Hot yesterday but blazing today 6-5-15

Almost since we arrived it has been cool and breezy here with intermittent periods of warm sunny days.   Yesterday it was hot and today it's blazing, around 92 degrees, so we've curtailed our outdoor time to some food shopping around noon and a return to our cheese vendor to pick up our purchases from this morning.  We bought them but couldn't go back to the apartment immediately so they said they would hold our purchases for an hour.   When we went back 45 minutes later they were closed for the afternoon siesta time and not opened again until 4:00.   We must have misunderstood but c'est la vie it's Paris.   So I'm out again in the heat to pick up our cheese, and maybe a cold beer?, then back again to loll in the shady apartment.   We'll fight again another day.


Deb's comments: Whoa - summer arrived with a vengeance today, but will revert to spring-like temperatures tomorrow. Meanwhile, we're keeping a low profile and letting the breezes blow through the apartment. We lowered the volets (roll down screens that allow ventilation but keep out heat and light, and probably 8th floor burglars) on the south side and that kept things markedly cooler. I wish I could get similar volets for security on the Guffey cabin, but they're prohibitively expensive in the US. Of course, maybe they are here, too.
***We needed to shop as the cupboard was nearly bare. We've been trying dedicatedly to do a better job of eating what we've bought and not letting things go bad. But that also means when we're out, we're really out. So today it was fruit, veg, meat, fish, cheese, olives, honey, jam, wine and, as always, bread.  It's apricot, cherry, fig, strawberry season at the moment. The trusty little red shopping caddy was groaning on the way home.
***Our cheese monger had introduced us to a whipped cream-like thing called Fontainebleau. It's not sweet and is a favorite served with smoked salmon or similar savories for a sort of mousse-y presentation. Anyway, we got hooked and asked for some today, having bought the salmon specially. Alas, none to be had, as they hadn't made it yet for the day. But, heavens to Betsy, they leapt into action and mixed up a batch and processed it in a little machine that I dubbed the Cheese Expresso Machine, much to their amusement. However, they then asked if we had further shopping to do, and offered to keep our purchases as the Fountainebleau was "fragile" and didn't like heat. That's where we got messed up on what the time frame was. All worked out well, but poor Warren had to go back out in the heat a second time to retrieve our bag of cheese. We just make ongoing mistakes in understanding what we're told. One word makes such a difference! (Something Lee Patton and Susan Noll have been trying to drum into my hard head for ages on my John Thompson writings...)
***Actually the whole conversation had gotten off with my misunderstanding. I thought they were asking about our recent trips to the chateau of Fontainebleau, and then realized that they were asking how we'd liked the cheese Fontainebleau that they'd recommended. They were also wanting to know if our visitors (Terry and Gina and Scott and Jennifer Jefferson) had like the cheeses that they had recommended. Fortunately, it was easy to give a happy report on the dinner.
***We're still adapting to the long days of sunshine here in the north (Terry tells us that Paris is roughly the same as Vancouver). But it's ~8 PM here now and feels like it should be about 4 PM. The aforementioned volets are a big help in getting our bedroom dark enough to get to sleep at a vaguely reasonable hour. I keep struggling to get dinner done before 9.
***We were happy to see the little "Scourge of the Courtyard" back out again today. He's a Jack Russell terrier we've dubbed "Sparky" who lives in a ground floor apartment and is giving the run of the courtyard (probably illegally.) He's a doughty little soul whose person uses an atl-atl to throw his toy far out into the courtyard. Sparky motors after it like a crazed road-runner cartoon. He also attempts, with frenzied barks, to intimidate several cats who also live on the ground floor and populate the courtyard with an act markedly more graceful than his. They ignore him loftily and one, whom we think lives with Sparky, actually attacks him when he gets too irritating. We, who miss our cat-person dreadfully, enjoy seeing the animal neighbors.
***And lastly, speaking of animal neighbors, the cat-food stealing crow was back this morning. He glides over to a higher neighbor's patio and carefully chooses among the boxes on a storage shelf there. He then throws in down on the terrace floor and dines at leisure on the dry cat food. We've seen crows all over town, ripping open the suspended trash bags that mark most street corners. Crows are not the most popular of birds in Paris, or France. But we love them for their impudence and insouciance, not to mention, wit.