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The cat naming video for Allie

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:42:05 -0600

Now, they're Will & Grey

On Tour Guides

Mon, 19 May 2008 09:10:30 -0500

Over the years I've heard, and heard of, tour guides that are unfamiliar with areas and sights that they are describing, or have so little command of the English language that they could be describing a cathedral design or a goat race for all their tourists knew. A more satisfactory category of guide has all of his/her information memorized and can recite it at the proper time and place in clear, if mechanical, English. However well intentioned you are, don't ask this type of guide a question as it will usually disrupt their train of thought. Then they must either start over from the beginning of the current chapter of knowledge in order to get all the way through it, or just skip the remainder of the chapter while trying to decipher and address the question that's been asked.

There does exist another type of guide that is native to an area, speaks understandably good English, and can adjust their "normal discourse" on the fly to suit their audience's interest and questions. This quality of guide is rare, but we had three of them in a row on our last trip to Italy.

I realize that the previous paragraph stresses the desirability of good English from a guide and sounds almost as if that should be the benchmark for every guide. Not so. I only speak English. If I were an grumpy old monolingual Frenchman, or German, those languages would replace "English" in the preceding paragraphs as a necessity for my comfort and understanding.

This first guide is Stefan. He was brought up speaking both Italian and German because those are the official languages of Trentino-Alto Adige. If you check this area on a map, you'll see that just over the Alps is the Tyrolean part of Austria. The area is rich in Tirol culture and currently happens to be within the Italian borders, hence the dual languages. Stefan has climbed mountains in the US and Alaska and is, in my opinion, a most interesting chap. We discussed the current building boom in several of the mountain villages that we traveled through. Stefan's concerns about the rapid growth are both environmental and sociological. His knowledge of the region, and ability to clearly express it to this English speaking monolingual, were impressive.

In Rome we were gifted with Eva to get us through the swarms of people at the Vatican, and to guide us through the Borghese Gallery. No, Eva isn't Italian. She's Spanish. She has also spent a short time in the States (California, I believe).

I was impressed with her knowledge of art styles, periods and individual artists, both paint and sculpture. I asked her if she was an art major; no, she's has a degree in "Christian Archeology and Church History". In case you wonder if a degree with such a stuffy name can be put to good use: it can. She may not be getting independently wealthy (at the ripe old age of 25), but she clearly enjoys breathing life into history for ignorant tourists. Eva also helps broaden her tour groups' Gelato appreciation. I'd never tried Meringue Gelato, but try it mixed with Mango or Passion Fruit. Ah, Gelato, the Levi's tightener of Italy.

Finally we had an Italian guide that was closer to what I'd expected when we went south from Rome. Francesca was a Neapolitan who moved further down the coast to Sorrento. She was our guide in Naples, Pompeii, Paestum, Sorrento, Ravello, Capri -- all along the Amalfi Coast.

Not only did Francesca know the area, she had a doctorate in English languages from Columbia University! We barely had time to get a feel for the area in 3 days, but Francesca kept us on track and could answer detailed questions on about any subject we asked.

I especially appreciated her candor when she discussed different archaeological theories about Pompeii and Paestum: she'd present two or three theories on something and say "but we don't know for sure - archaeology is just educated guesswork", or something along that line. Call me eccentric, but when a guide tells me exactly what happened, exactly where, and exactly how, and this event happened over a thousand years ago -- I wonder about their certainty.

If you look closely at Francesca's left wrist you can see her watch, which she consulted occasionally and announced, "Andiamo!", meaning "Let's go!"

The "Andiamo"s were balanced with, "okay, here's your Kodak moment", when we had permission to pull out our cameras and get to work.

We were fortunate to have three talented guides while on this trip. All three had their own style, personality, and a clear love of the areas they discussed. Makes me wonder if I could present a reasonably interesting tour of San Antonio to a group from London or Sydney (certainly not Parisians or Berliners).

Okay, so "produce" isn't what I've been up to lately

Fri, 16 May 2008 16:32:10 -0500

The trip really made me tired, so I haven't been very verbal.

Between naps I've been working on trip photos and nearly have them finished. You can click on the Metro photo to the right and browse my picasaweb site to see them. Hindsight being what it is, I wish I'd made the albums a little smaller because the files are full size and take a little longer to render when doing a slideshow (the upside being that if you like a photo you can order it or download and print it LARGE - these may go up to 16x20; for sure a high resolution 8x10).

The above photo was taken in the market in Bolzano, Italy. Looks like the radish crop was good this year. Bolzano is also known as Bolzen if you happen to be a German speaker. The area is just across the Alps from Austria and ownership has shifted between German and Italian speakers over the centuries. It has finally settled down into a bilingual area - trilingual if you count "Ladin", a Latin based dialect spoken in isolated villages.

Milan 4/28

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 02:42:21 -0500

This is home, sweet home in Milan. It's about 3 blocks from the Duomo.

Sunday at Satiro's

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 13:49:56 -0500

This is the inside of San Satiro's church. No, I don't know if he's the patron saint of Satire. I do know that it's quite old - built on the site of a religious place that dated from the 9th century. The mural at the back is 13th century. It's a small, but lovely place.

After landing in Milan we started on the day's adventure: finding lodging, food, rest, and a bit of site-seeing. Lodging was reserved here at the Hotel Brunelleschi. We picked up our luggage and caught a shuttle bus to the central train station, where we intended to ride the Metro to/near our hotel. We wrestled our luggage onto an "up" escalator and when I looked back, there was a pile of luggage with BJ's feet sticking out of it riding a few steps behind me. From that point, it seemed a better idea to take a cab to the hotel. We're old hands at subway trains, even in foreign languages, but not while handling big loads of luggage.

The hotel is nice, and we took the advice of a bellman and went to eat at Ristorante Bruno- which "isn't tourist" and where we'll be "familia" if we gave his card to Roberto. The bellman's name was Corrado and I'm sure it's just coincidental that he has the same given name as Tony Soprano's "Uncle Junior". Roberto, asian affiliation tattoos on his neck and all, received us warmly and we had a nice buffet. Familia or not, the buffet is limited to one plate per patron; the food was good and there was a generous (if confusing) assortment.

Back at the hotel we inventoried our "owies" (I didn't mention that one of my first official actions at the San Antonio airport was lifting my suitcase wrong and spraining my back) and took a short nap. Apparently, no one missed us. We went to the Duomo Piazza and avoided the Sunday crowds by finding San Satiro.

The day's interesting photos are here.

6:55 a.m. over the Atlantic

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:53:55 -0500

The GPS-like screen on the seat-back in front of me shows that our airplane is about to pass to the south of Dublin (6:55 is Milan time; I've already converted) and then make shore on the west coast of France, with a sweep just south of Paris. Looks like we'll go over the French Alps just south of Bern in about an hour. We're at 33,000 feet and it looks like a 25,000+ foot cloud deck below us; there's a half moon to the south of us (out my right window) lighting the top of that deck. The screen says we're just over 2 hours out of MIlano.

Trying to get the day started right here by simultaneously titrating up the Diet Coke and Ritalin; the attendent was a little puzzled that I didn't need cups or ice for these room temp Diet Cokes. Some things can't be explained.

Man, Atlanta Hartsfield airport is loud and busy! We landed at the A gate and were departing from the E gate. Lucky they do those little train things or we'd have had to cut our lunch at TGIFridays short. Lots of young men and women in uniform headed for parts unknown - BJ and I felt ourselves hoping they were all going HOME. Our country doesn't need to waste anymore kids overseas to scratch W's "war president" itch.

Wow, flying east is nice! Light sky and cloud deck to the east of us has turned pink. IF I wanted to crawl over BJ to take down my camera bag from the overhead, and IF these windows weren't scratched and streaked, and IF the flight weren't a bit bumpy at present, I'd snap a photo at present and see how it came out. Early morning at 33,000 feet is always pretty. According to the GPS thing, our outside temperature is -59°F with a speed (wind) of 525 miles per hour - would someone calculate the wind-chill factor for that? (Hmmph, short break while I checked to see if there was any software on board that would do that: nope!) Beth, I'm counting on you to give me a number here!

The aforementioned GPS thing also has movies and tv and music and games available on it. I believe that I was awakened this morning by a gamer feverishly punching the touch screen on my seat back. Hope he won, cause he wasted a perfectly good Ambien in my system. No worries - pre 7:00 a.m. blogging is a good thing. This is about the time I normally sit and drink Diet Coke and watch my cats (who I hope both had a dandy evening at the Traveling Tails Hotel & Spa) start the day. Hmmmph, otra vez, been waiting for more Diet Coke for 10 minutes, now; let's get our service shoes on, Delta folks!

Full daylight outside now, and I thought the cloud deck was breaking up so that we could see France, but no luck. We'll be entering French airspace in the Bordeaux country and then hopping the French Alps for northern Italy. Clear skies would really make for an entertaining flight.

The skies are beginning to clear a bit as we hit the French coast. We're passing between "La Rochelle" and "Montpelier" and some impressive bays. The outside air temp is cooling off to -72°F, guess the water kept it warmed up. Multiple jets tracking around us and leaving spectacular contrails.

The landscape toward Lyon, France is beautiful. Rolling green hills, wide valley, and then the French Alps are upon us - rising out of low cloud cover and still snow capped.

With the Alps behind us, we start out descent into Milan. Plenty of farmland. Time to put everything into its fully upright and locked position.

We're jumping off...

Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:18:47 -0500

...for a couple of weeks in Italy. I'm excited. We'll be seeing Rome for the first time, and for a history fan it doesn't get much better. I suspect the experience will be like trying to get a sip of water from a firehose: all that information, so little time. I'll keep as current with daily photos as internet access (and brainpower) will allow.

Preparation all day: cleaning camera lenses, freeing up drive space on the MacBook, charging batteries - oh, and packing a few clothes. Also, counting "pain & brain pills" into cool little plastic thingies so I don't have to take big pill bottles along. This will be the longest vacation that our cats have experienced. Hope they recognize me when I get back.

I'd better double check my packing. Something will occur to me that I've missed while I'm mid-Atlantic. Wish that my memory was that good while at home! And yes, Dr. Jenn, I'm taking sunblock and a hat - no more tanlines for this redhead.

So, how did you celebrate Earth Day?

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:59:35 -0500

Today was Earth Day - how many of you thought about that, however briefly? I'd like to report that I did many eco-friendly, environment preserving, notable things. But I didn't. Yesterday I wore my new "There is no Plan(et) B" t-shirt, but today I pulled on a silk Hawaiian print without thinking. Geez, I could have worn my "Recycle, Reuse, Reduce" organic cotton t-shirt and felt virtuous. Instead, I consolidated the few errands I needed to run in my V8 Mercury, had a DQ Blizzard instead of heating up the kitchen, and shut the house A/C off while I was outside with the cats. The A/C wasn't too big a sacrifice: it's running a little rough and I don't want it to conk out before the repairman comes tomorrow.

Nope, no dramatic life changes today. Just a little less waste than usual and some pondering about what kind of planet I'll be helping to pass on to my grandkids (our kids drive Expeditions as a defense against Houston and Dallas traffic - not "green", but hopefully helping the kids survive careless drivers and then inherit said planet) and great-grandkids if I live to meet them.

I did look a little more closely at the beauty around me. Our neighborhood has some stately oak trees that are well over a hundred years old: really durable old guys and gals. A sentimental developer resisted the quick-and-dirty method (so prevalent today) of dozing offending trees to one side. I'm proud of him/her and the beautiful trees left to shade us. I hope I can pass on a similar favor to the next generation.

"Chocolate was eaten"

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:06:07 -0500

In keeping with the passive-voice political statements ("Mistakes were made in Iraq"), Carson has agreed that chocolate has been eaten. When and by whom are still in question...

Just skimming the surface

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:42:59 -0500

Have you ever felt that the volume of news regarding subjects of interest has grown past what you can effectively digest? This being an election year would have normally been political overload for me. Keeping up with a war and a tanked economy and my government further unraveling daily has cut into the time usually reserved for finding out what's new in the Mac world, pleasure reading, and my photo related hobbies. If I had more clear-brain time during the day and didn't stop for a nap to recharge, I'd probably burn myself out all over again. So, I find myself skimming information more and digesting less (not that I can remember it all, but I like to go through the exercise).

I don't know what to cut back on and grow more resentful of the times I can only single-task. For sure, I can't cut back on keeping up with my family or my cats, or sleep less. Additional stimulants do help but I think I'm approaching the practical limit of Diet Coke, expresso, and Ritalin. I will not admit to middle age being part of the equation. Middle age? Who coined that phrase as a euphemism for 50+ year olds? I'm supposedly in middle age, but am certain that I don't want to live to be 112 years old.

Technology is a big help in culling information: I use Google's newsreader to aggregate feeds that I'm interested in and that cuts reading down to under 200 articles a day. During the process, hypertext allows me to jump out from each article and head down rabbit trails until I've forgotten what subject I started on. Needless to say, unless I start over on an article and re-read it, the point of article eludes me. Did you know that a chap named Ted Nelson coined the phrase "hypertext"? He also said, "A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within ten seconds." As is usually the case, Mr. Nelson's original concept lost much of it's functionality during application.

If anyone has a suggestion (non-Luddite) to help me streamline things, or a method to grow callous to the available news, I'd appreciate it.

Redhead Tanlines

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 21:20:13 -0500

I lived my first 30 years in Corpus Christi, Texas, dubbed "the Sparkling City by the Sea" during some ill-advised advertising campaign. The city is located mainly south of the Nueces River, the mouth of which opens into Corpus Christi Bay, and thus "the Sparkling City by the Bay" or "Sparkling City South of the River" would have been more geographically accurate - even if it meant abdicating advertising alliteration (yes that was on purpose).

Corpus Christi Bay is bounded on the east by Mustang Island, a sandy barrier island that divides the bay from the Gulf of Mexico. Although there is still no Sea in sight, the Laguna Madre stretches south from the end Corpus Christi Bay and Mustang Island becomes Padre Island. The lagoon and island are more aptly named than the "Sparkling City" because the Mother Lagoon is indeed a fertile spawning place for sea life, protected as it is from the Gulf of Mexico, by the Father Island. Together, Mustang and Padre Islands provide about 150 miles of almost-white sandy beaches and sometimes-pleasantly-rideable surf.

In short, Corpus Christi is about water and sunshine. Maybe that's where the "sparkling" originated in the advertising slogan, because that water does sparkle. Even on cloudy days the UV rays hit you on the way down and then sparkle right back up at you from the water, or from the almost-white sand, or from the concrete seawall on the bayfront where you can enjoy the marina. The best evidence that you've been faithfully enjoying water and sunshine is a golden suntan. Those of us with easily traceable Irish and Norwegian ancestry, even with red hair and freckles, were inclined to enjoy all the water and sunshine. Our evidence was double freckling and bright red skin wherever the sun happened to bless us. Red skin preceded blisters, which preceded "peeling", which removed all evidence of a golden suntan and returned us to our natural pale state. Although embarrassed by our genetic failure, we were undeterred and hoped that maybe, just maybe, the next time would be different.

We middle aged redheads may still be a bit freckled, our hair may have faded to white, but we finally have lasting evidence of our days enjoying water and sunshine. No, we didn't turn golden over time - we started breaking out in little red, crusty spots that can only be removed with liquid nitrogen or a scalpel. These are known in dermatology circles as "basal cell carcinoma", or BCC (or SRS, "Stupid Redhead Spots", behind our backs).

A word of advice to youngsters with fair skin: forget about trying to tan, you'll just wind up with BCC/SRS and sometimes removal is worse than peeling, which at least is free. For years I've gotten by with having BCC's removed with electric needles (old technique), liquid nitrogen, or a little slice/scrape.

This year I learned what happens when a BCC hides and works its magic for a long time. I'd noticed a little scaly spot in the fold of my ear that would occasionally bleed on the pillow at night, entailing spousal questioning of my hygiene habits (are you sure that you're not leaving soap on your ear and causing irritation?). A visit to the dermatologist cleared things up for me: the spot was a BCC and needed removal. The removal took 4 hours, including a skin graft to cover the damage. The graft site was about 10 cm long and took 20 stitches to close. I don't know how many stitches are in my ear because the graft was covered over with some coarse cloth. This is worse than peeling; even worse than the stigma of not being tanned.

If you want to see photos of the aftermath click here. The photos are graphic - be warned. If you're under 30 and fair skinned maybe this will convince you to use sunblock and a hat. Yes, I'm shopping for a hat with a wide brim, maybe a sombrero.

Software Change

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 17:52:05 -0500

I've finally had enough frustration with Apple's iWeb software. Maybe it's just me, but when I try to zig the software seems to zag about half the time. I'm trying a more idiot-resistant product called 'Sandvox' that seems to allow doing the simple things simply and the more complex things without causing mental dismemberment.

It'll be a few days before I decide to reformat pages from my old site, or to just link to the old site and go forward using Sandvox. There's a link on the right of the page if anyone (well any other Mac user) is interested in learning about the software. So far, Sandvox seem intuitive enough to get my brief flashes of 'think' online without becoming distracted by jumping through iWeb's hoops and losing my 'think' during the process.