a long weekend in two parts

Thanks to France monodenominational culture and general status as a bastion of the Holy Roman Catholic church, combined with the French socio-cultural obsession with not working very much, I scored a four-day weekend. More specifically, Thursday was Ascension, which almost certainly once had something to do with Jesus, and Friday was nominated by INRIA as RTT, basically a historical compensation for raising the work week from 2 to 2.1 hours per week. Something like that, anyway.

Whatever the convoluted and (to me) irrelevant motivations for this festival of not-work, to me it just meant time spent at home. I really, really should have gone somewhere, but I just couldn't be damned, so I spent Thursday playing NBA Live 2005 and Friday playing Need For Speed Underground 2.

Fortunately, Saturday was the final game for Avenir, so I trotted along like a good boy and watched them lose, unfortunately, to Pleyber Christ. After the game was, as advertised, an end of season party, to which I scored an invite thanks to Liz. It was perhaps a little less lively than it might have been had they won, but it still bounced along. Lots of music I didn't know, dancing, and interesting personal interactions once the Pleyber girls rocked up (actually, it was just two people who had interesting personal interactions, but they were pretty damn interesting). I spent the majority of the night chatting with Erwan, the announcer, Manu, an ex-player, and Arnaud, an assistant coach. It was a pretty good night, although I hit it (it being punch, white rum, whiskey, and desperados) pretty hard and was a bit under the weather for the latter stages. I staggered home, amid traditional SMS exchanges with Chris, at about 5am, leaving a few of the girls still going strong.

Sunday, the start of which I've already covered, was delicate. I feigned sleep for 6 hours or so, and then felt viciously sorry for myself until about 3pm when I rolled out to grab a bite to eat. After that it was out to Acigne for dinner with Sophie and Jacques followed by a film. Kingdom of Heaven was the only option, although it being in VF (dubbed) was quite against my philosophy, and definitely hindered my understanding. In any case, I didn't get the vibe that I got from Gladiator (sorry Ridley, but if you make sword epics now, that's what you get), and was generally pretty unexcited by it all, probably at least in part because suspension of disbelief is pretty tough when the actors have the wrong voices.