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| Isles de Brehat |
Let's see now... we leave these islands to go to the islands. Is there a pattern here?
Bits and bobs
As you may know, the French just had a big election. We had
recently told friends in our village that if France elected a socialist we
would leave the country within 48 hours. They did and we did. Never mind that
the election coincided with the fact that we were scheduled to fly out, it made
for good effect.
Wild French political rally for Sarkozy
We were invited to attend a political rally for Sarkozy and
got to watch 3000 enthusiastic frenchies go wild for the man. It was the first
time we attended a political rally anywhere but it was just like you would
expect and see on TV.
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| Loic launching his sailboat for the season |
In the final days before our departure, we had Los Angeles
friends Ed and Marilyn visit us and see the area for several days. Ed is a
diehard table tennis afficiano so I set him up with a local club to play one
evening. He is now an intercontinental player. After downing all the wine and
French bread they could, they were off to other parts of the country.
That’s a wrap!
We have transitioned from Europe back to the land of the free
and the brave, and our first stop was to visit daughter Kami in Los Angeles for
several days. While there, she took us on a tour of her workplace at the
Paramount studios in Hollywood. Kami is a set decorator in the movie industry,
and is currently working on season 3 of the television show called “Rizzoli and
Isles”. The weekly series is about a female detective and a medical examiner that
solve murder investigations in Boston.
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| Kami on the job |
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| Medical examiners room. Note lack of ceiling |
Kami showed us around the massive studio grounds as well as the sound stages where they were actually shooting the show. It is incredible to see completely decorated police station offices, as well as the medical examiners room, complete with all appropriate equipment and paraphernalia housed in rooms whose walls are an inch thick and have no ceilings. (The ceilings of the rooms are never seen on camera). All the rooms are contained inside a warehouse.
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| Outdoor scene being shot on studio grounds. Rain being created in foreground, wind being created by fans in background and lighting being made 'just so' by reflectors. |
Next, we visited the outdoor area on the studio grounds where some of the scenes are shot. Entire city streets with 3 to 5 story buildings---or facades I should say--- provide a backdrop to the action. The facades are less than a foot thick and are supported by hollow steel structures.
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| Buildings are fronts only |
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| "Inside" of above building is but a hollow shell. Walkways are for cameras, lighting or special effects crews. |
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| Kami's flower arrangement. Happy mothers day, mom! |
Being back home.......eh, in California that is, we spent time with Janice's mother and her husband Vern as well as catching up with friends. This is the last time we plan to make our returns here little more than a drive by, as we intend to re-claim our house when we leave the island in the fall. The plan will be to spend the better part of the late fall / early winter in California, late winter and spring in France and the summer unquestionably at the island.
Meanwhile, we did as much maintenance as we could on our house and will fly up to Seattle to see more kids and grandkids shortly.
Long lost cousins
I have a younger
brother who had two girls with his then partner. About ten years ago, after
they separated, she married and moved with the 9 and 11 year old girls to
Florida to start a new life. The move was sudden, with no forwarding address,
phone number or any manner to contact her. In fact, our family didn’t even know
her new married name.
Over the years, we
tried several times without success to scour the internet in attempt to locate our nieces. We hoped that at some point they would be old enough to want a
Facebook page so on occasion, we kept checking. We knew that if they had taken
their new fathers name the effort would probably be futile, but last month my
sister finally hit the jackpot. She found them.
We tentatively sent a
message, not knowing if they would remember us at all or if they would even
care to reestablish a relationship. Would they think that we had just blown
them off? Would they just not give a rip? Being 20-ish, would they have few
memories of their childhood extended family?
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| Victoria and Valerie |
Within hours we had our answer. They responded with Facebook links, email addresses, phone numbers and sheer joy that they had been the object of such a long search. They did have good memories of the relatives they could remember and have been slowly re-introduced to cousins, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, and assorted other hangers on.
We look forward to having Victoria and her
husband Efran along with younger sister Valerie visit at their earliest opportunity.
