C'est Nice

i've been hit again, another round of bites. I'm slowly resigning myself to the reality that, perhaps, i have a bed bug infestation in my room. this of course makes me fairly unhappy, seeing as it will require me to do a butt load of cleaning and inspecting, and then to talk to the people who run the school to see what exactly I should do about it. The prospect is rather daunting. Then, there is the question of where I'm supposed to sleep in the meantime, or if I'm just going to continue getting bitten. Barf-o-la. My worries weren't exactly eased by an article on CNN detailing a new bedbug epidemic in the States: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/22/bedbugs.ap/index.html. Apparently, there's nowhere to run. Awesome. I hate it.

This weekend was pretty okay. I'm on a budget since I purchased my plane tickets for the february break, which is probably a good thing, since there's no real reason to be spending a lot of money anyway. I saw three movies at the cinematheque this weekend, where, at 1,50 EUR per film, I decided letting myself splurge was okay. The films where The Maltese Falcon, The Gingerbread Man, and Fargo, the three films part of the cinematheque's admittedly bizarre "Film Noir" series. Anyway, all three were pretty good; I was surprised that I hadn't heard of Gingerbread Man, the thing was star studded: Kenneth Branagh, Robert Duvall, Robert Downey, Jr., even Famke Jannsen, who plays Dr. Jane Grey in the X-Men films (and who I'd never heard of before) was in it. It was a film of a Grisham short story, which was strange, because you don't expect a Savannah accent to pop out of Branagh's mouth, yet, there it was. The story was a bit... odd... and I feel perhaps the potent symbol of the Gingerbread Man was somewhat misused, but then, I haven't really spent that much time thinking hard about the subject.

Fargo was the most fun, but I suppose it was engineered to be a "fun" movie more than the other two. It did make me wonder where Frances MacDormand has gotten to; that's the role I believe she won an Oscar for, and deservedly so. It also made me want to be in some cheesy Minessotan Diner with a cup of coffee and a stack of pancakes and some sausage, while it was snowing outside, but, alas.

Anyway, the rest of the weekend followed the normal pattern, first drinking at Johnny's on the cheap, then a pint at Thor's on the not-so-cheap. There was a brief interlude at a discotheque, "The Metal Cafe," which I can say pretty much blew large, oblong-shaped chunks. Charlotte's boyfriend, Jon, came back to Nice for a second visit, and this time she let him spend some time with us (during his previous visit, the one night we went out during his stay, Charlotte returned home early in the evening, 10 o'clock, saying "Jon's really tired" over and over again... a likely story). But it was good chatting with him; as it turns out, he lived for two years or so in his earlier childhood in Chappaqua, of all places, so we got to do a little "Oh, those crazy United States!" which is always fun.

All right, I gotta run; I have class in five minutes. Hope all is well wherever you are, and keep it real.