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01.01.2019

Medical record keeping in France has been very old style - hand carrying many of my records, no central data base for digital health records. Recently a centralized data base became available for our use and henceforth all our medical information will be enterred in it. The previous system was supposed to be a money saver (as is no office staff for record keeping in doctor's offices). To me it has all been awkward and challenging.

With the new year came new health spending priorites such as glasses twice a year, free hearing aids and an additional 100,000,000 euros per year for mental health care. Much of that had been planned early last year but the amount of spending was increased in some areas due to the yellow jacket (and other) protests. Next year 100% dental coverage will start.

The following (and other actions) were also initiated this year, some of which is a result of the yellow vest protests:
Everything that changes in France 01/01/2019
increased minimum wage to 10.03 euros on 1 January 2019 instead of 9.88 euros -- the value of the minimum wage since January 1st 2018. In dollars that's about $11.50 increased from about $11.30 last year
reduced taxes (various)
increased pensions (social security in US)
increased health benefits (with more to come next year)

More good news for us - the price of cigarettes is already high here and it will increase by another 1 euro a pack this year to discourage smoking, of course. Bad news is price of stamps and electricity have increased, but not by much.





05.01.2019

We went to the downtown market again today. We always enjoy that. There are new items for sale each time we go and there are a lot of great treats. No melons yet because everything there is local although Carrefour has melons imported from Spain.





11.01.2019

There are more seagulls than usual at this time and they are very loud. At Parc Oberthür they mingle with the ducks at the pond and fly close overhead when they are away from the pond. When we were trying to feed the ducks a stray kitty was camouflaged in the tall grass waiting to grab a duck if one came by. Most of the ducks were bigger than the kitty who we called Cammy because of the natural camouflage of her coat.

Ruth draws Cammy out with her scarf. You can see from her coat why she is camouflaged in the grass. Next time we'll have to bring kitty food as well as duck food.





19.01.2019

A few days ago Macron launched "the Great Debate" which is "a public discourse of all grievances and concerns." It was expected to quell the anger of the Yellow Vests, but that only lasted a couple of days. The Great Debate is a tool that has been used twice previously during France's Fifth Republic so it's not a new thing.

Today in Rennes there were fires set by some of the yellow vests and the police responded with tear gas. As far as I know these are the first acts of violence in Rennes related to the yellow vest marches.

Video of Rennes protests today.





31.01.2019

The temps here have mostly been in the 40s with occasional dips into the high 20s. It's been warmer than in years past. Nonetheless, the wooden walkway by our apartment was iced over this morning (but no snow yet). We've been watching the weather in the midwest and northeast United States. In several places in the US midwest temps were 50 below 0 (℉). Brrr! Very dangerous! Even though it gets cold here in Rennes we feel lucky that we haven't had an Arctic blast this year (so far). Paris and many surrounding areas in France, Germany, Denmark, the UK and other nations have had very harsh weather from the polar vortex for several days recently. They still are. Last year we had one in Rennes and our Parc Oberthür pond froze over. We also had snow for a couple of days.