When dinner is a shell game.

 

Not going to get too carried away here,  but I’ll try and resist using point form. 

Started out with rain this morning,  and I only mention that,  ‘cause I took a picture!  Have to have a use for perfectly good picture.  Well,  it ain’t no pretty sunset, but it’s still a serviceable photo.   Or as I’ve heard said when referring to someone with obvious mental health issues,  “Functional”.  Whatever the heck that means.

 

You can see the little newspaper Dude on the corner there.  He always says good morning.  (well,  actually it’s Guten Morgen,  but then you should know that)   He has my Saturday paper ready for me before I get within 10 feet.  Possibly since I always give him a tip.  I could buy a paper in the grocery store,  but this guy is trying to make a living.  It’s all the same to me.

 

Now,  speaking of the paper.  (see how I did that?)  I did one of those snortingly haughty derisive kind of grunts when I read this article today. Use your imagination.

 

 

Have I not been bitching and complaining about the airport?   Well,  it seems I’m not the only one.

 

Turns out they’re going to have to redo a couple things.   The escalators are too narrow,  causing huge problems.   The handicapped access is practically non-existent.  There was a bunch of stuff.  Already some things are “Außer Betrieb” (out of order).   It just opened in June people!

You can peruse the article if your German is up to snuff.   I’m into my second glass of wine here.  Yer on yer own.

Suffice to say, they started planning this airport extension THIRTEEN years ago,  and it was supposed to be done in 2008.   There have been cost overruns,  sabotage (oh ya!) and other shenanigans.  And of course,  if you want my humble opinion,  the underlying problem can be attributed to the simple fact that,  IT WAS DESIGNED BY MONKEYS!    How many times do I have to say it!   Put me in charge dammit!   No wait wait,  I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.  No thanks! It’s beyond pooched at this point.  It’ll be a few more years before they see the light of day.  And they wonder why some of these countries are having some issues?   Cripes!

 

OK,  on to the “Meatball surprise”.  

Basically,  that means that,  if you get a meatball,  I’d be surprised.

Once upon a time when I worked at a place called Mother's Restaurants,  we (they?) had a thing called a Meatball Sub.   Not everyone’s cup of tea,  but I liked them.

So when I had some left over pasta sauce with a few meatballs from last nights humble offering,  this is what you get.  

Bread (stand-in for a sub) + sauce (with hopefully a meatball) and some stretchy cheese.   It actually has some German name,  but I won’t bore you.  It’s stretchy.  That’s all you need to know.

 

Not sure what happened with that one up there on the right.   Hadn’t had one sip of wine at that point.   I ate that one though.  I never serve the rejects.

 

Oh,  and all the vegans can just pretend there’s eggplant under there or something.   *shudder*

 

Try and keep your dinner down.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

 

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The Spare Tire Dilemma.

And it just occurred to me that there might be another meaning to those words but no,  I’m not talking about the slight protuberance around my mid section.  *ahem*

You do believe that it is “slight”,  right?  I mean,  compared to when I was 22,  it’s certainly bigger,  but compared to others whom I see of my vintage, I have a long way to go before any thoughts of having a “gastric by-pass”.   But let us not be a kettle calling the pot (belly) black here.

 

A little too much beer consumption comes to mind.  The scary part is,  my dear ole Dad had a somewhat considerable protuberance,  and he never drank a drop of beer in his life.  Maybe something to do with “wheat belly”,  but that’s a whole huge controversial topic of which I understand very little.

 

What also occurred to me,  was something that Travelling Companion said this morning,  before she said too much else,  and that was, “Made it through another month”.  This pretty much sums up our state of being at the present time,  which also explains the gaps where there should or could be daily blog posts.  Some days I got nothin’.

Way back yonder in the springtime,  when it was tire changing time,  the suggestion was made that I should retrieve the spare set of tires so that they could be delivered to the Company that Cannot be Named, either here in Wienerland,  or up in Shrems at an undisclosed location.  Well,  I know where it is,  but I won’t say. 

I’ll admit that there are times when I fail to use good judgement,  (only “times”?) which was the case in this instance when I simply should have said “No!”,  although perhaps not that emphatically.   

When we left the Netherlands and had to give up the Audi,  I only made sure to have a business card from the garage where the tires were kept, which I put in a little box with a bunch of other stuff that more or less belonged to the car,  and that was that.  I don’t remember if I left a note or not.  We knew who was going to be getting the Audi,  and I think T.C. mentioned it to him as well.  The bonus was,  they spoke reasonable English at that garage.  Of course,  that’s quite common in the Netherlands.

But instead,  I told the Tire Changing Dudes that I wanted to take the tires with me,  and they dutifully bagged them up and we shoved them in the car.   Of course,  now they’re in our storage locker.  

Just getting them into the storage locker isn’t all that easy in this case either.  It’s not like I can pull up in front of my garage and cart two tires at a time over to the shed or anything.  No,  I have to find a parking spot,  lug them into the building,  take the car away to the parking garage (before I get a ticket since I didn’t pay to park)  and then lug them downstairs.   Just such a lotta fun.

Of course,  they can’t stay there,  so at some point in time I have to reverse the whole process.

 

Those big things in the plastic bags are the winter tires.

There’s not a lot of space in there to start with,  and believe me,  it’s just so very handy to have to move the danged things each and every time I need to get out a suitcase.     Not going to miss this particular aspect of apartment life,  I’ll tell you that much.

 

 

So,  the PLAN was,  we were going to be “outta here”  before I’d ever need to put the winter tires back on the car again.  Hence the pick-up program.   Talk about being gullible.

Meanwhile of course,  T.C.’s work visa has been extended until the end of the year.  Gah!

I couldn’t very well mention any of this tire pick-up business back in April when I got the tires changed over,  since too many things were up in the air.  

 

 

 

Mind you, our departure is still pretty much up in the air,  but that’s beside the point.  When I know,  you’ll know.  Well, you just might not know right away is all. 

Tell you what,  when the movers show up,  THEN you’ll know.  Merry Christmas.

 

Right,  so along towards the middle of October,  I’ll have to do the tire change thing all over again.  *sigh*   Not sure if I want to go back to the Tire Changing Dudes I had been using, which would involve a certain amount of having to sheepishly explain that I should have just said,  “no” to my wife (never wholly recommended) OR find a new place altogether,  such as the BMW dealer here in Wienerland.   I have very little desire to go to the dealership,  since I’m not overly keen on dealerships to begin with,  and the one time I did go there,  there was one particularly rude S.O.B.  whom I didn’t really want to ever have to deal with again.   Maybe that’s the real meaning of the “deal” in “dealership”?    So I just said,  “Ain’t going back”,  and I never have.  

I’m funny that way.

The last time the car had to be serviced,  they sent someone from the dealership to T.C.’s work to fetch it.   It seems they didn’t mind,  and I didn’t have to sit in some stupid waiting room for an entirely too long a time.   Probably one of the reasons why I’ve always preferred to either do my own oil changes,  or take it to someone who will at least let me have a look under the vehicle and give it the once over while the oil is being drained.   Not too many places where you can do that it seems,  and I prefer to avoid any place where I can’t keep an eye on whomever might be mucking around with my car.  

I’m funny that way too.

“Don’t let anyone under the hood”,  was a piece of advise given to me many years ago by a particular mechanic who is one of those guys who doesn’t mind if you hang around and watch him work.  Words to live by. 

It’s tough to find a good mechanic,  and I’m actually looking forward to dealing with that guy again whenever we find ourselves back on the other side of the pond.  Of course,  we’ll have to buy a car first.   That should be just heaps of fun.

 

Other than that minor diatribe,  it’s a fairly normal Friday here in Wienerland.  There’s the usual chores,  that kind of thing.  We have had a couple rain showers,  which makes it tricky for hanging stuff outside,  but that’s about as rough as it gets around here. 

Now if I can only keep from tying up the computer all night by copying another 50 GB sized folder of files,  life will be just peachy.  (rolling my eyes here)  I won’t be doing that again.  

 

Keep those blades sharp,  and thanks for coming ‘round.

 

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Seeing old things.

And it just occurred to me that I could very well be talking about what I see in the mirror every morning.  At least it’s kind of blurry until I put my glasses on.  Not recommended.  You know what else is not recommended?  Those big magnifying mirror thingies they have in hotel rooms.  There was one in the bathroom at the Sava Golf Hotel in Bled.   Man,  that was a whole world of discoveries.  We won’t talk about it.

 

Often when we think of old things in Europe,  it’s along the lines of architecture or art.   Or maybe old buildings.  The Alamo or the little dust-up that went on there by comparison,  is fairly recent.   Heck,  that was only back in 1836.  And even though the Alamo was built in 1793, and is now a museum,  there are folks here living in buildings that are older.   Don’t get your panties in a knot.  I’m just pointing these things out.  We got some seriously old sh*t over here.

 

Since it’s never a bad thing to see something older than one’s own face in the  mirror,  we thought we’d stop along the way through Slovenia this time to see the ‘Stara trta’,  or ‘Old Vine’.

 

 

If you went to that Facebook page yesterday,  you may have seen a couple pictures.

The thing is,  I have to sheepishly admit that,  we’ve driven past Maribor a FEW times,  (lost count) and never had a clue that there was the world’s oldest grapevine in town.   On one of the first occasions,  we even forgot to turn off the GPS and ended up actually driving through town,  and still had no clue.   That’s the other thing about going to certain countries in Europe,  the Navigation system in the car needs to be updated,  and in some places it’s best to turn it off if logic is telling you to follow the signs to Ljubljana for example,  and the nice lady is telling you to get of the road,  because she thinks it hasn’t been built yet.  Just one of those learning things.  She doesn’t ALWAYS know the way.  Just saying.

Oh,  and it’s “Maribor”,  not “Marlboro”.   Some kind of Freudian “thinking I’d like a smoke”  sort of slip going on there.  Not mentioning any names.

 

Saying it’s the “world’s oldest”  is a bit bold I suppose,  but the folks from Guinness seem to think so,  as there has been some testing done along the lines of DNA and such to verify this claim.   OK then.   It looked pretty old to me.

So are we going to go back?   Well,  no.   There’s not much else to see,  except the odd tourist who wanders up,  looks at the foliage, reads the signs and wanders off again. 

 

 

Hey,  it’s a grape vine,  not an amusement park.

 

We made a proper visit of it by having our lunch.   There was a bench over by the river.

Saw a mating pair of swans with two signets.   Big whoop.  They left us alone,  which is my preferred way to view any wildlife.

 

Speaking of excitement at the amusement park, did you read about this one?

Photo credit goes to Chris Riley / Times-Herald / AP

 

This is reason number 47 why I no longer go on rides.

Used to have to suck it up and go on with the kids when they were too young to go by themselves.  Thankfully they grew up.

These brave (foolish?)  souls were stuck up there for a couple hours.  Roughly 150 feet up.   That’s a ways.  No thanks.

There was one picture I saw of some water being delivered.  I think I’d need a couple Valium to go with it.

Here’s a link to the article if you’re remotely interested.   Thought I’d throw it in there to offset the boredom generated by watching grapes grow.  That’s right up there with watching paint dry.

And that’s all I got.

It’s a fine day weather wise here in Wienerland.  Hope yours is just as nice.

Thanks for stopping by.

 

 

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