Finally I can announce the news!

I've been dancing in anticipation since Sunday when I find out, but Olwynn had asked me to wait on saying anything here until the official announcement was made.

I'm going to be the next Pelican Queen of Arms!! (Pelican makes decisions on all name submissions in the SCA.) *happy dance* I've wanted to be Pelican ever since I became an external commenter around 8 years ago. I never thought it would be possible that this dream would come true so soon.

So there's the bird-related news I promised in an earlier post. :)

not quite so successful a day

Joel went to bed with a headache last night and was still feeling a bit low this morning so we had a lazy morning and didn't get out of the house until after noon. Today's goal we failed to reach pretty miserably. I want a pair of boots, nice black calf-high leather boots with a moderate heal. I've wanted a pair for 5 years or so now, and figured where else to go shopping for them but in Paris, fashion capital of the world? The problem is, I've managed to reach adulthood having failed to acquire certain definitive female characteristics, such as knowing where to shop for things like this. Isn't this something that women are just supposed to know? "I want boots of type X; I should shop in stores of type Y". Well, whether you're born with it or acquire it, it's not a skill or sense that I have. Wikipedia informed me that the place to shop in Paris is the Champs-Elysee, so we took the metro out there, started at one end, walked down to the other, and up the other side. Guess how many pairs of shoes I found that I considered trying on? Two. Guess how many pairs of shoes I actually tried on? One (they were out of my size in the other kind). Guess how many pairs of shoes I bought? None. The thing is, and one of the reasons why I haven't had luck elsewhere and why I really hoped Paris would be my answer, is that I have small calves, and I really want a pair of boots and doesn't have an inch gap all the way around the top. I want them fitted! I'm beginning to think I need to find a cobbler and get them tailor made, since clearly I don't know the right places to shop for ready-made ones.

Anyway, that was pretty demoralizing, and we came back to the apartment mid-afternoon. Joel dig some web-hunting and found out that Rue Meslay is pretty much lined up and down with wholesale shoe sellers, and that that is where you should go to go shoe-shopping. By the time we figured this out it was getting late enough that we figured it wouldn't be worth going today because the stores would mostly be closed, so we headed out to Sacre Coeur instead. Half the fun of Sacre Coeur was going up the funicular. (I got to go up a funicular! Way cool.) The church itself was also beautiful, but it was, unfortunately, the only place we've been so far that had gorgeous heraldic representations (for the major cities in France) and the only one so far that doesn't allow photography! Just my luck. But we could take pictures outside on the hill, of course, and from there we were able to find the dome of Invalides, Notre-Dame, the steeple of Sainte Chapelle, and what we believe is the steeple of Notre Dame de la Croix, the church a few blocks from Joel's place. It's pretty amazing what you can pick out from a height, given how small, comparatively, some of the buildings are.

On our way back we stopped at Rue Meslay to confirm that it was worth coming back to tomorrow, so hopefully tomorrow I will have some shoe-shopping success to validate my worth as a member of the female sex! :)

We heated up the rest of our roti chicken for dinner, and Joel sauted a red pepper with some fleur de sel, very yummy.