Back in the Swing of Things

Ah, September! I think I mentioned all the things that are due in September: taxes, registrations, and so on. Well, we're now in full swing. I've been to the newly refurbished American Library and renewed my membership and the family membership for L's kids and I've taken C to the "Toddler Time", which is the new name for the "Lap-sit". The work at the library was almost finished two weeks ago and I hope it is done the next time. They've moved the circulation desk, again. Where it used to be, there's now a wide staircase leading to the basement, where they've created a reading room and study area. They've opened up book space down there, too. They've moved more books up to the mezzanine, also, and put in an elevator that goes to both the basement and the mezzanine. The big reading room had been soundproofed and there are electrical outlets all over the place for laptops. The children's library has not changed. There are no DVDs anymore. Not for adults, not for kids. Even though they were donations, it seems that the library was not allowed to lend them out without paying some fee or tax.
I'm typing on the new computer. I'm still a bit frustrated as I cannot seem to access my external hard drive. Every time I get the prompt to enter my password, and I do that, it does not recognize it, so it won't let me in. I can still get to it online, so I'm downloading to this computer, which has lots of space, still, and if I have to reformat the external drive and lose what's on it, I will and then start over. It's frustrating. Another program is giving me a hard time. I use Quicken and and loaded it up to this computer. I recovered the old files. It keeps asking me to register, but gets stuck in the process -- maybe because it's already registered from the time I bought it. In any case, I finally found the trick to stop the registration prompts, but when I want to download the account info from the banks, it still asks me to sign in with my Intuit password -- another hoop to jump through. This new computer comes with MS Office, of course, but I got hooked on Open Office and now need to decide whether I want to continue with that, but have to choose between Libre Office and Apache Open Office, which have diverged since Open Office, itself, was discontinued.
With the new computer, I picked up a new printer. No matter how much I cleaned the rollers of the old one, I couldn't get the paper feed to feed the paper properly.
I'm taking watercolor painting this year, not oil painting. Since the watercolor class will involve lots of drawing, too, it's the only class I signed up for. There's was a first session where we did not touch any water or color, just drawing. I bought some, but not all the stuff on the list of materials -- it's going to be an expensive class, I think. I missed last week, which seems to be a repeat of the previous session, so I didn't miss much. Several of my "buddies" from the drawing class are there, but we are all a bit disconcerted. There's the same set-up in the room and an invitation to draw it again, from a different angle, for an hour. Then, we get to the color, but the talk is all theory. I get that we must set aside white space, but I'd like some help determining, on my drawing, what that space should be. Then, we are told to create three grays: dominant yellow, dominant red, dominant blue. Fine. I know how to do that, but some in the class do not know what he's talking about. I know how to put oil on canvas and gouache on paper, but I feel intimidated with watercolor. How much water? Wet paper? Dry paper? If wet, how much? What about colors running into one another? What if you color a space you intended to leave white, but forgot? One friend in the class has now left, for good. She got her check back. She's an experienced watercolor painter who does lots of landscape painting in workshops during the summer. She showed us her paintings from the summer. She did a workshop in the Gers, not really far from where we were. The bastides were very similar. She did not like the imposed drawing of a subject with no interest -- neither did several of us, including me. She did not like the approach of the teacher. She left. I'll miss her. I'm sticking it out, at least for now, because I really want to tackle the medium.
There's a group on Facebook, Americans in France, with lots of people fairly newly arrived in the country. They have the usual administrative headaches that any immigrant has. In addition, they want to make friends. It seems to be a major concern, making friends. Well, the average person on the street, in the shops, or behind the window in an administrative office is not looking for a new friend. It doesn't make them unfriendly or rude, but the judgment of many in the group is that the French are snobs and standoffish. The complaints are commented on with more complaints feeding even more comments. I think they feel they should be welcomed with open arms, that somehow they are not just immigrants like any other immigrants. They wonder, after 16 years in France, why they should have a French drivers license and not renew their state license. (The argument that by getting their state license renewed, they are, in fact, declaring residency in the state and opening themselves up to local and state taxes, doesn't seem fair to them. They want the state license and not have jury duty or state and local taxes.) Why should they have to comply with the rule that states you need to present a clean record for your permanent residence papers? Why should they have to have their papers translated by court-certified translators? I think I'll take a break.

C'est la rentrée

That's French for "Back to school" but it's more than just back to school; it's also back to work or whatever else your life includes. For me, it's back to the monthly AARO lunches. Even if they never stop over the summer, there's still a feeling of starting a new year. In fact, the renewal notices will be going out soon for membership dues. It's back to board meetings.
It's back to taxes. I have sent in the 3rd quarter of US taxes and the final notifications for the French taxes for 2015 are in, telling us what is still due, or not. There's also the ISF payment for 2016 due on Sept. 15. Add in the registrations for painting or whatever other activity starts in September (and that's anything you can think of), September has got to be the worst month of the year. We fill up the savings account just so we can empty it in September!
I did try to keep the printer going so that would be an expense for next month, but I gave up. There are good videos of how to fix it, but nothing worked. I checked for hidden paper jams. I cleaned all the rollers. It just won't pick up the paper any more and hand feeding it wasn't working out too well, as it would mangle several sheets before finally printing one. And the computer wasn't taking any updating because the disk C was saturated after the move to Windows 10. Another September expense.
I haven't signed up for any gym classes. I am continuing with the painting/drawing; this year I'll do watercolor. I won't be going quite as much as in the past years because I think I've got too many commitments on my calendar. I want to spend more time knitting, actually. I still have to wear the wrist brace, though, and that's not helping with the drawing, painting, or knitting. In fact, I'm wearing it to work on this nice new computer. If I don't, then handling the mouse or the pad makes the wrist hurt again. I don't have to wear it constantly, just when I'm doing something repetitive, like this.
The American Library activities have started up. S didn't want to go to Story Hour on Wednesday, so we went to the Jardin des Plantes to the Museum of Natural History, the comparative anatomy and paleontology building, because he wanted to see dinosaurs. It was a bit of a surprise to see that the rooms were filled with skeletons, but he was duly impressed with them. On the ground floor, the comparative anatomy, we compared the skeleton of a race horse with a Percheron work horse and a zebra. There were all sorts of different animals, including a few really gigantic whales. Upstairs, in the Paleontology room, he saw how big a tyrannosaurus rex was. There's also a mammouth among the other animals. Thursday, C went with me to the library for what used to be called the lapsit, but is now called "Toddler Time". Today, I (more or less) finished installing the new computer. For some mysterious reason, I can't connect to my external drive, but I'll save that headache for another day.