Good times

Well, it's Thursday night in Zug, and that means one thing--PARTY!!!!

You see, Thursday night is when the stores downtown stay open all the way until 9:00 instead of closing at 7. In a sleepy little town like Zug, that's cause for a celebration. So I joined my fellow Zugers and did my grocery shopping at 7:30. We all had fun. Everyone feels a little more festive when they do their grocery shopping on Thursday night. See? You all thought I was a guy who didn't know how to have a good time.

Speaking of German (okay, that's admittedly an awkward transition), I was struck tonight by some of the absurdities of the English language. Try to fight your way through these sentences if you're not a native English speaker (it helps if you say them out loud to yourself):

"Polish your shoes before you look at your Polish travel guide."

"I was too wound up to bandage my wound."

"There was too much wind for me to wind my watch."

"Why would you read a book that you've already read?"

Does the pronounciation make any sense at all in light of the spelling? Who came up with this language, anyway?

Fun with planes

On occasion, flying isn't the most fun experience one can have. (I'll just note here that I still love flying when everything goes well.) Unfortunately, Stace and the kids are having one of those less-than-fun experiences right now.

They showed up at the Zurich airport for their 9:50 a.m. flight to Atlanta yesterday. They were told that a mechanical problem would delay the flight until 10:50. Then, they were told that a part had to be flown in from London and that the flight would take off at 3:30. This meant that they would miss their connecting flight from Atlanta. The airline went ahead and booked them on a routing that would take them from Zurich to JFK, from JFK to Atlanta, have them spend the night in Atlanta, and then fly to Salt Lake the next day. I called the airline and politely told them that was stupid. (I'm platinum on Delta, so Delta is somewhat accommodating when I call.) We got them back on the flight from Zurich to Atlanta and then on a later flight from Atlanta to Salt Lake the same day.

Well, the plane with the part from London had to turn back. This pushed the departure time from Zurich to 5:30. There was still a slight chance that they could make the last connecting flight out of Atlanta, so we scheduled them on that flight.

So, to pause for a recap, by this time, after waking up early to leave the house at 6:30, Stace and the kids had spent nine hours at the Zurich airport and were still facing about fifteen hours on planes to get home. There was at least a chance that they could make it to Salt Lake if everything went well.

Of course, everything didn't go well. For some reason, the plane left the gate in Zurich but then sat on the runway for about an hour and a half. This meant that they had no chance to make the last connecting flight in Atlanta. I put them on a 10:00 flight out of Atlanta the next day and went to bed while they flew for ten and a half hours.

They finally did land in Atlanta, but it took a while to get things worked out, get through customs, get to the hotel shuttle, and such. I last talked with Stace at 7:30 this morning. She was on the shuttle to the hotel. This was 25 hours after we'd left the house yesterday morning. (Side note: conversations get interesting when you span time zones and don't go to bed. Stace kept talking about all of the adventures they'd had "this morning" and "today," but from my perspective, that had all happened yesterday.)

Anyway, they were so beat by the time they were heading to the hotel that we changed them to a later flight. Stace was worried about being able to wake the kids once they got to sleep. They're now scheduled to leave Atlanta at 2:00 p.m., arriving in Salt Lake at 4:00. The bottom line is that, assuming they make it to Salt Lake as scheduled, it will have taken them about 44 hours from the time they left our house in Switzerland until the time they arrive at her parents' house in Provo. Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Quick report

We survived. The weather was very nice, which helped. It only rained once. More pictures and reports later, but here's a quick summary of what we saw and did:

Churchill war rooms, Westminster Abbey, Imperial War Museum, The Lion King, Globe Theater, London Bridge attraction and haunted house (yeah, you read that correctly), Tower of London (including the Crown Jewels), Saint Paul's Cathedral (Ethan), National Gallery (Ethan), British Museum (Ethan and kids), Tower of London again (Stace), and Wimbledon (Ethan and Tanner, and we didn't see anyone famous). And we rode the Tube a lot. And a couple of double-decker busses. And we ate fish and chips, but the fish was really greasy. I didn't like it. I don't know if it's always that greasy, but it was when we ate it.

Off to London

We're off to London tomorrow. The kids are pretty excited. To our horror, they've been practicing their fake British accents, and they've threatened to use them. Stace and I, in turn, have threatened to disown Tanner if he actually tries that while we're there. There are few things more embarrassing than an American trying to speak with a British accent around actual Brits. Lindsey could actually probably pull it off because she's had mostly British teachers since she was four years old. She sometimes slips into British without being aware that she's doing it.

Don't read this posting

This is your last warning. Not everyone will want to read this posting. Those who do will likely regret it.

You've been warned. Stop now. If you do keep reading, make sure you're not eating.

Okay, here goes. It's about nose hair.

There are many unappealing things about getting older. Less energy, more fat, difficulty sleeping through the night, decreased tolerance for loud children ages 12 and 7, and all of that. Two of those less-appealing aspects are gray hair and nose hair.

I was prepared for that. I knew that I'd have an increase in both types of hair as I got older. What I wasn't prepared for was that they would come together in horrifying ways.

Today in the mirror, I noticed a gray nose hair peeking out.

It had never occurred to me that along with increasing in quantity, my nose hair would start to go gray. Did everyone know this but me? Why didn't anyone warn me? I guess it makes sense that if all the hair on my head is starting to turn gray, it would actually include all of the hair on my head. I just found it a bit depressing.

The offending hair was removed in short order, but I'm sure it's the first of many. Sheesh.

Not enough time

I'm learning that we should have booked a longer trip to London than we did. Wow! There's a lot to do there. We have three days to see what we can see. We've even added more activities than we had started with: Tanner and I want to check out Wimbledon while we're there, and we've now booked tickets to see "The Lion King" Thursday night. Three days usually seems about right for one of our family trips, but London in three days may prove to be tricky. Maybe we'll have to plan on another trip one of these days. Of course, that's also got to fit in somewhere with our planned trips to Stockholm, Lisbon, Berlin, . . . .

I can't believe they finally got to me

After three years, the Swiss have won. They turned me into someone I don't recognize. I didn't even see it coming. How could this have happened?

Today was a Swiss holiday. Tanner was working on a science project and had baseball practice, so Lindsey and I went to the Zurich Zoo. We were there for about four hours, looking at animals, walking around, and playing on the occasional playground. (Side note: This being Switzerland, I don't recall seeing even one scrap of litter on the ground.)

During the course of the afternoon, we got a little hungry and thirsty. We stopped at a food stand to split a bratwurst and a soda. The total for one brat and one soda was 10.70 in Swiss francs. With the U.S. dollar as weak as it is right now against the Swiss franc, that's about $12.60. I paid for the food without really thinking about it.

It was about an hour later, as I was noodling over the purchase in my mind, that it dawned on me that the soda had cost 4.20 in Swiss francs. That's about $4.80. I was suddenly struck by the absurdity of the fact that I'd paid almost five bucks for one lousy Coke. It wasn't the price that bothered me; what bothered me is that I paid that price without even hesitating. I'm not the guy who pays five bucks for a soda, or at least, I wasn't.

I think that this land of $8 gas, $25 contact lens solution, and $5000 monthly rent has finally made me immune to sticker shock. My company pays me a cost of living adjustment to make up for the higher cost of living here, and that amount increases as the dollar gets weaker, so the weak dollar and the higher expenses don't really hurt me personally. But still, I never thought I'd find myself happily forking over that kind of money for a stupid soda. What have I become?