p brother visit

p’s brother and family came to visit for a few days. i was working every day, and would see them at night. one night we took them to christian constant’s cafe, one of my favorites.   (have to admit here that i am writing many entries much later, so i actually don’t remember what we did...)

biking to work

i LOVE riding a bike to work. it’s really close by and there are big wide sidewalks, so i just ride on them to work. it only takes 3 minutes to bike to work and i get to look at the eiffel tower the whole way. plus the weather’s been relatively nice. also, i use the public bike system “velib” so i pick up the bike close to home and drop it next to work. while i am riding am just smiling and appreciating every moment.

the studio

this studio has been around for a long time, but has recently become quite successful. they have figured out a way of making animated films much cheaper. a combination of having a good team and certain economical production practices. the higher ups – producers and directors and finance people – are american. the rest are french. you’d think that doing production in paris would be very expensive. certainly, living is very expensive. but for the film,

the models are simple and the shading (colors and textures) are simple. they concentrate on the story. typically in france, it’s not easy to fire someone. you have to go through protocol and it can take a couple of years, plus the company has to pay wages for about a year afterwards. . however now, there is a certain category of worker allowed by the french government called the “interim de spectacle” – sort of translated as “show biz short term worker”. created for people who work in theatre and such, who would work for short periods of time on a production and then move on. with this format, you can hire someone for a day and then you’re done with them. the person would have to work a certain number of hours a year to qualify for unemployment benefits when they are not working. so the studio hires people only for the days they need them. if something stops up the work, say a story crisis, you don’t have people sitting around waiting on payroll. the company pays slightly higher taxes for this type of worker, but can save tons of money. the first film they did was a huge success. they made a lot of money and had not spent a lot to make the film. they are just finishing their second film.

i’m lucky that the director is american. we can work in english. the rest of the office is french, so i get some practice. the only problem is that i’m really good focusing on my work and at tuning out french.

left home

jj has a 2 week vacation, but i just started working. p decided to go with her somewhere. he shopped around for cheapish tickets and they went off to valencia, spain. meanwhile, i invited my friend, andy, who is living in berlin, to come visit. i’ve known andy for almost 30 years now. we started out in computer graphics at around the same time in new york, though we never have worked together. he arrived saturday morning. we talked a lot, as we always do when we’re together. he was only here for a day and a half. i took him to the beaubourg cafe for an omelet, ran into some friends wandering by, and then he went to see the edvard munch show. i had already seen the show. it was ok. edvard munch is best known for the painting “the scream” which is a fun painting. i didn’t care too much for the rest of his work, or his style. interestingly, the more “realistic” self portrait that he did, he considered his best work. this indicated to me that maybe he just wasn’t very good. maybe his images came out the way they did in spite of him trying to paint realistically. anyway, while andy went to the exhibit, i went to the beaubourg library. what an amazing space! i want to send jj here to study – a way of getting out of the house, but still studying.

becca lunch

i took longer lunch break today to meet my friend, becca for lunch. becca is an american from LA whom i met in the dog park when we first arrived. she was here for a year and then had to go back in july. she had wanted to stay. when she left i was very appreciative of my good fortune to be able to stay for another year.

to beez or not to beez

one cultural difference i am very aware of, here in france, is the morning greeting. the “bisou” is the word for the french 2 cheek kiss. p said that, at his work, everybody stops by to greet every other person in the morning. fully half an hour is spent greeting the colleagues. the men come in and shake his hand to say good morning. he would be working and would feel a tap on his shoulder and it would be yet another colleague coming to say good morning. i said “ i guess it would be rude to tape a sign on your back saying ‘bonjour’ ”.

i work in a room with about 15 others. in the morning each person arrives and makes the rounds saying “bonjour” to each person. men shake each other’s hands. women get a bisou (pronounced “beezoo”) or “biz” for short (pronounced“beez”). women give bisou to each other. i’m ok with it, but it was weird on my first full day, because it was the first time i was meeting my colleagues. they just stopped by said “bonjour” and leaned in. but i’m an uptight american! especially after all those french languange lessons about how you must “vous” someone you meet for the first time until they tell you that it’s ok to “tu” them. somehow, meeting someone for the first time and kissing their cheeks seems too “familiar”. as i said, they say “bonjour” and begin leaning in to me, face turned slightly and lips puckered, and i hesitate and extend my hand. this throws them off and then there is an awkward pause and they pull back their face and take my hand. then, the next day, they are not sure what to expect. i lean forward to beez (trying to fit in) at the same time they are extending their hand and then they lean forward to beez. i further confuse things by not being consistent. “to beez or not to beez, that is the question”. finally, i figured it was easier to just beez than not to. (though, there is also the new yorker in me afraid of all the colds being passed around. )

working again is interesting. i am actually thrilled. i love the community and the structure. i sit at my desk and work intensely for 8 hours with a break for lunch. i am thrilled that i can still do it. though, i am afraid of time passing very quickly. i spent so many years working so hard and those years just passed by like the landscape you see from a train. we will probably only be in paris until july, and i am afraid if i’m working full time, the time in paris will suddenly disappear.

i love the new verbs that have been created out of american words that don’t exist in france. layout is the department that lays out the first scenes. it’s an american company that has brought the projects. the terms were created in american cartoon studios. so the verb in french is “layouter” and the person is a “layouteur”. the academie francaise is probably hard at work to come up with a true french term that would probably translate literally as “first step of design and rough camera movement”.

jj sleepover, new territory

jj went to her sleepover party. p and i went out. we met some french friends that we knew in san francisco. we just went to have a drink over in the montparnasse area – at the dome. great ambiance there, watching all the people go by on a saturday eve. we got a call at 8:30 from jj who said that they were invited to go to the champs elysees to meet some other friends. she needed our permission to go. the hosting mom said she needed a text from every mom saying it was ok, and “all the other moms have said it’s ok”. that line in itself should have made me say “no”. p said he thought it was fine, that there were lots of people walking around the champs elysee on a saturday night. so we said ok. i told her she should text us when she was back home. then at 9:30 we got a text saying that she was going now and would be back by midnight. “whoa, wait a second”. we thought she was going right up and would be back by 11 or so. we hadn’t asked. i was thrown off by the change of plans. i didn’t like the idea of her wandering around the street and then heading back, a pack of girls, so late. the sleepover was at the edge of town. we called her up. i said

“we thought you were going at the time that you called. now it is 9:30 by the time you get there it will be 10. we don’t want you wandering around the street so late at night. you can hang out for one hour, but then you get yourself back on the metro heading home by 11. you text us at 11 that you are on the train. if you’re not, i’m coming up there to get you”. the whole thing upset me. this will be a whole new year, with even more independence. it is relatively safe in paris, but it IS a big city. we will need to have a chat when she gets back. we need to set down some rules.

mom coffee

went to a coffee for the parents of the kids in the international bacclaureate program. great since i got to meet the mom of a girl who is hosting a sleepover this weekend. the new rule is that i must make contact with the parents at a party. jj thinks i’m overprotective and over- tiger mom. if i was a tiger mom, she wouldn’t be going to a sleepover at all. was happy to meet the mom. she’s american and a former new yorker. more than that, she’s on the same parenting page as me. after coffee, went to work

second start to work

so a week after we were supposed to start, i went in to work. there are 3 short films that we are working on, but today i was reassigned to a different short film than i had started on. i will be working with karine. there were 2 other layout artists that we started with. they weren’t there, so i asked if they were coming in later. was told that in fact, they wouldn’t be working and that they had been replaced by 2 other more experienced artists. brutal... tough world.

exciting though, to work again. the director is someone i worked with at pixar. the financial guy also worked there at the same time. the other director is someone who had worked with my old buddies in new york and friends of a doggy buddy here in paris, and the producer is a friend of a friend. the directors and producer are american. great, since for the important stuff, english is better. i was thrilled to be in front of a computer doing stuff. it was like getting back on a bicycle. no problem.

ready for work

got email telling me to come in thursday to start work.

on hold for work

got an email from my boss saying that the studio was still not ready for us to come in to work yet. they would let us know.

jj job

jj has a job on thursdays now, escorting a 7 year old girl on the metro to go to gymnastics. the little girl is the daughter of a mom i know through conversation group. the girl is really beautiful. she is blond with blue eyes and is russian. jj gets 5 euros. she’s very excited about it.

work; taxman

first real day of work. people were very friendly and welcoming. we’re supposed to have 3 days of training. we worked all day with some help from our trainer and then there was a crisis on the current feature film. new scenes needed to be “laid out” and our trainer was needed in production. so we were told that we would not work the rest of the week and to come back on monday. fine with me. breaking into the work schedule slowly.

tax man............went to visit an american tax accountant who handles both US and french taxes. i had gotten various extensions so they are due oct 15. of course, this is a bit late to just be visiting the guy now, but i’ve been trying to do it myself with turbotax. turbotax is very confusing and i need help. it amazes me how difficult it is to figure out US taxes. i really believe that any high school graduate should be able to figure it out, and i don’t think our tax situation is that out of the ordinary. this year was a more difficult because of living in a foreign country. anyway, the tax guy was around 65/70 years and very slow. our conversation went at a snail’s pace with us repeating our questions and he going off on the wrong paths. it cost 250E and we didn’t get very far except to know that we didn’t want to work with him.

champagne tasting 2

when i accepted this short term work, i told them i would not be able to work on oct 4, because of a “previous engagement”. it worked out fine, because there was no training scheduled for that day. there was a one hour “launch” meeting in the morning for the new short film i would be working on. that was fine. i went to that and then went home ( 3 mins away) to prepare for the “previous engagement”. it was a champagne tasting that i organized because tove, the expert was in town. i have written about tove before. i met her during a 3 week intensive french course many years ago. she came to live in paris and p and i brought her to the champagne region to try different champagnes. she proceeded in becoming an expert and writing a book in norwegian about champagne. i had organized a champagne tasting and potluck lunch through the school mom group, back in march when she came to visit. it had been wonderful. so when she said she was coming again, i leaped at the chance to set up another tasting, with different champagnes. it’s a great deal for me, since i get to taste 5 or 6 champagnes of my choice and it is financed by others. i have a list from tove of recommended small producers. this tasting was being hosted in our new apartment, so not as stunning as the location of the last tasting, but slightly easier to arrange. i ordered the champagne through 2 different mail order companies and it was delivered to the door within a week, with minimal delivery charges. tove called up her friend, celine, who is an actual champagne maker, and invited her to come along. i was so excited to have this special guest!

i am still a bit lost with the different flavors. i can tell what i like at first, but then after several tastes and back and forth, i get confused... there are “cheap” tastes and “expensive” tastes, but i still do not have enough understanding of why. i need to pay more attention to the specific grapes used in each champagne.

we had 12 guests, all parents from the school, who were all very interesting and it was great fun. tove talked us through the production process of champagne and details of each particular bottle (which she had researched). i am attaching tove’s notes on the champagnes we tasted, below. i thought they were all good! celine’s champagnes were also excellent and a big hit. she brought 3 bottles from her vineyard and that was too many to try to taste, so we saved one of her bottles for later. some of the parents loved her champagne the best. she said that if they came out to the vineyard they were 17 euros each bottle. one mom was so excited, she said, “i’m coming this weekend!”

afterwards, tove took celine to visit the rodin museum and then brought her back to the train. (you can get to the champagne region in 45 minutes!) then tove ended up in a wine shop just as the krug champagne salesman arrived and insisted she try some of his wines.

i had to go drop maynard with the family who will “borrow” him for a few days, and went to a college talk (colleges giving presentations to students at the school). afterwards, i picked up some sea bass to grill and veggies from our old vegetable man. then, stopped at the brasserie across from our old apartment to get some oysters. oysters go really well with champagne. the minimum was 18 to take-away, since they had to put it on a platter. it was more than i had wanted, since i had thought of just getting a taste of oysters, but with the 3 of us adults, we would be able to eat them all. they were beautifully opened and laid out on a bed of ice, then wrapped in clear cellophane gift wrap and a big bow. i made the 15 minute walk home carrying them and all the other groceries.

i put olive oil, salt, herbs de provence on the seabass and let it sit.

tove came back from her day, p came home from work.

we had some champagne left in 4 of the bottles of the tasting, plus a whole extra bottle from celine. p got to do his own little tasting from this. we had oysters with it, sitting at the big french window, looking out into the evening. i put the fish onto the electric double grill and then jj joined us for a delicious meal.

TOVE’s CHAMPAGE NOTES:

1. Guy Charlemagne: Reserve Brut, Blanc de blancs, Grand cru

Le Mesnil-sur-Oger

A pure blend of different wines from chardonnay (different areas, different years) Dosage : 9 g/litre. A good aperitif champagne or with oysters.

A small producer in the heart of the Côte de Blanc area. Makes 130 000 bottles a year.

2. Pierre Peters Champagne: Cuvée de Réserve, Blanc de blancs Brut

Le Mesnil-sur-Oger

Another grand cru champagne. Assemblage of more than 15 different years, composed exclusively of chardonnays coming from several “Grand Cru” villages (“Grand Cru de la Côte des Blancs”. Dosage: 6 à 7 g /litre.

3. Larmandier-Bernier: Tradition, Premier Cru, Extra Brut (4 g/litre)

Vertus (in the very south of the Cote de Blancs)

Un assemblage de Chardonnay de la Côte des Blancs (80%) et de Pinots Noirs de Vertus (15%) récoltés à la main en 2008. Les vins de réserve issus de plusieurs millésimes précédents représentent environ un tiers de cette cuvée.

Brut champagnes normally has between 6 and 12 g/litre

4. Erick de Sousa : Tradition Brut

Avize

50 % chardonnay, 40 % Pinot Noir, 10 % Pinot Meunier. Dosage : 7 g/litre. Degorgement : 14.10.2010 (he always says on the label). Erick de Sousa is mostly renowned for his blanc de blancs champagnes. Focuses on old vines, no chemicals.

5. Champagne Bereche et Fils: Brut Reserve Premier Cru

Ludes, Montagne de Reims

Dosage : 9 g/litre. Assemblage: base 2007: 25 % Chardonnay, 25 % Pinot Meunier, 20 % Pinot Noir vinifié en fûts (20%) et en cuves émaillés. Fermentation spontanée et lente.

30 % de vins de réserve provenant de 2 années antérieures.

Passage en cave : 24 mois. Dégorgé a la main le 17 Aout 2010. (Tres rare)

Champagne Jacques Rousseaux, 3 cuvées.

Verzenay, a grand cru village. A family house run by Celine Rousseaux and brother Eric.

6. Le Tradition

A blend of 80 % Pinot Noir and 20 % chardonnay.

7. La Cuvée de Réserve

70 % Pinot Noir and 30 % chardonnay. Made from selected wines that are made from the best part of the must (the juice that comes out when the grapes are pressed at harvest)

8. La Grande Réserve

A blanc de noirs = made only from pinot noir grapes. The champagne has matured on oak barrels for a few months.

first day of work

first day of work. very excited to start, and of course, a bit nervous. had training in rcs system (how to check work in and out). it was in english. was with 2 young danish animators, who are interns. they are just finished with school ( a relatively well known animation school) and this is their required internship. one is a guy and the other a danish/asian woman. we trained for 3 hours and then were told to go home. that was it for the day. i cooked pasta and homemade tomato sauce with basil and mozzarella. tove bought “lapin/noisette pate” (rabbit and hazelnut pate) and we had some nice wine. i also grilled zucchini on my new 2 sided electric grill. very good.

tove arrives

was lovely weather – like a summer morning – we got back from dieppe in the afternoon. tove (our norwegian journalist friend) arrived and i fed her chinese dumplings. we opened a bottle of wine and were sad to have no cheese!

i start work tomorrow. am excited but also ambivalent. hope i do well, hope i will be able to be around for jj if she needs me. i know she is 15 and old enough to take care of herself, but also know that a parent has to keep eyes open with teenagers. i am happy to “take a break from not working”, by working. most of my life i have worked and work defined me. i love having time to paint ( though it’s been hard to make myself paint enough) but i’d like to make some money too..

will see how it goes.

rouen

we're in rouen at moment. heading to dieppe for the weekend. stayed here last night and went for lovely morning walk with maynard while jj slept. lots of beamed houses and more than one gothic cathedral.

Rouen cathedral is famous not only for being very gothic, but also for being the cathedral that monet painted, several paintings at a time, with different lights of the day.  according to wikipedia, a church was present on the site as early as late 300’s. it was rebuilt many times because of various incidents, including being struck by lightning several times. what does it say about a church that it has been struck by lightning so many times? maybe just that it’s very tall and it’s in a location where there are many storms...

jj and p both have colds and i'm hoping not to get it for my first week of work.