It’s taken me two and a half years, but as of today, thanks in part to the long Toussaint (All Saints Day) weekend, my living room is finally in a presentable, almost finished state. The ceiling could definitely use a coat of white paint, and two small walls still need scraped, primed and repainted, but with the main wall done, I was able to move furniture and redecorate as I’ve wanted for a while.

Following is a photo timeline of my living room’s metamorphosis (each small photo is linked to its larger size):

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Yesterday, after I’d fi-nal-ly finished painting my big living room wall, was preparing to go to school twelve hours later, and wanted to mention how well Patches is doing with us now, I wondered how to bring it all together in a post.

Today I went to school, sat in a Bauhaus building classroom with gorgeous views of the hills of Nice, and in my second course, which is titled “Imagologie et ethnologie”, was greeted by Mister Smarty-Furry-Pants, as you can see above. So there you have it. Style, classes, and a cat.

Because the commission that validated my Masters application was held after classes began, I can’t say that “classes start this Wednesday” — they started nearly a month ago! I can, however, say that “I’ll be starting classes this Wednesday.” For the second year of the comp lit Masters, we take three courses: one is a required research seminar, the second is another research seminar that the student chooses, and the third is called a unité d’enseignement or UE, academic subject, which is also at the student’s choice. All are held one day a week, over a two-hour session. The second seminar I want to take is held on the same day as the required one, which is nice! I’ll be able to take that one day a week off work, and do the third course half electronically, half in person, since it’s held in the evenings (I would have to leave work early to get there on time).

I’ve spent the last few days hurriedly organizing things so that I have as much logistical support, so to speak, as possible. As always, I have a very limited budget, but I enjoy the challenge it brings, and often find that it helps streamline where you might not have otherwise.

First, I wanted a cheap, reliable way to keep on top of work, school, and personal emails, since a lot of my coursework will be done electronically. While a good solution might have been a netbook, which also could have been used for homework, I didn’t want one for two reasons: even a small, light one would be a pain to haul around on buses every day, and I couldn’t afford one anyway. I decided to upgrade my phone instead, and got a Nokia E71. It can use 3G and WiFi networks (among others), which is perfect since I’ll have free WiFi coverage at the university and at home. I got a barebone subscription with unlimited internet for 22 euros a month — that’s quite cheap for France, which has the most expensive 3G subscriptions in the world. You might be wondering why I’m happy to have free WiFi since I get unlimited 3G coverage… while it is unlimited, the connection is downgraded (slower) once you’ve used more than 500Mb of traffic in a month. That’s a healthy amount of traffic for a smartphone, but I’ll still be happy to use the free WiFi spots when I can, since they may well be faster.

Second, I wanted a dedicated study area. Growing older has further ingrained the importance of separating relaxation from work/school, so, if possible, I didn’t want to use my nice PC for studying. I’ve kept the laptop I got six years ago, and recently resurrected it with another stick of RAM and an installation of Xubuntu. With that, it runs nearly as fast as my more modern PC, and does everything I need it to do: word processing, email, and web browsing. The only thing missing was a permanent network connection for it — I’d been borrowing my PC’s Ethernet cable until now. I finally ordered a WiFi card for my Freebox, and soon will have my own home WiFi network. But I also wanted a desk to put my laptop on!

Above you can see the result of my repurposing. The desk itself isn’t very pretty, but it was free, as was the chair. I found the trestles and chair on the street, and the tabletop was hanging around in a cupboard when I moved into my apartment a couple of years ago. I’m happy with how everything turned out: I’ll be able to sync my calendar and email on the phone, laptop, and PC, back up documents over the home network I’ll set up, and take notes by hand (I prefer it) on my sunny little desk by the patio window. Bonus: when not in use, the laptop doubles as a bed for Kanoko.

After a mild setback with the original color I’d chosen, which turned out to be several shades darker than its sample showed, I bought more expensive paint for my living room. It turned out perfectly! I’d wanted a cloud-like lavender for the main walls, which are coming along nicely. This is only half of the long wall; I still need to wash and paint the other half. It’s taken forever due to our weather this summer — we’ve had 80-90% humidity and temperatures hovering between 86-100°F (30-38°C), even at night. It’s only cooled off since last weekend, which is when I was finally able to get back to working on my place.

I also returned to something else I’d left many years ago — cheese! I’m one of the many people who have a lactose intolerance, but decided to try “cooked” cheeses, which are usually aged and so have much less lactose than soft cheeses. After starting on Comté, which I’ve always enjoyed, and Emmental, both made from organic raw (unpasteurized) milk last week, I was happy to notice that I actually felt better. Probably in large part because I was so happy to be eating cheese again; in any case, I didn’t notice any ill effects. This week I decided to try another of my favorites, tomme de Savoie. I went to a local market seller called Lou Froumaï, which is Niçois for “Cheese”, quite simply. Along with a tasty-looking tomme de Savoie, they also had an aged Comté with beautiful colors that I decided to try. Aged for 24 months rather than the usual 4-18, it has an exquisitely complex taste. A single, small bite is enough for several minutes of strong, fruity, tart joy. (If you like Comté, of course — one thing you quickly learn in France is that everyone has their particular preferences and dislikes with regard to cheese!) I’d bought an organic red Côtes du Rhône Villages to go with it, which was perfect… I may never be able to pass up the experience again.

If all that sounds expensive: the 24-month-old Comté was sold for 24 euros/kg, and I bought 200g, or about 5 euros’ worth, which is enough to last me a week. I only cut centimeter-thick slices — it’s such a deliciously complex cheese that a few bites are enough. The tomme de Savoie was 22 euros/kg, I bought 225g, again, about 5 euros’ worth. That also lasts me a week. The organic red Côtes du Rhône Villages cost 5.75€ for a bottle. Living in France is a real treat, literally and figuratively.

Two weeks ago, I removed the glass shower door in my bathroom. The surrounding floor and walls were starting to rot, and I knew the door blocked much of the airflow needed to dry out the rest of the shower properly, so I decided to just take it out myself and put in a shower curtain and rod. While taking out the door, I discovered that the previous owners hadn’t waterproofed any of the seams… which is mainly why things had been rotting. However, it did make it much easier to remove the door, since all I had to do was unscrew it from one wall and pull it out of the other (it hadn’t been bolted in on both sides). As a reminder, they hadn’t waterproofed the floor beneath the tile shower they installed either. Every time I discover something like this, I’m glad I bargained down the price on my place — I had been very hard-nosed about it since some of the electrical work they’d done was borderline dangerous, which I suspected meant the rest of their “improvements” might be similar. Score one for intuition.

Putting in a curtain really improved the airflow, along with letting in a good deal more light… and a certain water-loving Maine Coon mutt! The video above shows Kanoko playing with the falling water this morning. I could keep him out by shutting the bathroom door, but his never-ending delight brings a lot of joy into my day, and so some old hand towels have now become Kanoko’s shower towels, and he’s happy as pie with the arrangement. When we finish showering, he saunters out alongside me, purrs while being towelled, then contentedly preens while I get ready for the day.

I mentioned some surprise seeds all sprouting in the last post — my pumpkin patch is growing well. All four are still healthy, those two are the largest. And they’re still just young’uns!

I’ve been working on my living room for a year and a half, since finding tomettes beneath the cheap brownish-yellow tile that the previous owners had put down. Not long after I finished renovating the floor, my upstairs neighbor’s pipes burst and flooded my couch nook in July last year. Ever since then, I’ve been working around the damaged nook, painstakingly scraping off the textured paint, something I had wanted to do anyway.

Yesterday I finally finished painting the nook, and was able to move in furniture today, shown above. I chose this blue because it has some depth to it, and it goes well with the burgundy tomettes floor and red touches. I also wanted it to be darker than the rest of the living room, in order to bring it closer visually. For comparison, the nook two years ago, when I bought the apartment. As you can see, the blue also helps the lighting immensely: before, everything had a yellowish tinge to it, but now the area has “truer” colors. Eventually, once I scrape the textured paint off the rest of the living room walls (ugh!), I’ll paint them in a nearly neutral lavender (it’s closer to grey than to purple/pink).

I’m delighted with my art deco chairs and this color scheme. I had considered reupholstering the chairs, but their deep brown goes beautifully with everything. As they say in France, le hasard fait bien les choses ! (“Chance does things well!”)

About four and a half years ago, I built a PC to take over from my aging laptop. That PC served me faithfully until December 2009, when I got myself a 24″ monitor for Christmas and upgraded Ubuntu to 9.10 (Karmic Koala). My four-year-old graphics card, with just 128 megabytes of memory, could barely handle my monitor, meaning I couldn’t watch DVDs full size. Furthermore, two weeks ago, while playing a complex Flash game, Ubuntu… crashed. Yes. The almighty Linux operating system crashed, for the first time in the three years I’ve been running it.

It was time to upgrade core hardware (motherboard, processor, graphics card). It was a bit disorienting to see how far things had come since building my PC in 2005! After getting up to speed on modern developments, I opted for a smaller-format motherboard (Micro ATX), a decent dual-core AMD processor, and a cheap but fast graphics card. I reused my old PC case, hard drives, CD/DVD drive, multi-card reader (mainly for SD cards), and no-name 7.1 surround sound card that I got for 15 euros a year ago and that works great. I don’t demand much of my system, so I always focus on the best quality I can find in the lower price ranges, making sure everything is compatible. Spending the time to research components really pays off in the end. I did also spend a bit of money to replace the old power supply that came with my computer case, since I wanted something more ecological. The components arrived today:
- ASRock N68-S micro ATX motherboard (this has great reviews)
- AMD Athlon II X2 245 (2.9Ghz) dual-core processor
- Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS graphics card (512Mb of memory)
- 1Gb DDR2 RAM
- Antec EarthWatts 380W Green power supply, rated 80Plus Bronze

My PC innards looked like this before, and now look like this. Time from start to finish: two hours. Zero problems, and excellent performance. I didn’t even have to reinstall my operating system! I just turned off the computer, unplugged it, changed around the innards, plugged it back in, turned it on, and it worked. Vive Ubuntu! I did need to remove some tweaks to Ubuntu for my old graphics card, but that was it. DVDs play smoothly at full resolution now, and I’m delighted with how fast Gimp opens and edits my photos. My old setup (AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.6Ghz processor, 128Mb graphics card, and 1Gb of RAM) had a rough time with Gimp, taking nearly a minute to open; the new setup opens Gimp in less than three seconds. I’m happy!

This will come as a bit of a surprise to readers, since I never mentioned it before, wanting to keep quiet until I knew for certain. This morning I had an interview for obtaining French citizenship at the préfecture in Nice. It went very well, and the préfet’s representative told me that there was no valid reason to refuse my application. In legal French, and in the context of the naturalisation for which I’d applied, this means it will be accepted by the Ministry in charge of naturalisations. That will take about a year, as the representative also told me.

Of his own accord, he also pointed out that the process had gone surprisingly fast. Indeed, I had applied around the start of November last year, and received notice of my interview at the end of January. The préfet’s representative explained that it was because the police investigation had gone quickly. “I can’t remember the last time I got a police report so soon after requesting one,” he laughed, then he asked me, “did the police ever contact you or visit you?” I answered “no, but I’m often in contact with them, ha! I have a dangerous neighbor, so I call them a lot.” Continuing with the joke, the man pulled out the police report and chuckled, “well, they say they have no idea who you are!” In French legalese, “ne pas être connu”, “to not be known” by the police means that you have no criminal record. The man interviewing me even added another layer of word play when he saw that I’d understood the joke, saying “et bien, on peut rajouter que le français ne vous est pas étranger !” In English, “well, I can add that French isn’t foreign to you!” It was nice to have met with someone easy-going.

That said, I’ve almost always dealt with easy-going public employees in France. At the tax office, train station (SNCF), post office (which is where I’ve met the grumpy ones), prefecture, city police, national police — they’ve nearly all been helpful and even funny. I’ll never forget the towering gendarme (national policeman) in my living room who, after he’d recognized my violent neighbor was indeed a danger to others, and after I’d showed photos of excrement she kept putting on my patio, said in his booming, authoritative voice, totally deadpan, “En effet. Mademoiselle, on peut dire que vous êtes dans la merde.” “Indeed. Miss, it could be said that you’re in a shitty situation.”

In addition to having a new home country, my home apartment became much more welcoming this weekend, with the addition of a sofa and two matching chairs, shown in this entry’s photo. On Saturday, I went to my favorite brocante, secondhand shop, to look for a small end table. In the window was a gorgeous forest green leather Chesterfield, but well out of my budget range. Further inside, I noticed a sofa and chairs set with oddly-styled arms; curved wood over an upholstered arm, but the wood “floated” over the upholstery. I love clean, curved lines on furniture. Furthermore, it looked like the pieces were narrow enough to fit through my living room door frame, which is just 75cm/30 inches wide. I checked their price, expecting something in the 300-500 euro range. 50 euros — fifty! “Oh dear, something must be terribly wrong with them,” I thought, and so I looked around the rest of the store. Finding no end tables I liked, I returned to the living room set. “At that price, I might as well try them out and check them over,” I told myself. They were in perfect condition, and incredibly comfortable, with firm springs. They were in such good condition, in fact, that I had no idea what period they could possibly be from, since they obviously weren’t contemporary, but not antique, either. I measured their depth: 70 centimeters (27″). Perfect. I bought them. Delivery cost as much as they did, and in another stroke of luck, I’d bought them ten minutes before the delivery van arrived for its afternoon round — they kindly delivered them the very same day!

Once home, I photographed the sofa and the two chairs, and submitted a question to one of my favorite sites, ApartmentTherapy. “What style are these chairs and sofa? Commenters all agreed: 1940s French Art Deco! My apartment building is Art Deco too, and was built in 1953. My living area truly is d’époque, period, and I didn’t even do it on purpose! I am very glad to finally have a couch after two years without, and the kitties are happy too.

After the preparation mentioned in my previous post, today I was finally able to tackle painting my entry. Above is the nearly-finished product!

There is still more to do. The entry was done oddly by the previous owners, leaving a strange section to fill in above the WC door. I also need to get better-quality paint brushes in order to finish smaller areas where a roller won’t work. The cheap brushes I had worked all right for the primer, but left enough marks that I’d rather wait to buy nicer ones before putting on the finishing blue coat.

I’m very happy with how the main wall looks now. To think, it used to look like this: entry in May 2009, before I’d started removing tile and the textured paint. The main wall looked like this with the textured paint off.

My apartment has been giving me all sorts of opportunities to work on it lately. After the latest water damage (upstairs neighbor’s bathroom leaking into my living room), I discovered that the textured paint in my apartment could be removed by using a wallpaper glue dissolver. I started removing paint in my entry, since its walls have the least surface area of the rooms in my place. The paint removal went quickly and easily, but I discovered that a floorboard was hiding a shallow but long hole in the wall.

This had several implications: I’d also been removing tile in the entry. With the floorboard out and the wall needing repaired, I realized it would be best to finish taking tile off the floor before patching and painting the wall, in case I ran into any other areas that needed patched. I finally finished that difficult undertaking today, as shown in the photo above! Here it is “finished” (all tile removed). I’m glad to say that only the one floorboard area needs fixed, so I should be able to do that and repaint soon.

As for the entry flooring, I may try to remove the old, grey linoleum and restore the original floor beneath it. Easier, though, would be to find some nice-looking carpet tiles. My main criteria for replacement flooring are removability — no more adhesive! — and ease of trimming to my entry’s odd shapes. A floating parquet could do the job too, but would be harder to trim with the limited tools I have. Carpet tiles would be great since they would do double duty as an entry rug, and would be easily replaceable if/when they get too dirty. After all, my feet aren’t the only ones running around on it — my cats love to sleep in the entry, since the building’s heating pipes run under it before reaching my radiators and going to the rest of the building.

Then there’s still the living room! I started removing paint in the damaged nook first, since I’d like to paint it a darker, complementary color to the one I’ll be using for my living room. That way I can finish it first, then move furniture into it to make repainting the ceiling easier. Then I get to tackle painting the ceiling, removing paint from the rest of the walls in my place, then repainting those! And I still have to finish removing tile from the kitchen area. It’s nice to be making progress in the entry though, since it feels better to come home to a tidy entry.