I never considered that the blogs would be read by the locals, which was foolish in hindsight. For the first several weeks of my job, after introducing myself, I was greeted with a slightly over-familiar look and ‘ah, yes - I’ve read your blog’. Each time, I slightly cringed at the thought of the rash cultural generalizations I’d made and muttered something apologetic. But, at the risk of offending more French people, perhaps enough time has passed to justify another entry... I sit on the sofa, for the first time in several months, with a cat. Obtaining said cats involved vast sums of money, kindness from friends in Boulder and bureaucracy. The final collection of the cats was a 2 1/2 hour tour de force of office apathy, with enough characters to make a functional sit-com (the mis-placed hiphop backing dancer at the main desk, the aggressive middle manager who was typing something very important and would talk to you in a minute, the guy who went out for a cigarette every ...