That's all the pictures we had ready from the old camera. The new one tried to arrive on Friday, but we didn't have the cash on hand to pay the customs fee for it. They'll bring it by again on Monday.

Thanks to Jennifer and Jonathan, I have purloined a copy of my unofficial transcript from UCI--they carefully (or carelessly, but very effectively in either case) make it both unemailable and impossible to cut and paste into a word document, but RichText works ok. The university's website tries to disguise the fact that you can still log in and see your transcript after graduation, and the registrar's office is singularly unhelpful when you ask them about accessing transcripts, but we got it done. Now I'm just waiting for the USAjobs site to bring its online application server back online to continue that branch of job searching.

The translation stuff is up and running. I've edited my first translated article for worldmeets.us, and have the first to translate myself downloaded and ready to start as soon as I finish this. I'm about three pages into the museum translation, and I am more and more astounded at the claim that the previous version was done by an English professor. Though, to be fair, there are a couple of points that are hard to translate because of some problems in the French original.

Yesterday we went downtown to take advantage of the sales--it seems every store in France has a total liquidation sale at the end of the year, continuing until early February. We got some clothes for Tristram--pants, a long-sleeved-long-legged onesie, four shirts (they gave us a free box of pasta with his shirts--I'm not sure why). We also got him some new shoes, in the next two sizes that he'll need. I didn't buy anything for less than 40% off all day. I'm hoping the sales will cut prices even farther before they're over, in which case we'll stock up more. I tend to resist buying clothes for him, because we've actually got a complete wardrobe for the next year or two already thanks to the generosity of friends and family with older kids. But there was some confusion in packing, since Tristram and I left CA early and Jonathan had to finish it up on his own, and we ended up with a sack of 3-year-old clothes and nothing for his current size. (He's now up to the 24 month clothes; he could squeeze into the 18-monthers for a few more weeks but it would be silly to keep buying them).

The other, smaller, splurge this week was baby-safe markers (feutres) for Tristram. He's starting to get this coloring thing, though he's still not altogether clear on which ends draws. We got him a set of super-washable pens that have (supposedly) indestructible tips as a starter set. I have grand schemes of having him draw on thank-you cards for this year, but we'll see how much he wants to cooperate with that one.