In Amsterdam

Here I am in Amsterdam. Wish I could put up a picture or two, but I didn't bring the cord. The internet is only free if you have a laptop - you have to buy access cards to use their computers. Since I had to email our friend in Paris, I had to buy a card - and I might as well use all of the 30 minutes I had to purchase, right? The trip over was fine...no problems there. But Royal Dutch Airlines definitely spoiled me last year - US Air just can't compare. Especially when it comes to food. We're about to head out to the Rembrandt Museum, and hopefully the line for the Anne Frank House won't be too bad - it's usually around the block, and I just don't want to wait that long when I could be doing other things. Have a good week!

Odds and Ends

Plans have changed yet again. (By the way, how are you feeling about The-Trip-That-Everyone-Except-My-Mother-Is-Tired-OF-Hearing-About? Tired of it yet?) ahem. We'll get into Amsterdam Saturday, and go to Paris on Monday to get there before the strike. There's enough stuff to do within walking distance of Friend's apartment that we can keep ourselves occupied while the Paris people do whatever it is they're going to do - or more realistically, not do - on Tuesday. My mother's two pieces of advice (I'm paraphrasing here): 1.) Please stay away from crowds that look like they're up to something. I do not want to see you on CNN; and 2.)Watch out for contruction crews. Ok, to get the last one, you have to know that I fell in Scotland on my honeymoon last year, on a curb that was under construction. I spent 7 out of 9 days on a gray cane, which came to me courtesy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. So I am basically killing time at this point, wanting it to be this time tomorrow. I've called my mom, talked with the sisters, packed almost everything. I'm waiting for the bank to open at 9 so I can go drain my paycheck out of it. There's tons of little things I should probably do, and will, once I can drag myself off of the computer. In news that surprisingly has nothing to do with The-Trip-That-Everyone-Except-My-Mother-Is-Tired-OF-Hearing-About, I am now officially a copy-editor for Siren Publishing. It's a freelance thing that I can do on my lunchbreaks and in the evenings...enough to pay for my coffee addiction and part of my love affair with the winery that opened up down the road. Many Kudos to sis for telling me about it. My husband has decided to torture me by putting The Three Stooges on TV and walking out of the room. I think this is some kind of a test - how long will I last with this on before I go crazy? It could be any second. I am sooooo not a Stooges fan. Google's Page Creator thing finally sent me an invitation last Monday. I've spent all of about twenty seconds on it making my page, but I'll probably play around with it when I get home. Feel free to check it out, but I warned you - it's pretty boring at the moment. And that's all I can think of to write about at the moment. I'm sure I'll have lots of fun things to write when I get home. I may even have a chance to make a quick post or two while I'm gone. That doesn't mean I will - I've found that wine severely limits one's ability to write coherant thoughts.

What would you do if you had $35,000

Would you donate it to charity?
From NPR's Blog:

March 23, 2006 · "99 red balloons, floating in the summer sky. Panic bells, it's red alert."

Yesmy friends, you too will have this song in your head the rest of theday. And if you're desperate, you can watch the video over and overagain on VH1 this weekend.

Apparently,some poor fool -- I mean, good-hearted soul -- gave $35,000 for Katrinarelief through a VH1 fundraiser. The gift entitled the donor to programa full hour of videos on the network. This guy decided on Nena's "99 Luftballons " again and again and again. No word on whether VH1 will be alternating the German and English versions or not.

I am in awe, and a bit frightened.

That's pretty cool that they let him do that. What would you choose if you could program an hour of videos?

Did Barry Manilow even make videos? Hmmm...

Wrapping things up

{stream of conciousness, "on"}

At work. On my fifth cup of coffee. Very little sleep last night - practice ran late, because I had to practice/teach Panis Angelicus with/to L. Much fun, very pretty - but that took 45 minutes after practice was over. My choir director told me he'd be out of town the day after I get back from my trip - which made our pianist look at me and say "you ARE going to be there on Sunday."  I think he wants to change around some of the music, so I guess I'd better look and see what we're supposed to be doing in the first place and then what we can do instead. I started working 7:30-4:30 this week, which means I have to be at work 30 minutes earlier than usualy. which is all so that I can go to the stupid gym after work.
Have I mentioned that I don't particularly like to work out? This isn't as horrible as what my hubby does, but it is still far from enjoyable. Oh well. I've lost about 10 pounds in the past month, so it must be worth it. Stupid body that needs exercise.
And while we're on the topic of stupidity - the stupid french people have succeeded in re-arranging my travel plans. We're staying in Amsterdam til Wed. Which means one less day in Paris. Stupid people. So now we're talking about finding the horse-back riding place that's just outside of Amsterdam so we can see a little bit of the country outside of the city. Since I love horses and riding, this is the thing that is saving France from  my wrath, which they should fear. :) The hotel we're staying at in Amsterdam is being wonderful about allowing us to wait til the very last minute to decide if we're staying for the fourth night - in case the strike doesn't actually happen.  These people are so nice, they're in the perfect location for us. I'm pretty sure that any time we go, we'll be staying with them.
New cup of coffee, new paragraph. I haven't even packed a thing yet. When I get off today (I wish I could leave early) I get to go work out again (see above paragraph for my thoughts on that), then take hubby to pick up the dearly beloved motorcylce, which has been having it's tires changed and some maintenance work done. I've been dying to get it back, so that we could go for a ride. I've been waiting for a week for the stupid thing to be ready, and now that it is, I have to wait more than a week. but I'd rather go on vacation than ride the bike, so I'll stop complaining now. :)
I really need to go to Wal-Mart tonight. I need to do laundry. Best Friend's coming over tonight, too - so I may have to cook a little something. A VERY little something. And I'll send her home with the leftovers. Luckily, she's not tired of pasta and red sauce. And if she is, then she's too good of a friend to tell me.
After food, comes packing. Which takes longer for this kind of trip than it does if I'm just going to visit family for a week. Who knows what we may end up doing over there? I need different types of clothes, but I also need plenty of comfortable, let's-go-be-tourist clothes. and I need to limit myself to one suitcase, since I need to leave some room in the big one to bring back stuff in. I have one friend that's sent me a shopping list, a woman at work that wants me to go looking for a skirt (That might not happen, since I'm supposed to go to the Left Bank to find it - and I don't think hubby'll allow that right now), and I have to buy presents for people. And then there's the shoes to consider....Luckily, I'm good at packing lots of stuff in the big suitcase. And then, I can always make hubby cart it all over the place for me, while I pull along the smaller one. After all, if he's going to work out and get all those muscles, he should use them for a practical purpose, right?

Tomorrow morning, I'm going to work out again - I'm trying to cut down on the guilt I feel when I eat whatever the hell I want, because that's exactly what I'll do. Then I have to go to the bank. Tomorrow's pay day, so I have to convert a big chunk of that into traveller's checks. Back home in time to run to Wal-Mart again for something that I'll forget to buy tonight (I've learned to leave time for that - the older I get, the less memory space I seem to have). Hubby's friend is picking us up about 12:15 to take us to the airport. Where we will sit, bored out of our skulls for a couple of hours. Then we'll get on a plane and go to Philadelphia, where we will be bored for yet 2 more hours, before finally getting on a plane and sleeping.

Well, I guess I can just use this blog post as my checklist for the next 24 hours, to make sure I've done everything. Of course, I'll still have lists for things I need to pack, things to buy, chores to complete, things to tell Best Friend about the cats....

And damn it, I forgot I have to get in my first edit to Siren before I leave. I better go make s

I Love an Adventure

Willour train leave The Netherlands next week? Will we get to Paris in timefor our flight out on Saturday 4/1? Will we be perpetually stuck inAmsterdam? Will I develop an undying love for windmills and tulips?Will I be fluent in Dutch this time next year, serving *coffee* in a*coffeeshop*? Or will I just have to do the expected thing, go to Parisand have a good time? The future is very unclear right now....

France, caught in a standoff between the government andunions on a new work law, is bracing for a disruption of services onMarch 28 {my travel day}, after transport and power company workers said they'll join the walkout.....

Protests are widening. Workers at Gaz de France SA and Electricite deFrance SA filed today a strike notice with the companies for March 28.Similar notices were filed at Societe Nationale des Chemins de Fer deFrance, which manages the national railways and part of the Frenchcapital's suburban train network, and at Reseau Autonome des TransportsParisiens, or RATP, which manages the Paris subway. Transport workersplan to strike from 8 p.m. on March 27.

Since there's absolutely nothing I can do about the whole situation -and I refuse to stay home (as some people have told me I should) - thenI'm spending time imagining four days free to roam around TheNetherlands, Belgium, and whatever other places I can get my greedylittle fingers on. Do we have a place to sleep? Nope, but we can justtake long train rides and sleep on the way. :)
I think I may be I'm even more excited about the tripnow that I don't know what's going to happen. At least I know I'll havea good time - until I run out of money!

Paris, I beg of you...

...just let me get in and out. I'll keep myself safe while I'm there.
And if fell like compromising - just let me get there safely. You can keep me in the country for a while, just let me get there.

From the International Herald Tribune(emphasis mine):

French students and unions have stepped up pressure on the government, calling for a day of demonstrations and strikes March 28 to fight a hotly contested new labor law that makes it easier for companies to fire young employees.

Have I mentioned that March 28 is the day I'm arriving in Paris? We're taking the train from Amsterdam, so this paragraph caused a bit of worry:

Though French unions account for less than 10 percent of the country's work force, their concentration in the public sector, particularly in transportation, gives them the ability to wreak havoc on daily life, putting enormous pressure on the government.

Now, would it really be so bad if I had to spend an extra night or two in Amsterdam? No, not really. It's a beautiful city. Very friendly people, lots of fun stuff to do and some great shopping. I'm sure I'd find a way to keep myself occupied, and I'd have a blast doing it.
But I'd really like to see Paris.

george makes a prediction

Washington Post Headline wins the headline of the day award: "Bush Predicts 'Tough Fighting Ahead' in Iraq."
Because, you know, everything's just been easy as pie so far.

The-Trip-That-Everyone-Is-Tired-Of-Hearing-About

The official countdown has begun. If I were as cool as my sister, I would put a neat little counter on my blog, letting you know how many days, hours and minutes til I leave on Friday. But since I'm not that cool.. I'll just have to talk about it.

As I'm writing this at 9:45 AM, I have 6 days 5 hours and 15 minutes until my plane leaves. After a flight and a three hour layover in Philadelphia, we will be on our way to Amsterdam. Three days of fun there, and it's off to join our friend in Paris for four nights. I cannnot even begin to put into words how excited I am. :) I LOVE to travel. I love to walk around new places, and watch people (I get that from my mom), or just sit around and watch people. People are crazy. They're weird. And they don't mind letting the world see it.

But the absolute best part of travelling is the food. I love eating new stuff (I get this from my dad). I'll try anything once...and I do mean anything. Blood pudding? Loved it from the moment I smelled it. I'd make my own...but where does one get fresh pig blood in this day and age? Then there's the problem of finding something big enough to mix all the ingredients in. Haggis? (there's a definition below, but if you've got a squeamish stomach, then don't look. Stacey, that means you). I was dying to try it when we went to Scotland. It's pretty good...but the two times I had it, it was a little mushy (because it's boiled), and I like my sausage-type foods to be crispy around the edges. Give me the blood pudding. The one and only time I've been offered caviar (a story which made StepSon green....but not with envy), I got to try about 6 different kinds. It was a wine/seafood tasting from my restaurant years, and by the time I noticed the caviar station I'd samples several wines and...well, I remember that I liked the caviar. I just wish I remember which ones I tried and which ones I loved. Probably the ones that I'll never be able to afford or the ones that are now illegal.

Eating any kind of animal brains seems kind of weird...but this article on cow brains makes it seem normal. I'm willing to try it once . And if I liked it, I'd eat it no matter what it was. There is one thing I don't think I could get myself to try - the Thousand Year Old Egg (which is really only 100 days old). I've seen pictures, and it looks kinda nasty. But looks aren't what would keep my away. I simply don't like pickled stuff, which is what this seems to be. The smell is supposed to be particularly....pungent. I'll have to ask my dad what he thinks about it.

But I was going to talk about The-Trip-That-Everyone-Is-Tired-Of-Hearing-About. :)

We went to Amsterdam last year on our honeymoon, but we had no money to do anything fun. We went to one museum - the Unofficial Sex Museum. It was pretty cool - my favorite part was looking at the 'porn through time' collection. They had a room that was devoted to postcards, magazines and other pornographic images over the past several hundred years, and that was pretty interesting - it was all pictures of naked women, but boy were they different! What was considered beautiful 150 years ago is very different from what it is today. But anyway, on the last trip we couldn't afford the Van Gogh Museum, the Rembrandt Museum, the Anne Frank House, or The Official Sex Museum. And the only full day we were in the city - Friday - was the one day a week that the Royal Palace was closed. So we're doing all that this year. We are going to completely leave aside the question of what "Official" versus "Unoffical" means in the world of Sex Museums.

And before you ask - the Red Light District really wasn't as exciting as all the hype builds it up to be. It was just a bunch of women in bikinis moving around behind windows. I expected them to be in corsets, or sexy lingerie or something. But it was just one bikini after another. And a lot of them weren't particularly revealing bikinis.

One of the parts of our trip that I'm really looking forward to is taking the train from Amsterdam to Paris. My first train experience was on our trip last year, and I loved it. This time, we'll be going through some beautiful country. It's only a four hour trip - and knowing me, I'll fall asleep as I always do when in a moving vehicle (something else I get from my mom). But when I wake up: Hello Paris! Clark's meeting us at the station, and we're staying at the apartment he's renting. We'll only have about 3 1/2 days in Paris, and there's so much to fit into that time. And I haven't checked on those riots in a few days. I should probably keep an eye on that...

Haggis ingredients: I'm not going to pretend to know how to make this stuff. There's no one single way to make it - as with most good sausage type foods, you can use just about anything. The casing for haggis, though, should be a sheep's stomach. A very clean, washed, sheep's stomach. I'll just remind you that traditional sausages are stuffed into animal intestines. The stomach seems somewhat better, to me.

The filling should have lots of organs in it - liver (from sheep or deer), heart and lungs along with some suet seem to be the most common ingredients. Other than that, it's your typical sausage-stuffers: some onion, pepper (white, black, cayenne, etc), stock, oatmeal and seasonings. Stuff it in the stomach and boil it - and voila! you have haggis. One stomach seems to feed about 3 or 4 people. And did you know Robert Burns wrote an ode to the Haggis?

Told ya it was pretty good.

Google Publishing?

I really don't want this to turn into another Google Blog, so I promise that I'll try and stop talking about them. Well, I will if they quit doing cool stuff.

Maybe.

Anyway, our daily edition of Google News comes from ZDnet, in an article on Google getting into the Publishing world (good luck, Google - you kinda pissed everyone off with that whole free-books-online thing):

"The new offering would allow people to sign in and purchase immediate, browser-based access to books, Google said on its site. Purchasers would not, however, be allowed to save a copy of the book to their computer or to otherwise copy pages from the book."

This both makes me happy and makes me sad. I like Google - and trying to bring books to people is good. Plus, I can easily see them coming up with a log-in service that would track which books you have access to, so that no matter what computer you access your account from, you'll always have access to your ebooks. They could even incorporate it into their Gmail. The possibilities are endless for this. Not to mention the wonders it could do for the epub industry. Yay! for Google and accessibility.

But then there are eReaders - always the Catch 22 when talking about ebooks. Yeah, a good one is probably still not close enough for me to be able to afford it - but it's going to happen, probably in the next few years. Is Google going to have their own proprietary format for the texts they provide access to? If so, will it be compatible with an eReader? If it is (not sure if eReaders are happy with 'browser-based') , what if I'm on a plane, or on a roadtrip, or on the beach - and I want to read my ebooks? How in the world will I get Internet access in order to get to my books? Boo! for Google. Unless Google really does have those plans for a world-wide wireless network hidden somewhere. Then, Yay! for Google.

I'm sure that there are going to people upset that Google will charge for these books (some peopel seem to think that everything Google does should be free - I've met several). I'm not one of them. They have to make money somehow, and they have to pay those legal fees to deal with the publishers suing them over free access. It's going to be hilarious if they fund those lawsuits with the money they make off the sale of ebooks. :)

Attention: Whomever Makes The Weather

Please consider making March 24th a bright and beautiful spring day. Thank you.

I love my local Meteorologist's weather blog. There's always a cool story, fun picture, or just interesting meteorological tidbits of information around there. They also put up weather discussions...and something popped up this afternoon that is not making me happy.
"FRIDAY (March 24): Winter weather fans will love the 12Z GFS... itpaints a deep surface low moving across the northern Gulf of Mexico,with heavy rain developing across the Gulf coast states, and asignificant snow event for the northwest part of Alabama and intoTennessee."

Now, he does go on to say this, immediatly after: "BUT REMEMBER... this is all voodoo at this point. No confidence inanything specific here, and this feature might go away in future runs.But, we will be watching for trends. Something like this is certainlypossible in March... but I am not saying it will happen. Just too faraway."

He's not one to be an extremest, and he always makes the point that his blog is about weather discussion, not weather prediction (that's on the weather homepage). That's one reason I love him - he doesn't jump on the "we're going to have snow!" bandwagon. And he can't control his models. But, since I am leaving for The-European-Vacation-That-Everyone-Is-Sick-Of-Hearing-About on that Friday:

I do not want any snow on March 24. You can have a tornado on the 23rd and a blizzard on the 25th. But please, for one day, let me have sunshine.

Thank you.