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Hello time traveler. You've found the REALLY old stuff.
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have fun browsing!  Update 8/22/06
Andrew asked me to post and I really don't know what to say. He seems to have more than covered everything going on in our life, but I will try to elaborate. It's been wonderful moving into the house. Some would say that I'm a little obsessed with getting everything perfect, but I'm sort of short on friends here, so there you go. I'm doing what I can to stay busy. :-) I hope to have the house ready in record time and open for visitors...We just bought a second bedroom set just in case. Artie and Sherry will be the first to join us next weekend, so that will be fun. I hope that others will come this fall. I'm sure it will be lovely here. Oreo is SO happy, which makes our move and our home choice all the more rewarding. Oreo is like a child to us, so his happiness is very important. He's got plenty of sticks to eat and a new best friend next door, Niko. It's great. Ok, all for now! Interweb enabled. Boy am I thankful for hot water! We recently had the natural gas re-connected (your author neglected to make a simple phone call to transfer service), and now we have hot water for showers! In only a matter of days, we've been able to obtain electric current throughout the building, a stream of flammable gas, various appliances from Home Depot and several pieces of furniture -- all faster than you can say Citibank credit warning alert! That's two paragraphs packed with run-on sentences ending with exclamation points. Take it easy on me, North Carolina is 41st in the nation in literacy, I'm not sure where we stand on grammar. I would also argue the most commonly misspelled terms are "speed limit" and "New England." I don't know when the nesting phase will slow down, but I'm desparately looking forward to sleeping in this weekend before my parents visit next weekend. I know we just saw them. A funny short story: Laura called my parents the other day to say hello, and they were both getting matching haircuts at home, from their unisex barber -- who apparently makes house calls. They had to cut the call short because their dog Duke began to eat (their) hair off the floor.
Last week, on August 4th we embarked upon our very first trip to Europe, which is outlined below: 1) Charlotte, NC *flight delayed 2 hours That's 17 stops, 7 airports and 5 countries in 10 days. I wasn't exactly relaxed and ready for work this morning, but I jumped in head first with a cup of coffee in each hand. We were originally supposed to fly from Chicago to London Heathrow on British Airways, but they cancelled 3 consecutive flights and put us on Luftansa instead. Luftansa saved the day and took us to Nice via Frankfurt (in business class for free!), so we could get to Cannes on time and board our cruise ship, the Star Clipper:
The boat was pretty awesome, the biggest sail boat I have ever been on.
They even let me drive for a bit
Every night, we were served a five course meal -- with everything from fresh lobster tails to steak oscar, it makes me never want to cook for myself again. Although it's not too realistic to assume I can just float around the world in my own chartered clipper with a full wait staff, but I dare to dream. I'm not sure if I would allow anyone else on the boat. I would probably communicate with people via satellite phone from an electric wheel chair onboard my private, catered clipper. Here's the fam!
My favorite memory of the trip was snorkeling with my dad in an isolated beach off the southern coast of Bonifacio. Because I became lighted-headed and girlish after a short scuba lesson in the pool on the ship -- I was not able to 'scuba.' But that didn't stop me from snorkeling. I digress, it was a great chance to putter around in the Mediterranean and see anemones, rich plumes of seaweed, and gobies darting around schools of larger fish.
We got a kick out of seeing a pair of gobies just like the ones I had in my fish tank in Chicago. While this was happening, my uncle got stung in the face by a jelly fish and had to be shuttled back to the boat.
Usually before dinner each night we would watch the sun set. On one lucky night we spotted dolphins swimming in front of the boat:
I got this shot from laying flat on the nest in front of the bow, here is B*ll showing how this is done.
Here is B*ll enjoying his favorite euro-treat, a capuccino!
Our clipper ship took us all around the south of France and the east coast of Italy, here is a faraway shot I took from one of the ports:
The only two souveniers I was able to salvage were from Sorrento: a refridgerator magnet, and a small glass bottle in the shape of a cello which contains a delicious lemon liqour called Limoncello. Here I am with my uncle enjoying a shot after lunch.
I guess you could also say I smuggled back a taste for pistacchio ice-cream, which actually saved Laura's life after our tour through Pompeii.
Here is another shot from Pompeii -- I was amazed by how the plants and trees contributed to the "ancient" feeling. Forgive the author for the previous sentence, it was written and re-written too many times to be considered again. This entire paragraph is just filler before the next picture.
Already I feel that this post has way too many pictures, almost as many as the epic Christmas 2005 post. Anyway, here is a final picture from one of the ports (I think it was in Elba), and one of my favorites.
Man I am tired, it's 7:20 pm here in Charlotte, but my body is on London time, which makes it closer to half past 1 am. I'm trying to not go to bed too early to make this the only day I feel jet-lagged. Anyways, so do you want to know how we got home? Our problems started when a group of gentlemen were overheard planning to use passenger jets as flying bombs. I got to read all of the details in the UK tabloids on Saturday, before boarding one of the intended flying bombs -- on the same exact route to America from London! The flight from Nice to London went perfectly fine. When we got to London, we waited a couple hours for our gate to be revealed next to our flight number on the various computer screens around the terminal. After a while, it became apparent that none of the flights to America had gates. And then pretty soon the word "CANCELLED" lit up next to every American city on the board. Everyone rushed to the small information desk for British Airways -- who had conveniently changed their customer service policy inbetween the time the plot was uncovered, and my flight to Chicago. We were experts on this policy, since it helped us get to Europe in the first place when BA converted our tickets to Luftansa. When we asked then what we should do, we were told to vacate the airport through immigrations. Soon we found ourselves in a sea of over 1000 people, draped in blankets and being fed snacks from the metal carts that usually rumble up and down airplanes. It was surreal. "All the flights are cancelled tonight. You must rebook on the Internet or on a phone. All hotels are booked." Suddenly we latched onto the idea that we would take a train from underneath Heathrow to Paddington Station, catch a connection to Waterloo and board the Eurostar highspeed train to Paris. That plan was put to a halt when the delightfully frigid French woman working the counter told us that no trains were leaving on Saturday night. We later read that all Eurostar trips to Paris were booked in advance by even more people fleeing Heathrow. We exited the Waterloo station defeated, and made our way through 3 hotels before finding a smoking room on the 5th floor of a days in. No air-conditioning, and free ambulence sirens all night. The computer was broken at the hotel, so I ran to a local Internet Cafe, and bribed a man to stop downloading illegal movies and let me send out a beacon that we were OK, but with no flight reservations to leave Europe. I emailed my dad our booking reference number for British Airways, and he was able to get someone on the phone and re-book us on Virgin Atlantic airlines, through Gatwick Airport. That happened sometime around 2am London time, so I scribbled down the flight number and slept until 5am. Then we took a 45 pound (sterling) cab ride to Gatwick, and endured longer lines (called queues), and more tents outdoors to accommodate the huge masses of people. We fought through the crowds to pick up our tickets from BA. Then we went to Virgin Atlantic, who told us it was really a ticket for Continental. Then we got in line for Continental, and were informed that we did not have a reservation, but they could kindly put us on standby. From there, they tagged our bags with huge "STANDBY" signs, and we took our only carry on item, a ragged clear plastic bag with a stack of useless boarding passes on to security. Then we basically played the waiting game for our gate number to show up, and prayed to get on the standby flight to America. The Continental flight was scheduled to leave Gatwick, London for Newark New Jersey at 10:30 am. Eventually it left at 2pm and we were on it. I have never been happier to arrive in Newark in my entire life. We are truly lucky that we were only delayed 23 hours in England, and we might just be better for it!
Clark W. Griswold would have been proud -- and probably would have made it out of the whole thing with a much better tan! Here is a link to a video from the boat... good times! Looking for old stuff down here? Other places you can find traces of our Netizenship: Myspace | |||
Update 8/22/06
