Bonjour! Guten morgen!

I made it to the land where the y's and z's are transversed on the kezboard, so don't mind the spelling errors.  We arrived safelz, without problems and have had manz good blessings in our european adventure so far.  I can't believe we've alreadz done so much.  Our second night we didn't have a hotel in Munich where we were so we booked ourselves on the overnight sleeper train to Paris.  Our mothers must be prazing for us because instead of sleeping in the assigned compartment with 4 strangers of varzing ages and genders, the conductor put us into our own compartment.  We became friends with him and he gave us the same arrangements on last night's train back.  Now we are in Austria readz to do the sound of music tour and visit other parts of Austria.  What an adventure!  It has been awesome!

Spontanaity

Untrue to my normal, cautious character, on Thursday I made a spontaneous move: I bought airline tickets to Europe. Connie's joining me and we're leaving this Thursday. We're flying into Germany, then going to Austria, Italy, Switzerland, France, and maybe Belgium. at least that's the plan for now. It may change as we go, because with this short of notice we're not exactly following a strict schedule... we haven't even had time to make as much of a sketch of a schedule. Finally I'll have something interesting to blog about. Retirement really is the life!

Kensington's growing up

My car (named Kensington) probably lost a lot of resale value today.  Kens hit the 100,000 mile mark -- not bad for a '99.  I like my little Civic.  I've had it since '01 when it was at the 21000 mile mark.  We'll see how many more miles we travel together.

Photo courtesy of Connie Bell :)

Retirement

It's official.  My job is over.  I'm now unemployed, though I prefer to call it "retired".  Now I get to sit on the porch swing knitting, gossiping with the neighbors, waving to the young school children as they go by.  I'll go to Bingo night and eat prunes.  Then one day I'll wake up and realize that I never did quite have the funds to retire so early and it'll be back to the working world again.  But till then I'm going to enjoy this time.  Cheers!  

JAZZ - Up close and personal

My close friend and former roommate Melinda called me last weekend and invited me to go to the Jazz game with her. The owner of the company for which she works couldn't attend and passed his tickets on to her. I was pretty excited about it because really... I don't go to many of those, and I love watching the Jazz play! I met Melinda at the Delta Center (yes, I still call it that... call me old fashioned). We proceeded to the "W" section as directed on the tickets. I prepared to walk up the stairs as usual but to my delight I found that some fortunate people actually get to walk down the stairs to their seats. I was one of the fortunate ones on Saturday. Our seats ended up being on the 7th row and we were even lucky enough to sit on the cushioned chairs. The Jazz players appeared larger than life from that close... The description of "tall" changed for me that night. It was an awesome game. They played against the Kings and won. I could definitely get used to those seats, if only I had the opportunity.


This picture makes it look further away than it was.




































I never mind seeing Korver up close and personal
















And every once in a while it was just as much of a show to watch the Jazz bear do the tight rope walk up the banisters
















So, yes... Melinda has covered Christmas and birthday gifts for me for life for her willingness to share her extra ticket with me. She's the best!