Some seriously mundane shite out of Mundania in the south west of France.

Wednesday we headed up to Perigueux to go to Leroy Merlin (I dare you not to say that like they would on the Dukes of Hazard, y’all) Leeeroy Mehrlin.

We needed tile, some misc hardware, needed to return a vent hood, and apparently a Subway Fix.

I am admittedly several things:

• Not really a fan of fast food.
• Not a big Subway fan either.
• A flexitarian. I eat mostly pescaritarian, though can happily go weeks as a vegetarian.

But there it is… Subway.

I had a the Xtreme Raclette Steakhouse.

Useful information; Some cheeses are more seasonal than others. I like feta in the summer, but the king of seasonal cheese is raclette. I opted for the normal amount of raclette on my Xtreme sandwich.

Mind you the raclette, when melted, mixed with the dressing on the sandwich had turned into a runny cheese slurry. Not the promised gooey, meltie raclette of the picture, but raclette transcends form…it is a state of mind. I had raclette, despite its transformation to a liquid state.

All told, it was pretty good though.

This is not my normal French experience… not that I fully grok what a normal French experience for me is.

This does reaffirm that I am actually living in a bizarro alternate universe. Everything is slightly off from what I was accustomed to in ‘murica.

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The drive up was lovely. we got an early start, took streets and highways, not the autoroute. It took us through approximately 60 minutes more roadway than promised, somehow, but we got to drive through a number of very picturesque villages and hamlets, and enjoy a crisp morning.

That is Google maps for you.

We returned a vent hood for the kitchen. The product was advertised as wall mount…guess what.

We went inside, found the tile, found a fireplace poker and some longer screws for the outlets that go over the tile and voila, one and done, and subway time.

The fine selection of robinet de cuisine at Leeroy Merlin’s.

We had other errands so we beat it out of there. We had to deliver a sandwich to my daughter in Bergerac, and we had to pick up a tree stump.

I warned you this was mundania…

I bought a log splitter to break medium logs into kindling. We received 6 cubic meters of firewood the other day, I stacked it neatly, tarped it, but found that there were really weren’t that many small pieces… thus the splitter thingie.

The cheap chinese ones were about 40€, we bought one that is French, has a nice tool steel blade and looks like it will last a number of decades.

Chinese Log Splitter

But at 30cm tall, I needed a stump to mount it on.

I was not in possession of a stump. My wife put out a call on one of the Facebook groups and within 20 minutes someone responded with a free stump. They even hauled it to the end ond of their driveway so we could do a drive by and scope it out.

We saw the stump, fell in love with it immediately, pulled up in the driveway and told the stump-owners that we would like to adopt it. We chatted with them for a few. Learned some stuff:

• They are northerners (England)
• They are selling, he wants to stay, she wants to go back after 7 years down here.
• They have seen sanglier(boar) the size of a small (normal French) car on their property.
• They have 300 meters of inaccessible riverfront property.
  

I love how you can put out a call for something and people will help. We have borrowed a wallpaper hanging table from a complete stranger the same way…

It’s just so nice.

That’s it, drove home, my wife baked with her new oven, I 3D printed some stuff.

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The kitchen is nearing completion…
Something leaks under the sink… but they gave a sink cabinet that is 10 cm too tall (10 cm is big chocolate chip cookie in freedom units) and owe us the correct one.

The granite tops are in.

The tile is purchased.

The new vent hood is somewhere. We ordered it. Online it shows it was delivered and on alternating days the shipping company doesn’t know where it is, or it is in their warehouse. It is Schrodinger’s vent hood. It has and has not been delivered like the original purchase was and was not wall mounted.

But the needle is moving forward.