Cirque du Soleil

Probably one of the most amazing theatrical experiences of my life!

Desney took all of us out to the Cirque du Soleil for my birthday present. The show they are performing this year is Saltimbanco. We had great seats and the kids were overjoyed. Basically it was in a big circus tent in the Bois de Boulogne.

Driving by the camp site in the Bois de Boulogne on the way to and from brought back strange old memories...

The show was just indescribably amazing. A true show with dancing, beautiful music in a nonsensical and intentionally incomprehensible language, amazing lighting and a small play running throughout like a thread pulling the show together.

Intermittent throughout were amazing circus acts. All human (no animals) and all physically amazing.

Just plain magical.

Walked out with T-shirt, DVD, CD, mugs, red noses and various other expesive paraphernalia.

A great time was had by all!

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.

Alex' Ears...

Got back late last night from another 3 days in Olde England...

The Eurostar was wonderful as always but it's a long and tiring 3 days...

The teachers are on strike here in France today and so Alex stayed home with me all day. She spent most of the morning doing her homework and some additional punishment that her teacher had given her (write 100 times "I will listen and I will not whistle in class").

After lunch I took her to La Défense to finally get her ear's pierced. This was her belated birthday present as she had a bad cold on the day of her birthday and we didn't want to take the risk of piercing her ears while she was sick.

She picked out the most expensive pair of earrings they offer for piercing and was all giggly. But she was very, very frightened when she sat down in the chair. She cried even before she got pierced. She cried for a bit afterwards as well. We joked around but she definitely did not enjoy the experience. In the end though she is very pleased and proud of the result.

I'm just glad that part is over with... now to just disinfect 'em twice a day for the next 6 weeks!

A small step forward...

Yet another Saturday of doing chores...

We have ordered new beds for Jessica and Alex and it's time to start preparations even though the beds themselves will not arrive for another few weeks.



I spent a good portion of the day dismantling Alex' mezzanine and putting all the pieces neatly away in the basement.



Alex and Desney then spent the rest of the day cleaning and getting the room ready for Alex to sleep in her new layout. Her new bed will hopefully go just where the mattress is.

The evening however was special. I started cleaning the mussels for dinner at about 18:00 which was unfortunately way too late to start. They took forever! The special event was Robbie coming over for dinner. The family hasn't seen him since last December and I hadn't seen him since we went out the La Villette Jazz Festival quite some time ago. It was great to see him and he had a great time checking out the house and the kids. We didn't get to sit down for dinner until after 20:30 after going through all the Champagne with a long apéritif. Dinner went well and afterwards Robbie and I sat around in the living room listening to jazz and shmoozing. I could have stayed there all night... however there are 3 other people living in the house... I put Robbie in a cab around half past midnight and off he went...

We're now starting the countdown to Super Bowl Sunday Night (06/02/2005) also known as our annual glorious guy's night out!

Friday Night & Shrek 2

Another Friday night kicking back just the four of us in front of the television.

Pizza, as is often the case, thanks to Pizza Hut down the road and wine thanks to the Maison de Fleurie. This evening we watched the newly released DVD of Shrek 2. Alexandra and I had already seen it in the cinema and adored watching it again. Jessica had also seen it in the cinema, with her friends, and enjoyed watching it again. Desney was not overjoyed.

But a thoroughly enjoyable evening kicking back...

Sticks and Stones

It started off as yet another day... programming all morning... clients desperately trying to contact me while I was desperately trying to concentrate.

Then comes the phone call:

Monsieur Erb ?

"Yes?"

This is the nurse from the Honoré de Balzac School...

It's about your daughter Jessica

At this point I spend one of those absolutely awful 10 to 15 second pregnant pause periods of all of the worst possibilites know to man (and some heretowith unknown)...

She has hurt her thumb (Whew!) It has swollen quite a bit and she can not move it. I think you should get an x-ray done.

After taking a few deep breaths I tell her I will be right there.

So that's how I spent most of the afternoon. Took a cab, picked her up from school, went to the emergency room of our hospital with a good hands and fingers department (Hôpital de Perpétuel Secour) which (unfortunately) we actually know quite well having been there before for both Jessica and Desney. After an hour filling out papers and waiting on queues we got her x-ray and then waited another hour to see a doctor. The doctor pronounced she had broken her thumb, in 2 places, and then proceeded to wrap her thumb and wrist in a sort of pseudo-cast. It's a special sort of bandage with built-in resin which dries after about 15 minutes. I was quite impressed. We didn't get out of there until about 16:00.

Got home to find out there were at least 2 relatively serious professional emergencies going on: 1 client in London had a laptop which would no longer boot (Unrecognisable hard disk) and another in Switzerland could not connect to the Internet. I solved the Swiss problem with a phone call and a bit of telemaintenance. The laptop however is going to be a challenge as the hard disk is dead but the client had done some work over the weekend which he had not yet backed up and which I need to recover.

To end the day Jessica decided to take a shower in "our" bathroom so as to be near Desney while she was making dinner. Jessica dropped the shower head and broke it. I didn't find out until much later. I was actually surprised by how severely such a minor incident affected me and by the time I went to sleep I was thoroughly pissed off that my shower had been "wounded"...

Holidays Over

Finally finished and sent out the announcement for the online version of the Holiday Newsletters (2003 & 2004) today.

Also finally finished all of my holiday cards this evening. The kids signed the remaining few and tomorrow morning it's off to the post office to send them...

I am actually quite pleased with the online Family page and I spent quite some time updating our Family Photo Albums on Yahoo so everyone can see bigger versions of our pictures...

I solved a couple of programming problems with my ACDB project and I feel as though the day was quite productive...

Holiday Cards...

Desney had bought me the full 10th season of Friends and I had spent most of the holidays watching. Tonight I finally watched the final episode. Standard American TV fare but it definitely made me laugh... as always.

While I watched Friends I worked on my holiday cards. I basically finished filling them all out by midnight. Now I just have to do the address labels tomorrow morning and get the others sign to the groups cards tomorrow during the day...

The Day After New Year's

Today I have spent almost the entire day, after waking up rather late, finishing the 2003 Family Newsletter and working on the Family Web Site. I reorganised the site and cleaned up the folders. The reason the newsletter took so long was that I wanted to put to use the style sheet functions I had learned in my recent online course. I therefore designed the newsletter using nothing but style sheets, with a different style for display and for printing, and then redesigned the opening page with style sheets as well.

The end result is on our family page at:

http://www.erb.com/family/

Test Blog from EMail

This is a test blog message sent via e-mail.

Just to see if this thing works… and how…

Another year...

Starting the new year with a new concept: Blog.

Woke up reasonably early yesterday morning and took the métro in to town (17ème) to get the seafood for the evening meal. Ended up spending a fortune on 4 dozen oysters, a couple of dozen of really big shrimp and 4 live lobsters (2.5 kg). This was the first time that a fishmonger actually had the lobsters in an aquarium. That should have given me an indication as to the price before I got started.

Got the food home and then spent a good portion of the day programming and then working on the 2003 family newsletter. A year late... but better late than never...



We had an absolutely wonderful meal, just the 4 of us, and absolutely every bottle of wine was wonderful. We started with an Ehrhart Gewurztraminer (Herrenweg - not Grand Cru) which was perfect with the oysters and shrimp. For the grilled lobster we opened a Moreau-Naudet Chablis Grand Cru Valmur 1996. What a pleasant surprise. A truly special bottle: complex and well-balanced in all aspects. Truly delicious and long. Ended the evening with a sort of Tarte Tatin and a small bottle of Château Le Fagé Monbazillac Grande Réserve 1998. Another delicious surpise as this was nice and long in the mouth without the sherry aftertaste their wines tend to get after a few years. Overall a delicious evening.

We finished the evening playing Euro Monopoly in front of the television and celebrated the New Year together yelling and screaming out the door as people walked bye. We called whoever we could on the phone to wish them the same.