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Kaye has returned from the memorial service for her brother in San Franciso. We hadn't given much consideration to getting to distant places from our country abode. It turns out to be move involved than we expected. We knew there is a train from Angoulême to Charles de Gaulle, but the earliest is 6.37, so if your plane leaves before noon, you have need to go the night before and spend the night at an airport hotel.

The weather has been quite cold, and there's been a bit of snow! Here's the house on the morning after it fell (you can see Ed's footprints down the fenceline on the left):

The birds have been emptying the feeder in just a few hours:

For most of the time Kaye was away, the daytime highs were right around 0C, with seriously cold nights. The temperatures are a bit warmer now, but there is still some snow around. When Ed returned from taking Kaye to the train station, he had trouble getting up the hill to Mazerolles, and then slip-slided down the hill to Condadeuil. After that, he, along with the postman and the garbageman, decided to stay home until the weather improved.

Dubbed movies are the norm here so we took advantage of an opportunity to see our first movie, Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, shown VO - version originale, with French subtitles rather than dubbed in French. There were no commericials or pause as there are in Dutch films. On the way home from this, a barn owl flew along side the road, landed on a fencepost, and was unperturbed when we stopped to watch it in our headlights!

Lydia is not doing well. She stopped eating, so Ed has been feeding her raw turkey, which she shouldn't have with her failing kidneys, but is the only thing she eats. After she nibbles her medicated food, he squirts the rest, mixed with a vitamin supplement, into her mouth. She seems to like this and be getting a bit stronger, but we know the time for letting her go is near.