It's coming together!

A friend volunteered to send my her books from the Paris trip she took a few weeks ago, and they just arrived i the mail.  I am very pleased.  There is a French/German/Italian phrasebook, which will be good - I have a French/English dictionary, but (a) phrasebook is better, and (b) French will do me little good in Frankfurt.  There is also the Rick Steve's Paris guide.  I had previously noticed that the Rick Steve guidebooks are very good for, sort of, orientational information and cultural knowledge and stuff.  Which is important, as I will be in France a whole month and do not want to spend all of it squinting at monuments.  But I am also a type-A tourist (actually, um, a type AAA... international trips that I have taken with other people have tended to involve a lot of arguing (me: "we are in ____ and we are not going to waste time sleeping/eating/watching TV/having fun"; them: "i'm tired/hungry/feet are falling off"), a lot of me leaving them in hotels to sleep while I tromped about or them leaving me in the middle of foreign cities to tromp about, and in one case, my rising early and going to an entirely different country while my travel companion slept) and I am certainly not going all the way to Paris without a guidebook that will tell me in minute detail about every single historical whatsit in the city.  So, now I can take this lovely vague Rick Steve book for local color, and also buy a proper guidebook to use in my self-guided death marches around the city.  (this is in addition to my walks book.  the walks book is just for fun.)

Also, my netbook came, so now I can type my novel in little Parisian cafes, and my camera (I figure taking my iPhone to France is a bad idea), which is very tiny and has many functions, but two of them are "take picture" and "zoom", and that is all that matters.  I have downloaded Picasa onto the netbook so that I can share my pictures (as well as backing them up in the google cloud), although I assure you they will all be very boring to people who aren't me (I have been known to take up to 100 pictures on a single cab ride).  I also have a netbook case and a camera case (which, basically, is the size of a small purse, and I may end up using it that way from time to time) and even a part-time subletter for my apartment.

The only thing I do not have is a lease for my Parisian apartment.  I really wish that would arrive.