Bang goes a white Christmas 2009… its raining…

Only kidding… for now that is. At the moment it is snowing still, even though rain is predicted this afternoon. Whether there will be a white Christmas in this part of the world or not, is debatable. Heavy rain predicted for Wednesday afternoon and 5°C.

We had some family snow frolicking in the garden yesterday and on Friday evening, more on that later…

…or perhaps tomorrow. My BIL is celebrating his birthday tonight with an apéro. Toffee is going to be, finally, introduced to the rest of the family!

Light-weight Twitter application right inside Gmail

Many Twitter applications appear to rely on Adobe Air to run, which on my laptop tends to slow down things. Why have a heavy application when you don’t need it, if all you want to do is tweet?

Well, I came across the Twitter Gadget site which uses Google Labs to install their Twitter client onto my Gmail page. You can even break it open into a seperate browser window if you want to handily access your tweets from the Windows task bar.

Full instructions on how to add Twitter Gadget to Gmail are here.

OK, sometimes the Twitter API gives up the ghost occasionally, but I can live with that. Just means my system resources are not clogged up by Adobe Air.

Twitter Gadget opened up from Gmail in a seperate browser window (Google Chrome)

Mmmm… snow… yum…

Thumpah went shopping last night and came back with snow boots for both Rémy and me, waterproof trousers and a pair of gloves for Rémy and a bobble hat for me… hmmm… nothing like going round looking like I’ve got a rolled up black condom on my head!

Rémy looking for deep snow on the cycle path.

So both her “boys” could go out today and play in the snow! Now, I can tell you that juggling a two year old and new dog walking up the road wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Even less easy when you add a camera into that. Rémy seemed keen on walking only in the deepest parts and Toffee wanted to walk right in front of me. A few times Rémy fell over as I held his hand, then I nearly kicked Toffee a few times as she walked under my feet.

Butter wouldn't melt...

The usual quick walk up the road to the parc du château was a lot longer than usual. The mairie had a couple of tractors out with snow ploughs keeping the village roads clear – but it seemed that even though the snow was falling lighter than yestrday this morning it was still covering quite well.

Main road out of Fontenay-le-Vicomte.

This morning Thumpah sent me an email to tell me that the roads up to halfway on her trip to work hadn’t been cleared, so as a result she was driving at 20km/h for about 7 or 8km and got to work 30 mins late. She took twice as long. I wonder how things’ll be on Monday?

She kindly proof checked the Roger Soubie magazine I’m working on, on Wednesday night. I had printed off two copies of the magazine that Mr le Maire Adjoint took with him the same evening, so that he and Mr le Maire could take a look and pass it round the members of the Conseil du Village. Nothing heard since, but I did manage to input Thumpah’s corrections on Thursday morning.
With this snow, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if those at the Mairie are little bit disrupted. Selfishly, as long as I get this magazine done and dusted before the middle of next week. I’ll be very happy.

Château de Fontenay-le-Vicomte

Deux petits monstres... )

Cher Papa Noël…

Passed onto me by Thumpah…

“Cher Papa Noël,

Cette année tu as pris mon chanteur favori, MICHAEL JACKSON, mon acteur favori, PATRICK SWAYZE et mon actrice favorite FARRAH FAWCETT.

Je voudrais te rappeler que mon homme politique favori est Nicolas SARKOZY.

Ne l’oublies pas.

Merci.“

Thaw Sunday evening?

As I look outside some of the snow close to the house has started to go, but it is still a bit icy underfoot. I know it is icy because I cleared our car of snow before Thumpah went to work this morning. The nice soft 3cm covering hid a layer of ice directly on the car, so had the motor running to clear the windscreen.

The weather forcast for the next few days has changed slightly to light snow today and tomorrow, the heavy snow Sunday morning and a sunny afternoon with temperatures climbing above freezing for the first time since last Wednesday. We’re set to get a dizzy 2°C before plunging down to minus 4°C Monday morning when no snowfall is predicted. That afternoon will see a 1°C.

By car we aren’t that far from the main Paris suburban road network. Thumpah said to me last night that the main thoroughfares are largely free of snow, but when she got to the lesser used Départemental routes, they were still a bit dangerous. Probably the only time you’ll see French motorists driving at 50km/h

P.S. At 9am it is now snowing.

White Christmas? While we’re thinking about it, here are a few snow views…

Of course I didn’t want to disappoint you all, so took a few snowy shots earlier from our front terrace. As Toffee is originally from Guadaloupe, she probably hasn’t seen snow before. She didn’t seem fazed by it at all!

View from the kitchen door

Might very well be Toffees first taste of snow!

"I don't care if you want your snowy photo, I aint going back out there!"

“Pardon Daddy…”

Today is bath day for Rémy, which he usually has in the morning during the week. Only today it was the first time he had one without the plank of chipboard with baby cushion on top, that I put over the sink as a changing table. He was getting a bit big for it anyway, added to which we have also done away with the bath chair too.

But it was COLD this morning. Our house has warm rooms and down right cold rooms. That is due the way the naff heating is, in our place. Rémy’s room is about the warmest in the house because he has a cast iron radiator. Our living room, even with a red hot rad going is about the coldest. Yesterday I cut up some pieces of scrap wood from the garage stock pile to get the fire going last night and for today.

So this morning,  it was a mad dash from Rémys room to the bathroom, with his dressing gown on. The bathroom has an old 70’s electric heater above the door which is turned on via a string hanging from a ceiling switch. So I have to put that on before taking Rémy to his bedroom to undress him, so the bathroom warms up in the meantime.

He wasn’t too cold, didn’t moan at all about that. He was snug and warm in the bath and got a bit annoyed when I threw that old joke of “accidentally on purpose” pulling the plug out. Usually resulting in a desperate sounding “Noooo…. no… no…. noooo”.

Anyway, with no “changing table” on the sink, I put a towel on the floor for him to step on (so he didn’t get cold feet from the tiles) and started drying him off with another towel.  We were messing about as usual – pushing each other and laughing, then he gave me a good smack in the nose. I held it for a while and I heard this little voice say “Par-don Da-ddy” with a serious look on his face. He just made me laugh, as it was the very first time I’d heard him apologise to me for whacking me!

The snow has been a good distraction today. It started not long after 8 am, around the time Thumpah went to work and continued steadily till 2.30pm. Very light snow is falling still as I write at 3pm and there has been some drifting. Unfortunately I’ve not been able to take Rémy out in it, as I realised he hasn’t got any suitable clothes. He is rapidly outgrowing his trousers, so very few of the padded ones will fit now. The ski suit he used last year is obviously too small. Usually we never get snow here in December – so we’ve been caught by surprise totally today. So we stayed in the warm and watched it from inside.

Toffee went out in it though… not for long, she was soon wanting to come back in. She sort of zipped out of the door, ran around as if on tip-toe then zipped back in again. Does this dog EVER pee or do a No.2???

As you can see from the forecast for the weekend below, we’ve got plenty of white stuff to come…

Weekend snow

Lakes of Vert-le-Petit in sub zero temperatures

OK… OK… just an excuse to add a few photos of us and toffee to my blog. On Monday Isa had taken an RTT, one of a few that she has left to take before Christmas. So after getting ready which usually takes a lot longer on a day off we headed to a neighouring village called Vert-le-Petit. The place itself is nice, but slightly hidden along a narrow road are les étangs de l’Essonne where there are walks, a restaurant and a camping site right next to the lakes there.

Holding Rémy as he feeds the water birds.

We took along some bread to feed the water fowl there and the one swan and goose that came over. Making sure Rémy didn’t fall into one of the lakes! We then went for a wander around part of the lake, but the freezing temperatures made us eventually turn back for a wander to the car park.

A bit of variety.

As we were out we thought it would be nice to go to a restaurant for lunch. The one at the lake was closed because it was Monday, but then so was the Chinese restaurant we’d planned on in Mennecy. They do some great food there, like many Chinese places locally doing an “as much as you can eat” buffet. If you are local, you’ll find it next to McDo on the RN191.

In the end we found another Chinese restaurant further along the RN191, not far from the entrance to the A6 autoroute. This place did a buffet too, but the food wasn’t as good and wasn’t very hot either. It was only as we were leaving that we noticed the micowave hidden behind the plates.

In fact we were in a bit of a hurry as we dropped off Toffee at home and changed Rémy before we left for the restaurant. By then it was approaching 13h 15 and I was due to meet Monsieur le maire at 15h.

Thumpah Rémy & Toffee

Your friendly neighbourhood blogger. Oh... and Toffee.