sorry sorry sorry…
We had some friends here in Paris from Australia last week who rented the apartment downstairs from us, and then some more friends from Montreal who came to stay with us, so I’ve been busy busy busy….

Not much new. I’ve been spending days trying to book something for our November holidays. There are 2 public holidays at the beginning of November, the 1st and the 11th, coupled with the “ponts” and the RTT’s and the vacation policy of Thales it means we can have 12 days off for not much vacation time. But after checking all sorts of options including a train from Istanbul to Iran, a driving trip through Portugal, a gourmet holiday in Bologna & Modena Italy, Israel, Club Med and another visit to the south of France – we’ve decided to cancel it all and save our pennies for our trip to Seoul and Australia at christmas. It seems money doesn’t grow on trees after all, and frequent flyer points don’t go very far when you have to pay the tax portions in £’s sterling.

So despite loosing about 3 full days in front of the computer, I’m quite relieved. We might catch a couple of movies, a couple of exhibitions, maybe use our 1 night away Table d’hotes package we received for our birthday, but essentially not much at all…
Things are back to normal as of today. I’ve been recipe hunting to feed 6 tomorrow night for a late dinner after the Motor Show. Michelle loves the “car show”, she’s going with Claire & her beau while I drink champagne with Anne & Olivier waiting for Michelle and Co. to arrive before their deadline of 22h30. We start eating then…. dinner after that seems ridiculous even to me, especially after last weekend when we ate dinner at half past midnight after a hockey game in Garge la Gonesse.

Anyway, we were invited to the thai tonight with Michel our neighbour to catch up. It was fabulous as usual, and nice to catch up with Michel before he’s off again to NY for business. We were each talking of our plans to leave the quartier, him with his new apartment project and us with our new apartment hunting. I think we finally agreed that it will be sad to leave the neighbourhood, but exciting all the same. Time for a change… I’ve got my fingers crossed we can move to the 18th, and still be neighbours but we’ll see..

The week ahead we have more visitors from Montreal which will be fun. Rita is always a laugh and I can’t wait to see Christine here in Paris, so more fun expected.

Have a good weekend and happy birthday Mad. In fact I’m late on all my birthdays – happy birthday Maddie in Newcastle, I know I’m late but I was thinking of you on the day, truly, and happy birthday Maddie in Sydney, less late, but still thinking of you. I wish you both all the best for a fabulous year and we hope to see you both over christmas sometime in or near Maleny??