Unibrow

A friend dropped the word “remunerative” into an email today, and after looking up its definition in the dictionary, I thought that it’d make an appearance in today’s, sniff sniff, final blog entry. Webster’s defines remunerative as “Yielding suitable recompense; profitable.”, and I think it makes a good adjective to describe our trip. Of course, Sherry and I spent a good amount of money on the trip, but the journey was profitable to us in many other ways. We had so many experiences, memories, it’d be just as hard to summarize the trip here, as it was for us to document via this blog as we went along. For example, after showing off a fuller set of photos to some of her relatives here, Sherry heard comments like, “we didn’t hear about that on the blog”, ... read more

Well, I'm still not back home, so you get another entry! So, I was just sitting in my hotel room wondering how the bathroom fan turns itself on and off. Even after some ten days here, I don’t know. Is it on a timer, based on when you turn the light on/off? Have the Swiss perfected a stench detector? Perhaps there’s a humidistat? Regardless, I feel less than comfortable not being in complete control of this device. On the topic of comfortable, I had a conversation with my friend Mats the other night. He has recently moved back to Zürich after spending a few years in the US. We got to talking about how it’d be great if you could pick the best parts of a place/culture to create the ideal place for you. So, this ... read more

First, a few interesting tidbits of current events, culled from the English language supplement of El Pais, part of the International Herald Tribune that I picked up this morning in Madrid at the airport. Did you know that Diego Maradona recently interviewed Fidel Castro for a broadcast on Argentine TV, and that this former soccer star (apparently recovering nicely from stomach stapling surgery) plans to lead an anti-Bush demonstration in Argentina during the upcoming summit? Apparently he's organizing a protest train from Buenos Aires to the sight of the summit. We live in a crazy world. The Spanish royal family has a new member, Leonor, daughter of Felipe and Leitzia. Felipe is the prince and current heir. There have been calls for him to move to change Spains rule of succession, which apparently favors a male ... read more

Isn´t their something to be said for a man that picks friends that are more cultured than him? Or maybe it says something about his friends? Anyway, thank you Rawley and Brian both for informing me and an our audience about this 2nd Renoir. The trip is coming to a close. We´re in Madrid, and frankly, we´re tired of seeing the sights. Today we had a nice train ride, tasted a very, well, sh·tty meal at the train station, we found an affordable hotel, we walked around and shopped, and we´re checking internet. Nothing complicated, and we expect more of the same tomorrow. We did look at some of our Alhambra photos yesterday at Christy and Dan´s (and Colin´s), and they look great! Unfortunately, currently the only thing that I can figure out how to do ... read more

It´s been awhile since an update. We are coming down to the last few days of our trip. I´ll try and fill you in on what has transpired. Leaving Paris this past Saturday morning -- thanks very, very much to my friend Jeff there for putting us up, and putting up with us, for 4 nights. Sorry about breaking your sleeper sofa. Long story... -- we traveled to Switzerland by train to visit with Novit and Bianca. They live in a small village just outside Bern and it was really lovely. Sherry and I ate a nice meal of 'game' in the local restaurant, or as they call it, 'wild'. Sherry partook in all of the tasty sides that are typical of autumn fare, as did I, plus of course some delicious venison, which could have ... read more

Now, I woudn't want you to think that we're jet setters or anything, but last night The White Stripes rocked Paris, and we were there... We found out about the show online and purchased our tickets via the internet using something akin to French Ticketmaster, without the extra charges! ; ) Anyway, we arrived yesterday evening in Paris and with a bit of detective work, helped by good 'net research ahead of time, we a) found our hotel, b) found the ticket office branch conveniently located on same block of our hotel, c) found the ticketmaster-like desk at the music-books-electronics store, d) picked up our prepaid tickets using combination of credit card/passport/secret confirmation code, e) found our way to the venue 'Le Zenith', f) found a seat (general admission for all 6,000 of us), and g) ... read more

So, we received a few comments from readers disappointed about the content of the blog. Apparently you wanted to read about this, and we posted something about that. You expected yin, and we gave you yang. Well, all I have to say about that is phooey on you! Just kidding of course, but in all seriousness (not that you can see me), but writing this blog is well, harder than it looks. I apologize, but sometimes I'll either purposefully or accidentally leave things hanging. For example, long-time readers are probably still expecting me to post a list of the contents of each of our bags. Well, that's probably not going to happen, though at the end Sherry and I thought it would be fun to look at our bags and figure out just how many things ... read more