Holy Three Kings Kids, we are already 2026 and almost through its first week! Work routine resumed, snow is everywhere: 2,5cm that feel like 2,5m since no snow or ice removal is happening on foot and bicycle paths. Today’s work commute—which is now happening only once a week—was tough. My broken one-geared Red Arrow™ was very hard to pedal forward even without the icy road, and tomorrow I will bring my also broken spare bicycle—which I just named Purple Arrow™—to the bike doctor. I also feel like I need a doctor, getting close to fifty comes at a cost I guess.

It is true winter, which is actually kind of fun. Below 0 degrees on average over the last two weeks, a rare thing. We spent the weekend with chickenpoxed Effi at the cottage, where I attempted to save my rainwater tanks from ice exploding. Warmer times will tell. With the wheels we got we now can roam around more freely, and back and forth to Burgundy. And thanks to a nearby parking spot I booked on convenient Yespark we have all it takes to store that city-annoying item away.

Bla-bla bla bla bla bla bla! Bla-bla-bla!!

A day at the Weltkulturerbe is over! We are currently in Saarbrücken and inside a nice Airbnb apartment with an unbelievable 25 m² corridor! Our stopover on our way back to Pantin from a lovely 3-day-family-Xmas break in Neustadt was the right choice, despite freezing temperatures I loved touring the Industriekulturdenkmal. Similar to what I could see in the Ruhrgebiet, but more compact and complete. Tomorrow back to the highway and France, home! And soon into 2026. Happy holidays!

It’s insane! After a much painful November, the corporate tax office is not dropping the ball and charged me again, against all odds! It’s a nightmare to deal with these continued administration fails, they still owe me over twelve thousand euros but made once again a claim of the same sum, plus fines. Somebody is trying to come at me since April 2024, and I have no clue why. Nor does my accountant. Why did I ever go freelance? This broken bureaucracy is such a punishment!

Anyway, thanks to Deezer I listen to some good frequencies rather this nonsense bullshit.

After countless back-and-forth messaging with finally reactive SIE PANTIN, my personal bank account was unblocked this afternoon—17 days after the incident began. Now I’m only waiting for the reimbursement of those 12 500 € that were mistakenly removed from my company’s account. That should be a matter of time, and it’s far less of an issue than the blockage. And yes, on Monday I got PACSed yet again. Jamais deux sans trois ! Just like my iPhone, I got my third—a 16E—last week. I’m still spending too much time on it, even though I have significantly reduced my usage since January. My current weekly average is roughly 2 hours per day, which includes at least 20 minutes of Duolingo Chess.

Administrative harassment is ongoing, probably worse than ever. While I’m still fighting to get my one-person’s company postal address changed, a quest that’s ongoing since summer 2023 and which cost me countless hours and headaches, I now have some additional troubles brought to me by our public service. It’s day number ten with a blocked personal bank account, triggered by SIE PANTIN (France’s corporate tax office)’s claim of over ten thousand euros, which I didn’t have. There’s no reason why they hit my personal bank account, it’s actually not even on file. More logically, the same amount has been withdrawn by the same entity a couple of days later, this time from my company’s account. That’s better, but still there’s a major problem: the withdrawal of this bi-annual VAT pre-payment shouldn’t have taken place at all since my accountant closely followed that SIE‘s requests to declare and transfer value added tax money on a monthly bases. Anyway, not only this whole amount shouldn’t be due at all (and is now missing on my account, probably leading to not being able to pay my salary at the end of the month), furthermore I have an unusable personal bank account until that mess is cleared. Unfortunately there’s no functional means to get in contact with this surely lovely tax office in Pantin, impossible to call and still no response to an email request to fix the situation from over a week ago. So hello welcome from chaos land where you should never even think about creating a company, even a simple one like mine. Apparently there’s not much I can do, other than wait. I did manage to schedule a phone meeting after days of waiting, and even if it got postponed by a couple of days I had a human on the line, who unfortunately could only explain what happened but had no authority to look into the real issue. I did learn that I got a letter, claiming those twelve thousand plus euros including the fine, to my old postal address… which I failed to change myself despite trying for over two years, and counting (now with true and legit Frenchmanwoman Mathilde, who has the necessary authority to sign documents online, we still keep hitting other walls for now over six months). To be continued.