Bad Day in Paris -- Tous les Appareils ne Marchent Pas!

Ugh. Here's what the day consisted of today:

Me vs. the Video Camera: After I made a trip to the FNAC store to buy a cable to hook up the video camera to the computer, the video camera broke. The tape came halfway out of the camera and would not come all the way out or go all the way in. It was stuck. I fiddled with it endlessly and never managed to fix it. Now we have no video camera and have to make a return trip to the large FNAC store and its long lines to return the now-useless cable.

Suzie vs. the Livebox: The TV service here is through the phone line, using a device called a "Livebox" that provides wireless and regular internet, telephone, and TV to the apartment. The internet and phone parts work fine, but the TV hasn't since we arrived. I spent about an hour trying to reset the equipment (including the "decoder" for the TV) but to no avail. Suzie then spent 45 rough minutes on the phone speaking in French about computer tech issues with a very efficient and patient woman at Orange France trying to get the TV to work. It eventually did work, for only for a short while, and then it quit again, then when I reset the decoder again, gave us a screen that said in French, "Please wait, the service is starting up," and which stared at us from the screen for about 45 minutes before I finally turned the TV itself off to free ourselves of its spiteful, mocking message.

All of Us vs. Les Telephones Portables. Suzie wanted to get cell phones for us all, so we've spent a lot of time in stores looking at phones and service plans and calculating which would be the least expensive for what we need. We looked various places and finally were helped by a terrific young man from Algeria named Mohammed, who worked at the Orange Wireless store up the street. Not only did he help us select the right plan by explaining it all, but he was also charming. I had a long conversation with him about his plans to travel to America to improve his English, and his desire to have a career in business. You want people like that to get ahead, and I hope he manages to. Our phones were our one success today.

Will vs. Le Ascenseur. The elevator in our building was, you recall, broken when we arrived, but was then fixed. But after we attended the party at our upstairs neighbors' house this evening, the boys for some inexplicable reason known only to teenage minds decided to take the elevator down from the 6th etage to the 5th etage, and then down further, and somewhere in their voyage they got stuck between the 4th and 3rd floors, unable to get out, encased in this small glass cage like some humanoid specimens on an old Star Trek episode, and semi-panicked at the possibility that they could be in there for some time. We were mortified, as we believed, but don't know for certain, that the boys may have done something to cause the the problem, and the Guardienne of the building received no assurance from the elevator company when she called about how quickly the repair man would come, although as it happened he came within 20 or 30 minutes and managed to fix the elevator, which is now functioning again, no thanks to the Shupe boys.

Suzie had a good time at the party, and I had a fair time, and I hope tomorrow she will blog about it. I'm exhausted and feeling overwhelmed and a little out of control and really, really tired of being around my kids so so much (bad Dad, I know, but don't criticize someone unless you've spent three weeks walking in their shoes in constant, constant contact with their offspring). Hopefully the ambulances and the partygoers will be fewer tonight so that I can get a better night sleep in my bed (which is just a tad, just a tad too short for my long frame).

But we still love Paris. We still find friendly people that humor us through our bad French. (I also ran into a scammer today, fairly transparent and not very convincing -- he dropped a ring on the ground as I was nearing him, then looked down in surprise as I saw it, feigning that we was also seeing it for the first time, and offering to let me keep it for 5 euro, an offer I declined, recognizing that the ring was probably one of 20 he had on him and was worth probably 50 cents Euro, quite a nice mark up. Andrew was suitably impressed that his usally gullible Dad had recognized and avoided the scam.)

Hoping that things work a little better for us tomorrow.