Don't Wake Me I Plan On Sleeping In

Some lessons learned in one morning early afternoon:

• After braising beets and meats the night before, don't leave the living room window open to air the place out overnight. Unless you enjoy walking into a meat locker when you wake up.


• Scrubbing melted cheese out of a pot is very difficult once it's hardened by the morning day after.


• Don't leave that 3/4 baguette sitting on the counter. What was once food is now an excellent billy club. An excellent, inedible billy club.


• Staying up past 4:30am listening to a UCLA basketball game may be the ultimate show of your Bruin pride, but it will make you miss the morning market on a rare winter day when it's not raining.


• The USC Trojans still suck.

Ok, so the last one isn't a lesson learned - it's a historical truth. But I ruined what could've been a glorious Saturday morning by overindulging the night before. Not with the drink, but with cooking a decadent meal and then staying huddled over my laptop for hours, glued to a barely acceptable facsimile of American college basketball 'til nearly dawn.

And this isn't the first time. When I was here in January, I spent a Saturday night hunkered down in front of my laptop. And a couple of Final Fours ago, I was at a bar in London 'til well after sunrise watching my team, my travel companions all falling asleep around me.

For this year, I've tracked down the ONE bar in Paris that shows March Madness. So starting next week, I'll probably be living at said bar. Please direct all inquiries to: The M--- wait, I'm not revealing where it is. Not until I can scope out whether I can get a seat to comfortably watch the games, or fight through a crowd of frat boys and exchange students who act like... frat boys and exchange students.