The vet just called and said the operation was successful and that Callie is awake and alert. He wants to keep her until mid-day tomorrow.
There was no single object blocking up her intestine. It was just a mass of dried material. She probably had chewed on too many pieces of wood and her gut was clogged up. That'll teach us to let her decide what it is appropriate to chew on. No more Mr. Nice Guys from tomorrow forward...
24 June 2007
23 June 2007
High finance in francs, euros, and dollars
Earlier this week the bread lady and I were talking when she stopped by to bring (or sell) us our daily baguette. We usually spend a few minutes chatting or gossiping when she comes by. On Monday, she told me that she and her husband had decided to look for an old house to buy down in the Auvergne region, in the département called the Puy de Dôme.
She said they had been looking at real estate ads on the Internet and now were ready to drive down there and see what the houses for sale looked like in reality. They know the area because they went down there on their vacation last summer, I remember, and they may have been down there many other times for all I know.
The bread lady makes her deliveries five days a week, with Wednesday and Sunday off. So she and her husband had decided to leave Tuesday afternoon, spend the night down there, and look around on Wednesday before driving back late that day. The place where they were going is about a three-hour drive from here.
It's raining again today. I took this picture yesterday afternoon.
If you can't actually see the rain falling, you can judge by how
green everything is the amount of rain we've been having.
On Tuesday, I asked her again to tell me the name of the town near which they were looking for a house. She did, and I looked it up on the map. It turns out it is just 30 km, less than 20 miles, south of the village where Callie was born. I thought that was a funny coincidence.
Yesterday, the bread lady told me that they have now signed a contract on a house, and she told me the name of the village it's in. It's not quite a ruin, she said, but it doesn't have running water or any kitchen or bathroom facilities. She said it's four big rooms, each about 25 m2 (that's approximately 15' x 20'), and it needs a lot of work. The old stone walls need to be scraped and cleaned — she says she wants to leave the stone exposed. There are big beams that need to be sanded and stained. The stone floors need to be polished. While there's no running water, the place does have electricity.
This is the result of a photo break between showers.
I didn't ask, but she volunteered the information that the price they are paying is deux millions — two million francs, I understood. But what francs, I didn't know. Before the euro was adopted as the national currency in 2002, France had used what came to be known as old francs (anciens francs) until about 1960, and then new francs (nouveaux francs) from then until 2002. People kept counting in old francs well into the 1980s or even 1990s — especially older people and people in rural areas.
It was very confusing until you got used to it, and now it's still confusing to hear people quote prices in francs instead of euros. When you get into large sums, it's hard to know if somebody is talking in anciens francs or nouveaux francs.
One new franc was worth 100 old francs. It was as if they decided to call a dollar a penny, so that five dollars became five cents, if you can imagine that. One hundred francs became one franc, and 10 new francs were worth 1,000 old francs. Is that clear?
The bread lady's two million francs, then, could have been either $4,000 or $400,000 in U.S. terms (you divide francs by five to get dollars). One conversion that always helped me keep it all straight in my mind was the value of un million, meaning one million old francs; that was $2,000. I figured it in my head really fast, and I concluded that it wasn't possible that they had bought a house for $4,000.
What dogs do on rainy days. There was actually a ray of sunshine
coming through the window the moment I snapped this picture.
But I also couldn't imagine that they had paid $400K for the house she described. Or that they would have that kind of money to spend even on a very nice house. You never know, though.
I asked her if her deux millions figure was in anciens or nouveaux francs. She realized how confusing it all was, and said, "Let me tell you in euros." She got out a calculator but the battery was dead. So she grabbed a scrap of paper and a pen.
I don't know where the two million figure came from, but she said the purchase price of the house they're buying is about 26,000 euros. That makes sense to me, for what she described, and for such a property in that area of central France. At current exchange rates, that a little less than $35K.
She said they had been looking at real estate ads on the Internet and now were ready to drive down there and see what the houses for sale looked like in reality. They know the area because they went down there on their vacation last summer, I remember, and they may have been down there many other times for all I know.
The bread lady makes her deliveries five days a week, with Wednesday and Sunday off. So she and her husband had decided to leave Tuesday afternoon, spend the night down there, and look around on Wednesday before driving back late that day. The place where they were going is about a three-hour drive from here.
It's raining again today. I took this picture yesterday afternoon.If you can't actually see the rain falling, you can judge by how
green everything is the amount of rain we've been having.
On Tuesday, I asked her again to tell me the name of the town near which they were looking for a house. She did, and I looked it up on the map. It turns out it is just 30 km, less than 20 miles, south of the village where Callie was born. I thought that was a funny coincidence.
Yesterday, the bread lady told me that they have now signed a contract on a house, and she told me the name of the village it's in. It's not quite a ruin, she said, but it doesn't have running water or any kitchen or bathroom facilities. She said it's four big rooms, each about 25 m2 (that's approximately 15' x 20'), and it needs a lot of work. The old stone walls need to be scraped and cleaned — she says she wants to leave the stone exposed. There are big beams that need to be sanded and stained. The stone floors need to be polished. While there's no running water, the place does have electricity.
This is the result of a photo break between showers.I didn't ask, but she volunteered the information that the price they are paying is deux millions — two million francs, I understood. But what francs, I didn't know. Before the euro was adopted as the national currency in 2002, France had used what came to be known as old francs (anciens francs) until about 1960, and then new francs (nouveaux francs) from then until 2002. People kept counting in old francs well into the 1980s or even 1990s — especially older people and people in rural areas.
It was very confusing until you got used to it, and now it's still confusing to hear people quote prices in francs instead of euros. When you get into large sums, it's hard to know if somebody is talking in anciens francs or nouveaux francs.
One new franc was worth 100 old francs. It was as if they decided to call a dollar a penny, so that five dollars became five cents, if you can imagine that. One hundred francs became one franc, and 10 new francs were worth 1,000 old francs. Is that clear?
The bread lady's two million francs, then, could have been either $4,000 or $400,000 in U.S. terms (you divide francs by five to get dollars). One conversion that always helped me keep it all straight in my mind was the value of un million, meaning one million old francs; that was $2,000. I figured it in my head really fast, and I concluded that it wasn't possible that they had bought a house for $4,000.
What dogs do on rainy days. There was actually a ray of sunshinecoming through the window the moment I snapped this picture.
But I also couldn't imagine that they had paid $400K for the house she described. Or that they would have that kind of money to spend even on a very nice house. You never know, though.
I asked her if her deux millions figure was in anciens or nouveaux francs. She realized how confusing it all was, and said, "Let me tell you in euros." She got out a calculator but the battery was dead. So she grabbed a scrap of paper and a pen.
I don't know where the two million figure came from, but she said the purchase price of the house they're buying is about 26,000 euros. That makes sense to me, for what she described, and for such a property in that area of central France. At current exchange rates, that a little less than $35K.
22 June 2007
Of mushrooms, plums, and cacti
Okay, big news this morning. It has to do with the weather. Can you guess? It's RAINING! Today it's a fine steady rain falling from low gray clouds. Pretty soon we are going to have to develop more words to describe all the different kinds of rain, the way people in the polar regions have dozens of words for different kinds of snow. (Or used to, if you see what I mean.)
A daisy with raindrops
Come to think of it, there are already a lot of French words to describe various kinds of rainfall. Pluie fine, bruine, averse, giboulée, ondée, déluge, trombes d'eau, torrents, grosses gouttes, des cordes, comme vache qui pisse, and on and on. Maybe that should have been my first clue. The only one they don't have in French has to do with it raining des chats et des chiens.
Champignons, 22 juin 2007
So here it is late June and we have mushrooms sprouting in our yard. There are three different kinds, but two of them are growing under big trees where it is too dark in the morning gloom for me to take a picture of them that isn't totally blurry. This is the kind of weather that produces a lot of blurry and grainy photos.
If Gisèle comes over and sees these mushrooms, she will probably encourage us to pick them and cook them into an omelet or something. We are not that adventurous. Besides, they are probably growing where Callie has fertilized the ground, if you know what I mean.
Le monde entier est un cactus,
il est impossible de s'asseoir-oir-oir...
Not only do we have a mushroom bloom on our hands (don't take that too literally), but we have an invasion of escargots as well. I notice that the snails don't eat the mushrooms — they are probably too smart, despite their tiny snail brains, to take chances like that. But escargots do eat cacti, I've learned, spines and all.
This is probably the snail equivalent of browsing in the imported foods section at Intermarché, where you can get Mexican tortillas, fajitas kits, and salsa in jars. Except in this case, what's being treated like a burrito is the cactus my friend Charles brought me from Southern California, which was growing so beautifully in the hot April weather we had. The recent damp has obviously taken its toll.
When I took Callie out for a walk yesterday afternoon — it wasn't raining but it was threatening to — she didn't want to go out into the vineyard because there was a big yellow tractor out there going up and down the rows of vines pruning or spraying something. So we took a walk around our neighbors' extensive yard. The neighbors are in Blois right now; that's where they live when they aren't spending vacation time in their country house.
Petites prunes — that's "little plums" in English.
Walking around the edge of their property, I spied a tree that is bearing red fruit. Cherries? No, plums this time. Little red plums. I tasted a couple. Sweet and good. Red skin, yellow flesh. A little later I took the dog home and went back over there to pick some plums — or pick some up, actually. There were more ripe ones on the ground than on the tree.
I'm sure the neighbors won't mind. As you can see from the picture, the ones I got were in beautiful condition, and this morning they are perfuming the kitchen with their good plummy aroma. At least 95% of them were already on the ground. I have to figure out what to do with them. Jam? Clafoutis? A crumble? I'll have to spend some time pitting them, whatever I decide to do.
I'll try to salvage this by gluing the pieces back together.
I had a kitchen accident yesterday. I don't think the item I broke ever made it into Walt's Kitchen Collection feature on his blog. It was a pottery spoon-rest that I kept next to the stove. We bought it in 1993 in a market in the town of Cadenet in Provence, when we were on the trip that Walt is currently chronicling on his blog (though he hasn't gotten to the Provence part yet).
A daisy with raindropsCome to think of it, there are already a lot of French words to describe various kinds of rainfall. Pluie fine, bruine, averse, giboulée, ondée, déluge, trombes d'eau, torrents, grosses gouttes, des cordes, comme vache qui pisse, and on and on. Maybe that should have been my first clue. The only one they don't have in French has to do with it raining des chats et des chiens.
Champignons, 22 juin 2007So here it is late June and we have mushrooms sprouting in our yard. There are three different kinds, but two of them are growing under big trees where it is too dark in the morning gloom for me to take a picture of them that isn't totally blurry. This is the kind of weather that produces a lot of blurry and grainy photos.
If Gisèle comes over and sees these mushrooms, she will probably encourage us to pick them and cook them into an omelet or something. We are not that adventurous. Besides, they are probably growing where Callie has fertilized the ground, if you know what I mean.
Le monde entier est un cactus,il est impossible de s'asseoir-oir-oir...
Not only do we have a mushroom bloom on our hands (don't take that too literally), but we have an invasion of escargots as well. I notice that the snails don't eat the mushrooms — they are probably too smart, despite their tiny snail brains, to take chances like that. But escargots do eat cacti, I've learned, spines and all.
This is probably the snail equivalent of browsing in the imported foods section at Intermarché, where you can get Mexican tortillas, fajitas kits, and salsa in jars. Except in this case, what's being treated like a burrito is the cactus my friend Charles brought me from Southern California, which was growing so beautifully in the hot April weather we had. The recent damp has obviously taken its toll.
When I took Callie out for a walk yesterday afternoon — it wasn't raining but it was threatening to — she didn't want to go out into the vineyard because there was a big yellow tractor out there going up and down the rows of vines pruning or spraying something. So we took a walk around our neighbors' extensive yard. The neighbors are in Blois right now; that's where they live when they aren't spending vacation time in their country house.
Petites prunes — that's "little plums" in English.Walking around the edge of their property, I spied a tree that is bearing red fruit. Cherries? No, plums this time. Little red plums. I tasted a couple. Sweet and good. Red skin, yellow flesh. A little later I took the dog home and went back over there to pick some plums — or pick some up, actually. There were more ripe ones on the ground than on the tree.
I'm sure the neighbors won't mind. As you can see from the picture, the ones I got were in beautiful condition, and this morning they are perfuming the kitchen with their good plummy aroma. At least 95% of them were already on the ground. I have to figure out what to do with them. Jam? Clafoutis? A crumble? I'll have to spend some time pitting them, whatever I decide to do.
I'll try to salvage this by gluing the pieces back together.I had a kitchen accident yesterday. I don't think the item I broke ever made it into Walt's Kitchen Collection feature on his blog. It was a pottery spoon-rest that I kept next to the stove. We bought it in 1993 in a market in the town of Cadenet in Provence, when we were on the trip that Walt is currently chronicling on his blog (though he hasn't gotten to the Provence part yet).
21 June 2007
The last day of springtime
Now that the dog likes to go for long walks in the vineyard out back — or at least is willing to do so — the plan is for me to take her on one walk a day, and Walt on another. We want to keep her tired out!
The gravel road runs out into the vineyards that are part of
the Domaine de la Renaudie winery, run by the Denis family.
Seriously, the exercise will be good for all of us. Now if the weather will just improve a little so that we can enjoy the walks without having Callie stop for mud baths in big puddles along the way, we'll be in good shape.
The silver lining in the weather situation is that we are enjoying very dramatic skyscapes these days. The gravel road through the vineyard runs westward away from the house, and there isn't much to obstruct the view of the western sky. Our weather usually comes in from the west or southwest, off the Atlantic, the Pyrenees, and the Iberian peninsula, this time of year.
The big sky out over the rise, looking north
I just heard on the radio that the South of France — Provence, specifically — is having very hot weather and a pollution alert today. People are being asked not to do strenuous work outside or to jog or do other vigorous exercise. The air isn't good.
France is divided in half by air masses right now. The hot South is sitting under an upsurge of stagnant hot air coming off the Sahara. The north is plagued by unstable, humid air coming in off Spain and southerly regions of the Atlantic Ocean.
It's been showery with fairly frequent bolts of lightning and claps of thunder for a couple of weeks now. But breezes are keeping the air fresh-feeling most of the time.
The western sky looked stormy yesterday afternoon.
Yesterday it was warm and muggy. It didn't rain at all. But at 2:45 this morning, I was awakened by heavy rainfall. We have a plexiglass awning over our back door, which is just below the bedroom window, and heavy raindrops really set up a clatter when they fall on it. It poured rain for 10 or 15 minutes, it seemed to me, but then I was drifting back off to sleep by then.
I checked the rain gauge when I took Callie out at 6:15 this morning. We got just 2 mm, hardly a trace, of water from the early morning shower. To think that about 10 days ago we had a storm that dropped 35 mm of rain in less than 90 minutes. No wonder our roof sprang a temporary leak in that deluge.
Looking out over the rows of vines from
the edge of the surrounding woods
Yesterday afternoon when I took Callie out she stayed out of the puddles. Actually, I avoided walking close to any puddles by taking her around the periphery of the vineyard, along the edge of the woods, on the way out. She prefers that anyway; for some reason she doesn't like to walk away from the house on the gravel road.
The paved road a mile from the house is designated as
a route touristique through the Touraine vineyards.
When our path along the periphery took us back to the gravel road, about half a mile from home, Callie wanted to turn back. But I kept walking farther out, stopping frequently and calling her as I went. She would stop and sit and watch me for a while, but when I squatted down and called her she would come running to me, all squirmy if you know what I mean. We did another quarter of a mile in that mode.
The Domaine de la Renaudie vineyards
That's when we arrived at the paved road. A car went by just as we got there, and that scared Callie. So I put the leash on her, attaching it to her harness, not her collar. We walked east on the pavement for a couple of hundred yards with her on the leash. Another car came by (such traffic!) and Callie and I stepped a few feet off the road and just watched it go by. She needs to get used to cars.
Callie, 20 June 2007, looking fine in her harness
Then we walked along a line of trees and down a row of vines to get back to the gravel road for the return home. She likes that part of the walk the best. She was way out ahead of me on the leash. I was able to keep her out of the puddles; she wasn't even too interested in them, focused as she was on getting back to her home territory. This time she didn't need to be hosed down when she got home.
Today is the first day of summer. So far, it doesn't really feel like it. Predictions are for more cool, breezy weather next week.
Remember, you can click on any picture to see an enlargement.
The gravel road runs out into the vineyards that are part ofthe Domaine de la Renaudie winery, run by the Denis family.
Seriously, the exercise will be good for all of us. Now if the weather will just improve a little so that we can enjoy the walks without having Callie stop for mud baths in big puddles along the way, we'll be in good shape.
The silver lining in the weather situation is that we are enjoying very dramatic skyscapes these days. The gravel road through the vineyard runs westward away from the house, and there isn't much to obstruct the view of the western sky. Our weather usually comes in from the west or southwest, off the Atlantic, the Pyrenees, and the Iberian peninsula, this time of year.
The big sky out over the rise, looking northI just heard on the radio that the South of France — Provence, specifically — is having very hot weather and a pollution alert today. People are being asked not to do strenuous work outside or to jog or do other vigorous exercise. The air isn't good.
France is divided in half by air masses right now. The hot South is sitting under an upsurge of stagnant hot air coming off the Sahara. The north is plagued by unstable, humid air coming in off Spain and southerly regions of the Atlantic Ocean.
It's been showery with fairly frequent bolts of lightning and claps of thunder for a couple of weeks now. But breezes are keeping the air fresh-feeling most of the time.
The western sky looked stormy yesterday afternoon.Yesterday it was warm and muggy. It didn't rain at all. But at 2:45 this morning, I was awakened by heavy rainfall. We have a plexiglass awning over our back door, which is just below the bedroom window, and heavy raindrops really set up a clatter when they fall on it. It poured rain for 10 or 15 minutes, it seemed to me, but then I was drifting back off to sleep by then.
I checked the rain gauge when I took Callie out at 6:15 this morning. We got just 2 mm, hardly a trace, of water from the early morning shower. To think that about 10 days ago we had a storm that dropped 35 mm of rain in less than 90 minutes. No wonder our roof sprang a temporary leak in that deluge.
Looking out over the rows of vines fromthe edge of the surrounding woods
Yesterday afternoon when I took Callie out she stayed out of the puddles. Actually, I avoided walking close to any puddles by taking her around the periphery of the vineyard, along the edge of the woods, on the way out. She prefers that anyway; for some reason she doesn't like to walk away from the house on the gravel road.
The paved road a mile from the house is designated asa route touristique through the Touraine vineyards.
When our path along the periphery took us back to the gravel road, about half a mile from home, Callie wanted to turn back. But I kept walking farther out, stopping frequently and calling her as I went. She would stop and sit and watch me for a while, but when I squatted down and called her she would come running to me, all squirmy if you know what I mean. We did another quarter of a mile in that mode.
The Domaine de la Renaudie vineyardsThat's when we arrived at the paved road. A car went by just as we got there, and that scared Callie. So I put the leash on her, attaching it to her harness, not her collar. We walked east on the pavement for a couple of hundred yards with her on the leash. Another car came by (such traffic!) and Callie and I stepped a few feet off the road and just watched it go by. She needs to get used to cars.
Callie, 20 June 2007, looking fine in her harnessThen we walked along a line of trees and down a row of vines to get back to the gravel road for the return home. She likes that part of the walk the best. She was way out ahead of me on the leash. I was able to keep her out of the puddles; she wasn't even too interested in them, focused as she was on getting back to her home territory. This time she didn't need to be hosed down when she got home.
Today is the first day of summer. So far, it doesn't really feel like it. Predictions are for more cool, breezy weather next week.
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