Spring in Paris

We're here!

For our first big news, someone special is here with us on this trip!  The guy in this photo is Ryan Adams, and the girl is....Duncan, you tell us!  After we got off the plane in Paris, I went to talk to them, and Kate said, "Um, are you Duncan's mom?"  And I said, "I know you!"  Anyway, Kate and Ryan have a little girl named Emmaline, and she is six months old.  I really like Kate, and her husband Ryan is a really good guy.  (Ryan is in the MBA program, which is why they're both here with us.)

In other news, we've spent a lot of our time in the last couple of days in the metro, trying to buy tickets, figure out where to go, find the exit, etc.  When there are 44 people trying to get around Paris on the metro, it can get a little complicated, but luckily, we are SUPER FLEXIBLE so it's working out great.  This is Baptiste helping 44 of us buy tickets from the metro machines.

Yesterday Baptiste did an incredible walking tour of Notre Dame and surrounding areas, and it began to pour!  It's pretty warm this week so it was fine, but my hair was pretty much shot for the day.  A great Paris experience, though.

As you know, Notre Dame has a lot of interesting architectural features, so we spent a lot of time looking up at them.  I have never seen so many people and critters built into a building in my life!

This is Meredith, Baptiste's wife, who also has a MS in Art History and used to teach art for BYU in the Louvre.  She is smart!  She gave us a special tour of the Louvre and it was fantastic.  Who knew there was so much behind these paintings?  If you haven't had a Louvre tour with someone who knows what they are talking about, I highly recommend it.  Now I want to take an art history class.

And, of course, the Louvre has a lot of incredible things painted on the ceiling, so we spent a lot of time looking up at them, too.  These ceiling paintings were done when royalty lived in the Louvre; can you imagine waking up in the morning and seeing something like this?

This last comment is for Napolean:  One of the rooms Meredith took us through today was filled with paintings she called "Napolean propoganda."  The paintings were not historically accurate, she said; they were intended soley to present Napolean in a positive light.  And, tonight we ate at the oldest restaurant in Paris, and guess whose hat is framed and sitting in the entrance?  (You can probably figure it out.  Hint:  He was very short.) 

Sorry about the mediocre quality of my photos.  This trip has a lot of moving parts and I haven't been able to photograph as much stuff as I'd like to.  I'll try to do better later.

Au revoir

We leave tomorrow! I'll be updating my blog from the road, so stay tuned!

This is snarky

So...let's say a colleague sends a proposal to his boss and your boss, and in the proposal he says, "I think we should do THIS," and he cites five studies to support his case.  As a side note he says, "the people who are on this certain committee have no idea what they are doing, or they would do THIS too," and then the proposal happens to be forwarded to someone on that certain committee, and that someone is ME.

I think that's snarky.

I wrote a counter-proposal, with references, and sent it to all the people who received this other person's proposal.  I pointed out (very objectively) that this individual overlooked the 600+ studies that supported the committee's work and that if the person who wrote the proposal had done his research, this would be clear to him as well.

The person who wrote the proposal later said, "I didn't mean for you to see that proposal," as if that made his snarky comment okay.  If a snarky comment isn't seen by the person it is intended to insult, isn't it still snarky?

Now, you tell me...