Attack of the Bonjours

Muriel and I braved the Saturday afternoon crowds to do a little "soldes searching." Unfortunately, I didn't find much to buy (which is probably for the best, considering that I live on a fixed income!), but it was nice to be out and about town. Plus, I was lucky enough to find a skirt that I fell in love with back in January -- marked down to half price! Woo hoo!

Unfortunately, a lot of the employees at these stores are annoyingly similar to salesclerks in the US. Every time we walked into a store, we were assaulted with the "Bonjour, mesdames!" of desperate commission-addicts. The worst was in a Chatelet/Les Halles store called La City. This hyperactive early 20-something girl pounced on me the moment I showed a remote interest in a rack of clothing. "Can I help you find a particular size?" she asked me. No, thanks, I responded. Ah, but that wasn't good enough for her. She immediately launched into a full sales pitch for the sweater I happened to be touching at that moment. (Not that I needed to have anyone explain to me that Angora is a high-quality wool...) My favorite part was when she reminded me how nice it is to wear a warm sweater in this kind of weather. Never mind that it's freezing outside, -- I'm being reminded of this unpleasant fact by a sales girl wearing a spaghetti-strap tank top. Lady, maybe you need the sweater more than I do!

On to other topics. As I alluded to earlier, Didge has a new girlfriend. Her name is Sophie, and she's originally from Southern California. You can see her on the left, standing next to Didge. I'm calling Sophie his girlfriend mostly because she's female. As you can see from the height difference, there isn't going to be any, um, "displays of dominance" on Didge's part.

Sophie belongs to Maggie and Colin, a couple that just relocated to Paris in December. Colin works for Deloitte & Touche, and Maggie is in the exact same boat as me: unemployed, yet incredibly busy. So, Maggie and I are trying to get the dogs together at least once a week to burn off excess energy. I posted a short video of them on Youtube - if you watch it, you'll notice that Sophie literally runs circles around old man Didge.

By the way, if I had tipped the camera up and over slightly in that picture, you would see the main entrance to the Louvre. Yes, my dog has playdates in the Tuileries. Imagine that!