Starting Over

First Things First

I'm starting anew with my France blog since it was so difficult for people to comment in the last one. My preference would have been to stick with LiveJournal rather than Vox since I've been LJ'ing for almost 7 years now and I quite like it, but the new owners of LJ underhandedly eliminated the advertising-free free user accounts there recently and I didn't want to subject you all to graphic ads. Blogger's not my favorite but it gets the job done :)

I'm bummed I couldn't get the username I wanted since someone else already had it and she seems to have a rather entertaining blog. Ah well, c'est la vie.

Things You've Missed

I finally returned to my apartment on Saturday night (4/12) around 9:50 PM, after 14 hours of flight time and about 1.5 hours of bussing as my roommate was unable to pick me up from the airport. This morning (Sunday, 4/13) my friend informed me that he would have picked me up had he known I needed a ride. *facepalm* I figure I needed to revisit the public transit system anyways...

The airline managed to:

• Accept my package as a checked item but fail to give me a receipt for it or to place a tag on it, and
• Consequently lose said package because it had no navigational information on it.

I subsequently wasted about 1 hour at the airport trying to figure out what to do next as I had never lost baggage before on a plane. Having not taken a plane in probably 8 years also did not help me identify where the problem originated (at the original check-in point in Minneapolis, MN) at the time. Fortunately, the package only contained a bottle of wine (and back-up wine at that should the first mondo expensive bottle fail to delight) for my very dear friend, and a bottle of an undeniably French crème de cassis for my own gastronomical experimentations - in short, non-cruicial items. The airline says they'll call me if they find it, as it does have my contact info on it, but it's pretty much a lost cause after 5 days. Best of all, since they failed to give me a receipt for the package (and admittedly not my fault as they stated), they technically never were responsible for the package so they don't have to compensate me or anything. Yeah, awesome.

And Things to Come

Since I've been home, I've managed to:

• Spend hours at the computer due to pent-up Internet withdrawal
• Pass out soundly due to jet lag and poor sleeping over the past few nights
• Create a giant mess in my apartment taking apart my luggage and not clean it up
• Have a delightful breakfast with a handsome gentleman suitor
• Fulfill my committment to work today even though I had informed them I was unavailable two months ago yet got scheduled anyway
• Purchase way too much food... which is exactly the opposite of anomolous.

It's 1:30 AM PST and tomorrow is the start of the M-F work week, sadly. I still haven't done my taxes or unpacked, so it may yet be a few days before I get the pictures uploaded and the remaining trip commentary scribbled out on the blog. Thanks for all the great emails during my absence - I loved receiving them as they helped me to feel connected to somewhere even when isolated across the Atlantic ocean.

If anyone has any particular questions or requests, let me know and I'll try my best to address them :) Au revoir et bonne soirée!