36 - Stay Frosty - Dax
Monday, 8 January 2024
Pretty good day at work. No meetings so I made good progress on the things I wanted to: thinking through a procedure for how to start up some of the equipment (I only have at most 18 hours of feed material for a test requiring 12 hours, so there's not a whole lot of wiggle room on getting to the right conditions), touching base with a few people back at the Newark office, and then putting out feelers for people to show me around a couple other nearby sites.
I mixed things up this evening: after work, I actually went out and did something! 😆 I went for a swim at the St Paul Les Dax pool, which is a pretty nice facility aside from being a little too shallow for my liking. The pool is located next to a large pond/lake and also the Best Western hotel that I'd stayed in my previous visits in 2017 & 2018 (I recall the room's being humid). Maybe a walk around the lake is called for on a weekend.
Honestly, it was refreshing to get back in the water and do some laps. I'm still not quite sure if it was a 25 yard or meter pool, it would make sense for it to be meters but the laps felt shorter than they should have been 🤔 The pool schedule lists adult Water Polo classes but the girl at the desk said they're really only doing classes for kids now; too bad, guess I won't get a black eye in France 🤷♂️. There also appeared to be several kids doing a workout with a coach but surprisingly they were confined to a single lane while two women chatted for 30 minutes in the next lane 🤦. I was tempted to ask if I could use their lane but I'd already carved out a domain for myself along the wall in the area without lane lines (in the way a shark patrolling a reef carves out a domain).
The pool was just emptied and refilled yesterday so the water was pristine. The pool is rectangular but the building is dome-like and I think it might be able to open up in the summer. The locker rooms had neat lockers that could be programmed with a personal pin to store your things. It was the first pool I've visited where swim caps were required; fortunately, the lady at the desk loaned me one from the lost and found... Oh, and there was a little trough constantly flushed with pool water that you're supposed to walk through on the way in and out of the locker room; I suppose it helps keep the floor cleaner.
After my swim, I made my way to the centreville of Dax for dinner, where I dined at Le Grand Cafe de Bordeaux. I had a small glass of floc de Gascogne as my aperitif and was quite pleased with my food; the salad had a surprising amount of duck for a dish I didn't realize was a salad 🤣. Other noteworthy thing about dinner was the music: it was a playlist of Norah Jones-like / Bossa Nova covers. I particularly liked the Bossa Nova duet of "Are We Human or Are We Dancer?"
Tuesday, 9 January 2024
It's a good thing I figured out the trick to get my heaters working last night: there was a nice coating of frosty ice all over my car in the morning. I don't think my apartment is particularly well insulated (lots of drafts around the windows and doors) so I might not have left my bed if not for the heater in the bedroom. I suppose I shouldn't complain about the cold, it was only -3C (27F) today with no wind and I know for certain that New Jersey's probably had much colder weather than this by now.
It was a quiet day at work; at one point the site manager mentioned that some higher ups would be visiting next week (not the CEO but no more than two rungs below him) and asked if I'd be interested in joining them for lunch next Monday. The question reminded me of a couple exchanges I'd had over the New Year's holiday mostly around asking me if I'd like to have the last piece of X on the platter. My response back then was trying to be in the vein of "well, if no one wants it" when I said "si je dois" which translates literally to "if I must". Apparently this is a very English sort of reply, the better way to phrase it would be "s'il faut", but such a response would be spoken by someone who was just asked to cover the midnight shift rather than eating the last slice of cheese (I'm told a truly French answer in the fromage eating context would be "oui" or "non" haha). So with this lesson in mind:
"John, would you like to join us for lunch next Monday?"
"S'il faut."
It actually got a pretty good chuckle out of my desk partner: "if I have to, then it would be a real pleasure!" 🤣
I took lunch at Carrine's: salad with gesiers confit (super tender gizzards) and a paleron braisé (braised chuck). Delightfully wonderful food. And Carrine corrected my pronunciation of "meilleures vœux" (best wishes), though I think I've already forgotten what the correct pronunciation was 🤔
I stuck around the office late to attend my group's monthly meeting online, no sandwich lunch for me but it was still good to check in on what people back in Newark have been doing.
When I came home, I remembered that when I'd spoken with the hotel manager yesterday he had mentioned he had somebody he wanted me to meet: he had said it was a guest who knew my company very well. So I popped into the acceueilli and found that the manager was chatting with a few other residents, one of whom I'd met at the last one of these shindigs. He offered me a drink and I got to try fig stuffed with foie gras 😋. Unfortunately, the guy he'd wanted to introduce to me wasn't here today but would be returning later this week. Oh well, I suppose a couple glasses of wine and some snacks are a good consolation prize.
As I was in no condition to drive and didn't feel like eating at the restaurants within walking distance, I made crepes for dinner again (a good way to use up the milk in the fridge). Of course, I didn't really have anything to put in the crepes aside from confiture, but a little comté by itself and a warm crepe made for a decent improvised meal!
Wednesday, 10 January 2024
Not too much to write about today; it was a good day of work put in finishing with a meeting that I'm not sure I fully understood why we were having it; I think there's a difference in the systems my team in Newark uses vs what the team in Europe uses for evaluating certain aspects of the project. To me, it felt like we were going around in a circle around a horse I thought was pretty well beat to a pulp; oh well.
I swung by a grocery store on the way home, L'atelier boucherie and a bakery called Lucas. With my groceries, I stayed in for the evening cooking a dinner of pork chops, a carrot/beet salad, and a portion of a baguette. I don't think I've mentioned it before, but the grocery stores I've seen (and even les halles) include loud wax paper bags at the produce section instead of the plastic bags we use in the states. This place also included a weighing station where one could then print a label/barcode of the produce, weight, and price to seal the bag closed; naturally, I didn't put 2+2 together about this machine till I was next in line for the cashier😅
While I was relaxing, I figured I'd give another shot at trying to watch a cult-classic French film I hadn't had any luck finding previously: Les Bronzés Font Du Ski. Unfortunately, I was completely skunked again: somehow the fact that my accounts are in the US means that I need to rent the movie in the US; when I use a VPN to jump back across the Atlantic, I learn that the movie isn't available in the US. 🤦♂️ I even checked out a couple of the options listed online I wasn't familiar with like Canal or Orange but turns out those require a subscription before you have the privilege of renting the movie. Almost makes me want to just find a DVD of the thing, but my company laptop doesn't have a CD drive nor even allows me to use USB storage devices... It almost makes one consider a life of swashbuckling, spirits, and scrimshaw...
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