So, um, yeah, I guess I kinda went MIA there for a little while.  I went to Berlin, which was delicious, and I want to tell you all about it.  I was staying with my lovely friends and their three year old, so most of my time was spent shooting the shit with them (which we can do copiously), drinking beer, eating yummy things, and chasing the kid around with glee.  When it came time to sit down at the old blargh in the evenings, I instead collapsed and dreamed of wooden trains and wurst. I came back to Paris on Sunday, so I don’t really have a good excuse for not posting until now. Well, there were those several huge piles of midterms that I needed to grade.  There is also something else, but I’m worried that if I blog about it, I will sound verifiably nuts.

I think I’m allergic to my apartment.

Or maybe Paris.

Or maybe I’m just allergic to not being in Berlin.

Either way, I’ve been congested since I my first lungful of French air. Last night, all the snot climaxed into this bizarre thing where it felt like my ear was filled with the kind of pressure you get on the plane or underwater or when driving up to my mom’s house in Colorado, except it was a thousand times worse. I’m such a hypochrondriac that I began imagining all kinds of crazy scenarios, including early-onset deafness or black mold growing somewhere in my apartment. I even entertained the idea that an earwig had crawled into my ear canal and taken up residency. Isn’t that why they are CALLED earwigs in the first place? An hour or so on WedMD confirmed my worst suspicions, and I called B crying and spluttering that I was going deaf and if I wasn’t going deaf I was surely going mad. To his credit, he came over and watched me writhe around like a jackass for a few hours, never once remarking that I was being kind of a huge baby about some ear pressure. I think he even at one point promised to learn to sign if I was indeed going deaf. A swell guy if I’ve ever met one. My ear finally popped, slowly and pathetically, and I collapsed from all of the self-induced stress.

I still feel woozy and my ear still feels like I’m scuba diving.  I’ll get to some restaurant reviews soon, and I’m really sorry to those people (Hi Mom and Dad!  Hi M!  Hi Londoner!) who come here everyday hoping for a post.  Right after I chew this pack of gum and yawn for a couple of hours, I’m on it.

If you want something sumptuous to read (I’d say “in the meantime,” but let’s be honest, nothing I’m going to tell you about currywurst would deserve that adjective), I would you suggest you visit my friend Brandon’s new food blog Terre et Mer.  The world of foodies can be broken into two camps:  fat kids and gastronomes.  I think it is pretty clear on which side of that fence I fall.  Brandon, on the other hand, is of the latter persuasion, and when he isn’t watching Agnès Varda films, collecting rare Armagnacs, writing about Proust, or learning his ninth foreign language, he is probably eating something so rarified and delicious that the rest of us plebs can only dream about it.  He’s also sharp, funny, and appears to have some serious chops for this oh so lofty blarging genre. Check him out.

Until soon, my patient, dearest reader. My jeans are tight from all the research I did for you. You’re welcome.