Here we are in the middle of France on a rainy Thursday. I fooled around with Google Maps making a map of our exact whereabouts in the countryside of France. Here's my current result: (Use arrow keys to move right to France...where we are)
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Not very exciting looking or indicative of where this is relative to things that might be exciting, like Paris (200 Miles North), Limoges (60 miles South), Lake Geneva (120 miles East) and the
Atlantic Ocean beaches (90 Miles West). You can pan out with the slider gizmo to see the rest of France pretty much and place us somewhere in the middle to get an idea of our location. Use the zoom in/out tool to see Lignieres more closely. In the meantime I'll fool around with it a bit more and see what I can do.
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About 3pm the front door bell rang. I panicked when I couldn't open the door so went to the hallway and peered thru the window and there stood a young man in a all blue uniform. At first I thought "oh he's from the fire dept come to collect AGAIN the fee for the hornet removal last summer", Kelly was napping upstairs so I was left to my own devices, I signaled with hand signals I needed a minute to get the keys. I ran around like a chicken with it's head cut off and found my keys on the table next to the door. I opened the door to see a Veolia Eau man with his tablet PC standing there, he introduced himself as Jacque XXXXXX YYYYY and told me in a very quick French that he was there to examine our pipes. Well not to be undone by this I welcomed him in and he quickly stated that he had to determine where our drain system was. This was done by hand gestures and speaking French at twice the normal rate and louder as well. Nothing helped me...as I failed to understand a thing the gentleman said from this point on.
We trapsed about the front of the house and finally he found the man-hole cover and exposed the drains. What this all actually MEANT was not apparent to me at all. He chatted away to a deaf ear as far as I was concerned. Oh the language problem. Eventually he brought out three bottles each filled with red, blue or yellow dye with which he was going to test our water system for what connection it was dumping into as the sewer system here is divided into 3 parts, a black water (toilet) system and a grey (shower, kitchen) system and a rain water system. Once I got to the rear gate to let him in I discovered IT was locked as well! Damnit! So back into the house while he yelled over the gate for me to open it, to get the keys and get it open for him. That accomplished he began his inspection and documentation of our system. He poured the dyes in each rooms water drain system and quickly returned to the man-hole cover to check the water for the dye. Over and over again, in the old kitchen, the new kitchen and each bathroom (we have two toilets). Afterwords he said that he would report back via the online link and we would get a letter describing the deficiencies (the kitchen drain was tied to the fresh water system from the roof). He entered all the data, gave me a look at the schematic of the drains and the problem drain and said we would, after it was corrected, go to the mairie to have them call out Veolia to recheck the system for correction. Then it was all goodbyes and he drove off. Another great day in Paradise. We await the letter.
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