Come and Gone and Going

A and J called this afternoon just after I had finished the Great Putting Away of 2009. They were bombing along the A71 in a northerly direction about 30 minutes away from us. They had faithfully taken in most of what I had told them were some of the major sights with varying degrees of success. They did enjoy the Pot Du Gard roman bridge and the Millieu Causeway across the Tarn Gorge. AND...they enjoyed the quality of French Rest Areas...called Aires that have service stations attached to restaurants and shops selling local products. I think they had a great time and did it in an restful and yet very active way. They used the ETAP Hotel chain to save hotel expense and ate in local cafes and bars which always keeps the food expense low as well. I was/am impressed. So they arrived at Maison Blanche about 3pm and charged their batteries for the cell phones and computers, had a beer and laid out the tales of their discoveries. Kelly went to Dave and Sue's place shortly after they arrived and returned about 5 minutes after they had left bound to the ETAP outside of CDG in Paris. Here's our picture together a couple of days ago.


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A Bread Making Disaster of Sorts

You know I like...no...LOVE making bread. I have been at it for a while now...last year actually, and have had many, many successes. I make it so that we have our daily bread everyday as fresh as humanly and machinely possible. I bake every other day on an average and sometimes more often than that. Most of my loaves are hand formed and not confined to a bread pan, just shaped after the kneading and final rise and put in the oven at 400 degrees for about 25 minutes. That's it...no proofing of yeast, no exact measuring of flour, salt, oils and butter or water. I use a Bluesky 40 Euro bread machine to do the mixing then I remove the loaf and proceed toi use the folding method for 4 turns of 45 minutes each. l'viola! Bread. Using my current supply of ingredients it has been just about impossible to fail, good loaves with each baking cycle have been the result...until yesterday. What happened yesterday? A giant break with traditional success is what. The bread as made in the usual way...lets do it for you here:
1.25 cups H2O
2 cups Bread Flour
1 cup Semolina flour
2 teaspoons dry yeast
2 Tablespoons sugar or molasses
2 Tablespoons butter or Margarine or Olive Oil
3/4 Tablespoon fine salt
That's it. Nothing more, no seeds, no nuts, no wholewheat...
results...a brick, doorstop or bookend or wallhanging...but nothing to eat and enjoy.
Oh yes I am one to not throw stuff away...so I tried to pretend it was "alright" this morning when Kelly ask me for some to have her smoked salmon with...but the telltale density running throught the loaf told the tale...this is shit!
So today, an hour ago, I proofed the yeast to check if it was still with the living,
weighed the flour and much more carefully assembled the ingredients as I have never done in the last few months. We will see soon what hath my hard work wrought.
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Later...All ok, she is arisen! The proofing at 104 degrees F caused quite a foam after about 10 minutes. I added the other ingredients and turned on the trusty dough cycle of the Bluesky breadmaker. 1hr and 30 minutes later...I have a loaf of quite risen bread! Cool...now I just need to sneak it ever so carefully into the 400 degree F Champion oven (My Baker's Pride-like gem of 200lbs of cast iron and enamel coated with Nansulate) and wait 25 minutes for a result. Careful now...don't drop it! It's jelly like slack condition makes it quite a case for collapse if one isn't careful. A beauty! It's portrait is the image above...so my arrogance had gotten me away from the basics a bit too far, now I know better once again. Patience!
Bye for now!

New Guests, New Challenges...Nothing New

One day off from our last visitors whom we know well and love equally so with only one stranger, a boyfriend in the midst of the rest. Now we have a known somewhat and an unknown and us...and we are running out of time and the patience it takes to be decent hosts to decent guests. So much to do in this our last week in France until when? I dunno this time as we have decided to "go for it", rent the Swamphouse after all and try for a long term visa so we can stay a full year, or two or ??? Three. The little house had to be cleared of all remaining "stuff", a couple of beds, matresses, a pot hanging rack firmly afixed to a wall, a coat rack similarly adjoined and a few more odds and ends. It's all out now thanks to our new young muscle-bound male guests and D and S who lent us the trailer with their car attached with them inside to do the final clearing of Dix. Out, across town then into the rear of 35 and emptying took but a few minutes with all working to get it down. Up and down the two flights of stairs we went carrying all manner of stuff to place it in the appropriate spots in the attic under the roof which we will (hopefully) get repaired this winter. That has to be arranged this week too.
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All of the above with Furry's rabies shot and inspection by her Vet in preparation for the trip to California once again. She's so good with the vet as he is with her. She, at first, is very resistant to coming out of her carrier...as she is in being put INTO it...but once coaxed out by hand and elbow grease she is calm and cool and very, very collected. We aren't but she is. He feels for problems, cysts, tumors, lumps and bumps, reads her ID chip and checks her eyes and ears as well...all the while she sits and ignores each insult. Very queen-like. Then she got a brand new shiny Pet Passport...a blue document that looks just like a passport from the EU but meant for Kats and dogs and other pets and thier vets. Cool as can be I think.

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The Guests went off with S of S&D fame this morning to Bourges for a tour of the Geant supermarket, Leroy Merlin and downtown ancient Bourges. I joked with them that she had to be back home by MIDNIGHT! I asked Kelly if S was going to wear high-heels for the occassion! LOL! (She's about 55 and The Guys, each ver handsome are in thier early 30's! Ooo La La!)

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Tonight a classic Lute dish...Spaghetti and Meatballs w/Puttanesca (Whore) Sauce. Sugo alla Puttanesca. The meatballs are Lamb and Veal ground coarsely with anise, bread crumbs and red pepper in my own version of this classy Sicilian meal. Look it up online and give it a try! I suggest you use Bucatini as the spaghetti if you can get it or some other larger noodle, even a fetucinni or rigatoni would be good.

Between Guests and The Fog...

Yes, today was the first fog that we have seen since spring. Thick enough to slow the little traffic of Lignieres around our corner and make for a spooky and ethereal backdrop to our medieval village. We were up early as Aud was on her way to Paris and her flight home. We packed her up and left Maison Blanche at 9:20am for the 10 minute jaunt to the RR station at Chateauneuf Sur Cher. Aud was scheduled this morning on the 9:53 to Paris...oops...Bourges, a stop and change of trains for who knows why. We missed her immediately, coming home we were both silent in contemplation of new challenges upcoming...soon...like tomorrow when my student from my Hogan High teaching days, Andy and his friend Mr. X make thier appearance at the Maison Blanch. New people, new conversations, new subjects. We are already tired and one day is probably not enough time to recharge our batteries for them, at least...not very much. Being young men and adventuresome I think they will put up with us only a little while before wanting to wander off to new sights and places. I know they wanted to go to Marseilles or Nice so I have dreamed up a sightseeing route to the south that will give them much to contemplate about this most amazing country. I plan on printing a sheet with some instructions and a list of our favorite places to tour in France. Here's the list...

Argenton-sur-Creuse, http://www.ot-argenton-sur-creuse.fr/index2.php

Lascaux, http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/

Sarlat, http://www.sarlat.com/eindex.html

Pont Du Gard, http://www.pontdugard.fr/index.php?langue=GB

Tarn Gorge and Bridge, http://www.ot-gorgesdutarn.com/index-gb.html

Carcassonne. http://www.carcassonne.org/

Orange, http://www.horizon-provence.com/orange-provence/orange-roman-city.htm

This is far from a comprehensive list but it's all good and food for the intellect.
All are grist for the camera eye that's for sure and each due it's own good time and a sit to contemplate. I will print out the list and discuss each one with our new guests and see what interest there might be in such a discovery tour.

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We spent the day cooking tomorrows dinner, a Mexican one with a complex recipe for Chicken Mole, Black Beans and Rice. It took us hours to create and I think it'll be worth the effort. Here's the lin to the recipe we used:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/06/FD1S19F7J1.DTL&type=food

Howard and Kelly Lute
He: Good Cook, Bad Mechanic, Terrible Plumber She: Patient
Orange Cell in France: (from USA) 011 33 64 359 9713 IN France? 064 359 9713
Blog: http://lignieres.blogspot.com
WebCam: http://www.sonic.net/~kell12/webcam.jpg
Photos: http://www.shutterpoint.com/Photos-BrowseUser.cfm?user_id=HNLUTE
More Photos at FLICKR: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hnlute/
Photos for Sale: http://unephono.etsy.com

The Voice Cometh

As I said before my dearest, no, OUR dearest Audrey "The Voice" is coming to a bedroom down the hall in The Maison Blanche. I followed her progress across the skies of the United Sates and the Atlantic Ocean until the site could no longer post the airplane's position south of Greenland on a map. It gave instead the GPS Coordinates in real time which was helpful when used with Google Earth. A good site it was as much detail was provided, landing times, takeoff schedules etc. Easy to use too.
Here's the link: http://www.flightstats.com/go/FlightTracker/flightTracker.do
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Besides that she was able when on the ground in Atlanta and again in Pittsburgh to email me using her new iPod Touch. Cool as heck! I've never coveted such a piece of technology though I like my little Shuttle iPod a great deal, mostly because it holds enough for me to listen to and the battery life is excellent. Apple did a good thing when they made it.
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We depart for Bourges shortly to pick up The Voice and bring her to the Maison Blanche where she will undoubtedly coo at the decor that has been created in the 2 years since she has been here and tehn take a shower and go to sleep as soon as she can. She has been on the path here since yesterday morning CA time at 3:00am, so well over 24 hours by the time she gets here. 2 stops on Delta plus crossing the pond. Gads.

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/

S&D are Baaaack!

Cool...folks to chat with again! Watering their garden was interesting, fun and rewarding vegetable wise...lots of lettuce, tomatoes, beets (oh the beets!). We had a good time with it as our own is a mess and all because we have spent all this trip in the house "doing things". I used to tend the garden at Dix and loved doing it, once in and growing it was not hard to maintain at all. Now though...the courtyard here is just overgrown with weeds and unpicked flowers and has a generally sad look about it though there ARE flowers amidst the gloom and the herbs are fine as they are. The weeds? Roundup anyone?
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We are redoing the infamous Blue Room...the WC with the motto "It's Not A Turkish Toilet!". Not that I have anything much negative to say about any "facilities" when you really need them but a hole in the floor is just a bit much. At least we had a fine white ceramic toilet to use. First the ceiling, white to reflect the little light that enters naturally. Then a little bureau that will be the stand upon which the new sink will reside. A new faucet is ready to be installed...at $7.90 Euros it was the cheapest one there and it looks fine, nice crome, the valve is all bronze and while there is no fine ceramic seals...it will do. Kelly picked out a wild green, fushia (purple) and cream white wallpaper and bought a color matching fushia for the lower wainscotting area. No more Blue Room indeed! It will be just this side of shocking!

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We (I) have used up the last dregs of Nansulate on the front walls of the parlor. 5 gallons are on the house's outside walls (mostly) and we will be ordering more sometime in the winter so we can have some handy after the new roof is installed.
How much? The roof is huge...another 5 gallons might be enough...maybe. The most interesting experimental use of Nansulate for me has been on my little gas oven. I've coated the sides of the thing with 3 coats as Industrial Nanotech has instructed and wow...what a difference in performance after about 3 weeks of curing.
I can get temperatures above 650 degrees...the limit of my temp measuring equipment was 650F so if it was higher I'll not know...yet! But the upside is that the leakage from the sides has been cut dramatically...enough that it reaches 450 degrees in 20 minutes where it used to take 50! The sides aren't cool..but they won't burn you either...which is another dramatic improvement. The refrigerators are equally happy about having their outsides coated in Nansumate Home Coat...they now are turned to their lowest setting and still are very, very cold inside, below 40 degrees...and the freezer is now at -45 degrees F! it was -25. All in all things have changed for nthe better, howmuch money it will wind up saving us is hard to say now as billing for electricity is a not so often occurance. I'll report though when I get some numbers.
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Take care everybody!
Good health to you and yours!

Water Wars!

The bill that came today from the Marie of Lignieres was for 423.57 Euros for H2O for Dix (10) Rt. St Amand Montrond aka The Little House (In deference to this house Maison Blanche which is across town from Dix) period. Here, in Lignieres, in Cher, maybe in all of France that is one hell of a water bill...especially since no body has lived in the house from September of 2006 to date. We moved into Maison Blanche then. Further the water has been MISSING the entire time...that's right, there is no water coming into any pipe within the confines of 10 Rt. Saint Amand. So what can we do? What have we done? Well poopsie that is The Story.
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The Story

Background:
Chapter 1: There was a huge project in Lignieres during 2006 - 2007 in which new connections for many city operated or administered services were installed. Water, Electricity, Sewer etc.

Chapter 2: Sometime in the recent past, perhaps 2 years ago, the Veolia company took over the water distribution for Lignieres.

Chapter 3: We had normal water delivery during any period of time that we were living at Dix. prior to the Fall of 2006.

Chapter 4: Ted, a half-owner of Dix, came in the Spring of 2007 with his mate Diane, to stay at Dix for a few days. He had no water at that time at the house. Ted complained about the lack of water to the Maire but he left shortly thereafter.

Chapter 5: The water company Veolia was instructed to mail the water bill for Dix to our California address so that we could remit payment in a timely manner.

Chapter 6: The bills we received were never successfully paid due to us either missing the bill as were were here when it was sent or Veolia would not accept a copied version of the bill when it was paid by return mail from France.

Chapter 7: Upon our stay in Ligniere in the summer of 2008 there still was no water at Dix.

Chapter 8: We still had no water at Dix Rt. de St. Amand. when we returned to Lignieres in late March of this year (2009).

Chapter 9: We went to the Maire once again to explain that we had no water at Dix, they promised that a person would come and look at the problem. A fine gentleman showed up and made a date with us to see about the situation at the Dix house. We met him the next day and he looked at the meter, turned the valve and nothing! No Eau Pas! No water! With this we thought, now we get some action. He left, we left.

Chapter 10: As we were getting Dix ready to sell the water issue was becoming a real problem, cleaning the house and watering the garden could not be done in any reasonable way. All during the next few weeks as we cleaned out the furniture and goo-gaws from the interior of the Dix house we still had no water. We returned to the Maire to complain and was told that we would have to contact Veolia.

Chapter 11: We continued to unload stuff from Dix and after a week or so returned once again to the Maire to find out how we could contact Veolia when the nearest office was many miles away and whom should we talk to? The kindly person at the front office called Veolia for us and thus was scheduled a visit yesterday for them to come to check out the lack of water at Dix.

Chapter 12: At about 11:15 in the morning a tall young woman in a Veolia costume appeared at our door at 35 Rue MJ. Through her speedy French I understood she wondered if she could visit Dix earlier than the originally schedule 14:30 hr previously agreed to.
I said my default phrase when confronted by a French person speaking French at the speed of sound "Oui, oui"! So soon we found ourselves in the car and racing through town to get to Dix for the Veolia inspection of the "No eau pas" (no low pah) problem so familiar to all involved. She looked at the meter, turned the valve both directions, tested the toilet fluching (nope!) and tried the sink faucet (dry as a bone). Then in French even more rapid that back at 35 she aimed us at the Maire once more to do what, I didn't have the slightest idea either then or now nearly 24 hours later. She said goodbye, we said goodbye, she hoped in her little Veolia van-car and we did likewise in the Toyota and that was the setup to the next chapter.
Chapter 13: Arriving at the Maire the lovely person at the desk rapidly explained what Veolia had found and said (according to Kelly) that WE need to get a plumbier to fix the problem. We?! The problem is NOT in the house...it's on their turf outside the house where the water IS...at their valve...why is that OUR problem to solve? Are we to watch as the plumber digs up the street with a backhoe holding up traffic with a series of flagmen or women and electric lights front and back? Oh my...water wars indeed!

Chapter 14: Then The Bill arrived today from the Maire...ohhhhh

The Cure Is Taken

Today we ventured to Bourges and the Tissues Du Monde outlet in the eastern part of town. Kelly was looking for a bold cloth with pink and perhaps black or violet as an addition to the current curtains in the dining room that we have hung over the two front windows. We both hunted high and low in this quite large stock of raw cotton, linen and polyamid cloth. They have a wonderful array of material from intricate brocades to common canvas and oil cloths. We have spent much time in the store going back several years, and always seem to find something that will be either superb or fantastic and that happened again today when Kelly spied a rather bright pink material with large dark flowers, at 50% off. It was only 18 Euros for 4 meters. She bought some other yardage for projects yet to come. Then we drove back through the recently harvested wheat and colza fields to the Maison Blanche to tackle the painting of the insulating paint on the water heater in the grenier (attic).
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The Water Heater

Kelly washed it and dried the heater thoroughly and then I tackled the Nansulate application chore. I measured with a precision digital thermometer I use for my wine making activities. I took the temperature of of the attic adjacent to the heater, 77 degrees it was and then on a spot midway across the top of the heater and it indicated 86.3 degrees. I will retake these some days from now and see how the application is doing. They say full effect isn't met until 30 - 60 days of cure time has gone by so my expectations are less than immediate. I used a very short nap roller of the small variety, only about 5 inches in length. I stirred the translucent grey-looking Nansulate for a bit over 5 minutes and finally deposited a few ounces in the small plastic roller tray and rollered it on careful to cover the top evenly and without thick areas or drips. It is similar in viscosity to regular paint, it is NOT overly thin and doesn't drip everywhere or spray from the roller either. Very well behaved in fact. It is a milky translucent material and goes on absolutely transparent. The first coat on, I retired to my computer for the requisite 1 hour drying time before the next coat, to chronicle the start of this quite amazing project.

Peace

Our friends from North Carolina left this morning bound for Paris and the ETAP we stayed in about a week ago. I abandoned all my plans for kitchen cleanup and fell fast asleep a few minutes after saying goodbye. Having guests is heady business,
we had plans, they had plans but we were put in charge from the get go so Get Go we did. They inspected Dix, the house we have for sale ( http://hnlute.blogspot.com ) and loved it. We went to the local horse races and numerous brocantes including the giant one right in our front yard in the Champ du Foire. They bought out half of France having fallen in love with the place. The car was a beast to pack even as well organized as it was. So much wine, food, cheeses, pictures and the spacious Saab was chock full to the very brim.
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We visited Ainay-le-Vieil ( http://chateau.ainaylevieil.free.fr/ ) yesterday and went on the tour of this little gem of the Loire Valley. It always gets high marks from us as it is really a family home and quite intimate. I always feel priveleged to be allowed to see the beautiful interior rooms and especially the chapel with the endearing frescoes. It is a place not to miss in the Loire.

All,s Quiet On The Western Front...Or Is It?

Truth is...it isn,t, at leqst not on this part of the Western Front. We have been busy as beqvers and that,s pretty darned busy. The guest room is our latest target now that the sewing room is partially papered with the yellowstriped stuff Kelly wanted. Now we have attacked the walls available tobe coverred with a grey and beige trois...a set of scenic drawings of the fancified continents, all manner of animal life and winged persons interacting with them in colorful and maybe even questionable ways. We cannot compplete any of the external walls as they must first be coated with the magic paint nano_naunt or some such which will aid in heqt retention in the old place. The stuff, all 5 gallons of it was to be shipped on/about the 18th of May and though I have written the company and they have cashed our check there has been no reply and no paint either. So we wait and strike out in directions that the situation allows. Which included the following activity.,
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We had a dinner for 8 last night, our best friends A&R, S&D and nearly relaives by marriage to A&R whose daughter is in a serious relationship with. Future mother in law and father in law types. It went off quite well if I do say so myself. The main event was a coq a vin done in the style of Bay Wolf the restaurant in Berkeley, California. Not the usual cooked to deth chicken boiled in red wine, no, noth this. Every ingredient gets carmelized first then assembled into the dish with the chicken skin side left out of the liquid thus it gets/stays crisp. The cqrmelized mushrooms were sweet and eqrthy at the same time, delicious!

One Busy Summer!

Yes we are going to be greeted by many visitors this year. Old and dear friends, relatives and Barrack and Michelle might even join us. 8-) Whoopee! Dinners for all to cook, lots of wine to sample and hours and hours of chats and sightseeing in the verdant green outback of France called The Berry. Terrific! Ted is first, he's landing the day before we get there thanks to my errant scheduling attempt at www.Cheapoair.com. I have no idea of how long he'll be there but he can help with preping the little house for sale or rent and we'll have a ball with him too, he's open to anything and anyplace. The S & M (Steve and Michelle) come in early-mid summer for a couple of weeks more or less, then a past student of mine Andy and his girlfriend in early September followed by Kelly's sister in the middle of September! What a hoot! Meal planning extraordinaire! Gotta get to work on the guest room too...new cloth walls and paint, paint, paint. The courtyard will be a winters mess, the roses need work as does everything else. I'm about to become very busy. The huge and heavy iron gate needs hanging...great fun that. Steve has volunteered for that lil' set of tasks, drilling 3/4" holes in solid limestone is interesting, inserting the pintals into said holes and then hang the gate panels. It gets painted black too. So we will have a productive and rewarding good time in the French sunshine this year...weather permitting.
I'm always asked, as is Kelly, "what do we wear?" Well...that's a long read. The weather in France has proven itself to be quite variable. It can snow as late as late April, at least it has twice in the 7 years of our personal observations. Not enough to matter but not exactly T-Shirt weather then either. May and June are beautiful Spring weather mostly, clouds, rain in the afternoons, sunny mornings, just plain pretty. July can be a bit warmer, or not...the cloud cover this last year was extensive in July and July was cooler than I remember in the last few years...highs in the 70's mostly, umbrellas at the hand in the afternoon. August, the Vacation Month can be blistering hot like 2003 and 4 or like last year a copy of July, highs in the 70's and 80's with a rare day in the 90's thrown in for backyard fun around the barbecue. Beer weather for sure. September can be August-like but more variable and towards the latter part of the moth decidedly cooler at night.
So there it is, freezing to sweaty, that's France outside of Winter (cold to colder).
So wear layers, cotton or linen in the summer, warmer stuff in the Springtime thru June and otherwise T-shirts and shorts in July and August. Pack lightly! You'll love yourself for that as you can buy anything here and the prices are cheap to higher for any clothing items you might need, makes great souvenirs too! Bring camera, batteries, memory cards and two pair of comfortable shoes. To be picked up at your train station is easy as long as you choose the right train, get on it and make it to Verizon, take 2nd class non-smoking. You will leave Paris via the
Austerlitz station. When you land a Charles De Gualle (CDG) go to the taxi stand and take one to phonetically said as " Jay-Voo-Drey...Austerlitz See Voo Play" and sit quietly while you scream down the freeway some 15 miles to the very center of Paris. Cost...well about 50 Euros...they take credit cards but best to get an ATM at the airport and get cash. Don't do it in the US...they charge way over the exchange rate here...and currently it's about 1.28 dollars = 1 Euro. Better than last year by a mile (1.60 = 1 then!). Once you get to Austerlitz train station go to the mail hall and get in line at one of the windows. Be very polite and calmly say.
Duh bee-lay Duh klass aww Ver-eh_zone (Verizon) See-voo-play (2 tickets to Verizon Please)...once in your hand look at the scheduling board and see which track is the right track. There's a machine to insert your ticket into at the front of each track...you need to get your ticket time stamped therein. Watch others to do it easily. It works.
Then find a conductor nearby your train and show him your tickets and do as he indicates. Board your train...put your bags in the end of the car and find a seat either as assigned or anywhere. Rest, read, look out the window. About 2 hrs later you will arrive at Verizon station. You will need to call us from Austerlitz or cell phone...and we will pick you up in Verizon!!! Such a deal!
If you are driving...that's another matter entirely. I'll cover that issue in the next issue!

Back to the Rockpile

This section of the rockpile was the dining room in an earlier iteration of 35 Rue whatshisname. We don't know what it is now besides one very complete mess. We have been AT this room for at least 6 weeks and there is no end in sight. First it had to be sealed as the interior of parts of the outer wall was lying on the floor as dry red dust, horsehair and lime. Rot. Lots of rock rot. Upon inspection I decided the best course was to do as little as possible to retain the existing wall (no longer 18" thick but a mere 14") and by hook and by crook create a semblance of a flat surface once again. So I used the fibreglas mat material that is used here to prepare rough walls for paint and glued it over the existing hole's border...a vertical trampoline sort of. Then I fastened the chaor rail across and glued it to the fibreglas matting as well. It started to act and look like a wall! Then I glued thin strips of pine that I ripped from the finest French knotless pine 40cm X 70cm X 2.4meter board(s). This took some doing as my Ryobi Table Saw while quite powerful has a blade wobble problem that makes it take a wider cut than you may want on a particular pass. Several trys were made before I could create the necessary pieces.
Grrrrrr. Lot's of sawdust. Lots. Then I took these strips back into the dining room and edge and back glued them to the top and bottom of said chair rail. Now there was a place to staple the material to when we got to that step in this nearly endless project. I tested my construct with one whack of the electric staple/nail gun. Oops, that won't work, too flexible still. Blast! So back to the drawing board(s).
So I drilled a 10mm hole thru the thin wood strips and inserted and glued 10mm dowels to the rock surfaces below as a way of getting the stiffness I needed, sort of Viagra for the fibreglass mat. If all of this seems uncraftsman like well...it is but it is THERE now and while the dear reader would rather have torn down the entire three hundred year old, 17 tons of rock, lime, horsehair and common mud I chose not to. One day I MAY have to rebuild that wall and I know it but in the meantime it's what it is. Good enough. Just.
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Today more itching, aoutat again on all (well not ALL) tender parts. We tore away the sheets, pillow cases and washed them in hot water trying to eliminate these invisible bastards. Remade both beds and sprayed them with finest French Perfume...Insect Killer! Sprayed self with the Aoutat Repellant we bought at the Pharmacia downtown and lied down for a nice peaceful nights sleep. Sure.
2 am, huh? What the hell?! Flash, KA-BOOM! Lightning, thunder, repeatedly and nearby.
Then a downpour and the sound of wind ripping through the house! Uh oh...up and turn on the lights, no lights, electricity is out too! Merde! Oh well just another summer storm in the foothills of the Massif Central. Then I feel an itch, oh noooo...oh yes, my left forearm has a thousand bites in it! What? Large reddened welts, awful, hot and boy do they itch! Damn! Salves, creams, oil and grease, fingernail polish (yes) to the rescue. All it does is lube me up, something I do NOT like! Back to bed after finding the downstairs dining room window flapping back and forth while torrential rain pours down the walls. Boy isn't this fun!? Grrrrrr.
Asleep now dreaming of AOUTATS crawling over me, eating freely of my precious skin cells...ohhhhhh. Awake at 7. The aforementioned bites on my arm are GONE! What? There were a thousand of them!? Wrong diagnosis by my addled brain? Not Aoutat? The cats have them too...that's why we changed out the linens last night and sprayed enough French Perfume to drown most insects. Gads this IS complicated. So maybe NOT Aoutat? I itch under my arms allong both sides, I lift my T shirt to show Doc Kelly and she says Ooooh. Oh no...more bites! Good greif but where are the ones that were on my arm? now I have a thousand on each side of my precious body instead.
HIVES! I have HIVES! So off to the computer to GOOGLE "Hives". Cool! And sure enough while the EXACT cause is unknown it can be set off by INSECT BITES! Anto-histamines are recommended for relief. Don't you just love this stuff online?! GOOGLE to the rescue again and again!
By for now, I have a wall to attend to.

Oops, arrived in New Zealand

Yes, I poked out of the sands of a beach on the south island and was NOT in China. Drank a fine Guinness Stout in a local pub and returned to my hole to turn right and head to China in a NEW Hole! Yes, another hole. I bissected the original pipe find and collaborated with the one coming from under my kitchen. A new spot. I took the 6 ft breaker bar and began the dig. We shall see if China reveals herself one day real soon now. We also read the notice given us by the Veolia man, it notes that we have ONE YEAR to complete this rerouting. Hmmmm.
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Else, tore into the doorway wall this morning to see if the material used on the right side was also used on the left side, one never knows in these ruins. It appears it is of the same construction and so now I'll de-nude BOTH walls and the ceiling over the opening as well. The MUR (Wall) through which the doorway proceeds is some 24 inches thick of waddle and daub as they call it...basically mud and rocks (typical olde construction method) and the openning to the dining room is coverred with a very fragile layer of 1/2" thick unglazed tiles of varying sizes. Interesting... yes, delicate... yes, rustic... yes. What's to "NO" about? Well poopsie...if I shatter, break, chip, any of these fine tiles I will get to glue them back together as nowhere on this earth will you find ANYTHING like these except possibly buried behind some grass hut in outer Mongolia or maybe Botswana.
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Then I tore apart an old picture frame and remade it in a different size for a print we got when we were in Scotland some 15 years ago! It's finally getting FRAMED in France! Amazing. Yhe whole IDEA of framing pictures in cut down frames from an early time period...seems nice, easy, cheap and ecological on some remote level. In reality it is a far more DIFFICULT thing to do as accuracy COUNTS and true 45 degree CUTS COUNT and I'm apparently not that capable as three of 4 joints are good...c- work, decent fit, small chips etc. and ONE joint is a friggin' mess of out of angle cuts and chips the size of the frame itself. It's NOT the saws I'm using either...it's ME! I need more practice you say, sure I do...but there is little time left for practice, this IS the real world, measure twice = cut once (old adage) abd get on with it! I do...and I've cited the results. Shit! I have another sitting up in the grenier (attic) to tackle any day now that I want to feel inadequate.