Lift Up Your Hearts!

Transition!  We took the tram to the train station, where we bought drinks to go with the food we had bought yesterday to eat on our trip to Paris.  Janet knew exactly what to do and guided us to the train—it helped, too, that the signs were clear and the station logically organized.  "Did you notice the border control?" she asked, as we neared the train.  Well, no, we hadn't, unless you counted the big sign labelled "FRANCE," and that was her point.  Apparently we were technically in French territory at that point, but no one had asked for our passports, nor did they when we reached Paris.  Eventually the conductor did take our tickets, but that was all. (More)

I thought our Sunday was exciting, until I read about the Daleys'!

It was Sunny on Sunday here, too, at least for the morning.  Porter put our bikes on the back of the car and the skies were blue and clear as we headed out for 8:00 church.  The service was glorious, with lots of great hymns—we needed to double up on the hymn board!  The 8:00 service at Messiah rocks!  (Though not literally.)  Afterwards there's always a great breakfast, at which we fortified ourselves for our adventure. (More)

We had so much fun last year at the Mad Cow Theatre's Orlando Cabaret Festival:  It Was a Very Good Year that it wasn't hard to decide to return.  As we had last year, we gilded the lily by eating dinner at the nearby Napasorn Thai restaurant, although this time we saved a whole lot of money by dining there without buying the parking/show/dinner package.  We lost out on parking, though.  There was some big bash going on downtown, which meant we paid a flat "event parking" fee of $5 instead of 50 cents/hour it should have been.  Ah, well.  Last time we parked in Boston it cost some $32, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Whereas last year we chose the earliest possible date (1925), this year we picked the latest:  1949.  This time I recognized 15 out of the 19 songs, some of which I hadn't heard in many years, so it was quite natsukashii. (More)

In case you'd like a professional writer's view of Basel, this article was in Pittsburgh's Post-Gazette this morning.

I'm glad she didn't find what she was expecting.  "Bling" does not sound like something particularly desirable in a city.

Today Janet was feeling the pressure of work to be done, and she decided we knew enough to be let out on our own for a while.  So—even though our stock of German comprised little more than "zwei Tageskarten," "bitte," "danke," and of Basel Swiss German merely "greutzi" and the word for thank you, which sounds passably enough like the French "merci"—off we went.

Janet's version is here. (More)

Perhaps Porter was missing Europe and our museum-overload, I don't know.  But the Morse Museum is free on Friday evenings this time of year, so he suggested we visit.  As usual, it was delightful.  There's always something new to see if you take the time at the Tiffany windows, and their beauty evokes such a calm, peaceful atmosphere.  After refreshing ourselves for a while with the windows, we moved on to a new exhibit:   Dickens To Benton—Rare Books and Works on Paper from the Morse Collection.

The Park Avenue area of Winter Park does feel a little bit like Europe, with its small stores, its cafés, its park...and the Morse.  Here, as in Paris, we enjoyed works by Cassatt, Manet, Whistler, Gauguin, and Cézanne—and if they were sketches and etchings of the kind that we passed by quickly at the Musée d'Orsay in favor of the artists' paintings, at least here there were no crowds to contend with and the works could be better appreciated away from the shadow of their more famous cousins.

We concluded the evening with a stop at Chamberlin's for kefir, kombucha, and other interesting drinks, then went home to make mushroom-and-spring-greens stuffed chicken breasts served with cole slaw and asiago cheese bread, and followed by a decadent treat of Ben and Jerry's ice cream (on sale, six pints for ten dollars, at Albertsons).  I guess we both miss Europe! (More)

Janet's version is here.

Today we made the most of both our tram passes and our Basel Cards, the latter providing us free admission to most of the museums (Janet used her Swiss Museum Pass) and various other discounts.  We began with the Kunstmuseum, which has a collection of art that is quite impressive, at least for people who have not been to the Louvre in 40 years or so.  In many ways I actually liked this better than the Louvre, because it is limited enough in scope that we felt we could devote as much time as we wanted to particular pictures.  You can take your own tour here.  (More)

We slept late this morning but otherwise showed more effects from all our walking yesterday than from jet lag.  Janet gave up her bedroom to us and is sleeping on the couch, so she awoke early with her host family, but had no trouble falling back to sleep.  Fortunately she was awake when the call came from the airport:  Porter's suitcase had arrived and would be delivered between ten and eleven this morning if someone would be here to receive it.  Janet handled the entire conversation in German, by the way.

This is what I didn't know about the Swiss yesterday at the airport:  They don't deliver an item "sometime tomorrow between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.," and when they say someone will arrive between ten and eleven, he will.  In this case, right at 10:30. (More)

Melissa Busekros, the German teen kidnapped from her family by government authorities because she was being homeschooled (see my previous posts here and here) has given herself a birthday present.  On the day she turned 16, she ran away from her foster care situation and returned to her family.  The response of the authorities remains to be seen, but having turned 16 gives her more legal rights, so there is hope she will be allowed to stay.

As I mentioned before, we recently returned from a delightful two weeks in Europe, visiting Janet in Switzerland and some friends who live in France.  There were other friends we wanted to visit, but there's only so much you can do in two weeks and remain sane, so we'll just have to make a return trip.

It was nearly as perfect as such a vacation can be.  We had a tense moment or two in Paris, for which I take much of the blame by not having planned the program sufficiently.  It is very hard to leave the agenda open when you're trying to take into account the desires of three people, none of whom enjoys making decisions and each of whom will only be happy if the others are happy first!  But we got over that, and the rest of the trip was idyllic.  Much credit goes to our hosts in Switzerland and in France, and most especially to Janet.  As in Japan, she was an excellent tour guide and rarely showed how worried she was that she hadn't done enough to prepare.  It was enough!  It was perfect!  Now she can start worrying that our next trip can't possibly live up to the high standards set by this one....

As you can tell, I've been posting a lot of random stuff lately—mostly because it's much easier than buckling down to the job of editing pictures and preparing this trip journal.  But here's a start, with more to follow.  Be sure to check out Janet's version (this post and following), if you haven't already.  And remember that the pictures are only previews that do not show the complete scene; click on the preview to get the full picture. (More)

Well, no, not really.  Sunscreen has an important role in preventing sunburn and skin problems.  But I've long thought that we are now going overboard to avoid the sun, and this article on vitamin D deficiency encourages that belief.  It turns out that vitamin D is valuable for far more than preventing rickets, and the recommended daily dose is probably much too low.  A few interesting quotes from the article (since I know it will become inaccessible after a while):

A series of recent studies has found that vitamin D, the so-called sunshine vitamin—once thought to be critical only to bone health—is useful throughout the body to strengthen the immune system and control cell growth. Yet researchers estimate that as many as half of all Americans are likely deficient in the nutrient.

 (More)

I like vegetables, especially if they're raw, but in many ways I have not recovered from my childhood opinion that vegetables are something you eat because they're good for you.  Occasionally I encounter a vegetable dish that erodes my prejudice, and this is one of them.  It can hardly even be called a recipe, but I share it anyway because it was so good. (More)

My friends and family know how unobservant I can be.  When I'm focused on one thing, all else recedes to near invisibility.  At the grocery store I can pass a good friend without knowing he is there, because, well, I'm looking for food, not friends.  Advertising is more or less wasted on me; in a newspaper, magazine, or online I simply do not see the ads on the periphery of what I am reading.

However, that's no excuse for reading stories of the Virginia Tech tragedy and letting slide the oft-repeated comment that this was "the worst mass murder in U. S. history."  (Thanks to Tim at Random Observations for opening my eyes.)  I tend to ignore hyperbole as I ignore advertising, but this should have whacked me over the head. (More)

Since everything turned out all right, I have to post this link to Serina's Crazy Afternoon.  It's as funny as any comedy show, much cleaner than most, and has a happy ending.  Serina writes so well!  Li'l Writer Guy nearly indulged in a fit of jealous pique, but fortunately his sense of humor won out.

I've always found Amazon.com's "Better Together" feature to be mildly amusing, since every time they've offered me a "deal" to buy another book with the one I'm interested in, the price has been no deal at all, just the sum of the two individual prices.  So I rarely even bother to look at the offer.

However, while investigating possible toaster ovens (ours recently having self-destructed in a spectacular, fiery death), I came upon this offer which I share with you now.