Paris Pride (slightly delayed)

So I was just looking through my backlog of photos and realized that there are some good ones from a while back that I never got around to posting during my whole moving/no internet/crazy phase, and that I should probably go ahead and post them anyway.  This batch are from Pride Day, which was waaaaay back in June, and yes, I know it's now September, but it's not like you tune into this blog for current events, now is it?  At least I hope not, or you must be horribly disappointed every time...

So on this occasion, I was at Tiny Dancer's place, which has an enviable view onto the Place de la Bastille, and therefore it was the perfect place to capture some of the colourful characters and ambiance.  Enjoy...

Slightly crowded

Honestly, I kind of want purple wings now myself.

Whole truck full of abs. What?  I can look...

Fierce!

Ummm...okaaaay.

Kind of Alice in Wonderland, but I like it

It's a bee thing, I guess

My absolute favourite - check out those boots!

I have no idea.

Blackberry in one hand, beer and whip in the other.  Respect.

And then, it was over...

Miss K returns

Gentle readers (assuming I still have any after such a long absence), I'm back.  Of course, it's been so long now that I don't even know where to begin, but somewhere back in the mists of time, I believe the last thing I actually posted about was my then-impending move, so let's start there...

Moving in Paris is a strange experience, as I've mentioned before ( Demenagement) - in this particular case it was even stranger.  I was supposed to move into my flat on 1st July, but the only person I knew with an available vehicle wasn't actually available that day (a Friday) or that weekend, and I had to have my stuff out of the old place by then.  What to do?  Well, I was acquainted with the guy who was leaving the flat I was moving into and asked him if I could move my things in a week early.  It wasn't a lot, but on the other hand, it's not a huge apartment and he also needed to pack up his own stuff, so it was really rather excellent of him to agree to this.  So, on the 25th of June, Tiny Dancer's boyfriend showed up with his mini-van at  9am, we dragged my stuff down five flights of stairs, went to the new place, dragged my stuff up one (just one! yayyy!!!) flight, stacked it up in a corner and left.  The whole thing was done in less than an hour, which I think is a record for just about anyone moving house...

Anyhow, so my things moved to the new apartment a week before I did.  I stayed in the old place through the night of the 29th, and stayed at Tiny Dancer's place  on the 30th.  So, on 1st July, my actual moving date, all I had was a little carry-on and my laptop bag.  So I moseyed on up to Montmartre, signed my lease and that was it, I was all moved into my very first official-lease-holding, living-on-my-own Paris apartment.  More on that next time...

Good news, bad news

All right, my pretties, as suggested by the title, I have good news and bad news.  The good news is that I have sooooooooo much to write about:  my very strange moving/unpacking experience, my new apartment, my new neighbours and their shenanigans, my new neighbourhood (where there is an extremely high level of crazy, which I have been photographing, never fear), the "gay" Austrian, the return of Southern Belle, the heartbreaking loss of Furry Man-Whore and my subsequent addiction to wine and sleeping pills just to get me through the night (okay, the wine is nothing new, but the sleeping pills are), the total awesomeness of Tiny Dancer, aaaaand submarines - no, not the sandwiches, but the big metal things that glide around under the surface of the ocean.  It's a long story. 

In fact, it's a whole bunch of long stories, but here's the bad news:  you're going to have to wait just a little longer for them because a) I have my final work deadline for my second job this week, plus b) I am running around like a maniac trying to get a bunch of essentials for my apartment this week while the sales are still on, plus c) most importantly, I STILL do not have the goddamn internet hooked up at home and my neighbours all lock their wifi networks (inconsiderate bastards).  In fact, I am so constrained in terms of time and internet access at the moment that I am writing this very post from work, so I am going to have to leave off now because when I'm here, they really quite like it when I, y'know, work.  But I just wanted to let you know I haven't forgotten about you, gentle readers, and I will be back with you on a regular basis again soon, just give me a few more days...

Welllllll...

Okay, I am a big liar - no photo for you today. But the reason why you don't get a photo is because I am having a horribly rough day and right now, I'm at Tiny Dancer's place being looked after. First she took me out for a very lovely dinner, and now we are at her place, drinking champagne and watching trashy tv. More details later, but this is it for now - sorry!!

A very good day (I think)

Gentle readers, I advise you to look up into the sky to see if there's a flaming ball of DOOM headed for the Earth.  No, really.  Because I apparently landed both an apartment AND a lucrative second job today.  And the reason why I say "apparently" is because these things have both actually happened, but I have been so unlucky in the areas of housing and finance for the past year that I am not going to believe either one of them are true until I have a) my new keys and b) my first paycheque both clutched tightly in my grubby little paws.

So the story, in brief, is this:

Home:  a colleague at work told me a friend's apartment in Montmartre would be available for rent in July and that she would put in a good word for me.  It all seemed fine until it fell apart two days ago (cue panic attacks about finding another place to live in just two weeks - aieeee!), but I met with the landlady today and basically begged her to let me rent it until she agreed.  Yes, this is how competitive the market is in Paris - if you want a home and you don't earn eight gajillion euros per month, be prepared to grovel.  And possibly barter one of your kidneys.  My negotiations didn't go quite that far, but I was ready to offer it up.  Just saying.

Work:  I love my job and they pay me well for it, but I just don't have enough hours to really get by.  So I have been looking for something else that has flexible hours and is in English (someone suggested I'd be a great dominatrix and if this doesn't work out, I might just have to think about that...), so the always-awesome Tiny Dancer mentioned me to a firm she's doing some voice work for (as she is a radio journalist and her dulcet tones are in high demand) and I also met with them today and they're giving me a trial run.  So I will be spending the whole weekend recording technical specs to be narrated onto a PowerPoint presentation, but in my current state of poverty, that actually realllllllly sounds like a good time.

So there you go - an extraordinarily lucky day for Miss K.  So lucky that I might just have to buy a lottery ticket as well.  Before I get hit by that meteor, of course...

Things you might see in a shop #8

Well, it's actually something you might see in a butcher shop, so any of y'all who are vegetarians, stop reading this post now...

Okay, are they gone?  Righty-o, the rest of us can continue on.  It's not that this is particularly gross, but y'know.  Anyway, Tiny Dancer and I had stopped at the boucherie one day to pick up meat for a dish she was making, and we asked the butcher about a particular piece of poultry.  His answer: "Zis?  Zis is Daffy."  Hee!  Ahh, nothing like a little butcher humour.  And come on, is he not the jolliest looking guy you've ever seen? 

Let's try that again

Sorry about yesterday - as I said, I'm really going to try to finally achieve a perfect record of posting every day this month, but as I ended up going out with Tiny Dancer and English Rose for a drink yesterday afternoon, it kind of turned into an all-day-and-all-evening sort of thing and I had to blog from the bar on my iPhone just to make the deadline.  (And yes, I felt like a pretentious idiot for doing it - the things I do for you, gentle readers...)

So, as I said, I was at Rosa Bonheur in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont last night - it's  a famous bar in Paris, but you may not have heard of it as it doesn't seem to be in the guidebooks.  It's an interesting combination of outside (picnic tables, everyone chilled out and relaxing) and inside (full-on disco nightclub), not to mention that the park is high up, so you get a spectacular view of the sun setting over the rooftops of Paris.  Highly recommended for a summer evening...