Ok, we went to Paris. We had a great time and I took a lot of pictures.
I will post them. But when we came back we had problems. We came home from work on a Friday night, I opened the mailbox and there was a slip in there. It was a from the electric company and it was marked up like a lazy student’s test paper. I had a feeling it was not a good sign. The power was out. This is what happened. Our real estate agent did her job and faxed a contract to EDF (Électricité de France.) They lost the fax, apparently. We have been living off the previous tenant’s electricity. They found this out and cut our power. This pissess EDF off because they realize they just got screwed out of 3 months of power money. Ok , this is Friday. We call a colleague for help and he jumps in to help us. EDF says Wednesday of the next week. We had many people call to fix this but Wednesday was carved in stone and Wednesday it would be. We lasted 5 days with no power.
The EDF guy showed up today (Wednesday). . ..he walked over to the little white box on the curb outside my street and inserted his key and opened the door and threw a switch. Wa-la we had power. Five days we took cold showers and sat around candles at night. We were being punished for their fault.
Good things that happened: Everybody at work tried to help us. They felt bad for us and generally had bad things to say about EDF. . ..it’s a monopoly.
A guy at work took all our freezer food and put it in his freezer.
The same guy insisted we come over for dinner and we did and had great time with him and his wife and two kids.
We got three months of free french electricity.
I made my my first French joke .. . EDF stands for Electricity Doesn’t Freakinwork.
It got a few laughs at work. La vie a belle (life is good.)
