My old professors keep showing up in Paris. It’s nice that they all want to see me, even though my advisor, who currently lives in Paris, doesn’t seem particularly interested. Last night J.D. was visiting, before heading to Angers to check up on Notre Dame's study abroad program there. The President of the Notre Dame Club of Paris had sent an email inviting everyone to meet her. He and I were the only two people who showed up. So I hung out with my prof and her 15-year-old son Nicky and the ND Club president. Poor Nicky had to sit through our conversation about the libertine novel and pornographic performances in eighteenth-century France, when he was clearly tired and just wanted to go to bed. And J.D. was so excited to talk to me about my dissertation because she is an eighteenth century specialist, too. The Club president kept saying ridiculous things about "Pollacks" in Dublin, and how he voted in Virginia by absentee ballot but he didn't know who either the Republican or the Democrat was, so he just voted for the Independent. It was kind of hilarious. But J.D. referred to me as a "distinguished alumnus" of the French department, and she kept telling me she was proud of me. So it was a good ego boost. It’s also kind of funny that she remembers me as being on top of things when I was a student of hers, when in fact she was constantly calling me out for being a slacker. Except for that one time when I wrote a paper for her and she called me at home to tell me her reaction to it. That was a little scary, because I got this voicemail that went, “Hi, Dan, this is Professor D. I just finished reading your paper and…(pause, pause, pause)…I loved it.” Also, I was her research assistant one summer and I showed up in the middle of the afternoon one day and was just like, “Yeah, I drank a lot last night so I didn’t feel like getting up this morning. But I have a key to the office, so I’ll just work until 8:00 tonight.” She and her secretary made fun of me for a long time over that one.

This event was at Corcoran’s Irish Pub, on rue Saint-André des Arts. I went up to the bar and asked for “un Gueen-NESS, s’il vous plaît,” pronouncing it like I thought a French person would, and the bartender said, “Oh, un GUIN-ness.” I can’t win.