Lindsay could get used to this bumming around the house thing.

I arranged to take a day off work today because we've hired a guy from a landscaping servive to take care of some projects in our front yard. He's going to trim our HUGE Russian Olive tree (my So Cal LJ friends are all silently saying "It's about time!"), our enormous Juniper bush, and our wierd, wierd plants on the side of the house that grow somehow both horizintally and vertically, and are next to our house but are actually touching our neighbor's roof. Whoops. Oh, and he's also going to haul a bunch of wood in our backyard from when we trimmed the oleander two or three times ago.

For all that he's charging us $400, which sounds like (and is) a lot of money, but considering it would easily take the two of us working together 20 hours to do the work? I'm happy to pay the guy and wash my hands of it.

But what that really means, of course, is that I have the day to myself to pad around my house. A day to myself! And I'm not even sick. Hot diggity dog!

Can any French speakers help Lindsay out?

I'm trying to send an email to our Paris hotel telling them that we'll be arriving in the evening and need a late check in. I studied Russian and Spanish, but French leaves me feeling rather like an idiot. I translated what I wanted to say from http://babelfish.altavista.com and you never can tell with that site if the translation is correct...

Does this make sense?

Bonjour,

Mes compagnons de voyage et moi arriverons à votre hôtel 5 novembre. Nous arriverons à l'hôtel a 20 heure. Veuillez assurer nos salles sont tenus pour nous. Les noms sur nos réservations sont:

[name 1]
[name 2]

Si vous avez des questions, repondez à moi s'il vous plait. Merci beaucoup.

Any sugestions would be appreciated. Merci. ;)

ETA: I took up Amy's suggestion from the comments. Because Amy? Is wonderful.