Hello les loulous ♥.
Désolée de cette absence de début de vacances, mais comme certains le savent j'étais donc à Paris, notamment pour le concert de Lady Gaga. & Je peux dire que je me suis éclater, franchement. Le show était extraordinaire, & la première partie avec les Semi Precious Weapons juste inoubliable, tout comme la séance de dédicace de ces derniers après le concert. Ceux qui me suivent sur mon FB personnel le savent déjà, mais je m'en fiche, je le redis, JUSTIN M'A FAIT LA BISE, M'A REGARDE DANS LES YEUX & M'A DIT QUE J'ÉTAIS BELLE. Voilà, le moment hystérico-niais de cet article est passé ; ça, c'est fait.
Hello sweethearts ♥.
I'm so sorry for the bad updates since last week, but as some of you known I went to Paris, especilly for Lady Gaga's show. & I can say that I lived one of the night of my life, seriously. She rocks, & her concert was amazing, as the Semi Precious Weapons, the band who make the first part of the concert. They did a CD signing at the end of the show, & it was unbelievable. JUSTIN KISSED ME, LOOKED ME IN THE EYES & TOLD ME I WAS BEAUTIFUL. Well, ok, this was the hysteric moment of this article ; done.
Pour cet article, donc, des photos de Paris, mais aussi ... Des photos de mon Bal de fin d'année, avec ma robe chérie d'amour :D.
Now, some photos of my Paris trip & also ... The photos of my prom with my lovely dress :D.
Let's go ?
A chocolate muffin w/ a Mocha praliné for my BF Anna !
A part of cookie & cream cake w/ a Mocha praliné for me !
See the snow in Paris was awesome.
Anna, opening the X-Mas presents I offered her.
The beautiful merry-go-roud at Paris-Bercy, near Lady Gaga's concert place.
The autographs of the members of Semi Precious Weapons ♥♥♥.
J'aurais pu vous faire un street style sur les Champs Elysées, mais j'ai eu trop la flemme, désolée x').
J'ai pu aller y voir le nouveau H&M ( ouais, bon, ok, " nouveau " depuis Octobre quoi, lol ), & pour info' la collection Lanvin est toujours disponible, il reste pleins de robes encore ;').
& Maintenant, les photos du Bal & ma tenue ^_^.
& Now, the photos of the prom & my outfit ^_^.
Dress : NafNaf, shoes : VetAffaires, Necklace : Bijoux Brigitte.
Ma robe est juste, sdklsjdkldjsqlkjq. Je l'aime, je l'aime, je l'aime.
& Comme pour le Bal de l'année dernière, j'ai trouvée ma précieuse chez Naf Naf !
Mon collant rend un peu bizarre sur les photos, à cause du flash, normalement ils sont couleur chair. & J'ai l'impression d'être un peu petite, aussi. Alors que ces talons sont les plus grands que j'ai, " des chaussures de Lady Gaga " comme disent mes amis x'). Bref, eux aussi je les adore.
My dress is just, sqdkjsqdklsjkdljq. I love her, I love her, I love her.
I found my precious at NafNaf ( like for the last prom, ahah ).
My tights look weird because of the flash, they're normally the same colour of my skin. & I feel like I'm a little bit small on those pics, although I'm wearing my highest shoes ( " Lady Gaga's shoes " as my friends say, LOL ). Well, I love those shoes so much too.
& VOILI-VOILOU, c'est tout pour aujourd'hui !
J'essaie de vous faire une petite vidéo rapidement, que vous pourrez retrouvez sur ma chaîne You Tube ;'D. ( D'ailleurs, merci aux abonnées, vous êtes des amours ! ).
Demain soir c'est le Réveillon de Noël, & j'espère que tout le monde y sera heureux. Une pensée pour ceux qui n'ont malheureusement pas la chance de fêter ce réveillon, j'ai en tête notamment tous les sans-abris qui passeront un Noël de plus dans le froid ...
& THAT'S IT, that's all for today !
I try to do a little video as soon as I can, you could find it on my You Tube channel ;'D. ( & So much thanks to my dear followers ! ).
Tomorrow will be Christmas eve, so I hope you guys we'll have fun & love.
A thought to all the people who unfortunately won't celebrate that X-Mas eve, I think about all those homeless persons who'll spend another W-Mas outside on the cold ...
and northern Africa. [...] // Teasels are easily identified with their prickly stem and leaves, and the inflorescence of purple, dark pink or lavender flowers that form a head on the end of the stem(s). The inflorescence is ovoid, 4-10 cm long and 3-5 cm broad, with a basal whorl of spiny bracts. The first flowers begin opening in a belt around the middle of the spherical or oval flowerhead, and then open sequentially toward the top and bottom, forming two narrow belts as the flowering progresses. The dried head persists afterwards, with the small (4-6 mm) seeds maturing in mid autumn. // The seeds are an important winter food resource for some birds, notably the European Goldfinch; teasels are often grown in gardens and encouraged on some nature reserves to attract them. // Teasel is also considered an invasive species in the United States. It is known to form a monoculture, capable of crowding out all native plant species, and therefore is discouraged and/or eliminated within restored open lands and other conservation areas. (wikipedia)
(CARTMAN BEFORE THE HORSE is great in that I love CARTMAN, but not so great in that CART BEFORE THE HORSE is not a phrase—PUT(TING) THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE is). The rest of the fill was all over the map—sometimes seemingly inventive (THE POKY? USS WASP!?) (60D: Stir + 73A: W.W. II carrier praised by Churchill for its ability to "sting twice"), and other times the opposite of that, i.e. too readily accepted from some horrible autofill monster. I may have seen TEASEL(S) once before in my life, but I really don't like it, esp. in the plural. EPACT was worse (56A: Difference in days between the lunar and solar year), and UKASE worser (102D: Decree) (though I understand that it's old skool crosswordese and so not Entirely from outer space for many solvers). I realize that someone whose own puzzle featured IAT has no business complaining about OFFAT, but since I was not responsible for IAT, I'm complaining anyway. Actually, I'd let that go if I didn't have to deal with the A family: AMUST, ACARE, and ANOTE. It's all ABIT much. Did I leave one out? Maybe, but I don't feel like hunting. HUS on first? Who knows? (84D: Czech martyr Jan) Your guess is as good as mine. All I know is I groaned more than I wowed. Not a terrible puzzle by any means, but not one I'll be fondly remembering either. I mean ... *two* particles?? (both of them the equivalent of constructor "Eject" buttons) (MESON and CATION) (65D: Quark/antiquark particle + 25D: Charged particle). No thanks.
23A: Loving comment from an astronaut's wife? ("I NEED MY SPACEMAN")
36A: Santa ___ (MONICA MOUNTAINS) — ... whereas I've never heard anyone call these MONICA MOUNTAINS, and furthermore I never think about SANTA MONICA as anything but the city (where Best Friend 1 lives), or maybe the BOULEVARD (it fits!) so ... weird and weird so far.
Kind of an odd fake Christmas puzzle. Theme answers don't produce much joy. Fill is fine but unremarkable. Cluing is interestingly much more like Stan Newman's "Newsday" cluing than it is like the typical NYT puzzle. That is, it relies more on short (often one-word) and vague cluing for its toughness than the typical Shortzian creation. I'm thinking of [Point] and [Point] and [Tap] and [Zip] and [Spring] and such. [Go around] isn't ORBIT, it's AVOID. [Stir up] isn't AGITATE (as it should be), it's ANIMATE and the cross, [Imply], isn't GET AT (as it should be), it's AIM AT. That said, it wasn't all that hard, and there's hardly an obscurity in sight, so what toughness there was was welcome. [Put away] — is that about eating, or stowing, or ... nope. It's killing (DO IN). In the end, I liked this puzzle fine, though the theme left me cold.
44A: Happy cohort? (SNEEZY) — transparent, but I still liked the clue. That's the playfulness I like / expect in my late-weekers. (and it's a "Snow White" reference, in case somehow that's not yet abundantly clear)
Hot on the heels of the GHOTI / "Fish" puzzle, we get another puzzle based on the vagaries of the English language and its pronunciation. When I first finished, I did not get the "silent" part of the puzzle — I thought the fact that NIGHT was "hiding" in the circles (quietly?) was the feature signified by the word SILENT. That wrong conclusion lasted only a few seconds, as I realized it made no sense, and the circles didn't form a Christmasy shape that I recognized, so some quality of the letters themselves must be important (I reasoned) and bingo—theme solved. Helped (somehow) that NIGHT shares 4 out of 5 letters with GHOTI. The fact that the silent letters all appear in Christmas-related answers (including the date-specific CHRISTMAS EVE) is a nice touch. The puzzle felt a little slight for a Friday (possibly because of all the short, basic answers occasioned by the strange, black-square-heavy grid design), but there are very few weak spots and the theme is tight and clever. Thumbs up.
CRU (6D: Word on a vin bottle). Couldn't remember my lesser trigonometrical functions (i.e. ARCTAN, 4D: Inverse trig function), so had to move along and found GEHRIG (8D: The Iron Horse of baseball). From there I was able to get into the NE and once CHURCH HYMNS was in, I caught fire. The only real thorny parts were all part of that NW corridor that runs the length of MAURITANIA (2D: Its capital is Nouakchott) and MUSIC STAND (3D: Score keeper?). Never heard of the USAC (39D: Car-racing org.), so needed every cross there. Terrible trouble seeing MT. SINAI (didn't expect a mountain to have "steps") (29A: It has 3,750 "steps of penitence"). OH I and HEN were very well hidden (21D: "___ don't know" + 1D: Game ___), and it took me a while to give up on YES as the answer to 1A: Not an ideal answer to "Do these jeans make me look fat?" ("HMM...").
