low and outside

No, this is not a post about baseball. It's about the electrical switches in the apartment. Since it is raining this morning I thought I would give you a tour of my digs and reflect on its idiosyncrasies.

First, the building. It is a newer place, probably built in the 70's, not like the gorgeous old places across the street that can be seen in yesterday's photo, but not starkly modern, either. It has two parts. Each has its own elevator. If you take elevator #1 to its 6th floor you cannot get to my apartment. You have to take elevator #2. There is a stairwell between the two wings for evacuation purposes. The apartment has no number; you just have to know where it is, although the mail boxes in the lobby have numbers but I don't know what they correspond with.



This is the front hallway. You can see by where the little white rectangle is how low the light switch is. That one is for the foyer. Just to your left and you enter is the WC, tucked away in a closet.


Mme. Danielle neglected to tell me where it was and I had to go through the apartment opening doors until I came upon it. It was either that or the bidet, but I figured that couldn't be right!
Off the foyer is the kitchen.


Its light is low on the wall outside the door. Also off the foyer is the living room and the rest of the apartment.

The LapMac is on its work table, the only place I can put it since it has to be connected to a modum, but the sofa is a comfortable place to sit and work. At the other end of the living room is a very nice dining area.


Good overhead light for reading, too. There is a short hallway from the living room back to the bedroom and bathroom. Here's a good example of the "low and outside" switch.

The white rectangle next to the door frame is the on/off switch for the bedroom light. To turn off the light you come out of the bedroom, go down the hall, switch off the light and stand in pitch dark. What's wrong with this engineering decision?

The bed is supremely comfortable, albeit tiny. It's billed as a double, but the only two people I know who could sleep in this bed are my paternal grandparents; she was 4'10" and he was 5'5"). But for one tall person such as myself, it's perfect. Across from the bedroom is the bath/shower.

I managed to get the shower to work this morning just fine. The only problem with a hand-held, if there's no shower door or curtain, is that everything in the room gets wet. I'll do better tomorrow.

So that's about the size of it. The rain has stopped and, although the sun isn't out, it's time to hit the streets and see what's there. Think I'll walk over to the the 7th to the rue Cler market and perhaps find a spot for lunch. More later.