In the meantime we're scavenging wood from the yard and huddling around the fireplace. We have one hot water bottle to fight over.
Finally, this morning, the fuel truck arrives. Boiler does not magically begin working. Fuel guy and Chris determine that something is wrong with the fuel filter, which is sucking in too much air. Fuel guy tells Chris to stop calling the boiler guy, and to go over to his house at lunchtime and beg for mercy. So Chris drove over to the next village and roamed around looking for a Boiler Guy Van, banged on his kitchen door, and convinced him to come over later this afternoon. Fingers crossed.
Meanwhile, I'm waging war with USAirways. When I made the plane reservations last April, the agent told me I was not allowed to make a return reservation so far in the future, and that I would have to make a phony return date and change it later on. (Paying the change fee, of course.) Waiting to make the reservations was not an option, he agreed, because trying to get four tickets in late July to fly to Paris in August is impossible, all the seats would be booked.
But yesterday when I tried to make this change, the USAirways agent told me that since I had chosen to make the reservations in April, the returns were only valid through the following April, and our tickets were useless. After much desperate explaining that I had only followed the first agent's recommendations, she got busy with the supervisor and poof! the tickets were valid again.
Except. Chris and I used dividend miles for our tickets, and there are no award tickets available for our return date, or anywhere near it. "You'll have to buy new tickets for you and your husband," she said. All we need are one-way tickets. No problem. They're only $3500. Apiece.
The other alternative is to buy new round-trip tickets, for $1450 apiece (what a deal!). Then we end up with a return trip to Paris we can't use -- even if we did, we end up on the other side of the pond again with no way to get back. And we lose the dividend miles even though we wouldn't be using a travel award ticket.
Following this? No need to bother with the details -- the conclusion is, that on USAirways at least, it's impossible to fly to France for a year without buying an extra set of tickets. I declined to buy an extra set and am going to check the website every day hoping some dividend miles tickets become available. If not, we'll stay here and eat foie gras indefinitely.
I'm going to skip the story of the USAirways agent at the Charlottesville airport who knew nothing about visas and told us we weren't allowed to board. USAirways? They stink. (And so do we, after four days of no hot water.)
We were warned about the implacable French bureaucracy and how difficult getting the necessary papers would be. But so far all our dealings with both the Embassy at home and the préfecture here have been quick, easy, and friendly. USAirways, not so much.
