follow up

so... as promised: the follow up to the naked man story.

as whitney recounted, one evening as we were leaving out apartment, the downstairs neighbor came out to yell at us for the insupportable amounts of noise we made on an ever constant basis. (i still think his hearing is above and beyond that of any canine to have ever lived... but that's me.)

since we've already covered that part in whitney's post, i will spare you to gory details.

the next evening, as i'm cooking dinner, i can hear him -- as usual -- making little grunts and noises with every other step i take. i'm doing the best i can to not make noise... but when you live in a building constructed in the 1800's, there's really only so much that can be reasonable expected. the floor is wood planks... i mean, you look at the poor, warped thing at it creaks in protest!

right... cooking dinner... and i get in to the freezer to pull out a couple of chicken thighs -- i'm making BBQ chicken for dinner, with mashed potatoes and corn. we've got a half dozen or more legs jammed into our freezer that's the size of a large shoebox. seeing as they're all stuffed in there, as i pulled to two nearest the front out, the others decide they'd shift to make more room. this ends in one jumping out, in addition to the two i'm already holding. i do my best -- my leg clamp together like bear trap, my hands go in for the save... but despite my efforts, the third chunk o' chicken escapes to the ground. this has the effect of dropping a large rock.

from below: “MERDE!”

it took a great amount of effort on my part to not start yelling down through to floor to the guy that i just dropped a chicken, and there's no need to go off having an aneurism. i manage to refrain.

i must remind the public at this time that we'd been living in the place for five months. during the first month, we didn't realize to what extent the walls and floors of the place are like rice paper. at the time, the concierge came up and said that there were some complaints (i suspect they all came from the same guy...) about the level of noise that we were making. (this level of noise was normal conversation, mingled with the occasional fit of laughter... we didn't have a TV or anything, so it was just our normal decibel output.) we toned it down... and a few weeks later, the same comment, but with a side note from the concierge that the guy that was complaining was an old, ornery fella who complained about everything, and that we didn't have to go out of our way to be overly quiet... we were well within our rights as far as any disturbance of the peace laws are concerned. we still made extreme efforts, but despite these, almost every day we'd hear cries of muffled outrage rise up through the ceiling... sometimes every 5 minutes for an hour... despite the fact that we were almost not moving, and doing what little movement we needed to in the quietest manner possible.

needless to say, i was fed up with this guy, and quite ready to go down and give him several very large pieces of my mind. for those who know me well... i don't do stuff like that.

where was i? ah, yes... “MERDE!”

he then yells a sting of muffled french, and think he went downstairs, slamming his door on the way, to see the concierge. he might have just called him on the phone. i don't know... this was months ago (sorry).

a bit later, i hear the concierge talking to him, as he's yelling things about how we're making all this noise on purpose just to vex him. (this i hear as i had my ear pressed to the floor to see what all the ruckus was about. i'd actually been tempted to do that. the evening before, when he came out to yell at me in the hallway, and accused of stomping our feet about everywhere we walked... i was on the point of telling him that if that's what he thought we were doing... i'd show him what that was like... give him a week of it, and see how much better he liked the way we actually we comporting ourselves. again... i decided against this. sometimes christian acts are so frustrating...) a few minutes later the concierge came up to our place, and asked if i could come down with him to talk to the guy.

so down we go.

we get to the apartment, and he the first thing he (pierre... the neighbor) says is, “i don't want to have a yelling match, i want to talk like civilized people.” this became a theme for the conversation over the next 20 minutes, as mostly he and the concierge would get over excited and start raising their voices. i did once or twice... but only because he refused to let me speak. i hate that. more than almost anything i HATE it when someone wants to talk and discuss... and doesn't let the other party have two words, but talks and talks, and interrupts... and gets mad at the OTHER person for interrupted when they try to say more than two words. oh that boils my blood...

so, we talked. the concierge left, because he was missing his soccer match, and pierre and i talked for the next hour or so. he smoked... i sat... we talked. i told him we were doing everything we possibly could, but that i weight 210 lbs, and the floors aren't exactly the image of solidity. i can make them squeak even without moving... just a slight shift in my weight. once he found out i'm as big as i am, he calmed down a bit.

so we talked, and just... yeah... talked. i sat on the chair, and he sat on the bed in his navy blue speedo and white t-shirt.

he was much better after that.

now every time we see him, we joke around. we took him some cheesecake, and he
brought us some croissants and strawberries. once we saw him at a café in the next
town over, and he invited us to sit, and bought us some drinks.

we still get a “merde” now and then when we drop something... but things are much
better. he's a nice guy... just an ornery retired man who wants to live the rest of his days in quiet, sleeping until noon and going to bed at 9.

i think he needs to move to a retirement home if that's what he wants... but what do i know?

HOLY FRUITLOOPS!

so today...

mark and i were walking to the university to do some stuff on the internet and saw this awesome tree...well 3 of them actually... but that's not the point...

lookie this!


pretty!!!....



nice big gorgeous purpley-pinkish flowers on a tiny little tree....



it doesn't look like the tree is big enough to have flowers that big...but look! they are HUGE!



told ya! :]



and those are just the buds....which strangely enough...smelled EXACTLY like fruitloops... :]
cool huh?

tsk tsk

i am a bad, bad person.

i haven't posted anything here for ages.

i hope you'll forgive me... and chastise me... then forgive me again.

i really need to get some posts up.

breaking rules

the other day, i’m sitting in class (and by that i mean standing). i’m doing a lesson on food, i believe -- though that’s completely irrelevant information.

in french schools -- at least in the elementary schools -- every class room has a plethora of rulers, protractors, triangles and what-have-yous to facilitate the drawing of geometric lines, squares, circles and other things. i often use these rulers (meter sticks, if you will) as pointers... due to the overwhelming lack of pointers in the class rooms. (there’s one class where the teacher has a four foot bamboo stick. i’m highly tempted to steal it. i think she’d notice. on a side note -- since this totally isn’t already one... -- they’ve planted some bamboo shoots in front of the train station. i want to go cut one down so i can have a bamboo pointer... and maybe a walking stick too. i don’t think they’d notice.)

these rulers aren’t exactly what you’d call... sturdy. they’re plastic. they’re a meter long (just over a yard for the metrically challenged...), and really thin. (ok... not like SUPER thin... but still. thin.) this makes them ideal for flexing. you know... like a saw. (they’re not that thin...)

well... i was doing just that -- flexing -- when the stupid ruler decides to go off and break! (at approximately 3 decimeters -- that’s 30 centimeters, or just under a foot, for the metrically challenged). break i tell you! snapped in two...

naturally the classroom, half filled with 9 year olds, was very quickly completely filled with “ooooo”s and gasps and various forms of giggling.

and... of course... the next question asked (which was on subject -- this is very rare... but happened quickly in this particular instance) was: “how do you say, ‘mark broke the ruler’ in english?”

silly, silly children.

they didn’t let this go very easily. i was trying to be all nonchalant about the whole thing... but they just wouldn’t let it go.

silly, silly children.

i continued the lesson, and as it was getting time to leave (which meant that the kids went out to recess, and i waited for my next class to get back from recess), one of the boys offered to tell the teacher that he had broken the ruler while being a turd in class.

i couldn’t let that happen... he’s usually a very well behaved child. perhaps if it had been one of the actual turds... maybe. so instead, i wrote a note and left it with the carcass on the teacher’s desk. she came up to me after school and said that it was no big deal... happens all the time.

i’m not sure i completely believed her... but then, i forget this is france: kids are terrible here. wow. i would have been shot, strangled or otherwise dismembered by my mother SEVERAL times over, by the age of six and a half, if i had ever thought of being that daemonic!

besides... the gov’t pays for it all anyway... so who cares, right?

I REMEMBERED! i told you i would!

SO! at long last i have rediscovered the amazing thing i was going to tell you all!

now...i'm just giving a warning...

TURN OFF YOUR VIVID IMAGINATIONS AND TAKE THIS STORY FOR SIMPLY WHAT IT IS! DO NOT DWELL.

got that?

so i don't remember quite clearly how i came about this discovery...but! i thought it was hilarious all the same...granted...i was there when it first happened and also haven't been waiting for a good month or so to figure out what it is...so yeah...anywho i hope i don't let you down...

so...i have alot of hair....A LOT! it is really thick and i shed everywhere! mark is always laughing at me and the large clumps of hair that we have to pull out of the drain after each of my showers...and the numberless hairs that he pulls off of my coat during sacrament meeting in church....( you would think that i'd be bald by now....but no...it's still as thick as ever....:] )

well we woke one morning and started getting ready for the day...mark was getting ready to get in the shower when (like always) he found one of my hairs on his chest....so he grabbed it to toss from himself as he got in the shower ( probably thinking the shower didn't need to be tortured while he was in it ) and was very surprised when he found that it was not one of my head hairs....no, no, no, no, no...but that it was attached!...to him!

YES! my dear friends...mark has a hair on his chest that is a good 3-4 inches long!

i think i laughed quite generously for the rest of the day...:]

good times...

i love my husband...

i decided to spare you all the pain of pictures....however...maybe if you ask nicely...:}

fun, fun, fun

over the holiday season, there was a nice little rash of entertainment that took place. the feasting and merriment has already been discussed elsewhere on this blog.

the current post is to make note of the games that were played. most notably, uno. (u-no?) twice we played games, twice we played uno. once, it was the normal version. the second time, it was uno-wizz. i don’t know if you’re familiar with this verision. behold:



oh, it’s fun. the wheel-of-fortune feature makes it all sorts of interesting.

the other game that we played was topword. i think this exists in the states... it seems like i’ve seen it. basically, three-dimensional scrabble. (sweet...)




yeah... i like. but i’ll tell you one thing: if you think it’s challenging to play scrabble and other word games in your own language... try it in one you’ve only spoken for a few years. ay!

never prouder to be dutch

on the way to and from work, i have to cross a rather large bridge. on the bellerive-sur-allier side of said bridge, i cross the street.

there is often a bit of traffic on this stretch of road, and sometimes it makes the crossing more treacherous than at other times.

the other day, as i approach the crossing in question, i see a nice older lady (with a frightening leopard print coat) trying to get across the street. she succeeds in calming traffic before i get to the crosswalk, and so i simply follow behind her.

reaching the other side, i say to her (in french, of course), “this crossing can be a real pain, can’t it.”

“yes, they need to install a red light for the pedestrians.”

“yeah... with a button and the whole works.” (i floundered a bit on the word button in this context, which i believe lead to her next comment...)

“are you from holland?”

???

i must say i take that as a compliment.

i’ve not met an overwhelming number of dutch in my day (and how many of them were actually from holland i can’t say, but that’s irrelevant), but all of them... yes, i believe i can say, without exception, ALL of them have spoken impeccable english -- nearly flawless and with hardly any accent. and they usually speak 3 or 4 other languages too (if not more... i knew a chap who claimed 15 or so). i don’t know what they feed their children, but... i’ve heard it attributed to the fact that all of the cartoons (and i assume other television programs) that are broadcast are done so in the language they were produced in. and honestly, how big of a broadcasting (especially film...) industry can the netherlands have? not to mention that are SO many people that speak dutch. it’s kinda like how all swedes, norwegians, fins, danes and icelanders (?) speak english too.

so, yeah... it made a nice little swell in my ego that day.