So, what’s been going on, you ask?

Lots of things and nothing, if that makes any sense. My days are filled up with inconsequentials, for the most part.  So this entry will be filled with much the same thing.  Although I don’t have a great deal of time, thanks to a non-inconsequential thing that happened just last night.

I saved a kitten.  She wasn’t in a fight or anything like that.  No, rather, I saved her from freezing to death.  She is tiny, probably not more than two or three months old, and she had been crying in a tiny, locked courtyard of a church just across the street from where I live.  She had been there for at least three nights, and although I had slid some food/milk under the four-inch slot at the bottom of the door to the courtyard, I knew that if she didn’t get inside soon, she would freeze. (It has been 0°C/32°F for the last few nights.) So I spent an hour yesterday evening being drizzled on and freezing myself, crouched at the door to the courtyard, trying to persuade her to come within nabbing distance. I finally succeeded, took her back to my room (where she promptly started going to the bathroom all over the place - woo ha), and spent the rest of the evening trying to sort things out.  I’m going to call the local humane society on Monday morning, but until then, I had to find her a litter box of sorts and get some litter (kindly donated by a woman who lives nearby and has a cat of her own).  Then it turns out that she yowls, so I had to move her into the shower/washing machine room down the hall.  As I type this, she’s in there, with my laptop’s music program playing to keep her company - she doesn’t yowl if she hears sounds and human voices.  I thought that Enya would be nice and soothing. ::grin::

So, yeah, I have to get back to my temporary kitten.  But first let me regale you with a bit of advice about walking around Laon, should you ever come to visit.  Half of Laon, the old, interesting, historic part, is on a plateau about 200 m about the plain (I think that’s the right height).  There are a number of ways to get from top to bottom and back again - the cable car (the POMA), driving, or walking along one of the many chemins, sentes or escaliers. These last are very useful, usually get you where you’re going with a minimum of fuss, and are almost always more direct than the POMA-to-bus route. However... (My, I seem to be on an italics-kick, don’t I?)… There are two of these routes that I will avoid at almost all costs, and that I would advise you to treat with the same degree of plague-outbreak-esque caution.  These are the Sente de Morlot and the Ruelle de l’Arbalete.  The second one is, for me, relatively easy to avoid, as it doesn’t lead anywhere that I usually need to go.  It goes straight down an incline that one of the most historic streets in the city - the Rampe d’Ardon - takes four or five meandering switchbacks to climb.  Pretty steep.  The first, however, has the unfortunate (for me) position of being the most direct path to the Walmart-like behemoth here in town, Carrefour.  I frequently need to go to Carrefour for things like, oh, food, clothes… things like that. 

Unfortunately, I detest the Sente de Morlot passionately.  Not only is it as steep as the other, but it is not paved, so it turns into a mudpit when it rains (which is frequently).  Imagine, if you will: you are standing at the top of this particular path, knowing that the food that you so desperately need is at the bottom.  You can’t actually SEE the bottom from here, because this path twists back and forth while it plummets.  You step onto the first “stair” - a wooden block that shores up a patch of dirt/muck.  As you walk down the stairs, you relax some, thinking that this, while admittedly precipitous, isn’t so bad.  (Ignoring that nagging voice in the back of your head that reminds you that you have to climb back UP this later, and that you’ve grown awfully fond of those pains au chocolat as of late...) Then you reach a point where the stairs stop, and gaze in dismay at the rutted, muddy path ahead of you, which is sprinkled liberally with dead, slimy leaves, which in turn almost hide the large rocks that are also strewn around. You take one step, then another, and then you lose control.  You race down the slope at a speed that would make Michael Johnson shudder, fighting to at least LIFT your feet and not just slide along on leaf-boats.  There is the occasional flat spot, but unfortunately, at the speed at which you are unwillingly flung, these patches more threaten to send you head-over-heels entirely than to slow your speed any.  Finally, you shoot out of the bottom of the “walkway,” directly into the path of the car which is backing out of the driveway which crosses the foot of the path.

And don’t get me started about going back up again…

::grin:: So my advice is to avoid those two pathways entirely.  I usually do.  I will go a further quarter of the way around the circumference of the Ville Haute rather than use them.  Other than these two, however, the various pathways between the upper and lower towns are very nice, and provide a brief illusion that you are walking through the middle of nowhere. Birds sing from the trees, the air has that richness that comes from a mixture of living and rotting foliage, and you can *almost* ignore the sounds of the cars that are just ahead.  They are wonderful.

So, I’m headed off to Madrid the day after tomorrow.  I hope that the trip will go well, and I will write up the details when I return. Have a good week, everyone!