Thursday, September 04, 2008

Opening Doors


I had great plans today, finish the door hanging after yesterdays triumph of the male over the mass of the RH door. The guys did it, Dave and Raj and the brilliant idea of using the car jack to first raise the door off the dolly. Then align it with the pins, then lower the door with the jack onto the pins. Worked the first time. My cuttings could have been better but given the totality of wood rot and rust it turned out quite well we think. Today I wanted to finish the hanging by getting the doors aligned and properly closed which they are NOT. Then hang the middle door on the RH door. Plans. All plans. Then Kelly said she wanted to go to Mountlucon, the junk shop, the Grand Fraise grocery store and the Carefour supermarche to get things we want to take home, spices, sealed package goods and chocolate for our friends. So I canceled the door work and we were off. First to the hamlet where the NEW Americans we were introduced too live south of Chateaumilliant, a local wine appellation. Yes, we have NEW Americans...actually SHE is an American from Milwaukie, Wisconsin and he is a German national. We (Kelly) has talked with her and they got along famously (hour long phone call), we are to meet them Sunday at 6pm, wine in hand (A nice Quincy (can-see)).
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Off to Mountlucon at 10:30, by the time we went to find the New American's abode and didn't, got to the Troc Du L;ile junk store they were closed for lunch til 2pm. Onward to the Carefour to buy whatever gifts for ourselves and our California friends we could imagine and find. The chocolate aisle was well visited and numerous samples taken. The spice area was perused and I selected 7 beautiful containers (about 2 oz each}. Kelly chose a nice Bayules desert wine to bring home while I checked out the Scotch area in the Booze aisle. Great fun with many choices to be had. I like the smokey Lagavulin the best, some find it over powering but my...is it ever smooth and delicious. Expensive at 38 Euros a litre bottle but...worth every bloody cent.
Off to Grand Fraise, aisle after aisle of wonderful vegetables, some we have never seen much less used. Fruits the same way. One of the attractions at Grand Fraise is the meat counter where the elusive PORK RIBS reside now and then, why not all the time remains a mystery. We bought 2 HUGE globe artichokes, some green onions (rare other than at Grand Fraise, more spices and that was it. Fini. We left knowing it was the last time this year we'd be buying anything at Grande Fraise in Mountlucon.

Monday, September 01, 2008

One September! Whoopee!

Well off we will soon go to return to California, it's been a wonderful Sproing and Summer. We have worked our butts off on the olde Ruin. Many walls covered in cloth and fixups here and there. I exposed some of the olde rock and tile entrances at the front of the house and sealed then in preparation for the winter. Kelly painted til she ran out of paint, she sewed new curtains and all of that cloth on the walls...incredible work! I have worked on the barn doors for the last week and a half and Wednesday we have a dinner work party that will hang that rh door in trade for dinner and enough booze to finish the job. Rhe barn doors are white to match all the rest of the exterior doors and seem to be taking the paint well and the necessary coat count appears to be three or four if I feel up to it. Anyway they will be far better off than what we started with about a month ago.
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The doorbell rang yesterday and it was a friend of the pharmacist who said she had been in the Monday marche last week and ran into ANOTHER American couple! Wow! So very RARE in this neck of the French woods. She gave me a piece of paper with their names and phone number and the email address as well. Kelly took up the challenge of contacting them as they needed a witness to get their absentee ballot approved.
We are glad to help but now they have become difficult to contact. Kelly wrote an email then tried calling them last night and again today to no avail. Darn it. We would love to speak to another bunch of Americans but who knows, for all we know they have taken off to parts unknown or back to The States. We will keep trying.
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We rsan into D and S yesterday at a brocante somewhat southeast of us. After the usual laughing, bantering they invited us for drinks after we were through with the brocante action. We bought NOTHING. That is the way of it for us these days. So we followed them to their lovely French country cottage in the village of St. Hillaire en Lignieres about 5 minutes from out house. We spent the afternoon with then, they served us a delicous lunch and wine to overflowing. We watched the sports channel with the MotoGP races and a the Tour du Espania afterwards. They are great company and we truely enjoy them a lot! Smart and funny both! I worked a bit on their PC to no great conclusion. Downloaded Ad-Aware and CCleaner to help them with spurious ads and junk clogging up the works. Good software, both programs.