AliThinks

A Love Affair

I'm having one. With Paris.

This will be very short, because I don't have time to craft a proper post.

I. Love. Paris.

This trip was quick and dirty, with one intention only: to pick up my kids. (And to see a couple of other bloggers along the way, bonus!) There are people I didn't get to see this time, faute de temps.

I hope to rectify that in the not-too-distant future. I'd love to spend a week or more in the City of Light; je veux flâner dans les rues avec Allan. Monuments are lovely, but I want to feel the vibe of Paris.

And I want to see the friends I didn't have the time to this past week.

Sigh. That about sums it up.

(The kids and I are back in Lexington, and I'm looking forward to this month with them. Blogging will most likely be light.)

Des Bloggeuses à Paris

Yesterday (this would be Wednesday, July 2; I'm not changing the time stamp on my blog just for three days, and it's nearly 5 am in Paris right now) I had lunch with one blogger and dinner with another.

Polly and I connected recently, and I was delighted to meet her at the same café I had a Perrier with Jeorg at last year. (And it was a total coincidence, which makes it even better). We had each had a tarte salée, salad, and a glass of rosé for lunch, then coffee. Then another coffee. The second coffee we had out on the terrasse, because the rain had stopped, and coffee on a café terrace is one of life's better pleasures. See here:

Polly's lovely daughter and her adorable friend joined us for a while, then we all went off to do other things. In my case it was a reconnaissance mission at La Droguerie.

Samantha and I arranged to meet at 7 for dinner somewhere. She crossed the Seine and we met at Les Halles, which was kind of her, since it meant I only had to walk about 300 meters. She'd heard of an Italian restaurant with great ravioli; I knew there was one on the rue Montorgueil. It turned out the be the same place, so we had ravioli (hers with figs and Parma ham, mine with truffles, Parma ham, and button mushrooms) and the house red.

By 9:30 I was back in my room, exhausted. An hour later, I was asleep. A dream woke me at 3:00, and here I am.

But what matters here is the people I met. Blogging is such an amazing thing. (YES. I know I said I thought about quitting.) You encounter people via the blogosphere, and if you're lucky enough to meet in person, you automatically have a connection. My jetlag-addled brain can't think of a better way to say that.

In any case, spending time with Polly and Sam was a great way to spend my first day in Paris. (My second day in Paris will actually involve fast trains, the city of Bordeaux, and picking up my children.)

Merci, les filles !

(Now, do I try to sleep a little more, or do I hit up the hotel breakfast in 40 minutes?)

Love

Chillin' On The Grass, originally uploaded by Alison.

I caught this sweet scene at Lexington's Pride Festival on Saturday. This was the first year the festival has been held downtown; previously it took place on a private farm. What a milestone this is, and it's only right that Pride events should take place downtown.

After all, last year Lexington was named one of America's top ten cities for gay people.

The highlight of the day was the drag show, the first ever public drag show in Lexington's history. And it took place on the steps of the old courthouse!

You can see my photos here; I still have more to upload.

PS: I guess I'm still blogging. Will try to answer your kind comments soon!

Meh.

So tonight I mentioned elsewhere on the web that I was pretty much over this blogging thing, that 4+ years was enough, and that I was thinking of hanging it up.

Within minutes, three other bloggers essentially said "Noooo! Don't go!" Or maybe they said "Stay. Have some champagne."

Either way, it made me sit up. I think I go in blogging cycles, and this is a low point. Comments are down, and I haven't bothered to check my stats, because hello, DEPRESSING. I feel incapable of turning every day events into amusing stories, as I used to do. There's stuff happening that I don't feel much like talking about. Like, hey! I'm getting married again, and certain people who read this blog have no need to know anything about that!

And then there are the things I feel strongly about; my last two posts have been very short, but they deal with a matter that is close to my heart: downtown Lexington. The central block of our downtown is slated for demolition so that a hotel complex can be built. The design does look quite like male genitals, but if you look at it the right way, it could also be perceived as a middle finger, as if the developers were waving theirs at the citizens of Lexington. Edit: My friend Joe, aka Media Czech, just posted this blog entry about yesterday's council meeting about the fate of the block. While some of his references are clearly local (the "Heavy Hitter" is a cheesy ambulance-chaser of a lawyer; Don Jacobs is a car dealer), you can get a sense of how the meeting went down. Yes, Joe's a blogger, which means he injects a lot of his personal views into what he writes. But in this case, I agree with him. Lexington is losing a bit of its soul.

On the other hand, right now there's just banal stuff going on. Washing the cat hair off the kids' bedding in anticipation of their arrival for their month here. Taking delivery of a new bed for my son, since he and his sister jumped a little too hard on the old one at Christmastime. Planning a few outings with the kids, and a few 'innings' too. Arranging to meet a fellow blogger or two in Paris while I am there next week.

And then there's The Thing Hanging Over My Head: the review of Petite Anglaise that I must write. I got a free book. I read it. I liked it. Now I have to translate that into a coherent review. I've got part of it written in my head, but I must sit down and hammer it out. And revise. And revise again.

So there you go. I don't really feel like blogging. I've got a ton of photos to process and post to Flickr, and I don't feel like doing that, either. Meh.

Dammit

Cock and Balls.

Farewell to The Dame

Farewell to The Dame, originally uploaded by Alison.

Tonight The Swells and Hot Club of Cowtown performed at The Dame*, which will close its doors in an hour or two (it's 1 am as I write this).

Lexington has lost something special. I'm too tired to write about it now. More photos and commentary to come.

*The Dame's MySpace page actually has more info; you can see a list of musicians who have performed there and get an idea of what a HOLE the closing of The Dame is going to leave.

The Backyard

We have a husband-and-wife rabbit couple who live in a warren somewhere in the bushes that edge the far end of our backyard. The two bunnies spend time in our yard in broad daylight, munching on the clover and dandelions. They're not afraid of us anymore.

Tonight as we ate our dinner of ribs and salad o'CSA goodness, the rabbits ate theirs. Clover, clover, dandelion, clover. Monsieur was feeling randy, and hopped close behind Madame, who lay her ears flat and tried to make her way back to the safety of the bushes. She didn't seem in the mood.

I'm pleased that we have these creatures sharing the land. We may live in the middle of the city, but we still have Nature.

Upcoming

Like Polly, I received an e-mail from a kind soul (hi, Kelsey!) at Spiegel & Grau. Like Polly, I got excited. (Then I remembered that my blog has been really boring since I moved back to the States, and my little bubble popped.)

Anyway, my review copy of Catherine Sanderson's Petite Anglaise book arrived this morning. I haven't started reading yet, as it's been A Day. Yes, capitals A and D, and I don't mean the ointment, although I could probably use some where it counts.

Having read Petite Anglaise for years, I'm looking forward to the result of a blogger getting dooced, discovered more widely than she already had been, and landing a book contract. It's like the best kind of karma.

23 Years Of Friendship

This weekend Allan and I attended the wedding of my best friend from high school. Back then we didn't call each other "BFF," but rather Befri St. End, after the way the words were split on the heart-shaped necklaces that you can still buy today.

We haven't been in constant touch over the years, but we have shared joys and sorrows with each other. It was a joy to see D. wed to her soul mate. I wish them many years of happiness with each other and ALL THOSE BOYS they have. (They each brought two sons to the marriage.)

For your amusement, there are a couple of photos after the jump. 

Dear Blogosphere,

I'm taking the day off. See you tomorrow.

The Storms, They Are A-Comin'

Literally, there is a line of storms racing across the US and Canada. I can see the lightning and hear the thunder and look at the weather radar on the Internerd.

Figuratively, there are storms in my brain. I'm not saying this is a bad thing (FLASH! CRASH! BOOM! RUMBLE! outside), but it's happening.

Morphine on the radio, it's all buena buena, good good good.

Email Stuff

Seth Godin gives us an e-mail checklist.

h/t Slice of Pink.