Sheila and I got back on the forever-long metro ride to go home after that. We rested and made dinner plans with Rouge and Sharon for tonight. I think both of us were under the impression that Madame was going to leave early this morning and be back in the afternoon, but that wasn't the case. As time went on, we realized that she'd left for a short weekend. Since Saturday is our usual day to fend for ourselves for dinner anyway, it made sense. We realized that this was the third weekend in a row she'd left us alone in the house. Good to know that she trusts us, at least. Sharon was craving a burger, and Rouge is a little strapped for cash (most of us are by this point), so we ultimately decided on MacDo, specifically the one at Saint Lazare which is over by where Rouge lives. I've got quite the craving for Pancake Square (the crêperie by our house), but I'll save it for now. I attempted to nap for a little while, then Sheila and I went off to Saint Lazare to meet up with Rouge and Sharon for our MacDo dinner.
I've managed to figure out that ordering my burger sans pain (without bread) means two things: I have to order it in person (the first time I did it, I didn't get any argument, but I really confused the cashier the second time I did it), and it takes about 10 minutes to get the order as opposed to about two for a "normal" order. To save time and sanity, I ordered my burger at one of the bornes (the computers that allow you to pay with your card), and I ordered it like a normal person would since Rouge agreed to eat my bun for me. Once I got the burger and we sat down, I removed the bun (and most of the cheese, much to my dismay) and handed it to Rouge. Rouge's reaction of "this is totally normal" as she ate what looked like MacDo's version of a grilled cheese sandwich as I ate a hamburger patty covered in ketchup, mustard, and a pickle was all too fitting. Despite Sharon's craving for a burger... she ordered chicken nuggets. We ended up staying at MacDo for about two hours chatting and catching up, talking about stuff that was going to be going on back at our school when we'd return, and if people would assume we were transfer students since some wouldn't have seen us before...
Sheila and I headed home around 10. I got a chance to Skype my boyfriend while I was checking my email, and one of the emails I'd received cracked me up, so he asked me about it... and it required a bit of a lengthy explanation. The email in question was one from eHarmony, and my profile had apparently "melted someone's icecaps." That was why I was laughing. I now had to explain to my boyfriend why I had a profile at all. A year ago, I took the introductory Psychology course at my college, and one of the professors in the department gave a guest lecture all about personality. She talked about the Big 5 personality traits (openness, agreeableness, extraversion, emotional stability, and conscientiousness) and mentioned that eHarmony has a great personality assessment that you could take for free to get all five traits... but you should sign up with an email you don't use often since they'll continually keep sending you emails like the one I'd just received. My boyfriend's immediate response was to make his own account to take the test himself! We compared our personality assessments... and then both of us got relatively addicted to eHarmony's "Q&A" portion that's put on each user's profile. They'll ask you questions like "Can you light a fire without a match?" and they'll give you anywhere from two to four options to select as your answer. In that case, it was "Yes, No, Yes: It's called a blowtorch." People looking at your profile can view the questions you've answered, and answer them themselves to see if they think the same way you do. We were discussing our answers to some of the funnier questions. I find it rather hilarious that my boyfriend and I are quite stable in our relationship... in yet both of us have eHarmony profiles now... I went to bed around 1 AM.
I got up at 10:30 and Facetimed my mom. Sheila had said last night that she wanted to wake up no later than 11 in case Madame came home early in the morning. Noah was having a bit of a moment while I was talking to my mom... he has trouble understanding that I'm in the computer, and not in my room, so he was sitting by my bedroom door and barking at it. My mom kept scolding him, but he wouldn't stop barking, so I yelled at him (at the computer, really)... and Sheila got her wish. My scolding Noah from France woke her up around 11... It worked, though. He stopped barking for a few minutes... Because it was raining and both of us were tired (probably because of the weather), Sheila and I weren't sure if we wanted to go out at all. We consulted out "Paris To-Do List" and checked off what we'd done recently. We definitely still have a few things to do, and we added a few more to it. I double checked some things in one of the guide books, and we realized we could do
Centre Pompidou or
Musée de la Magie (museum of magic) on a Wednesday after our classes, so we'll save those for a middle of the week treat. We need to do
Musée des Arts et Metiers (literally the oldest Arts and Crafts museum in Europe, but it's all about science, technology, and how things work) sometime soon. We even realized that we'd never been to the top of
Tour Eiffel yet... Sheila wants to be out for the entire night when we're set to leave France so she can sleep on the plane, so we might do
Tour Eiffel then, but I'm not so sure. I have enough trouble sleeping on planes as it is, I doubt being physically exhausted will help at all.
We opted to stay in and have a homework day instead. Sheila was much more productive than I was. For the first part of the day, I managed to read all of
Acte II of
Le Malade imaginaire, and Sheila got about a page and a half (tiny font, not your mom's 12 point) of one of her papers done... and then I got incredibly distracted between the House M.D. game on Facebook, to Facebook itself... to those blasted Q&A questions on eHarmony... I'm a mess. A couple of our friends are starting to "threaten" that we won't be seeing anymore of them until we go back to America since they have lots of papers to do. My solution for things like that is always to have "homework parties" where we all get together and study at the same time, then we take breaks after an hour or two to reward ourselves for the work we've done (and to de-stress a little), and we get back to work.
After Sheila went back into her room, and Madame came home around 4:30, I managed to finish reading
Le Malade imaginaire. I've figured out that I can "cut" a great number of scenes by combining them (there are a ton that are all of maybe five lines long), and I've managed to cut two roles in entirety. I can double-cast two roles (have one actor play two parts), and have a final cast of nine: three women, six men. I think I can fudge Monsieur Diafoirus, Monsieur Purgon, and Monsieur Bonnefoy and have all three of them be women if I don't have a lot of men on hand. I should probably take that into account when I do my costume project and have a costumes for a male and female version of each of those characters... After a bit more procrastinating, I managed to whip out my costume sketches, and finish tracing the fashion forms for all of the characters, gender-bending for the three characters mentioned above included.
Madame made those
galettes du sarrasin with ham, egg, and cheese for dinner. I think this is fourth or fifth time we've had it... and I'm starting to get a little tired of it. It's good, don't get me wrong, but this is one of those dishes that you can have once or twice a year and not crave. We told her that we went to
Père Lachaise yesterday, and that we stayed in today to do homework. Her response: You didn't leave the house at all? Not even to just walk around and get some fresh air? ...I swear, we cannot win with this woman. It rained today! We didn't want to leave the house! Good lord! The end of the day was spent with Sheila in my room, both of us on our computers. My boyfriend Skyped us... and he was eating Thanksgiving brunch. Sheila and I about DIED. He wasn't shy about it either, he quite happily showed us every single bite of pumpkin pie before he shoved it into his... pumpkin pie hole... I wanted to cry. He made up for it
a little by showing us his new nephew.
I've got a lot of work ahead of me with my project, and Sheila managed to finish one of her essays today. That means she has two of her four essays done. Half of her work is done. I have to admit, I'm incredibly jealous. I know I need to buckle down and get my stuff done, and I'm working on it... but there are so many distractions around... and I don't exactly know where to start with my set designs... I think once I get the dimensional conversions done, I won't be so afraid to really hit the ground running.
Le Roi, juste et prudent, ne veut que ce qu'il peut. Corneille:
Nicomède
