Off to France we go…

November 15, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

Holy Jiminie-Joe-Bob it has busy around La Maison du Talley! We finally got the green light from the French authorities for our work and residence visas. A week later, the movers showed up, packed our place and loaded most of our possessions onto truck that drove away, hopefully to be seen sometime again in February/March in Toulouse.

We have a list two pages long of stuff to get done before we take our flight around the first of December. Yard work, paint touch up, moving The Nana, small fixes at the house, selling vehicles, etc…

Speaking of the last point: I FVCKING hate car dealers. For me, they rank right up there with lawyers, who hand out cards at accident scenes. You walk in the door of a dealership and you are a mark, like a rube in the big city for the first time. Big smiles and hand shakes, innocent questions, a free coffee or coke, all to gauge how much they will be removing from your wallet. No matter how informed you are of how much research you do, you will be bargaining from a position where they hold all the cards. This is doubly so when trading a vehicles.

We are trying to sell my truck preparation for our move and I want to strangle someone a little. Because of our time table, a private party sale is not going to happen, so we have to take the dealer route. The first dealer I went to offered me $16K for my 20 month old truck and had the identical model on his lot for $23.5K. Even with fees, he stood to make 7 grand on the deal!?!!

I get it. Everyone is in business to make money, but come on… Hate car dealers.

Home Again

October 14, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I got home from another Toulouse trip (third in 3 months) on Friday and after my sweet wife picked me up at the airport, we headed to a local BBQ joint for Brisket. I had read in a cast off magazine I found in the Amsterdam Sky Lounge about the 10 best places to find BBQ in Texas that made my mouth water. Seriously, Pavlov-esq. It was all I could think about for 5400 miles.

We ordered a full pound, the sweet sauce and a square of cornbread to take home and go all caveman on. It was not slow-smoked Hill Country perfect, but it scratched an itch.

After dinner, there was puppy play time – rough housing and fetch, Stamps-With-Foot and I watched a little TV, there was singling and the I passed out for the best sleep in 6 nights. It was so good that I slept late and with the jet lag – it felt like I had been out for 20 hours. It was only 9, but it felt so good to be home and in my own bed with my own pillow, warm wife, and snoring puppy.

Went to C&P Coffee with wife for brunch
Stayed 4 hours – finished book
Halloween costume shopping at Goodwill & St. Vinson DePaul.
Wrote a couple of letters to family
Chinese for dinner
A little TV watching.
I heart Barnie Stenson.
Finished book I got for my B-day
Said “thank you” again to wife
Passed out

Special breakfast of coffee and Apple pie tarts Sunday morning
iPad decided to imitate a brick
Said curse words until I remembered I did a cloud backup Friday night
Not as unhappy
Cleaned and refilled hottub- Winter is coming
Top of cover was GRODY
Wife helped clean. Wore a bikini and a sweater.
Have learned the hard way not to ask questions…
Put most of garden to bed for winter – no hot houses this year.
Stamps-With-Foot had hair appointment
I remained calm and begged her not to shave it all off
I went over to my mothers for dinner
Chocolate chip cookies for an appetizer, Frito Pie as a main course, cranberry juice to drink, and chocolate cheesecake for desert
Like it was 8 again
Came home and fired up the hottub. A piping 59 degrees by 10 PM.
Might have to wait till tomorrow night to get in…
Wife came home… Hair looked great.
Sigh of relief.
Told her repeatedly how pretty it was and ‘thank you’ for not chopping it off
Watched 10-12 movie trailers – don’t judge me!!
Off to bed.

Our new home in France

August 24, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

A few pictures of our new home in the French countryside and small shots from around the village.

Getting ready for our move to France – first round

July 18, 2013 / Matt Talley / 1 Comment

We/I have some serious work to do before we move to France for two years and we have a list of stuff that needs to happen. Here is the initial “to-do” post:

The Lawn:
The Nana is going to be moving into our house and will be puttering around the yard, planting flowers and the like, but there is no way that she will be pruning trees, cutting the lawn, weed eating, edging, or pulling pine needles out of the gutters. There is a little time, so we have contracted a crew to start taking are of the lawn now so that any kinks will be worked out.

In the spirit of full disclosure, the timing of this yard work transition was set into full motion only when my lawnmower blew up. Really, really – kaboom! As in there was a silver dollar-sized hole in the side of the piston housing and oil spewed everywhere. Right up until that moment the lawn caed transition was just a good idea. After it died, I threw it in the back of the truck, so it wouldn’t leak anymore oil on my grass and called the lawn service. There were a couple of things after their 1st visit, that I would like done differently, but on the whole, so far so good.

Projects:
The Kitchen HAS TO BE COMPLETED. I have stopped working on my Basement of Doom, the Campaign Camping Furniture, wood turning and a couple of refinish projects until the kitchen is complete. I will work down from there and not take on ANY new projects. I have two chests of drawers and a Duncan Phyfe Table that I want to complete and sell so that I am not storing them.

Shop:
I hate my table saw. I am going to out the beast on Craig’s List along with my contractor’s saw (Just collects spiders and sawdust), 12″ band-saw, small joiner, small drill press and the miter-box saw. None of them will work in France (50Hz vs. 60Hz power issues), so I can’t take’em with me. They are all old and have had a good life with me. It is time that I pass them on to new homes where they will see less use and live out their golden years making soapbox derby cars and bird feeders. I am planning to use any money made to invest in both some quality carving chisels and I will save part for the down payment on all new, cabinet shop-quality, power tools when we return to the US.

I can’t not build stuff, so I am taking the Anarchist’s Tool Chest route and am taking a rebuilt an old ammo/tool box (see evolution in pictures below) into a more useful tool travel case and will then show up in France with planes (22 of them), carving knives, mallets, hand saws, chisels, etc… The plan is to make smaller more detailed items, mostly by hand, while I am there (I will be sourcing a lathe and doing some bowl work though…).

Some Big News…

May 1, 2013 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

So… My J-O-B has made us an offer that is very hard to refuse: a two year stint in the south of France and they will fly us home 3 times a year. We get to keep our house and I get to come back to my job in Seattle when that period ends. THE SOUTH OF FRANCE!! Warm weather, amazing wine, spectacular cheese, lavender, honey, the French vacation plan. We would be living outside of Toulouse – the third largest city in France. It sits at the foot of the Pyrenees Mountains, is an hour from the coast, has one of the 10 best Saturday markets in Europe (so says the interwebs), and has more sunshine in 6 weeks of summer than Seattle has all year. We are so freaking doing this!

There is some red tape that we have to cut through, namely a work permit. Since around 27% of the French population under 30 is out of work, getting a permit right now, even in the aerospace field, is tres difficile. Fingers crossed. If this happens, then The Nana will move into La Maison du Talley, pay the utilities, and keep the zombie horde away. Visualize a sweet grandmother rocking away on the front porch with a shotgun across her lap. Add a Marlboro hanging from the corner of her mouth and you will have an accurate picture of The Nana.

I will miss my shop and my yard for those two years, but I will plug the hole in my heart with Cote du Rhone, Comte, a day trip or 6 to the Mediterranean coast, weekends in Paris/Rome, sunshine, and a yearly vacation to Morocco. I will be taking a chest of hand tools and am planning on making some small detailed pieces while there. I also plan on scouring the flea markets over that two year period for planes, chisels, and joinery tools.

Stamps-With-Foot is not concerned about logistics or housing or much of anything other than “How is Brodie going to handle that long flight?!” She feels that we will be taking Brodie back to ancestral homeland and has spent some amount of time talking to the dog about this possibility – trying to get him psyched about the proposition…

Film Friday – Wooden Clogs?!?

April 27, 2012 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I am not a big clog wearer… But I can appreciate the work that goes into crafting them. Althuough some of the work is done by machine, it is not like the shoes are being cut to the 1/1000th of an inch on a 21st Century HAAS CNC machine. The makers of this type of footwear are using old iron to rough the shoes out and then hand fitting and finishing them. These are built for wear and use and not for souvenirs to hang in an Amsterdam tourist shop. If you take a day trip out from Amsterdam/Rotterdam into the fields and villages, you will still see these on people’s feet. The same holds true with parts of Spain and France – especially with older rural residents.

Hot tub installation and emergency preparedness

March 2, 2012 / Matt Talley / Leave a comment

I bought my sweet wife a hot tub for our wedding anniversary. We had been looking for a while for just the right used tub, but most that were out there on Craigslist and the Inter-Webs were utter crap or cost almost as much as a new one. We found a machinist who wanted to sell his immaculately maintained soaker so he could put in a lux outdoor kitchen. It is an older tub, but he had all the maintenance records on it, the interior looked brand new, it worked great, and we paid about what it would have taken for him to have it hauled to the dump. I hired three giant Pacific islanders to deliver it – money well spent – then dug the trench for the electric and ran the wiring almost right away. I then made five trips to Home Depot and bought 2,450 pounds of gravel and sand to make a base – my back ached for a week from carring and packing it all into a solid foundation. The the hot-tub movers were absent on installation day, so I used my big monkey-brain and with the help of my nephew, I moved the tub into place with rollers, planks, a lever, and wedges. It is within 1/2 inch of where I planned it on paper and is almost dead level – 1/8″ up on the west side.

Due to my homeowner’s insurance restrictions, I was not allowed to wire into my main panel – it voids my fire coverage (yours probably says the same thing…), so I hired three successive electricians to tie it all in (one showed up high, the second was a complete no show, the third finally doing the needed work). While the third and final electrician was there and since I was paying for his time, I had him install a generator transfer switch, an exterior generator plug and a grounded exterior outlet. I reasoned that when the power goes out, I can crank the generator and we will still have the fridge, lights, TV/DVD, and heat as long as we have gas.

Stamps-With-Foot LOVES the tub. Given to her own devices, she will sit in it all day like a Japanese snow monkey. It was great when the snow storm hit us this year in January. We sat in the tub with snow piled all around, reflecting the city lights off its white surface. I will build a deck over our existing concrete pad, from the house to the tub this spring, which will make her doubly happy.

November 2013 Update:

The tub ran like the German rail system for over 2.75 years. The water was always perfect, the heater and pump worked just like they were supposed to. I had a plastic fitting crack while switching filters that cost me $250 to have replaced, but that was it for maintenance. We ran the tub year around, turning the heat off in the summer for a nice cool soak on hot nights/afternoons. In the preparation for the move to France, I winterized it by shocking the water with chemical treatment, then I drained it completely. I vacuumed out all the lines as best I could – any water left should grow mold due to the shock treatment. I built a 2X4 platform and put the cover on it so that any accumulated snow or rain wouldn’t cause a cave in, before shrink-wrapping and tarping the whole thing to keep out any and all errant moisture. The cover has had it, and we will get a new one when we return to Seattle in a couple of years. My hope is that the tub springs back to working order and we have more trouble-free years together.

The City of Light

January 14, 2011 / Matt Talley / 3 Comments

Just before Christmas the news was filled with people stuck in the major European airports for days due to weather delays. I was one of those souls. I, however, made lemonade out of lemons and spent an afternoon roaming central Paris, the city of light!

I was bumped from two flights and told to come back to the gate for the next available flight – in 12.5 hours! Uhhh… OK…. I have been to Paris enough times over the last 10 years to have a pretty good handle on the transport system. From Charles de Gaulle Airport there is a RER train that, for $10, will take you into the heart of the city, a trip that takes around 35 minutes. It had been snowing like mad that morning, but when I stepped off the train at the Saint Michel Metro stop, the grey skis parted and the sky turned a brilliant blue. It stayed that way for three hours before the clouds and snow moved back in.

I rushed over to Notre-Dame because in the 20-odd times that I have been to Paris, I have never been inside. It always seems to be summer and the line to get in is normally oppressively long so I skip it. Being a COLD winter day there was no line at all! I removed my hat, opened the door walked into the naïve, kneeled, crossed myself, and proceeded to tear up like a little girl. It was stunning!! I walked around the church for almost two hours, exploring every corner. There was so much beauty and a glossy magazine worthy picture opertunity at every turn. I just wish Laurel and the kids could have been there to see it! We will be back.

I reluctantly left Norte-Dame and headed over the Seine to Shakespeare & Co. bookstore. It crowded dusty shelves make me oh so happy. I browsed, listened to the proprietress’s sweet voice laugh and chit-chat in both French and English, I took a few pictures and bought a couple of books. From there I walked to a Crepe stand in the Latin Quarter and ate my savory crepe in the shadow of the “oldest” tree in Paris.

At 4:00 I headed over for the Catacombs tour. 6+ million of Paris’s former residents now reside in former quarry tunnels under the city. In a word, spooky! I left the hour long tour is a pensive, reflective mood. I took the RER back to the airport, my “scheduled” flight was still active and I settled in for a wait. After a few more delays, I flew out just before all flights were cancelled and an hour before Terminal #2 was evacuated because of the weight of snow on the roof.