It’s been a very quiet week, so this should be brief. Work continues to fly at us from all sides. Projects for which I did quotes a while back are all going ahead, and of course, they’re all urgent. We’re redoing a site we inherited last year and it could be an interesting one. It’s for a villa rentals site in the south of France. The current version is a shambles, and they recently hired a young person to take over managing the site, which should help. I’ve also got the second server to migrate and this has to be done by the end of November when the current software expires. I’ve made a start, including this site which is now hosted there.
We had a few social events. Jenny came by on Monday for an apero and help with her phone. We had Lewis and Pary over for dinner on Thursday, which was somewhat surprising since Pary usually bails at the last minute. She’s vegetarian, so we had a medley of roasted veg topped with a slice of grilled halloumi, served with herbed quinoa and almonds, followed by cheese, and coconut bars that I’d made previously. It was nice to spend time with both of them and they’ll be back around xmas.
Friday night was dinner at Benoit and Virginie’s. His brother Benjamin and wife Alyssa were visiting from Paris, and just came back from a week in Madrid visiting her family. They brought back chorizo and olives, which we had for apero. The main was cepes omelet, served with roasted potatoes, salad and Iberian ham, followed by cheese and apple and pear tarts for dessert. We hung out drinking and playing games until 3am when Benoit’s mom came down and told us off for being too loud. We took that as our cue to leave and went to bed shortly after.
The rest of the weekend was nice and quiet. We did a bit of work on Sat am, then chopped wood for the first time this year in the afternoon. We had tried to do so the previous day, but the chainsaw wouldn’t start. Luckily, it was just a question of being too cold, and it was fine the next day after leaving it in the sun for a while. On that note, the weather has been mainly fine, with a few days of rain earlier in the week. It was 19C today, but will turn cool and rainy for the next few days. Mauricette came by in the afternoon with a load of cepes, so we had them in a risotto that evening.
We had band practice on Sunday which mainly went well. We’re making slow progress, so hopefully, will be ready for our concert in June. I hope we manage to play somewhere before that, but it depends on our readiness, as well as finding a venue / sorting out equipment. I went for a few walks during the week, and enjoy tracking my time / distance with my new Fitbit. I haven’t been to the pool in weeks, not even during the last two when it was school holidays. Francoise wants to start going again too, so I hope we’ll manage at least once this week.
Will went over to see Eva today, who fixed up his Bowie black star tattoo. This will be the third time it’s been touched-up, and it appears she’s nailed it. It’s dark, uniform and has solid lines so looks much better than before. Will is working on a quote and design to put around it, and he consulted a bit with Eva afterwards. Benoit just stopped by for his cement mixer, although the sand and remaining stones are still here. He hopes to come by at the weekend to collect the remaining bits.
I’m going to try the choir in Nontron tonight with Paul. It’s run by Christophe, the same guy who did Milhac, so I have an idea of what I’m getting into. I’m not thrilled about a Monday night activity, but considering I don’t have any at the moment, I’ll make do.