Lights out--sort of

DICK SAYS: When we visited the apartment today, two workers--one with a very round face--were putting up some drywall and talking in an indecipherable mix of Polish, Polish-inflected French and English. Well, at least Liz thought one of them injected a common English obscenity into the running patter. To be perfectly honest, I didn't hear it--or hear it completely. I sort of heard it, which is different, of course, from definitely hearing something. So maybe it was just a mix of Polish and French.
Anyway, things are moving along, and one of the gray-haired sisters who live next door acknowledged me when I said "Bonjour!" to her. So that's encouraging, especially since I was wearing a breather over my nose and mouth and easily could have been mistaken for one of the workers. (Of course, maybe she thought I was one of the workers. There's no telling really.)
It will be interesting to find out what happens to the noise bleeding in from the street when the double-paned windows are in place. I don't find the current noise level distracting, but a French Parisian certainly would. They can't abide street noise and will tell you that such and such a location is far too noisy for an apartment, even if it's enveloped in silence long before midnight. It's strange, since Paris is a large, densely populated city that features commercial spaces on the ground floor of many apartments. Noise is part of the life of the Parisian street. Then again, the French are great sleepers. In fact, they log more hours in the sack actually sleeping than the inhabitants of any other developed country. So I guess they must be rather light sleepers, which I'm not.
So anyway, I think the double-paned windows will make the place almost tomb-like. That is if Teddy is content to munch his millet spray without making a peep. And there's fat chance of that happening as you've learned from my previous report on the Russian incident.
Tonight they're turning out the lights on the Eiffel Tower to celebrate Eco Watch or No Energy Hour or some such thing. I'm not against it, mind you, but the lights on Notre Dame are still blazing as are the neon signs up and down Rue Monge. In fact, you can see the very bright lights that illuminate the football stadium* that's a couple miles from here just fine tonight. Not much of an Eco statement in my book, but I guess it's the thought that counts.


*I should add that dozens of police vans were staging on the street in front of the apartment today when we went down there, and while we all were wondering what demonstration or strike or work slowdown was brewing up at the Place d'Italie, it turned out that they were getting ready for tonight's football game. So all the cops were kitted out in riot gear that makes them look like extras in "Road Warrior" because they were anticipating some pre- and post-football action around the stadium. I guess, in a way, that's a good thing, since the football and rugby fans tend to party down on Boulevard St. Germain or over on the other side of the river. Fine with me. We lived down the street from a much larger stadium for nearly 15 years and that was no fun.