Sunday, April 30, 2006

A trip across the ocean....

Here's the Holland update you've all been waiting for, pictures included :)

On Thursday, we flew out of O'Hare on a direct flight to Amsterdam. The flight itself was unremarkable, except for our inability to sleep, despite the fact that I even took Ambien. Turns out, Ambien just makes me a little nauseous and light headed. Oh well...
When we landed in Amsterdam, we immediately took the train to Nijmegen, which is in the south near the German border. On the train, I was giddy and Andrik was jetlagged.
I expected the countryside to be full of windmills and tulip fields, but I saw no fields of tulips and only one windmill. The countryside looked a lot like Ohio, see what you think...















The actual view out the train window.















The only windmill I actually saw during the trip.

We took a taxi from Nijmegen to the hotel where the wedding was held, Jachtslot de Mookerheide. It was a gorgeous place surrounded by fields and woods. Our room was the highest room in the tallest tower and it was incredible. Gorgeous furnishings, including what must have been the coolest bed ever. On the top of the bed was a field of lit stars that bathed the room in a gentle glow. Absolutely beautiful.
















Jachtslot during the day. Our room is the one with the arrow slit windows on the right.
















Jachtslot at night.















The star ceiling of our bed

Friday night we went to the rehearsal dinner, where the food was fine, although I was generally not impressed by Dutch food. Although, the Dutch do make a decent french fry. The Dutch don't seem to have a particular cuisine or fine food, which was disappointing.

Saturday was wedding festivities all day. I woke up, had breakfast and then went back to bed, where Andrik had been smart enough to stay asleep. There was a Tea at noon, where we each had three cups of coffee and tea. Tea was followed by the Civil Ceremony, which is required by Dutch law to be completely seperate from the Church Consecration Ceremony. We went to the church after the Civil Ceremony, and the church ceremony was followed by another Tea, where we had 3 more glasses of coffee and tea, and a champagne and cake reception, which was followed by dinner. Dinner was equally decent, but unimpressive Dutch cuisine. Following dinner were cups 7-9 of coffee and tea, which fueled our dancing through the night at the reception. Overall, a very fun wedding :)















The church
















Us with the happy couple

Sunday morning we woke up way too early, considering we were partying in the hotel bar until 3 or 4 am, and took the trian to meet Jamie in Amsterdam. Thank goodness that Jamie is a better friend than any of us and remembered our hotel's name and general location so that we could meet up. Jamie wanted our first order of business to be a ride on the roller coaster inexplicably placed in in the middle of the city center plaza.















Jamie enjoying the roller coaster ride.

After the ride, we generally roamed the streets of Amsterdam for several hours, ending up drinking Heineken across from some prostitutes and the Moulin Rouge in the red light district. Amsterdam, outside of the red light district, is a beautiful and old city that I thought was incredibly goregeous.















A canal, but I can't remember which one.















Houses in Amsterdam


There are many more pictures that you can see on Ofoto, which I'll have sent out within a couple of days. I'll leave you with a picture, not of Amsterdam, but of Bo wrestling with a pile of hangars...

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Dutch Treat

Well, if nobody else is going to post about Amsterdam, I will. Andrik and Jen have a bunch of pictures too (including about 10 pictures that Andrik took of me on a roller coaster that the Dutch have placed in their main square), so I'll cut straight to the exclusive stuff:

Why pee behind a dumpster or in some alley when you can just let loose in a public urinal? (Homer: "they're YEARS ahead of us!")


Amsterdam Centraal Station, which almost ruined the whole weekend for everyone, thanks to its "fake" facade which looked like a real entrance, but wasn't. Thousands of years ago the Dutch must have gotten a two-for-one special on vowels, which is how you end up with words like 'centraal.' Personally, I think it's baadaass.

A nice shot of one of the canals (or "grachten", which is a disgusting sounding word) that wind through the city.


Enough scenic stuff, I'll cut straight to the sexual perversions. Like Chickita's Sex Paradys, which was selling a film called "Top Notch Bitches 4."



On the subject of sexual perversions, check this shit out. This is by far the greatest advertisement in the history of man. And it covered the side of a building. I feel like such a chump - here I've been eating fish all these years, while the Dutch have been putting them to a far more exciting use.


And just so Beanie and Liz don't feel left out - did you eat the Dal Makhani from Trader Joe's yet? I had it for dinner tonight. It's damn tasty. I'm buying like ten more boxes this weekend.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

TWELVE!

So I've had "Pinball Number Count" stuck in my head the better part of the day. And I don't really mind, because it's a jazzy little tune.

Check it out here. Odds are you knew it as a kid and just forgot about it.

Kittie Surgery

Last week, the kitties had surgery. They stayed overnight at the vet, so we had our first night at home without kittens since December. This inevitably led to date night. We went to Flatlanders a steakhouse far up 94. We went there once in college with two of you guys, but we can't remember why. It was definitely for some event. Do you guys remember what it was? Andrik ordered what must have been the largest pile of bbq anything I've ever seen. It stood up off the plate and went on forever!!

Anyway, Bo got his boys snipped and Ally got her eggs taken away. Ally got stiches and couldn't keep from tugging on them, so she had to wear this satellite. The receptionist at the vet's office kept raving about how she's the cutest kitten she's ever seen. High praise for our little flower child...


Well, she's doing much better, now that she's got her stiches out. Bo's been fine basically since day one. I think the surgeries made them more cuddly. Just wait and see how much licking Radar will do once he's fixed :)

I'm including this last picture, just because it was freakishly cute when she burrowed under the blanket :)

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Ahem

Where'd everybody go?

I'll break the silence with a report on my trip to San Francisco to visit Beanie and Liz. The trip included a surprise overnight visit with my parents in Dallas, since I got to Dallas too late to catch my connecting flight to Oakland. The next day I was met at the airport by Beanie and Radar, who licked my face through Oakland, across the Bay Bridge, and into San Francisco.

A shot of Liz and Radar after we gave him a Vicodin. Seriously, I'm just kidding. It was a Xanax.

Except for a few hours on the first day, it rained the whole time I was there, which put a damper (get it?) on things. Nonetheless, Beanie and I amused ourselves with Mario Kart and cookies while Liz swam across oceans and climbed mountains and biked to China or did whatever pugilistic stuff she likes to do.

I got home at about 11:30pm on Monday night (thanks to a series of delays and a thrilling three-hour layover at John Wayne Airport in Orange County), then promptly turned around and flew to Knoxville for the rest of the week. The weather there was gorgeous, which made up for the fact that most of the city looks like this:

I'm back stateside for about two more hours, then it's off to Madison for my fourth and final trip to Wisconsin this recruiting season. Avis has rented me a totally bitchin' Mercury Grand Marquis for the trip, which means I'll be pimping Interstate 90 like none other.

Andrik and Jen - at some point we oughta discuss Amsterdam, since it's less than two weeks away. Huzzah!

Sunday, April 02, 2006

I need help

How do you get the Laverne and Shirley theme song out of your head?

"...Give us any rule we'll break it..."

a