The Minutiae of Carniverous Plants & Road Trips

“I think writers need windows on a view to remind them that a whole world is out there, not the minutiae with which they might be dealing on a close scale.” – Anne McCaffrey

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It just occurred to me that it has been a little while since I’ve posted anything here.

Of course, that isn’t because I’ve run out of things to say – I’ve actually got a list of topics sitting next to me that I’ll be bitching about in the future, but the thing is… I just don’t feel like it right now.

I don’t read many other blogs.  The reason being, I can’t stand to read about the minutiae of other people’s lives.  I admit, I just don’t fucking care.  Blogs written by new mothers about each time their brand new larvae shits, blogs supposedly written by someone’s fucking cat or anything written by someone who has absolutely nothing to say, but just needs attention from strangers on the internet… yeah, I can’t handle this.

It can be difficult to find the interesting, funny, well-written & informative stuff.

That being said, let me just bore the fuck out of you for a few minutes with the minutiae of my life.

Ok… well, maybe I can omit some of the painfully banal details & just summarize what’s been happening.  Don’t worry – it’ll be a while before I’ll do this again.

— We planted a garden.  We did this last year, but it was small & under control.  This year, we decided to jump in head first.  We got a bit overzealous with the seeds, dumping entire packages into the soil.  Within days, we had plants bursting out of control, spewing forth soil & making demands.  Then the magpies came… big ones, with bad attitudes looking for a fight.  Oh, I suppose that I should mention that we don’t have a yard… we have a balcony, since we live in an apartment.

So, trying to keep the carnivorous plants at bay while engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a tiding of maniacal magpies has been occupying much of our time lately.

— Vacations in France don’t work the same way that they do back in the states.  The most profound difference being that they are much longer; it’s common to have around 8 weeks of vacation as opposed to only two.  Olivier’s vacation just started & he has a month off from his job.  He has expressed some worry, seeing as how he will be around me for an entire month, which is something that has a very low survival rate.  I suspect that this worry is related to him constantly feeding me drinks & candy.

— Of course, we’re actually going somewhere for vacation.  We’ll be heading out of here in a few days to start our road trip.  For Olivier, this involves something that he refers to as ” a plan”.  He’s been typing things into something called a “spreadsheet”.  Apparently, this is very essential to the “plan”.

All I know, is that we’ll be going to Lille to see some friends & we’ll be going to Bruges.  Um… that’s in Belgium.  While we’re there, I plan on drinking plenty of delicious Belgian beer & doing a crappy impression of a surly Colin Farrell.

There are also some plans to visit other places: Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Austria & Holland.  In some places, we’ll be staying in various bed & breakfasts… in others, we’ll be camping.

I’m sure that somewhere around Holland, the trip will take a turn toward debauchery.

— After 2 weeks of that, we’ll stop by home to pick up the cat before we had down to La Grande Motte to do absolutely fucking nothing for a few days.  Well, I’m sure that we’ll have plenty of wine, sand & sun.  Possibly even another bouillabaisse binge.

— Ok… so, um… I started using Twitter.  To be more accurate, I’ve started using with almost no regularity the Twitter account that I started about a year ago.  I have learned that Twitter is basically fucking pointless.

— Olivier & I went back to Créteil this past week to deal with the annual ritual of renewing my carte de séjour.  We had been pretty excited about it, being under the impression that this next one would be good for 10 years, rather than only one.  Well, it turns out that instead of 10 years, we got this other thing that most people refer to as “the shaft”.  I’ll get it eventually.

— I know I’ve been neglecting my blog a bit.  Whatever.  I’m sure that the 4 (ok, maybe 5… I can’t be fucked to keep count) people who read this have been getting along just fine.  There are several reasons for this – a few of them I’ve just mentioned.  Another is simply because while I have been spending a great deal of time & energy on writing lately, I haven’t been blogging.  Sorry… I know many people consider those two things to be the same, but I don’t.  Deal.

— Last bit of mundane merde: maybe you’ve already noticed that the tag line for this site has been changed.  Also, the “about” page has been destroyed & a new page has been created.  If you haven’t figured out what all of these varying topics & posts have to do with one another, then The Rasmenian Nation should clear it up. Or maybe it won’t.

Right then… the next time that I post something, I’ll think about making an effort to be interesting.

Eh… or maybe I wont.

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[tags]Audrey II, Little Shop of Horrors, magpies, carniverous, plants, gardening, home, humor, ridiculous, Fear & Loathing, vacation, travel, road trip, Holland, France, Lille, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, La Grande Motte, Créteil, carte de séjour, Colin Farrel, In Bruges, minutiae, bogs, Twitter, writing[/tags]

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