Holiday Preparations.

 

 

And…..we’re done!

 

 

Oh wait,  lemme just flip that for you.

Right.  Beer and sh*t tickets.   That ought to do it.

 

Not quite sure what the squirrel has to do with wiping me arse though.  I think he would object?  And possibly bite?  Just wondering.

Pretty sure that would leave a mark.

And this is what happens when boredom starts to rear its ugly head.  Oh Laud have mercy.

 

Actually,  I did do some proper shopping yesterday,  and came across some sort of “deal” on this butter.   It was a “two-fer”,  and if you bought two,  you got a certain price.  The price is irrelevant.  I was just curious why it was called “summer butter”. 

 

 

Now I have to say,  for the most part the folks who work in the Billa up the street can be a bit of a serious bunch,  but when I asked one of the young ladies if I bought this summer butter it meant I could only use it while wearing my shorts,  she did manage to crack a smile,  and I think I might have detected the tiniest bit of laughter.  It was very brief mind you, and she was very quick to reassert her professionalism.  Well,  it could be that I’m being a little bit generous with that term.  She did suggest that wearing shorts could very well be a possibility,  but that perhaps the explanation had more to do with “free range” cows.  Something like that.  You know,  cows that are allowed to be outstanding in their field?  Waka waka.

 

We’ll see what “free range”  butter tastes like.

Can’t wait. 

Actually,  it’ll have to wait,  since I was going to bake up some banana bread today and realised I forgot to buy flippin’ sugar!  Gah!  Oh well,  that’ll be for tomorrow I suppose,  but then it’ll need to go in the freezer as it won’t be much good come Sunday night when we get home.   Silly bunt.  

Either that or I throw out several very ripe banana.  Hate to do that.

 

With it being a holiday and all,  I couldn’t help but notice the lack of warm bodies this morning after I walked Travelling Companion to the parking garage. 

Yup,  dead as a fart.

If you happen to notice that one lonely pigeon up there to the right,  I’d just like to point out that I made sure to kick a wayward bun in his general direction.  When I turned to take a look he/she was pecking away.  That’s me,  a regular St. Francis of Assisi.   Yessir.

OK,  I realise they’re “rats with wings”,  but he was by himself,  and there was sweet bugger all except cigarette butts.  That’s just not right.

By the way,  if you have the conviction to go to that wiki link and get about half way down the page,  you’ll read where he (St. Francis,  not the pigeon)  was “preaching to the birds”?   I think nowadays we’d refer to that as “mental illness”,  but that’s just my somewhat empirical view of these kinds of events.

 

To keep from going the rest of the way out of my gourd,  I figured I’d head out for a bit of a hike down the main drag in these parts.  The closer I got to the ring of course,  the more people there were out.   Mostly tourists,  many of whom quite likely didn’t realise this morning when they got up that all the shops would be closed.  Cafes?  No problem.   Other shopping?  Forget it.

 

This (below) is inside the Museumsquartier.

And no,  that’s not a bunker left over from WW2.  It’s the Museum of Modern Art.   I know we’ve been to the Leopold Museum, which is just to the left,  but I don’t seem to recall going to that one.  Quite often it’s a good idea to have a guide or docent to take you around if you’re visiting a museum of modern art.  Otherwise,  chances are you’re not going to have a clue as to what you’re looking at.  It’s amazing how much more sense it makes if someone explains what the artist is trying to depict.  Or *ahem* what degree of mental illness they may be suffering from.   Do we have a theme going here?

 

Speaking of mental illness….

 

I had this idea that I somehow wanted to make a “collage”  with a few pictures I had taken yesterday.  

I already have a couple programs lying about,  but neither of them were terribly user friendly.   Briefly thought about using “MS Paint”,  but that creates a huge mess.  Then I thought about another one called “HP PhotoSmart”,  which I could probably get rid of,  since I don’t use that retarded camera anymore.  The camera and the software both kinda suck it turns out. 

What it came down to,  was that I had to drink from the “Google well”.    Into the abyss.  (“Drink deep Grasshopper!”)

I downloaded Picasa 3.

We’ll see how that goes.

 

It did seem as though it was “taking over”,  so I was getting a little apprehensive there, but I did manage to get my little collage put together.  That only took an hour. *sigh*  I’m hoping to get a bit more use out of it. 

I’ll be keeping “Paint” since I can do that “Printscreen” thing,  but I think the HP nonsense is going to get the bums rush.  Only so much room in the Inn.

 

 

So,  why the hell did I need a collage?   Well,  because I wanted to stick a bunch of pictures together!   They’re the same,  but different.  And I didn’t want to upload four pictures of pretty much the same thing.  I could have given up on it,  I know.   But I persevered.   It was an hour well spent.  ‘Cause I’m such a busy guy…

 

We have this idea,  that we’d like to install a mini spit air conditioning system of some sort in our house when we get back home.   So yesterday I was watching YouTube videos on that very subject.  Man,  the stuff you can find out on the net!   Holy moly!   I mean,  admittedly there’s a whole whack of cr*p of YouTube,  but it’s amazing what you can find if you’re looking for specific information.

 

Here’s an example.

 

So,  in one of the videos,  and I don’t even recall if it was the one I linked to above,  they showed an installer dude very carefully measuring down from the ceiling when installing the indoor condenser.   Not only that,  but he seemed to be leaving heaps more space between the unit and the ceiling, compared to what we have here in our humble abode. 

This was actually why I was in the closet yesterday,  I was looking for a tape measure.  The beer and ass wipe sort of spoke to me.  And you had to suffer for it…

 

So all of the units installed here in Vienna seem to be at pretty much the same distance down from ceiling.  Give or take.

 

See my collage?  Huh?  Huh?

 

Then there’s this one in the dining room,  that’s only a couple inches from the ceiling!  What?

Hm.

I’m guessing the boys who installed these units here didn’t really measure?   Are we back in “Monkey Land” here?

I know for a fact they all work fine,  so I can gather from this randomness that the distance from the ceiling doesn’t matter a damn.

I’m sure you needed to know that. 

 

Now admittedly I’ll happily hire an air conditioner Dude to do the final purging of the lines after testing with nitrogen,  but judging from what I saw,  muggins here has a pretty good bead on doing this installation himself.   I just have to carefully pick the proper season, since I know there’s going to be some crawling around in a knee wall involved.  I’ve done it before,  I know what it’s like, and it ain’t pretty.

Check back in a couple years.  That’s a pretty vague “long range plan” there,  but that’s all I got.

 

 

One more sleep then it’s off to the UK.

 

Keep cool out there.

 

Thanks for lookin’.

 

now when I hit “publish”,  is Picasa going to mess something up?   Here goes.

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Lucky or not?

I had something completely different in my head for today’s offering,  but it will have to wait.

I was out and about this morning as usual,  ever mindful that tomorrow is a holiday here in Wienerland.  Yes,  another one!  Seriously,  a feller has to keep a close eye on the calendar,  since a holiday can come right up and bite ya on the hind end.   It’s Corpus Christi,  and I don’t mean the one in Texas.   That would be even more bizarre.

I think it was last year sometime,  when there was a holiday on the Thursday,  and it just so happened that Travelling Companion had unfortunately gone off to the UK to do a balance sheet review*.   She’s become considerably more aware of the days on which holidays fall since then.  It’s kinda tough to get the monkeys to come out for a ‘look-see’ if they’re all on holidays.  Them monkeys need their time off,  don’t ya know.

*Otherwise known by the terminology that I’ve been using up until now,  which is “some kind of financial hocus-pocus”. 

 

So on that occasion I was here by my lonesome in Wienerland for a few days.  No big deal.  I had gone out in the morning on the Wednesday and was coming in the building,  at which point our neighbour lady was also coming in, after a trip to the grocery store.  She was somewhat overburdened with all the stuff she had bought,  and was having some issues,  so helping her was naturally something I would do.  Never did it occur to me that she had so many groceries because the next day was a holiday.  Nor did it occur to her to perhaps mention it to the dim-wit foreign guy who was so very kindly helping her.   I guess she figured I knew what I was doing?   Why would anyone?

So the next morning,  when it was eerily quiet out on the street which is a crazy place most any other day but Sunday,  it began to sink in that I had made a slight miscalculation.   *drat*

Not that much of a hardship really,  since I always have some provisions set aside for just such an eventuality.  That,  in spite of our fridge and freezer compartment being no bigger than the one we had in our motorhome.   Just thought I’d point that out.

 

 

 

So back to today….

In addition to this morning’s little grocery excursion,  I had once again seen a couple items on sale that piqued my interest.   Just shirts.  No biggie.  But it did mean taking another brief hike in the opposite direction over to the Vögele store that is situated in the mall at the West Train Station.   Picked up a couple shirts for €15.   Good wampum.  I had already bought a couple previously,  knew the proper size and knew they were ‘günstig aber gut’.   (That’s ‘cheap but good’,  btw) 

I had already worn the first two enough to have them go through a couple wash cycles,   which is a good way to tell if the fabric will stand up for any length of time.  If you’re going to drop €100 on a shirt then yes,  it bloody well better stand up,  but two for 15?   Probably best to not get too carried away.

 

I think I’ve said this before,  and I try not to get too darned repetitive,  but I always get a kick out of some of the stuff you see in a big city.  It might be mostly a Viennese thing,  but I doubt it.

 

The “unlucky” part was,  these guys were just finishing up a set.   Only caught the last 15 seconds or so,  BUT they were really quite good,  and worth posting here.    And yes, you can safely turn up your volume.

 

 

So fine,  I wasn’t about to hang around there for too very long waiting for them to come back,   so I pressed on.

 

Just as I was coming out of the cross walk at the Gürtel,   I looked up to see this guy,  in flight.

 

I was going to say,  “this bike rider”,  but he’s clearly not riding it at the moment.

These photos are taken from the opposite direction,  since I wasn’t very well going to take photos of the guy sitting there writhing in pain from too close up.  That would be kinda rude I thought.

He was riding along on the bike path in the direction away from where the picture was taken, and it didn’t seem to me that he came in contact with anyone else.  Possibly there was some issue with the bike,  or he swerved for some reason?  But like I said,  when I looked up, he was airborne.

 

As he sat there on the ground, he was hanging on to his right arm,  and it looked as though he had dislocated his shoulder.   Anyway,  when I came by the first time,  someone had phoned for an ambulance,  and they were on the scene when I came back through after my little shirt extravaganza.

 

 

 

So….not so lucky.

 

And oh my yes,  he was wearing a helmet!   Fat lot of good it did for his arm though.  Don’t get me started on that whole helmet cr*p!    

Well,  I’m just going to rant about it for just a minute or two.  You can skip ahead.  I won’t mind.

For example,  the population of the Netherlands comes in at around 17 million,  (just under) and the number of bikes comes in at around 13 million.   That’s a lot of bikes.  And who wears helmets?  Only little kids,  (most of whom are quite likely better riders than this guy) and the jocks who go out to storm around the countryside on their racing bikes as a form of recreation after work.   Nobody else wears helmets.  Are you kidding?  There would be an uprising if some dim-witted bureaucrat or politician thought it prudent to come up with some sort of “law” saying you had to wear a helmet in the Netherlands.   Look at New Zealand,  where their bike riding dropped off to nothing after some monkey in government thought everyone should ‘protect themselves’.  F**king Nanny State!  

 

I’ve seen some bike riders here in Wienerland do some truly dumb things,  and if you’re going to be that much of a dummy,  then by all means,  you should be not only wearing a helmet,  but possibly some body armour as well.  Could have helped this guy.

If it’s going to be a “sport” rather than a proper mode of transportation,  then unfortunately you’re going to have to get bundled up in a bunch of protective gear to keep from getting hurt.   Hey,  I wear gloves when I go sailing (because it’s racing) to protect my hands, and I’ve seen guys wear helmets on their noggins out in rough weather,  but there’s no law that says you have to.  I’d just as soon think for myself.  Thank-you.

 

 

Oh,  and by the way,  one of the blogs that I enjoy reading from time to time is written by a fellow who lives up in Assen,  in the Netherlands.  He’s originally from the UK,  but immigrated to the Netherlands after briefly living in New Zealand.  Seems to me their helmet laws had nothing to do with the move,  it was only coincidental.  There’s a wealth of bike riding related material on his blog.   Knock yourself out.  You'll find it here.

Cheers.

Feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

 

Keep it between the ditches.   Any other instructions?   Um no.  I think I’m done.

 

 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

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All Quiet.

“All’s Quiet”?   Maybe that’s better.  

I could say,  “Im Osten nichts Neues”,  which could more or less be translated as, “Nothing new on the Eastern Front”,   if you use a very old literary work as a translation model. 

Instead of PTSD,  which was something that was alluded to in that literary work I referred to above,  we have,  PGDBS.   “Post Guest Departure Boredom Syndrome”.  Or something like that. 

It hasn’t really become terribly serious just yet,  and we are flying over to the UK on Friday night,  so I think we can keep from tearing each other’s hair out.  

Well,  good luck to anyone thinking about tearing MY hair out.   I’d just like to briefly recap if I may:

 

I realise that I shouldn’t clog up Google’s servers with silly pictures,  especially if I put up the same one more than once,  but you know what?  They can install more servers.  I don’t care.

I think they have more than a couple at this point?

 

Man,  I’m easily distracted!

 

 

As I write this,  our guest is on the second leg of her journey back to Vancouver.  She flew on points,  which is all fine and dandy,  but that meant having to fly through Heathrow in the UK,  with a bit of a nasty lay-over for the return trip.   Her overseas flight was this morning at 10:30.   If you recall,  and I’m not sure why you shouldn’t, we took her to the airport yesterday afternoon,  and she arrived at Heathrow some time before 9:00 p.m.  Last night.

I’m not sure if she holed up in a airport type hotel for the night,  or simply camped out on a bench.  I’ve done that “camping out on a bench”.  I don’t recommend it.  When I saw a note from her this morning that said she was at Heathrow,  I at first misread it, and thought it said “Death row”,  so I hope that wasn’t some sort of subliminal message.  Just my brain getting mixed signals is the more likely explanation. 

Let’s hope so anyway.

 

Just a moment of reminiscence for times passed:

Some folks like to play scrabble.  I suck at it.  I think it has more to do with attention span than vocabulary.  That’s my excuse anyway.  I’d sooner slap down the first word that pops into my head than try and maximize every little point. 

Wait a minute,  that’s kind of like the format of this blog,  isn’t it?  Maybe that’s why my blogging skills have never evolved passed the “monkey smacking on a keyboard” stage?   Hm.  Oh well.

 

 

Travelling Companion will quite possibly be staggering in late,  as it’s only a few days after month end,  and in keeping with the way these things go,  it behoves her to carefully,  carefully go over all the information that is being passed along to her,  before turning it over to those who want to know.  

The objective is to not be just another chimp.  Note. Keeping with the monkey theme here.

If you’ve ever gone to the zoo,  you’ll notice they keep those fellers behind glass?   That’s mostly since,  even though the monkey might be smiling at you,  there’s a good chance he’s getting ready to fling some sh*t in your general direction.   This is somewhat analogous to the way things work in the business world.  Never trust a monkey.

Just an observation.

 

 

Hope everyone is having a fine day.

 

Keep those sticks on the ice.   And be mindful of those monkeys.

 

 

Thanks for lookin’.

 

 

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