Huh. Both, I guess, but mostly the latter--what my character is trying to say is, "That noise is nothing you should worry about, just Pierre being clumsy again, so go back to sleep (because no prisoners are trying to escape here, nothing of the kind, and by God I hope you're too asleep to notice I'm speaking French with an English accent)."

In that case, “Qu’est-ce que c’était?” or “Qu’est-ce que c’était que ça?” would be the literal translation of “What was that?”, but I would probably put “Qu’est-ce que c’était ce bruit?” (literally “What was that noise?”).

So, for the whole exchange, I would use:

—Qu’est-ce que c’était ce bruit?

—C'est (or "Ce n'est", if you want to be more formal) rien! Pierre a juste trébuché.

The closest translation of “trébucher” is “to stumble”, but there is an implied fall in it. You could also say “Pierre a juste fait un faux pas et il est tombé.” But why would you when you can use a cool verb like trébucher?

Timelies all!

Once again I am trying to type around a cat.(who is nomming my earrings. Oh, goody)

But why would you when you can use a cool verb like trébucher?

Why indeed? Thanks!

Kitchen remodel!!! Can't wait to see the finished product, lisah!!

Root canal today. Much easier than the last one. Possibly because I popped a Vicodin in the cab on the way over. (Which caused me a little worry when she was all "I'm just going to test it to make sure we've got the right spot. Tell me when this hurts." "Ummm..")

Then I stopped at Filene's and the clerk forgot to ring up a $40 shirt. When I noticed my first thought was "Crap, what if I need to return...nevermind." If I were a better person (or thought the cashier could get jacked for this in some way) I'd take it back. I'm not.

Got home to find frantic messages flying all around about a project I'm working on. I swear, it's like the entire company is fifth graders playing telephone - people all the way up the food chain getting their panties in a twist because one guy keeps using the wrong term and sending everybody off in the wrong direction. By the time I got that settled, the project is actually in way better position than it was before I started making my fix-it calls, so that's good.

Turning out to be a whiplashy kind of day, actually.

I want to remodel the kitchen in our apartment. The cupboards and countertops all suck, and need to go.

The stove needs to go, too. We might actually make that happen in the next year or so.

Has anyone ever used a weight loss/fitness site called SparkPeople? I stumbled across it yesterday after googling for a recipe nutrition calculator and decided to register for it because it seemed to have more useful features than FitDay. So far I'm favorably impressed (though I'm avoiding the community aspect, setting my info and recipes to private, etc.), but the name is so corny and vaguely cultish that I keep expecting to be asked to accept Xenu as my personal savior or something.

I had an embarrassment of brown bananas in my freezer. So I'm now going to have 2 large loaves of banana bread. They are in the oven now. My bowls were barely big enough to mix them.

I've been getting the e-mails from SparkPeople for a while (because I signed up for them). No one has asked me to join a cult yet.

I don't use the message boards and stuff, though.

Yeah, I'm message board averse WRT that kind of thing. I know having a support group is supposed to be a huge help in losing weight, but I need to find a support group of people who can be suitably snarky and cranky enough to not make ME hit stabbity levels of crankiness.