tenniswitch

Trainman, we opened a French bank account while we were in France negotiating the purchase of our residence secondaire. We were (and still are) residents of the US. We were required to provide proof of our primary residence (i.e., the US one). Of course, we were not intending to become full-time residents of France.

PeterCD, I can't advise you about stopping and starting internet service, but I can assure you (having done it yet again just this week) that you can suspend or reactivate your telephone service for a residence secondaire via the FT website and it takes no more than a couple of days for FT to act on the commande.

Before rebooting, have you tried right-clicking the internet connection icon and clicking on repair? I have a temperamental laptop that sends the "limited or no connectivity" message any time I fail to allow it a full 5 minutes to boot. The repair function always fixes things.

Is it possible to do that for TF and TdH for a residence secondaire? We pay only property taxes in France.

Oh, my, that's tough. Could you set everything up (lighting, trial-run focus of camera, etc.) in advance at home and then get someone else in the family or a close friend to stand where you want your son to look and engage his attention? Is he really not allowed to smile for a UK passport? I know that's not a requirement for a passport from the US (they're more concerned with size, lighting and a light, neutral background).

Nikki, it sounds as if your abonnement is for a ligne residence primaire, not a ligne residence secondaire. The links for suspending service only appear for the residence secondaire abonnement. Have you had the service for very long? If not, I'd call the English line again and tell them that you were erroneously signed up for the wrong service. They should be able to fix this by telephone.

Danny's right, at least if you're using IE. When you delete links from your "Favorites" file, they're normally sent to your trash can. Try that first, then see if they're still in your history.

I'm thinking the gift tax wouldn't apply as neither the donor or recipient are French tax residents.

Thanks, Nick. I guess I need to talk with our notaire to see how much that would run.

"Tabbed browsing is one of those things that once you've experienced it you'll wonder how you ever managed without them " Unless you're Mr. Tw and you insist upon opening every page in its own window. (sigh) PS: Sorry, AnOther for the way I quoted you, but the normal way was showing up as gibberish/coding.

If you are not a French tax resident, can you give away a piece of property? Or a share of a piece of property? I don't mean as some kind of tax dodge with an under-the-table payment, I mean as a legitimate gift of real estate.

Peel the bit you're using. What's a large piece? Depends on what you're preparing- could be anything from a slice about the size of a 20 centime or euro coin to enough to make a tablespoon (soup spoon) when grated.

Partout, have you ever looked at your FT account online? Do you at least know the account number or have a copy of your latest FT bill? Once you have access to your account it is very easy to turn the phone on and off online (I do it from the US for 2 different houses). I'm sure that any of us who do it will be happy to walk you through the process.

I rather like http://sites.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/accueil/.

LyndaandRichard, I'm sure you were directing that comment to the OP, not me, as I'm not a big Word fan either. I find Excel so much easier that I rarely use Word for anything except letters. It's a funny thing about Office 2007, which I have on my US computer, while Office 2003 is on my computer in France. At first I absolutely loathed working in Word or Excel 2007, but after I added buttons for the things I commonly do (or had trouble finding commands on the ribbon tabs), I started to like it better, and I love the ease of saving files as PDFs. Now, whichever computer I'm using, I'm always missing some feature of the other's Office programs.

I quite agree, AIG, but, from his description it doesn't sound as if the OP needs a database for the task.

I won't tell you to put it into Excel, but I will tell you that anything involving columns, rows and sorting is much easier to do in a spreadsheet than in a Word table (including formatting the page for printing). I do everything possible in Excel: finances, itineraries, inventories, catalogs, mailing lists, tennis league schedules, you name it. If you can ever get over your horror of Excel, I think you'll find that your work is both easier and faster than when you use Word.

Not exactly a seal, but have you looked at the Syntilor Huile Pour Parquet? (There are probably other brands, but that's what are Mr. B carries.) We've put that on the new oak floor in our salon and it looks super. It's too soon to tell how well it will hold up.

Okay, thanks, guys. Our vines are old and large, and I thought I had butchered them in April (along the lines of Tony's), but evidently I didn't go far enough. I have been cutting off some of the shooters, will set out again and take more off and start cutting off grape clusters (we must have more than 100).

Sorry to be so stupid, but 3 or 4 bunches per....what?

We have 3 varieties of table grapes: white, red and black.  The vines were planted a number of years ago by the previous owners. I quite understand that grape vines should be pruned early in the year (when we are never here), but I do always cut them back when I get here in April.  This year I thought I'd cut them back quite hard, but, judging by the current growth, I didn't cut them back hard enough, and we have many more bunches of grapes than the vines can support (for max quality). Can anyone give me a rule of thumb on what I should do now?  Just cut off a certain per cent of the clusters?  Cut back the vines, too? It must be pretty clear that I am not a gardener and don't know much about growing grapes.  I've been trying to read up on the subject, but can only find info on the winter pruning, nothing about dealing with spring/summer overgrowth. Any help will be most gratefully received.  

[quote user="Jonzjob"] Mono lasers are good and quite cheap to run especialy if you refill your own toner, but not a lot of good for colour photos, domage..[blink] Also, if you are only printing single documents they can be slow, but once you get past the single copy they are fast. The time is taken in setting the print image on the photocunductor and warming up the fixing roller. After that away you go! Colour lasers are comming on now with the photo quality, but they are very costly to both buy and run.. Inkjets are still the best for photos and I can just imajing what the heater roll would do to a CD or DVD [:-))] [/quote] I print a lot of photos and have been quite happy with our Canon MP530, which has printer, copier, scanner and fax (which I've never used), has 2 feed trays and is quite efficient about duplex printing (which saves time and/or paper).  I've also noticed that photos printed on the Canon seem more fade-resistant than those printed on our previous HP- something about the ink, maybe?

Sometimes it really just is the website, not your computer or the ISP that's at fault, and will just get resolved in time. That being said, it sounds as if you're using Internet Explorer.  If so, you might try going into Tools/Advanced and finding the bit where it says notify about script errors and turn that off. Also, sometimes after website weirdness, IE will get into a maddening sort of loop where it keeps trying to pull up cached pages.  Sometimes you can resolve this by deleting your history and, especially, your cookies (which is a pain as you'll have to sign into all those pages that you're normally automatically signed in to). If that doesn't work, I'm afraid you'll need help from someone who's actually computer literate. [:)]

[quote user="ErnieY"]Oh yes, well aware of the situation and no way would they have put themselves through the trauma if there was any possible alternative [:'(] [/quote] Okay, I just asked because the DH occasionally gets the notion that he would like to (try to) get a French DL the hard way.  (I think he's insane as our licenses were issued in Florida.)

[quote user="ErnieY"][quote user="elihai"]Well, it is true[/quote]Sorry, but as a literal statement is definitely is NOT true, but you know it because of your mention of not having an EU licence [:)] It seems to me one major drawback of this outfit is that they are only in Paris so you have to add in the expense of going/staying there to the cost. I can't say that I know anyone who has used them but I do know an American couple who are really struggling with taking the test locally. I'm sure you've done your research but out of interest what driving licence do you have ?[/quote] Ernie, are your friends certain that their US licenses were issued by states that don't have a reciprocal agreement with France?  Several states do.