On family vacations when Mark and I were children, and maybe even particularly when we were teenagers, our father was very concerned with punctuality, and he sometimes got pretty upset when we were running late in the morning (which, in fairness, was often). So this morning, when Mark and I were sitting in the lobby of our hotel at 8:37 and wondering why Mom & Dad hadn't yet arrived for breakfast, it was absolutely unprecedented. But we still gave them until 8:45, as they're getting older and deserve a little leeway. When I called their room, they had just woken up - apparently Dad set their alarm for 7:30 in the evening. Whoops! Mark and I enjoyed a quiet breakfast together, during which I predicted they would be fed and ready to go at 10:15. We returned to our room to hang out, and they called, fed and ready to go, at 10:17. Particularly on the first night after the redeye, it would have been nice to have that extra hour or so of sleep, but I won't hold it against them.

First up was a visit to the Louvre. That the Louvre is larger than any other museum you've ever seen, so absurdly large that you won't believe the scale of it, is the kind of statement around which the human brain has difficulty getting itself in the same way it does with "The Grand Canyon is a mile-wide, mile-deep chasm in the desert and you simply won't believe the scale of it," until you see it right in front of you. We split up and spent a decent chunk of Wednesday at the Louvre, and I moved pretty quickly - yet I barely saw 10% of the collection. I would need a week to see everything, and two weeks to do it properly. I did see "Winged Victory" and "Joconde" (Mona Lisa) though, two of the pieces I'd have been annoyed to miss; I also saw most of the German, Flemish, and Dutch paintings and a tiny portion of the enormous, ego-sapping, manhood-robbing avalanche of French paintings. Every few rooms, there would be a student sitting at his or her own canvas, attempting to duplicate (or pay homage to) one of the masterworks on the wall; I took photos where it was allowed.

After a small, mediocre lunch in one of the Louvre's cafes, we went to Les Jardin de Palais Royal, the Academie de Musique (the old opera house), a pillar that Napoleon had stolen and/or built to honor himself, a park called Les Tuilleries, and then after a break for drinks at a cafe in the park, a far smaller museum called L'Orangerie, where we saw some interesting works. Then, a stop at Iglese Madeleine (the Church of Mary Magdelene), and back to the hotel by way of a rather tony street full of shops and boutiques.

Tonight we walked to dinner nearby at Tante Louise (literally, "Aunt Louise"), where we had another lovely bottle of red wine (this one a Pessac-Leognan from Chateau de Rochemorin). I had a pan-fried foie gras and spinach appetizer that was really wonderful, and a roast duck breast entree that was very good, followed by a dessert similar to (but not quite as good as) last night's - rhubarb ravioli with mascarpone ice cream in raspberry juice. After dinner we thought to walk a few blocks out to a very nice part of town we'd passed earlier today to watch the city as it lights up, but we misjudged the timing and would have had to wait another hour to hour and a half before it got dark enough (the sun sets really late in Paris!). So then we took a scenic route home, and my feet were killing me.

Even before dinner, Mark's pedometer claimed that we've walked about 19 miles since arriving in Paris early yesterday morning, and if I doubt its accuracy, I do not doubt the degree of magnitude. We've walked an awful lot, and it's been quite nice out - so Mark and I have both gotten some sunburn. His seems a little worse right now, while I think I've just built up a good base on what I retained from the lacrosse game in Princeton on Saturday. But I will probably try a little harder to remember to put on some sunscreen tomorrow, when it's supposed to be mostly sunny and 81 (today's high was 77). Either way, it'd be kind of funny if I showed up in Ithaca after five days in Florida a slightly more interesting shade of alabaster, yet I came back to New York City from France with a deep beach-type tan. [Ed. note: I came back with a slight tan; too much rain during the second week to sustain any really good color.]

After we returned to the hotel and made our plans for the morning (8:30am for real, this time), I decamped from the room with my laptop to the hotel bar and did some writing over Scotch for a couple of hours as British businessmen got their drink on.

Late afternoon yesterday, I drove the seven miles down the island portion of New Smyrna Beach from my hotel to JB's Fishcamp, which had been recommended to me by everybody I spoke to who knows anything about New Smyrna Beach. The place was filled with people visiting the area for Bike Week - which is centered on Daytona Beach, about 15 miles to the north, but also gets a lot of spillover into NSB. I waited a short while for an outdoor table, and the wait was well worth it.

I sat outside watching the sun sink toward the horizon, having a drink, working on my novel, and listening to a live band play Allman Brothers Band, Molly Hatchet, and other southern blues/rock. One biker couple danced for a few minutes, to everybody's delight, and the crowd was very upbeat and friendly. The half pound of cold, spiced shrimp was fantastic. The grilled grouper was merely good, but the crabmeat with which it was stuffed was sublime. I stayed for the band's second set and another drink after darkness fell, then I came back to my hotel and settled in for the night. I'm planning to go back to JB's for lunch with Beth tomorrow, if not also dinner tonight.

If I had the money right now, I might just buy a house here. It's that beautiful.

...I'm taking a vacation. A short one, but one I need very badly. The last time I took a week or so just to go somewhere nice and relax was right after the Bar exam, when I went with friends to the coast of Maine, and I don't really count that, because it was urgent decompression. Prior to that, I'd spent a week in Florida with Jessica, followed by a few days in Atlanta with her family, but the weather had been pretty cold. I've been saying for a while now that I could really use a few uninterrupted days of warm, sunny weather on a quiet beach somewhere, and I've finally managed to schedule it.

After my cousin's wedding in Atlanta the weekend of March 3, I'm going to fly directly from there to Orlando. I'll stay with friends the first night, then I'll drive the short hop to New Smyrna Beach, about 15 miles north of Daytona, where I hope to enjoy four days and nights of uninterrupted warm, sunny weather on a quiet beach, plus some good writing time for my novel. Then I'll fly directly back to Laguardia - where, if the Cornell men's hockey team has secured a bye for the previous weekend, and if the flight lands relatively on time, I will immediately proceed to Ithaca for a weekend of ECACHL quarterfinals. :-D

That'll leave me unavailable for contract work that week, but hey, ya gotta break a few eggs, y'know what I mean?

On Sunday evening, my friend Farrah and I hit B.B. King's for dinner and some live music. We're both fans of the jazzy, too-intelligent-for-their-own-good, classic rock band Steely Dan, so when I learned that tribute band Stealin' Dan was playing in town, I immediately asked Farrah to join me.

I'd actually learned of Stealin' Dan four and a half years ago, when I went to an open call to audition to be the matinee keyboardist for the Billy Joel Broadway dance musical "Movin' Out." I met some very interesting people there, including Stealin' Dan's musical director, keyboardist, and slightly-lower-tenor vocalist Mark Bonder. He invited me to catch a show whenever I was able. Unfortunately, they mostly play on Long Island, and not all that often, so it took the entire four and a half years before I actually saw them.

Farrah and I also had another purpose for getting together. A couple of years ago, we had come up with what we thought was a pretty good idea for a weekly television series. But we'd never bothered to write a pilot or even a thumbnail sketch treatment. Now, she's been working with some people in television, so we thought we might as well pick up where we left off. We were just getting started on ordering our stiff drinks and jotting down notes when someone came over to our table.

"Hi, I'm Carrie," she said. "My friend and I are sitting over there and we have a proposal for you." Uh oh, I thought, looking at Farrah. Were they going to offer us a million dollars to swap partners for sex or something? And if so, could we take it in small bills? No, it just turns out that B.B. King's won't let you have a cushy booth with every seat more or less facing the stage unless you have at least four people, so we all pretended to be friends, while Farrah and I tipped out the waiter who'd already taken our order, and we all took a booth. Carrie and Bob were from Iowa, and very much enjoying their visit to New York City, other than the fact that our new waitress seemed completely incapable of grasping the (admittedly complex and heady) concept of a "Dewars and water."

Anyway, Farrah and I got to work, and over the course of the evening I think we did a good job of fleshing out the concept, drawing characters, and even putting forth a few "why not?" casting ideas. Hopefully we'll get around to a pilot script soon, though November promises to be a very busy month for both of us.

In the meantime, Stealin' Dan performed a massive, two-hour set full of magnificent Steely Dan music. Now, you can denigrate the tribute band for needing thirteen musicians to do the work that Steely Dan gets away with from only, oh, eleven or so - but I thought it worked great, and Mark and his slightly-higher-tenor vocalist counterpart did a fabulous job with the singing.

The Set List:

• Bodhisattva
  
• Deacon Blues
  
• My Old School
  
• Time Out of Mind
  
• Josie
  
• Rikki Don't Lose That Number
  
• Dr. Wu
  
• Aja
  
• Haitian Divorce
  
• Green Flower Street (solo Donald Fagen)
  
• I Got the News
  
• Dirty Work
  
• Kid Charlemagne
  
• FM
  
• Parker's Band
  
• Hey, Nineteen
  
• Peg
  
• Black Friday
  
• Don't Take Me Alive (encore)

I was a little surprised they didn't do "Reelin' in the Years," and I would have loved to hear "Do It Again," but they commented a few times during the set that it was rare for them to do this many "hits" in the first place. I grabbed Mark after the show and reintroduced myself, and he confirmed that they're pretty sick of the top few requested songs, so we were lucky to get the "hits" that we did. But he obviously has a great time no matter what they play, which is nice. It's really a tight unit, and if you get the chance to see them, I recommend it.

I'll let you know when Farrah and I have struck it rich with our single-camera drama about a thirteen-piece touring Steely Dan tribute band.