My third test in three days

Sorry this is so late - I had a rough three days. Actually, with respect to what I do at Hopkins, they were a piece of cake. But whatever - I'm allowed to be lazy once and a while. This morning, I had my philosophy class very early (9:30) at Clignancourt. We talked about Kant, which was interesting, but not as interesting as Sartre. I think existentialism only makes sense in French. When it came up in classes at Clarence, it never made sense. Anyway, Alix came late to class because she was sick. She had bad hives. After class, Mlle Benoliel explained how the colle would count in my grade. In fact, it won't really, unless it will help. She said if it were a catastrophe (but also made sure to mention that she's sure it wasn't a catastrophe) then she'd just drop it, but if not, she'd just average it in with my other grades. I should be happy about that, but I still don't know any of my grades!! She's nice, though - and apparently she studied in NYC for a year, so she knows what it's like taking foreign classes.

Between that and my exam for my l'OuLiPo writing class, I got a panini and some Bethillon (well, I won't be able to get it again for a long time, so I need to profit now!), then went home for a little bit before the exam. Well, the exam was simple. It consisted of: first, a lipogrammatic translation with the letter "o"; then, a homosyntaxism (where she gives you what type of speech each word in the sentence should be. In this case, ASVSA or Adj/Adv, Substantif, Verbe, Substantif, Adj/Adv); a haiku about the ocean; and finally, a plain creative writing exercise without constraint imagining that I had written a whole collection of haikus about the sea and I had to write the preface to the book. Basically, I was just happy I didn't need to do that dumb Perec one where you can only write using words whose only vowels are E's. It's just too hard in French...and in English. I think the only "revenente" you can do in English is basically "the three trees see me."

After that was my last l'OuLiPo meeting, but before that, I had to call the doctor frantically. You see, Alix's hives are actually chicken pox, and I was afraid I might get them. Apparently, there's only a five percent chance that I will. I'm still a little nervous, though. After that, I went to the OuLiPo meeting (fantastic, though Jacques Roubaud wasn't there), got very sad (the emotion, not the club), and met Eileen and her friend Sarah to get the free moules frites if we bought a drink at that bar again and then we went to the Moose (the Canadian bar where they all speak English). It was really fun, and I really do like kir, and moules frites. Who knew mussels tasted so good! And, that was my day. My philosophy CM was moved to 8:00 tomorrow morning, so I should probably go to bed...I'm just not very tired since I'm sad I won't be able to say goodbye to Alix considering she's going to be contagious for 10 days and I'll only be here for 9...