Friday, June 20, 2014

The Day Of Electricity!

"Our House is a very, very fine house, with two cats in the yard, Life used to be so hard..."  Nice lyrics by CSNY.  Good album too.  About 1/3rd of our fine French maison is electrified, the other 2/3rds is not.  Oh yes, of course there is electricity after all as I've strung out an array of extension cords from the one upstairs working socket and another string downstairs from the laundry room that electric stuff here and there.  Overhead lighting though is unaffected by my clever applications of wire snakes.  This has been the case for a long time with one circuit dead as a doornail.  This all occurred because of a lapse of judgment on my part when I spied (and did nothing about) a small sparking connection in the larder about 3 years ago.  I saw it...and blew it off as a fluke and a short time later the circuit died...somewhere, but where?  I've spent hours and hours, ne...days looking, testing, poking and prodding and double checking to no avail.  Liz darling suggested Maurice the Handyman, who lives nearby and has fixes many of her home-related issues, as, perhaps a source of a possible fix.  For me it meant another brain to re-examine all I've already looked at and maybe, just maybe find out where the problem is and repair it.  In about 1.5 hours he said he'd be here, 10am our time.  Then becomes the difficult task of explaining this whole deal in pidgin French.

Music tonight too. At Le Hall. Free...we like that.  3 groups, an Algerian Rapper and two others.  It should be fun.

France beat the pants off of Switzerland last night!  5 - 2.  GO FRANCE! 

Monday, June 16, 2014

We have a CAR!

Yes, Garage Gau called and it was ready.  I walked swiftly as I can to the garage and there she was, as pretty as ever our 2002 Toyota Avensis former Ambulance/Taxi.  What work! She looks as good as new!  Everything works!  Even the light up/down function is alive and well!  Wow!  I'm ever so impressed, can you tell?!  The paint matches exactly!  No ripples, no orange peel, heavens, what work!  Beautiful!   We have our car back!

We had Duck a la Orange to celebrate, so very good. I used a Bay Wolf recipe, I've become quite familiar with the exercise, sauté, let what was left behind to the next step, build upon flavor..the result is magnificent indeed!  Rare Duck, Parsnips and a green salad.  Oh so good.  Thank you!