New category

Random

I realized we didn't have a nice catch-all category to post those random bloggy things you need to write once in a while to keep the updates coming. So, sit back and enjoy this first entry to the Random category dealing with the minuta of our weekend.

Getting lost on a drive a while back we came across the city center of the town we actually live in, Montesson. It was a nice little area with the requisite cobblestone, small roads and smaller shops and looked like it might be a cool place to grab a drink another evening. That evening turned out to be Saturday and the idea turned out to be a bad one. The city center wasn’t that nice upon closer inspection and we ended up walking into a bar at the end of town because it was the only place we saw that might be serving drinks at all. It was a total dive and Chizzy felt very uncomfortable being the only woman in a tiny smoky room filled with what appeared to be hooligans. (Dante's foosball crew: I did make one amazing observation watching the hooligans play on some really old tables with what looked like rubber balls. The dominate shot of all the players turned out to be the aptly named Frenchy Pullback. I am not kidding.) After making quick work of our beer while standing at the bar we grabbed Chizzy’s coworker Mike and went out to the more inviting town of St. Germain En Laye. We went to a cool Irish pub and got to speak a bit of English to the barkeep and put back a couple Guinesses. They only had little sandwiches for food though so we moved down the road to a pizza place. We arrived at 6:45 which we knew was early for dinner but not so early that they wouldn’t even be open yet. They weren’t however, so we had a while to kill so went to the English pub next door. The British tabloid The Sun was sitting on our table and I introduced Mike and Chizzy to the famous Page 3 Girl. Finished off our beers there and headed back to the pizza place. I wanted to make sure I got a little local flavor to my meal so I ordered the ‘special’ which came with a fresh raw egg cracked right over the top immediately before serving. I had heard about the raw egg phenomenon from many people before I got here but was still a bit surprised to learn there are no rules on what qualifies to be topped with one. After dinner we moved across the street to the French bar where we met up with Bill, another coworker. If you are a long time reader of this site you might be familiar with a post I did several months back about how silly I thought asking where restrooms where in bars and restaurants. I have been regretting that post for quite a while but I still like to venture out to find them without asking. I thought I had these French bathroom locations nailed because they never seem to be on the dinning level. You are either going upstairs or downstairs if you want to use the restroom. So I made a beeline to the nearest staircase and was half way up by the time I heard the waitress yelling at me. Turned out to pretty much be the door right across from where we were sitting. I will always remember this bar, however, as my first introduction to the infamous smoking in Europe. I’d been telling people for a couple weeks now that I hadn’t noticed the smoke here at all. I guess it was just a matter of time before I found it. It was pretty much unbearable to me after a while and it was at my suggestion that we call it a night. In classic fashion the machine ate our parking ticket and I needed to use the call box to find a dude to come and help. Normally a trivial matter but the language barrier makes even those adventurous.

I don’t know if it was the beer or the raw egg, but I felt pretty crappy the next morning and we called off plans to head into Paris with Bill and Mike who wanted to go see the Rodin Museum. Chiz learned this morning that not only did we miss the museum we missed our chance to admire The Thinker along side Dustin Hoffman who was kicking it Paris style there.

I blew out a fuse in the apartment (I hope that’s all) yesterday while messing with a power strip I brought from home. I have been very cautious about what I am plugging in to the walls here because of the difference in voltages but I got lazy. I plugged in this power strip (actually labeled surge protector) and BANG. Sparks and smoke came out and the TV on the other side of the room went out. Fortunately it was just those two outlets and the maintenance man should be on his way later today. Although he is probably not in any hurry to help me because he thinks I am cruel to animals. The story: Our trip to Zurich a couple weekends ago coincided with a FedEx delivery of a couple of our boxes. I knew this was coming so I went down to reception and told them we are expecting some boxes and they are heavy and I am sorry if it will be an inconvenience. She said they would happily store them in the mail room until we got back. We also left one of Chizzy’s coworkers keys to our place so she could come by and feed Tolsty and stuff. We let her know he prefers his water dish in the bath tub. So the boxes arrive and the FedEx guy plunks them down right in the middle of the reception room and the woman can’t budge them. She calls up the maintenance man and he figures he would be nice and just take them up to the room. When he comes in Tolsty is anxiously waiting by the door. He sees the food dish but can’t find the water. He pours Tolsty a bowl of water and leaves. So now I go down to tell reception about the electrical problem and she conveys this story to me in broken English about the cat loving maintenance man and his disappointment there was no water. I tried to tell her there was water in the tub and we had somebody coming by but she just kind of nodded like I do when I have no idea what somebody is saying. Even if she did understand I doubt she'll convey this information on to the maintenence man and I can almost guarantee you his english will be worse than broken so I won't be able to explain it myself.

Today is the last day of the financial quarter for Chizzy’s company. Yay. Her hours should get a little more reasonable after today and our collective stress level will come down a few notches. She’s been kicking total butt, by the way.

Nice work making it to the bottom of my first Random post. We will be going to Paris again this weekend so hopefully will have some better stories and pictures.