Hello, Friends. How are you? How was your week? Our week was mostly filled with Visa-renewal tasks (so many tasks!!), including a visit to Caen where we stopped by the building above (it’s where Williams the Conquerer is buried).
Beyond visa-renewal tasks, my weeks have become progressively filled with more and more decisions, design work, research, and physical labor on the house renovation.
I find it all very exciting, but I keep being surprised by how much time it takes up. Stuff like meetings with different tradespeople, getting multiple bids for different projects, figuring out options for vanities in France, and then the actual on-site work like demolition and floor restoration. Plus sharing it all on Instagram Stories.
I definitely have less time to create blog posts, and I feel very conflicted about that.
Anyway, I’m glad the weekend has arrived. It’s going to be a hot one, so we plan to stop by a nearby lake on the Orne River for some swimming. And hopefully, we’ll make more progress on the attic floors. What are you up to this weekend?
Ready for the link list? Here are a few things I’ve wanted to share with you:
-Did you see the footage of the explosion in Beirut. So devastating and heartbreaking.
-A helpful new tool that shows the coronavirus risk in specific places. “If 50 people gather in the SF Bay Area (like a grocery store) the risk is over 50% that someone there is infected.”
-Oprah is putting up 26 billboards about Breonna Taylor around Louisville.
-Dammit. Facebook employees collected evidence showing preferential treatment of right wing figures and Facebook fired a key employee who gathered info.
-“These documents provide compelling evidence — long rumored but seldom established — that the companies, especially Facebook and Amazon, in their rise to dominance did not always play by the rules and apparently violated antitrust laws.”
-The $ 1,200 stimulus checks served as a natural basic income (UBI) experiment. What happened? Credit card debt in April and May (when the checks were sent) dropped the most on record.
-For generations, the Khasi people have been training tree roots to grow together into living, functional bridges that can last for centuries. And they do it with a tree many of us keep as a common houseplant: Ficus elastica.
-Thinking about using copper pots in the French house. Have you ever used them?
Here are some tweets I saved for you:
-The responses to “What radicalized you?” are stunning.
-A life sentence for stealing hedge clippers.
-An excellent thread on the U.S. Postal Service.
-Please read this thread on gun violence.
-What in the what??? This is incredibly disturbing. I hate it so much.
-The efforts that Republicans are going to, in order to prevent people from voting, are very telling.
–Hahaha.
I hope you have a terrific weekend. I’ll meet you back here next week. I miss you already.
kisses,
Gabrielle
