Everyday Life

Cheers from Nantes!

So our days have some definite high points.  Among them, our nearly daily lunch in a brasserie or bistro. This photo was taken at our first time downtown on our own using public transportation - we celebrated at this Bistro du Canard (Duck Bistro)  Neither of us had duck but were offered a choice of four large salads.  I ordered a seafood one and Dave ordered a pork version.   We are a bit off on the French schedule for food...they eat lunch from noon to 2pm.  We arrived around 2ish and they were nice enough to let us eat something cold - the burners are turned off or something...!  We are happy here since it was our first bottle of Muscadet wine from the Loire.  Yummy!  They were also able to bring us these luscious desserts. Amen!

Grand Marnier souffle and chocolate mousse

From the sparkling to the somewhat drab...housework.  We do not have a housekeeper or laundress...boo hoo!  So, we vacuum and dust pretty regularly.  Laundry is the interesting task.  We deposit the clothes into this top loading vertical drum that has 8 rubber balls in it.  You latch the lid to the drum, close the top and voila!  The washer works for about an hour and then the trick is to unload the clothes without losing the balls which like to get lodged into pockets, pants legs and anywhere else you can imagine.  It does a wonderful job of getting clothes clean. 

Laundry drying in the garage

Then the fun begins...hanging all your items on the laundry lines!  Wow...it's been a long time since this was a task...I complained bitterly the first time because I couldn't reach the line to attach items.  I looked around and found that you can lower those lines - hallelujah! 

Steam Iron

If you want to iron some items, there's this lovely contraption to really get the wrinkles out of things.  You can hold shirts up and steam the heck out of them or use an ironing board. 

Television continues to be a crap shoot.  Some evenings they show US shows like 'NCIS' or 'Bones' without dubbing...you watch an hour and then the next hour it's another one in French...our family doesn't have basic cable, just local stuff but occasionally an HD show comes on.  They have this 42" TV that has wonderful reception...where's CNN???