Atherton Family Notes

[Editor's Note: To understand this post, you need to understand that prior to this incident, we had our phone service cut off for two weeks. The bill for the service was being sent directly to Thomson, and they were delaying payment, just due to normal business processes. France Telecom didn't see it this way and shut off the service when they didn't get their money.]

I was able to get on the internet in the morning and do my daily rounds on the internet. When I had finished, I went on with my other daily tasks of getting myself and the kids dressed.

Around 12:30 I tried to log on and I could not get the internet. I waited thinking something was wrong and figured Ken would be home for lunch, so he could fix it. When he did not show, I thought I would call him but… the phone line was DEAD!!!! AGAIN!!!! I was SO TICKED OFF! I hated France and was ready to call it quits, pack up and go home. I was not about to wait another 2 weeks to get it turned back on and what’s more… could not figure out why it was turned off since we are now paying the bill. I unplugged the phone lines and put them back in. I tried everything I could think of. I spent the rest of the day and most of the evening trying to entertain myself without the computer and internet.
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When Ken came home I asked how many times we were going to get our phone cut off. The shear shock in his face said it all.

We asked our neighbors for help calling the phone service and they thought to try calling our number first. It rang busy. What the (bleep)!!!! So we unplugged the lines again and nothing!

Finally, I put ONE stupid cordless phone back on the charger and low and behold….. dial tone. Apparently, if the cordless phones are off their chargers for long periods of time, they cut off the phone lines.

OOOOPPPPSSS!!! Yeah, I admit.. … we’re stupid!

I had flash backs to our dryer in Germany. I had called on the neighbors to help me figure out why all of a sudden my dryer would not stay on for more than 5 minutes before shutting off. It did not take him but 2 seconds to figure out the problem. Seems that it iscommon knowledge that there are 2 lint traps on every dyer, one obvious and one hidden. As I did not have the book of “common knowledge rules”, I had never cleaned that hidden trap. Pulling the 5 inch pile of lint out fixed the problem.

Both in Germany and here yesterday, I am thankful my embarrassment and stupidity is limited to our neighbors and not the butt of office jokes atthe technical help centers. At this moment, I would pay any price to have a book ofcommon knowledge rules for every country. Who knows, maybe I have found an idea to make my millions!

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From the “They-Name-Things-For-My-Amusement” Department:

I saw this beer in a grocery ad , and I just had to try it:

For those of you not immediately amused by this carton, note that in French, the letter combination ”ch” is always pronounced like the English combination “sh” .

And if that isn’t funny enough, most of my French colleagues agree that the second syllable is accented . So in fact, this is sh’TEE beer. How could I not try it?

It’s even more funny for me, as I heard the human resources manager use the exect same word, including the accent, to describe the contract Thomson has with the unions in Rennes. That’s right, Thomson has a sh’TEE union contract. It seems that non-native English speaking Europeans have a special affection for this word.

As for the beer, it doesn’t taste nearly so bad as its name would suggest.  :)

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