Summer Vacation Part II: Sculpture Viewing In Paris (or, With All This Nice Art To Look At, How Could Anyone Be Les Miserable?)

As I alluded to in my last post, the trip to France and the UK this summer was not going to just be fun and games, as there was strenuous bog snorkeling to be done.  But more than that, I was visiting Jen in the midst of her work for the summer.  In other words, I was on vacation, but she was not.  This worked out splendidly for me because I got to see Paris in a rather unique way.  Rather than going to touristy destinations each day, we'd hunt down various sculptures of some relevance to Jen's work, seeing neighborhoods that otherwise would have gone unseen, and seeing the touristy things as a matter of happenstance if they were on the way.  With this arrangement, I like to think that I was able to assist Jen in her work, and by extension, be a contributor to original research!  Not only did I consistently get out of the way when she was taking pictures of the sculptures, but I also offered insightful observations, such as "I like this sculpture, because.....because...........well, I just do."

Allow me to pause here and say a few words about the monumental difference between me and all the tourists in Paris.  I've already touched on the fact that we did not set out each day with the aim of going to a tourist destination, but rather of going to work, like regular residents of Paris.  In addition, after only 2-5 days of clinging to Jen like a scared child while traversing about the city, I felt more than comfortable navigating the Metro system, shouldering past all the tourists standing around with their maps, and occasionally displaying a disgusted sneer or disdainful sideways glance.  Furthermore, I went running in the city a few times, like a real Paris resident, loping along confidently on streets that began to feel as familiar to me as my own neighborhood, overshooting the turns on my selected route only about 75% of the time.  Finally, and most importantly, I wasn't one of those tourists (even saying the word is distasteful to me) going around speaking English and expecting the French to speak it back to me.  In fact, I didn't speak at all, letting Jen handle all communication with her ability to ask questions and order things in French.  You will note that I used the word "monumental" at the beginning of this paragraph, and that term was not chosen randomly.  As the French clearly erect public works of art for almost anything, it is only fitting that a new sculpture be commissioned to honor my non-tourist, good will-heralding visit to Paris.  I just can't be expected to deliver an acceptance speech at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Summer Vacation Part I: Adventures In Flight (or, The Best Way To Get A Good Rest While Flying Is To Exhaust Yourself Ahead Of Time)

Europa!

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my plans for this summer involved a trip to select countries in Europe to see Jen and engage in some eagerly anticipated R&R (Self-impRovement & GRowth as an individual).  I am now returned from the trip and, as you might expect, have many thoughts swirling in my mind about the experience and what to share here (that is, how to best take a fantastic trip and reduce it to some meaningless banter that will serve as cheap entertainment in keeping with the nature of this blog).  It seemed best to write about the experience in manageable chunks rather than trying to cram it all into one ungainly Voltron post, so this post will be the first in a series over the next few weeks, with each part of the series having its own theme, subject to the usual tangents and side notes.

But before we get too far, let me outline the basis for this trip, both so that you have some background and so that I can get focused.  First, the trip was a two-week venture that took me to Paris, London, some towns in Wales, back to London, and finally back to Paris.  For some time now I've had the desire to do some international traveling, but also a desire to not just be a tourist.  Rather, if I was going to travel, I wanted it to be in one of two contexts: 1) for the purpose of participating in some event or purposeful activity, or 2) to live in another country for an extended period of time so that I could truly become familiar with the way of life in the country.  Clearly, this trip fit into the first category, and it actually involved both an "event" and a "purposeful activity."  A "purposeful activity" could be something like a service trip, or it could mean visiting someone, which was the case in my scenario, as I was visiting Jen.  The "event" for my trip was a Bog Snorkeling Triathlon in Wales.  Just because.

Please, please, no need to dress up just for this

Two blog posts in one week?!  Preposterous!!  And yet it's happening before your very eyes...

A nice suit can only do so much to make you look good,
especially when you have no hands and a knob for a head

This week at work I had occasion to dress up a little bit more than usual, wearing a suit one day and wearing a sport coat the next day.  If you're a working professional, you probably know what that means, and if you're an HR professional, you definitely know what that means.  If you're an HR professional and you don't know what that means, you are merely posing as an HR professional as part of some clever ruse, and I wish you the best of luck in your chosen subterfuge.  Typically a suit is not part of my day-to-day attire, as a jacket seems a bit overboard for my role.  As a result, I have not accumulated many suits over the years.  In fact, I own one suit, which I have had since partway through my undergraduate years.  There have been enough occasions over the years that the suit has gotten plenty of wear, but there really haven't been enough occasions to warrant getting a second suit.  And certainly there is no reason to get a new suit if you aren't going to wear it regularly, as a suit represents a decent investment if you want to avoid the social stigma of wearing a "cheap suit."

A long flight will inevitably also involve some drive(l) time

You may as well pack it with krill

In just under one week now I'll be taking flight to cross the Atlantic en route to visiting Jen in Paris and getting into other mischief in the land of sheep and harps.  Much more on this later, to be sure, but for now the business at hand is packing and making other final preparations for the trip (or more accurately, blogging about packing and making final preparations for the trip).  When packing for such a venture, it is important to pack light.  The weight of your luggage is not important because it is difficult to carry around heavy luggage on your person, but rather because you want your stuff to have the best chance at being retained when they jettison luggage midway over the Atlantic to reduce weight in the aircraft and thus save on fuel.  Airlines have to be profitable like any other business, and cost-saving measures such as this are regarded as commonplace.  What, you thought there was just a "mix-up" with your luggage and that it's sitting at some other airport now?  Silly traveler!

The luggage-jettison idea was submitted via a standard corporate "idea drop box" in 1979 by a gal named Rosalind Grenbodine, and was so quickly adopted by all major airlines that nobody could actually remember which company implemented it first.  Rosalind would have obviously been able to speak to this question, but she was a rather unpopular employee within her organization (nobody likes the coworker who always has the good ideas), and company administration either purposefully or inadvertently approved a suggestion, also submitted via the idea drop box, to award Rosalind a guest seat on the first flight that would practice the luggage jettison, with the underlying intent (and outcome) of also jettisoning Rosalind.

For best results, read while sitting outside in the evening

Have you hosta?

Tonight's post is brought to you from the front porch of the house, where I'm sitting out in the cool of the evening with a light rain coming down on the multitude of hostas planted alongside our house.  Some of the hostas have pointy leaves, some have rounder leaves, and some have leaves with a whitish border around the green interior.  Being shade-loving plants, the hostas are really "in their element" on the side of the house, where they get a limited amount of sun but a full dose of any rain that falls, as they are now.  I pronounce the word "hosta" with the h-sound, much like I pronounce the word "huge" with the h-sound.  Some folks like to pronounce the word "huge" like "yuge," leaving off the h.  I expect these same people pronounce the word "hosta" like "ahsta."  Although I am definitely not a proponent of leaving off the h-sound in any word, I would take it as a compliment if someone came by the house and said "Boy, those are some yuge ahstas you 'ave there!"

As I was discussing with Jen recently, sitting out on the porch is one of the simple pleasures in life.  Porches are for bare feet, and cups of coffee or tea, perhaps a book, and watching critters when the opportunity arises.  Much like the hostas on the side of the house, I feel like I'm in my element on the porch.  It's a place to read, write, and think, not to mention go about in bare feet, drink coffee, and watch critters.  I feel I excel at doing all of these things.