The Aerie
Well here I am again, typing one-handed while bleeding from my left arm. I'm at the Red Cross again this morning, donating "clotting factor" cells. I've been donating regularly since 9/11, and moved from whole blood to apheresis pretty early on. See, the world is divided up into three kinds of people...
First there are people who don't donate at all. There are three reasons for not donating: you could have had one of several diseases, or lived too long in certain foreign countries, or you could be a heroin addict who has paid money for sex with a boy from Africa who has a dura matter brain covering.
Aside from those reasons, however, there is no reason not to be a blood donor.
Blood donors then are divided into two distinct groups - apheresis donors and whole blood donors.
Whole blood donors are heroic figures, of course. In the clinic they can be found sprawled on rickety cots, their blood collecting dark bags while they stare at the ceiling tiles, eventually staggering forth after a few minutes pale and dazed. These are the noble yeomen of blood donation.
The final category of people, a small, dare I say 'elite' group, are we the Apheresis donors. Where whole blood donors are in and out of the clinic in a few minutes, we Apheresis donors stay for hours at a time. Our blood is removed, spun in a centrifuge to separate out the precious, precious clotting cells, and then the mundane red cells are returned. And where whole blood donors receive only one needle, apheresis donors are offered two, one in each arm.
Truly we are an exceptional class of people.
For providing this service we are treated like royalty: like royalty we recline in mighty thrones of naugahide and wood, draped in luxurious blankets and heating pads; we are brought high-calcium sweets at the merest request; abundant entertainments are provided to us; and since our arms are immobilized, a staff of trained college professionals, people with advanced degrees, will if asked scratch our noses for us, or any other bit we request.
So, yes, there are three kinds of people. The Exalted, the High, the Apheresis donors... The Heroes, the Foot Soldiers, the Whole Blood Donors... And those whose health or location prevent them from being able to donate..
What kind of person are you?
One of the few channels that was at least partly in English when we were in Germany was MTV, so I found myself occasionally watching the German music videos interspersed with the American ones.
One of those that caught my attention was a music video that featured a weird looking guy in a suit and fedora singing a kind of Motown/Rap fusion while the house he and his band were in was torn down around them. Unfortunately I had no way to locate this music video since it was in German and I hadn't noted the singer or title of the song.
However a little time spent browsing through the German Yahoo Music Video site unearthed the video, and a subsequent Google search - now that I had the name - yielded the following YouTube file, which I think is my first YouTube embed... Anyway it's after the jump... enjoy!
A busy couple of days! Unfortunately, theyhave precluded my getting any homework or housework accomplished...
Saturday was my wife's birthday. Since every evening last week was busy (a list? Monday: meeting; Tuesday: writing group; Wednesday: class; Thursday: Phil's) Friday was my first chance to take the kids birthday shopping. After dinner grabbed at a variety of fast-food joints, and a quick round of back-to-school shoe-shopping for the kids, we deposited Mom at the bookstore to wait for us and set about the shops.
My youngest was quick, he found his gift for mom in the bookstore, so we left him with her as well. Then we headed off to the pet store.
Yeah, the pet store. My wife has wanted a pet for years. After a variety of rodents she wanted to graduate up to a cat. Myposition of course has always been that we ahve three pets, and as soon as they graduate from high school I'll get a dog.
But her idea has always been that upon our return from Germany she would start looking into getting a cat, and I haven't been married seventeen years without learning not to fight losing battles. So when we went shopping for cat supplies, among other gifts.
The next morning, Saturday, we had to determine whether or not we were going to the Renaissance Festival or if we were going to wait until tomorrow. The weather was gray and cold and not very inviting, but the forecasters suggested that Sunday would only be a little better. I was all for going, especially when I saw the radar: bands of rain north of the cities, but south where the RenFest is located, no rain.
However my wife decided not to go, and as it turned out a good thing. First, at about 3:00 in the afternoon, with the rain still north of the cities, a patch of rain bloomed spontaneously right over the RenFest. Second, Sunday turned out to be sunny and clear, a gorgeous day.
Meanwhile with the RenFest postponed, I suggested to my wife that we go to breakfast. Little did she know that I had other plans! After breakfast, instead of driving home, I drove to the Humane Society, where we picked up a kitten. The birthday girl was delighted.
What with taking the kitten home and introducing it to the family etc., it was about 3:00 o'clock before I had a moment... and shortly thereafter I found myself on Kid Duty, making sure they got their homework and piano and stuff done. Then it was time for me to cook dinner. And after dinner I went out to get the Birthday Pie - French Silk - from Baker's Square. Along with pie, my wife wanted to try out Speed Scrabble, and before I knew it the time had come for sleep.
Sunday being the RenFest, the day began with the departure. At RenFest we met some friends and spent the day strolling pleasantly around with them. My daughter bought some earrings, and my youngest son went bouncing on the bounce-o-thingamajigger they have there.
After the RenFest I stopped by our friends' house to help with a weird e-mail problem they were experiencing. I was more than happy to do it, but by the time I got home it was almost 9:00.
So it's Sunday night, and I'm heading off to bed - not a household chore nor homework accomplished. Sigh.
Hopefully I can get something done tomorrow - at least we don't have any plans for the evening.
yet.
Well that was fun. Yesterday I worked from home. I was going to head in, but I checked my e-mail just before leaving and my only meeting had been canceled only moments earlier. So I figured the heck with it, I change jobs next week anyway, and worked from home.
But I took advantage of my work-from-home status to run an amazing number of errands between 10 and 11. Drove to the mall, bought myself a windbreaker. I have an old "wind shirt" from a company I worked for five years ago but I was way tired of it. A "wind shirt" is a windbreaker without a zipper that you pull on over your head. Tiresome.
My new windbreaker is nice enough, with deep pockets, a hood, and a velcro flap over the seam to keep the wind out. It's a little longer than a jacket which offers better coverage, but makes it a little tight to sit down in, such as in a car. Hopefully I can learn to live with it, since it is otherwise very nice.
By the way, in case you were wondering, this ISN'T going to be one of the most fascinating blog posts ever.
Anyway I left the mall and drove over to the St. Paul campus of the U of MN. My homework for last night (yes: at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday I began to consider my homework for 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday. Go me) required me to look over the course catalog and make some selections, and while I hadn't yet visited the website, twelve years of attending and working at the U of M made me skeptical that the course catalog website would be very good. So I stopped at the St. Paul campus to pick up a catalog.
As it later turned out this was a good decision, because the St. Paul campus was the only place where there were any course catalogs remaining. Blithely unaware of my good fortune I grabbed one (they're free), and then noticed a poster regarding U of MN identification cards.
This reminded me that I needed such a card, and surprisingly enough there was a photo station nearby, and surprisingly enough they were due to open at 11:00. Thus wreathed in a cloud of serendipitous good fortune I made my way over to the photo station and got my card. Go me!
I then leaped back into my car and drove over to the leather repair and cleaning store near our house. I wanted to get my leather jacket repaired. I received this jacket as a hand-me-down from my brother in law - either he didn't like it, or he thought the lining was too worn out to wear. In any event I've worn it for three or four years, and now the lining is TRULY too worn out to wear. Putting the jacket on is somewhat like sticking your arm in a spiderwebby crawlspace trying not to become entangled in any of the dangling threads.
Now, I'd brought the jacket in before to this place, and to other places. All of them told me the same thing - replacing the lining would be prohibitively expensive. They flatly refused to repair the jacket.
But I'd shopped around, and any replacement jacket was going to be several hundred dollars. I stopped by one store that wanted a thousand dollars for a leather jacket! (I asked the salesman if for $1000 the jacket could stop bullets.) So this time I was determined. I marched in there all ready to argue - hey, I'm the guy with the money, I want this fixed!
"Hi, I'd like the lining replaced."
"No problem."
But! But! My cogent arguments! My insistence! My umbrage! I had been all ready to bawl someone out. I was left suffering from blue bawls. *rimshot*
Anyway I dropped off the coat and headed home, only about ninety minutes after I left, four annoying chores accomplished.
And I even managed to get my homework for class.
So I'm really enjoying the opportunity to work from home.
Ah, happiness. When i returned from the Big Trip, my job had changed. My boss, the woman who hired me, had moved to a different department, leaving me in the care of some other people who were perfectly nice, but who weren't my boss. At some point I was sure they were going to look at their ledger and note that I am a much more expensive consultant than most and let me go. And since my contract was due to expire in a month, that was when I figured it would happen.
Happily, my old boss called me from her new position and asked me to move over with her. This makes me very happy, because I like my boss and she knows what my skills are and how best to put me to use. That way I can actually earn my exorbitant salary and keep working, rather than being assigned to tasks best done by others, and getting canned.
On top of everything else my contract was renewed for six months, which makes me oh-so-happy-you-don't-know it. Really, altogether a lucky and wonderful development.
There wil lbe some changes, but even these may be good. I may end up being able to work from home some days, which would be great: I may end up having to drive to work some days, which would be OK but not great. But these changes, these inconveniences, are as nothing next to getting to work at a good rate of pay on stuff I like to do for someone I like to work for.
And to on top of it all not have to worry about my contract for another six months, well...
Hooray!
As mentioned, we had a wonderful time on our recent trip to Europe. A glance at my blog homepage "Features" bar will reveal that I have collected the photographs and links to the blog entries into a Germany 2006 album.
However, upon our return home we learned a surprising thing: nobody in town will exchange dollars for Euro coins. We checked with the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, the University of Minnesota travel office, the
airport currency exchange, and a number of local banks. The only place that would accept coins at all was U.S. Bank, and they wanted $15 to do so.
You can exchange paper Euros just fine, but nobody wants the coins. This is regrettable, since Euro coins come in eight denominations, beginning with the cent and two-cent piece, all the way up through the two-Euro piece, which is worth about two and a half or three dollars. We found ourselves in possession a little over thirty Euros in coins worth a around $40.
So if you're traveling FROM Europe, be warned: change those coins for paper money before getting on the plane!
Fortunately an e-mail to our church mailing list elicited a number of future travelers who wanted to have some change on hand when arriving in the Amsterdam airport (always a good idea), and I was able to unload the coins by giving a generous 1:1 exchange rate.
Now I know a lot of people think that the U.S. penny is a worthless coin that ought ot be scrapped, but these people haven't encountered the Euro 2-cent coin. Given the existence of the 5 cent and 1 cent coins, the 2 cent Euro coin is my candidate for Most Useless Coin in current use. Exactly what benefit is to be had from a 2 cent coin? Let's see: if I have once cent, I have a penny. Two cents, okay, a twopenny coin. Three cents? Well, I either have three pennies, or a 2 and a 1. Four cents? Either two, three or four coins. Five cents? A nickel.
Now, if I don't have a twopenny coin option, I end up with either one, two, three, or four pennies, then a nickel.
The existence of the twopenny coin reduces the risk of carrying four worthless coins by half, and the risk of carrying three worthless coins by about a third. That's about it. On the other hand, the risk of having a pocketful of worthless coins - to wit, twopenny coins - goes up about 1000%.
The Euro penny is itself a stupid thing, because it is so tiny as to be almost unusable, being only 16 mm across. I have perfectly capable fingers, and yet getting ahold of a Euro penny coin is about as easy as picking up a tiny piece of ice off a tile floor. And woe to the nailbiter, for the penny shall remain on your floor forever.
In keeping with this theme of uselessness, the Euro has a 20-cent denomination but not a 25 cent denomination. Again, largely useless. Everybody needs a 1, and everybody needs a 50-cent piece, but in between, ya gotta have a quarter. Why? Because otherwise you need three coins - two 20's and a 10, to make up a half Euro. And what exactly is the point of that?
Now, I'm not saying we're any too brilliant in the U.S. I think our Quarter is the most useful coin we've got, and beyond that they're all crap. Quarters I collect to use in parking meters, every other coin goes into the peanut-butter jar until it's full, and I take it to the bank to exchange for about $14 in actual money.
We HAVE half-dollar pieces, but good luck finding one.
And of course there is a little-known Constitutional Amendment that insists that only certified morons are permitted to design our various one-dollar-coin incarnations. That's why, try as we might to come out with a dollar coin, they always turn out to be about the same size and weight as the Quarter. The little-known Moron Design Amendment.
No, they may be coming out with new dollar coins and maybe even a two-dollar coin, but I think such efforts are doomed. Everyplace you go takes plastic anyway, and no doubt we'll soon see gumball machines that have little card-swipes on the side. The advantage to such systems is that not only do you not need to carry cash, but the government can track your every move that involves money, so really everybody wins. Except you of course.
I think the idea makes cents.
So I'm at work here, and I'm trying to look up a form on the internal network. I locate a FAQ, and it says
Where do I find the ISIM Request Center form?
It is located under the “Service Center” tab on insideABC. On the Request Center Home page, search for ISIM or CMN and the link to this form will appear.
I'm currently logged in to "insideABC", the corporate intranet, so I look up at the top of the page where all the tabs are. None of them read "Service Center."
I cogitate for a while, and then on a whim I click the "insideABC" logo on the top of the page. It's a small logo, with no border to indicate it might be an active link, but as with so many such links brings me back to the top of the web hierarchy... and I see the "Service Center" tab and click it.
I search on the page for a while and can't find what I'm looking for, so I sent an e-mail to the page owner saying "Why not just put a link in the FAQ page to take me where I want to go?"
A few minutes later I get an e-mail back. "That's a good idea. Requests for changes to the FAQ can be filed through the CMN process form. To reach it, click on the Service Center tab from the insideABC page, then search for the "CMN" text link. Click that link and look for the "Change request form link"...
I wrote back and said "Or... you could e-mail me a link to that form. Which was my point in the first place."
So far, no reply.
Ah, Friday, wonderful, wonderful Friday! Who could ask for more out of life than to work 71.4285% of it, and then have 28.5714% left over in which to work around the house?
Friday's are 'casual day' at my present employer, which means that I wear jeans and sneakers to work - again, such freedom! I'm sure slavery would never have ended in the South if Casual Friday's had been instituted...
Oookay, so two weeks after a five week vacation, I'm comparing employment to slavery. I guess the vacation is really over!
Yesterday was gaming at Professor Barker's - it actually went pretty well, had a good time, although Steve was a mysterious no-show. Steve is usually very reliable to either appear or call.
Today I have to run over to my accountant's and sign some tax papers. I am distressed because my accountant has been showing increasing signs of Not-Doing-A-Very-Good-Jobism. Failing to have me sign the tax forms back in July is the latest issue. Prior to that she failed to file a State tax form for me on time (which is an issue that has not yet been resolved), and last winter she failed to charge me for my annual tax return.
Yeah, that last one is a poser. I've offered to pay her, but she never sent me a bill. So... do you switch to another accountant because your current one isn't charging you enough? Nooo... in fact the amount she didn't charge me is enough to cover a significant amount of tax penalties. But the fact that my accountant is disorganized, that does make me nervous.
But then, my PRIOR accountant, she was organized alright - and at the end of the year I had a $12,000 tax debt. So... I dunno. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" is hard to apply in this case.
Meanwhile at work, all sorts of nonsense has erupted today, making it not-such-a-fun-Friday. A colleague for the past year, a fellow who offered to teack me racquetball, has been diagnosed with non-metastacized lung cancer. Cancer again: have I mentioned how much I loathe cancer? Well I do.
Anyway, he has just moved over to a new department with my former boss, and they have been talking about trying to get me over there with them. This is tricky, since as a contractor I "belong" to my boss's former boss, not to my former boss herself. So my former boss would need her former boss to agree to transfer me. Or I would have to let my contract lapse in October and then start anew. There's a lot of politics to this nonsense of course - my former boss's boss, well, HIS boss is one of those purely-political middle managers who see the world only in terms of how increased headcount equals a promotion. This lady wants to grow the department beneath her in order that she can then declare herself a director rather than a manager. So losing people, even contractors like me, runs counter to her goals.
In other words, the usual office nonsense. Still, it's nice being fought over! I feel like a Southern belle watching a pistol duel. I'll refrain from fluttering my eyelashes.
As for this weekend we don't have a lot planned, so I think I will be trying to get some Dad and Kid Days accomplished. Since the Renaissance Festival is underway, maybe we'll go there, who knows.
Anyway, I'd better head over to my accountant's and sign those papers...
Well this is cool. I totally rock.
Okay, I'm not THAT good, but I must admit, I am a little good.
Because what I did was, I hacked LJCrosspost.pl and LJCrosspost.pm to work with Blurty, since Blurty is apparently using the same software as Live Journal.
So now, when I post on my own blog, the posts are automagically echoed to both my Live Journal Account, and over onto Blurty account.
It wasn't all THAT difficult - I just had to go through and create duplicate files, blurtyxpost.pl and blurtyxpost.pm, and then rename the ljcrosspost subroutines to blurtyxpost subroutines.
But it's still cool.
So it's back to the usual nonsense in life. I have a class, it has homework... so I'm waiting til the last minute to do it. Of course. That means that any other stuff I might want to do -like arrange the Germany album - gets postponed until tomorrow, when something else will inevitably come up to postpone it again.
Welcome back to normal!
Yesterday was odd, but fun. Woke up early for some reason (still jet lag? hard to believe, but I suppose) and used the time to put together a gag gift for afriend. I thought (mistakenly) that he'd passed his Project Management Professional or PMP test over the summer, so I put together a "Pimpology Graduate" gift, complete with a big garish hat.
Since I had that in a big box, I couldn't bike to work, so I caught the light rail, then turned around and rode the rail down to the meeting in Bloomington where he was providing refreshments. Gave him the hat, had a good laugh, then rode the rail back up to work.
I finished up at work and then took the 16 bus to the U of MN, with no clear plan on how to get back from the U to my home (there are no direct buses). But there was an open house going on for the college program that I've joined, so I figured I'd stop by and see what was up.
I was surprised at what a big deal it was! Held in the abominable Weissman Museum, there was a fellow playing the grand piano, and a catered hors d'ouvres spread, and a speaker. I met my advisor and chattted with a few current and former program students, and then hung around for the speaker. He was talking about creativitiy and time management, and his brief presentation of his simple approach did make a lot of sense.
Basically his approach is to front-load your brain with a project right at the beginning, so that for the rest of the week you're subconsciouly processing it, and searching your environment for solutions. Rather than procrastinating, wasting the week, and then scrambling at the end to finish a project. A good idea, and worth trying out... once I have time, of course!
During the presentation my wife called, and she was at sixes and sevens over what to do about dinner, so I said yeah let's get something out (not that we can afford it), and she picked me up at the museum after the presentation. Then we went to the campus dive, the Big Ten Bar in the obsoletely-named Stadium Village area. I used to study and eat subs at the Big Ten in the days before any of the staff in the place were born. The subs are still great.
Finally we staggered home at, like, 8:00 p.m. or so. I was too tuckered to get my homework done, so I'm doing it now.
So a weird, inside-out kind of day yesterday. Today was nice though. The twins' high school has a "late start" day (10:00 a.m.), so the spouse and I went off to the Birchwood Cafe for breakfast together, then I biked into work only a little late. From here I'll bike to class at 5:00, then home at 7:30.
Well that was my screed. I sat yesterday and watched the CBS documentary on the firefighters, including the updates as to what has come to pass for many of those featured since the original documentary aired in 2002. And I saw the footage again of that day five years ago.
In between I inevitably saw snippets of the ABC "docuganda", and the airing of these lies has to finally put to rest the accusation of a "liberal media." This all got my blood boiling.
This morning after the kids left for school I found myself home alone, at about 7:40 a.m., so I tuned into CNN's real-time replay of their coverage of 9/11. How amazing, to sit there in real time knowing that in five minutes, in three minutes, something was going to happen to make the world change. At least for me.
The coverage was so naïve, so stupid. I tuned in when the anchor was smiling, and laughing at some comment, just as they cut to break. I didn't catch when news was interrupted for word of the first crash - the feed kept sputtering in and out of existence. But there it was, the giant, slanted, airplane-sized gash in the first tower.
The anchor at this point became a man in severe denial, and a raging example of why good-looking idiots should not be in the anchor chair. "Is the plane still in the building?" he insisted on asking, as if he needed to see the nose sticking out one side, the tail out the other, and the wingtips protruding out the sides. And for the intervening 15 minutes, everyone kept trying to convince themselves that this was an accident. "Do planes often fly low over Manhattan?" he asked, and "Can you hear sirens, are authorities on their way?"
Then it happened. Ironically, my feed froze briefly with the image of the second jet poised about three jet-lengths away from the second tower. Then the feed resumed, and flame belched from the far side of the image.
At the time the anchor was talking to some eyewitness to the first impact, and this fellow did not quite see the second impact. The anchor was apparently not watching a live video feed either. So the fellow on the cell phone kept saying "I dunno, everyone's panicking," while the anchor kept repeating "There's been another explosion, the fuselage of the (first and only as far as he knew then) plane must have exploded!" He had no idea that a second plane had hit the other tower.
But I was watching at that time. I saw the second plane. I knew immediately and the world shifted right out from under my feet. One plane, that's an anomaly. That's a lone madman. Two planes? Two planes within minutes, hitting each tower? That's several orders of magnitude worse. That's war.
The first time that happened, I let loose an expletive that scared the kids more than the explosion.
By today, I had become numb. I saw the second plane hit, and all I thought about were the people who had died, and the lies and disappointments that have followed.
Devoted readers of this blog might remember my entry from September 8th, 2002, when I told the story of finding the "Missing" poster for Dr. Sneha Philip - who was not, as it turned, lost on September 11th, buit on September 10th.
In reviewing the events of 9/11 today, I came across a careful review of her case by Mark Fass of the New York Law Journal. It adds, rather than detracts, from the ambiguity of the disappearance of Dr. Sneha Philip, including as it does accusations of alcoholism and marital problems.
Oddly, I found it comforting. Because these problems in her life open up the possibility that she fled, that she disappeared, rather than that she died. A woman with a perfect life has no reason to flee: a woman with problems may have decided on September 10th to catch a bus out of town and leave her life behind. If she had, her disappearance would have been made all the more clean by the tragic coincidence of 9/11.
Do I believe that's what happened? I can't really make myself do so. But I can imagine it happening. I can imagine her living somewhere else, a new life, leaving behind a grieving family but at least still being alive. Being capable at any moment of changing her mind, of calling her mother, of writing a note to say "I'm okay," even if she never goes home.
That would he heartless. It would be selfish. But at least, in that circumstance, she would still be alive.
It has been five years. What has been accomplished?
The World Trade Center Site is still a hole in the ground.
The firefighters and workers who labored on the ruins are sick, but they aren't being treated.
Anne Coulter has labelled the windows of the 9/11 victims as "witches." Yet she is still asked to appear on television programs.
Osama binLaden is both still alive, and still free.
The record national surplus has become a record national debt.
We've lost an entire city.
We've lost an entire planet.
We've lost our soul.
We have lost so much. What have we gained?
Are we safer?
Is the world a better place?
Does the "War on Terror" show any sign of ever ending?
What would the end of that war look like? How could it manifest itself?
Tonight two programs aired: on CBS, a documentary about the firefighters on 9/11. On ABC, a "docudrama" about the events preceding 9/11.
The CBS program was simple, and it was heartbreaking. It was true.
The ABC program was dramatic, and it was a thorny crown of lies on the brows of every person who died that awful day.
On the Fifth Anniversary of 9/11, ABC decided to honor the occasion by rewriting history to suit the Bush Administration.
CBS simply aired the truth.
And the truth is, five years after 9/11 there's something terribly wrong with this nation.
For nothing has been accomplished. Nothing has been gained. We are not safer. We are not freer. We are not a better people today than on 9/10/2001.
We have allowed ourselves to be seduced by lies and silenced by fear. We have allowed evil men to seize and exercise power in our names. We have allowed a fool to act as President, and a thug to rule from the Vice President's chair.
And we've done it. We've let this country go to pot. We've jumped in the handbasket for the trip to Hell.
We've made this mess - the Bush Administration has merely wallowed in it.
But it's 9/11. November is coming. And it's time to clean up our mess.
Here's your agenda.
TO DO
November: Vote
January: Impeach
And start taking this country back from the thugs and idiots. Start making this country something great and honorable again.
Well, what a nice surprise! I returned home from work today a tad early, and caught my wife setting off to Target. This would be a completely non-notable event, except that she acted so abashed and surprised.
Something was up.
I feigned ignorance (not a difficult task since I had no idea what she was up to) and when she returned home we all had a nice family dinner.
Afterwards as I was starting to doze off in my armchair in the living room, she told the kids to "get your stuff." The next thing I know they were singing "Happy Birthday" and giving me presents! This was very kind, especially considering that my birthday was almost a month ago.
Now, through no fault of anybody's, my actual birthday was, at least in my wife's view, less than optimal. I didn't really have any problem with it: after all, I spent it with my family in Germany.
Granted, most of that day was spent driving from Garmisch-Partenkirchen back to Neumarkt. And, granted, the majority of that trip was spent in stop-and-go traffic on the autobahn, riding the clutch in first gear from the southern edge of Munich all the way to the town of Pfaffenhoffen nearly 40 miles to the north. Yes, that's right: I drove 40 miles in first gear in a stick-shift minivan on my birthday.
So, according to my wife, not an ideal one.
There was that stretch where we couldn't find a bathroom. Then we finally found a blue [P] parking sign and pulled off there, bladders straining, only to discover that while there was a large parking lot for weary drivers to rest, there was not so much as a porta-potty in the place. I ended up finding a clump of bushes and picking up a nasty nettle sting - on my hand, fortunately.
Being one of those pull-off and pull-back-on parking areas, we attended to these matters and merged onto the freeway at the other end at almost the same point in the traffic. That's how slow the autobahn was moving.
So, okay, my birthday hadn't been ideal. Still, I had really not felt badly about it. I was in Europe for the whole bloody month of August, I should complain because I spent my birthday in first gear? Not hardly!
Regardless, my family felt badly that my birthday had included 40 miles of stop and go traffic, nettle stings, and being pushed around by old German women in gas stations, and so tonight they gave me presents.
It was very nice, and my presents were very good. My spouse gave me a "hot stone massage" coupon for the local spa where I'd sent her for Mother's Day. Or our anniversary. One or the other. And I got a bar of Dove dark chocolate. My son got me a copy of "Blade Runner" on DVD, which made me very excited because he hasn't seen it yet, so we can watch it together. And I got a box of Raisinets, jumbo size! And my daughter gave me a copy of "V for Vendetta" on DVD, which includes a radical 3-D cover, AND the comic book version of the movie in small form, AND a disk of special features. And I got a bar of organic Dark Chocolate. All the chocolate was from my youngest.
So very, very nice. Very considerate and surprising.
We watched the extras on the "V" DVD - a little bit disappointing: the extras disk seems a tad small, and the main DVD lacks either commentary tracks (which I enjoy) or deleted scenes (likewise). Nevertheless, I'm pleased ot have it and glad my daughter got it for me. I just wonder if they're going to do that thing where they sell the DVDs, then in six months or a year come out with the "Extended DVD" or "Special Edition" and then sell them all over again, this time with outtakes and commentaries.
We shall see I guess.
And now, although it's only 10:00 p.m., I'm off to bed - a drowsy victim of the success of my own schedule. Tomorrow there is much to do.
Well it's three days into work again, and back to the routine. Meanwhile, I spent some downtime yesterday looking back at our trip to Germany.
The routine of life reasserts itself, but with some changes which I hope we can maintain. One thing that seems to be working out without much effort is that we're all getting to sleep by 10:00 p.m. now. While the kids' current 9:30 p.m. drowsiness is a jetlag legacy, I hope we can hold on to it. We've given up on watching the evening news, the TV - if it's on - goes off before 10:00 p.m. We start getting people geared up for bed by 9:30. And so far it seems to be working. This is letting us all wake up earlier, which means more time to get ready for school and more rest. By the end of last year a midnight bedtime was not uncommon, even on school nights.
It's the 10:00 o'clock news that does it. They lure you in with some hot story, and then they have you. From 10:00 until 10:12 you get news, but not the Hot Story. From 10:12 to 10:20 you get weather, with the Hot Story "next." From 10:20 to 10:32 they talk sports. And finally, for 20 seconds at 10:32, they tell you the hot story about the beagle that, ha ha! , actually sleeps on top of its doghouse!
By which time you've seen the list of guests on the Tonight Show AND Conan O'Brien, and, somehow they make Kiera Knightley's views on AIDS in Africa sound downright fascinating! And that Robin Williams, he's always a riot! Next thing it's 12:30 a.m. and the only way you could get enough sleep would be to blow off your morning meeting and show up for work at 10:00 a.m.
Meanwhile the kids have been bumping around, avoiding sleep, while you've been distracted by the TV. Or, worse, they've been watching it, and the eleven year old is asking "What does he mean when he says 'if your election lasts more than four hours, call your campaign manager!'"
But all that is put aside now, and I sure don't miss it. Today I got to work at 8:00, not that it matters, but for me that's pretty good seeing as I'm bicycling.
Meanwhile I continue to pine for the Vacation that Was. I guess post-vacation nostalgia is normal, but yesterday I found myself using Google Maps to locate the various places we had been on our journey. "Let it go!" I know, I know, the vacation is over, but I feel like a part of me is left behind there, still wandering the streets, just as a part of me still remains in Mykonos, where I travelled in 1986, or the streets of Madrid when I was 17.
I'm getting ready to pile all of my Germany pics together into a big album, so look for that change in the right-hand features column sometime soon. Meanwhile I guess I'd better get my brain back to America and get back to work...
Sigh... I think I'm really well suited for the life of an idle billionaire...
P.S. By the way, a site milestone: this is my 500th blog entry since I started doing this in January of 2000.
Well, it's over. I just finished processing the last few photographs from the trip, and our return home.
What a fantastic journey this was, and what an opportunity to share with the kids - and with you out there reading - this great adventure.
We were so lucky to have the chance to take this trip. And we were lucky to meet our German hosts, who contacted us about making this exchange. They turned out to be wonderful people.
We were lucky to meet so many wonderful people on our trip, from our hosts' neighbors (who were friendly, kind, and hospitable) to their families, who were all generous and friendly. So many people in so many places helped make this a marvelous trip.
Our final couple of days in Germany were relaxed. We had plenty of time to clean, so it never felt rushed. I took the boys into Nuremberg one last time in order that they could visit Ultra Comix one last time, and while they did so I strolled around Nuremburg and got some of the photos in the last set, including that crazy fountain.
With everything clean and ready, we waited on Thursday for one of our hosts' fathers, Joseph, to come drive us to the airport. It certainly was a treat not having to drive that way myself, I was able to grab a few snapshots of the countryside that I had been passing by. As Joseph drove us to the airport he told us how sixty years ago, when he was ten, his family left Czechoslovakia after the war and settled in Neumarkt. It was fascinating, as always, to speak with someone with memories of that tumultuous time.
He dropped us off at Nürnburg's small airport, and our journey home was uneventful, but LONG. It didn't help that we had a crying baby three rows in front of us, all the way back across the Atlantic. But we survived and when we arrived in Minneapolis, our host and his daughter were waiting to drive us home. Yay! Actually I drove home, but still, it was nice to not have to take the bus or train.
We stayed up late that night, fighting jet-lag and trying ot reset our internal clocks, and also chatting with our new friends from Germany. But eventually they headed upstairs where their family was staying this last night, and we settled in on the main floor - home, but not yet in our own beds. At least not the adults.
The next morning we celebrated the birthday of one of the girls in our friends' family, who turned eight. Poor kid had to travel on her birthday, AND lost seven hours off of it to boot Hopefully she'll have a proper party when she returns home.
And we have settled back into our home. Jet lag is still waking us up at 6 a.m., but with school and work starting Tuesday that's not such a bad thing.
But now it's September, and time to get back to work. Reality is staring us in the face just two days away.
In preparation for the resumption of normality, I went out yesterday and got my hair cut. I am no longer the incredibly shaggy-headed fool you see in these family pictures - now I am a neat, trim fool!
We have a party at our friend Debbie's house tonight, but otherwise we have no plans except to prepare for school and work on Tuesday. Continue to clean up, unpack, and prepare, that's about it.
The adventure is over. Reality waits just ahead. A year of No Big Plans, paying down bills, and just taking it easy.
Hopefully!