And by the way, AMERICAblog will be temporarily moving its global empire (that'd be my laptop computer) to Paris for most of August

You may have noticed that Chris in Paris has been gone for a few days. That's because he and his lovely wife are on vacation for the next 3+ weeks (ah, the French). They needed a cat-sitter for their wonderful two kitties (who bear somewhat of a resemblance to Atrios cat-children), so I volunteered.

I'll continue blogging from their apartment, and writing for RADAR, and trying to scrape up more clients, etc. etc. etc., but as DC is just so dead in August (the town pretty much empties out and politics grinds to a stand still, and it's hotter than hell), it seemed like a great opportunity, so I'm taking it.

I'll still have wi-fi access in Chris' apartment, so nothing much should change from your end, other than you'll probably get more than a few Paris Photo-blogging posts. And, of course, as is my tradition, as soon as I leave all hell will probably break loose either here at home or in the country I'm visiting.

Seriously, I'm like the typhoid Mary of travel disasters. I was in the Aleutian Islands during the Russian coup (which was a real bitch since, at the time, I was a foreign policy adviser to a US Senator and, well, there's not a lot of news in the Aleutian Islands (pretty, though)), I was in Chicago for Christmas when Romania and other governments were overthrown in 1989 or so (and didn't have CNN, so I was briefing the boss from what I read in the Chicago Trib!), went to Indonesia right before the terrorist attacks a few years back, to Cote d'Ivoire right before its coup, to Morocco several years back right before its terrorist attacks, to London ON THE DAY of its recent terrorist attacks, and on and on and on - you get the picture.

The lesson here? If you really hate someone, buy me a ticket to their homeland.

Anyway, I'm very excited. I do love France, and it's not very often you get an opportunity to visit another country for an extended period of time at a pretty low cost (my plane ticket was pretty much the only cost, since I can work from there, have the apartment for free, etc). So I consider myself lucky. I'm also looking forward to seeing Chris' adorable cats Nasdaq and Sushi - who were kind of bitchy at first, but now like me - and rest assured there will be some Friday Cat-blogging in all of your future.

Anyway, I don't leave until Sunday evening, so I'll be posting tomorrow. And if I can get my Vonage phone to work in Paris, that will be way cool (since now I have my cell phone unlocked too!)

A bientot :-)

JOHN