I can go in, I can go out ...

[posted by Amy]

We rang in the new year rather low-key this year -- not quite what I expected from living in Paris, but good nonetheless. The city didn't have anything official to attend (unless you had at least 100 euros), so we joined some other Michiganders at a small apartment party. The wine and champagne was free-flowing, and true to form, I couldn't hold my liquor. So, on our walk home at around 2 am, I made sure to return the cheers of "Bonne Année!" to all of the other inebriated people whose paths we crossed. Ah, good times, good times.

Earlier that day, Rachel, Muriel, Kate and I met up for a serious afternoon of shopping up at La Défense. We enjoyed super-yummy tartiflette for lunch (potatoes, cheese and bacon in a cream sauce), our last chance to do so at the Marché de Noël there. This might not look like a very big container for lunch, but neither Kate nor I was able to finish it. (We hadn't had breakfast, either!)

After looking over the remaining items at the Christmas market (it was pretty picked over), we headed indoors to explore one of Muriel's favorite shopping centers. This place is a mall in the true American sense -- lots of retail stores under one big roof, with a food court at one end. We had a great time, though Kate and I couldn't get our priorities straight. Kate wanted me to try on all of the cute clothes she found, and I wanted to find cute outfits for Beanie! In the end, I treated myself to a new pair of pyjamas at Etam Lingerie, and Kate got two really cute layettes for a real steal at C&A.

At one point during our shopping excursion, Muriel stopped in the Levi store to see what they had in the way of jeans. While I wasn't particularly interested in looking for jeans, I did manage to find something to entertain myself. This came in the form of a t-shirt.


Everyone's reaction to this shirt thus far has been something along the lines of, "What does that mean?" My theory is that it is an instruction shirt for couples who want to get pregnant, but haven't quite mastered the mechanics of how it works. My proof of this theory is the label inside the shirt (apologies for the blurriness):


The brand is "Reproduction by Levi's."

The one drawback to my solution is the remote possibility that it's true. In that case ... if a person actually needs this shirt to explain and/or remind his or her partner of how procreation occurs, do we really want these same people reproducing? Kind-of reminds me of another t-shirt that I saw a few years back: "Hey you! Out of the gene pool!"