All-Nighter

Since it was Monday yesterday and hence the 9:00 film class, that meant that I had to wake up at 7:15, which really meant 6:15 because of the time change. And I did end up going food shopping, so I was pretty tired after lugging everything home (I’ve sacrificed personal ease for not looking like a Wheelie Backpack Girl). I made myself a little dinner, and then I thought that I would just lay down for a second, just close my eyes, you know how the rest goes. I woke up again at midnight and tried desperately to sleep through the rest of the night, but it wasn’t in the cards. I got up to go to the bathroom at two o’clock and have been cold and noisy in the kitchen since then. Why is it that I am so much more clumsy and loud in the wee hours o’the morning than in real life? I guess the combination of it being really dark, my hands being cold to the point of oafishness, and the quiet seeming to amplify every sound you make. Although I did knock my straightener off the dresser and I bet it was every bit as loud as I feared it was.

Have I mentioned the hot dogs here yet? On a whim, I checked the ingredients list for the regular pork ones, and it’s horrifying so I won’t mention what’s in them. So I thought that maybe the chicken hot dogs might be better. They give new meaning to the word fowl. 16% of the entire hot dog is chicken skin. Ew, ew!

But I did break down and buy the pork ones because gosh darn, they’re only 89 centimes for ten and they are so easy to make and filling to boot. I picked up some mustard in the next aisle because it was on major sale (29 centimes, hope it’s not crap in a jar) because the mustard I have in my apartment, tasty horseradish sauce it may be, is not mustard.

Anyway, I meant to post awhile ago about a particularly amusing incident in Shakespeare class. We’re onto Antony and Cleopatra, not one of the better known plays. The professor was getting all deep and interprety into one of the passages, which after an initial skim made me giggle. Why? Here’s why:

The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne

Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten gold;

Heh! Juvenile, perhaps, but I don’t care. The poop was beaten gold! Hee! I’m still laughing. Still funnier, though, was that the professor loved this entire passage. He gave us an impromptu lesson on rhythmic Shakespeare stylings, and would bang his fist on the desk to make sure that the duller students understood the emphasized words. So, he ended up chanting,

BURN’D on the WAter: the POOP was BEATen gold;

I bet he did it just to give the Americans a laugh.

So! Aigues Mortes! I really wish it had been a sunnier day, since I’m sure that it’s beautiful in good weather. But, it wasn’t bad nonetheless.

What are all those crazy specks in the lake? Flamingos! Oh yes! An entire flock of them was just camped out in Camargues. Why? Well, the area (which happens to be the basin for the Rhône, or something) is really salty, and this particular kind of red algae loves it like mad. So the shrimp come and eat the algae, which in turn is like a magnet for flamingos, or as the French say, les flamants roses.

Here we are inside this fortress of sorts, which was used in ye olden tymes to imprison the Protestant women for decades.

Nice arches. This is my current desktop background.

From the top of the fortress.

Note the purplish haze on the water from the algae.

Sam and I made a judgmental error in deciding to walk the entire way around the sentry path that surrounded the city. Back in the day, they had steps that led down to the road, but those were boarded up so the only way to get back down was to just keep going the entire way around until you got back to where you started. It was a good half hour walk.

The sentries seemed to have crude bathrooms every so often. At least they're nicer than the ones at the university.

As well as spying peepholes. If Mom had been there, I would have called it the Snoo Peephole, and then laughed.

So we finally got down, and set out to the shopping district which sold naught but ice cream and tacky souvenirs.

And, augh! The scariest mannequin ever manufactured.

They did have one frightening store where it seems all of France goes for its weaponry needs. I really want that huge Swiss Army Knife.

More knives. They actually sold guns there, too, but I couldn’t get a good picture because of the reflection. I think that was the first time that I’ve seen a gun in France besides the Uzis that the soldiers had at the airport.

No arms store would be complete without some nerd memorabilia.

Like a huge dragon knife.

Now I want a Taser.

Oh, my mistake. They don’t sell arms – they sell arm’s. Egads, no French person can manage apostrophes correctly. Bonus points for the handle, though.

Brass knuckles, wow!

The flowers were blooming nicely.

Sam and I went halfsies on some gummi bears manufactured by Tom and Pilou. So that there’s no confusion, Tom’s shirt says TOM on it. I want a gigantic gummi bear that I can sit comfortably on.

This flavor was the devil. I thought it was grape, but it was a horrible hybrid mix of grape and black licorice and badness.