The fates wag fingers in warning

Thursday October 15th

So I had a quiet day for the most part.  We each had a small Pain au chocolat with coffee for breakfast and then I retreated into a few chapters of Rosetta Stone before taking a nice nap.  I made some phone calls after a lunch of leftovers and occupied myself until around 4 when I decided to take a bike ride to CarreFour market.  I still needed some ingredients for my Blanquette de Veau and for the apple desserts I planned to make on Saturday.  I set out toward Carrefour market and when I got there I noticed my wallet was gone!  So I retraced my route, went back to the house and checked all the places it could have been dropped, but I had no luck in finding it.  My heart fell into my stomach and my stomach churned.  I doubled back on the bicycle to make sure I hadn't missed it on the first search.  I knew I had had the wallet nearly the whole way there because I had switched it into my right pocket specifically because it is zippered.  I guess somehow I must have moved in such a way that the zipper opened.  Sigh...

30 minutes later my father saw me at the house.  A guy had called his cell phone to say that he had found the wallet and called the contact phone number I had left inside it (hooray for disaster planning).  He stopped by later and returned the wallet.  He explained that he had seen me drop it maybe 100 feet from Carrefour, and as I rode the bike around a parking lot corner some kids picked it up, grabbed the 50 euros in it and then threw it into a ditch and then ran off.  He must have picked it up less than 1 minute before I came back looking for it.  Anyway I'm taking this as a warning to be neurotically overprotective of my wallet and passport (which I always leave locked at the house).


At dinner my father mentioned that a swiss woman, who was a friend of his was retiring from running her bed and breakfast around the corner.  She related to him that she wanted to retire and paint and that she was tired of the hotel business.  The current price of the building is something like 300,000 euros.  After dinner I took a walk to the hotel and fantasized about running a bed and breakfast place.  I wonder if I know anyone who could invest...I know plenty of people who would want to stay there.