Bored Silly in the Emergency Room

About half-way through a 12 hour wait, you should see the video! Lori and I found lots of uses for those surgical gloves, including impersonating a rooster! Ah, well . . .

[Fwd: Just landed in detroit and]

Just landed in detroit and feeling strange in a strange land

chaz

Turkey in August

Erma writes:

Oh, the trip to Turkey was amazing! Albin and I had so much fun, and we saw so many things. Site-seeing around Istanbul, and going to different beaches down in Ismir and Fethiye. We went on boat trips, and then something called jeep safari where you go on an all-day tour of some of the most popular sites around Fethiye. Ermis and his girlfriend were excellent hosts, they have a really nice apartment in a student area of Ismir . . .

Poor Little Solta! Going to Hell!

(Ed. Solta is a small, largely unspoiled island only a kilometer or
two from Milna, Brac.)

First european rotating hotel is going to be build near Split, Croatia.
The total cost of building is 90million euro. The 3 storey high hotel
will make a total rotation during a day so all the rooms will have view
to sea.

The first european rotating hotel will be placed on Solta island around
35kms from Split, designed by Richard Hywel Ewans. The original
conception was to build a hotel where from all guests have seaview.

The hotel will be three storey high and will be quite slow, make only
1.3 rotation per day, so everyone can enjoy adriatic panorama. The
center of the hotel will stand by, as there will be placed the
elevators, reception.

Not only the hotel will be a new development, but the whole area as new
guesthouses, apartments, restaurants are going to be build around the
unique hotel.

The rotating hotel will stand on the center of a huge pool as an island,
so the hotel is gonna look like floating on water.

Development will start 2010

http://centraleasteurope.com/blog/?p=997

UPDATED: Home

Man, I've only been home a week and already Julia has made me a plum pie from my Mom's trees, a pumpkin (squash) pie from Lori's garden, and an apple pie from the neighbor's trees!!! (Isn't Eason cute?)

PaHurd's Say!!!!

We walked in Gettysburg yesterday since we were all together and wanted to do something fun as a family for Tim's birthday, since he will be in Washington for the date.

Here are some shots of our day, it was a gorgeous early fall day as you can see!

Dateline Alger

Kinda anti-climatic, since y'all know I'm home, but . . . I am home.

I had a last drink of pivo with Slavko on the job site on my last day. Then Wednesday, Slavko and Nada were kind enough to rise one hour early in the dark to drive me to the ferry to Split.

Short flight to Vienna after waiting around in Split, arriving about 2:00 p.m., walked to my "Pension Mozart" - thank you, MapQuest - and checked in, then walked around the old center of town. Nicely enough, the pension was almost in the Museum Quarter and directly adjacent to the old center with its government buildings, museums, cathedrals, palaces, sculptures, and squares.

Spent 8 Euros (senior rate!) to see an Impressionist exhibit at the Palace Albertina, then found a 20th century exhibit downstairs which I enjoyed even more, especially Joan Miro. Spent a little time lost in the dark in a large park trying to find my way back to the pension.

Interesting place, for a big city. Famous Austro-Hungarian architecture (of course!) with mythological trimmings, tons of cultural events and venues, sculptures and monuments everywhere - (musical or military themes) - parks, lots of bicycle paths, pedestrian sections, great old electric trolleys just like Zagreb or Sarajevo (since Austria supplied the trolleys to those places when it ruled them), buses, and the Underground, plus the wonderful City-to-Airport electric train, super-quiet, convenient, and only takes 16 minutes one way.

The next day, 9 hours to Toronto, 5 hours to Vancouver B.C. and - thanks to Julia - one-hour to Alger. Almost like magic!!

My first impressions now that I'm back:

1. Wooden houses seem so flimsy compared to the stone ones of Dalmatia.
2. Colored walls seem strange! (All white in Dalmatia.)
3. The sprawl in the U.S. seems obscene. (Flying over Austria and Vienna, I could see again the European planning which keeps the villages and cities so tight with farmland running right up to them.)

(And a tip: if you ride a newer 767 with Air Canada, you can adjust the headrests up or down for a comfortable overall fit in the seat, as well as wrap them to fit your head. I discovered this 5 hours too late while stretching my cramped body in the aisle waiting to exit the plane.)

Last Day, Dateline Milna

Last day. Beautiful, sunny, slight breeze: this has been a very good
season for me and a bad season so far for the olive trees. They need
rain to plump the olives.

My house is all tucked in, tho, everything cleaned, covered in plastic
or packed away in the closet with a few mothballs, and if my roof
repairs did any good things should be sound when we return next year.
Water bill paid, electric bill paid. Most good-byes said.

Tomorrow, 10/07, Slavko will drive me in to Supetar and I will catch the
7:45 a.m. ferry to Split, then a 12:20 flight to Vienna. Stay there
overnight at Pension Mozart. Then onwards the next day to Toronto,
Vancouver, Alger!

Today, however, everything is a little sad. Even the palm trees are
waving good-bye.

Peeling Away the Mask Reveals a Radiant Being of Pure Light

or Heraclition Fire.

[Fwd: living in america]

I hope the cement patching of the rough is going well
there is something harder to do than what
i am going through
what is harder is helping melanie pack things up:
scientific, emotional, i think this is like death
only i am still alive in another place i'm done in here and you walk
into the room and say did anything change and then there is I'll be back
in three weeks to finish or i need to run to the knitting store and then
i want to go out in a few hours and let's go for a walk in the arboretum
i leave at noon tomorrow and you know you, the husband, are left with
mountains of things to do only you can't do them really because if you
do the choices you make will not be what your wife would like but she
leaves you no choice but to break her heart throwing something away she
did not have the heart to throw away herself so you are the one who has
to choose and right or wrong you are on husband island. I see all of
this coming but there is nothing i can do about it because every little
item has to be processed by some idiot and that idiot is looking more
and more like me.

all that i really hope for is to find my favorite pair of glasses that i
misplaced last summer. i know they are here somewhere. funny i never
thought of glasses as plural before but i guess they really are.
Remarkably that is what the extra s is for at the end of the word. One
item (your glasses) being plural. Amazing the twists and turns of
language. I could be
lost in that issue all day.

I have decided, once i reorient myself, i am devoting my personal time
to the study of phythagoras. he is the man. i think he lived just across
the water from you. we'll sail to
his hometown and walk the streets he once walked.

like i said, stay on milna, duck under the covers and instead of being a
weekender go through the winter there... i'll bring provisions in the
spring. This recession in america is not going away and might get worse
sooner than later.

also another thing to ponder, the right wing in america has truly gone
crazy in the head... how are they ever going to govern this country
again if they all sit around and clap
that chicago lost the olympic bid to rio, brazail... the last time i
looked chicago was an american city. obama losing is more important that
america losing. these crazies
are going to choke on their crazy. who would ever vote for republicans
to lead us as a nation ever again... let's hope the percentage of crazy
people doesn't go up too high
or we are lost.

dateline queen anne 10/3/09

Roof Repair, Dateline Milna

It's pretty hard to ignore roof leaks when you have plaster walls. Each
leak shows up long after the rains have stopped as a rather interesting,
rust colored stain against the white plaster. And then of course when
it is actually raining, there are those not-so-small streams of water
pouring from the ceiling or running down walls and across the floor.

To get to my roof, first you have to go into my house - carrying your
tools and buckets of cement for repair - up my stairs, past my bedroom,
into the back room, step up on a wooden chair, then crawl over a small
cement sink and out a small 30 x 30 (or so) window, brushing millipedes,
snails and spiders aside. It is no easy trick getting through that
window either: any way you fold yourself has its own problems and
pains. Then you can climb up on the roof using the neighbors concrete
wall as a step. Once on the roof you must tread very carefully, trying
to put your weight on the thickest part of the roof tiles, which are
generally old and brittle since I told the Bosnians to go ahead and use
the old tiles when they redid my roof three years ago. So, every time I
climb up there to try and put cement or mastic or rubber sheeting over
leaks that I have found, I end up breaking another tile or two and
adding to my work and risk of future failure. (And, of course, this is
just the backside of the roof - - the frontside, with its own problems,
is too steep for me to contemplate repair.)

As always, Slavko has been an incredible friend, helping to locate and
review my problems, come up with creative solutions, list the supplies I
will need for repair and even drive me to the hardware store to pick
them up. Of course, as he pointed out, the right answer is to redo the
roof, again.

My plan is much simpler than that, however, and a great deal cheaper.
(And I think he suspects it.) What I want to do is spread some cement
around, call it good, and get the heck out of here before the late
autumn rains start. Then it will be 6 - 9 months before I have to face
this again!

Local Hardware Store, Dateline Nerezisca

Say what you will, you gotta love it when a trip to the local hardware
store finds you wandering among 300 liter rubber and stainless steel
wine-making supplies.

Thanks for photo, help and ride, Slavko!!

Pies

Riding with Slavko today to Donji Humacs to pick up some stone slabs for
a job he is working on, I started
talking about fruit pies. Raspberry pie, plum pie, rhubarb pie,
strawberry pie, blackberry pie (marion, logan, himalayan, evergreen),
peach, apricot, blueberry, mulberry, apple, even lemon and lime. I went
on and on and on, surprising myself. And he must have thought I was
crazy, but Julia, please take note . . .

F--- You, Dr. S.

F---- you, Dr. S.

How many times did you stick your finger up my bum?
pronouncing, h-m-m-m-m-, a little big, but seems ok.

And if that weren't enough,
you took this bionic snake,
this roto router,
and really stuck it to me.

ouch. that hurt. that really hurt.
(and we - you, me, the nurse -
watched it all on video.)

but now, you look at me with this false paternal look
that makes me want to puke,
over the top of your glasses
(do you wear glasses?)

and say
no alcohol, no tobacco, no caffeine.

OK, daddy. OK. OK.

On the Riva, I drink a beer, followed by some rakija,
then a coffee and a smoke,
(a Cubanito,)
just remembering,
just remembering.

May I die but still I say,

F---- you, Dr. S.
and all your kind.

Wine-Making #4, Finale, Dateline Milna

First day of Autumn, the white grapes are ready for bottling. This
time we do things a little differently with the help of Spiro's
brother. Instead of transferring the new wine from the rubber vat by
hand, we hook up an old pump and plug it in. Magic!!!! A white wine
gusher. Sweet now, but it will dry out as it matures. Different, too,
is the fact that most of the wine will be stored in old glass wine jugs
rather than the stainless steel canister that we used for the red wine.

It's a beautiful and successful day, capped off with some succulent
meat, potatoes and carrots cooked under embers: peka. On the walk
home, I stop for my Dalmatian annual Equinox swim.

EQUINOX!!!!!!!!

The wise man keeps his head down and sticks to business.

Wine-Making #3, Dateline Murvica

Saturday, 9/19

Today's the day! A clear, sunny day. The good red grapes have been
sitting in a vat in Murvica, near Bol, for a week now, fermenting and
getting mashed and stirred daily by Ivo's neighbor/ wine master.

Now we open the spigot and watch the beautiful stuff gush out. This is
the easy part: we just transfer the new wine by hand from the rubber
vat to a stainless steel . . . ummm, canister (I'll have to find out the
correct term). Beautiful, beautiful. We fill the 320 liter canister
almost half way like this. (1)

Then the harder part. We assemble an old Yugoslavian wine press, pack
in some of the grape mash left behind in the rubber vat, screw down the
lid, and start crankin'. Ivo, Spiro and I take turns. When we are done
pressing and straining all the mash, the stainless container has about
300 liters of rich red wine. (2)

The stuff that's left in the press is incredibly dry and packed tight.
We break it apart and pack it back in the rubber bags that we used to
collect the grapes here. Spiro will take these and have rakija (brandy)
made this winter. (3)

We celebrate by drinking a little of the young wine. Yummy. It will be
ready to start drinking in earnest after Christmas.

After cleaning the equipment, I go for a pre-Equinox skinny-dip at the
beach below Ivo's little villa. I don't realize that this is a naturist
beach until I notice the couple at the other end and the boat of young
people approaching as I am leaving.

On the drive home, we stop by an old friend of Ivo's who also has a very
nice villa above the sea on this south part of the island. (This is
actually Alexa, the guy who sold me Bella Bijela a couple of years ago.
And I am with Spiro, the guy who purchased her from me this year.)
Sitting on his patio, under a grape arbor, and shaded by almond trees,
we eat fresh almonds, drink homemade brandy, and talk about tuna fishing
and hunting wild pigs on the mountain, Vidova Gora.

We return home by climbing a gravel road that relentlessly switches back
and forth right up the side of the mountain while the little vineyards
sloping to the sea disappear in the distance below us.

Now it's Monday, 9/21, and I am back to working on my roof. But
Equinox is a'comin' then time for a swim.

Mashin' Grapes

2 x's day x 7 days = vino

Wine Making #2, Dateline Milna

09/15/2009 --

It's 11:00 a.m. but I am already a little hot and tired, eating lunch.
Still, it feels wonderful sitting in the shade under a 150 year old
olive tree twisted sinuously behind me, with a nice glass of home-made
rakija in one hand, a sandwich of cheese and salami in the other, and a
cooling breeze blowing from the North. I am high on a hill, back
winding rock roads, with an expansive view of the Adriatic and the
mainland beyond.

We are back at Sutivan again, near Milna - Ivo, Spiro, and Spiro's wife,
Golga - this time picking the white grapes for white wine and rakija.
Of the 800 grape vines, the majority are white grapes and I can feel
it. (Funny, I think, how much grape picking and tile laying have in
common. A truth I can feel in my hands, and back and knees.) This is
the real thing villa rustica, small rock shack on agricultural land,
check out the photos for a view of the water collection system and you
will see what I mean (although you can't see the dead lizard next to the
water-in sieve.) The land is owned by a Polish woman who purchased it
as an investment and who did not understand that the grapes, figs, and
olives needed to be worked for them to survive fruitfully. So we are
working them to our benefit.

We get 14 bags of white grapes off the land. Maybe 300 liters of wine.
These buggers are heavy - I'd guess about 60 poundds or so - and remind
me of bucking hay bales, except the sweet, sticky juice is everywhere.
We also get a couple of baskets of figs and some grapes for eating.

Back at Spiro's, we mash the grapes, but discover to our distress that
he will have to add sugar to get them to a level for proper
fermentation. (See photo of Spiro and Golga peering anxiously at meter
reading.) This is a big no-no, as everyone speaks disparagingly of
those chemists adding sugar and water to stretch their wine. Still,
what must be, must be and we shrug philosophically.

Once again, we finish the day with a big feast of . . . meat. Some
onions, some wine, and meat. That's all it seems to take over here for
a good time.

After Finding a Big, Ugly Centipede in my Bedroom: An Inconsequential Memory

We were walking a loop
on Sam's father's land
admiring the way -
as I recall -
he had culled the firewood,
when
from the canopy of alder and of cedar
I felt a plop!
on the top
of my head.
Suppressing a shudder
I brushed away a plump
banana slug,
still grunting assent
to Sam's sililoquy
while thinking at every step of the way,
jee-sus key-rist/
jee-sus key-rist/
jee-sus key-rist.

September Wine-making, Dateline Milna

Up at six to hit the slopes. . . vineyard slopes, that is . . . with Ivo
and his brother-in-law, Spiro . . .one vineyard, secluded among the
hills not too far from our village, as a bonus had some plump and
delicious figs too. . . then down to the other end of the island, near
Bol, where the best wine grapes grow and where - down an ever narrowing
dirt road that clings to the hillside above the sea - Ivo has a small,
true, very wonderful 'villa rustica' that he is working on, complete
with a tiny vineyard sloping down to the sea and a horizon full of
sailboats and Hvar. There, with a little help from a knowledgeable
neighbor and his sons, we were able to complete the harvest and mash the
grapes for primary fermentation . . . (This is a big experiment, Ivo's
first time making wine, although his dad did routinely, of course. But,
as a small child trying to help, Ivo accidentally 'destroyed' a vine.
His father said, "No, Ivo, you must love the vine." and after that never
let him help.) . . . then back home for a carnivores delight feast of
grilled meat and inexpensive red wine in a carton from Macedonia . . .
This was a 'red wine' grape day; on Tuesday, we go back to the nearby
vineyard above Sutivan for the white wine grapes . . .

Villa Rustica, Dateline Milna

Well!!!! while everyone else is dealing with the opportunities and
problems in their lives, I have finished tiling our little Illyrian
summer home, or villa rustica, as I have taken to calling it. That was
back-breaking work. Now, a little clean-up, some roof repair and
contracting for back wall excavation, and maybe a week or two of hiking
and painting, if all goes well.
Maybe some wine-making too, we'll see!

Tile Status, Dateline Milna

Man, seven days into laying a 200 sq.ft. floor and I'm still not done!
(That doesn't count a few days prep.) Who knew?

The work is hard and I am slow (and achey. and slow.), and I did slack
off a couple of half-days and today (somehow) forgot to get more mastic,
it's Sunday, so I am forced into inaction. Well, there's a couple of
things I can still do . . .

Slavko tells me that I am taking 3 x's as long and using 3 x's the
mastic as is normal. Gotta glue those suckers down good.

Friends have helped . . . Ivo has loaned me some tools and came over on
the first day and laid tile for a couple of hours . . . plus he drops by
once a day, loudly announcing that "Control is here!" and inspects my
work, usually pointing out some sloppy work and asking "Why, John?
Why?" . . . Slavko has wisely stayed away for the most part once I got
started, but he taught me how to lay tile, drove me to hardware stores
looking for tile, helped me get supplies, showed me how to prep . . .
and has fed me twice in the last 3 days!!!!! (I actually had two meals
in one day on Thursday! I will get fat.)

Strangely ebough, I am really enjoying this but I need to finish this
this week so it doesn't interfere with our big wine-making plans. The
grapes are ready!