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Post by bjd on Mar 27, 2023 18:55:52 GMT
I just returned from Toulouse. I don't know why I bother looking at forecasts -- I arrived on Thursday afternoon and it was cold, windy, some showers and not much sun. I didn't have a warm jacket with me. When I left at noon today it was 12° and cloudy and windy. Bayonne was warm and sunny and now I'm at home where it is supposed to be in the high 20s by Wednesday before it cools off and rains on the weekend.
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Post by bjd on Mar 21, 2023 16:42:00 GMT
It's sunny, 17° and we had some rain a couple of days ago -- that means everything is suddenly growing. One of the peonies seems to have grown about 20 cm overnight. Leaves coming out on many of the bushes too. We went for a walk this afternoon and all the local willow trees are green and lots of bushes and small trees are blooming.
Of course, the weeds are doing really well too so I spent a few hours today pulling them out. A few weeks ago I bought two round boxwoods, put one in the ground, the other in a big pot. The one in the ground has more new leaves on it, so I took the potted one out and put it in a flower bed.
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Post by bjd on Mar 21, 2023 6:47:38 GMT
Leslie Caron French singer and dancer whose career was mostly in the USA. Age 91 now.
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Post by bjd on Mar 21, 2023 6:45:46 GMT
Keswick Town on Lake Simcoe in Ontario
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Post by bjd on Mar 21, 2023 6:43:38 GMT
Perhaps you missed the hike, but there is an nice novel by Barbara Kingsolver about a woman who improves her life when she learns about the monarch butterfly migration: Flight Behavior.
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Post by bjd on Mar 21, 2023 6:37:35 GMT
My favourite photo is the first of the three landscape pics of your return to Paris. The colours of the new green on the trees and the blue sky with clouds make me think of an impressionistic painting.
Is the Dragon of Calais made by the same people who did the machines in Nantes and Toulouse?
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Post by bjd on Mar 19, 2023 16:39:33 GMT
Those are so well done, Cheery. The head on the first one looks kind of small compared to the rest of him, but I am so impressed with your abilities.
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Post by bjd on Mar 19, 2023 16:33:01 GMT
Yesterday afternoon we went to Capbreton - a smaller port, only for fishing. There too we had incredible winds and our son mentioned some saying about big messy waves mean the seagulls fly overhead rather than staying in the water.
I'm sure the seabirds use the winds to play on the air currents, given the way they hover overhead.
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Post by bjd on Mar 18, 2023 19:52:41 GMT
It's more the angle at which the pictures are taken. I'm always surprised when I see them too. The entire lot of garden, house and driveway is 815 sq m.
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Post by bjd on Mar 18, 2023 19:35:40 GMT
What a difference the sun makes! And any town or city with water gets bonus points.
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Post by bjd on Mar 18, 2023 8:50:02 GMT
I heard that the OMS has declared that covid is becoming a generalized virus like seasonal flu.
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Post by bjd on Mar 18, 2023 8:48:28 GMT
Good to hear that you are doing more than before, Questa, and indeed, that you are keeping your sense of observation and humour about it.
When I clicked on this page, my screen showed me earlier posts about shaking hands. I just remembered my mother had this and learned that it was lack of potassium. She started eating a banana every morning and it improved dramatically -- her hands no longer shook when she was drinking tea, for example. Stupidly, it wasn't her doctor who helped but a nutritionist friend of my sister's when it came up in a conversation.
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Post by bjd on Mar 18, 2023 8:41:04 GMT
We actually got up to 26° on Thursday, which felt too warm. Yesterday's rain didn't actually happen and for the time being (9:30 am) it's 12° in bright sunshine despite more rain forecasts.
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Post by bjd on Mar 18, 2023 8:39:05 GMT
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Post by bjd on Mar 18, 2023 8:36:24 GMT
Interesting pics and comments on a place I have never been. Metz is one of those places I had no idea about and never had a reason to go to. The architecture is indeed a bit heavy but I imagine it fits in with the general atmosphere of the area.
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Post by bjd on Mar 17, 2023 16:39:24 GMT
Indeed, those currently working are paying the pensions of those who are retired. The money stays in the pension fund. Supposedly, the problem is that there are ever fewer workers paying into the fund while people are generally living longer.
That said, it's true that allowances should be made for people who do back-breaking work (like construction workers) or work a lot of shifts, for example. Some changes have been made but it's really hard to know exactly what is going on. A failure of proper communication on the government's part to explain with numbers the current and future projections, in the face of opposition led by the leftiest unions and the political extremes blocking parliamentary discussion by adding thousands of amendments.
There is also the problem of different professions getting their own pension systems. There were 42 of these groups. Some, like train or subway drivers should probably retire earlier, but notaries' clerks also got to retire at 60 when everyone else had gone to 62. Working in a notary's office is not that tough but obviously they had a powerful lobby.
This whole thing has become a political issue going way beyond retirement pensions.
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Post by bjd on Mar 17, 2023 6:12:57 GMT
It doesn't seem like yesterday to me -- rather far off but it feels like a period where everything stopped but then everything changed.
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Post by bjd on Mar 17, 2023 6:10:37 GMT
Ascain Small town in southwest France, on the border with Spain
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Post by bjd on Mar 17, 2023 6:05:22 GMT
RuPaul Andre Charles American drag queen and TV personality
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Post by bjd on Mar 17, 2023 6:02:06 GMT
Yes indeed, Whatagain, hope all is well and it's nice to see you back.
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Post by bjd on Mar 17, 2023 6:00:11 GMT
All getting a bit heated I see. Yes, it has been getting heated for a few weeks already. Even though the government had a perfectly legal right to push through its legislation without a parliamentary vote, it was a political blunder and will just stir things up more. Obviously, Macron and Borne (the PM) weren't sure they would have the votes to pass their law so decided to force it through instead, hoping all the street protests and strikes would calm down. Pouring oil on the fire in this case.
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Post by bjd on Mar 16, 2023 16:26:48 GMT
I think the Wikipedia writer is mixing up declensions in verbs (which is what Fumo and I were talking about) and the fact that adjectives agree with nouns in French, Spanish and other Romance languages as well as German, but not in English. This is because words are gendered in Romance or Slavic languages, so if you have a plural or feminine noun, the adjective agrees with it. Since English does not have gendered nouns, adjectives are constant.
A quick look at Wikipedia (again!) tells me that any form of change in a word is now called a declension in linguistics.
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Post by bjd on Mar 16, 2023 7:28:27 GMT
8° this morning, 23° forecast for this afternoon. Spring is here and more rain coming this weekend.
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Post by bjd on Mar 16, 2023 7:24:35 GMT
Not my personal experience but I remember my sister telling me about being invited to a newly-married friend's for dinner. His young wife overcooked the pasta and used her brand-new, wedding gift electric knife to cut a cake. That marriage didn't last very long either.
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Post by bjd on Mar 16, 2023 7:21:22 GMT
I agree, the French don't do spicy. Even in shops when I look for hot curry paste, for example, I can only find the mild version. On our outdoor market there is a guy who looks South Indian who makes takeout. I once asked him if he could sell me a jar of hot curry paste but he told me he only uses the mild stuff here.
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Post by bjd on Mar 16, 2023 7:15:20 GMT
It looks like a nice city -- I really like that Austro-Hungarian architecture.
re languages. English, French, Spanish do not have declensions. German has 4. It's not the der, die, das, it's the change in the ending of the noun depending on its role in a sentence, ie. subject, direct or indirect object, object of a preposition.
Slavic languages have more. Russian has 6, Polish 7. I don't know about the others. In addition to the same declensions as Russian, Polish also has a vocative, in other words, the end of a person's name changes when you speak to them. This was the case in Latin, if I'm not mistaken.
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Post by bjd on Mar 15, 2023 18:29:09 GMT
Thanks for this. When I went to various cities with a friend some years ago, we considered Ljubljana but it was quite expensive compared to other places we looked at and we thought the city would not be enough to fill 5 days. We didn't drive anywhere so that limited options. But it does look very nice and Austro-Hungarian.
As for "the language changes people’s names depending on the context of them being spoken about." That's perfectly normal in any language with declensions and all Slavic languages have declensions.
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Post by bjd on Mar 15, 2023 6:46:44 GMT
What is the little strap around the waist for?
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Post by bjd on Mar 13, 2023 12:09:09 GMT
24° and blowing here too but the wind is supposed to turn from the south to west and be at 90kph this evening.
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Post by bjd on Mar 13, 2023 12:07:18 GMT
Here are some blooms from my garden today. red camellia A bunch of violets in the grass. I didn't plant them but suspect the seeds were in soil brought with some plants from my old garden in Toulouse Anemones in a pot -- totally covering the tulips underneath The biggest and oldest of the loropetalums
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