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.

The club sandwich to end all club sandwiches

Here's the saga of the sandwich. Our office is in a building that also houses an Italian restaurant. (It also houses a BMW repair shop, but that's another story.) Last week, one of the administrative folks in the office sent out a message saying that the restaurant was offering a club sandwich this week. This was odd because we don't usually get messages about what the restaurant is offering. No one else in the office seemed to know anything about the club sandwich. I couldn't pass it up. Today, I ordered the club sandwich to go just to find out what it was all about.

I still occasionally get sticker shock here in Switzerland, and I experienced it when I got the bill for the sandwich: 17 Swiss francs, about 15 dollars. This had better be a heck of a sandwich, I thought to myself. And then the plate came, and oh, what a sandwich. Between the two slices of bread were grilled chicken and a third slice of bread, sauce, lettuce, and tomatoes. Several strips of bacon had been placed on top of the sandwich. There were sausages on top of the bacon, and then tomatoes on top of the sausages. There were steak fries (or chips or whatever we should call them) on the side. I could have fed two or three people with this sandwich.

Here's the picture.