05.27.01 - 3:30 p.m.

Ben says, "Seems that all men want to get into a car and go, anywhere." Well, I want to get into a car and go anywhere too. The end of the quarter � we�re closing the book this week and then it�s nothing but presentations and cleaning up, and then I�m moving downtown and reporting for one more quarter. And then�.

Specifically, I wanna go to Paris. I realize I�ve been there three times already and that�s more often than most kids my age, but it�s like an addiction. I still haven�t seen L�Orangerie, or stepped foot inside the Madeleine, or visited Pere Lachaise (yes, Jim Morrison is buried there, but so are Proust and that great wit Oscar Wilde � I�ve already paid my respects to Great Wit #2, Baudelaire, at Montparnasse). So much has been written about Paris, but nothing does justice to actually beingthere � so much to do, to walk down the ancient white boulevards and go to the market on the Ile-St. Louis, and eat at the crazy Italian restaurant with the candelabras dripping red wax and the Leonardo DiCaprio banner hanging on the wall, and stop at my favorite metro station, the Louvre/Rue de Rivoli one that�s all beige and soothing with the Louvre artifacts set in the walls in glass cases.

During my disastrous high school trip to France, I got to rendezvous with my boyfriend in Paris for a day � we met underneath the Eiffel Tower. That had to be one of the greatest, most romantic ideas ever � ruined by the fact that my annoying host family trailed us the entire time. Damn.

But it�s a beautiful sunny day here, and I should be out in the streets of Evanston instead of thinking about rainy Paris. I�m painting my nails coquelicot (poppy) in honor of Monet.

I need a phone call � I need a plane ride � I need a sunburn � I need a raincoat.