plain brown American wrapper you're used to?)

This was a cacophany of horror. A symphony - if by symphony you mean the devil has planted his seed, and it's about to come ripping out of your womb singing it's own little demon song of harshness and all-devouring evil.

...living out a Greek tragedy tends to make you angry.

You know; if by stressed, you mean ready to take a sledgehammer to the next thing that moves.

You like the snazzy new template, no? Apparently, when the going gets tough, the tough cheese around with graphics and html.

The hunt for an apartment in Paris is underway.

Never. Going. To. Die.

It's done, it's done, I got my apartment!!!! I'm goin' to Paris!!!

If I were really a criminal, do they think I'd go thru the hassle of applying for a long-stay visa?

Apparently, I am only 36% evil. I know a lot of people who would disagree.

Seriously; what the hell do you think I would be carrying around with me that would help you with your bleary-eyed exhaustion at 1am on a weeknight???

Ah, arrogance, thy name is Katie.

3 passport-size photos with clear background. Check...and, ouch.

I told her dysfunctional was the word I thought she was searching for, and then introduced her to Hershey's miniatures and crunchy Skippy peanut butter.

I finally got to talk to the consulate lady to make my visa appointment today, and I gotta tell you, she scared me.

There is nothing I hate more than busting my ass for someone who not only doesn't appreciate it, but disparages me in the process.

I mentally resolve NEVER to fucking eat lunch with these people again, and am now blogging the frustration so that sometime later today I don't suddenly snap and kill someone.

KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!

My fear of flying has caused me to begin planning for what I am convinced is the inevitable thieving of my favorite clothing and all my unmentionables.

She corrects what she perceives as my atrocious french spelling skills, but I think that's kind of unfair, considering this is an american computer, and a mac, to boot, and I don't know what the supersecret keystroke combinations are to make it type an accent grave or cedille.

CuppaJoe is totally my hero, and I think the peeps should be aware.

I really need this trip to France.

JJ Abrams and his team of crack-addled season 5 hacks suck.

Oh, you mean this gate key. And, scene.

You may think it is a good idea to go hogwild at a raw foods restaurant for your friend's birthday dinner and go all the way with a Tibetan Tonic drink, because hey, it's anti-aging and pro-energy, and you know, what with all the cheeseburgers and Hostess, your liver could use a little cleaning out.

Do not do this.

I am getting on a plane bearing a British name, flying from one of the most trafficked airports in the entire world - with quite possibly the worst security of any airport ever built in the entire history of non-secured airports - to another highly trafficked airport in yet another country targeted by extremists with access to unstable chemicals and things that go boom, and I am doing it at the height of tourist season, just after my government has probably managed to piss off every single anti-American extremist on the planet by parading that goddamned picture of Zarqawi thru every single news cycle for an entire week and a half. Seriously, WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING???

I think my dentist was actually Pol Pot in another life, because holy crap, that woman is friggin' evil with a sharp, pointy instrument in her hand, and she is not shy about using it.

I touched a millipede on Friday, and that isn't a euphemism, either.

Can there be a moratorium on blowing stuff up for the next 4 months? Please?

No one official knows I'm here.

It's funny how something like that makes you want to scream so you won't explode.
(re: standing close to a lot of tanks)

Moats are very deep...and a long way down, when one is standing on a bridge made of blocks of stone and happens to look down thru a grating and see the weeds and flowers waaaaay down at the bottom of said moat.

I'm sitting on the loveseat that passes for my sofa, in a dim little pool of gold light. It's very overcast at the moment, and every so often, the pale blue of that spotlight cuts a narrow swath thru the sky.

I can not stress to you enough how much fun this is.

Like, when Harry the Hamster got loose? Benjamin and his little sidekick were all over that. It does seem the sidekick does all the work, though. Benjamin is more the idea man.

Imagine, then, my horror at bursting into tears in the middle of a crowded bakery this afternoon.

You have not lived until you've seen William Shatner exclaim "El Papagayo ROJO???!!!" in french.

I got most of the way home and had to seek shelter in the doorway of a bistro that has and awning, where I stood and watched the rain pour down and sang showtunes until it lightened to mere rain, and then I walked the rest of the way home, where I discovered that, Oh yeah - I left the windows open.

::sigh:: I scare myself, sometimes.

I totally went outside to use the payphone, and when I was comin' back, I hit the top of the second floor stairs, and one of the neighbors was comin' down the 3 little stairs that lead from the "upper" hall on the right to the landing hall on the left, and he weren't wearin' nothin' but his boots and underwear, y'all.

HHHHOOOOOOOOOOOWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHKKKKKKKK.

Let me repeat that again, for those of you who think I mistyped something there: It is illegal to use a tripod in Paris.

No matter how desperate I get for english language, I will never be so desperate as to watch Jackass.

I wanted the same bitchin' Sharon Stone crop that I had (which I know I hated when she first did it, on accounta it being all frizzy, but it had grown out really beautifully, and I really loved it), but instead, I ended up with Carey Lowell, License to Kill hair.

Then the cathedral is freaking huge. I mean, you don't really grasp it until you're standing there trying to fit it all into your camera lens, and then you're like, holy crap, that is one big freaking building.

I love living in Paris, yo. It's really awesome.

I even like the ridiculous warren of medieval streets and bad city planning that sometimes results in my getting lost because I digressed on the way home from the Metro despite really needing to pee. Because sometimes that results in a really insane piece of quiche lorraine, yo. I just wish I could figure out how to stay longer, because man, does Paris rock.

When you travel, you really shouldn't have to plan for terrorist plot contingencies. I'm in EUROPE, for Pete's sake. It's not like I headed off to Beirut.

SPACE MONKEYS!!!

I have to go buy water tomorrow. That is the most onerous task of my week, the hauling of 9 liters of water up 4 flights of stairs.

Paris, while still awesome, loses some of its magic in the cold and rain.

Told.

You.

So.

"Tick, tock."

I'm not kidding you guys, to not be able to do something for myself and to have to wait for someone else to do it fucking makes me insane on a level heretofore incomprehensible to me.

I almost cried when I walked into the first waterlilies room. Just to be standing that close to such monumental canvasses by my favorite artist was a bit much.

And apparently, you are not allowed to sit on the floor in the l'Orangerie, even just for the time it takes to position and photograph a small bear, because I totally got yelled at for it.

I would really like to know what the odds are that today, I was taking a picture of the *exact same carving* on the grand staircase that I was taking a picture of 3 years ago when the Opera closed and a guard came and told me it was time to leave.

And it's not that the guy was crazy that I objected to, so much. Crazy I can handle. Crazy and aggressive, not so much. And then by the time you stir up a crazy, aggressive, and pissed off stew, and you're lookin' at me like I'm the bread bowl, it's time to get off the train and call it a day. Know when to say when, people, that's all I'm sayin'.

So anyway, the cable guy was supposed to show up yet again (for the 3rd time) today, between 30 and 80.

Seriously, if I'm not taking pictures, no one even talks to me. Stick a camera in my hand, and I may as well have a huge fucking bullseye painted across my chest and back.

Well, I thought I had cable when I started this entry. It turns out I don't. I have a cable box. That's not the same thing.

The IM Pei Louvre pyramid is really cool, by the way.

I love Paris with all my heart. It is an amazing and beautiful city, and even though its streets are atrociously laid out, it's sidewalks are mined with waste, the pigeons are godfreakingawful, disgusting, and everywhere, and the people here are in general not at all what I would term a friendly or helpful people, those are minor inconveniences compared the sheer glory of what just has to be the most beautiful city in the entire world.

I'm far Rive Gauche, it's far Rive Droite...in fact, both of us are so far as to technically not be Rive anything.

My legs are going all fiery rubber on me, and all I can think is that if I'd known I was going to be doing this twice today, I'd have taken the funiculaire up the side of the damn hill earlier. But climb them I do, and when I get to the gate - out of breath and knees knocking, I ask a couple if they speak english, and the girl does, and I ask what's the deal, so she goes to ask the station guy, and it turns out that there was a fire at one of the stations down the way, and the entire line has had to shut down. Down the way. As in, between me and home.

The front part of my brain went, "Uh..." because it's all eloquent like that. The rest of my brain - the part that operates under pressure - went, "Don't. Move."

So, like, the Eiffel Tower is kinda hard to photograph in a way that isn't boring.

Imagine Jack Black as a psychotic frenchman with shoulder-length curly brown hair, probably in his 40's, barechested and wearing boatloads of eyeliner, a ton of big silver chains (and I think a cross), semi-sheer black tights, and a leopard print negligee, and you approach the psychosis.

It's kinda weird, being in another country on the 5th anniversary of September 11.

After that, I figured I was lucky. It wasn't Pepsi, and it had a nice, pleasing orange scent.

I sat here, crosslegged on the floor, with a cheese packet pressed to one cheek and noodles pressed to the other, and cried just a little for the sheer joy of something familiar.

I noticed a bit of a change in the city the last 10 days or so. Just slight changes and unusual activity, but enough to make me go "hmmm."

Saturday I went to Hotel de Ville & Notre Dame, and climbed the tower at Notre Dame. Wanna know how many steps to the belfry?

So, I changed my ticket today, to fly out on November 19, instead of October 9.

I wish I had pithy stuff to share, but you know, I spent the last 3 days being lazy.

On the upside, I now know how to get blood out of a wool carpet. On the downside, I know how to get blood out of a wool carpet, and the reason hurt like hell.

You may think, one day when you are living in Paris and have access to Velveeta cheese sauce and are still high on the memory of Tostito chips and queso, that doctoring up said Velveeta cheese sauce with a variety of things from your tiny and poorly stocked kitchen in order to recreate the wonder of queso is a really good idea. So you will throw all manner of things into said cheese sauce, including (but not limited to) a selection of Herbs de Provence and garlic & herb cream chese.

Do NOT do this.

I can't believe I actually climbed a frigging light pole and hung out into air, for a picture.

Speaking of tomorrow, I just realized it's after 6:30 in the morning here. I have to get to bed. Especially if I'm planning on doing something boneheaded like getting myself arrested and deported at 2.

Also, when you ride the Metro and touch the poles, you really need to wash your hands before you eat, I don't care how distracted you might be when you get where you're going.

Paris is awesome and I love it, but I don't want to spend all my life going on trips alone. I'm not a loner.

I have grown to hate that bleeding white sky.

I want to rewrite every one of my blog entries so that they're polished and witty and urbane, like some Pulitzer Prize-winning dispassionate author sat down and turned my life into something pithy and creative.

I would like to inform all readers of Gofugyourself.com who also visit me that most of the world's fashion ills can be pinned on Paris and London.

Paris is a cool place at 6:30 in the morning.

I tried to tough it out, but after 45 minutes of drizzle, I'd had enough.

So, the Rodin museum was pretty cool, but I discovered that if you're not really crazy about a subject, an entire museum - and I'm talking a big one - full of it is a tad much.

...I kept having major deja vu, and my brain kept trading images with what was right in front of me and the pictures in my mind's eye of the Waterlilies paintings at the l'Orangerie. Several times as I was walking around the pond, I realized I was standing pretty much right where Monet had been standing for a certain part of a canvas.

I realized all that moving up the stairs in the dark, the smooth wood of the railing under my hand, putting my feet where they belong without thinking about where that might be. Here and there, windows were lit across the courtyard, and I could see through lace curtains into kitchens with pans hanging on the ceramic tiled walls under little wooden shelves holding sugar and flour and tins of coffee, and past parted drapes into rooms where people were sitting having dinner at dark wood tables with green runners and brightly painted walls bathed in golden light, and I realized how much I really don't want to leave. That it will be good to get back to my life, to taking care of the things that have been sitting on hold, that I finally feel motivated to tackle and want to stay on top of so that I can finally make my life work, but that a huge part of myself has worked its way into this place and this life, settling into it like it would always be here, like this was the permanent thing, and the life I had was the temporary, and somehow I became a part of this place as it became a part of me, and I do not want to leave it.

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.

So I did what any self-respecting girl would do when offered the opportunity. I packed up my stuff and I headed to Paris. Because when the going gets tough, the tough obviously go to France.

"Fall" has come to Paris, and it's coooooold.

Can I just say how much it is saving my sanity not to be living in the US during the last half of an election cycle?

The phrase "Donald Rumsfeld's resignation" and its various permutations will never get old.

I have not written a single nanowrimo word in 3 or 4 days.

I was on the Metro bound for home when I passed through Concorde and thought, "you know, why the hell not," so I got off and went up to Place de la Concorde and shot some sunset stuff of the fountains.

I got my water and headed home, and I kinda wanted to cry realizing that tonight was the last time I will make the walk from my Metro home.

I am slowly fitting back into life here.

Jury duty.

So, what with all the time to read that I had yesterday, I read all the way through Pamela Ribon's "Why Moms Are Weird," and you guys, that is one awesome book.

Trust me on this, people. Readiwhip gone bad is a horrifyingly vile experience.

I LOVE MARIE-PIERRE!!!

This is a little entry I like to call "Welcome Back to Los Angeles."

Ah, Los Angeles, you are hard on motor vehicles.

So. Addicted. To Flickr.

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Yesterday's News - Next Stop

In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
In which Katie returns after a very long absence - Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
In which Katie pokes her head in and brushes some of the cobwebs away - Thursday, May. 06, 2010
In which Katie asks you to write your congressman again. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2008
In which Katie asks you to please click the link and send the message to protect the rights of artists - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008