It is warming up here

The Paris transit system allows people to purchase weekly or monthly tickets that allow them unlimited travel on buses, RER, and the metro. The weekly tickets expire on Sunday evening, and the monthly tickets expire on the last calendar day of the month. As it is Monday, July 1, the line to recharge the transit ticket was crazy long this morning. Fortunately, I only have machines waiting for me at work and they don't know the difference between 9:00am and 9:30am (actually they do now that I think of it -- but they don't care).

The sun decided to come out in force today. Some might even call it hot! Thank goodness. I was going to feel very sad if I had to experience another frigid 4th of July. I remember it snowing on us when we visited London on July 5 back in 2007 (or 2008? I can't remember). Berkeley was horribly cold and rainy last year on July 4th which made me embarrassingly upset. After all, July is supposed to be so hot that I can hardly breathe, and I should be covered in mosquito bites and sitting in horrible traffic on the way home from fireworks. So thank you Paris weather for providing us with at least one hot July day. Hopefully it will stay this way.

My messy desk

This was the only picture I took today. The only non-work thing I did was go to the grocery store to buy some food. I tried a new, middle of the road grocery store today and it looked small from the front, but when I entered, it was like an endless cave. One room led to another led to another... I've never seen anything like it. This grocery store was not quite as snooty as the last one I went to, so I didn't find any goat's milk or oatmeal. However, I did find some everything bagels! I made myself some pasta for dinner, but it wasn't very good really. I didn't want to buy any oil or spices, because I couldn't possibly use a whole bottle of oil or a whole jar of spices in a month. Therefore, the pasta tasted just like you would expect pasta mixed with peas and a sliced grocery store tomato on top to taste like. Not great. But it filled me up, and the bagel I ate for *dessert* was delicious!

Tomorrow I plan to go back to the snooty grocery store to get some oatmeal. I guess they don't really eat oatmeal here? It seems like the typical French breakfast is a croissant or something chocolate with coffee. Anyway, I do prefer oatmeal, so I'm glad I found a place that sells it.