I'm waiting for someone who actually speaks French to tell me if it's 'Viva le France', or 'Vive le France', or something else. I don't speak French at all, so you'll have to forgive me.
Today, on the way home, I braved the
Arc de Triomphe as two others suggested. Not intentionally mind you, the cabbie's GPS said it was the quickest way. It wasn't nearly as bad as in some other parts of the city, and I did get some relatively nice photos considering the cobblestone street. It's a pretty big roundabout, but it was only 5pm, and I'm told the traffic doesn't get nasty until after 5:30pm. Honestly, I'd hate to be there after 5:30pm, even with my increasing tolerance for the traffic.
Sickeningly enough, on the way to the office this morning, I was actually somewhat comfortable with the way people were driving. It almost seemed normal. Sitting still while motorcycles whip by at 60kmph between you and the car next to you can be a bit disconcerting sometimes, but I started getting used to it.
My GPS device started working today as well. I went out into a relatively open area and it was able to sync up with four satellites and switched my maps over to Paris. It doesn't work in the car because of the glass, but it's nice to see where I am in relation to the loop around Paris, and in relation to my hotel room.
I went to dinner on my own after work, and thankfully the menu was in both French and English. But their rib eye steak was more like a tv dinner sirloin than anything else and was more expensive than a much better cut I would have gotten back in the 'states. I had some sort of creampuff stuffed with ice cream for desert that was pretty good. I was sorely tempted to see if banana splits here are the same as they are in the US, but I decided to try something new.
Oh, and I was shown the "French Finger" today.
Isn't that nice? I bet the artist who made this will tell his buddies for decades to come how he gave Paris 'the finger'. It might be a thumb, but how can you be completely sure?
I've been trying to keep up on my email, but it's been hard. I've been getting a lot more resumes for the open position at Moon River Software, and I'm the benchmark editor for the
Center for Internet Security's SQL Server 2005 guideline. There's a lot of activity on that email list right now and I'm hoping to publish it before the end of December, although I think that's probably a bit optimistic.
Since I'm not around this week or next week, that makes interviewing somewhat difficult, but I can at least do phone screens on the weekends until I get back in my office during the week. The benchmark emails are hard to keep up with just because there are so many of them. I could set it to digest mode, but I've never much cared for that.
I'll try and get some decent photos tomorrow. Maybe I'll try to brave the Metro.