Say it isn't so Jan, say it isn't so!

What in the name of Pete is going on?! Without Ulrich who will we cheer for? What's the point of starting the race without the favorites? Idiots!! All of them!

'Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened'Dr. Seuss

I find it highly amusing that men feel a compulsion to look under the hood of a car. These are really smart men who know lots of cool and brain busting stuff, but who know nothing of the workings of the internal combustion engine. Yet they feel a need to play 'the man' and look under the hood of a car. It's an insecurity of sorts isn't it?

(Not my man, he single handedly rebuilt an entire truck from scratch in his basement.)

I speak of other men. The men, for instance, who came to look at my car on Monday to see if it was worthy of purchase. They drove it around the block and then when they came back they popped the hood and stood there first staring and then reaching in and jiggling hoses and tapping things. I tried not to laugh but it wasn't easy.

Have you EVER seen a woman, oh I don't know...what...Oh, have you ever seen a woman go into a clothing store and examine the seams or examine the zippers to see if they were appropriately 'installed'? I mean, of course, women who don't sew. Or look at the box of frozen pizza and muse out loud as to how it was assembled and pre-cooked and whether it was properly seasoned and if the crust was over handled? Women do not feel compelled to feign knowledge of these things. And incidentally, by their not feigning this knowledge don't we assume they just have it, just by virtue of their being women?

So maybe if men didn't look under the hood we would automatically assume that they know what's under there and that nothing in the test drive made them doubt the 'sea worthiness' of the vehicles engine?

Well, at least the guys that came to look at my car didn't actually kick the tires, because that would have ended it all for me and it would have taken me several minutes to compose myself.

Oh, yeah, I'm selling my beloved Mercedes. I placed an ad on the AIT website forum on Sunday and had three responses by Monday. Plus there is someone at S's office who is also interested in buying it. So between them we'll hopefully have a buyer.

The selling of the car means that I'm really leaving. Really leaving and sooner than first thought. We had originally bought our tickets for the 27th of July, but changed them last week for the 20th of July. The fact that I have less than a month left is starting to sink in. Aidric has spent a couple of bewildering days with me setting him on the floor of one room or an other as I drag out suitcases and make piles of what to take, what to get rid of and things I'll take if I have room. This is tough because whatever I bring will have to sustain the two of us until sometime in November, I think. Everything else will be left here for the movers to pack in September sometime and we will not see it again until it is unpacked, when the shipment arrives at our final destination.

So the goodbye-ing begins and I'm sort of sad. I'll miss this house (sans creatures) and I'll miss our little town. The trolley looks like it might actually come in, the new downtown market square is almost finished, the new Picard store has just opened and they are finally resurfacing the main road to my favorite grocery store. And I read in my Newsweek magazine that Toulouse will be competing with Paris for the 2016 Olympics. Wouldn't that have been cool?

I spent the day shopping and walking with Mags and Paula today. This was probably the last time I'll ever see Paula, and even maybe Mags, as she's very hard to get a hold of these days. We had lunch at Place St. George at a little tea place that has the best chocolate cake you've ever tasted and lunch was a salad with scones of sun dried tomato and mozzarella. It was a quintessential French lunch experience and I savored every second of it. The days are moving too fast now and I'll miss the city with all its insanity. I learned how to park like the French and today I got a little too creative with my parking and I got a ticket. I guess there's a first for everything and maybe the ticket is just to make sure my Toulouse experience was well rounded.

That's all I've got today, just a huge mixed bag of emotions.

La Vie En Rose

This week Newsweek's cover story is "The World's 10 Hottest Cities" Below is the part of the article about Toulouse.



'It's Airbusville'

France's dynamo is a pink-brick city with a 17th-century feel, but its dynamism is powered by jets. Call it the Airbus effect. The industrial revolution had all but bypassed Toulouse when local engineer Clément Ader got a flying machine off the ground in 1890 (13 years before the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk). From that bouncy start emerged Europe's aerospace capital. Airbus accounts for a quarter of industrial employment in the department of Haute Garonne, of which Toulouse is the capital. Each Airbus job generates two more in related companies, making Toulouse a leading multinational company town, alongside the likes of Nagoya (home of Toyota) and Bentonville (Wal-Mart).



That's great when the multinational is flying high. Record Airbus sales in 2005 meant boom times. The Toulouse suburb where Airbus HQ is located, Blagnac, now has "a head of state visiting every trimester," marvels mayor (and Airbus alum) Bernard Keller, over the din of construction. Toulouse's own suburbs are growing even faster than the center. "Airbus used to build two planes a month. Now it's 35!" enthuses Claude Terrazzoni, head of the chamber of commerce, rattling off companies—Honeywell, Goodrich—that have set up to serve Airbus.



Some efforts have been made to diversify, for example by creating a European hub for cancer research, and wisely so. Now that Airbus has come up against uncertainty, as production troubles delay its new A380 superjumbo, Toulouse's vulnerability may be exposed. "It's Airbusville!" says Philippe Hugon, author of a history of Toulouse and chief editor of the local monthly Toulouse Mag. "A problem with Toulouse is its mono-industry." And that's an industry all too familiar with bumpy rides. —Tracy McNicoll

Newsweek International July 3/July 10, 2006

Mélange

I've neglected posting for quite some time and in that time have mentally lined out stories. If I wait to properly flesh them out, they'll never get posted. So here you find the basic gist of what has been going on here. These stories and events are in no chronological order, rather they are in the order I happen to remember I wanted to tell you about them.
Animal Kingdom It seems that in addition to our eight legged creepy crawlies, we have now become a must visit destination for other local populations. (Aside from the miniscule spider currently crawling across my screen,) In the past we have had a local cat or two drop by, dogs have found there way into the garage and we've even had a late night visit from a couple of wild boars. (Yes we live in France not Africa) And now the past month has seen visits from either 3 different lizards or the same lizard 3 different times. Yes, in almost 3 years of living here, I have never had a lizard in the house until this last month. The first sighting happened when S and I were in the office. He was working and I was rocking Aidric and reading to him from my current book (not a Stephen King.). I looked up from my book and noticed that there was half a lizard sticking out from behind my bulletin board, the back half of him to be precise, his head and front legs were behind the bulletin board. (Poor guy, he must have been the worlds worst hide and seek player.) I sort of screamed, but didn't because I was holding Aidric and didn't want to frighten him. (Never, until then, had I fully comprehended a 'strangled scream'. Stuff you read in books but you have trouble understanding exactly what it might mean. Now I know what one is.) S started to laugh at me, the sound I made must have been pretty funny. Then he noticed me pointing and doing my fish out of water imitation as I tried to find the words to explain what I was seeing. When I got my voice back I stood up and said with as much dignity as I could muster after my girlish hysterics, 'Please get rid of that.' Then I left the room to change Aidric's diaper. When I returned it was as if the ugly episode had never happened. No sign of the overturned furniture and scattered papers that I expected to find to give witness to the chase that must surely have occurred. Just S sitting on his side of the desk, assuring me that it had been handled. I was gone for only 3 minutes, but ok, if you're sure. The next week while S was in South Africa, I walked into Aidric's room to change him when a dark something caught my eye next to the window. Yep, there it was, another lizard (or the same one, I think it was the same one.) The windows and shutters were closed, and had been for a couple of days and the lights were off. So what I don't want to think about is how long had that thing been traipsing around the house? Where else had it been? How did it get in? All questions best left un-asked and un-answered. I took Aidric to my room and set him on the bed and returned to his room with a broom. The simple plan was to open the windows and shutters slowly so as not to frighten the thing (or myself) then gently shepard it out the window. The lizard was in the corner of the ceiling and two walls and as I gently shooed at it with the broom, it fell to the floor. Of course, because things can never go according to plan. Once more I issued a brief strangled scream, but kept my wits about me. I kept the broom on it in the corner and reached for a small box that just happened to be lying at arms reach. Now, when S removed his lizard he said he just lay a piece of paper in front of it and the obliging little creature climbed on and S was then able to dump it out of the window. So he says, but it sounded a bit too easy (not to mention far fetched) to me, but I was hoping for an equally equanimous specimen. I set the box on one side of him and brushed with the broom on the other side, in the hope that it would cotton on quickly and get into the box. The little monster moved quickly toward the box and just as he reached the edge of it he turned and headed back toward the corner. I tried the gentle sweeping toward the box over and over, but with the same results, lizard gets tantalizingly close to the edge of the box and then turns back to the corner. Once in a while, just to spice things up, he made a move to climb back up the wall. These attempts were quickly dealt with with downward sweeps of the broom. Hours of this back and forth dance, (Ok it only seemed like hours, it was probably minutes...Ok, one very long minute.) and the stupid lizard refused to get in the box. Just about at my wits end, I raise the hand holding the box to brush at some hair that has strayed into my face and I notice that I've been holding the box with the opening toward the floor (Doh!). I flip the box over and set it in front of the lizard who obligingly gets right in, after shooting me a meaningful 'duh' look. I dump him out the window and the adventure ends safely for both of us. TWO DAYS LATER, I get out of the shower to find that the stupid lizard has come in the open bathroom window. I wave a towel at it and it scoots right out, I'm sure he just left right away to avoid me embarrassing myself again. Perhaps he's gotten the message now that he's not welcome...she says hopefully. And no I did not get pictures, when your life is in danger the last thing you think of is picking up a camera and documenting the event! On Sunday, Father's Day, we had a bird in the house, don't ask. And today a huge, beautiful pheasant in the back yard. We're thinking of charging admission.
The men in their Sunday-go-to-meetin' clothes
Daggers We have been lucky in that M.co has been good with the support services with this move. France requires that people living and working in France who are not French jump through an ever changing array of hoops in order to stay in this goofy country. So, from the beginning we have been required to apply for and carry work (for S) and residents visas. Our first such visas were good for 6 months and there after have been renewed for only 3 months at a time. This means that at any given time we are somewhere along the application process. With Aidric, however, the paperwork is a bit different. First of all, contrary to popular belief, he is not a French citizen. The law changed a year or two before his birth, in an attempt by the French to stem the tide of incoming undesirables. The law used to allow that a foreign child born in France was automatically a French citizen and that that child had the right to have his immediate family live with him in France. You can see how that system could be abused. So now a foreign child born in France has no such rights or automatic citizenship. In order for Aidric to claim his French citizenship he has to live in the country for 5 years (I think)consecutively before he turns 16. However, in order to be allowed to stay in the country, and/or travel in and out of it, instead of a visa he must have a card that identifies him as a French born foreigner. So this time instead of the usual dealing with the immigration company and picking up our visas at the local Mairie, we actually had to present ourselves and the baby at the Prefecture in Toulouse. Having never been to an American immigration office I cannot compare it to that, but let me compare it to your local DMV office on a really bad day. People begin lining up at 8:30 for the office opening at 9:00. There is a room with about 100 chairs that fill up quickly and everyone else lines up outside the door. As you come in the front door you can take a number and either sit in an empty chair (fat chance of finding one) or stand against the walls and wait for your number to be called. Add to this the problem of some of our French friends having alternative hygiene practices and on top of that some warm late spring temperatures and you'll have a good idea of what we're dealing with. On the day we were to file the paperwork we agreed to meet the immigration company representative, a very nice grand motherly French woman, at 10 am at the prefecture. We arrive to a find her waiting for us by the main reception desk and the line for the immigration services office is already stretching down the hall. She tells us that she has spoken to someone and that they will come and get us when it's time. We actually have an appointment for this. I wonder what sorts of strings must be pulled to get an appointment. After waiting for about 15 minutes a young woman comes to get us. She leads us past the long line, around the side of the office and in through a back door. A back door door that actually brings us in to the front of the line in front of, and in plain view of, the multitude of waiting humanity. Chairs are brought and we all sit at this woman's desk where she and S and the consultant begin to sort through all of the paperwork. I am only there because Aidric has to be there and once it is established that he does indeed exist we become superfluous to the process. The sounds of a few screaming, cranky kids wakes Aidric and he begins to cry. I pick him up and look around for the source of the noise when I notice the stares, no make that dagger like glares of those who are waiting. The thing I notice is that by and large the majority of those staring at us are of North African or Middle Eastern descent. Are you getting a clear picture of how the situation must have looked? You have no idea how awful I felt at that point, imagining what they are seeing and thinking. S and the consultant were completely oblivious to this and I for my part tried not to look around too much after that.
Drool Aidric is cutting some teeth. The process really began when he was about 3 months old; right around the time my mom was here. It was just a little drooling and crankiness then. Now, however, it is major drooling and major crankiness. Drooling to the point that the front of his shirt is saturated most of the day requiring him to wear a bib to protect his clothes. So much drool that when I hold him I'm covered in slime. Between the drooling and the heat the kid must be constantly dehydrated. I'm going to have to make sure he gets plenty of water to compensate...wait, will that just make more drool?
A380 The Airbus A380, I'm guessing, must have a certain number of flight hours put on it before it can start commercial flights. It circles over my house about every 25 to 40 minutes. Its engines make a distinctive sound so I always can tell the difference between it and the hundreds of other planes that pass overhead. Also it flies over very low and slow, you'd think something that big moving that slowly would fall out of the sky. No point here, just an observation.
Ardo& K-M Ardo and Kay-Marie were here for a few days. They came to see us on the tail end of a business trip to Venice. We did some tourist stuff, but mostly just hung out because they wanted to get to know Aidric a bit also because K-M is pregnant and too much activity is exhausting. We visited Carcassonne and did some shopping in town and S dragged us all out to see some rubble. Ardo made a flan for a Mexican dinner I was having the Friday after they left. I sort of made him make it. I'm a mean big sister that way, I made him cook on his holiday, but let me tell you it was a hit. Damn the boy can cook, the flan was cooked to perfection and was a taste treat not to be missed. Even people who have claimed in the past to not like custards, liked it. When I grow up I want to be a chef too.	Aidric and his Uncle Ardo.
Coming Attractions So J is getting married on August 19th and Aidric will be baptized on the 20th. Just an FYI.
The Tour The teams are in the country, we've seen the vans on the highways. Suddenly cyclists are everywhere in their team jerseys, Even people who aren't competing can be seen cycling in team jerseys. One stage of the tour will be finishing in Carcassonne this year. S will be in South Africa at the time. I would go but me and a baby would be too hard in the crowds. However, if one of you all would like to join me then I'd consider going. Hint, hint...