Two of my idols, Yann Arthus Bertrand, one of world’s biggest photographers, and Luc Besson, again, one of world’s biggest filmmakers and producers, are associated in this wonderful movie which will start all over the world on June 5th, the entry will be free in every theater, everybody should go and see it !

HOME ! Click on this and you will be able to discover the website of the whole adventure on this movie, click on “video” while you visit the site so you can see an english version of the trailer I show here in french.

The planet is our home, let’s not become homeless by destroying it !

Things have been very busy lately, all our clients arrive for Easter or at the end of april, so houses to be opened, to be cleaned, pools clean and warm, gardens tidy, cars working, etc…

Three new clients in a few days, that was boosting us to go on because crisis is hanging over our heads like for everybody else. Lucky our clients still have to “maintain” their second homes so we won’t be out of business but paying gets a little “slower”, our invoices are somewhat kept on hold… but we can’t complain !

Today, as I am writing, rain comes down again, awfull, because we have many leaks in our roof at home, several rooms, living and kitchen are filled with buckets to catch the fload !

Our friend, gardener, went up the roof the other day to check on “real bad tiles”, well, he confirms that just 10% on the roof is ok, the rest is all broken, all just pieces of tiles left so no wonder it rains in the house when Mrs Nature pees all over !

We decided to get legal help for our house problems, our Landlord doesn’t want to hear or do something, so we will. We offered him to buy his house a few years ago, he declined our offer (which was much more than the exact value) so now he probably will have to make decisions once our lawyer will go after him.

Last weekend we had a great time, Easter ofcourse, but Philippe turned 40 ! We had a lovely Easterlunch, Foie Gras (Ph favorite, and homemade by Romain), a huge leg of Lamb, wonderful cheeses and a  chocolate cake with a Philadelphia icing on top (not rich at all….) made by Michaela and Dorine ! We managed to put 40 candles on it, it worked out perfect, he blew all of them in one time !!

Since a few weeks we are keeping a little doggy ( a friend who needed to go into hospital asked us to keep her sometime) and she, this lovely little Beagle puppy (10 months) decided to destroy half of our belongings… just to mention one ; the Charles Eames… she actually ate the leather on both sides…. the list would be too long of what she destroyed but she is such a lovely dog that we forget (not about that Eames tho’… our living room now is completely awfull !!!)

Philippe is training her, we don’t know when she will go back to her owner (if ever she will, because he might decide to leave her with us… like he did with Pablo, our Golden Retriever…)

I must admit she is fun, but it confirms I would never choose a little dog, I miss our Paquerette (Berner Sennen) very much, together with Pablo they are the two dogs I prefer and that I  grew up with, we’ve had so many of these breeds, now having this little dog in the house, it confirms that it makes me a little nervous. I keep on looking for her, she barks and runs around the house, I am not quite used to it, but I probably will have too (I’m just getting old hahaha).

I have many other things to say but need to do a little work, this was a quick update, I’ll try to get back soon ! xoxo

Our office, open since september 2008 ! We are very proud !

Just before the funeral services, the undertaker came up to the very elderly widow and asked, 
‘How old was your husband?’ ‘98,’ she replied. 
‘Two years older than me’ 
‘So you’re 96,’ the undertaker commented. 
She responded, ‘Hardly worth going home, is it?

Reporters interviewing a 104-year-old woman: 
‘And what do you think is the best thing 
About being 104?’ the reporter asked. 
She simply replied, ‘No peer pressure.’

The nice thing about being senile is 
You can hide your own Easter eggs.

I’ve sure gotten old!   
I’ve had two bypass surgeries, a hip replacement, 
New knees, fought prostate cancer and diabetes 
I’m half blind, 
Can’t hear anything quieter than a jet engine, 
Take 40 different medications that 
Make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts. 
Have bouts with dementia . 
Have poor circulation; 
Hardly feel my hands and feet anymore. 
Can’t remember if I’m 85 or 92. 
Have lost all my friends. But, thank God, 
I still have my driver’s license.

I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape, 
So I got my doctor’s permission to 
Join a fitness club and start exercising. 
I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors. 
I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But, 
By the time I got my leotards on, 
The class was over.

My memory’s not as sharp as it used to be. 
Also, my memory’s not as sharp as it used to be.

Know how to prevent sagging? 
Just eat till the wrinkles fill out.

It’s scary when you start making the same noises 
As your coffee maker. 

THE SENILITY PRAYER: 
Grant me the senility to forget the people 
I never liked anyway, 
The good fortune to run into the ones I do, and 
The eyesight to tell the difference.

Now, I think you’re supposed to share this with 5 or 6, maybe 10 others. Oh heck, give it to a bunch of your friends if you can remember who they are! 
  
Always Remember This: 
You don’t stop laughing because you grow old, 
You grow old because you stop laughing!!

How do you know if it’s real love ? Every night you think of what either seperates you from that person or what holds you together !

Our weather has been awfull all autumn, in those almost 30 years that I have been living here never I have seen such rain (and snow.)

This is a panoramic view from our familyhouse, view on Chateauneuf and the mountains behind covered in snow. (This is just 15 minutes away from us.)

Many avalanches have been coming down, destroying several houses and chalets, the ski-resorts are very happy though, their season will be great !

This was my daily picture, in front of my officewindow, rain, rain, rain, the road filled with water (10 cms) a real pool…

Finaly today the sun is out, only 9° though, but we are going north for Christmas. We will be in Paris and Normandy, and in Breda for new Years Eve…

Hereby I am wishing you all a very happy Christmas, love and peace within all families and I’ll be back in January for a new start, hoping for a year 2009 with goodies and fun, not another year with bad memories and sad things !
Thank you for being a faithfull reader of my blog, I haven’t been there much lately, same thing; work and fun don’t always go together, wish it could, but also, I don’t have a computer at home anymore which makes me enjoying my family much more and that is something I wouldn’t want to change !

Thanks for being here ! Love to all !

Dear Tech Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance, particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, and then installed undesirable programs such as NBA 5.0, NFL 3.0 and Golf Clubs 4.1., Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system.

Please note that I have tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.

What can I do?
Signed,

Desperate

DEAR DESPERATE,

First, keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system.

Please enter command: ithoughtyoulovedme.HTML and try to download Tears 6.2 and do not forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update.
If that application works as designed, Husband1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

However, remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Beer 6.1.
Please note that Beer 6. 1 is a very bad program that will download the Farting and Snoring Loudly Beta.

Whatever you do, DO NOT under any circumstances install Mother-In-Law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources.)

In addition, please do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend: Cooking 3.0 and Hot Lingerie 7.7.

Good Luck Babe!

Tech Support

Last week I went to a funeral in Holland, never a great moment, but this time also we couldn’t fly to Rotterdam since there was no flight on tuesday, so we went to Brussels, me refusing to put another foot on Schiphol airport Amsterdam. (We had to go to Breda anyway, which is closer.)

Anyway, we came back, no wait…, we were supposed to fly back from Rotterdam, on friday, got up at 6.30 left Breda around 7.30, arrived after trafficjam etc around 9.30, left the car at rentalcarparking, waited, checked in, waited, waited, had to take the bus to Eindhoven, (too much wind in Rotjeknor for the plane to land), so off we go to Eindhoven, 1.5 hours busdrive, waiting there for some stupid passenger who didn’t arrive (went to Eindhoven by himself) so we were back in Nice around 6.30…. 12 hours travelling day… Thanks.

So I just heard this funny joke I wanted to share it with you :

A man at the airline counter tells the rep. “I’d like this bag to go to Berlin, this one to California, and this one to London.
The rep says, “I’m sorry sir. We can’t do that.”
The man replied: Nonsense. That is what you did last time I flew with you.

Things have been a bit strange since the beginning of September. Good and bad things, happy and sad things, things of life!

First of all, our house, family house, ‘was’ sold, it was a real relief, knowing we all could go on, my mother to a flat, we probably could have bought a fine home for ourselves, but then after all it didn’t work out! Big deception for all, and now with the crisis going on we still hope someone will have a crush on it very soon…

We had spent our august holidays in Brittany. As always we were invited to stay at the lovely home of ‘Bonnemaman’ and ‘Bonpapa’, they are my sister-in-law’s parents. They have a lovely holiday house right on the beach of Loctudy, near Pont l’Abbé (south from Quimper). For many times we have been there and it is always a joy for the kids and for us to spent two full weeks of rest on that extraordinary Brittany beach.

This was the pleasure of the holidays, but the sad thing was the awful and complete sudden departure of ‘Bonpapa’ who died of a heart attack a month ago. It was an awful loss for his wife, his children and grandchildren (our niece and nephew) and of course our own kids were touched by this event since for them ‘Bonpapa’ was like a grandfather to them!

We will miss him terribly.

My sister-in-law has to go through the unpleasant time of grief, losing a parent is very hard, I know, but she also suddenly had to spend days in hospital last week, has been operated and is waiting for results, hopefully they are good, but until that, time is very long.

As I read all this, actually it looks like a long letter of bad things that happened, since I wrote earlier last week about our own loss, our beautiful dog ‘Paquerette’. We miss her very much, she was so there when she was alive, always ‘hanging’ on to us and she would share the couch with me in wintertime, while I watched a movie… it sure will be cold around that couch this winter. Pablo (our Golden Retriever) is doing fine, he sometimes looks at us with a questioning eye “Is she coming back?” I take him for long walks, every weekend we go for hours walk, and through the week, as soon as I have a minute I go.

Trying to think of the good things in life over the last few months, well, I had a lovely b’day party in July with all the people I love.

But most important, WE’VE GOT AN OFFICE! Riviera Expat is now officially working from a real office! We have spent 8 years at home, computer, fax, phone… but we couldn’t go on with it anymore.

My daughter (almost 12) needed her own room; kids have been sharing the same room since they were born. We couldn’t afford a ‘multinationalofficespace’ but… we found the right spot, at the right time!

It is actually just in our village, two minutes from home, opposite the parking for school so we drop off Bart at 8.15 am. and we’re in the office, he comes out of school (6.00 pm after homework classes) and we’re off home again! Great days, hard work, but very efficient and some clients just loooove to come and visit us, cup of coffee and a little chat… And…our friends; they all come over at 8.15 am for coffee so now Philippe decides not to open the office until 9.00… we’re better of like that, even though it’s fun, I feel like having my Bar/Restaurant back, I do miss that conviviality!

Pictures for this office will come soon when it’s all finished, same thing, we are no multimillionaires who can spent loads on furnishing their office, we do it step by step, and it starts to be really cute! We are very proud!

At the house it is all getting worse, I couldn’t sum up all the big problems we’ve had lately, the heavy autumn rain has ‘flooded’ the complete cellar window out of the wall, so now when it rains, not just a ‘little’ water comes in as usual, no, the whole f****** street floads in the house…

We had cleaned out the cellar lately, put everything on bricks and wood to have precious stuff dry, but it is a disaster. Then also, every time it rains we have to move our dining table, put a bucket under it, like a tap water drops from the ceiling into the living room.

Our shower has all tiles falling apart, the wall is getting so soaked and moist and disgusting that roots are starting to grow… This weekend I am going to take it all off and do something about it… all the things our landlord wouldn’t do or hasn’t done in 30 years… He should be ashamed of himself and you would be very surprised to see the state of our house.

The wooden doors to the terrace are falling apart, rains, air whatever just goes through it, like Philippe says; – “when the heating is, it’s for the birds…!” I won’t refer to all the shutters (what am I saying, shutters? Are they shutters or something that used to look like shutters???)

We try to take all this with optimism and as I told you before, we are so happy with the office, Dorine finally having her own room and the ‘zenitude’ on having the privacy at home, no more phone calls from clients on Saturday, no more faxes coming in on Sunday… real ‘home sweet home’!

Autumn has been very rainy, today the sun is out, we are looking forward to a nice weekend, Bart has another rugby competition, he has been selected for the ‘A’ team, we are very proud, looking forward to have him on the national team in a few years…

He also integrated HIP HOP dancing classes with all his buddies, that’s going to be a great show in June next year in Grasse’s Theatre ! We always go there for Dorine’s Gala dancing show, but then Bart will be in it too!

I think I went through it all, I told you I would update things a little, well, that’s done! Thanks for being here, thanks for reading and keep visiting my café, I will try to make my posts a little more ‘fun’ next time !