Another Friday Night

Actually this Friday was slightly special... Jessica had just finished her Brevet Blanc so we let her have a couple of friends over for a sleepover.

Jessica invited Anna and Sarah. I went to my clients' in Paris at about 09:45 and didn't get there until just before 11:00. What was supposed to be a couple of hours of fixing a printer problem and removing one virus ended up being until the end of the day as there were 7 viruses and then there was a new Palm to install...

I got home at just before 19:00 to find everyone waiting for me. We called our local Pizza and ordered pizza, went to pick them up and stopped off at our local video rental place so the girls could pick out a film they would watch AFTER we watched our standard family film.

After quite a lot of discussion it was decided that we would watch the first Lethal Weapon as most of our guests had not seen it... although they had seen just about every other movie which was released in the last 10 years (70% of their life).


After the movie Alex went to sleep and we watched the movie they had chosen... bad choice girls!


Off to bed after midnight and I have to get up tomorrow morning to get Alex ready for school...

Another day...

The day started normal… like any other weekday. I was actually looking forward to being able to get some programming done and maybe even catch up with a bit of my accounts.

Got Alex out to school on time and the house was mine. I started preparing my accounts to start entering them in to the computer and, of course, the phone rings.

They day didn’t change much from there on. From 09:30 to 15:08 I was on the phone. I don’t mean I had one long call or even that I had a call, put down the phone and did something else and then had another call. I was on the phone, non-stop, from 09:30 to 15:08. I would be in the middle of a conversation on one phone line and the other line would ring, which I would not answer, and someone would leave a message. As soon as I would hang up one call I was calling back the next call and it continued like that throughout the day. I finally got up from my chair at 15:08 mostly because I was coming to the belief that I would soon wet my chair and that it would probably stain the leather which Desney would punish me for.

I can’t even remember all of the calls. One was from a client in Switzerland who’s hard disk is dying. We spent hours backing up the computer and then trying to figure out whether we get the disk replaced, which would require re-installing and reconfiguring everything and involve a certain amount of down time, or replace the computer. One of the calls was a client in Kentucky who is having problems with his laptop only to find that his anti-virus and firewall software has not been kept up to date and he was answering update questions NO rather than YES… That took a while to fix. Another was a client in London with problems with one of the database programs I wrote where a comma is in the wrong place and there is an extra line missing in between two sections. Life-threatening!

One of the fun calls in the middle was my mother who too was having computer problems but who is now back online and happy.

Picked up Alex at school (16:30) and got right back to work with more phone calls…

Finally got a break at dinner time and, to celebrate the fact that Jess survived her first day of brevet blanc exams , we cracked open a bottle of wine (Maison de Fleurie - Fleurie – Les Déduits 2001) which certainly helped. Most of the dinner conversation was about Jess’ exams which obviously Alex did not completely appreciate…

Now I come back down to my computer to catch up on the latest instalment of the email mystery ( http://www.emailmystery.com ) only to find out that their server is down and they are having difficulty with their computers. Why didn’t they call me? Everyone else did!

Another Wednesday...

This is another attempt to see if blogging by e-mail is any easier or less time-consuming for me.

Today was another Wednesday as normal…

Got up a little bit later than on most weekdays (07:30 instead of 07:00) as Alex does not have school. Tried to get through as much work as I could before 11:45 when Alex and I headed off for lunch and her weekly English class.

Lunch was different today as I let Alex choose and went along with that lessest of all evil options: McDonald which I am sure my body will be regretting shortly.

After lunch, which was quick, Alex and I walked around a bit and she had her English class while I did household shopping at Monoprix and then picked her up.

We got back home where she headed off to her girlfriend’s (Julie) house to play. Jessica arrived with Anna, Mercedes and Laure in tow to supposedly study for their Brevet Blanc which starts tomorrow.

Now I’m trying to get through as much work as possible again before Desney and I head off to our regular Wednesday night dance class this evening…

Temple du Swing

Another month...

Well it's become obvious that I don't have that much time for this thing...

I don't even have time to write down now what's happened over the past 2 weeks. Nothing vital I imagine...

Anyway here is a picture as I am determined to include a picture of myself each month and a picture of our gardens each month to be able to look back on later.