pasta

I made fresh pasta today. It's probably the third time that I've made it. The first time was kind of a bust... the second was pretty good and now I think I'm getting a hang of it. Plus the recipe couldn't be easier, for ever 100g of flour you'll need 1 egg. So easy to multiply! I used 100g of wheat flour and 100g of spelt flour, then of course 2 eggs.

I'd love to try and start adding different flavors to it, spinach etc. Maybe try different shapes etc too. I made the pasta for dinner tonight with sauteed eggplant and garlic shrimp. YUM.

14 juillet

Last night Mystery Guest and I drove down to check out the fireworks display in the nearest town (4km away). We got there as the sun was still going down, and it wasn't really dark until 11:30 or so. It was still warm out and they had a buvette, DJ and all the families were out and about with the kids playing on the grass and swingsets at the foot of the castle. It was nice and summery, better than some 4th of Julys I remember where we were huddled up under blankets for the tail end of the Pacific Northwest's "June gloom"... !

We ran into our neighbors and sat up on the rockwall with them to get ready for the fireworks. They were supposed to start around 11 but ended up starting around 11:30. The medieval castle is just the most amazing backdrop to the firework display!Here are a couple shots, I had fun testing out my tripod (a Christmas gift) and getting used to the manual setting on my camera. For a first attempt I thought they turned out pretty good :-)

Frenchified

Today I dropped off my file to ask to be naturalized a French citizen. I asked for several different reasons, many of them private but mostly because I really feel that France has become my home, its where I became a grown up.

The procedure itself has changed since July 1st. This basically gives the local government much more power over the decision rather than just processing the file. Now the local government gives a yes or no answer, passes along the file to the national government who validates it.

The main reason for this change is that in the past it used to take 12-18 months to hear back. Now because everything is done when you first drop off the file it is supposed to speed up the process and not have the national government re-do all the work that the local government had already done. They said it should cut things down to 8-9 months! If it's under a year I'll consider that progress!

So its all out of my hands now, the guy was really positive sounding and said that there shouldn't be any reason why things don't work out. The only thing I can think of is that I only have a CDD (temp contract) and not a "real" job with a CDI contract but we totalled up all my jobs and in the 6.5 years that I've been here I've worked a total of 5.5 years. Basically all those summers I was between jobs added up to around 1 year but that's not bad.

And now the wait begins... fingers crossed!

Happy cows

Driving to work I saw 3 cows with their backs to me side by side with their tails swinging back and forth in rhythm.. Totally made my day!

Sent from my iPhone