Earthquakes, Paris maps, and diverted flights

The news about the Southern California earthquake is disturbing to me. I feel queasy. I'm re-living our Northern California earthquake experiences — we felt a lot of them. We were living in San Francisco in 1989 — can that possibly be 30 years ago? — when the Loma Prieta earthquake, approximately 7.0 on the Richter scale, struck. I blogged about it here back in 2007 (1, 2, 3, 4).

Several people have mentioned in comments that they have poster-size maps of Paris. We have two of them also, in addition to the aerial photo of the city that I showed yesterday. The one above hangs on the wall in our downstairs WC. The one below, an old Paris metro map, hangs on the wall at the top of the stairs up in the loft. We had both of them in California and moved them to France in 2003. They're not easy to photograph.

Meanwhile, a friend (Peter H.) was supposed to be arriving in Paris this morning, coming in on a United flight from Chicago. Apparently, the plane experienced a mechanical problem over Montreal and had to be diverted to Newark. His plan was to take the TGV high-speed train from CDG airport down to Tours at noontime, change trains there, and arrive in Saint-Aignan at 2:00 p.m. Now we don't know what to expect. Maybe Peter will read this. We're hoping for a phone call later today.

Views of Paris from above

In a comment yesterday, "Diogenes" asked me if a photo I had posted included a partial view of a map of Paris. It did. Well, not a map, actually, but some kind of aerial or satellite photo. Here's a better view of it.

I took this photo in a fairly dark room using a flash. I had to take it from a side angle, and not straight in front of the map, because the flash reflected in the map when I tried to take it straight on. I "corrected" the image in Photoshop to make both the photos you see here.

This second attempt at editing the photo I took is truer to its actual color. It's too bad the image has turned so blue over the years. Walt bought the poster in Paris, probably back in the 1990s, and carried it home to San Francisco. He had it mounted on a board. Then we moved it back to France in 2003. It's almost as wide as a double bed, by the way. I just went and measured it: it's 132 x 80 centimeters — 52 x 31½ inches.

Now it's our turn

The
plumber
finished
his work
yesterday
before
noon.

The two building contractors more or less finished their work by about five o'clock. They'll need to come back, maybe tomorrow, to do some touch-up work. We've already started experimenting with furniture placement. We have a nice mirror to put on the wall over this chest of drawers.

Now our work starts. The first task is cleaning out the guest room and getting it ready for a visitor on Friday. A lot of stuff needs to be moved back into the downstairs WC and the bathroom. A lot more furniture needs to be moved around upstairs too. So I'd better get busy.

I ordered a new rug for the upstairs WC. It was delivered yesterday. I put it in the room this morning to see if and how it fits. The perspective of the photo makes the room look bigger than it is in reality...

Down to the wire

First the weather news. It's actually chilly here this morning. Yesterday was very pleasant. It's been a treat to have a break from the sizzling weather. Meteorologically, at least, things are back to normal.

Progress on the bathroom front is touch and go. The good news is that the plumber came over yesterday and installed the new wall-mounted cabinet-with-a-sink-on-top. That's it on the right. It's quite an improvement. (The photos I posted yesterday were ones I grabbed off the Ikea web site.) We're waiting for the other contractors to come in today to install baseboards all around the new room upstairs.

When Walt told the plumber that I wanted to return the smaller cabinet and sink to amazon.fr for a refund, he said he doubted that they'd be in good enough shape to be returned. However, the little cabinet cleaned up easily. I don't know about the sink yet. I may be stuck with it. The big faucet looks good on the bigger sink.

The plumber also did a little fix up on the sink in the downstairs loo. It looks better, and I cleaned it well with bleach. I think the decision to keep it was the right one. Luckily, we had some of the old blue paint left in a plastic bucket downstairs, so rather than repaint the downstairs petit coin, for the moment we'll just touch up the old paint.

The plumber (a French guy whose done a lot of work and repairs for us over the past three or four years) also said that if we would go ahead and paint the new wall board that hides the frame and tank for the new downstairs toilet, he'd come and install the toilet today. We have enought blue paint for that. Yay. We might have two working half-bathrooms by the time our friend arrives from California on Friday afternoon. Plus, of course, the main bathroom with shower etc., which is already in good shape and open for business.