Saturday, August 22, 2009

Daughter Dearest! Oh Daughter Dearest!

In Pittsburg our daughter A awaits her plane to good ol' Charles De Gaulle, then 8.5 hours of sitting and musing over the next three weeks of France, sights, dinners, new friends and old ones too. We are anxious to have "The Voice" as we have issues with our Notaire regarding the recent sale of Dix. Just details but they leave us questioning the process. What if the buyer decides to not pay us on October the 15th as documented? What happens? I dunno, this little detail has escaped us this time through the Process. When we bought Dix we put 2 thousand Euros as a deposit towards the purchase, that was early on in the deal...when we bought the Maison Blanche Madame (the previous owner) said to us in front of the Realtor...They are serious...so no deposit was needed. So now when we have no such deposit...how does this work? We NEED "The Voice" to speak for us and find out since I now feel a bit unsure about her intentions.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Canicule...It's @#$#@#! HOT!

This morning feels like last night at 9pm when it was still 90 degrees with humidity to match, a three shower day with the last one being a cold one. Not nice. It bhasn't rained in 11 days...pretty unusual here in the summer when the cululous clouds build to thunderheads in the warm afternoons and it pours like the tropics for a couple of hours tehn subsides to more sunshine the next day and a repeat of the cycle. Not now...it's been like this since August 9th. Yesterday my weather station reported at 2pm 106 degrees and at 5 it was 108! Two different thermometers in two SHADY locations outside and aways from the house. Damn. Devil has opened the gates I guess.

So our anxious-as-hell buyer came to our door on Monday at 6pm all in a French tizzie that she had gotten the estimate back from Olivier for the installation of the electrical in the attic of Dix and it was TRES CHER! No money figure mentioned but expensive in her mind whatever it was. No shit...expensive as hell, nothing odd about THAT. You bet, builders here pay a ton of taxes and medical expenses drive the costs up, up, up...just like everywhere else in the world these days. He of course is a ROOFER...so he would have to sub-contract to a certified Electrical contractor, proper permits etc. It's the shits for anyone that's a builder to have a small job like that and so maybe he doesn't even want to do the damned work, there are much bigger fish to fry, even in tiny Lignieres. Did she get a competitive bid from someone else? Nooooo...so what?...why is that of my concern anyway when we GAVE up 4000 bux off the @!#$@##! price in the first place JUST FOR HER! Go to hell I think. Then she is gone and Kelly and I console each other for a bit and finally decide if that's what she wants to do...f___ her we will go to the Notaire tomorrow with the news and see what he says. Tomorrow comes...that's Tuesday morning...we tell him of the Frenglish conversation we had with Madam Buyer and that NO...WE won't lower the price AGAIN...and NO more concessions are coming her way on the sale of Dix to her, end of story. So he says he will email us when he gets to chat with her. AND...get this...she had 7 days after receipt of a certified letter from him that commited her to the sale to refuse...we did not even know that bit of the sales story existed...new law he says...shit! When is the time up then...tomorrow at midnight. Good. We leave to sweat, watch the clock and be miserable together. At least my Dix blog is still intact and we have the sign and the price at 59,000. So Wednesday came, we left to do a bit of grocery shopping and l'Viola! The Notaire fellow is walking out the door of his office, I ask Kelly to roll down the window as we creep by him cars backing up behind us, he leans in and says...it's ok, she wants the house...Merci! we say and off to the grocery store we go before anyone honks. Such is a house sale in Lignieres...now when do we see actual $$$? October 15th. About 2 months from now. Our half to be deposited in our French account here...and Ted's half to go to buying Jaguar transmissions and shipping them to the US for his @!#$#@#! car. We have FUN in France.
Have you read Furry's blog yet? She asked nicely and I set her up a page nextdoor to mine. Here's the link, (She's a smart kat you know...)
http://thefurkat.blogspot.com/

Monday, August 17, 2009

Pizza to die for: L’Auberge de la Tour owners Patricia and Moez Bounafeck! The BEST pizza I've had in France to date comes from the kitchen of this small hotel/restaurant. Delicious on every level starting with the almost thin crust, lightly toasted on the bottom with bubbles in the crust, a fine red sauce over mozzerella and a great sense of all the ingredients, just the right amount of toppings, excellent in all respects. Mr. Bounafeck served the magnificent pizza himself. A very thrifty and satisfying meal with a large pitcher of a local red wine and a drizzle of hot oil, this is a stop not to miss when you are in the Burgundy region. On the corner of Rt D926 and Rt D951 in the city of Beaulieu-Sur-Loire, 22 Euros worth of superlative pizza. Try it! It was my birthday lunch. Our next table guests were from Paris, he a salesman for a batimat (stone, cement, gravel) company and she was a dead ringer for Brigette Bardot complete with rhinestone high heels and a short skirt! Terrificly funny and wonderful they invited us to share another bottle of the local Gienois pick, delicious and crisp as well as fruity as we laughed and Fringlished our way thru the explanation of our life here in France.
It was great fun, we shared email addresses and said our goodbyes and headed for Bourges to acquire needed things for the Maison Blanche.