I am back in London tonight with a cazy-loud hostel lounge envionment
aound me at the Geneato hostel o London. We had a lovely expeience
checking back in hee (we stayed hee o a couple nights last week),
waiting o about an hou while they cleaned one o ou two ooms. Oh well…
Esthe’s o sleeping, and I’m typing away on he iBook and moving laundy.
Can you tell that he keyboad lost the lettes “”, “”, and the numbe “”?
Oh well, doesn’t bothe me at all…

Since New Yok, we lew to
Toonto then London, touing aound the city itsel, seeing the Bitish
museum, Hyde Pak, Piccadilly Cicus, Buckingham Palace, Westminste
Abbey, Big Ben, and lots o the Undegound subway system. It’s a geat
city – I’ve ound it to be clean and iendly with handy Vegetaian
Paadises that oe awul Indian ood and teible sevice. The histoy is ich,
and I keep inding wondeul views and chaming buildings all the time.

With
lots to see in the county, though, we kept moving, visiting Cantebuy
and the Cantebuy cathedal then on to Dove o a bit o the white clis and
a cool Dove castle with some inteeseting undegound tunnels used in wa o
hundeds o yeas. Hopping back to London and on to Bath since the bus to
Salisbuy o Stonehenge was ull, I had a little bit o a view into the hot
spings without spending any money and an inteesting hostel expeience
thee as well.

Then on to Statod-upon-Avon, Shakespeae’s
bithplace. At least that’s the claim, I don’t necessaily think that the
peson immotalized in that city wote the plays, but it’s inteesting
nonetheless – at poved to be ou geatest lodging expeeience with a cute
little B&B that a 6 yea-old gave us a tou o. So that was last
night. Today we olled into Wawick and ocked the Wawick Castle, which
kept making me think o my paents and how much they would both ADOE
going to it. Chis, too. And Joe, Beth Tina, and Zoe. Especially Joe and
Chis, and paticulaly, Beth, Tina, and Zoe.

I watched a eal, live
tebuchet launch a laming ball a quate mile. That’s cool. Plus they’e
all done up in costume, speaking these unny Bitish accents – making not
so unny to them, though. The bus was an hou+ late, but we’e back in
London, and the ba has dumped its patons into the lounge. This guy to
my let is smoothly using the ench language with geat success…and
moving close.

Pictue tally? I have 3000 pictues that I would
conside “keepes” and would post hee o want to save a paticula memoy.
But I’ve been uthless, eeling quite poud that I copped that numbe down
om the 8000 pictues that I’ve taken on the tip. Beoe I let, I
ovenighted some equipment that has made my lie easie and the pictues
bette. When I get back, the stu that I couldn’t ovenight will be
waiting o me, and I miss it aleady! Oooh, they’e alone on the bean bag
chai now. Opps, the language switches to English now that the
Bit/Aussie is back. Hose.

In the moning, in a ew hous, actually,
we’e o to the noth and will be moving he into he dom by the next day.
The hose has an even cute gil with him now. Wow, this is unny. Bean bag
chais ae multiplying. Since GB memoy cads ae so cheap, eveyone should
get one…i you’e device handles it – buy the Tanscend GB at NewEgg
today…i I could, I would link to it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820163159 I you go
to a stoe, you would get 1/8th o the memoy o 58 bucks.

Ou ench
iends ae gone – they let when he got a bloody nose. Hmm, inteesting
stategy. The even cute Aussie gil is back, with he oiginal annihilated
guy. Talking to an annihilated Canadian. I will quickly send this enty
now and ty to upload as many pictues as I can beoe my money uns out!
Enjoy my iends!

My aunt has a beautiful home out here, and I’ve had a lot of fun taking pictures as you can well imagine. Lighthouses, waves, beaches, people, deer, horses, dogs, butterflies, bees, food, streets, cars, subways, planes, plains, harbors, marshes, sunsets, trees, and even trees and sunsets. –>

Plus talking to my Aunt Betsey and George was great… even getting the low-down on what it was like growing up with my dad. =)

Tomorrow, we head back to the city and meet up with another aunt of mine in Manhattan and take the chance to see whatever sites we can fit in until we leave on Tuesday.

It’s good to be with wonderful people, and we’ve found New Yorkers to be extremely kind, good drivers, and fun to visit. With great views!

   

Criteria: Which are the three most useful?

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Thank you very much!

Excuse me, but is the comment feature not working on my site? I don’t seem to be getting any responses to even the most time-consuming posts.

Unnecessary clarification: the video camera is to help me get old footage stuck on tape onto DVDs. As in, over a year old stuff…

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Hmm…I’m getting just as many comments on this entry from facebook as I am here on Xanga… Tonight, we hit up the Highland House for dinner after I found out that what looked like a quaint restaurant in Friestadt was actually a school! Seriously, it looked like the classic by-the-seashore restaurant every time that I had driven by, except tonight there was a cop with flashing lights outside the Lindenwood 4-H Community Center where there must’ve been a moving in the making. And instead of being by-the-seashore it’s in a farmer’s field. Anyways, the Highland House was a great place, and the server was great.

The two of us are nervous about leaving for New York on Saturday and England on Tuesday. Even though I’m coming back in October and she’s staying for a year, we both have a lot to wrap up quickly and a lot of last-things-to-do-while-we’re-in-the-same-continent types of things. I hate feeling even hints of stress because I’m such a low-stress person. But we’re both wondering what all we have to do to leave and mustering the energy to do it. And I’m starting sentences with conjunctions. That’s a bad thing.

Maybe I should get a laptop. Any two-for sales on MacBooks? There’s someone I know who would like one. hmmm? And I would really enjoy having a computer for the road since I do have 9 weeks of vacation. If I did get one, perhaps in the next several months, I would definitely spring for a wireless card through Verizon so I’d have wireless internet all over the US instead of having to find “default” wireless networks that people forget to secure. Someone had Verizon on their laptop in Waupaca last weekend and was able to browse easily from the woods. Very convenient. Yes, I know, nothing is sacred.

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A few pictures from my little-known here, but quite popular on its own Flickr site.

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Anyone have a Sony camcorder that uses Hi8 tapes? It would probably be a Handycam model. Cuz I’d like to borrow it…

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I’ve hit the phase where I feel comfortable calling Esther my girlfriend. A year ago today, I asked her out. =)

Mini Crusade 1: While going canoeing this weekend with Royal Rangers (Laura, I’ve given your comments lots of thought!), I was talking with a doctor from Michigan about a number of things. One of the questions that I asked him was about obesity and his practice as a doctor since I’ve read a lot about the impact of obesity on other health factors and longevity. He said that quite often he will advise that people lose 15 or 20 lbs. along with his other recommendations, but he had a bit more fatalistic attitude about weight. He said that at my age, if I’m fat, I’ll be fat when I’m older. If I’m thin, I’ll be fat when I’m older. He is borderline morbidly obese himself, but he hardly looks overweight because he has the less common (for men) pear shape. He’s in some of my pictures, but you can imagine. What about all the skinny old people? I never asked…

At any rate, his greater concern is about the psychological stress of obesity with people being preoccupied with their weight and feeling the burden of their weight in a much different way than what I’ve seen in the newspaper. It struck me and reminded me of my own Xanga site. So, I’ve taken down the ticker at the top, because I’m going to be happy with my weight no matter what it is because it’s one less thing that anyone needs to worry about, much less me! While I would certainly encourage everyone to downsize their diets, I would even more strongly want people to be happy with their appearances and not be preoccupied with looking like anyone else. I’m happy with how I look, even if I can’t hang onto 150 lbs. Apparently this is neither because of my smashing good looks nor my perfect physique because models and actors the world over seem to be torn up by this more than the less attractive rest of us.

Mini Crusade 2: Infertility. If I found out tomorrow that I am shooting blanks and could never have a kid (love how it’s sire for a male?), it would not disappoint me. Yet for many people, it’s agonizing. People try desperately for years to have a child “of their own” without blinking twice at the thousands of dollars that it costs for drugs or operations. I was on a plane next to someone about to fly to Russia with $15,000 strapped to his body in cash, ready to bribe his way through the legal system. You could easily spend twice that on an operation. That’s nuts. There are millions of kids who need homes and millions of places to put that money besides the hands of Russian bureaucrats or fertility doctors.

Am I missing something? Am I not feeling the pain that people go through with this process? Why do many couples opt for a decades-long marathon event to have a child of their own, often with many failures along the way, when they could quietly adopt a child or two or three or four? There is no way that I would try to be super-papa Nick and force something to happen to the exclusion of the kids already suffering on this earth. It makes no sense, yet it seems impossible to say to someone who is tearing up because they are unable to have a kid.

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These both may go right back to being an infant. For Mini Crusade 1, parents are continually misdiagnosing their crying baby as being hungry and addressing every cry and discomfort with a spoonful.
For Mini Crusade 2, perhaps we are ingraining people with a pressure to go to college, meet their spouse there, start successful jobs, have a baby together, and raise a perfect little family of identical kids to dress in identical outfits and parade in front of everyone. Both cases, we’ve got a population trained to self-medicate with food for boredom, fatigue, sadness, etc while feeling pressure to look slim and have kids of their own.

Well here I go bucking that trend. Take that Jenny Craig and creatine, I’m gonna be my own man.

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