Zombie Apocalypse Prep and My Last Ballet Class

Sofia's been sleeping a lot.  I don't blame her, because she is an odd sleeper anyway and if you add jet-lag to that, she's a goner.  We did get out for a lovely walk around Montmartre, though, which is my favorite place in Paris.  We went into the Sacre Coeur basilica, which is absolutely breathtaking, in my opinion.  Just epic.  An art nouveau take on medieval architecture.  Mosaics with gold pieces all over the walls, twinkling behind the candelabras (or they would be, if they lit candles where they were intended to be), and twining on the railings.  And the dome in the middle is lofty and bright and held up by four angels with beautiful wings, and the sun shines in through a million stained-glass windows and makes rainbows on the pure white stone..  I really like this place.

the outside is so gorgeous, too.  by Stephan Edelbroich.

from this guy's blog.

As we were walking through, Sofia's main observation about the place was not that she liked it, per se, but that this would be her ideal location in the event of a zombie apocalypse.  It's too bad we would have to board up the windows, she said.  That would be too bad.  I think we should make at least one window-covering maneuverable, so that we can open it on zombie-clear days and bask in the colored light.

I would have to say, however, that while Sacre Coeur in Paris is quite a picture-perfect place for post-apocalyptic headquarters, it can only be my second choice.  When it comes to apocalypse refuges, I've always imagined myself holing up in the Slater Memorial Museum in Norwich, CT.  I used to work there.  It was my prime motivation to get an MA in Museum Studies.  I know the place inside and out since I've dug into every hidden corner in my inventories and object searches (oh, for the days when I was an explorer!).  The old creaky floors, the thick wooden beams that vault the ceiling, the little library loft, the deliciously dusty attic, the stained-glass windows behind the statue of Moses*... I just love that place.  One summer, I started daydreaming on a regular basis about living there with a small clan of survivors after some horrific world catastrophe.  Where would we sleep, would the windows still be intact, which of the artifacts would be looted already and how could we prevent further looting while caring for the remaining objects?  I think I even started writing down bits of a short story once..

i love this picture!  perfect for apocalypse pondering!  thanks Richard Arsenault for making it!

this is a vintage postcard.  the inside looks a bit different now, but only a bit.  isn't the architecture wonderful?

Funny, both buildings were built around the same time.

Change of subject:  my last ballet class was tonight.  I was worried that my hair (which is now red and still retains quite a bit of dye, since we only dyed it yesterday) would leak red down my face when I sweat.  You should've seen what I looked like last year with freshly dyed hair in a rainstorm.  As a precaution I wore a black shirt so that I could mop off my face and not worry about staining it red.  My fingertips were quite pink, though, by the end of class.
I told Frederic Lazzarelli, by friendly local ballet instructor, that this was my very last class, and he kissed my cheeks in the French manner and said goodbye.  And when I said thanks again at the end of class, he blew me a kiss.  It was good.

That is all.  The end.

*I actually saw a replica of the Moses statue on a grave in the Montmartre Cemetery.  Surprised me to see such a familiar face in that place.  He certainly is a weird thing to put over your dead body.