UPDATE: The new site is now live.
First off, many thanks to those of you who helped test the new site. We’re just in the process of tidying up the last bits, mainly for viewing it on a tablet or phone. It’s slightly embarrassing that it’s taken us this long, but we want to get it right, so we’ll continue to tweak it. If it’s not gone live by the time we write our next blog post, then something will have gone seriously wrong.
The big news of the week is that Will received the results of his French language exam today. He got (nearly) perfect marks! This comes as no surprise to anyone, except Will himself who wasn’t sure he would pass. He now has all the necessary documents, so all that’s left to do is send them in, and then wait for a year.
We had a light dusting of snow on Thursday night, which stuck around all of Friday since the temp didn’t get above 0C all day. Since then, we’ve had a nice reprieve, and it was 10C today with lots of sunshine. Even better is that it’s forecast to stay that way all week. We’re still expecting temps around freezing overnight, but we can certainly live with that.
I took advantage of the nice weather by doing some yard work today. To be fair, it was Lucien who did most of the work, and I just cleaned up. I noticed that some of our trees along the road were starting to interfere with the phone/power lines. I mentioned this to Lucien awhile back, and he offered to come by and do the necessary. He’s got a large chainsaw, a smaller one, and a very small one at the end of a 4 metre pole. Between those and a couple of ladders, he was able to cut off the tops of some of the trees, and remove the side branches from a few others. Tomorrow, I will mostly be burning the trimmings, plus whatever else is still on the compost heap.
In the work department, Will is very busy, and I am not. He’s got five or six sites on the go, or in the queue, and he’s been working full-time these past few weeks (gasp!). We’re still getting the odd enquiry, either from Colleen or our site, so it’s going to be like this for Will for the foreseeable. Neither of my projects from last year are going ahead, so I’m back to square one. I have updated my LinkedIn profile, and as soon as we get our new site live, I’ll start trolling for new clients. We got a list of English businesses in the Dordogne from the guy at the Chamber of Commerce, so I may start there and see how I get on.
We had one social event. On Friday, we went round to Manu and Mathilde’s for pizza. They have a wood-burning stove that also doubles as a pizza oven, and it was a real treat to stuff our faces. Also there were Philippe, plus Sabine and Alain, our neighbours, along with their son. We had the usual enjoyable evening, and stayed till 2am before calling it a night.
The cats had a very quiet few days when the temps dropped, but they’ve been making up for it since it’s turned nicer. On Saturday, Smoo had a mouse, followed by a mole! He knows better than to bring his kills in the house, but he couldn’t resist offering the mole to us as a gift. I like to think he knows that we want him to kill them, and this was his way of telling us. It’s a good thing too, since the moles have started making a comeback in the front garden in a big way. Thus ends another short entry.