It doesn't fit in anywhere chronologically, so before going any further I wanted to mention Fodor's website at www.fodors.com. That site is full of information, and I consulted it about every destination on the trip. I found the forums very helpful, and usually received a reply within hours of posting. Check it out!
Next: BED!
Well, we finally got our cruise documents today! The TA sent them by FEDEX, and they got here Thursday while Ellen and I were at the Spanish AF Academy's graduation ceremony. Although the note said they'd try back Friday before 2, we waited until 4:30 and they never came. Today we were just about to call when they came by at 1:45.
Now we have the task of reading through the Shore Excursions book to decide what we'd like to do with the ship. Then we'll pass that list on to the Pinkards to see what they have to say. We went through the debate about with the ship or not with the ship on our first cruise, and there are definitely advantages both ways. I've been around the world with the Air Force, and I know that sometimes the tours are cheaper and more interesting when you take care of things yourself, and sometimes they suck. The big thing for me is that I have done a LOT of searching, planning, querying, wondering, etc, and I'm done. D-U-N, done, I tells ya, so anybody who wants to research the stops and arrange for something other than the Orient Lines excursions can feel free to do all of the legwork and then email me a price list. Otherwise I'm just going to read through the book and mark one or two choices at each stop, then tally up the $$$ and decide if we need to nix anything.
I was a little disappointed with the fact that OL doesn't have excursion info online like the big cruise companies. I'm not going to type in the 76 page book, but I will most likely give at least a synopsis of the tours we pick. If anyone's interested in the whole thing, leave a comment below and I'll think about scanning the book in.
Ellen just did something that knocked my socks off. She wanted to let me know how much she appreciated the work I did in researching and reserving the cruise, so she got me a present! I've been wanting to replace the FRS radios we lost in a move 2 years ago, and she's been quietly researching FRS and GMRS radios to find the best one. After consulting with my friends, she decided on the Motorola TalkAbout T7200. It's on the high end, pricewise, but the deal was sealed when she realized we should be able to talk back and forth while I'm at work. That would be REALLY COOL. For the cruise, we'll definitely be able to use them on the ship and in port to stay connected if we ever split up.
Thanks Ellen, you really are a great wife!
Before moving on I wanted to mention I site I found called EuropebyAir. With it US citizens can buy a $99 "flight pass" that will allow you to go between any two eligible cities. Although Ellen and I are US citizens and have a US mailing address, they wouldn't let us order a flight pass because we are physically out of the country. They did, however, let Joelle buy them for us in our names, and she'll be bringing them when she comes over.
The flight pass wasn't available for the day we need to leave Athens, but we did use it later on down the road.
NEXT: Athens-Venice
Only a few days into the journal, and already I'm tired of manually entering all of the HTML tags required for everything on the site. As professional as Movable Type looks, I'm somewhat surprised that it doesn't offer at least the standard bold, italic, underline, and hyperlink buttons that you see on most decent forums. In any event, there are numerous Windows clients to enter blog text that feature at least automatic tag insertion if not true WYSIWYG. I checked out w.bloggar on Ellen's WinXP box and was very impressed, but it immediately made me want to get one for my Linux machine.
After 2 days of searching, I finally came across Chronicle Lite, which offers the same basic functionality as w.bloggar. I don't know if it will make my updates more frequent or of better quality, but I feel better about it!
Well, I just posted a link to the site on Fodor's. Let's see if anyone actually comes over to read it. If you've come from Fodor's and found this useful, please leave a comment.
Thanks!
Well, we're getting down to the wire, and someone (can't say who because she reads this too) just realized that we would be heading to Barcelona in just 13 short days! That resulted in much shouting and jumping up and down. Now if she'd just finish making me lunch :-)
We've been looking through the shore excursions book trying to decide what to do. Despite my earlier somewhat jokey post, I really am participating in the planning process still. The big things we want to do are see the Colosseum, Pompeii, and the Acropolis. Everything else is gravy. We might just go ahead and do Rome ourselves, because the 1.5 hour bus ride with no tour from the boat to Rome costs $65 per person, while we could take a ~1 hour train for ~€10 pp. Much nicer. Ellen went through her old stuff from her college trip to Europe, and she has a brochure for one of those tourist busses that leaves from the train station and goes all around the city. Sounds like something we might try!
As for Pompeii, there doesn't seem to be a better way so we may go ahead and do the $45 ship 1/2-day tour and then spend the rest of the time wandering around Sorrento. We're also tempted to see the world-famous Blue Grotto in Capri, but I always remember what Dave Barry had to say about it, and that makes me have second thoughts. [Pause 20 minutes to search]. Well, apparently the aritcle isn't available online anywhere, but it was funny, trust me. My linking to it would probably constitute some sort of copyright violation anyway.
Other than those two, we're pretty open about what to do in port. I'm sure it will all work out in the end....
And, HEY! I heard that SOMEONE IS PLAYING WITH MY NEW PRESENTS! That hardly seems fair, does it? :-) You know I'm kidding, enjoy them while you can because after 24 Jul they will be all mine BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
I'm trying to implement a countdown timer so you can see how many days are left, but I seem to get a value of 3 days no matter how many actual days are left. I've already spent all weekend poring through my NFL Calendar's PHP code; I don't think I'm ready to start learning Perl as well :-) Hopefully when David gets back from his current excursion he can shed some light on the 3-day problem. In the meantime, there are roughly 11 days until we leave for Barcelona :-)
How's this?
...until we get to Barcelona (Hit refresh if you don't see anything above. Sometimes the image blanks out)
Well, Joelle and Ted should be airborne by now! They've got a much longer trip ahead of them. While we're sleeping tonight they'll be going through Atlanta and then Frankfurt before getting to Barcelona tomorrow morning.
We're taking advantage of our last opportunity to use free internet access (and in our pj's, no less) and researching everything we've meant to look at before. We decided to leave well enough alone with Athens. We already have a ton of info, we're planning on the 1/2 day tour with the cruise, and we have time to see things on our own Saturday.
For Venice, although we've both been there before separately, we decided to do the guided "Original Walking Tour" through Venice Walks and Tours. Their fees for a standard walking tour are €20 per person, with a €2 discount if we reserve through the web. Plus, if the tour is so good that we decide to do one of their other tours before leaving, the price will be only €15 per person. Not too bad.
Now, all we have left is packing and making sure that we have all of the info we've gathered on the places we'll be seeing soon. It's likely that there'll be no more updates until after we get back, but I'll back date them for clarity's sake. Let's get moving!
How is it that a Norwegian cruise ship with Bahama registry and a Filipino crew off the coast of Spain and France can call Budweiser a domestic beer?
On a sign in the women's rest room closest to gate B28: "Please do not throw the toilet paper in the toilet basin. Use the special wastebasket." According to Ellen, she could tell from the overflowing "special" wastebasket that people had been following the instructions. Yuk!
We made it back tonight, and I'm slowly getting the entries in. Once I put my mind to it they should be done fairly soon. For now, we need a little rest and some sleep in our own bed!
If you haven't read any of the entries, I'd recommend starting with the first one and reading through day-by-day. If you're just looking for the new stuff since the day we left, start here.
The blog is still active--if only in my mind. I do plan on putting in my Venice entries someday, but I've been busy helping Ellen work on her part. She decided to integrate her journal with the pictures we took from the cruise, and it looks great! This blog may eventually morph into a regular blog where I type something every few days, but for now it's only about our summer vacation.
If you haven't read any of the entries, I'd recommend starting with the first one and reading through day-by-day. If you're just looking for the new stuff since the day we left, start here.
Tell me this doesn't look nice!
C'mon, April! Get here fast!
Apparently BMW is reading my blog. I got this a few hours after posting pics of the new car:
"Your new BMW has been allocated factory production # XXXXXX and is scheduled to be produced in Week Number: 8 (Week of February 16, 2004)"
By the way, in case it helps the car get built faster: BMW BMW BMW!
You gotta love those saints! Not the ones in New Orleans, who don't do anything important or even win football games. I'm talking about saints like San Blas who give you a day off of work.
We intended to go to Alicante today with Fran and Teresa, 2 of our good friends here, but before we knew it the clock had already struck 2 without us calling them or them calling us, etc...We figured that by 14:00 they were already either in Alicante or they had canceled the excursion because it was too late to leave at that hour.
So, instead of shopping, we spent the day relaxing and working on various websites. We recently started working on the website for our church, Iglesia Bautista Murcia, and it has kept her pretty busy. As usual, I'm just here for technical support; she's the real web designer. Thankfully there are pre-defined CSS stylesheets for MovableType or my website might look like it did back before we got married when I had a nice wood background that e hated! :-)
In between helping e on the church site, I've been tweaking my own as I slowly convert from a travel blog to a regular "what's on my mind" one. On the right you should see my new blogroll as well as some new buttons for my RSS feed and MT.
With all of the questions I'm getting at work after last week's Superbowl, I almost feel negligent for not including a special Janet Jackson update section. Fortunately, Dave Barry's Blog will keep you, ahem, abreast of the situation.
As my way of jump-starting the transition from travel blog to just plain blog, I've decided to do the Friday Five for this week. Here goes:
1. Are you superstitious?
I'm not really superstitious...I like to act like I'm following superstitions sometimes such as leaving the brooms behind when we move or not filling out the aircraft forms with the final destination until we're actually on the ground, but I don't really believe my actions are changing anything. I guess it just seems to give me a little more character.
2. What extremes have you heard of someone going to in the name of superstition?
It's not very extreme, but my aunt's whole family firmly believes in both lifting your feet when driving over train tracks and scratching the ceiling when running a yellow light. They believe it to the point where they'll just about scream if the driver doesn't do it right.
3. Believer or not, what's your favorite superstition?
I would have to say "knock on wood," coupled with the ever-popular self-deprecating joke of knocking on my head.
4. Do you believe in luck? If yes, do you have a lucky number/article of clothing/ritual?
One of my favorite sayings is "I'd rather be lucky than good," and there are times when things have turned out right all by themselves, but I don't really believe there's some mystical lucky force helping me out, and I don't have any special luck things I wear or carry around.
5. Do you believe in astrology? Why or why not?
I believe in astrology because it exists :-) (If you don't get that, you're probably one of those people who says that the sun is hot today, when in fact it's quite toasty 24/7). Seriously, I think astrology is in general a scam industry that's about nothing more than money. I like to read the free horoscopes from time to time for a little chuckle, but I'm objective enough about them to see that almost any horoscope could be applied to anyone willing to believe.
So, there are my five, and with that my travel log fades into the past, although still available in the archives of this blog. Enjoy!
Update: I posted this entry about 12 hours ago and it completely destroyed my website. Should I be re-thinking the whole superstition thing here on Friday the 13th?
Blue Goo Ate My Mom might be a strange name, but I like the way it looks. I told e I was thinking about asking Firda to give me a quote on redesigning my site, but she got very offended because she's been working so hard to learn CSS lately. So, as time goes on we should be slowly changing tca to look more like I want it.
As my family members will no doubt confirm, I have a penchant for genealogy. I started working on my family tree several years ago when asked my mom questions and she wasn't able to remember her grandparents' full names, let alone anyone above them. After researching several programs and purchasing more than one of them, I decided to stick with Family Tree Maker by Brøderbund©. I kept it up for a few years, but after I sent a mailing to over 30 family members in 1998 and received a grand total of three responses, I decided to put the tree on the shelf. My last name is so common that the majority of internet resources weren't very helpful to me.
When I got married in 2000, my interest to check out the family tree came back to life. I sent several questionnaires to my wife's family--most of which were filled out and returned--and by 2001 I had hundreds of names dating back to the 1700's on her side of the family.
2001-2002 was a busy time for us with the attacks, the Spanish school, and then our move to Spain, but I picked up again in 2003 after receiving a lot of information from e's mom. Everything was going well with my 2000+ person tree until one night in April when the program suddenly crashed. I tried using the backup file, but it crashed in the same way. I frantically tried all of the online help suggestions before dragging out my old SyQuest drive to see what backups I might have there, but they were all from 2001.
That pretty much took the wind out of my sails until last night when I found 2 programs that got me interested again. The first was Gramps, a family tree program for Linux, and the second was The Master Genealogist, a Windows program. TMG was able to import my corrupted FTM file without any major errors reported, and at the end I had my 2000 names back! I then exported the data to a GEDCOM file that Gramps can read. The import to Gramps went just as smoothly, with 2089 names showing in my database. Time to get back to work!
A day late and a dollar short, but here goes:
When was the last time you...
1. ...went to the doctor?
August 2003 for my annual flight physical. I'm still arguing with the Spanish flight docs over that one because they aren't inclined to comply with NATO agreements and accept my US physical. They want me to do another flight physical with them just like last year, but this year the PTB have promised they'll go to international incident level to keep me from doing a second physical.
2. ...went to the dentist?
The same day as my flight physical. 33 years and no cavities, but the dentist says all those years of floridated water have made my teeth so brittle that I need to be careful with them. That put a serious damper on my life-long ice chewing habit!
3. ...filled your gas tank?
The last time the tank was filled was in December because out here we mainly buy gas with prepaid coupons in 10L increments. The coupons are part of the overall agreement between Spain and the US that allows us to avoid paying some taxes, so we get gas at 55 céntimos a liter instead of 75-85. The last time we put gas in the car was Monday. We seem to be using more and more of those little coupons lately now that we're going horseback riding 3 times a week at a little finca an hour away from our house.
4. ...got enough sleep?
Probably in 1970 the day before I was born. I'm told that was a relatively quiet evening, so I must have been saving up my strength to pop out the next day. Is there such a thing as enough sleep?
5. ...backed up your computer?
Before upgrading to Mandrake 9.2, I copied all of the important files and directories to a CD. This turned out to be a good move because a few days later I decided a fresh install would serve me better, and with the system already backed up I was able to start right away with the format and reinstall.
There's still a lot of work to do on the family tree, but after playing with it all day yesterday it looks better than before. Gramps will generate a rather basic-looking set of webpages. but instead of uploading 17.7MB to my server I'll let anyone who's interested take a look at the tree I posted on RootsWeb.
Update, 24 Feb: Move over bacon, there's something leaner! I keep telling e that I really like PHP apps, but I can't adequately explain why. One look at our new Family Tree Site and she needed no further explanation. Now that's cool!
Well, not that I'm surprised, but the Spaniards decided again that my flight physical was no good. They let me know Wednesday morning that I'm grounded until the situation is resolved, and today they said it will be resolved next Wednesday when I take another Spanish flight physical. Meanwhile my US superiors, who have had only 365 days to work on the problem, are scrambling to deal with this "last-minute" situation while at the same time telling me not to take a second physical.
My first reaction was anger: anger that the Spanish side isn't interested in complying with NATO agreements, and maybe more anger that the US side has been blowing me off for a year when I kept telling them to get something in writing or it would be a problem this year. I hate it when I get angry over something where I'm totally right and everyone acts like I was screaming and hollering. My Spanish isn't nearly good enough to accurately convey real anger, but I hate it that I come away embarrassed as if I were ranting and raving.
After I "cooled down" from my "outburst" which included about 3 whole sentences, the Argentinian exchange officer put everything into perspective for me. He's a very smooth operator who seems never to get angry. Anyway, his philosophy was: if they want to pay me to go to work every day and not fly from now until June, then that's their problem. All I need to do is bring some good books, my laptop and some DVD's, and I'm set. Of course, I'd much rather be flying with my student, but in the meantime I'll try to enjoy my days off.
Today I played around with the Knoppix Live CD on my laptop. I can't figure out why it comes configured to mount the existing hard drives as read only. I more or less understand how to mount and unmount drives, but I do that manually rarely enough that I always have to relearn the process the next time. I sure hope there's a good LUG wherever we move next; I need an expert to sit with me at the computer and tell me everything I'm doing wrong.
...me!
I have been trying to resolve my flight physical situation for a year, but everyone kept blowing me off and telling me it would fix itself or they would do something about it this February. On Friday night right before bed, I read an email from the Embassy that said since "there's not enough time to fix this" I should just cave in and go for a second flight physical. When I read that after having been ignored for a year, it made my blood boil. That really made me as mad as my friends thought I was last week.
I'm having a hard time explaining myself to my friends and family. They all keep saying, "What's the big deal? You're healthy, right?" Unfortunately they're missing the point entirely. The point is that I joined the military because we follow the rules. What I see here is a military officer (albeit a foreign one, but we're more alike than different) who knows the rules and blatantly chooses not to follow them. Then I see the incompetence of my own government's officials. I've already said that if their decision was to have me take 2 physicals a year, I would salute smartly and move on. That's not how it was, though. They told me that I would NOT take a 2nd physical and that they would fix everything, but instead of ever talking to the Spanish government they strung me along until it was too late to get anything done.
Life is not all fights and crises. Saturday we went to a friend's house for a great steak dinner before heading up to Murcia where we saw the Chinese Grand National Circus. That was amazing! I think my favorite part was when they had some rings setup about 5 feet in the air, and the performers would flip across the stage and then through the 5-foot high ring without touching it! We clapped so much that my hands were numb at the end. Definitely worth the €30 per person we paid for the Saturday show!
So far it looks like the weather is making my flight physical a moot point. We've had low ceilings for almost 2 straight weeks. The funny thing is that we're in the instrument phase, and it would be perfect weather if we had an instrument-rated aircraft or reliable NAVAIDs on the field. Instead, we've got to wait for VFR so that we can go fly simulated instruments!
Well, it's not definite, but it looks like our next home will be in Georgia. I'm slated to be an IP at the C-130H2 FTU.
We're pretty thrilled, although so far I can only find a website that acknowledges the existence of the schoolhouse but otherwise doesn't say anything specific. I'm a little worried that this will turn out to be an Active Duty advisor job to the Reserves, which will pretty much end my career, but I'll just keep hoping that it's the best place for me.
Spoken to me today by e, who is so obsessed with the baby idea that she ties everything to it:
"That's a milestone, baby, right after we started TTC you tried chicken salad!"
This came after I tried my first taste of chicken salad since the dark days of 1988, when 600 other people and I got sick at USAFA when some brainiac kitchen worker hosed down the lettuce with the trash hose instead of the one normally used for food. I wasn't really scarred for life, but on general principles I have not partaken of the foul concoction since. Until today. It MUST be a good sign for a possible upcoming baby!
Here's the Five for this week. Actual news from my life to follow later when I feel like typing more.
1. What was the last song you heard?
Rockafella Skank by Fatboy Slim.
2. What were the last two movies you saw?
Original Sin on DVD and The Last Samurai in the theater (in Spanish--we really want to see it in English someday).
3. What were the last three things you purchased?
Futurama Season 3 DVDs, a 128MB USB memory stick, and e's birthday presents (earrings, Oprah subscription, a book, and some romantic coupons).
4. What four things do you need to do this weekend?
I need to finish writing an article I started 2 weeks ago about a guy I met 2 months ago.
I need to write the first draft of my end-of-tour report for this assignment.
I need to move everything from the guest room back into the room where they tore up the walls to replace the pipes last week.
Most importantly, I need to see about sleeping later than 5:45, which seems to be my wakeup-without-an-alarm time lately.
5. Who are the last five people you talked to?
e
Ricardo Schmitt, the Argentinian exchange officer here
Rafa De Haro, Jefe de Operaciones and one of the guys I play IL-2 with online
Ernesto Mira, one of my best friends in the squadron
Kiko Calleja, a super nice guy who works in Relaciones Públicas when he's not flying
Rather than do the regular Friday Five, I thought I'd write about 5 things going on with me lately that have kept me away from the blog:
1. The new job
I'm one step closer to being ready to leave this GFC, thanks to the assignment RIP I just received. It means that I officially have the job at Dobbins ARB, GA, even though I still know very little about it. I've tried writing a few of my friends at Little Rock to see if they know anything about it, but so far I haven't heard anything. Getting the RIP means I also got about 40 pages of outprocessing checklists and paperwork--more than normal because the folks at Ramstein's MPF sent me their own checklist because they don't know I'm not stationed there.
2. The new car
Well, since I'm here writing I'm not out and about in the new ride. Last week when I sent a request for update to the dealer in Rota, he responded with a panicked message saying that I needed to pay for the car ASAP or they wouldn't deliver. I immediately called to see why they hadn't received the checks 3 weeks earlier, and he said. "Right, I remember getting your checks now. I forgot to enter that in the computer." You'd think that he'd be a little less cavalier about the amount of money required to buy an M3...anyway, he said that the car was already in Jerez and should have been ready by this week, but since I didn't get any calls or emails I suppose we'll have to wait a little longer. With Semana Santa coming up, it looks like I may not get the car until mid-April even though it's been in country since mid-March.
3. A new OS
Not brand new, but updated at least. I spent about a week of sporadic downloading getting the Powerpack version of Mandrake 10.0, and then I spent another week hemming and hawing about when I should install it. I finally bit the bullet Wednesday night, backed up my home directory to a CD, and did a fresh install of 10.0. It had some immediate problems, not the least of which was that some of the 5 CD's weren't burned properly, but I'm getting back in business slowly but surely. Today my big goals are to get the printserver working and to find out why the CD-burning programs don't see my IDE CD-burner. It worked great under 9.1 and 9.2, so I'm confident I'll be able to get it back under 10.0.
4. Turkey Day
In my squadron, we occasionally have some sort of lunch on Friday afternoon before going home for the day. Lunch is usually at 1500 here after work, but on Fridays we move it up to 1300. We've had Spanish rice, Argentinian barbecue, and Italian pasta among many others. I've been thinking for a long time about what I might cook for the squadron, but I never came up with anything that sounded good until just recently when some of the guys asked me about Thanksgiving. I decided to take my turn at cooking this week, and with a lot of help from e we had a Thanksgiving meal at work yesterday. I fried 2 turkeys in sunflower oil and made 3 pies (pumpkin, pecan, chocolate pudding). e made broccoli-cheese casserole, sweet potato casserole, green beans with potatoes, and stuffing. We also had our can of cranberries that spent last Turkey Day in the fridge, lonely and forgotten. On the big day I had lots of help from Ernesto, Antonio, and Fran, but I was very nervous about the turkeys since it was only my second time cooking one. I needn't have worried. The skin burned a little, but the insides were fantastic! The turkey was a big hit in the squadron, as were e's sweet potato casserole and the desserts. The other stuff was pretty much devoured as well, but I was able to bring e back some of each dessert. All-in-all we had a great time, and it was worth the week of preparations e and I had.
5. On the high horse
We had a week of hard work with the horses. I'm still not back on Lulu as she's had a sore leg. Supposedly she'll be back in business soon, but in the meantime I've been working my butt off with Bonnie, a horse that practically falls asleep in the middle of a ride. Tuesday e and I took turns riding her bareback, which was very different. It's not something I think I would enjoy for hours on end, but it was pretty cool. Thursday I did a short ride on Bonnie, and then switched to Sorpresa while e got on Bonnie. Sorpresa is a Spanish thoroughbred who has been trained to do two things: that "dance" you've seen Spanish horses do and run like the wind. To help with the latter, Cindy took me out on a lead rope for the first time in months. Unfortunately it didn't do much for the dancing part. Cindy's been training Sorpresa hard to try and break the old habits, but when the horse gets nervous (like with a new rider on it), it goes back to the old ways. So, while e had a leisurely ride on Bonnie, I spent the whole time guarding my face. Sorpresa is a fairly tall horse, and when she throws her head back like she was originally trained to do, it comes very close. One time I actually felt her mane on my nose, and if I hadn't reacted quickly I would have gotten a broken nose instead of just her hair in my face. After that I rode one handed with the other hand held about a foot in front of my face. Sorpresa got about 3 good knocks on the head before realizing not to come back so far. In the end Cindy had me let go of the reins to try and calm the horse down, but I spent the rest of the ride avoiding the reverse head butt.
Well, we're back from our little Spring Break trip to London! We were actually back last week, but we took the week off from everything besides resting up from having walked all over creation the week prior.
Our trip to London was great! We bought the London Pass for 3 days with travel and planned out our first 3 days there so that we'd get our money's worth.
The first day was "animal day." We started out at the London Aquarium and were disappointed to find that it was a smallish building built around 2 tanks. Walking through the building you're brought to these same 2 tanks from different heights and angles, almost as if they're trying to trick you. We finished up with the aquarium and it started to drizzle as we made our way to the nearest tube stop. By the time we got to the Baker Street stop, it was raining enough to pull out the umbrella. Naturally this day we had only one of the 2 we'd brought; we carried both the other days and never opened one again.
As we walked up Baker Street towards the London Zoo, we saw the Sherlock Holmes Museum. It purports to be at 221B, but you can see from the neighboring buildings that it's really in the 240's. Our guidebook said the museum wasn't worthwhile so we passed on by. We made our way through Regent's park, which would have been a terrific walk if it weren't so rainy out.
The London Zoo was average, especially since so many of the animals were hiding from the rain (like we should have done!). It started pouring a couple of times while we were walking through, but there were enough buildings that we were able to dash inside. After the Zoo, we made our way to the IMAX and watched a cheesy movie that was short on story and long on neat 3D computer effects.
Our second day was spent at the Queen's Gallery, the Royal Mews (we wanted extra credit from our riding instructor), and Kensington Palace. The highlight of the day for e was having afternoon tea at The Orangery, a building adjacent to Kensington that was originally for the Queen's parties.
We spent most of the third day at Windsor Castle. The London Pass not only included the admission, but the train ride down as well. We had to ride the tube to Paddington Station and then board a Thames Train for Windsor. The whole process took only an hour door-to-door, which was less than I expected.
Knowing that many of the attractions were going to be closed on Good Friday, we scheduled a Stonehenge tour that day. Unlike all of the other rainy and cloudy days in London, this day was perfect! We booked a small-coach tour with Astral Travels. We liked going with 16 people instead of 50, and our driver was pretty nice. Unfortunately the bus broke down at Stonehenge, so we wound up with the other Astral driver doing the same tour that day. He made two trips to get us from Stonehenge to lunch, and then we wound up taking a hastily chartered city bus to Salisbury Cathedral. We were dropped off at our hotel around 6 and headed for a Mongolian BBQ restaurant. It wasn't the best I've ever visited, but it was pretty good. After that we walked all the way back to the hotel at a very leisurely pace. We wound up crossing the Thames just to see the view, then we walked past the London Eye, crossed back over at Parliament, and continued the walk back.
Our last full day in London showed that we had reached our museum limit. We spent over 2 hours at the Imperial War Museum's Holocaust exhibit--much longer than planned--and then managed about 30 minutes at the Victoria and Albert museum. After that we went to the Science Museum, where we found that once again I had missed the very cool looking 3D Space movie shot at the International Space Station. I think we stayed a whole hour at that museum before heading to Leicester Square for a huge Garfunkel's banana split. We finished the day by watching Mona Lisa Smile and then doing last-minute souvenir shopping.
We made it back on Easter with no troubles and are slowly getting ready for our move back to the States. I can't believe it's so close!
Well, the day has finally arrived! We took delivery on our M3 this morning up in Murcia, and we've already put over 150 miles on it!
We picked up the car more or less on time (the dealer from Rota got lost but made it there eventually). The first stop was to the gas station next door because apparently in Europe cars don't generally come with a full tank of gas. My first fill up was €50.50--hopefully I'll be able to start using gas coupons with it soon!
We parked the Toyota near our church in Murcia and then just jumped on the autopista towards Alicante. We didn't really have any plans except to drive a while and then park with a decent view of the Mediterranean and eat the small lunch e packed for us. Before we knew it we'd already passed the Alicante exits and were on the toll road to Valencia. We decided to get off at the first exit which was Villajoyosa. We meandered towards the beaches and wound up parking right at the port. Instead of worrying about walking over to the beach, we went out on the big rocks by the port's big wall and had our lunch there. It was beautiful! It wasn't too long before I was itching to drive again, so we started heading back. Instead of jumping on the big highway, we took the coastal road to Alicante. We drove with the windows down and the music loud, just like you should at the beach. As we made our way away from the beach, we got stuck behind a big construction vehicle. I patiently waited until we got to a good passing zone, and then a car behind me pulled out like he was going to pass first. I cut in front of him and really gave it the gas--WOW! We took off to 100+ kph in no time!
The second funny thing happened in Alicante. At this one area there are often lots of transients who try the New York City trick of washing your window and asking for change. Well, as I came up to a turning lane, a group of guys who had given up on the stopped traffic saw my car and started pointing and running. I wagged my finger "no" at them and kept riding up the shoulder to the light. When I saw that they were still coming I checked traffic and ran the red light! e couldn't believe that I'd really run it (in fact, I could hardly believe it myself), but I didn't want those guys putting their hands all over my brand new car!
We got back to Murcia with no problems, and I dropped e off at our Toyota. She wanted to do some shopping, so she went off to Carrefour while I headed home. I was thinking about a "show-off" pass at the beach, but I'll wait til e can do it with me :-)
Of course I'm limited to 160kph (~100mph) the first 1200 miles, so some cars get past :-)
More pics on our home site at http://www.tedandellen.com/tedscar
I got this from my sis-in-law today and it made me laugh:
Apparently, one in five people in the world are Chinese. And there are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It's either my mom or my dad, or maybe my older brother Colin or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu. But I'm pretty sure it's Colin.
We're off to Lanzarote tomorrow in the Canary Islands. The weather isn't going to be that great, but hopefully it will be better than here. Fran's got a triathlon on Saturday, and he invited us to come watch him compete. We generally don't get vacation during the school year, but the PTB gave me the go-ahead.
This is just a friendly reminder to everyone that it's is one of those funny things we call a "contraction" (in big Dr. Evil quotes). It means it is, and in no way demonstrates the possessive. If you want to show possesion, please use its.
That is all.
Well, we got the big news this morning. And I mean BIG!
The doctor confirmed e's suspicions (and one weak test result) with a blood test. We're going to be parents early next year! The doc's first guess at a due date is 21 January, but we'll just have to see.
Wow. Even though we were trying, I think it's fair to say that I'm completely stunned.
Trying to think about what to say today, my thoughts are filled with the continuing stories of what happened not only in the Abu Ghraib prison but in other Iraq locations and in Afghanistan as well.
I'm not going to defend or deny; I hate when you have clear video evidence of a crime and the family members go on TV and say, "That's not my Johnnie! Nossir, he would never do anything like the video you're watching of him!" The sad fact is that the military has people in it who commit crimes.
What I will say is please take a breath and don't think that this small element represents all of us. I guarantee you that the vast majority of military members, some of whom were working close to if not in the abuse locations, are just as surprised and shocked and ashamed and disappointed as the average person. People around the world are using it as an excuse to say that all US citizens are evil. A lot of US citizens, failing to see the irony, are saying that they shouldn't be stereotyped but that these abuses mean that the whole military is immoral.
All that aside, this mistreatment raises some serious concerns. As an Academy grad and even more so as a C-130 pilot, I've spent most of my military career hearing about Vietnam. The one conclusion that always jumped out of those stories was that WE WOULD NEVER TREAT PRISONERS THAT WAY. Now it seems that we may have taken the first several steps down the road to being just as bad as the bad guys, and that doesn't sit well with me. We need to flush out everyone who thinks it's OK to mistreat POWs, even if it means firing a lot of otherwise "good" generals, CIA agents, and presidential staffers. We need to punish everyone responsible for the wrongdoing, not just sacrifice a few scapegoats, and then reclaim our place among the nations who do not, under any circumstances, abuse prisoners.
We just got the news that President Ronald Reagan passed away at the age of 93. I don't know anything about him that you won't find in a thousand other places, but I can say something about me: I always listed him as the #1 living person I'd like to meet on those endless questionnaires that you see. I will never have the chance to meet him in person, so I'll just say here what I would have if I'd been able. "Thank you, Mr. President, for everything you did for us. For our country, for our world. I grew up afraid that the world was about to end in a nuclear war, and your team changed that." Goodbye, we're sorry to see you go so soon.
I'm writing this at 9 am on the 4th of July with e's computer blaring patriotic music out of the speakers. I figured we needed some holiday spirit on this our last (for now) 4th of July outside of the country.
Yesterday was the first of our "last days," that is, the last Saturday that we'll be in Spain. We spent the morning and afternoon getting ready for the movers. e's already got several things sorted out for the 7 different categories we have: normal shipment, express shipment, carry with us on the plane, send back to Rota, give/sell to people here, and then my professional gear for the normal and express moves which is counted separately. I spent several hours vacuum sealing foods so that the movers would take them and there'd be a good chance that they'd be fresh in 3 months when we see them again.
[1-minute pause while I flail my arms like a conductor to the 1812 Overture--you gotta love that song!!!]
Anyhow, by now you're probably wondering about the title. Yesterday evening we finally went to see a bullfight. They set up a portable plaza de toros over in nearby San Pedro, and we went with Jay and Carmen. There were 6 bulls killed by 3 bullfighters. I had seen bullfighting before on TV, but never in person. There's no arguing that it's violent, but it's not overly gory. Even when they pith the bull after it falls or cut off its ear as the matador's prize, you can't see e