Whew, this weekend has absolutely flown by! I meant to post yesterday but I ended up leaving for my Finnish class at noon and not coming home again until 2am. That of course means I got nothing done, but I had a great day. My new Finnish teacher is amazing and everybody is pretty much at the same level, so it's turning into a really interesting class. And then I was off to the Salon Mer & Vigne. "Salons" are kind of like the equivalent to an "expo" or "show" in English - you can have a salon of everything - food, hunting, sports, weddings, etc. This one was specifically for seafood and wine though. We tasted all kinds of things - alcochol mostly- and had a grand old time. I'm not going to talk about it too much - you'll have to listen to K&K this week to see what they say - but it involved lots of fun things like dancing with a Breton and trying a "liqueur érotique de bois bandé". The man's selling point was something like "ça fait bander les hommes, et les femmes reviennent avec la culotte à la main". Très classy. But it was a fun day overall and I came home with a really taste apple liqueur from Normandy, the most expensive comté I've ever eaten in my life and some caramel au beurré salé from Lorient (a little hommage to le 56).

I was glad to have the distraction yesterday though, because I've been stressing about my last-minute work trip to Holland these past few days. As of 7pm tonight, I will be picking up a car at the Gare du Nord and driving to Antwerp. And then tomorrow morning, I will get up early and drive the rest of the way to Utrecht.

When they first told me about the trip earlier this week, I was told it was going to be an easy-peasy install, so my main concern was actually not work, but driving out of Paris - I've never driven here before and it scares the crap out of me. But then things changed, and a few days later I was told I was going to have to do a major upgrade during the install. Which I've never done before, nor even seen done before. So I freaked out about that for a little bit. Until they came back and said "Sorry, but you're also going to have to reformat their computer". And then I really freaked out - I know nothing about Linux nor reformatting.

I'm pretty much over the freaking-out stage now - everything usually works out in the end, and all's I can do is give it my best shot. And The Company realizes this is a huge challenge for me - and if I can do it, maybe some of the men there (the CEO included) will finally stop thinking I'm just some dumb girl. The good thing is that if I don't get everything accomplished, it won't be a huge deal either - I'm saving them thousands of dollars by being able to drive there from Paris instead of sending someone from the US at the last minute.

And on that note, I'm off to make crêpes with salted butter caramel. I'm not sure if I'll have internet access (or even time to post) this week, so wish me luck and hope that no news is good news!