Sunday, lazy Sunday

...I know, I know. My blogging has been seriously lagging. I'm well aware...

This week was good, nothing out of the Paris ordinary, busy with work, etc. Had lunch out with a fellow Quebecois and a few other work folk at this quaint little restaurant run by, you guessed it, a philosopher. I'm sensing more than a theme with Parisian philosophers...if I don't come home, it's because I've decided to join the ranks, live on bread, cheese and wine in a loft in Belleville, write my heart away on a typewriter. Doesn't sound too bad, actually!

This weekend had been just lovely. Went out on Friday night to a friend's birthday party in Montmartre - met the most hilarious, gorgeous, archetype of a Parisian girl who kept me highly entertained all night. I wish I could have just put her in my pocket to keep her and take her with me, pulling her out on the metro, at work...any time I need a little pick-me-up. Instant friends; another theme I'm sensing from Paris. I really don't know what people are talking about when they say Parisians are snobby or cold. I've never met such genuinely kind and real people before. Sure the island is full of open hearts, but there's something different about people here...still haven't put my finger on it. But siiigh. I love it.

Spent the day yesterday wandering around the Marais, ducking in and out of old vintage shops, caught in the hustle of a Saturday afternoon which is pretty nuts, I gotta say. The sidewalks are completely packed, vendors on the street shouting prices, fish markets spilling out from storefronts, kids weaving around the masses on their scooters, the occasional couple kissing in the middle of it all. I honestly feel like I'm walking on a movie set anytime I go to the right bank on a weekend.

Last night a fabulous friend from work (she's an interpreter, Dominican, lovely and definitely my closest confidant in Paris) invited me to ANOTHER birthday party. A loft party waaaay out in the outskirts of town - very strange area, industrial, but the party was good fun. Lame music, but I'm not complaining! Got to dance, met some pretty interesting people, some of whom I also managed to share a cab home with thankfully...that would have been a pricey one, and a dodgy one given the nature of the area! Got home, crashed with a huge grin on my face, exhausted but satisfied.

Today it's a lazy kind of Sunday. A Billie Holiday kind of Sunday. A loads of coffee and maybe a movie or 2 kind of Sunday.

paris - in my heart for keeps.

well, it's official. i'm in love. i'm in love with this big, dirty, crazy, manic, pricey, devastatingly charming city. i know you're probably thinking, geez melissa, aren't you two moving a little too fast? you've only been seeing each other since january - how well do you really even know each other? well, i'm throwing caution into the balmy parisian wind in this case. i'm just going to accept that the heart knows no logic. and i'm going to continue this love affair, possibly for the rest of my life. does this mean i'm staying in paris? not necessarily. but does it mean that it has stained my heart for keeps? definitely.

i'm also going to admit that i'm quite proud of myself. ha! i've been working on this policy paper about indigenous languages as keys to maintaining and understanding biodiversity. i've been pouring over documents/articles/conventions/etc. well, today i submitted another draft to my boss...and she was very pleased. i could tell she was impressed, and it helped that she actually told me how impressed she was, how useful this paper has the potential to be...i sat there slightly stunned (blame it on university-induced-insecurity-of-all-things-on-paper). a little over a month left at work and i'm ready to give it my all.

spent an amazing weekend, just...amazing. the dashing dr.rewilder made a second paris appearance, and i did my darndest to be a decent tour guide. this time around, we did less typical-tourist things, and more crazy-posh-fun-real paris things. great food, great company, great wine..some mayhem, but mostly yet another weekend for the record books of the melissa life series.