Swiss humor

Who says the Swiss don't have a sense of humor? (Well, lots of people actually say that, but I'll set that aside for now.) There's a website that takes a couple of articles from the local Zug paper and translates them into English every day. Here's part of an article from today:

In a separate incident in Unterägeri on Monday morning, a driver was stopped for being in charge of a vehicle of which the windows were totally iced over. Police noticed the vehicle as it was being driven by a 26-year-old shortly before 7.30 am on Weststrasse in the municipality. His vision was restricted to such an extent that he had to lean out of the window to be able to see where he was going, despite the temperature of minus 14°C. The driver was subsequently charged for attempting to drive what the police described as a "mobile igloo."

The cast is off!

At long last (well, it actually wasn't that long), Lindsey's cast is off. We can finally quit saying things like, "Lindsey, go wash your hand," and "Lindsey, be sure to put on your glove." It's going to take a while before she has full motion again. She can't bend her wrist back because it was bent forward in the cast. I'm sure she'll be back to normal before long. She still can't do things like skiing or climbing for another month, but she'll survive.

In other news, the temperature here today is 17 degrees. The temperature in Cairo is 73. The temperature in Luxor is 82. It's going to be weird packing shorts and sunscreen for our trip to Egypt this weekend.

And yes, I know that things are a little interesting in Egypt these days, particularly Cairo, but we're going to be careful. I'm excited to be going to a place where so much interesting history is happening.

Quick foreign trips

Stace and a friend are taking a quick trip into Germany today to buy meat and some other items that are much cheaper in Germany than they are in Switzerland. As the kids were heading off to school this morning, Stace told them that she'd be heading to Germany later that morning but that she should be back before they got home. Tanner's getting old enough to appreciate the weirdness of being able to make a comment like that. He got a pretty good laugh out of it.

I guess once we're back in Minnesota, we'll have to settle for saying, "I'm heading to Canada for a few hours, but I'll be back later today." No offense to Canada, but it's not quite the same.

In other news, we're heading into the coldest stretch of weather that we've experienced since moving to Switzerland. The high on Friday should be 20 degrees. Now, that's an average day in Minnesota in January, but it's pretty rare here. I guess that's Mother Nature's way of gradually easing us back into Minnesota winters.

Easy skiing

Our skiing situation here has been perfect. We have such easy access to ski hills. This morning, Tanner woke up, played on the computer for a while, did some homework, skied hard for three hours, did some more homework, and then went to to Lucerne with all of us for dinner with another family.

It's about a 25-minute drive to our local ski hill (and it's a nice drive into the mountains). We parked about twenty steps away from the bottom of the ski lift. Tanner skied his heart out for three hours while I read in the car, and then he decided he'd had enough, so we made the quick trip back home. It's that easy. Unfortunately, his skiing abilities have pretty much surpassed the difficulty of our local ski hills, so we're going to need to start ranging a bit farther from home from now on. Bummer.

Pharmacy or . . . .

I have almost four years' worth of needles to dispose of from the shots I give myself every week. In the U.S., we're supposed to take them to a pharmacy or hospital or some place like that to dispose of them rather than just throwing them in the trash. I assumed that it worked like that in Switzerland, but I wasn't sure.

I went to ask one of our Swiss support staff today if she knew what I should do. She didn't know off the top of her head, but one idea she had was that in Zurich, there are places that heroin addicts can go to drop off their dirty needles and get clean needles. She thought maybe I could go to one of those sites. The needle exchange program is a noble idea overall, because it helps to prevent the spread of hepatitis and other diseases among people who are going to shoot up anyway; however, I wasn't qute sure if that was my deal. Try to picture the scene--Ethan furtively walking away from the needle disposal site just as a co-worker happens by. Nice, yes?

Further research revealed that yes, I can just take the needles to any pharmacy for disposal. The other option sounded more fun, but I guess I'll go with the pharmacy.

Reflexes or tickles?

It's been far too long since I've mocked Stace on the blog, so here we go.

We were sitting on the couch reading our Kindles a minute ago. Desiring to be obnoxious, she squeezed my leg about three inches above my knee. She moved a half an inch and tried again. She did this several times. (Don't worry; this isn't going anywhere inappropriate.) Finally, exasperated, she asked, "Where are your reflexes? Are you dead?" I had no idea what she was talking about. She explained to me that whenever anyone squeezes her leg above the knee (and knowing Stace, you gotta believe there were many guys who did this during her teenage years), it makes her jump. In her mind, the only logical explanation for this was that this happened due to reflexes, just like the pattelar or knee-jerk reflex with which we're all familiar.

It was quite a revelation when I explained to her that her response when someone squeezes her there isn't a reflex; it just means that she's ticklish. This was another "rock my world" moment for Stace. Her mouth actually made the shape of an "O" as she digested this new revelation about herself.

East, south, or way south?

As has become my tradition, I'm trying to figure out where I should go on my mini-trip this summer after Stace and the kids head to the States. In past summers, those trips have included my jaunts to Norway and Warsaw. This year, I've been torn between Budapest and Lisbon. (There may not be much time left to visit Budapest. It looks like Hungary is quickly sliding back to totalitarianism.)

However, another destination has caught my eye in the past couple of days: Cape Town. Now that the notion has lodged iself in my head, I'm having trouble getting it out. Maybe I'll see how the trip to Egypt goes before I decide to venture back down to Africa.