14 Strikes and you're out

Well, since my last post, I've gotten a letter of rejection from Galway and I've gotten an email back from HPU saying that my rejection letter is in the mail. So, the search for 2007-2008 is over and it was a losing season. My batting average was 0 for 14.......

Cal State Northridge (my alma mater) - Rejection letter
Cal State Channel Islands - Rejection email
Cal State Dominguez Hills - Rejection letter
Cal Poly - Rejection Letter
Vermont - Rejection Letter
Oklahoma - Never heard back
Ventura College - Search canceled for budgetary reasons
Franklin College, Switzerland - Never heard back
Command & General Staff College - Position already filled
Dublin - Rejection letter
University South Florida - Never heard back
UC Riverside - Never heard back
Galway - Rejection letter
Hawaii Pacific - Rejection letter in the mail.

So, should I try the 2008-2009 draft or should I just take the hint and find another career.................

PFC

I saw this place near our apartment, not far from Canal St. Martin. I had to try it out! Look out KFC, here comes PFC!!!

All KFC has is some wannabe Kentucky colonel. For those who don't know, that is an honorary title - it has no military distinction. PFC meanwhile could have the petit colonel. (That as a nickname given to Napoleon by his adoring troops.) They have a freaking emperor.

Well PFC actually doesn't, but if this little family-run Pakistani restaurant hired me as a consultant, we'd turn this into an international food chain. Oh well.

Well, I tried it out this Saturday for the Berlitz picnic that we held at the nearby Buttes-Chaumont park. Not bad, the breaded-skin has a little flavor of Indian spices.

Next on the list of places to try - King Kosher, a new eatery where you can get Koscher Paninis, Pizza and Sushi!

What the hell?

When I first decided to study history, my undergraduate adviser, Stephan Bourque, asked me what subjects I was interested in. I said "Roman Empire, WWII, and Napoleonic Period." He told me that if I wanted to study the Roman Empire, I'd have to learn a bunch of dead languages and WWII was so overcrowded, so I chose the Napoleonic Period.

In the course of my research, I've had to read a bunch of handwritten letters. While it has taken me years of practice to get fairly good at it, every once and a while I come across someone's writing which is just, well illegible. Here is an example of a letter from the Balli de Suffren, the French naval commander who gave the British so much trouble in the Indian Ocean during the American Revolution.

This crap is like freaking Linear B. It was so bad that most of the letters had to be transcribed/deciphered by his contemporaries. Thankfully, these copies are attached just behind the originals. However, there is the occasional one that isn't already transcribed and I have to try and decipher it. What do you think this letter says?