Seen on a local movie theater sign (around 2pm, so it must have been up there for a while) where "The Bourne Identity" is playing:

BONER IDENTITY

Tee-hee....

Well, that was an exciting evening.

The Spouse and I were enjoying a quiet Cocktail Hour at home, with martinis and Absolut-Citron-and-Toschi-liqueur-spiked lemonade, "savoring", as Philip Collins puts it, "the small victories of the day." We were also savoring a set of cheeses¹ left from last weekend's visit to the Cheese Store as a lazy and ovenless alternative to cooking dinner.

The cocktails left us drowsy, and with the best thing we could find on TV being a dull baseball game, we both drifted off for a while. When the news came on, we woke up in a hurry on hearing "wildfire burning north of [Our Town]" --- with an evacuation zone ending some six blocks north and a little west of the house. Nothing was visible from the lawn so we piled into the car and headed out for a look. First off, the main road (normally dead quiet that time of night) near home was packed with cars, looking like the traffic coming out of a football game. We snaked further and further out until the Spouse spied orange light through the trees. Then we hit a ridge with a better view, and what a view it was. A whole rectangle of hillside was spotted with bright orange flame. The side boundaries were solid with fire, and the red and blue lights of the fire trucks were flashing up at the top of the hill.

It's one thing to see TV news pictures of a fire, or even to see a plume of forest fire smoke off in the distance. This was gut-level creepy in a completely different way.

We spent the next couple of hours enacting the preliminary stages of our evacuation plan. (No order had been given for us; when it's your time, the cops have an auto-dialer that calls to tell you to get out.) Cleaned out the trunk of the car; assembled the cat carrier; packed financial files, wedding pictures, autographed "Life in Hell" books and expensive booze into a box.... We felt a little paranoid when we first made up the plan, but now it didn't seem so silly after all.

As it turned out, the firefighters (just about every one in the county, as we read this morning) kept the blaze under control. We didn't suffer anything worse than having the house smell like a campfire all night, and none of the multi-million dollar trophy homes on the hillside burned down. (Whew.) But with a night of breathing smoky air plus the tipsy-sleepy-shocked-adrenalized roller coaster ride, you'll forgive me if I'm a little groggy today.

¹ Havarti, Edam and Camembert, if you must know, plus some proscuitto and smoked salmon. I still haven't been brave enough to try the goat's milk Brie. (The Spouse wants nothing to do with it.) Even inside a ziploc bag, it's funking up the fridge something wicked.

Merci de l'accès à votre weblog, Sarah! Au revoir! Bonne chance à France!

So, despite seeming to feel it was a dangerous lapse of judgement and a recipe for disaster, Sarah has turned over the reins of the Fiendish Plot stagecoach for the duration of her aventure excellente. Please, Sarah, put your worries to rest. I'll be treating these pages with all the respect and care you could hope for.

At least until you're safely an ocean away.

So if y'all need to send in links while Sarah's out, or pleas for me to shut up, or whatever it is one might send to a weblog contributor, you can mail it to MonsieurDiable@excite.com. I'm aiming for a tone somewhere between a William Shatner interpretive monologue and a crazy person mumbling on the subway. Let me know how you like it.

Until next time, I remain your loyal surrogate weblog host,
M. Diable

[tap-tap-tap] Hello? Is this on?

OK, now I have to try something:



Does it work?

(If it does, I wasn't the one who animated it -- not by a long shot. Jane sent it to me, and she got it from someone else. I just think it's way cool.)

I'm going to Paris... I'm going to Paris... I'm going to Paris...

I'm going to finish developing content for an intranet and deliver a hard copy of a 360-page manual that I had to print out on a inkjet for chrissake and follow up on my Cobra elections and visit an ad agency to deliver materials for an organization for which I am no longer even on the board and pay the water bill and put down money on the home equity loan and clean the kitchen and figure out if I can fit everything into one carry-on and fill out the paperwork to see if we can get our property taxes reduced and pay some bills and trying to find a copy of Bitch in which my sisters article is printed and maybe if I'm a very good girl sleep a little.

And then I'm going to Paris.

Desperately rushing to get freelance stuff finished before Friday. Late night -- up til midnight editing -- led to early morning -- up at 5 to continue editing -- led to long day -- at the Trib from 10 til 7. Whew. I'm tired.

That's ok. Friday I fly to France. I can sleep on the plane. I can sleep on the plane. I can sleep on the plane....

So here's my question: I have 6 days in Paris, before heading to Carcassone with my family. Amy and I get to Paris on Saturday, Laura and Jorge join us Tuesday. I want to hang out and wander Paris with Laura, Jorge and Amy when we're all there together. I'll probably be too damn tired (even with sleeping on the plane...) on Saturday to do much. I have three things outside Paris that I really, really want to see: The Normandy beaches and WWII memorial/museum in Caen; Mont St. Michel at night; and Chartres cathedral. I do not plan on renting a car, and therefore am at the mercy of the train system. It is within the realm of possibility to do all three in two days -- with the overnight at Mont Saint Michel -- but it's damn hard. Most likely, I will have to sacrifice at least one of these destinations. The question I put before you: Which should I leave til next time?

(Because I will be coming back. Oh hell yeah, I'll be coming back.)

Here are the contenders:

• Chartres -- One of the most beautiful cathedrals of all time -- or so I'm told. What do I know, I've never been there.
  
• Mont Saint-Michel -- An amazing abbey/fortress island that gets surrounded by the sea -- best seen at night, when you can wander through the abbey and the tourists aren't as rampant. Apparently.
  
• Caen museum and the Normandy beaches -- Incredibly moving and fascinating historical voyage. That's what they say.

Anyone been to all three? Feedback? Ideas? Offers by gorgeous Frenchmen to chauffeur me around? Anything?

Rob's version of my security conversation:

Were the Tribune guys in Imperial Stormtrooper uniforms?

S: (makes Obi Wan Kenobi hand-waving gesture) "I'm here to see the head
of security."
1: "You're here to see the head of security."
S: "You don't need to call anyone."
1: "I don't need to call anyone."
S: "I can go right up."
1: "Go ahead. You can go right up."
2: "Hey, she didn't sign in! What's go---"
S: "It's OK. You got the memo."
1: "It's OK. We got the memo."
2: "Oh, right. It's OK. We got that memo. You can go right up."

Hee. I wish.

I'm doing a freelance project for the Trib, and I'm reporting to the head of security. When I tried to get past the desk this morning, it went like this:

Me: Hi, I'm here to see [head of security].
Guard 1: Oh, right, We got a memo about you.
[Head of Security isn't there. I try to call someone else to check me in. Guard 1 goes to help someone else. Guard 2 takes the phone to talk to the other guy who was going to sign me in.]
Guard 2: [Slightly pissy] What floor are you on? And you want her to go where? Well, she'd have to come back downstairs and sign in again...
Guard 1: She's working for [head of security]. Remember, we got the memo?
Guard 2: [MUCH less pissy] Oh. Wait. We got the memo. She can go right up.

I am a rock star.

There's a new blog for all things Joss Whedon. My little geek heart goes pitter-pat.

If you tried to reach my post on Raising Hell, something is wrong with the section -- it sort of comes in and out. Alas. Read the rest of the 'zine, though -- it's great.

Conversation from brunch this morning:

Me: I'm sorry I almost killed you, Brian.
Brian: It wasn't you, it's just the cat. And I'm glad I could come. By the way, have I told you how good your hair looks?
[Brian gets distracted]
Christine: Bug [my cat, who made Brian's airways shut down] was being very cute last night.
Angie: Yeah, she was.
[Brian tunes back in]
Lotti: She was so cute. She was all stretched out on the bed....
Christine: Yeah, and she let me rub her belly and everything.
Brian: Um... we're not still talking about Sarah, are we?
Jordan: You missed a hell of a party after you left.

Look! My Alice in Wonderland post is in Raising Hell! I LOVE that zine!

Party last night. The usual suspects, about 10 people. There was much talking and laughing and Buffy and bad music -- Lotti gave me a particularly fiendish CD, full of songs I adamantly hate. She suggest I bury it in the backyard after one listening, but I will most likely keep it, as it's so damn funny.

Yes, I am a masochist.

There was also much Buffyage. I got the season 2 DVD set. Wheee! Life is good.

Except I almost killed Brian. Sorry, dude. I swear I cleaned -- I have no idea why all the cat hair and dander in the place migrated immediately to your nose. Next time you come over, we'll have a hazmat suit and a decon chamber set up downstairs.

Everyone ooohed and ahhed at the kitchen and bathroom. It's starting to look like a real house, with no holes in the walls or anything. And Angie actually saw the closet in the spare room and said "Oh my god, where's all your crap!" yes, the place was that clean, that I didn't even have to shove boxes of shit in the closet to get them out of the way. (Note: She didn't look in the office closet. Whoo-hoo! I win!)

Random thoughts:

• When someone shows up at a party with her own bottle of decaffeinated, alcohol-free drink stuff, it's probably a sign that someone's pregnant. I did not pick up on it. I'm an idiot.
  
  
• You can now see Angie's stomach move when the baby does back flips. This freaks me out to no end.
  
  
• Costco is a dangerous, dangerous place. Yes, you can get cheap stuff there, but only if you buy in vast quantities. Hence, my purchase several 1.75-liter bottles of liquor. They're really, really big. I don't actually drink much at all. It's all very bizarre.
  
  
• You can count on me to have too much food. It's a Jersild family thing -- god forbid anyone should be hungry.
  
  
• The problem with working from home is that you can't offload said food on your co-workers. I'll be foisting much of it on Wendy, because otherwise it just sits here and I have to eat it.

Actually, there's a blogger potluck tonight, so I should be able to get rid of much of it.

Oh, hey, Amy and Laura -- thanks for the Mirror Mirror gift certificate. People kept complimenting the hair.