March, 2010

Chateau Kermezen
6 minutes from the house, it has been
inhabited by the same family since 1438

Bad News

Yes, this is a crappy way to start this month's newsletter but I may as well get it out of the way.

After getting some blood work done and a biopsy, Janice found out that she has breast Cancer, again. I can make this quick because as of now, we know little or nothing as to where we stand. Will she need surgery, chemotherapy, radiation or perhaps all three? We don't know yet as we are a week away from meeting with the specialists. What kind of Cancer? How aggressive is it? Will we have it treated here or fly back to the US?...We don't know yet until we meet with the specialists.

We were 3 days from the start of this years European road trip to 9 different countries when it all came to a screeching halt. We have our Canadian friends Wayne and Barb here visiting with us and we will still drive down to Gordes in the South of France for a week before returning home since we will not be able to meet with the Cancer specialists until then anyway. The rest of the trip, including a week in Vienna that we planned to spend with Mandy had to be canceled so we can get the treatments started.

Van Gogh returns

For years, Janice has enjoyed being the family artist. Much like her mother, she is seriously skilled at drawing and all manner of painting. She has had a few fits and starts at doing more of it but time, opportunity and inclination never quite jelled.

Until now.

We recently meet a few new couples who, like ourselves, happened to be Americans living in the area part time. The fellas are retired from working for the state department, ‘foreign affairs’ kinda stuff. One of the ladies was taking a painting class and Janice needed little encouragement to join her. Now, 3 times a week I become the artist’s widower, having to fend for myself by serving the pre-cooked meals she leaves me and doing all the things I am not allowed to do when she is home.

Like it or not, all the kids will soon be flooded with moms art, reminding me of when we put all their best work on the front of the refrigerator when they were young.

She is having a blast!

Just having fun

In January I mentioned that we had friends here that bottle their own wine. In fact, I took a crack at it and helped with about a hundred bottles. While this is not a monthly event, I took another shot at it again this month with about a hundred more. I did however, fail to mention that this is a premium Bordeaux wine from a ‘classed’ vineyard. They are only allowed to sell a limited amount of that pressing but that does not mean that is all they produce. Au contraire…

They can sell the rest as an unlabeled wine, which about a dozen of us get together and order hundreds of gallons of this ‘red and white nectar of the gods’ and bottle them ourselves for pennies on the dollar. Imagine, a fine Bordeaux wine for the price of a Coke.

My apprenticeship as a cider bottler

The main event this month though was bottling apple cider. I missed the fall harvest and the crush where they mashed about a ton and a half of apples and allowed them to ferment in oak casks for a few months. Last week we gathered at Chateau Kermezen (photo at top of page) over 3 days for the traditional annual event. Again, this is not a huge production but we managed to fill 1600 bottles, so they are not quite goofing around either.

I would be remiss in not mentioning that the current occupants of this Chateau are only the most recent in a long line, as the chateau has been occupied by the same family since 1438. They have a private chapel on the property that has buried every family member within its walls (actually, under the floor) since then. The latest was buried just 3 months ago, a daughter who passed of cancer.

The flood

As we arrived the water level was to the top of
the raceway to the left, with the river to the right

We have friends who live in a mill house that invited us over for lunch. This was a day after a rather big storm you might have heard about that caused a lot of damage in France. Naturally, being a mill house, they live next to a tidal river and as we arrived I mentioned that the water level seemed threateningly high but they assured me that it was fine. Our area has the highest tides in Europe and to complete this perfect storm we had a full moon.

Within minutes the water was flowing over it's banks

10 minutes after this picture was taken,
water poured under the doors

We got through lunch just fine but before we could serve desert, the river had overflowed it's banks and water began to pour under the door. Naturally, we all went into full emergency mode, with the women starting to carry lighter pieces of furniture upstairs, while the guys got shovels and started barricading the bottom of the doors with logs, gravel and dirt to slow the water's flow into the house.

Houston, we have a problem!

More furniture, books and household items were moved upstairs as we attempted to keep up with the flow with a large wet / dry vac. The garage and bathroom were quickly submerged in 6 inches of water being at the low point of the house. The irony is that these folks are the same people who had invited us over for a New Years Eve party last year when her father passed shortly after we left. (The Epistle, January 2009) We are still trying to figure out if we are a curse to them or their rescuing angels. Either way there is always a lot of drama. Next time I am taking a fire extinguisher....just in case.

Wayne & Barbara

A few days ago we had our Canadian friends Wayne and Barbara show up for a two week visit. Having visited last year, they apparently did not get their fill so we were thrilled that they decided to come back. We saved some of the best local spots to visit. These guys are not exactly high maintenance guests as they did the lions share of the cooking and are a breeze to entertain.

Wayne and Barbara
at Chateau La Roche Jagu

We spent a part of the week having some of our french friends meet them and we will spend a week in the South of France at a home exchange we set up in the medieval city of Gordes. We left on that trip this morning so I will have more on it next month.

And the winner is...

Mandy!

For the past several months, daughter Mandy has been participating in regional competitions for wanna-be-lawyers in both client counseling and mock trials. The object is to represent 'clients' and to guide them through the process. It obviously provides great experience in thinking on your feet and emphasizes the importance of knowing your stuff, or at least being able to blow smoke...a skill she developed at a young age.

With real lawyers providing the coaching, she crushed some teams, bamboozled others and outwitted the rest. She will be back in action in Vienna at the end of this month where she is scheduled to represent her school at a mock trial competition.

Having won the national competition, she was recently chosen to represent the Netherlands at the Hong Kong International client counseling competition. It seems ironic that an American student won the top spot to represent the country in this international event. You go, girl!

Oyster harvesting

In the 'what did we do for fun' category for this month, this was a first as we were invited to join a group to harvest oysters. There is no danger of these slimy, stomach turning, revolting things ever crossing my lips, (here they eat them raw) but I know that some people think they are a delicacy, it being the second most expensive item on a restaurants menu. That's probably because they have not tasted buttered popcorn. Ha!

Being the open minded millennium kind of guy that I am, I volunteered to join them and give them away to those with a less developed palate.

A commercial oyster bed

We picked a day with extraordinarily low tides where you can see the commercial oyster farms above ( hundreds of these stadium sized oyster beds line the surrounding shores) The 'seeds' are put into these heavy plastic netted sacks where they will grow for 3-4 years. We on the other hand, pry them off the rocks on the shores where the escapees have clung to the rocks. There is an unlimited supply available without any license requirements.

Every white blotch is an oyster

Projects, projects, projects!

This month was wind down time for projects. I did little odds and ends like building a cabinet with a sink for our master bathroom / dressing room with a matching one on the opposite wall planned for next year. What-dy-a-mean "is that all"? I told you it was wind down time...

This is not SPAM!

Every month I send out our little newsletter to our friends and family via email. Recently I noticed that when I include myself in the recipients list, it occasionally arrives in my SPAM box, so it occurred to me that it might arrive in yours also. If you are not receiving this on the 15th of each month, it is not because I have not sent it to you. If you want to see the blog you simply have to identify my email as not being SPAM and to check your junk mail folder if you are not receiving it. On the other hand, I have done a little research on the subject myself and will ensure that I only send it out to a few people at a time further reducing the chances that it is identified by your ISP as junk mail. If you don’t receive this, just let me know… :( (!)

February, 2010

Two scenes of 'Isle de Brehat' (Brehat Island)

A spectacular Thousand Island look-alike a half hour from our door

No cars are permitted as it is a 'zone for feet' only

Show and tell!

Show and tell is so much fun! I feel like a kid being potty trained, bragging about his self control while dragging his parents to the bathroom to proudly display his achievement. They cheer, they applaud and he thinks he is just the cat’s meow.

First off we finished part of our kitchen renovation. I say 'part 'because we still plan to tear down the ceiling and install 'old world' beams with textured drywall in between. I have been hand hewing the beams with an adz in my spare time but we may get lazy and do part two of the actual renovation next year. When I left off last month I had just started by smashing the kitchen counter, sink and cabinet. This is only part of the kitchen mind you as this is not a typical American styled set-up.

Before...

Here, Janice has nothing fancy, just a large farm styled work table in her kitchen, an old French buffet styled piece of furniture to store cooking implements in as well as a long bench for someone visiting to sit and swill wine while she is cooking.

During....

Still, the changes required replacing the old part vinyl / part press board counter top with a butcher block counter top, building a pull out trash cabinet and ‘French-ing’ up the slide out storage areas. In addition, of course, I replaced the million year old ceramic sink with a stainless double sink complete with food disposer and R/O water filtration system…all of which we packed in suitcases and flew over from California over the past couple of years. Why? Simple. Price, availability and, believe it or not, ease in bringing them over.

...and after
(Click on any pic for an enlargement)

This is not anything like a typical American kitchen, but my bride wanted a French traditional styled look and that is what she got. The center section baskets are fixed so the shelves slide out. The left side cabinet door is a false front concealing a slide out trash receptacle.

It would not surprise many to know that the plumbing sizes in the US and here are quite different. I was quite meticulous in preparing for this project, trying to anticipate all eventualities, problems, issues and unintended consequences, so I brought gobs of extra everything.

Still, it was a little daunting knowing that I have never done any plumbing without having to go back to the hardware store for extra bits and bobs for whatever plumbing job I was doing and that I had not anticipated that I would need. The problem was that in this case, the closest hardware store that would have the parts in the sizes I would need would be 3000 miles (4800 Km) away.

The long and the short of it was that it required my doing the one thing that I will never do to Janice’s airplane---jury rig things to make them work. Still, it is a real nice improvement.

Next on our agenda were having our master bedroom / dressing room in the loft carpeted, new bed drug up the 2 flights and Janice putting her personal decorating imprint on the whole shebang. This is one of those projects that seemed a little anticlimactic since it has been unfolding in slow motion as it rose higher on the to-do list and as we could afford to move forward on it over the past 7 years.

Our bedroom loft, 2002

It may seem ridiculous to take so long to finish a stupid bedroom; after all, this is not rocket science. Remember though that we are only here part of each year and we can’t have work interfering with having too much fun. Besides, this area occupies the whole 3rd floor and is the same size as all 3 second floor bedrooms combined. We had the windows installed the first year and drug up all of the drywall to the 3rd story.

Doing my thing

A friend inspecting the new windows
Stack of drywall board on floor yet to be installed

Subsequent years saw the electrical work done, framing, building closets, insulation, drywall, refinishing the ceiling beams, paint and texturing. In the end what matters is that we have what we set out to do. We should be good to go for a while as we now have 4 bedrooms and 2 ½ baths for 2 of us. Won’t someone please come and visit?

Same angle, same view as above

...and part of the dressing room beyond

It has been a bit of a push for the past two months and there is still a couple of weeks of odds and ends to do before we wrap up our building projects for the season. I have been making serious deposits in my brides love bank so that I can relax when it's time to get back to doing really important stuff in June, like finishing building her airplane...

As much as it may seem, life around here is not all work and no play. Having regained the use of our kitchen and living room, we have started another round of dinner parties.

Chatty news

We have lined up our usual home exchanges for our upcoming European road trip but we were pleased that we were also able to make a few available for our daughter Kami as well. This is the second one of our kids who has cottoned to this whole scheme and is fast becoming an enthusiastic proponent.

Some time ago, she asked if it would be possible for us to find a place for her in New York City to stay in order to see the Tennis Open. We came up with a possibility or two but in the end she chose not to go.

Recently though, she asked if we could possibly find a place in Vancouver, British Columbia during the winter Olympics this month as no accommodations remained available. Within hours we had two excellent homes for her and her girlfriends to choose from, so obviously she chose a real nice condo near the events and they flew there this morning.

Empowered by her success, she hesitatingly explored the possibility of our willingness to find a place in Maui (Hawaii). The hesitation was not so much because we had just found her a place for the Olympics but because she would be taking her mother (read my ex-wife) and she feared we would be about as receptive to the idea as a Muslim opening a bikini stall at the Kabul mall.

They just got back from their holiday there two days ago.

As our kids are able to get it together, we expect they will all want to pick their favorite vacation destinations in the world where they will only have to fly there to have their own home waiting for them.

Let's go on an adventure!

Whenever we find ourselves needing a quick island fix, (admittedly, we have a real fetish for these things) we stroll down to one of our local beaches which has a plethora of them. Often, we have gazed up at a small castle on the bluffs across from Lliec Island, home to famed aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1938.

I have often though that I would give your right leg to see the place, but alas, it was not to be. Then again, it was! We have friends in the village who asked us to go for a beach walk with friends of theirs (rubber boots required as we go sloshing about at low tide). We drove to their door and SHAZAM, it was the castle!

It is fascinating to see the inside story of these places when you realize they have been passed down for generations. The interior rooms are filled with antiques and cozy family furnishings, giving an old world ambiance matching the exterior.

The place is quite huge, with additional towers on the main entrance side (this view is the 'back', facing the sea) complete with secondary structures on the property. There is an 9 foot high (3 meter) stone wall that surrounds the property and gardens that I estimate is a half mile (1 Km) long.

It has become common for the owners of these places to occupy only a small portion of the place in the winter as heating is simply prohibitive. And now you know the rest of the story...