Off to Norway

I'm off to Norway tomorrow night. I'll fly to Oslo and spend a few days there, including a one-day "Norway in a Nutshell" where I leave Oslo at 6:30 a.m. and return at 10:30 p.m. It includes train rides through mountain passes, a cruise through a fjord, and good stuff like that. Then I'm off to Tromsø, which, as I mentioned before, is within spitting distance of the North Pole (if you can spit 1200 miles). The sun won't go down there until late July.

I'm not taking my laptop, so there won't be any blogging during the trip. (And Stace has our computer, so I won't be able to post pictures until the computer and the camera are reunited in late July. I don't want to involve my work computer in our relationship.) Other than my BlackBerry, the TV in my room, and the hotel restaurant, I'll be pretty much cut off from civilization. Wish me luck as I rough it!

Also, I may come back bankrupt. I've had a couple of the Swiss tell me Norway is expensive. When the Swiss tell me that something is expensive, it gets my attention.

There's a new sheriff in town

With Stace and the kids gone, there have been some changes here in the Wood household, and I have to say that so far, I'm pleased with the results. Here are some examples:

1. We don't waste precious time making the bed anymore. Studies have shown that if we stopped making our beds every day and instead devoted that time and energy to more worthwhile causes, we would cure world hunger within five years.

2. We took all of our decorative pillows and shipped them to poor countries where people will actually use them instead of just looking at them and moving them out of the way all the time.

3. We now leave the bathroom door open.

And we're just getting started . . . .

The single life

Well, I put Stace and the kids in a cab to the airport at 6:30 this morning. They'll get to my parents' house in Utah at about 4:00 a.m. Switzerland time. Ugh. I'll be alone here for four weeks until I fly to Minnesota.

I had ambitious plans to spend tomorrow on a train to some remote area of Switzerland to see some new mountains or eat some stinky cheese or something like that, but I'm a little worn out. Plus, I'm headed to Norway in four days. I think I'll stick around here and do exciting things like ironing and grocery shopping while I root for the Americans in their soccer match. The Swiss play tonight. If they win, I expect things to be pretty noisy for a while. The World Cup is a big deal on this side of the ocean.

Tanner and Lindsey were very excited. Both love to fly, although I'm not sure that they'll feel quite so enthusiastic when they land in Atlanta after ten and a half hours and still have four hours to go. Tanner said he was really excited to get back to the States. When I asked him why, he gave two reasons: he could have toaster waffles for breakfast every morning, and he could go to Target.

All growed up

Tanner had his fifth-grade graduation ceremony today. (Yup. I just typed the words "fifth-grade graduation ceremony.") It's hard to believe we've come this far. In just a few short years he'll be done with college, earning a huge salary, and supporting his parents. It's gonna be great.

Do I get to keep the car?

As both of you know, we sold our luxury cars before moving to Switzerland, so we don't own a car. That means that I rent a car when I come to Minnesota on business. (This time, I made sure I had a car with both power locks and power windows. The last one had neither.)

So I'm sitting here at work today when I get an e-mail from National Car Rental. This strikes me as unusual since I don't ever get e-mails from them until I return the car. I open the e-mail, and it's the receipt for the car that I just returned to the Minneapolis airport. It occurs to me that this is a bit strange since the car keys are still in my pocket and, to the best of my knowledge, the car is still sitting in the parking lot here at West. (I walked out to the parking lot to make sure the car was still there. It is.)

My question is, since National Car Rental thinks I returned their car, do I get to keep the one currently in my possession? It's a Ford Focus with only 400 miles on it. Not a bad deal for free. On the flip side, what if National reports it as stolen at some point? Will I get pulled over and sent to jail? Maybe I should give it to Jed and let him drive it for a while to see what happens.

The differences, including toilets

(It's an awkward title, I know, but I wanted to throw the word "toilets" in there to grab Stace's attention when she next checks in on the blog sometime in 2012.)

I've commented in the past about differences between the Swiss and the Americans that I notice each time I come back to the States. (We weigh a lot more than the Europeans, there's lots more free parking, stuff is lots cheaper, that sort of thing.)

This time, my mind has drifted to the theme of water conservation. Here are three examples:

1. Toilets here use tons of water. European toilets have just a little water at the bottom of the bowl. People in the U.S. say that low-flow toilets don't work, but I've never had a European toilet back up on me. American toilets always have a couple of gallons sitting in the bowl and more in the tank.

2. The shower at my hotel sends out approximately 5,000 barrels of water per minute. The pressure is high enough to scour off several layers of skin. I can control the temperature, but I can't control the flow. That's typical of most American hotels I've visited lately. A European would be horrified at the amount of water that my shower uses. (Larry Wood feels the same way, to judge from all of the low-flow shower heads that he installed in our old house in Provo.)

3. This was the real kicker: Rather than staying in typical hotels, I've started staying in residence-type places with a fridge, an oven, dishes, and so forth. At some places, they only come in to straighten up twice a week, which is just fine with me. The place I'm at right now comes in every day unless you tell them otherwise. I got here on Thursday night. By the time I left my room on Friday morning, I had used one spoon, one small plate, and one glass. When I got back to my room Friday night, I discovered, to my dismay, that they had lovingly placed those three dishes in the dishwasher and then run the dishwasher through a full cycle. For three puny dishes!! I told them not to clean my room over the weekend. I didn't want them doing that again. I guess it takes less time for them to just run things through the dishwasher than to wash even a few dishes by hand, but still, it's a huge waste of water and energy.

My mind is a horrible thing to waste

I'll be back here in Minnesota in just six weeks. I'll be working while Stace and the kids catch up with everyone. With that in mind, I just sent a message to an admin here in Eagan asking her to reserve an office for me from July 26 to August 4 while I'm here. She quickly popped into my office and informed me that I had already sent her a message asking for exactly the same thing last week, and she had responded. Sure enough, I can see her reply sitting right there in my inbox.

And so my brain begins its long, slow descent into twilight . . . .

Oops--I'm not here

I forgot to let both of my faithful readers know that I'm headed to Minnesota for a quick trip. (Hello from the Zurich airport, by the way.) I'll be back next Friday. I wanted to make sure that I had just barely had time to recover from jet lag before turning around and flying back.

Bless the Swiss

Well, for all the things that make the Swiss hard to get along with sometimes, they can also be predictably thoughtful about many things. Today, somewhere between Zug and Baar (where my office is), I lost the kids' junior cards. Those are the cards that let kids ride trains and buses for free if they're with one of their parents. The cards cost $20 each per year, so it wasn't a huge loss, but I was still annoyed with myself. They slipped out of my pocket somewhere when I pulled out my sunglasses.

I was sitting in a meeting at work when I realized that the cards had fallen out of my pocket during my commute. This was at about 11:00 this morning. The cards have our address and the kids' names on them. Knowing the Swiss as I do, I was 95% sure about what would happen by the end of the day.

I didn't get home until about 8:30 tonight because Tanner had a concert at school. I got home and went to check the mail, and, just as I predicted, the missing junior cards were tucked in snugly with our mail. That means that someone had found the cards, found out where we lived, and brought the cards back to our house before the day was over. I knew the Swiss would come through for me. I'd like to think that a the good people of Minnesota would have done the same thing. They probably would have, but I wouldn't have quite the same level of confidence that I had with the Swiss.