June 2016

The beginning of  'after'

Show and tell

Well, its done. Whatever we were able to do to our place in France is now in our rear view mirror. Looking back, we couldn't be more pleased. No major gotchas or catastrophes, albeit slower progress than we had anticipated. We still pinch ourselves to see our villa perched over the Mediterranean on the French Riviera.

We know that hardly anyone is interested in "before" pictures but it is the only way to show how far we have come, so without further ado, here they are. 

Villa that needed a little love

Rough, but fixable

OK, just plain rough.

All metal repainted, all doors & shutters refinished by herself, who is also the chief cook and bottle washer.

 

Lousy photo but you can see where we are relative to the sea. I took this pic from a friend's boat in our bay.

The view from one of the 3 terraces with all new tile. It shows the area where we were in the boat to take the picture above.

The upper terrace with new tile, exterior finish and 2 of the 5 new French doors, 10 windows and a skylight.

View of the lower terrace and part of the garden on a double lot.

More of the garden and my mini workshop in the far back corner

The middle terrace off of the garden level living and dining room

A number of less 'sexy' tasks were also wrapped up, like installing a new drive through entry gate, then installing all the heating and air conditioning systems and rough electrical and plumbing for the garden suite. This is all the groundwork to allow us to hit the deck running when we return next February and finish what we had originally intended to do this year.

 

The summer crush is upon us, so we said Adieu to Angelina and Brad, Johnny [Depp] who live nearby, and to Sylvester [Stallone] who likes to keep his yacht in the bay and headed to our other bit of heaven. We got back right on time to watch the 4th quarter of the scorched earth political campaigns of "Crazy Donald" (according to Hillary), "Crooked Hillary" (according to The Donald) and "Santa Bernie" ( according to all his Reindeer).

The view from the cockpit

 

3 hours a day is all I ask...

Last October, I promised that I would not regale annoy you with anymore airplane stories for the next 8 months.

Time's up. I am back in the saddle. God, I missed my air time. We have a had an absolute ball, but 8 months is a long long time to wait to feel the 'wind beneath my wings'.  

The irony never escapes me. My father was born in a small town in Ontario called Carleton Place. I learned to fly at the private airport's grass strip there because that is where my instructor lived and operated out of. Of all the places in North America I could have learned to fly, it was there that it happened. Sheeh! My father would have rolled over in his grave had he lived to see this. (?) One of the weird aspects of my flights is following the highways and seeing the cars and trucks below go zooming by me on the ground. "Wait a minute", I am thinking. "I'm in a plane!" The fact is, I fly much slower than you drive. I can go faster but that is not the point.

The point is to take in the incredible view, low and slow. Like checking out some fellas new waterfront McMansion for the stars. Nice. Or some guy's private pond on his estate. I will never see it from the road but up here, I am a Peeping Tom interested in all that goes on below.

Interesting stuff like the little shed in the middle of a large island owned by the government. Hmmmm....let's see here. No dock anywhere, so how do they get there? The place is buried deep in the  woods with no visible path to it. A closer inspection shows that it is a swampy area almost all around it. 

What possible purpose could it serve? Some secret government facility? Nah. Government employees would never wade through the swamp. A Meth lab? Nah. Dopers are too lazy to go to this much trouble. Maybe the guy has a dozen sex slaves chained to the walls! Whatever it is, he doesn't realize how visible it all is from the air. 

What's the big deal about flying low and slow? 
This for one.

 What a great start to the summer. If my head stays in the clouds, Janice might have to write next months Epistle. That will be the girl version of what goes on around here. 

IIPHBETCTBHE TOBAPHIIIH!

(Greetings, comrades!)

Once a month, I get a little ditty from Google or whatever telling me that I got a few folks like yourselves curiosity and that they took a peek at our goofy  little newsletter. Often, I will get notified that someone in Indonesia, South Korea or God knows where had a look. I attribute that to someone probable just surfing the internet and innocently stumbling on The Epistle. 

Recently though, there has been a growing number of readers from Russia. In fact, 12 of them last month. 12 more from Singapore and even 4 from the Ukraine. No, not a huge number by any count, but more than I would expect from random chance, especially when I don't know a soul there in the first place. As you well know, I have lightened up on my political comments like... " I'm not saying let's do away with Liberals. I'm just saying let's remove all the warning labels and let the problem work itself out."... in the spirit of non partisanship and mutual understanding. Besides, I can't keep up with our current crop of politicians trying out crazy each other. As one of my 4 favorite daughters told me recently "Dad, we are being asked to vote for one of the two most hated politicians in our country's history"

Still, the Russian folks have no reason to have any interest in our little goings-on so I am at a loss to figure out what's up.