So! I have been pretty deadbeat around here, all not blogging until given a meme and hardly even knitting. Well, darling readers, I have missed you greatly and so, for my little comeback, I present you with Hot Guys in France. Seriously, I don't know what they feed them in Paris (CHEESE *ba dum kish!*), but people in Paris are really, really, ridiculously good looking. They dress well, too. I am possibly blogging this in a pizza-stained wife-beater and some worn out pajama pants, so French coiffure seriously intimidates impresses me.

Please excuse the blurriness of some of these photos, my friend and I were drinking wine. And maybe trying to be sneaky about it. Also, I think you should all know that we saw many, many more specimens of the hot than this while we were sitting for about 1.5 hours in front of a brasserie, unfortunately, they are really fast  in France and I couldn't always get my camera pointed at them in time.

Pocket Hot. I will keep him in my purse and take him out to let him say nice things to me.

I'd polish this knob any day.

This guy was awesome, he posed for us for a good 10 minutes. Except he didn't even know he was modeling! I really dig his hot pink blazer. You will probably never see this in DC.

"So yeah, my facial hair is effortlessly sexy." "Mmhmm. Does my profile look appropriately dashing?"

French Taye Diggs. I call him Taye Deeeeegs.

It's okay, baby, let me soothe your worries with my vagina.

This was not taken in front of the bar. It was taken at Mont Saint Michel after lengthy staring, and being all, "I'm taking pictures of the wall, of COURSE I'm not taking pictures of you! But please continue to pose for me."

So yeah, the plan now is to retire wealthy, move to France, and be a dirty, filthy old woman.

The lovely James has tagged me with the "7 Things Meme." For him, I shall dig deep and provide timeless, pithy prose of deathless wisdom and healing self-reflection. Actually, I haven't had enough coffee, so you get Kim answers and a threat at the end. Enjoy!

"The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer."

1) What was I doing 10 years ago?

I was 18, working as a receptionist for a RE/MAX. It remains one of the most miserable jobs I have ever had. Egos, egos, everywhere egos! The worst was this huge woman with extreme maturity issues (but plenty of that good ol' egomania!), and a tiny little pocket man with a worse Napoleon complex than, uh, Napoleon. It would be so cool if I could travel back in time, put on a mask, and slap them with a glove made of razors. Then travel back to the future and get away with it scot-free! I was also dating a man named Bucky (shut up), living with foul roommates and playing lots of hackey sac, if you know what I mean. 1998 was not so much the year of personal growth and development.

2) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today?
a. Work
b. Go back to my house-sitting gig and let the dog out, feed the cats, etc.
c. Worry about moving
d. Watch the Top Chef Reunion
e. Finish packing and tidying up before the people I'm house-sitting for get home.

3) Snacks I enjoy:
- Little Debbie Nutty Bars
- Pizza Rolls
- Taco Bell
- Self-loathing, after eating all the above (see: Tuesday)

4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
I would lay on top of my piles of money, wearing only diamond shoes, with a panda as a pillow. Or maybe I'd swim in my tower of gold coins, like Scrooge McDuck. Then I would hire an inventor to create a time machine so I can travel back to 1998, for known reasons. With whatever is left over, I would travel all over the world (and at different times, too, what with my time machine!) and give money to the needy.

5) Places I have lived:
- Fort Sil, Oklahoma
- Osan Airbase, South Korea
- Kadena Airbase, Okinawa
- Luverne, Minnesota
- Minneapolis, Minnesota
- Arlington, Virginia

6) Jobs I have had:
- Gas station attendant
- Factory drone at that Static Electricity OW FUCK IT HURTS Factory
- Receptionist at real estate hell hole
- Assistant to a loan officer
- Administrative Assistant at a financial institution
- Office Manager at same financial institution

7) Friends I want to know more about:

Oh geez, I never know who to tag for these, but I definitely enjoy reading memes so...please do this meme. As a favor. To me. *shakes razor glove ominously*

I am really, really tardy with these. I blame being busy at work to the point of being mentally exhausted when I get home. Also, I am lazy.

So I discovered that I can make my own Photoshop actions and preparing these photos just went from an hour and a half to 10 seconds. Woo! Technology! Note that I still forgot to put a border around most of these. Um...boo humanity!

So, to start, we were staying in the Bastille area. There's a few bridges around there, and a lot of people like to do street performances on them. Cuz they're cool like that. I'm not 100% sure what exactly is going on here, but the cute muppet was being manipulated by the cute guy to look like he's playing a French rock song.

This is one of the many, MANY disturbing anthropomorphic ads plastered EVERYWHERE for Orangina. It's natural and has pulp. And a fig leaf-covered abomination.

We also went to the Louvre. I got to see the Mona Lisa and smell a lot of BO.

This is one of the flea markets in the enormous La Puces. I forget what this particular market was called, but it was like your exact fantasy flea market complete with everything from doll parts to human skulls.

Eiffel Tower. The lines for this were fucking insane. We did not ride the elevator, as we were too busy being elbowed in the chest by much more aggressive tourists.

Oh, this is from the flea market too. I told you, PERFECT.

I love this statue I found at the Louvre (it's Cupid and Psyche). I also loved being a foot taller than all the Korean tourists crammed around it.

And this is what happens when you let me loose around "culture." But in my defense, there was weiner everywhere. You couldn't avoid it. You'd turn around and bam! Cock.

Carousels seemed to be really popular (well, I guess compared to DC), I took this one in Paris, but I saw one in Honfleur as well.

This is a homeless man with a bag of cats. FYI, this picture cost me 2 Euro to take. He is holding it in his grubby fist.

This is some adorable racism. So cute, so appalling.

Okay, that's it for the choice pictures. The other 700+ pictures are either repeats, or just not that great. I will try to get around to posting some of the other stuff we did. Definitely more of those awesome Orangina ads.

I'm back, y'all! Confession time: I've actually been back, as of the 11th to be exact, however due to an awesome sinus infection + asthmatic bronchitis (which I got in the middle of the trip. Because god hates me.), I've been laying low. As I tend to do when I'm dislodging chunks of my brain through my sinus cavity while my lungs collapse upon themselves. Also, lots of...stuff...going on in life, and I've been too weighted under the pile to be too motivated to blog. But France was wonderful, Paris is the shit fo sho, and I can't wait to sort through my 700-some pictures for the real choice ones to share with my peeps.

But no pictures yet, alas, as I am at work. But I won't be here for much longer! I have been promoted and moved to another division of the same company and will actually just be moving down the hall. Next month, actually. And this time they actually gave me a real raise to go with the promotion! (I don't know how this works, is it still a promotion if a job opened up and I had to apply for it? Whatever, I is moving! on! up!)

I don't have much to show for knitting (as evidenced by more of these non-pictures I am posting), though Action is still plugging along nicely, if slowly.

Final TMI into my personal life, but it relates to the blog as posting may be kind of sparse because I'll be moving in another way soon. Monkey King and I are going our separate ways to get our own space and perspective to reevaluate our relationship. We had planned to move to New York City this year, but with my promotion and our mutual (and amicable) decision to stop and think before we make another big life change, that plan's on hold again. He's still looking for a job up there, and when he moves I may go too, or I might get there by myself. I learned a long time ago not to try to predict the future (what's that saying? Man plans, god laughs.), so we'll just have to see. That's all, we'll see when we see.

After waiting for 1) adequate sunshine for picture taking, and 2) the purchase of new white pillow cases (as the old "white" pillow cases were definitely showing their vanilla-colored age), at last, here is a picture of my new duvet cover in action:

Just so you all know, Monkey King will probably kill me for posting that picture. The lengths I go to for a laugh.

That's not all I've been sewing, however. This morning, in a fit of "green guilt," I sat down and bammed out a reusable Clorox mop pad. YOU'RE WELCOME, EARTH. Not just because it is so much cheaper than buying those $10 boxes of one-use pads all the time. That had noooooothing to do with it.

For the benefit of other cheap eco-concious sewers, I've prepared a photo tutorial of how I did this. This is my 1st one, so it's not a beauty by any means, though it is plenty functional and can be done in under an hour. And did I mention cheaper than a trip to Target (because you know that you SO do not just leave with one box of anything) and good for the Earth? I'm still trying to figure out how to wean myself off of the bottles of Clorox floor solution, but one green, thrifty step at a time.

Take out a clean mop pad and trace the outline onto the wrong side of your fabric (pre-shrunk cotton fabric, that is). These lines will be good for guiding your seam stitching too. I pre planned that, it did not happen by accident at all. (I'm lying.)

Cut around your outline, giving yourself about 1/2 inch of extra fabric. Also cut out a piece of cotton batting the same size as the "pad" part of the Clorox version.

You're going to sew the pad in the middle of one of the pieces.

Layer your pieces with the 2 "right" sides of the fabric facing each other.

Now pin your pieces together, leaving one end open. Sew all around, using the pencil marks as your guide.

When you're done with the sewing around (leaving your one end open!), snip the corners to reduce bulk.

Turn your work inside out, and poke the corners so they stick out better. Iron your work, and on that open end, turn the raw edges in and iron them flat. I forgot to take a picture of this step, but you're going to sew these together from the right side and you don't want that ugly frayed edge showing.

Here is where I quilted the piece to reduce the fabric shifting around. The stitches didn't show up so good, so I used my vast Photoshop skills to put these squiggly lines in to represent where I sewed.

Voila!

Um...Extra voila!

Why yes, I regularly mop my carpet. What, that's weird?

Did I tell you I'm going to Paris next Wednesday? I'm really excited, it's my first trip to anywhere in Europe at all, and I'll be there for 11 days. SWEET.

I look forward to being embarrassed by my lack of French language skills (but I got plenty of frenching experience, I'm sure that counts for something) and eating lots of crepes and cheese and snails and being drunk all the time and spending the entire contents of my savings account.

So, basically a Friday night at my house, but in a foreign country.