March Madness... well not really

I've been living in an apartment outside of Paris now for over a month with a native French girl. Babysitting to get by. Not that I've been doing a stand-up job of getting by. I've been letting the disappointments of the past 6 months get to me and bog me down. I couldn't imagine playing this employment game in the states right now. A friend of mine who I've met in Paris has moved in for a while. She's from Manchester (not CT) and has her own slave labor, I mean... au pair, horror story. The arrangement is mutually beneficial, but she never remembers to turn off the light when she leaves a room. ; )
I've been getting some writing done! It's a bit weird and nice and tough on me to try to pull myself back in time to when the story takes place. It's getting clearer and clearer to me when something works and when it doesn't. Lately I've been focused on getting the pace right--the first chapter is proving difficult to slow down, because I'm being uber picky about the content I put into it so early on into the novel. I'm planning to write this as a practice book. A test to see if I can get it done in close to a year and to dissect my writing process.
I'll keep it at that for now and two happy updates. My mother and kid sister are coming to visit during the middle of March! yay! That's sweet. They aren't bringing Loco, but I'm sure they will bring some familiar happiness. We might go to Switzerland. The other cool news is the visit of a friend for the beginning of April. It's gonna be awesome to get to show my side of Paris to someone I know who I'm not related to. There are also lots of touristy things that I haven't gotten around to doing yet. The next month or so will be good excuse to get some of that out of the way and feel more accomplished in museumy, cathedrally, monumentally French culture.
p.s. I don't have a converter to charge my camera. So no pictures. I'm going through one hell of a withdrawal.