All change

Sink on tank
Sink on top of the tank

What a difference a day makes. Last week, on the last day of August we bought a new toilet. We paid for it at the front of the store and the salesman sent us around to a side entrance to retrieve it. To our good fortune, the young man who got it out of the stock room opened the box and that’s when we discovered that the tank was broken. He explained that we could wait for a new one to arrive at his location in 3 weeks or if we were willing to pick it up at their store in Narbonne, they had one on the shelf and he would reserve it for us. Visions of a city by the Mediterranean Sea, only 30 minutes away with the item we wanted in stock made the decision for us. That’s when things got lost in translation. Continue reading “All change”

That crashing sound

A wall shelf unit without its shelves or doors
A wall shelf unit without its shelves or doors

Last night after dinner I was sitting here typing something for the blog when a frighteningly-loud crash seemed to be happening right beside my head. Instantly the thoughts of an airplane going down or a car wrecking or a building collapsing filled my brain. Then in the next few seconds I realized that the reason it sounded so close was because the sound had indeed come from an arm’s length away: part of a wall cabinet had come loose and had fallen towards the floor. Luckily a table was directly below and helped to cushion the fall. But what made all the noise? Continue reading “That crashing sound”

Free association

The annual showcase of Associations poster (from the city's website)
The annual showcase of Associations poster (from the city’s website)

When we first moved to the Atlanta area we were kind of isolated in both the physical sense and with social connections. We knew some of the neighbors and we saw people at work but being far out of the city had its disadvantages. The first weekend dinner group that we joined was called Out in the Country to give you an idea of our remote location. It took a few years after that to discover another social group for us that actually had Georgia’s capital city’s name in its title. Luckily, within two weeks of moving to Carcassonne we were part of a discussion group and after this past weekend’s Rendez-vous des Associations, things are looking even brighter. Continue reading “Free association”

Carcassonne, Spain

La Feria poster on the stage at Place Carnot
La Feria poster on the stage at Place Carnot

Like you, probably, Bill and I thought that we lived in France. For the past 4 days however, it seems that we’ve slipped south of the border into Spain. For the last 10 years the city has held an increasingly popular music festival for 6 weeks during the summer that literally fills the air with sound from concerts that stretch from inside the walls of the castle to the banks of the river and canal. While the majority of those events are in French, lots of what we heard and saw this weekend had a distinct Spanish accent as the city celebrated La Feria. Continue reading “Carcassonne, Spain”

Silly questions

Some of the chocolate we have in the house at the moment
Some of the chocolate we have in the house at the moment

Before we head off to the market a couple of days each week, Bill and I always check the refrigerator to see what fruits and vegetables we might need. That really is only the starting point since we kind of just say “yes, we need fruit” or “no, we don’t need potatoes but we have no other vegetables” and then just see what’s available as being in-season and a good value. Since the open-air market can’t supply everything for us, we do have to walk to the supermarket about once a week. Bill was checking the cabinets and asked me “Do you think we have enough chocolate?” as he held up the 7 large bars we had on hand. What kind of question is that? Continue reading “Silly questions”

French mythology

The only mythology in town: Neptune's fountain on Place Carnot
The only mythology in town: Neptune’s fountain on Place Carnot

If you say the word “mythology” I bet that visions of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses come to mind. What if you add in French to the mix? Maybe kings and queens, cheese and wine, poodles and fries? Now that we’ve lived in France for a few months I thought that it would be interesting to compare our experiences with what we’ve always heard it should be. Continue reading “French mythology”

Which one?

A field of sunflowers near Limoux
A field of sunflowers near Limoux

If you’re in the US and tell someone that you are from Washington they might assume that you mean the state but it could easily be the nation’s capital or about 25 other cities, towns, mounts, and ports around the country. According to the post office, if you address a letter to Springfield without including the state name, they will have a choice of 41 locations where it could be delivered. Last Sunday our neighbors asked us to go with them to a festival in Villelongue which we had to look up in a mapping program to see how long the car ride might be. Since there are a dozen towns or villages in France with that name, we hoped they had chosen the one about 45 minutes south of Carcassonne. Continue reading “Which one?”