Updates and upgrades

Callie was so good yesterday. We had a small crew of electricians in to do some long-needed upgrades to the wiring in our house. The work focused mainly on the kitchen.

By the time the electricians got here at 8:15 a.m., it was raining. For once, I'll say the rain was nice. It had been very hot on Sunday — that's about 90ºF or 32ºC for us — and there wasn't a breath of air Sunday evening. About 4:00 a.m. the wind had picked up and the air turned cool. I got up and opened all the windows and doors, which we had closed because rain was predicted for overnight.

All the stuff we had to move out of the kitchen

Because Callie wants to greet every stranger she meets with her wiggly submissive movements and a big smile on her face, and wants to climb up on people to get a better look at them (I guess), we couldn't just let her have the run of the house while the electrical work was being done. And we couldn't put her outdoors in the rain. We figured out we could keep her in the living room and on the front deck while the contractors worked in the entry way, utility room, garage, and kitchen.

The new wire runs up the back of the cabinet that has
the lazy susan in it, to new outlets on the wall above it.

They made a lot of noise. In a house like this one, made of hollow bricks and concrete blocks, it's not easy to run new electric wires inside walls. Instead, they have to be installed in plastic tracks that run along baseboards, in the corners of rooms, and along the edges of the ceilings.

This is what our 1960s French kitchen looks like.
Actually, I don't know if it was ever updated between
1967 and 2003. The house is 40 years old this year.
Our house in San Francisco was older.

To install two new sets of grounded outlets in our kitchen, replacing a long and probably dangerous extension cord we had running under a steam radiator from one side of the room to the other, they had to start at the circuit-breaker panel down in the utility room, run a wire about 20 feet around that room, and then drill a hole through solid a concrete wall to get the wire into the garage, which is located under our living/dining room (la salle de séjour in French).

One of the nice new things we got is this extractor unit,
installed in the old hood up over the stove. I know, most
of you already have one of these, but we didn't have one.

Then they had to drill through another concrete wall to get the wire into our little glassed-in sun porch, where they installed tracks for it along the edge of the ceiling. At that point they were just below the kitchen, so they could then drill up through the porch ceiling, through the concrete and ceramic tile floor, and into the kitchen.

The reason I say Callie was so good is that all that drilling through concrete and tile made one hell of a racket. Our dog Collette, who died about 18 months ago, would have barked all day, doubling the racket we had to withstand. But Callie sat quietly. She played some with her various chew toys, and we played with her. Then she took a long nap, which is what she usually does between 10:00 and 12:00 now, after her morning walk and her breakfast.

This shows the sink and the hood over the stove, which
before had just two chimney pipes in it for natural ventilation.

And yesterday she didn't even get a morning walk, because it was raining. You'd think that would have made her squirrelly and nervous and barky, but it didn't. The work went on until about 4:00 p.m., with a break for lunch.

Another update: We haven't pursued the idea of adding Callie's brother Cody to the pack. Annick Vincent, the woman who with her sister owns and operates the Elevage du Berger de la Vallée des Géants, is supposed to get in touch with us later this month. She told us she usually brings her children to Saint-Aignan to spend a day at the Beauval Zoo sometime during their summer vacation. We invited her to come by to spend a few minutes with Callie when she's in the neighborhood — we're only a couple of miles from the zoo.

New outlets for the coffeemaker and toaster, plus a
luxurious extra one. Older French houses never have
enough outlets for all our modern appliances.

Who knows what will happen? I haven't checked Annick's web site to see if Cody is still living there with her, or has found a new owner.

And about that camera — the Panasonic Lumix TZ3 — it came. My mother has it, and she said she would see about shipping it to me this month via airmail. That might be too expensive. In a way I wish I had just had Amazon ship it to me in France (I don't even know if they would have agreed to do that, and it would have cost some bucks). I'm anxious to get it and use it. My older cameras are showing their age.

Even so, I may have to wait until my sister comes to visit in mid-September to get my hands on the TZ3. She'll bring it in her suitcase. So now I can look forward to her visit AND getting my new camera.

Meanwhile, the kitchen and the little sun porch both got a good "spring cleaning" yesterday and today. Especially downstairs, where the drilling was done, there piles of a fine white, powdery concrete dust all around, and a coat of it on everything. I'm in the process of cleaning all that up. The kitchen feels very clean and light and airy this morning. It'll be a good day to go do some cooking, but first I have to go over to Intermarché to get some things.