Escar-go-go-go

France is sort of in limbo right now, with a caretaker government while trying to form a coalition and choose a prime minister.  But that's not the reason the university still hasn't sent me a schedule for the semester that starts in a few days. Maybe it's showmanship -- a dramatic unveiling of the awaited for hour of the most aMAZing, inCOMParable, FANTASTICAL lecture on possessive pronouns!

In the meantime, I'm just getting resettled in the house, meeting more of Jean-François's very nice friends, and wondering where the trillions of snails will go in winter.  They are legion.  They love to scoodge their way onto the van, and spawn on fence posts and grapevines.  The vast majority are content to hang out and digest by osmosis(?) the fennel flowers, but a few daring fellows cross the bike path at great peril.  They scoff at the speeding assassins pursuing them, goo-ing nonchalantly as looming beasts approach.  The snails traverse the gauntlet carefree, in their own sweet time.  Not a bad way to be.

Beautiful infestation

This year's vintage has notes of stone fruit and gastropod 

Bumper sticker: "My other car is a jalopy"

Good hair day

Bad hair day

Desperately trying to blend in and not be eaten like popcorn by a heron

Slow-Motion Whiplash

Junior year of college I studied one semester in Italy.  This was 20 years ago, in the early days of the internet, and so once I gathered all the necessary documents, I woke up early one morning to visit the embassy.  December, 6am, huddled in an extra coat for hours on a Midtown sidewalk waiting for office hours with an ever-lengthening line of fellow beseechers.  Luckily I had everything required, and didn't suffer an invented whim of the interviewer.  I surrendered my passport for a few weeks, then repeated the pre-dawn vigil to retrieve it, now graced with an iridescent green-gold student visa.

Fast-forward to now.  I want to improve my French, to build a full life, comprehend the culture, and communicate with élan.  I am formally and legally saying, "Hey France!  I like you a lot, let's hang out!"  For several months the response was, "Hmm, yeah.  Or maybe just fuck off?"

Bureaucracy in France is pretty notorious.  I get it, it's hard being so cool and sexy and smart, with everybody fawning over you all the time -- especially scads of overeager international students.  But did they have to resort to such tactics as:

- hiding the log-in page on the application website 

- requiring a resume and letter of intention written in French, when you are applying to learn French 

- requiring the signature of the mayor of the town where I'll live

- employing a smarmy for-profit third party to process the paperwork, with a useless and kafkaesque helpline with operators that neither confirm nor deny even the most basic information, so that eventually you break down and eat the cost of multiple visits to Chicago, and finally after twisting in the wind to breaking point you receive your visa the day before you are supposed to fly to France...

'Tis such stuff as green card marriages are made on.  But in the end, I made it.  I get to stay a whole year, during which I hope to continue trundling about with and consuming the contents of my cheese-filled rucksack on a more local level, and with an expert guide and partner.

Lots of nice fun things also happened, like beach picnic and fire

As we returned a final time to the Windy City, I yelled into the night, "Fuck you, Chicago!"

Also lots of progress framing Mike's house!

And a beautiful visit to the dunes