"Tech Girl" has fallen behind the times

I haven't thought much about my iPHONE or iPOD since I've been in Paris. They are there when I need them, I charge them, that's it.

I started out today with one simple thing -- I added a CD (french language lessons) onto my computer and wanted to put it on both the iPOD and the iPHONE.

Being sensible, I bring only one cord for all the Apple things, so I had to go on a big search to find the right cable for this activity. Found it, plugged it in, transferred the CD to the iPOD quickly and easily.

Now for the iPHONE. There is a more elaborate set up to do this on the iPHONE and there were some photos on the iPHONE that weren't on my computer. The computer knew it and insisted that I download them. Then, the computer figured out that the iPHONE needed a software update. OK, I did that. It took a long time.

Now, I still had to download the CD. I clicked on the music I wanted to add and it is now humming away, putting the music on my iPHONE.

While I was doing all this, I decided to look at the iTUNES music store. Big mistake. I did not know that I could download TV shows from the US into my iPHONE iPOD or computer. They don't cost very much, either. I decided I needed a little "cooling off" period before I start adding TV shows, so I'm blogging.

But, I'll be back to iTUNES very soon, I'm afraid.

While I realize that I am not very current on this part of the computer world, I should be grateful for my innocence. Now I will be watching US TV shows instead of reading a good book, studying french or visiting with other people.

Fall in North Carolina

This beautiful photo was taken by my sister.

Cooking With Cecile

We spent the afternoon yesterday in Cecile's kitchen. It's a remarkable place. Quite big for Paris and very welcoming and charming. Not at all like a kitchen in the US. The floor is old tile, everything is functional. The spices are all within reach, everything works perfectly even though it's not new. No granite here, just great cooking.

There is a big table in the middle of the room, good for eating or, in our case, for assembling b'stilla. Cecile teaches us Moroccan and french cooking.

Everyone that participates enjoys the activities. We all know how to cook and really just come to see the new preparation and enjoy a lovely October afternoon in a warm kitchen.



Here's the work in progress. It took over three hours to make this dish and Cecile was already cooking when we arrived.



Here is the finished product. We all had a wonderful dinner last night.

"Oh, Halloween"...

“Oh”, Nicole sneered, "Halloween. That’s an American holiday." Bien sur, Nicole.

She continued, “There is a store here in Paris that has the paper cut-outs with the faces…”

“Thank you” I replied, not at all what I was really thinking, with my half-smile plastered on my face.

I fixed my bangs at the same time, in a natural swoop with my right hand. They’d gotten a little damp on the walk from the metro so they needed taming.

I’m not at all embarrassed about my passion for Halloween decorations. It’s not excessive, in fact, it’s quite subtle here in France, mainly due to lack of surfaces to put the decorations on and lack of “material”.

I’ve had a hard time finding consistent pumpkins. Every year, I eventually find something that represents my idea of Halloween, but it’s not without a cost. I traverse the city, looking at the plant market at Cite, various florists, and other shops that are “sympa”. Every year, I find the pumpkins at a new place and the previous years’ places have let me down.

I can deal with this, I’m flexible.

I have my go-to items for Halloween. The chestnuts, gathered year after year in the Luxembourg Gardens. The great Halloween quilt that my Mom gave me, a few other American decorations, small and discrete, but important to me.

Some of the Halloween items stick around through Thanksgiving, another “weird” holiday in France, but important to ME/MOI.

The little pumpkins and gourds, the chestnuts, maybe some beautiful brown leaves, they will grace my apartment until December 1, when I have to put up the Christmas stuff. Not nearly as fun, in my opinion.

So, back to Nicole and the dinner party last night. She is very nice and not at all stuffy, but I could tell that she doesn’t understand anything about the “fun” of Halloween. It isn’t necessarily scary, pagan or for the young. It’s fanciful, and, like the harvest, a celebration of life.

It will never catch on here in France as anything more than a day for young people, eastern European tourists and the manufacturers of candy.

However, there is a two-week school holiday coinciding every year with Halloween, called Toussaint which is the day after Halloween, November 1, luckily on a weekend this year so I won't be driven crazy by store closures and holiday transportation schedules.

The Painting Is Done

The painters have finished, cleaned up and left. Order has been restored.

My Halloween decorations are up, including the three pumpkins I found yesterday afternoon on the way to WICE. In typical french fashion, they "wrapped" the pumpkins in a pretty orange paper bag.

I like to start decorating for the fall holidays around the first of October, but the painting project got in the way.

Some of the decorations are clearly for Halloween, so they don't get to hang around the house for very long this year, but the pumpkins, the chestnuts and the candles will stick around until Thanksgiving. I might even be able to find a gourd or two. Actually, I found some, but didn't buy them at the time because I wanted pumpkins.

Weather

Since I'm from Southern California, I'm ecstatic whenever there is "weather".

I don't really like boring weather -- clouds, fog, etc., I like real weather -- something dramatic.

Tonight, it's Halloween on October 7th. It was mild today, warm and cloudy, humid. Threatening rain, but not a huge threat.

Dinnertime rolled around and we heard the first clap of thunder, then the serious rain started pounding down. The lightening, the thunder, the rain. People running down the street, this is not normal.

It's continuing, in waves. The lights are flickering, luckily the internet is still working.

I LOVE weather!

Gourmet Magazine Is Closing

For me, memories are made when I associate a thing with a time or place.

I can remember exactly where I was (in Mrs. Mitch's class) when we learned that JFK had been killed. I remember the day that Elvis died.

Today, I will remember as a rainy morning in Paris, the day that I was shocked to learn that "Gourmet" magazine is closing.

To me, it seemed like an institution. It had been published for 68 years, longer than I've been alive. In the last year, we've seen so many institutions fail -- Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual (my ex-bank). This is just as shocking.

My mother was an innovative cook. I was a picky eater. As a child, even though many of the dishes that came out of the magazine were not basic enough for me, I was aware of the beauty and elegance of the magazine.

As a young adult, even when I didn't have much extra money, I found enough to subscribe to Gourmet. I saved back issues for years, not willing to tear the recipes out. Eventually, I started removing the recipes and articles I wanted to save and putting them in binders.

What I will miss most isn't the recipes, though. It's the beauty of the photos and the well-written articles, always taking me to a different wonderful place.

So, my concept of Gourmet will live on, a reminder of the beautiful things in life, childhood memories and dreams.

The Painter

OMG
The painter has terrible BO.

Body Odor.

ICK.

It's raining but I'm opening the windows anyway.

Let The Painting Begin...

We have cracks in many of the walls. The whole place was painted 3-1/2 years ago before we moved in. The cracks started showing up within six months. Many of them continue to grow. One, in particular, has large scales peeling and buckling off the wall. We've been told that the building is about 200 years old and the support beams for the building are wood. When the building shifts, the plaster and paint on the walls crack. The only hope for this is to repair the cracks and cover the walls with fabric or fiberglass, sand it all, then repaint.

We've tried to put this project off for the obvious reasons -- inconvenience and cost, but finally Terry couldn't handle it for another day.

We got bids from painters, selected one, a guy we've used for a lot of other projects, Timothy, and the work started this morning.

Of course, it's been sunny and warm since we arrived in early September but today it is raining and dark. We had to remove the permanent light fixtures and put all our floor lamps into the room to get enough light for the painters to see what they are doing. I guess that if it keeps raining, which it's scheduled to do, the whole project will take longer, as each step has to dry before the next step can start.

This morning, Terry and I got up early and moved all the furniture to the far corners of the apartment, rolled up the rugs, consolidated all the items normally on tables, onto a bookshelf so that it can all be covered. I took everything off the kitchen counters and put it elsewhere, since dust will be all over.

We've also made several trips to the cave this morning, to get the old paint to match, get drop cloths and a ladder. Our original ladder was stolen (or expropriated) out of the cave at rue de Seine, so this is a new ladder. We've guarded it carefully this time.

As soon as they break for lunch, I'll take a photo fo the dismantled apartment so that I can look at it and feel sorry for myself. I am worried that my week is ruined.

Hopefully nothing bad will happen. We've made it clear to the workers that they can't touch the Livebox or any of the cables leading to it. After a minor France Telecom disaster earlier this year, we don't want to wreck our internet connection, it will probably be our only source of comfort this week since the TV is covered and there are no chairs or couches that we can sit on in the front of the apartment.

The Grocery Stores of Paris

I feel like I spend more time in the grocery store when I'm in Paris. This is probably because I can only buy what I can carry in my wheeled cart, so I have to go to the grocery store more often.

The stores I go to in Paris are smaller, but I still have to go up and down every aisle. The aisles are so narrow that you can't pass another person without excusing yourself, "Par-DON".

Even though the stores are small, I can find everything I need most of the time, and often find interesting and delicious things that I could never find in a US store (a dozen quail eggs in the same area with the chicken eggs).

There are a few things that I don't think I'll ever get used to about Paris grocery stores, though. In the US, the only time I see the shelves being stocked is when I go in the early morning hours (5 AM) when I have jet lag after our return from Paris.

In Paris, the workers join the shoppers, often during peak shopping times (mid-morning, early evening). We shoppers are taking the food off the shelf, to buy it, and the workers are refilling the empty spots on the shelves. The problem is that the workers and their boxes of food take up precious aisle space.

Yesterday I was in the BIG Franprix on rue de Rennes at 10AM and every aisle was filled with boxes and workers. Why can't they do this at 5 AM?

It was chaos. No one could pass the men on ladders and their stacks of boxes. We had to go around the aisle and approach the shelves from the other direction. Several jars had been dropped on the floor and had broken. Spaghetti sauce mixed with glass was all over one aisle. I promptly slid on it until the glass shards acted as brakes and I stopped.

In the US, this would have been an automatic lawsuit. Not something I agree with or am proud of.

As I continued to shop I noticed that the spill hadn't been cleaned up for at least 10-15 minutes, the other shoppers avoiding it, sliding on it or commenting.

The other thing that happens a lot in grocery stores in Paris is change.

One store I frequent has just changed its name from Champion to Carrefour. Maybe Carrefour bought it. The only other changes I noticed in this store were that there were more brightly colored, modern looking signs in the store and now, if you need a plastic bag, it costs 3 cents for each bag.

Every store I use, in both the US and in Paris has an automatic and complete reorganization about every six months. Just when I learn where everything is, they change it. The Franprix was in the middle of a re-org yesterday.

This store has a mezzanine. You have to go up a double flight of stairs to get to this part of the store and you can't take your cart with you. The mezzanine used to house the household items, paper towels, cleaning products, pet food, deodorant. Now, they've changed it and put many of the daily necessities of life on this floor, and at the back of the store. After searching every shelf for coffee, I found it on the mezzanine, right next to the spot where they keep the assortment of pots and pans that they sell.

In the US, in my neighborhood Ralphs, they reorganized the store and put all the snack food, the deli cases, the alcohol in the front of the store. This must be what most people buy. Of course, the produce (fruit and veggies) are right next to the snack aisle, in case someone feels guilty when they buy the beer and chips.

In Paris, the frozen food section is almost always in the front. I don't think this was the case five years ago, things are changing.

We also have delivery service from grocery stores in Paris. This is good if you can get to the store in the morning and be available in the afternoon for the delivery. Or, we can buy food via the websites of the major grocery stores. They don't have as much "stuff" (like the quail eggs) but you can get the basics. This is my go-to activity when we arrive in Paris. I order the food the week before we leave for delivery the evening of the arrival day. I try to leave enough time for travel delays and have been pleasantly surprised by the ease of this system.