"Periscope Depth"

Hello, all,
You know about those nuclear submarines that can go for months at a time cruising deep under water? That's what it seems like for me. At first I thought "coming up for air", but really, not yet. I've just ascended to periscope depth to see what's out there, and to get a transmission off to home base before descending for another long run. It'll be a long one, there's much to catch up on.

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Seems I've got precious little time but stressful time.

Simultaneously we are going through

• A paper I'm editing that will go through peer review this July, to be published in October.


• Moving to a different/unfurnished apartment, which means


• Tracking down and buying all the stuff we're going to need to fill the new apartment up, and


• Trying to show the old apartment to people, all of whom want to take it, but the landlord is being picky


• Assessing B for possible autism


• Trying to get him into French pre-school with a personal assistant this fall

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The paper itself moves now into the heavy review phase. First the local HCAL community reviews the paper and issues a pre-approval. I'm slated for a one-hour talk tomorrow, at which time anyone can grill me with questions for the purposes of determining whether the paper is ready to go to the next phase. That would be review by an "ARC" - analysis review committee - that takes place from mid-July to mid-August. I've been told horror stories about these things - and remember that boring meeting that I was sitting in looking at a map of Minnesota? That was an ARC review session for another paper.

After ARC approval the paper is made available to the entire CMS collaboration for review. Final version is submitted along with dozens of other papers that will fill up one whole volume of the Journal of Instrumentation sometime in October. Check it out, all the technical docs from the LHC and all the experiments are already there.

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On the housing front: I reported back in May that we were looking to move - mostly for financial reasons. We applied for subsidized housing, similar to what we did back in Minnesota - except in that case, the housing was loosely affiliated with the University, whereas here the housing is administered by NPOs, and assigned by the city hall of the commune in question. Yep, French have communes, but they're not communists (mostly), just socialists.

Executive summary: we have the keys to a new apartment and hope to start moving stuff in this week.

Details: When we first applied the secretary at city hall, Mme Guillbert, said (but not in so many words, and not in English), "Not a chance. Prepare to wait for 15 months." But then somehow, by God's grace, we got the assistance of a social affairs woman at CERN, Rafaele, who's a native French speaker, and she put in many hours to help us fill out forms and collect important documents, and came on her day off to an appointment at city hall. And then, miracle of miracles, the secretary at City Hall got to like us too, and advocated for us to her superiors, even when the first apartment they found fell through (current tenant got skittish).

Since then things have moved a lot faster than we anticipated. We gave notice at our current place at the end of May. It's a 3 month notice! And then the apartment we got assigned to became available in July. Our landlord advertised for the 1st of August, knowing our situation.

The latest is that this last Friday we signed the contract in the morning at the SEMCODA office. (This is the name for the NPO that administers our new apartment, and stands for "Société d'Economie Mixte de Construction du Département de l'Ain" - "Ain" being the department of France that we live in, part of the Rhone-Alps region.) The lady the office mostly didn't speak English, and I hadn't allocated enough time to translate the contract by computer, so I got a download in French of all the conditions related to the contract, etc. I think I understood most of it, but required quite a bit of gesticulating, and sometimes just nodding the head dumbly ;>.

Then, having proof of our (new) address, we walked less than a block to the "Hotel de Ville" (city hall) and registered B for pre-school in the fall! Last day before the lady in charge was going on vacation...more on B later.

That morning we found that we were supposed to do the walk-through of the new apartment that same afternoon, whereupon they would give us the keys. So even though we don't start paying rent till the 15th on the new place, they've let us get in early if we need to.

Upsides to the new apartment: 3 bedrooms now instead of two, just a bit more space, elevator is big enough to fit a double-stroller in, and best of all, 500euro less per month than the current place, although water and heating will knock that back to ~400/month less.

Downsides to the new apartment: it's unfurnished, as in really unfurnished. See the video to understand what I mean:


Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
So we've been looking for bargains on all the online markets and thrift stores, and getting in touch with people, mostly from church, who are moving (lots of Americans and Brits moving back home this summer), and collecting second-hand furniture in a friend's garage. We still need, most importantly: bed frame, refrigerator, oven/stove, shower rod/curtain, and a whole kitchen - cupboards, counter space, pantry, all the cookware, silverware, dinnerware, etc. etc.

Re: our old apartment, our landlord has not yet identified a replacement to us, although he has said there are two people he's discussing with right now. We don't know if we will have to pay for two places at once, but hopefully we won't - most of the people we showed the place to said they could move in right away - easier for them since this place is completely furnished.

So even though we have the keys, we're not in a terrible hurry to move, because of three things: 1) no replacement here yet 2) no phone/internet at the new place yet 3) want to get the place set up before moving to disrupt the kids as little as possible.

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Just what the heck is autism, anyway?

We were starting to worry about B possibly having a double-whammy: Down Syndrome and autism. He seemed to be interacting less, self-stimulating more, not looking people in the eye, not very happy, and not very energetic. We've been on the verge of having a comprehensive assessment done on him.

Fortunately, K's mother knows someone who has (had?) a kid with autism. She changed the kid's diet, and bam! no more autism. At least none of the symptoms anyway. Makes you wonder what autism is - just a food sensitivity?

The diet is gluten-free/casein-free, or GFCF for short. K has done a good bit of research on this over the internet and read lots of other similar stories. She also asked pediatricians on both sides of the pond. The pediatrician we have here is a pill. She's not old, but apparently nevertheless a sourpuss. She thought that feeding B rice milk instead of cow's milk (fortified of course with Vitamin D and iron) would be equivalent to moving to a third world country.

Not ones to wait for medical approval, particularly where nutrition and diet are concerned, we just decided it to try and see what would happen. And believe it or not, we see a big difference in B's behavior since the diet started. He has perked up substantially, he engages better, and he just looks better, in more ruddy health, than he used to.

And he has a castle that has since burned down, fell over and then sank into the swamp.

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

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That's all I can handle for the moment, but stay tuned for more to come soon!
-PKBGD