The curse of the New Year's cards

Only in France would the post office be out of stamps. 

So we finally finished off the New Year's cards, yes I know it's almost February. I go to the post office Sat morning ready to send them off….and baf. 

No world stamps.

That's like the gas station having no gas, the library having no books. No stamps???

 I walked home disappointed but not beat. 

No problem, I said. I work right down the street from the downtown post office, I'll go on Monday. I'm sure they'll have the stamps I need. And they did. 

Except, get ready for this….

that since I went with only 10 minutes to spare before having to be back in class and being distracted and stressed, I proceeded to drop a whole bunch of stamps (not yet stuck to the envelopes) in the mail box with some of the cards. I'm too embarrassed to admit how many. 

And once again, this being France,

 no one who actually works inside the post office actually has a key to the post box right outside on the curb. 

That's someone else, someone from the sorting building at a different location who drives a truck who can access it. Come back and wait at the box at 5pm I was told. OK….

so, thankfully Stef is superman, superflexable with work and could pick up Seb from school and take him to soccer, because I'd never be there in time to jump the postal carrier at 5 o'clock when they arrive to open the box. 

Only, yes you guessed it, 

this being France, 

the mail person shows up at 5:20 (not 5 o'clock) and to my horror as we go thru the letters deposited, mine aren't in there. THEY HAD ALREADY BEEN PICKED UP! Along with my stamps. 

So she was completely sympathetic, took my name and number, called the routing center to see if anyone had found some stupid lady's stamps, was super nice. But I'm not holding my breath that I'll recoup my stamps. That makes for one heck of a waste of money. I was kicking myself for hours…

Until I showed up to teach my english class at 6 o'clock (and yes, I just made it in time) and one of my students informs me that her father just had a stroke and is recovering from some surgery on the artery in his neck and her son's 12 year old best friend is having the third brain operation (the third one in the course of three days) and they don't know if he's going to make it. 

That kind of put me back in my place. Yeah, so I was not carefull, rushed, wasn't thinking, was just plain stupid and wasted a bunch of cash, but hey, after all, in the scheme of things that's it. 

Hard lesson learned but I'm still here.

Your humble screw up….Michelle

You'll just have to wait another few weeks for those darn cards.

Owls and wigs…..

Still on the trail of an apartment to call home. 

The last one we looked at was complete with the elderly owner

  (moving into retirement home) who had overslept the night before in her living room chair, hence never heard her alarm, hence was still in he PJ's when we showed up. Nor had she had her breakfast or moved from her chair.

The real estate agent was opening the blinds for her….

In her entrance was a carved wooden owl with a wig on it! 

Kind of cool and freaky all at the same time. And stuff, man she had the stuff….hoarder? Perhaps not, collector, definitely.

All I can say is Stef was not the same man when he walked out of that place as when he entered. Even though we knew we wouldn't be buying it, too dark, ground floor….the old lady and all of her stuff was really a bit much. Even for me. 

And did I mention Stephane was so rushed that morning before our 9:30 visit he hadn't had time for his coffee? I'm sure that didn't help. 

What else could we do but drive to the nearest bakery and load up on croissants and pain au chocolat to relive a civilized breakfast, restart our day…..
 try to wash it all away.

I'm laughing as I write this, it was priceless.

 

Is your stomach churning yet?

 Come on, put the two together for the full on experience, 

you know you want to. Live large, live dangerously. 

Happy happy

Be happy

What ?

Some shots of my ears in situ….

Food glorious food….

So why am I putting these pics up?

Well, the chapon ( a castrated coq which I bought thinking it was just a plain old chicken except it had to be cooked for like three hours) tasted and looked better than this photo. But if you look close the drumstick bone cracked right through in the cooking. I heard this pop and what do you know…..wierd. But is was good.

 Well, the green pea, chapon ( because that chapon just kept on giving) and cheese tart below (homemade wwflour crust thank you)  just because it was so darn good.

 Part of our New Year's eve feast.

 And crummy lighting, but homemade deep fried apple fritters.

 Yummmm, 

thank you Annick for the fryer, 

may my waistline never be the same.

la glacière souterraine

 We visited un underground cavern here in Caen recently.

 It was  carved out of the limestone around 150 yeas ago. No one is certain of the actual purpose ….of course its underground center core contained ice to keep the surrounding two levels cool, but after that they can only speculate as to what exactly was kept cold. Back in the day glacières were used to keep food, medicine, even corpses "fresh".

 They think this one was used for beer believe it or not. (The landowner on the deed had many breweries in the city.)

Here's a diagram of the setup underground. (12 meters below ground)

La glace is the ice and the people in the pic are where the food or whatever 

would be kept cool on the two levels. Apparently the ice could be conserved this way for up to a year.

Apparently Sebastain has been here before 

seeing as his name was written on the wall.

Each floor is octagonal and has 327m sq of usable space.

This is a shot of the doorway leading out of the center core.

This shot (below) is from the inner core (5.85m diameter, 8m high) bottom level where the ice would be, looking up. The "window" is where the blocks of ice would have been lowered down onto a layer of straw which would allow any melting water an evacuation without touching the remaining solid ice block.

The metal on the left side of the shot below is the top of a well.

During the war around a hundred civilians 

found shelter here from the Germans 

and the American bombings in June and July 1944.

And voila! Your history lesson of the day!