The "Recover Username" feature is a beautiful thing.

First comment: my new year's resolution was a spectacular failure, but given that I'd forgotten about it probably somewhere around mid-January and haven't thought about it for more than 2 minutes cumulative since then, there hasn't been much emotional fallout.

Greetings from Paris, which I haven't taken much advantage of since I got here on May 28th. I think it's because I spent 5 weeks here last summer and the ennui has set in. That, and I lost my monthlong metro card on a trip to Amsterdam/Brussels a few weeks ago, but since I live in the 6th arrondissement and it's easy to walk to the pretty, stereotypically "Paris" things, it's mostly the ennui. Also, the fact that I'm doing actual work for my fellowship! 8 senators and 3 National Assembly deputies have agreed to speak with me about their experience of gender in campaigning and in the French government. Those poor, poor fools. I've been trying to get my French up to snuff by taking the following measures:

- setting the default language to French on my webmail, Mozilla, and Windows (as much as it allows me without buying new language packs, at any rate)
- changing my home page from nytimes.com to lemonde.fr
- listening to Radio France, when I remember to
- when I'm walking around town, making a concerted effort to listen to the French mélodies and Jacques Brel songs on my iPod, rather than the American Idol mp3s that I spent an entire day downloading
- considering a subscription to Glowria, the French equivalent of Netflix (the first month only costs 1 euro!)

Additional suggestions are welcome. Back to reading some Kundera in the original...


PS, if any of you (the legions that read this) want postcards from sundry European places, drop me a line with a summer address.