I just received an email from Schmap informing me that one of my Paris images was used for their 2007 Schmap France Guide. What is the Schmap Guide though? Well, Schmap’s series of digital travel guides integrates dynamic maps with useful background reading, suggested tours, photos from the traveling public and reviews by local correspondents (for sights and attractions, hotels, restaurants, bars, parks, theaters, galleries, museums and more) to profile 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Schmap Guides can be browsed online, or downloaded for offline trip planning and when traveling with a laptop.

It is hard to believe that I didn’t take one picture today. I just didn’t have the time or the energy. Because of getting to bed so late last night/this morning I didn’t even wake until about 12:30pm. After that I had some laundry to do and some basic errands to run. By the time I was finished with those I felt it best to just work, work, work. So that is what I did. Nothing exciting about taking pics of me working.

However, I did decide to book a flight to Edinburgh, Scotland for tomorrow. I will be staying with my cousin (on the Odom side) and seeing the lush, green lowlands. I am extremely excited.

I realized that once you are in Europe intercountry travel is quite affordable. I will be taking Easyjet and am looking forward to the whole experience. I will miss Paris while I am gone but I am sure it will wait for me. hahahahah. If you are interested in tracking me my travel info is as follows:

So my next post should be from Edinburgh most likely. Please do pray for safe travels for me and thank you for staying with me this long! Au revoir.

Day 7 in Paris has been one busy day. Busy enough that I now have two bruises on my feet; one on each foot just below the toes where apparently I put most of my weight on the downstep. I feel like such a tenderfoot today.

The day began as normal. I woke up, went to the bakery. Purchased some milk, an au lait and two croissants (one for me and one for Diego). I also stopped at the newsstand to read some recent headlines. Then I headed back to get some work done. 12pm rolled around and I realized I had better get ready because I was to be at the Carousel Louvre by 1pm for the Robert Normand prêt-à-porter fashion show. Diego went with me as my guest and we ended up taking the taxi there because we were short on time. Not the best use of 9.50 €, to be sure. We got there as the previous show was ending so we took the time to snap a few pictures of some models. You can see all the pics from yesterday by following this link.

The show lasted about 13 minutes and then we were headed outside to find a café and walk around some shoppes. Time lingered and we decided we should get back to work. We ended up doing some major bug testing on the MinuteFix app. and getting quite a few things solved. It had been a truly satisfying day. It wasn’t over though.

Diego and Gil had a dinner with an investor at 4:30pm so I stayed home and caught up on emails, Facebook, Flickr, etc. I also watched a little of a movie and read a bit. I really just enjoyed my time alone. About 6:30pm I headed out for some dinner and to just take in the neighborhood some more. I got back around 11pm or so to Diego’s spontaneous invitation to hit the Eifel Tower. So, we did. We made it there, walked around, took some photos and then made the 1am (or last, as I like to say) train home.

The day ended with much reflection on what I had seen this past week, how I have felt, what I have to look forward to, what needs to change, etc……oh, and did I mention we went back to work until 5am? Yeah, we did. What a day!

Today was a bit of a slow day. I didn’t wake up until late thanks to this new method of sleeping I found called “pulling the blanket over your head to create a dark setting.” It works like a charm. I suggest everyone try it! When I finally did wake up though I shared a little breakfast of (can you guess yet?) croissants and coffee with Diego as we had a bit of a “staff meeting” and really just plotted out how to do some housecleaning for MinuteFix and get ourselves completely organized again. The rest of the day was spent doing just that; organizing and cleaning emails and fixing pages, etc. It was very productive.

Around 5:30pm though I decided to take a break and head out for a few. I went over to Père Lachaise Cemetery to see where Jim Morrison and Edith Piaf were buried. Pretty impressive cemetery but it was, after all, just a cemetery. I walked casually through the neighborhood there stopping every so often to just kind of take it in.

When I returned I ended up meeting Diego for some Thai food for dinner and more walking around. This time we visited Montmartre and saw the famous Moulin Rouge. May I just say it was far more romantic in the movie.

This coming up week is going to be quite busy as we are preparing to invite more people to the site and do some recruiting for technicians again. I am anxious to do so though as we really need to build things up before we hit San Francisco and start asking for more funding. If you haven’t already tried us out I encourage you to visit MinuteFix and get any PC help you may need. Sessions are currently free during our beta period.

To see today’s pictures please just click on this link.

Yesterday, for the most part, was quite a treat. It began by being able to sleep in some. Now, I am not known for sleeping in but I guess when you work 19 and 20 hours a day like I have been doing lately, sleeping become quite a gift. So yesterday began right around 11am. Diego and I had already decided to make an “early” start of it by heading out at about 1pm for some shopping. We headed down the block and rented bicycles. This may sound kind of odd and for you east coast readers a bit peculiar as all we know of bike rentals is the beach cruiser (with cup holder, of course) rentals that are available down at the Va. Beach boardwalk. Not the case in Paris. These are highly accepted forms of transportation and can be found virtually everywhere.

The concept is that you put your Visa/MC into the machine (which looks like a skinny ATM), choose how long you wish to rent the bike. The bike is then randomly selected (they all look identical and are numbered to remain inventoried) and unlocked in the spot corresponding with the number the computer gives you. Your card is deducted the appropriate amount of money (1 € per hour for short term) and you get the bike.

Once we had our bikes we rode on to the Louvre where I was able to take in several integral parts of this massive museum. Home to 35,000 works of art including the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. I spent my time at the Pavilon Denon and the Grand Louvre Pyramid. Both beautiful structures and works of art on their own.

Afterwards we headed to do some shopping at a place I cannot remember the name of. The street, while having mostly french stores, was also peppered with Quicksilver, the Gap, H&M and McDonalds. Yes, I said McDonalds which means yesterday I tried the offering of a french fast food chain. The result? Tasted the exact same. The only difference is the portions are way smaller. I elegantly ate my hamburger in four bites. They also don’t put mustard on them and don’t even offer it as a condiment.

Once done at this area I insisted we go to the high end shopping on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. Home to the world’s largest Virgin Megastore as well as Chanel and Vuitton, this street offered us more dreams than anything. At the end of the avenue was, of course, the Arc de Triomphe; a most amazing structure.

From this point it was back home to work until about midnight, our time. Around 1am though we needed a break and ended up at a little bar down the block that was more 1940s speakeasy than reputable café. There were shutters over the windows allowing no light in. The bartender (gay as a seal – as the french would say…in their own amazing colloquialisms) and owner played host to about three rounds of wine and one round of digestif. I have to stop trying that stuff. It is disgusting! While there we watched a man open his shirt and invite the rest of the bar to feel of is chest hair. We saw a woman try to dance on the table only to fall and smack her head on the floor. We saw a guy get his cell phone stolen and then proceed to chase the perp. down to an alley. We watched a guy stand on the bar and fart in the face of another man. It was simply unreal. By 4am we had had enough and decided to get home and call it a day/night.

Today’s images can be found on this page.

Yesterday was far from glamorous. I was beginning to buy my own Paris hype. But yesterday brought everything back into perspective. I am truly here to work. MinuteFix is my priority in life, professionally speaking, and I am here not just to enjoy Paris but also to sit across from Diego and build this company up. So that is what we did. We worked all day and well into the night stopping only for dinner at the Centre Pompidou.

The frustration of the day came when we went live on minutefix.com. We had to switch our server over which meant our email, both blogs, the forum and our testing site were down. My company email is still not up which concerns me as it is my primary SMTP for even my anotherkindofdrew email. So I have been toggling between my Mac Mail client and my webmail. What a time killer.

Dinner was rewarding though as we ate at the Bistro Beaubourg dining on escargot and sausage. We also enjoyed a bottle of french table wine and ended with a digestif. It was all quite tasty and although the escargot was sauteed in a bit too much garlic, it was still quite good. The sausage could be compared to scrapple, I think, as it was a minced pork product encased in intestine. It was really good though with a bit of mayonnaise.

The night ended with more work at the computer and a bit of an early turn in.

To see the images from today, please visit my photo site.

Art and architecture and even fashion seem to be a an addendum to most cultures in the western world. Sometimes I feel in the states that it is considered more of a luxury than anything else. What has impressed me most about Paris is that the aforementioned three are not part of the culture; they are the culture. Each building you pass by is a form of stone work adorned with sculpture and architectural goodness. The wrought iron of the balconies is intricate and carefully crafted. Fashion is not something reserved for the runways but paraded on the streets the way I am know for parading basketball shorts, flip-flops and old tees. And art? L’art est beau! And it is everywhere. It hangs from the walls of the cafes and in the hallways of public spaces. So yesterday I decided to take full advantage of all of it. My day went something like….

• Woke up at 6:45am EST or 12:45pm here
• Walked down to the corner cafe for a coffee and an omelette (which was far too runny)
• Walked to the fabric district in Montmartre and walked aisles and aisles of bolts
• Grabbed another coffee from a street vendor (although the French do nothing “on the go”)
• Visited Sacre Cour church and the carousel out front
• Walked back to the apt. and worked until 6:30pm
• Took the metro to meet Miss J for a bit of a breather
• Hung out with him/her and met Robert Normand (a Parisian designer who is preparing for fashion week)
• Secured tickets to fashion week as Miss J’s guest (Normand show and Vuitton show)
• Came back to apt. and worked until 10pm (4pm EST)
• Went to an international party sponsored by a Facebook group at the Last Hop pub
• Drank Coors light in the bottle (too bad they didn’t have PBR)
• Walked home at 3am after a burger at some random cafe (completely rare….not yummy)
• Worked until 5am
• Finally went to bed

In case it isn’t obvious, I have not yet adjusted to the time change and since we have to be available online 24/7 I just assume it stay that way. My life has become work, break, eat, work, work, snack, work, see a bit of Paris, work and then go to bed for a few hours.

It is most fun and perhaps the most exciting part of yesterday is that www.minutefix.com is not 100% live and open to the world! Success is sweet.

To see my pictures from yesterday you can click on this link.

Perhaps the most miserable part of moving on is the packing. Several scenarios come into play. It is inevitable. You either forget something and leave it behind or you accidentally give something away that you thought you would never need again. You realize that you only need it when you don’t have it. Such is the case with my MP3 recorder. I find myself now, only hours away from a celebrity interview here in Paris, without my recorder. That is hardly what weighs most on my mind right now.

I honestly thought that by leaving Savannah physically I would also be leaving it emotionally, academically and socially. I was wrong. For instance, through email correspondence I took an assignment with The South magazine just today, interviewing and writing an article on a rather dogmatic and flamboyant personality. But upon reading the email thread between Carrie Nations, the editor, and I , I realized that no matter how hard I tried to leave it all behind, fate knows no geographic boundaries. I eagerly took the assignment and have positioned myself to take more should the situation arise.

I have also been in touch with a PR firm in Savannah that I am going to be doing a social media quarterly webinar for. Not to mention I still maintain three clients in the 9-1-2 that I speak with on a regular basis and now communicate with through my computer. It is fascinating to me sometimes how I continue to push forward while still holding on so dearly to the past.

Savannah and the magazine and the friends I made during the past three years…well, I carry them with me all the time. As the french quote by Alphonse Karr goes,

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” which simply means “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

This article came as a surprise to the magazine (filling a slot that had to be changed at the last minute) and upon learning I was in Paris they offered me the job. Of course I took it. My fate was to be in Paris and this affirms it in some way…oddly enough. C’est la vie…

NOTE: Pictures from day two can be found here.