graffiti in a hurry

These are some more pictures from the G8 protest on July 2nd. I should first say that I agree with the march and think the whole thing was pretty cool. But there are always a few assholes who try to ruin it for everyone. In this case it was one asshole with a can of paint. I got lots of pictures of this guy's artwork, but these two are my favorite. Next time slow down buddy!

UPDATE 04/06/06 Images Temporarily Offline 

they say it like it is

You got Punkt!

…oh my god I'm hilarious :/

UPDATE 04/05/06 Image Temporarily Offline 

how (not) to ship

See that smile on my face? It's because I haven't yet found out how much it costs to ship a 50 pound box from Scotland to Colorado. A little background – inside this box (which I had to make from smaller boxes at the post office) is a suitcase filled with all the wedding stuff we didn't want to carry around Europe for two weeks. There was some other small travel stuff that we no longer needed as well. Anyway, it came out to about 22 kilograms (about 50 pounds).The cost to ship this thing? 127 GBP. In American terms that's $225.00!

Before the trip we had the idea that if we ever ended up with too much crap we could just ship it back along the way. No way jose!

UPDATE 04/05/06 Image Temporarily Offline

german car ad: bmw

Those Germans really like their car ads. This one was spotted in the Munich airport, which is one of the nicest airports I've been in. The bathrooms are clean, the restaurants are nice, and, as noted, they have cool ads. You can see this at baggage claim should you happen to be in Munich. On a side note, the Frankfurt airport is one of the worst I've been in. Munich:1 / Frankfurt: zero.

UPDATE 04/05/06 Image Temporarily Offline

protest poster: #1 terrorist

On July 2nd (same day as our wedding) 250,000 people showed up in Edinburgh for the Make Poverty History march. It made traffic a be-atch, but we did get to see fun posters like this. I have a ton of protest photos (and other photos) to upload, just haven't decided between loading up new photo software on Cheezwhiz or using Flickr. Flickr is $25/year and very cool, but I already have photo space and bandwidth to spare on Cheezwhiz. The free version of Flickr is kind of weak…

UPDATE 04/05/06 – Probably won't be uploading any new photos any time soon…

european gadget: swiss light switch

this little oddity is used in switzerland (and elsewhere?) as a light switch. very simple. one button. push it once the lights come on. push it again the lights go off. I could see this being useful for those rooms with two switches on the same light. see, on a light switch up is on and down is off. but if you have two switches in the same room, one switch is always in the wrong place. and that can be very confusing after a few rounds at the bar. it seems the swiss have figured this out, even though their food sucks (not at all related but worth pointing out).

wildfire is freaking me out

Right now there is a wildfire burning about 9 miles from my house (click photo to enlarge). It's visable from my street. Scary stuff. You can watch the news video here. Watching it on TV or looking outside I can tell you this video doesn't show shit, but you do get a nice commercial for John Elway's Auto Dealerships. They think it was started by a couple of kids with fireworks. It's over 100 degrees right now so, like my lawn, most of the grass on that mountain is dead…

search stats

It's always fun to see how people are finding my site (an idea I stole from Joey). From looking at these stats (click photo to enlarge) it looks like people are really into Star Wars and Blondie. On a side note, I've finally overtaken Kraft Foods in the Google search engine for the word "cheezwhiz" without a space. What I mean is – type cheezwhiz into Google and I'm first on the list. Typing it as "cheez whiz" still brings up Kraft Foods first, but the fact that I used the phrase "cheez whiz" in this post (twice!) may change that, too.

married!

nobody wants to look at a whole roll of someone else’s wedding photos. so you get one. I really just wanted to show you how awesome the scottish countryside is. this was taken at the same spot we had the ceremony – kailzie gardens in peebles, scotland (07/02/05).

sorrento part 2

Sorrento was the last stop on our trip. We set up our lodging at this place called Mama Camilla’s. It’s kind of like a bed a breakfast that serves dinner about two blocks from the ocean. When we arrived we were told our room was under maintenance and that they had arranged for us to stay at the hotel across the street. When we got over there we realized it was nothing like the cozy bed and breakfast setup we wanted. Plus, the shower was grimy, we were right on the street so it was noisy, the room wasn’t painted all the way and there was no air conditioning.

The AC was the biggest deal. Mama Camilla’s was listed on their website as having AC. In Sorrento in July, AC is a necessity. It got hot as balls during the day. Sabrina called Mama Camilla’s to tell them we weren’t happy with the switch. So they called and told the new hotel that we weren’t happy with the room. So now the new hotel had to find a way to fix Mama Camilla’s problem. That was pretty shitty on Mama’s part.

After a little back and forth we got Mama’s to find us a room at their place for the next three nights. The room at Mama’s was much nicer, and best of all, we got our AC. After bickering with the owners on the first night, it made our next few nights a little awkward. We really liked the place, but as we found in much of Europe, service isn’t always their top priority. But the place is great and has a great atmosphere, as if you’re surrounded by jungle. They have two gigantic dogs that just lay around the bar. The bar drinks were cheap and our room opened up to a little courtyard. Very cool. When it was time to leave, we were told at the last minute that they only take cash. We had seen this all over Europe, and even at one other hotel – the Deuchtes Hotel in Munich. But at least the Deutches told us when we checked in that they required cash. I call bullshit on this. We paid a deposit two months ago to Mama Camilla’s using a credit card. If they could process a card then they could do it now. But nobody likes paying those fees so they demand cash. And there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. So, we loved the place, but their paperwork and service policies could use some work.

Enough about hotels. What the hell did we do in Sorrento? We ate lots of pasta. Having just left Switzerland where we couldn’t find good food of any kind, we were eager for a good meal. Most places in Sorrento delivered this no prob. Two places – the Mayflower and the Fauno Bar were the best. In this part of Italy the grapes are huge and the lemons are the size of softballs. Everywhere you go you can find lemoncello and lemon cream. Lemoncello is vodka based. I tried some the first night and it was a little much to drink by itself. The lemon cream was was more relaxed. We brought a few bottles home with us.

We did lots of shopping, as there’s always more crap you don’t need. And we went to the beach. Sorrento is on the side of a cliff, so the beaches are all man-made with not a whole lot of sand. You have to pay to go to the beach most places, but this means they are clean, so that’s cool. Our favorite was a place called Leonelli’s Beach. Pricey (25 euros to rent two beach chairs and an umbrella) but when you’re on vacation it’s like play money anyways, so that was no big deal.

The water at Leonelli’s was clear to the bottom and we found some rocks you can jump off. Totally good time, one of the highlights of the trip.

The next day was more shopping and just general hanging out.

The last day was quite interesting. We had wanted to go to the beach on day 2, but it just didn’t happen. So we had to go back on day 3, but we hadn’t seen Pompeii yet. So we busted ass to get to Pompeii early (like 11 am) and made it to the beach by 4pm.

Pompeii was awesome. I guess I never paid attention in school, so I didn’t know that Pompeii is an entire city. The Arena is at the far end of the city. Quite a hike from the ticket window but it meant there weren’t as many tourists. We walked most of the place before the heat set in, and took off around 2pm.

Back in Sorrento we decided to go to a beach a little closer to Mama Camilla’s. This beach wasn’t nearly as cool. The water was cloudy and the whole thing was kind of small. We wanted to rent a paddle boat to take out to sea. They were all out so we settled on a two person canoe.

Here’s the deal. Don’t take a frickin’ canoe on the frickin’ ocean. Very bad move. See, we had this little bag with our journal in it (luckily we had left the camera at Mama’s). We wanted to stow the bag away but they don’t rent lockers, only cabanas. And those were like 20 Euros. Weak! So we figured we’d just keep the bag dry.

Let me tell you that in a canoe on the ocean, everything gets wet. So I get the genius idea to pull over to some rocks, set the bag down and pick it up on the way back to turn in the canoe. That way we could enjoy all the tossing and turning of our ocean canoe without worrying about the bag. When we get to the rocks we realize it’s even crazier than out in the water. We became part of the waves crashing up on the rocks. I climbed out, placed my left foot and left hand on a rock. With my right foot and right hand I attempt to swing around and set down the bag. when I go to make the move my foot slips and I catch myself with my left elbow, holding the bag above my head and out of water.

Sabrina grabs the bag and I pull my leg out from between the rocks it fell through. When I get back in the canoe, my leg is shredded from barnacles and I’m bleeding like crazy. We turned in the canoe, went home, cleaned up and went out to eat.

That happened on sunday. Last night my leg developed new redness closer to the ankle. My cuts are healing but my shin is bruised quite a bit. Sometimes it hurts to stand on it and my leg is swollen. Tomorrow I’m going to the doctor so hopefully I get to keep my foot. If they do have to take the foot I’ll get it embalmed so I when we go back to italy I can return the foot to the ocean.