Posted by barb on Mar 25, 2006 in
Travels Who knew a day could be so filled with contrasts. Today was a very good day – exciting, thrilling, magical – but it was also a depressing, guilt-inducing, and hard-to-take.
I think many of us have romantic visions of Egypt. Pyramids in the desert constructed in an ancient world before cranes and forklifts. The land of Cleopatra, Ramesses, King Tut, and the Nile. The imagination runs away with images of hieroglyphs, mummies, and cat worship. The truth of Egypt is that it is a third-world country today, not matter what it was in the ancient world. That single modern truth takes most, if not all, of the romance out of modern-day Egypt.
Our day started when the ship docked in Alexandria. We went above-deck to look at the harbor, and the first thing that struck me was the number of police patroling the harbor area. Several of these police had rifles slung over their shoulders. These were hardly the last police we saw today – they were everywhere.
We gathered for our shore excursion, and the second we disembarked, we were assaulted by vendors trying to sell us postcards, hats, and bags. This mini-assault was just the beginning, and mild compared to what was to come.
Once all of the buses were loaded, we took off in a caravan, complete with a police escort. We drove for about 20 mintues through Alexandria to get out of the city. Many of the buildings we passed had large portions of bricks missing from the foundations and first floor walls, yet most of them had laundry hanging from the balconies. These certainly would have been condemned in the States, but here they were important housing for the people of Alexandria. Many street corners boasted more police, most of them with rifles.
There was a check-point (or gate?) at the edge of town – it was very cool, with “Alexandria” spelled out in both English and Greek alphabets. Yet, the approach lanes were all lined with ads for Pepsi and vondaphone. I couldn’t help but think, “This checkpoint brought to you by Pepsi”. That’s not exactly the image I think Pepsi would want to be associated with, but who am I to judge.
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Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Mar 22, 2006 in
Travels 
I didn’t sleep well for the first half of the night — I woke up every half-hour or so. There were weird noises, the bed was rocking, the light from the porthole, all contributed to my odd sleep. Around midnight, I got up to look out the porthole and saw some specks of light moving quickly through the air – birds of some sort. for a few moments I thought I saw the lights of a city off in the distance, perhaps an island or the coast. Then those “lights” broke up and flew off. I crawled back into bed and slept until 6AM after that.
We docked in Civitavecchia, Italy, shortly after 6AM – perhaps the manuevers into port woke me…or the rising sun. After a quick breakfast in our room, we were off to our first shore excursion: classical Rome. Rome was an hour and a half bus trip from Civitavecchia. Our first adventure came with our “pee-pee” stop at a gas station on the way – toilets with no seats. Fun, fun.
The reputation of Rome traffic (or “circulation”, as our tour guide would say) is well deserved! I sat by the window, so I got to see every close encounter and crazy move of cars on the bus’ left side. Yikes! Our driver must have nerves of steal to navigate that city, in a bus, not less. Parking was a premium, too, so many people had small cars, like the SmartCar in the picture.
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Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Mar 21, 2006 in
Travels Whoever said “Getting there is half the fun” was an idiot.
Andrew and I left the house at 1:30 PM yesterday for our 5PM flight to Paris. Why so early? We first had to hop on the Metro to get to a shuttle to Dulles — there’s no good way to get directly to Dulles (usually I drive, and park there, but since our stay is going to be nearly 2 weeks, I didn’t want to pay for the parking, even in the economy lot).
Mental Note: if the airline you’re taking only has two flights per day, be prepared for a bit of a wait at the check-in counter. Fortunately, we still had enough time after checking-in and going through security to grab a bite to eat before boarding. There were lots of annoying children in the gate-area, so we worried that the flight might suck. However, the plane was large enough, or the children quiet enough (yeah, right), that we don’t remember hearing them at all.
Our flight left DC at about 5PM and arrived in Paris at about 7AM, so we knew that we’d need some sleep on the way. But AirFrance actually served dinner (!) — I didn’t know that any airline still did that — so, I had to wait until after the meal service to try and sleep. I tried watching The Constant Gardener on the in-chair screen in front of me, but had to give up when the woman in front of me leaned her seat back so far that I couldn’t make out the picture anymore.
The airline had given us sleep masks, so I popped mine on and slept on-and-off for about 4 hours. Of course, this was airline sleep, so it was not exactly refreshing. Still, I think it helped me stave off some of the jet-lag.
The Paris airport was…um…fun to navigate. Even though Andrew knows French, and I remember enough French from high school that I could read most of the signs, it wasn’t enough to help. We blindly followed the crowd, but couldn’t tell from the signage if we were really in the right place. Eventually we made it through customs and into the rest of the airport, but that was only part of the fun. From there we stumbled around, trying to find the signs for our gate, but never quite sure if we’d made the correct turn (one problem I remember is that the airport used the down arrow to indicate both “straight ahead” and “go downstairs”, which ends up being confusing).
Before we passed back through security, we stopped at a cafe for a bit of breakfast. Can anyone tell me why the tea and coffee were so expensive in Europe? It was €4 for a cup of tea. €1.50 for a pastry. Diet coke? €4.50!! Yikes!
It’s a good thing we grabbed something before going through security – after security there was only a single vending machine, no restaurants, and there were no refreshments on the plane due to a strike. I slept much of the flight from Paris to Genoa. Poor Andrew didn’t; nor had he slept on the flight to Paris.
Next we hopped a bus to the cruise ship. The ride to the port was only about 40 minutes, but there was such a line of buses loading people onto the ship that we ended up waiting another 40 minutes or so. We saw our first Eurpoean kitty while waiting, but I was unable to get a picture.
Once we got off the bus, we….waited and waited and waited and waited in the Costa building for our boarding number. Sigh. Andrew had not slept, and we hadn’t eaten anything since our morning croissants. We were both getting a bit cranky, and just wanted to get to our rooms.
Finally, our number was called, we boarded the ship, surrendered our passports, and were shown to our room. Surprisingly, the luggage was already there, so we unpacked, read through the materials in the room, and freshened up. I wanted to go upstairs for our departure from the port, so we popped above-deck before dinner.
Not many people were above-deck, but I thought it was fun. My first cruise. My first time out of North America. The beginning of a grand adventure, and we were finally off!
Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Mar 19, 2006 in
Random Thoughts This is the 1000th post on My Silly Life. I tried to think of something clever to do to celebrate, but couldn’t come up with anything better than just listing some of my favorites from the last 999 posts. Here they are:
Enjoy! Posting will be light/non-existent here for a couple of weeks while I go on vacation. Play nice while I’m out.
Posted by barb on Mar 17, 2006 in
Random Thoughts I posted last week that a paper in Duluth, MN wanted to publish a picture of mine, but I wasn’t sure if they had published it. Well, yesterday I recieved an envelop containing a copy of the Duluth News Tribune from March 8, and my picture was there! Yay.
Here’s a scan of the article, written by Robin Washington, with my picture:
Tags: photography
Posted by barb on Mar 17, 2006 in
Random Thoughts,
Thesis/Grad Life I suppose I shouldn’t write a post eluding to “bad news at work” without expanding on it a little bit. This has to do with the Joys of Contracting post I made a couple weeks ago. I think I mentioned that in the propsed NASA budget my project got hit pretty hard – the budget dessimated the NASA science programs, and the project I work with was no exception. Basically my project is now in a holding pattern.
I had been hoping to drop to 50% time on this project, and had already made up my mind to quit the other contracting task that I’m on. The purpose would be to have more time to work on my thesis while not cutting my income to that of a poor grad student. In addition, if I could keep my contracting position at at least 50% time, I keep my benefits.
Yesterday I heard that I’ve been cut to 30% time on my project. It’s certainly not as bad as it could be – Andrew and I had been prepared for either the 50%-time or a 0%-time contingency. It’s just that I’d been hopeful about staying at 50% time (as had my project). Andrew and I have decided that I’ll contract at just 30% time, and work on finishing my thesis that much faster. We’ll be fine financially – we’ll just need to stop eating out quite as much. The part I really hate is feeling like I’m not pulling my weight in the household. I know that Andrew feels like I am pulling my weight, especially since I’m working on the PhD, but I just feel like I could be doing more.
Tags: grad life, work
Posted by barb on Mar 17, 2006 in
Random Thoughts My plan last night was to go to a movie with Andrew, then go home and drink a pitcher of margaritas (due to a stressful day at work). Instead, I went to a movie with Andrew, and then went home to bed with a migraine. I’d rather have had the margaritas.
Normally I don’t remember dreams during a migraine sleep, but last night I remembered a few. Yikes.
The first dream I had, during the worst part of my migraine started with Andrew and I underwater. We had a clear bubble-thing over our heads so that we could breath, but our legs were in the water and we walked along a reef. We were following a tiger shark to find where it hibernated (yes I know that sharks don’t hibernate, but this is a dream, so anything can happen). On the way we saw a “coral snake” in the muck. When we found the hibernating tiger sharks, we switched to an opaque breathing bubble so that we could hide if the sharks woke up.
Eventually Andrew left the bubble to check out some things, and shortly after that the room we were in (the ocean changed from an ocean to a flooded-out room, but with really high ceilings and mushy-ocean-like floors) started getting more air in it. Rather than the air rising to the surface, an odd layer of air formed so that there was a few inches of water on the floor and then the water picked up again near the celing of the room. I took a shower in this odd underwater room, but kept feeling like there was less and less oxygen available. After my shower, I saw an alligator chase one of the tiger sharks in the layer of water above me.
Eventually Andrew came back and we left the room, being careful not to upset the coral snake. Shortly after that I woke up.
So, a dream featuring a snake, sharks, and an alligator, all underwater. According to Dream Moods, these all indicate being wrapped up in emotions. Hmmm…maybe because of bad news at work?
Read more…
Tags: dreams, health
Posted by barb on Mar 14, 2006 in
Crafty Me,
Pictures Last night Laurie came over to scrapbook. Normally we wouldn’t be able to get together on a “school night”, but she was in my part of town for some training and came over after her class.
We immediately made a large mess of scrapbooking supplies in my living room:
(This picture does not do justice to the amount of stuff we had strewn about the living room – maybe Laurie’s pictures will show it better)
Most of my scrapbooking is done solo, and I have to admit that I loved having someone else there to poke for ideas. Laurie worked on a page of Connor’s “first sit”, and I worked on a wedding rehearsal spread. Here she is laying out her page:
And here are our results:
We’re not going to be able to get together again until April, and I can hardly wait!
Tags: friends, scrapping
Posted by barb on Mar 9, 2006 in
Random Thoughts A couple nights ago I got an e-mail from a journalist, Robin Washington, from the Duluth News Tribune asking if they could use one of my photos of Rio the dolphin from the Minnesota Zoo. Turns out that Rio died this week at 35 years old, and this journalist was writing a short piece on Rio and an encounter he’d had with the MN Zoo dolphins years ago. I agreed, as long as I got a copy of the paper.
Robin also left a message for me at work, which I listened to yesterday – he admitted that it sounded like a weird request, apologized for stalking me, and promised that it wasn’t a crank call.
I looked for the article on-line yesterday, and it was there in an article titled “…as another Minnesota ballplaying great passes on.” Unfortunately, my picture is not on the on-line version…not sure if they used it in the paper or not, but if they did, Robin promised to send me a copy.
So, now I have a photo published in a Russian magazine, and maybe one published in a mid-size town newspaper. Maybe I should add these to my resume!
Tags: photography
Posted by barb on Mar 8, 2006 in
TV I’m watching Adam on Mythbusters sitting in a tub waiting to fart. And now they’re bringing the resulting vial of air to be tested for the gasses present. Are there some lines that shouldn’t be crossed…even in the name of science?
Tags: oddness, tv
