Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

Dina and Alex are starting to make friends here. Yay!

I’m still of the opinion that I want to be a relative hermit for the next couple of years.

What does one do when one has a bad day at work when stuck in the German part of Switzerland?

I don’t know what one does… but apparently I make a sauerkraut martini.

Update: Followed by a beet martini.

Alex now says “fucker”…

Worse, he uses it in context / correctly (as a general purpose expletive, not as in fornicator).

Rented a car, mainly to replace our mattress with a softer one and buy a wardrobe for the basement. Took advantage of having a car to do a bit of tourisiting.

Went to Baden on Saturday evening for supper. Sadly, we missed the open air Martini-Markt (having to do with St.-Martin, not the drink). Worse, I probably had the worst case of food poisoning I’ve ever experienced.

Sunday, went to Schaffhausen, a picturesque medieval town. and then onto the Rheinfalls, the largest waterfalls in Europe. If / when you visit us, we should drag you there, it’s all of 30 minutes away.

Alex’s attention span is getting better, and he’s willing to walk for longer and longer distances. We managed a good ½ hour of wandering through a museum with him. Buying the Swiss Museums Pass was a good idea. It lets us feel free to randomly wander in and out of museums without having to consider whether it’s worth 18 CHF to see a museum for Alex’s attention span.

Sprint sucks.

When we tried to cancel our service, they insisted on billing us for the whole cycle, even though we were cancelling mid-cycle. Fine.

Our last bill just added insult to injury.

1. The salutation: “Hello! It’s your anniversary. You have been our valued customer for 6 years. Thank you.” We’ve actually been customers longer, but previously under Dina’s name, not mine. A bit insulting when they’re telling us this as they milk another $50 out of us.
2. Not only did they bill us for the full cycle. They started another cycle and billed us for one day of that too. Sure, it was only $3.50, but the implied corporate flipping off your “valued customer” was maddening.

We told Sprint that we’d be back in 2 years. They seem to have done everything possible to make sure we go with someone else when that time comes.

• Montreal: December 19th to December 30th. Lots of visiting family.
• Boston: December 30th to January 12th. I’m working from the 5th to the 12th.

Ping us if you want to see us.

Movers brought us the last of our stuff, our sea cargo, on Wednesday. I think we have too much stuff… the movers noted that we didn’t at all bring too much stuff, especially for Americans.

They arrived just in time… it started snowing Wednesday, and I needed my golf umbrella. The Swiss are practical. Many people had umbrellas the same size or bigger than mine.

The walk to the train for work was nice… snow falling, lightly coating the ground, and the smell of wood burning in fireplaces all around…

The walking around town has been good for me. Despite eating like a pig last night (all you can eat raclette (meat and cheese… mmmm)), this morning the scale informed me that I’d lost 6 pounds so far.