Wanted to make sloppy joes for dinner yesterday. Lacked microwave with which to thaw ground-beef patties. Recalled experiences in past weeks involving items placed on kitchenette shelf above neon lamp. Deduced that if lamp could melt package of Mars bars, lamp could thaw beef patties. Thus a new tool was created: the Julian Joiris Microwaveless Defrosting Device for the Relatively Speedy Remediation of the Frozen State of a given Freezer-Stored Foodstuff:

Diagram A: Two plastic-wrapped frozen beef patties atop the Device.

Today 3/4 of my project team actually managed to get together to go to the Bibliothèque Nationale. We walked around for a couple hours, managing to communicate to one another in mostly intelligible French with odd bits of English, and took pictures and so forth, went inside the library, which is very pleasant. Pictures (taken Friday, have not yet uploaded ones from today):

On the edge of the library plaza area. The tower seen between the plant things is part of the Frigos, which (according to a student who did more research than I) is some sort of artist-y type thing.

In the middle of the library plaza is a big garden, about 3-5 stories below ground level (which is istelf maybe a story or two above street level of the neighboring area).

The library seen from a bridge across the Seine. See cute yellow jumping child figure!

Nice mosaic-esque archway.

Old train-station type thingy.

Colorful graffiti on side of aforesaid train whatsit.

More aggressive graffiti on neighboring wall.

I like the double-façade thing on this building.

Back to school tomorrow. I’ll have my first MICEFA class in two weeks. I’ve taken to riding the bus to the train station here. At first I didn’t even consider it—I’m used to routinely out-walking the M23 in New York—but I noticed the buses were passing me here, not the other way around, and then I rode the bus back with another student and it only took 5 minutes. People actually respect the bus/emergency vehicle/municipal vehicle/taxi/bike lanes here, probably because they’ve got those huge boulevards where you can actually fit them:

See?

The campus right near the dorms–which is, I think, one of the Sorbonne things–has apparently gone completely on strike:

And that’s about it. Nothing exciting going on here.

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