Nearly a month has gone by, with a nearly silent CyberMandounette. But fear not, Mandounette in the flesh has been living large the past month and has lived to tell about.

My internship at the Louvre has finished, and in addition to the Girodet exhibition book and a couple of Japanese soup bowls bought from the museum store, I left with a lot of great memories and, even better, some great contacts. My director was thrilled with the results of my 4 months in her service and I have pretty much a guaranteed place for my spring internship, the big one on which my first master's thesis is to be based. There are also other possibilities in a myriad of other Parisian museums. I think I will kiss some ass to work at Cite de la Musique...

I started classes again, my enthusiasm waning about an hour in. Although it is nice to see familiar faces and realize that the 60 of us have become pretty close over the past year. This process was particularly catalyzed by the drunken end of the year "picnic" we had on the Ile Saint Louis.

The cat has been with us for just over a year and will be celebrating her 3rd birthday on October 11. I was worried about her after 2 weeks in a kitty kennel during which her coat (usually black and orange) had become a sort of frazzled gray and she no longer smelled like herself, but she recovered within a few days. The only scars are her incessant need to be touching us. Today I woke to her sleeping on my back. I rolled over and somehow she managed to stay on top of me. She could be a WWE champion, the way she can pin us.

I am still reading "House of Leaves" although it is going slowly because I can't read before bed. It gives me nightmares and insomnia. I never thought a book was capable of that. But it is. Oh yes. Afterwards, I am planning on reading some "urban lit" just to remind myself that fiction doesn't have to be so deeply disturbing...

What else?

Liters of beer made way for a raucous Oktoberfest. Not as roots as the Oktoberfest celebrated in the deep recesses of Queens, but perhaps more true to the actual Oktoberfest in Munich with lots of drunk tourists in beer tents.

The last month also beared witness to a game of Monopoly so fierce that AssRay and I shouted at each other (and in front of others) for perhaps the first time.

But I guess seeing the Monopoly side of someone is a necessary step before marriage.

AssRay proposed on September 16 and I said yes. I have a very hip ring to prove it. No idea about dates yet, but it looks like it will be sometime in the first half of 2006. Probably at the town hall of our district, the one between the methadone clinic and the soup kitchen. How very rrrrrrrrromantic. Then there is no stopping us!

So there you have it! A snapshot of my month. Not very creative, but somehow necessary. I wonder if any of you are left out there...