Quarter-to-six last Thursday morning found me stumbling groggily down a carpeted way in SJC when I spotted a familiar name that made me heart leap.

Porte des Lilas is the name of one of the two métro stations equidistant from my sublet in Paris this summer. It's near and dear to my heart, but it is also probably dead last on the list of stations that might connote Parisian haute couture.

On a tangent, I generally really like this series of Microsoft ads. Even if they tell me absolutely nothing about the company, they give a warm fuzzy feeling inside.