Tourist Office to the rescue

log Entry Saturday April 26th, 2008
Well I might as well break the silence on my “little(BIG) problem”. I STILL have no Internet, the DSL indicator on my LiveBox (HA!) is just blinking away, resetting it does nothing. Yesterday I went BACK to my dearest friends at the Tourist Office and asked their help ONCE AGAIN in contacting France Telecom about “Our Little Problem”, which CM promptly did. After much re-dialing and correct-number-getting, she reached a FT person who told her that the “Problem” was one of IDENTITY! It seems Mr. Theodore Berry is named on the telephone line’s account as it’s owner and the application for DSL indicates one Kelly Lute. So in the infinite wisdom of FT instead of telling us that problem via a letter or perhaps a smoke signal, they just put the application on HOLD. Ah! So after some quick clarifications by CM via my dearest Kelly about who was who on the account and how it got that way (?!) it has, apparently, been ironed out…that wrinkle, whether it results in an actual DSL connection is yet to be determined (supposedly Tuesday or Wednesday next week). So there is some hope I hope. This morning it blinks.
The sun is shining thru the cloud layer over our little village in the heart of France! Yippee! Life here is soooo very much easier with a bit of dryness, warmth and sunshine. Indeed!

Tele Repaired! Whoopee!

Blog Entry_04-09-08
Well sure as heck France Telecom came and went today at about 9am as scheduled. They found a bad connection OUTSIDE on the side of the house…huh? How’s that got anything to do with anything? Let me review this telephone problem as I have lived it.
1.Inet and Telephone worked fine on the day we arrived. That was the 21st of March as I remember.
2.10 days later it all went away. 4/1 came and all was inert, dead, mort, fini etc.
3.On the 4th we got a letter telling us they cut off our Inet and Telephone for non-payment.
4.We paid the balance in arrears and were told we would have our phone back last Wednesday or Thursday.
5.That didn’t happen so we went to the Tourist Board, they called for us, found out that they had turned the tele back on and were surprised we had no phone and got a crew to come out today and check our connection.
6.They came, they fixed it.
7.Huh?
So now we have a telephone with the promise of an actual internet connection sometime in the next week. Good luck to us. Kelly called Jane.
The dining room is shaping up, we worked on it all bloody day, cloth is hung on all the walls and Kelly produced the curtains as well. A full day. I prepped the beef marinade for the oyster sauce beef dish and made the ice cream mix as well. Tomorrow will be a cooking day as well as cleanup of the dining room to make it ready for our guests, now all 4 of them.

What Else Is New?

Blog 4-08-08 A Monday
Ok, It’s now Monday night, no…I don’t have a telephone and with that said…I have no Internet as well. We went to the Tourist Office this morning to consult with our resident French Cultural and Technology Specialists E and MC, MC was caught up in another major operation regarding a new computer being installed in the office for use by patrons…like us. E called the lovely folks at France Telecom for an explanation of why did we receive a notice this morning of some billing issue re the NEW phone number when there is NO DIAL TONE on the aforesaid telephone line. They referred her to the technical office who is sending out a techie tomorrow morning…er ah by 1pm that is to check our line and find out why they think our line is GOOD and we have no telephone instead. When we disengaged ourselves from the office I came home and checked the telephone in another socket, no hope, doesn’t work. Oh well, someone who really KNOWS how this system works will be here tomorrow with luck and maybe oh maybe we will get connected. What a bore this is.
We have a dinner planned with friends Thursday evening. Thai food promised, but what they will get is my interpretation of Thai food using French ingredients and my addled memory of the recipes of my books in California as I have none of those here. So yes, I’m faking it a bit but I understand the differences between Thai and Chinese and Vietnamese and their similarities as well so it’ll be a good fake I hope. A soup with lemongrass and ginger, nems with pork and spring vegetables, Oyster Sauce Beef with red peppers and snow peas, Thai Shrimp Curry over rice, apple/ginger tart al a mode. Wish me luck.
So today we worked on the walls of the dining room, YES THE Dining Room we will be using night after next for the Thai dinner. Hanging cloth by the yards, quite a process, nailing up the wood strips to hold the cloth on all sides, hanging the cloth with installed battens at the top edge of heavy paper after placing the fuzzy stuff over the area that the cloth will cover. It looks great though and we are almost through with the 3rd of the 4 walls with only the window wall left to complete. I doubt we will get that part done before the dinner but we will see.
Kelly went to the doctor that speaks english today, first this morning to find the office open, warm and empty with a notice saying the first patients will be seen at 2pm. So she returned home to continue the wall project, it’s a three block walk more or less so not a lot of time was wasted. At 2pm she went back to see 9 patients sitting in the room and decided that was a bit too much of a wait for her sensibilities today so she came home again. Maybe tomorrow.