I had a very nice weekend, a lot of reading. I felt as though I shoveled the walk 5 times but really that’s the only physical exercise I had.

I’ve been very good about reading so far this year. The key to increasing your reading is to stop watching TV and the key to cutting down your TV viewing is to get rid of cable. The book I began this weekend was a biography on the French writer Flaubert by Henri Troyat. The book is excellent and very detailed and while Flaubert is interesting what is more exciting is Henri Troyat- this guy is great. I read several of his biographies in the past and had forgotten how compelling he makes the story. The biographies that I’ve read by him are Chekhov, Tolstoy, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great I guess the translator ought to be given kudos as well. My favorite, if I remember correctly, was Chekhov, but they are all worthwhile.

I received some great advice from Self Taught Artist and Frog with a Blog (look at me linking to sites 'n shit) regarding the year-long rental in Paris. As you may recall, after doing the math I found it would cost us $40,000 to rent the apartment we were looking at. K- and I need to investigate this a little further. That is too much money that is basically pissed away. At $40,000 dollars we are looking at a pretty healthy down payment on buying a place in Paris. Of course, I suspect they French banks aren’t interested in lending mortgage money to an unemployed couple. Banks are funny like that.