American Logic Gets You Nowhere

So back during our assistantship year in France, Susannah, Jenny, and I had a motto for dealing with all things French: "American logic gets you nowhere." I find myself coming back to that motto fairly routinely since I still deal with all things French (haha), and right now I'm facing a prime example of it. For my dissertation research, I need to look at book reviews of a certain set of novels, ranging in publication date from 1983-2008. The later years are fine because databases like Lexis Nexis and Factiva cover the major French newspapers I need. It's the early years that are a hassle, because I have to go back to the source (which, more often than not, is in microfilm...BOO). And as if microfilm didn't suck enough, the French have found a way to make it suck even harder: THEY DON'T INDEX. So there is only one way to know if a newspaper or magazine reviewed a book, and that's to look for it. Page by page. On microfilm. ohhhhhhhh. So that is precisely what I've been doing these past few days, using the Columbus method (search and discover). I've put in two 7-hour days and gone through 10 years' worth of a weekly news magazine. The good news is of course that I'm finding a lot of great stuff to work with. The bad news is that I'm finding a lot of stuff to work with...and now I have to figure out what to do with it, haha.

Otherwise, it's been a whirlwind of a week. Last Friday was my going away party in NYC, which was a ton of fun. We started at Yaffa, a great Moroccan-style diner, and then headed to China One, where the atmosphere is amazing, the music is rockin', and the drinks are...well, made with really cheap alcohol, we think, judging by how we all felt the next day, haha. But whatever, it was fun while it lasted!

Here I am with Lisa and Sarah:


And Ana and Junette:


And one of my favorite pics of the evening, with Dane:


And if that weren't hard enough core for you, I got my sorry ass out of bed the next morning to go roller blading because the city is doing this special program where they shut down Park Ave on Saturday mornings in August. And since that Saturday was my only shot at glory, Willemijn and I decided we'd make it happen, whatever the cost. I sort of felt like I wanted to die, but I'm soooo glad I went: