Friday we arrived in Paris after a very long journey. We met the owner of our vacation apartment and got the keys and the lay of the land from her. We had dinner at Le Sketch, a place we found next to a fountain called “Le Fontaine de Mars” on the corner of Rue Saint-Dominique and Rue de l’Exposition. Ash had the magret de canard au poivre (duck in pepper sauce). “C’est magnifique!” David had the veal. For dessert we shared an excellent tarte tatin. It was good because it was “just a little tart.” Then we walked to the base of the Eiffel Tower and looked at souvenirs.

Saturday we had pain au chocolat and café crème (which was trés bien) at Le Den on the corner of Rue de Grenelle and Rue Cler. Ash was able to get our train tickets for the week in French, and we went to Parc Disneyland for Halloween. It was crowded. We liked the architecture, the dragon lair, and the castle, but the only ride we went on was Phantom Manor. “Trés frighteningue!” (I don’t know how to say “scary” in French.) We saw Ash’s friends Erinn, Christina, Carlos, and Casey in the “Once Upon a Dream” parade. We also saw the “Fantillusion” parade, which David called “the electrical parade part deux.” We bought some souvenirs for the nieces before we left.

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I haven’t been writing much, but I’ve been taking a lot of pictures. Visit flickr to see them.

There’s always laundry to do after a big trip.

I think something should be done about that, because nobody likes doing laundry, and it’s sad that you have to come home to extra work just because the clothing you took on the trip needs to be cleaned. Since I just woke up, I only have two ideas for dealing with this:

1. The hotel should offer a free laundry service the day you leave or the day before. That way, everything except the outfit you’re wearing on the plane will already be clean, so you can put off laundry for a while longer instead of having to do it right when you get home.

2. Disposable travel clothes! Especially for visiting warm places like the Caribbean, Hawaii, or Mexico, disposable clothing would have many advantages. It would be thin, lightweight, and easy to pack, and you wouldn’t have to wash it when you came home. You’d just toss it and buy a new set. As an optional added bonus for romantic getaways, it could also be edible.

I think it should be apparent at this point why I’m not actually employed to solve these kinds of problems.

The break room here at work is about eighty degrees. No one knows why. The entire building is air-conditioned, and the rest of the building is around room temperature (like it should be), but for some reason the break room is consistently much hotter, even when no one is in it. It makes me wonder if our real business is refining plutonium in the break room.