I don't want you reading any spoilers. Just go see it.

It's been almost two hours, and I'm still shaken. Having seen more than my share of horror flicks, that's really unusual. Great stuff.

Just a very quick entry because I have lots to do. But I'm so upset about this, I couldn't not write.

Last night, I came home to a chilly apartment. Turns out the reason is, the workers in the courtyard had punched a hole clear through the wall.

More than just a hole, in fact. If it weren't for some "decorative" slats in my kitchen (ugly as sin, but we won't get into my landlord's taste), I'd have a huge gap leading directly outside. Not to mention the new "ventilation" that I have above my kitchen sink.

kitchen sink and hole

My landlord pleaded ignorance when I called him this morning, and I guess I believe him. He and his wife take a very hands-off approach to management (i.e. they're happy that I always pay on time, and they don't say much of anything). But, as an apartment owner in the building, he surely received at least one letter updating him - and that's even if he decided that he wouldn't attend the voting session that legally has to be held for work of this scale to be done.

Bien sûr, none of this could have been done during the warmer months. November, with its short days and plummeting temperatures, is much better suited for removing what little insulation my apartment has.

One: Walking to the post office, I overtook a woman, her daughter, and the woman's dog. The dog was a cute little Jack Russell, who despite his diminutive size was keeping pace with the woman. The latter, dressed in furs and high heels, was nonetheless walking at quite a clip. Even I, a fast walker, didn't pass by nearly as fast as I normally would.

In fact, my opportunity only came when the woman stopped. The dog's lead wrapped around the woman's daughter, she scolded her child. This little girl, probably no older than seven (though I'm a bad judge of age) had been struggling for some distance to keep up with her mother. The task was made no easier by her school backpack.

Please, let that never be me, I thought as I passed by. Obviously, this woman has some screwed up priorities. Maybe they were late, I don't know. But somehow I came away with the impression that her daughter was a burden, and why couldn't she be more like my obedient dog, anyway?

Who's in so much of a rush that they they don't keep a child's pace, and yet can stop to scold her? It's so easy to think of the woman as having a typically French attitude, the way they value their dogs. But just as I'm sure not all French people are like her, I'm pretty certain that there are many more like her around the world.

Flash to this evening, our latest pre-Cana course. Tonight's topic was children, and raising them with Catholic beliefs (hardly a surprise, considering this is an official church course). I'm not very religious, but I have really enjoyed this course - tonight's class the most of all.

It's great to have a chance to gather with other to-be-married couples, to get a chance to listen and learn from a pair of experienced couples (21 and 24 years of marriage, or thereabouts). I also really like Father Ephrim, who has some excellent anecdotes.

The short experience is the long explanation, and vice-versa. And I'm pretty confident that I won't be like that woman with her dog and child. As long as I can enjoy a class like tonight's, there's always hope. Maybe I'll even do as well as my parents did with me.

As grave as the riots are, I think that the media has probably made it worse for U.S. viewers. In part, out of not making it clear how Paris is laid out - which is understandable, since their goal isn't to cover who is "safe." In part, because they're playing catch-up. This is a problem that has been simmering for some time, and even then there was apparently little international coverage until late last week.

What I don't like in some of the reports is a certain undertone of smugness. The U.S. is hardly one to present itself as a good example for race relations. I also worry that some of the reports are bringing political baggage besides this smugness. France is often used as a scapegoat for waning international support of U.S. policies, and I'm sure more than a couple of people feel that it's getting a deserved comeuppance for not kowtowing to U.S. pressures. Get real.

The BBC has an interesting article written by John Simpson. This reporter is notable because he's known for his coverage - and presence - in highly volatile areas, such as the Tiananmen Square uprising or in Baghdad during the first Gulf War. Read it for a good summary, but remember that it is far from complete.

This is a keg that France has created, both willfully and unwittingly. With so many recent immigrants live in what amount to suburban ghettos, it's not surprising that the riots have hit hard and stayed in specific areas. Even though many teens from these areas regularly come to Paris, the most remarkable thing that I've noticed is how quiet they are. Hardly surprising, if you consider that even they want to escape from the events surrounding them.

Even if the riots stop soon, it's unlikely that the root issues will be resolved in any foreseeable future. But unless you hear otherwise, it's safe to assume that I'm doing well. Worry instead for the people who have no option and are trapped in the middle of this whole situation.

My apartment's bathroom is rather, er, unique. Cramped to the extreme, the shower is immediately in front of the toilet, which crouches next to the sink. There's only just enough room to sidle between standing in front of the sink to standing in front of the toilet, and then spin around in that place.

Did I mention the deep-brown sink bowl, or the Margaritaville motif on the tiling? No? Well, then you must have heard about the Astroturf on the bathroom floor. Really. I have witnesses.

This room hardly sounds like a candidate for movie stardom, and yet there it is.

The street side can be rather noisy - especially in the neighborhood that I'm in, with a narrow street and delivery trucks stopping all day. At night there's more than the average amount of traffic because it's a good shortcut, avoiding major streets with many stoplights. The courtyard, in contrast, is calm and pretty much never changes.

So you can imagine that it was with some surprise that around the middle of last week, I returned from work to find the scaffolding. By the next day, it had climbed past my apartment and all the way to the top. By end of the week, it was obviously ready for workers to use it.

All this runs right past my bathroom window.

Because of the long weekend (Tuesday was a holiday, so most everyone took off Monday), no one was scampering along the grid of metal tubes outside my window. All was quiet yesterday, too. But I steeled myself, and adjusted my schedule to wake up early. Sure enough: this morning, at 8:30 AM (eight thirty!), I heard the oncoming workers climbing.

view from the building stairwell

This was a scene straight out of one of those B-grade horror flicks: Trapped in a tiny room, with no way to hide. (My apartment owner - in his infinite wisdom - apparently hadn't seen the need to add curtains to cover the window.)

And naked.

Now, I'm absolutely positive that I wouldn't be as titillating to the average movie-going audience as some nubile 17-year-old girl. But I can assure you with the utmost confidence that I was not looking forward to being eyed by the wildlife clambering up the monkey bars as I stepped out of my shower.

Fortunately for all concerened, I succeeded in getting out of there before anyone made it to my floor. The rest of my morning getting-ready-for-work routine was spent darting in and out of my bathroom, timed to avoid the workers outside my window. Oh, these next few weeks are going to be so much fun!

But wait! You weren't expecting a double-billing, but you're going to get one anyway: How about a twist on a teenage comedy?

In normal times (or as best conditions may be said to be "normal"), my bathroom window looks out onto the courtyard. Upon which other neighboring apartment windows look. And their occupants, as well.

Not a biggie, right? Well maybe you forgot that I don't have any curtains on my window. And I certainly didn't mention that, when standing upright in front of my toilet to do... what I do when standing upright in front of my toilet, my head is unavoidably positioned right in front of said bathroom window.

You can just imagine the ensuing hilarity. The entire courtyard population within view of that window must have seen me looking out at one time or another in the last five years. I do believe I've become some sort of an imagined Peeping Tom bogeyman, sheerly by answering the call of nature as my neighbors do what they do.

The greatest irony in all this is that mine is the only bathroom window - all the other courtyard windows look into kitchens, hallways, etc. So, I'm really the only "vulnerable" one.

Ha ha ha, haha. Ah, good times, good times. (I've gotta get out of this place.)

Living for the moment, slacking off, procrastinating - whatever you want to call it, I never did get around to writing about the concert that Heather and I saw two and a half weeks ago, Sunday, 16 October.

That concert was the White Stripes, and it was pretty decent. Their stripped-down sound carried well to a live show. Though you could only see Jack and Meg White on stage, it was pretty apparent that there was at least one, maybe two people, off-stage. Despite its being contrived to keep the illusion of only two band members on stage, at least using real off-stage musicians was truer to their keep-it-real sound. I for one definitely prefer that option to the alternative of using prerecorded backing tracks.

I really like how the White Stripes have gone back to certain rock fundamentals: shorter songs (typically around three minutes), clever lyrics and catchy tunes, a willingness to mix sounds (blues and country sounds seep in), a stripped-down approach to recording in an over-engineered world. In all these ways, their concert was a success.

While it was great to hear the band play a lot of my favorites live, I was actually pretty disappointed with the show on the whole. The group played for less than an hour and a quarter - the main set plus a single encore, including the five-minute break between them. Despite the short length of their typical song, they have more than enough for a second encore (or longer main set). I wasn't looking for the White Stripes to exhaust themselves (or their catalog), but I felt a bit shortchanged - especially since they didn't play my favorite, "Fell in Love With a Girl."

I think some of my disappointment also stems from my getting too old to go to concerts. Having to wait for over two hours after we got in the doors wasn't my idea of fun. In keeping with what seems to be typical French management, there was no hint of the actual show time or who the opening band would be - or even that there would be one (I'm open to being corrected if this is normal elsewhere). That meant getting in immediately, half an hour before the ticket time but with an hour and a half to wait after ticket time. Plus - again as seems to be typical with my concert experiences in France - the opening act sucked (though not as bad as the one who opened for Röyksopp).

I'm glad I finally got to see the White Stripes live, especially after having missed them in February 2004. But I'm not sure they were really worth the ticket price. As I wrote above, I really like their return to more basic rock values - especially in light of the current industry norms. But I think I'd have enjoyed the show even more had their values come across in how the show was performed, not just what they played for it.

I ended up not going to any parties this year, but I did see kids of all ages dressed in costumes on my way to see Corpse Bride. There was a small group of very cute kids, the oldest being no more than five or six, going door-to-door on Montorgueil, a market street near my apartment. (Heather is right, French spoken by little kids can be adorable.) As young as they were, they obviously had the same priorities of any American kid, noisily planning how to maximize their butin.

Halloween is my favorite celebration (my favorite holiday being Thanksgiving). Children get to rule the world, if only for a day. And adults get to become someone (or something) else, playing what-if and briefly escaping their normal lives.

America can certainly be considered immature but to me, Halloween represents the best of what Americans can offer the world: youthful playfulness, and the hope (and desire) to be anything you wish. I'm looking forward to being able to share the day with kids of my own.

My friend Jenny came down from Stockholm with her friend Therese for a weekend getaway, sort of an extended girl's night out. It was great to see her and catch up; it's been three years since we last saw each other in person. Also, I found out that both of them are regular readers of my blog - which almost doubles my last readership count. Heh.

Jenny and I worked together at Icon Medialab; Therese is a friend of hers who I met when I went to Stockholm for Midsommar in 2002. Midsommar, being the longest day of the year, is especially interesting when the darkest hour is around three in the morning but doesn't get much darker than twilight.

Wow, three years ago. You can imagine we had a lot to talk about. Jenny and her boyfriend Jon have an extremely cute little boy, Nils, now a year old. No photos of Nils, but I have one of us three at Fajitas, a Tex-Mex place, and another one of Therese and Jenny finishing their Tequila Slammers.

Good times, even before the tequila.

(Snygging - besides being one of the three words I know in Swedish - means "cute." In light of the photo of the three of us and mention of Nils, it's about the closest to a theme as this entry has.)

Looks like France is just as cutting-edge as the U.S. as far as the use of public records to generate sales leads. Except, the address label was hand-written.

Hit a bit (oh, just a tiny bit) by the shell shock of starting the process to buying an apartment, I didn't write yesterday about our latest concert experience.

Wednesday night, the same day as finding the apartment, Heather and I went to see Röyksopp. They played the Élysée Montmartre, the same place we saw Zero 7 last year.

The show was good, nothing remarkable. I really like Röyksopp's music - at least, the first album (I don't have the second one) - but there's very little an electronica group can do to impress. Well, there's always a big light show, but not everyone is loaded with money. Certainly not these two Norwegian geeks (and I mean that in the kindest way. Also the "geek" part).

I was surprised to find that the female vocals were done live; often, a woman's voice is sampled. This was cool to find out for "Sparks," a song with a somewhat retro-sound to the vocals. I'd always assumed it was a sample from an old record. On the other hand, the singer (Anneli Drecker) was overly camp while she vamped - to the point of being corny. Congrats to her for doing a tour while five months pregnant, that's some stamina.

Also cool to discover was that a lot of the percussion was live. The drum kit was virtual (except for a lone cymbal), but the half of the duo who played the drum pads really went at it with full vigor. I tried hard to capture it in a photo, but wasn't successful.

All in all, a solid show. Röyksopp played almost their full catalog (at least as far as I could tell), including some tracks not on their albums (I knew they were old, a friend said that they're not included on the second album). Better yet, they played all of my favorites - including a couple of great reworked songs (hard to call live versions "remixes"). Not bad for an earnestly geeky duo and their two backups (vocals and guitar).

It seems like a lot of landmarks and major events this year have taken place on the 14th of a month. I proposed to Heather on 14 August. That marked the anniversary of when we met (and almost exactly six months after our Valentine's Day weekend in Florence). There was 14 October, when I applied for French citizenship.

So you can imagine that it came as sort of a surprise that yesterday should be such a pivotal day.

Shortly into our search (after only seeing two places) - and totally by chance - Heather went to a salon for expatriate resources. There, she met met partners from an apartment hunting agency. Heather got a good vibe from them, and I liked what I read. So we decided to hire them (very smart idea, Heather!).

49, rue Nollet (click for more)

Well, yesterday morning we got a call from our agent, Tanya. She had a place that she wanted us to see that very moment, if possible. Heather and I met up nearby, and visited the place.

Wow, easily the best place we've seen so far. It was the first place that Tanya found for us, and it may be the last.

That's right: Heather and I are going to buy this apartment on rue Nollet.

Yesterday we entered into preliminaries, signing a offer which, if accepted, leads to our signing a formal offer. Next week, once she returns from her vacation, we will meet with the owner (along with the French-required notaires, the real estate agent, and Tanya) to sign a promesse de vente.

Seven days after that, we'll formally be in the real process. The waiting period is to ensure you don't make any snap judgments - and believe me, at the prices in the Paris market, you wouldn't want to be locked into a bad decision. During the time that follows, we have to lock in a bank loan and loan insurance - all that good stuff.

But those are boring details for the moment. Nothing tangible now, no worries yet. The feeling is great: We may have found our first home together.

This weekend, my bride-to-be surprised me with a trip. (Actually, my being too clever by half - often too much for my own good - I had sort of figured out the destination a while back. But I pushed it to the back of my mind, and so it remained a surprise.)

Heather took me to Nantes, the French town where I was a student so long ago. We'd been talking for a long time about my showing her the place, especially since it essentially marks the start of my French Experience. So it was a thrill to play tour guide for her - and for myself, since Nantes has changed in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways since my student days.

You can see photos of our trip in my new gallery. At the time I write this, though, things are still in flux. I still have to add titles and descriptions (and more). But sooner is better than never, right?

We got there Saturday afternoon, which meant we missed out on "normal" lunch hour - and with it, my being able to eat at my once-favorite crêperie, La Crêperie Jaune. So instead we had our galettes at another of the many crêperies in the old town area. We did have time during our wanderings to have a great cup of hot chocolate at La Maison des Ancêtres (a new addition since my student days).

We had dinner at La Cigale. The last time I'd been here was when my parents and brother visited me, along with my French girlfriend. Wow, I hadn't been back once since. The place always held a certain mystique for me - maybe because I was a student, unaccustomed to nice places (as Heather pointed out); or maybe because of the circumstances of introducing my serious girlfriend to my family (as I think).

Anyway, La Cigale was fun. Having five years of restaurant experiences - in Paris, no less - as reference, I definitely felt more at ease. Besides, as I pointed out to Heather, every server there save one was younger than me. Our waiter was warm and personable, the food was decent (though not top-notch) and the décor was a colorful reminder of typical brasseries of a century ago.

Like I said, no photos of the place because I didn't think of it (and forgot on Sunday), but the linked page has a couple. And I also missed copying down the name of the dessert I ordered. It would've been worth noting, since I couldn't pronounce it right no matter how hard I tried. It made our waiter giggle.

We got a late start on Sunday too, this time due to brunch. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Jules Verne's death. The Nantes native authored Around the World in Eighty Days, 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and more than a few other well-known titles. So, we trekked up to the Jules Verne museum which had recently reopened three days before. Close an essential part of the celebration for repairs in such a landmark year? Don't ask me, try a French person for that kind of logic.

One of the highlights of our trip came after the museum (which was itself pretty dry): While looking toward Nantes from the hill, an older man passed us and asked if we liked what we saw. We got into chatting with him and he gave us some great details of the view stretching out before us, as well as fun historical tidbits. Actually, the chat was a lot more far-ranging than that, but it's hard to capture.

Funny enough, we ran into him again at the foot of the hill. Heather and I had paused at the tramway station to decide whether to wait for the next one or walk back, and along came the same French gentleman. Well, we all hiked back to town center (truth be told, it wasn't more than a fifteen minute walk) while he gave us more history and tales.

Once at our destination, he managed to smooth-talk our way into the private courtyard of the largest of the old mansions in town. Nantes was a part of the Golden Triangle of slave trade, and here was a mansion built with some of its spoils. This was a place that I'd passed many times before, and never had given a second thought.

I regret never getting the man's name, even more that I didn't take his picture. We'll always remember him and this unexpected tour of Nantes, the town I thought I knew so well.

Sunday was wrapped up by going to see the converted interior of the LU biscuit factory (it's now a trendy art-crowd bar and exhibition space) and stopping by the university campus. Well, at least we saw the building where I had my two on-campus classes (the rest were in a building in town center, under repair when we stopped by on Saturday). Throw in a couple of butter-and-sugar crêpes, and we were set.

[Updated Tuesday, 1 November 2005: Check out Malaysian Broadcasting Corporation's "Re:Looking", a fictional web site created as a part of an exhibit at the converted LU biscuit factory. The "art piece" consisted of a full living room, with "Lust & Empire" showing on the TV and a computer showing this site. The immersive experience was an interesting use of alternate history to examine our own.]

That's the rundown. I don't know why I went into so much detail, but it was a weekend to remember. Not because it was exciting, but because it was fun to share this part of my past with Heather.

The main thing that stick in my mind is how, well, odd the experience was for me. A city is a living thing, and Nantes is no exception. Our visit brought home with full force a realization: It's been fifteen years since I first set foot in that town, ready to start my study year abroad.

Fifteen years, from student to resident. From beginning my adult life to beginning a new chapter with my fiancée. It'll be interesting to see what the next fifteen years bring, and how I'll look back on Paris (and Nantes!) in that time.

For me, Jobs's keynote is the high point of the Expo. With it canceled, I didn't even bother to mingle with the masses of Mac fanatics fans. What, pass up being crushed by the great unwashed (sometimes literally)? I must be crazy!

Sarcasm aside, I did miss going to the Apple Expo this year. Apple has in recent years been distancing itself from trade shows to announce new products, instead preferring to create its own "events."

Um, ah. So, you're all still here? Er, this is rather embarrassing.

Ahem.

Anyway, my point - belabored as it is - is that 2004 may well have been the last year Apple introduced any products further than a stone's throw from its Infinite Loop headquarters. That would be a shame, since it was pretty cool to know that Jobs thought highly enough of Paris to come here personally. Even New York didn't make that cut.

"Paris: We're cooler than New York." I like the ring of that.

So, Steve, won't you please come back next year? And bring an extra iPod (whatever the newest model may be). No special reason - I just happen to, uh, have a friend who'd be interested in one.

The restaurant on the ground floor in the corner was completely gutted (as were the floors above, I would imagine). The new interior is quite nice, lots of wood and stone. It's still the same pizza restaurant as before, but now it looks much nicer. The workers are just getting started on the commercial space next to the restaurant, so that'll be interesting to follow.

The building exterior was cleaned up, French-style: the stone is ground and scrubbed down, pocks and pits are filled in with a similarly colored cement. Best of all, they've removed a very ugly concrete addition (probably a result of some quickie work in the 60's or 70's) on the side of the restaurant. It's now roughly the same texture and color as the rest of the building's stone, the concrete having been stripped away and the underlying stone repaired (within the limits of how much you can repair stone).

The building proper will become logements sociaux, or low-income housing. This is good news, as there were a rash of fires this summer in buildings filled beyond capacity. There was an outcry at the time that the people running Paris were ignoring the needs of the large number of poor (typically immigrants). I'm sure this is a drop in the bucket; but from the looks of this building, Paris certainly isn't ignoring the poor who need housing.

So everyone wins: Low-income families get housing in a pretty nice location; a cheap-looking pizzeria is revamped to the extreme; and a largely vacant building is once again useful, with a very nice-looking exterior. And life in the city moves on...

Last Friday, 14 October 2005, I applied for French nationality.

I still remember a former U.S. coworker saying that I'd probably last three months or so in France, and then return to Minnesota. I didn't much care for his, er, candor - but for all I knew, he might be right. When I left to live in Paris, it was to see whether or not I really did want to live "real life" over here. I had no set time to stay, other than long enough to be sure that I wouldn't have regrets for never trying.

But wouldn't you know it: I've done well here. It isn't always easy, but I'm a part of France and it's a part of me on a daily basis. I didn't do it to prove anything to anyone - it just sort of happened.

So I made the decision to try for French naturalization. It's something I want for myself - and more importantly, it's something I want for my children. Heather had the same goal to become a naturalized citizen from before we even met, and she also wants to be able to offer dual citizenship to her children. Earlier Friday, before I mailed my own request, Heather went to the government office to get the necessary paperwork.

Heather's just reached the required residency time that qualifies her to make the request.) Like her, I qualified when I received my fifth carte de séjour (which was last year). I quickly ran out of that proverbial gate, getting the lion's share of my paperwork (birth certificates, my parents' marriage license, copies of police records, etc.) last October.

Then I got caught up in work and lost momentum, until I got my rear in gear once again this spring. That's when I found out that I needed additional certification (apostilles) of my documents. By the time I had those and had the final documents translated by someone approved by the Paris court circuit, my carte de séjour had expired and I was waiting to find out about my situation. Well, as we know, that turned out well.

Armed with all but a couple of documents, I spent the first couple of weeks of October completing and assembling the mass of paperwork that composed my application. Friday, I sent it in. Monday, they received it. And today, I received that confirmation.

Now I wait to see if my dossier is accepted as complete. If that happens, I have up to an 18-month wait for the French officials to make their decision (including interviewing me in person). An upside of my carte de résident is that it should help my case and perhaps even accelerate the process. This was even spontaneously confirmed by the woman who handed me my carte de résident, so it's good to have that reassurance.

Now comes the wait.