Amendments and Updates:

yes, paris! it looks like dan and i will probably be going in feb now so that it can be during one of his school vacations and so he doesn't have to miss work to go. that is one big reason -- the other big reason is because yes, we could make it work for october, especially since we'd be staying with other people, BUT it would mean we'd have to have the money for it now. and frankly, i'm not sure that we do.
but i'm still excited, and i heard from my friend abi kelly who lived in france for a year that she thinks everyone should check out paris in february because it's beautiful and the skies are pristine and it's not as touristy. good idea. the louvre's free morning is much less likely to be completely swamped.
well, this weekend has been really nice, and i have to say that it was cool to have mark and stef down here. it was kinda like how when lee and alan were down here, it gave us an excuse to check out a couple of things we hadn't checked out before. and we played a couple of games (dan and i are big on games) and that was fun too. unfortunately, the weather was miserably hot and humid, AND it was pouring on and off, so going places didn't happen so much. but we still had a great time, and it was fantastic to see them.
dan and i also went to have coffee and croissants with our new landlord yesterday morning. she is a cool old lady who has so many interesting stories! i love old people -- they have so much to share. it turns out she lived in brazil for 10 years, and it always stuck with her. she was on the board of councilors who opened up hampshire college (!!!) and she was glad that i had gone there and had so much good to say about it. dan charmed the heck out of her, of course :) and she also had a great collection of british literature, which excited both dan and i. we had a great conversation about jane austen. dan and i are optimistic. she let us borrow a book :) so yeah, she's cool. the real reason we went over there to begin with was to sign some escrow forms to open up a certain kind of bank account for our security deposit. i guess it's this kind of account specially for real estate and it accrues a lot of interest, so that's GREAT. glad to hear of it. so we had to sign the papers for it, and we ended up then having a great time with margaret afterwards. it was cool.
well, i guess that's all for now. i'm having a chill day since yesterday was fun and crazy, and i think i'm going to seriously consider what i can start packing... sigh.