Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

The Switzerland-Chile World Cup game ended an hour or so ago. By the lack of continuous honking in the streets, I’m going to assume, without checking (the rest of) the internet, that Switzerland did not win.

Bought a cut out Italian Euro piece (with Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man) while in München. He had some other very pretty cut-outs that were tempting including the ones from Kanada, Ägypten, and der Schweiz.

In a lot of our touristing pictures, Alex is wearing a New England Patriots cap and a Roots hoodie.

We went to London last weekend for a 4-day weekend to visit Hannah, David, Kiaya, and Alma. Alex and Dina got to see Hampton Court Palace for the first time. Alex was looking forward to it as he had a Paddington Bear book where Paddington visits the palace. London was a good weekend city trip for us as we’re very familiar with it. Gave us confidence that we can do the same type of trip for other cities. Mind you, London is very different with kids.

This weekend we drove to München (Munich) with my cousin Austin and his friend Sarah. Very pretty city. Germany tends to be much more beautiful than I anticipate.

All that said, I still feel that we don’t travel enough… odd.

You know you picked a good weekend to go away when:

1. It’s raining when you leave home.
2. It’s beautiful when you arrive at your destination.
3. It’s still raining when you get back home.

• After supper: Grappa. Chocolate. Espresso. Church bells. Sun. Family.
• Elevenses: Scotch. Cool night air. Stars. Solitude.

I finally deleted my LiveJournal account.

The marathon that I referenced previously is now back on… but staffed by zombies… this is just plain weird. Guess I’m going to need stamina.

I was in The Netherlands on Tuesday and Wednesday. One nice thing about trips is that I get to cuddle up with a good book… mainly on the plane rides and late at night at the hotel. As usual, reading helps me come to realizations. Mind you, this time a lot of my good thinking happened cruising down the Autobahn at 160km/h. Anyway, this time, I just realized that life is cyclic… sometimes it’s scary… sometimes it’s fun… sometimes it’s bad… but it’s all been done… and will all be done again. The best thing to do is sit back, relax, and enjoy it as best one can.

My friend notes that we’re going through the 5 stages of grief.

1. Denial: Yup… we went through that.
2. Anger: Yes. That passed quickly… no time for that if you want to get things done… need to channel it.
3. Bargaining: Yup. Doing that now.
4. Depression: I think that happened before bargaining for me… like Anger, that also passed quickly… or… I channelled the Anger to get rid of the Depression.
5. Acceptance: No way… uh… does that mean I’m back to Denial? Darn-it!

I almost got sucked into watching another season of LtV’s new drama. Thanks to friends, new and old, for recommending against getting hooked on yet another pointless drama. Maybe it’s also a sign of my changing tastes that even that even the premise / promise of the Martians finally landing their first probe on Venus, despite all the tight technical challenges after the thaw in Mars/Venus relations, just couldn’t draw me in.

• I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here before, but we’re now planning to spend a few more years in Switzerland. No set timelines. We’re playing it by ear. Moving here has been interesting. My planning horizon is artificially shortened by the temporariness. It’s odd and hard to handle.
• A lot of my old blog entries were broken by my blog software’s autoformatting. I’ve fixed most of that.
• I’ve finished a lot of things I’ve wanted to do lately… I think I’m on an adrenaline crash. It’s odd… I feel like it started off as a sprint… then I realized that the course wasn’t paved… then it turned into a marathon… half way through they removed the water stations… and then with the finish line in sight they shut down the race… and crash-boom-thud.
• I suck at writing. I suck at communicating. I suck at servicing. I suck at planning.
• I get home from work, and all Alex can say is, “Daddy, go away.”
• I’m consoling myself with heavy metal, scotch, and chocolate.

Talking to a coworker today and she pronounced “benevolent” as “ben-evil-ent”. I appreciate the juxtaposition of good and evil in the same word.

Morpheus, Shakespeare, Hetfield, in that order.

• New lawn chair.
• Spring has sprung in Switzerland.
• Balcony 3 floors up.
• Nice clouds.
• MacBook, Earphones, Crystal Method (… I’ve got the peace of mind of a killer soul… I’ve got the patience of a chopping block…) .
• Sibona, La Grappa Di Moscata.
• 4 day weekend.

Now, if only I didn’t have my self-review for work hanging over my head.

It was interesting to take a step back from myself this morning and realize that some of my recent decisions must look irrational to people that don’t have the same set of information that I do.

I will be on a plane for 4 of the next 5 days.

• On Thursday, Arianna took her first dozen steps or so. No falling at the end either.
• Alex now makes a pun in German. He puts his shoes on his hands and says “Handschuhe!” Hand = hand. Schuhe = shoes. Handschuhe = gloves.