Play with your food

Here they are. Its really hard to find them, so when I saw them at the market in Antony, I impulse bought myself a few.

Sorry mom, dad.

La da di..

La da da..

I ask you, how can you NOT play with frog legs before you cook them? I ASK YOU!

Et voila.

They taste like fishy chicken, or chickeny fish.

When life gives you lemons....

...you waste them on baking disasters.
...you struggle to find the balance between tart and sugary baked goods.
...you paint that shit gold.
...you want to find the perfect lemon recipe, just cause Pecos likes it.
...you threaten to bring said baking disasters into work unleash them onto your coworkers.
...you clone them to make super lemons.
...you go through a bag of flour AND sugar before you can say "when life gives you lemons..."
...you remember how much of a bitch it is to convert recipes between the crisp, clean, metric system and idiotic imperial system.
...you aren't clear at the supermarket if you can use sucre crystallise to suffice for powdered sugar.
...your roommate says that your most recent disaster is "......good?"
...you are too stubborn to give up, and thus continue to hit up the lemon man at the market, who I am certain thinks I am suffering from a rare citrus deficiency.

So, I'm trying to make this perfect lemon dessert, and.....

The Translation Game

I think I mentioned that I muscled my way into translating at work. I am still making sales calls, 'lead generation' is my business jargon job title, technically, but more and more small jobs float my way now, from writing the forward in the new guide, to making the website sound like it wasn't written by a six year old foreign kid. I was translating something for the website last week. The sentence said, in french, "subscribe now and enter to win a case of champagne!" The translation that they had suggested was, in english, "subscribe now and win a case of six bottles of champagne!" I pointed out to them gently that although America's presence in the global community is not a very, ahem, admirable one, we do in fact know that a case of champagne has six bottles in it.
Without nerding out on you all too much, translation is the concept of moving an idea from one language to another, not just translating word by word, and I think my boss is now sick or hearing me use the word 'context', which is why she gave in and gave me the projects just to shut me up. First, I received a list of word and parts of sentences, and was asked to translate them. I...didn't. My big prideful stubborn love of language brain refused such nonsense. I wrote a LENGTHY email explaining that they wouldn't dare have me write for the french website, so why have a frenchie write for the english website when I'm sitting right here. It worked, but for god sakes people, give me some context. Marie and I have begun the arduous, time consuming, and downright delightful process of translating the whole damn website. I am certain that everyone else in the IFE program is also translating, but I feel this probably undeserved sense of pride in now being the trusted one in the office to look over all things by non native English speakers. I am still astonished by the level of english written by foreigners like Lisa the German, who writes newsletters in english for the website like I do. Go ahead, rifle through the last few weeks of news articles and see if you can pick out which ones I wrote and which ones ze German wrote.
(Random side note- If I fail to capitalize or erroneously capitalize a nationality or language, I hold the french entirely to blame. They don't capitalize these things, we do. There, grammatical errors from here on in rationalized. I expect no mom corrections. That's right, Susan Marie Rexrode, I am looking at you.)
I have thus transformed "We invite you without reservation to email or call us whenever you have further questions not addressed by this website" to "Contact us". French is flowery. They loooove their words, but an english website is an english website, and when it comes to Americans being of a country that honors individualism, there has yet to be a whole lot of deviation when it comes to universal buttons.
Another thing I forgot to tell you during the last few episodes of Paige's Inane Ramblings is that they serve booze at the lunch cafeteria. BOOZE. I have yet to partake but i will damnit, oh I will. If nothing else that I learned from drinking on the job at Woodstock's Pizza in San Diego, I learned that the more soaked you are, the better business you do. Within reason, duh. Thats it. Happy Easter. Go hunt and eat rabbit, or whatever.

Ketchup

This is gonna be a crash grab wham bam kinda entry. I've been slacking, and I'm going to recap the past few what, has it been weeks?! in bits and pieces. One Friday, I went after work to a bar in the Parc Butte Chaumont called la Rosa Bonheur with a few coworkers. It was properly sunny, and Casey, Abder, Laetitia and I drank rose wine in the sun on long wooden picnic tables with the freshly-out-of-the-office-and-soaking-up-the-weekend crowd. I left at some point to go meet up with my friend Emily and her boyfriends friends for a beer on the tip of the Ile St Louis, where we watched fire breathers across the Seine at another popular evening public drinking hole. Another time, I had a picnic on the Champs de Mars, the gardens that lie at the feet of the Eiffel Tower, again, with wine and lazy Sunday folk, on the tiniest square of grass they could afford with all those degenerate youths. I celebrated Em's birthday on Sunday by having Mexican food made my Mexicans who mocked my hybrid french/spanish, we had champagne and chocolate and strawberries at the park, a charcuterie plate with some wine, held a pint in one hand and a petanque (bocci) ball in the other outside in the setting sun, but mainly just talked and laughed.
I bullied my way into translating for my company. I pointed out numerous embarrassing language errors on the english website, and told them I could help. It took two emails to the head cheese to get the ball rolling, but they finally gave in to my evident genius and now people come to me daily with translation questions. Its only a matter of time before I'm running the place.
Apparently, I am still a student. A rude awakening, I know. I am required to attend classes on Mondays after work, which make Mondays loooooong. The professor and I basically have private conversations in front of the rest of the class, who, like the tender youths that they are, fall asleep, text in class, and doodle. For those IFErs reading this, admit it. You do. Helene, the professor, is breaking down the European Union, and I am nerding out on it. She has picked up on this, and so when she asks a questions, or simple speaks in general, she just looks directly at me. The days I'm not on my game, its an effort to look fascinated, but I don't have that problem for the most part.
Ok, off to the daily grind. Ta ta.