FOLLOW THE RULES!

TODAY’S WORRY

What is it today with people not following the rules? And I’m not just talking about being polite, that is a whole other worry. Yesterday, I was standing in line at Best Buy, first in the “please wait here for next available representative,” and a guy just walks right past me and takes the next available representative (I guess “salesperson” must be demeaning.) Did I go up to the guy and say, “Excuse me, sir, I’m next in line?” No, you just don’t say that kind of thing nowadays without worrying that you might get shot. Don’t litter, use your turn signal, mute your cell phone, express lane – 10 items only, and I am sure you can think of a lot of other examples where people just don’t think the rules apply to them. So what am I worried about, anarchy? No, but life would be less stressful if everyone followed the rules.

DIET TIP

When at a restaurant, is salad the dieter’s friend? The leafy greens and many of the other vegetables you find in salads are low in calories but the salad dressing is not. And most of the low-cal dressings available taste horrible. Many people order the dressing on the side. Then they dump it all over the salad. The little cup may contain more dressing than the chef would have given you in the first place. I have found the best way of dealing with dressing on the side is to dip just the ends of the tines of your fork in the dressing, spear a piece of lettuce and then enjoy. You get a little flavor of the dressing with each bite but don’t end up using all the dressing. For an even lower calorie way of dealing with the salad, dip once, spear twice. This technique works well with tartar sauce, too.

Tomorrow, an amazingly good low calorie dressing recipe!

WORD FOR THE DAY

If you are a crossword puzzle fan, you’ve got to love Will Shortz, crossword editor of the “New York Times” since 1993. Recently I discovered that he is also the puzzlemaster on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday.” Each week he presents a challenge for the audience to solve. One of the correct solvers plays an on-air game as well. I know the show is on at 6:40 AM Mountain time and 7:40 AM Pacific time. Too early for you to be up on a Sunday? The puzzle can also be found on the NPR website – www.npr.org/programs/wesun/puzzle/

Here’s a word whose definition is very useful in crosswords due to its vowels.

sniggler -A person who fishes for eels; an eeler

WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST! – THE SINKING DOLLAR

TODAY’S WORRY

What’s up, or should I say down, with the dollar? Against the Euro, the dollar is trading down almost $ .50 in the past three years. So, this should mean that American goods are flying off the shelves. But are they? What consumables do we produce? Clothing, shoes, small and larger electronics and furniture are all produced overseas where labor is cheaper. Count how many American vs. foreign cars you see on the road. Things that we do well such as finance, health care, distribution and intellectual property are difficult to export. What happens is that Americans buy increasingly more expensive foreign goods adding to a burgeoning trade deficit. The US government borrows money and drives up interest rates. More of our money goes to pay off our credit cards and to service this huge debt. What’s the solution?

DIET TIP

Usually, when I go on a diet, it is all or nothing. I’m on it or I’m off. But since it’s the holiday season, the good choices I talked about yesterday are a little more difficult. So, obviously, it must be time to throw up your hands and give up. But the difference between making your best effort and no effort can relate to staying the same weight this week (or maybe even losing a little) and packing on another few pounds. If you have gone off the wagon a little, cut yourself some slack. Ultimately, you’ll get where you need to be and, really, nobody’s giving you style points anyway.

WORD FOR THE DAY

Here’s a word that I came across in my puzzling that sounds like its definition should be, “an agreement between internet users,” but means something totally different.

epact – the difference in days between the solar and lunar years

TSUNAMIS

TODAY’S WORRY

As if there weren’t enough in the world to worry about, the recent disaster in Asia has caused me to search the webpage of the U.S. Geological Survey (www.usgs.gov) for information about tsunamis. Ryan and Jon are leaving for Hawaii today, so in addition to worrying about the flight and the road conditions on the way to airport (it’s raining), I have to consider the possibility of tsunamis in Kauai. Fortunately, I recently saw a program about tsunamis on History’s Mysteries and know that there is a warning system in place for all the Pacific Rim countries.

DIET TIP

Being on a diet is all about choices. You always have the free will to choose the better food or to skip it altogether. No one is forcing the food down your throat. It is your rational being making the choice for immediate gratification over long term benefit. Stop being a victim and whining about how everyone is undermining your effort! You are only fooling yourself.

WORD FOR THE DAY

When I was a junior in high school, my English teacher, Miss O’Connor, always posted a word for the day. We were called on randomly to give a definition. It didn’t matter whether you knew the word or not; you had to come up with some sort of definition. The next day, you were called on again to give the correct definition. In addition to knowing the Word for the Day, you were also responsible for the definitions of all the words around it. It was a great vocabulary builder.

Miss O’Connor was very memorable. Before Jenny Joseph’s poem, “Warning*,” caused millions of American women to feel they had the right to wear purple, she was wearing it. Plus, she was brutally honest, probably the only teacher I ever had who would have told me, “Mary, sometimes you are less than charming.”
*(for a copy of the poem see http://www.barbados.org/poetry/wheniam.htm)

This section of my blog is dedicated to her.

WORD FOR THE DAY
Today’s word comes from “The New York Times Sunday Crosswords,” Vol. 21, edited by Eugene T. Maleska

nyctophobia – an abnormal fear of the night or darkness

GREETINGS!

This blog, among other things, is to help allay worries that plague me each day. Many of them like to pop up between 2 and 4 am. The idea is, much like burning your wishes and letting the smoke go up to the gods for wish fulfilment, that just the physical act of writing worries down, will help them to dissipate. We’ll see.

In any case, today is not a day for worries. Today is a day for thanking my wonderful family for all the happiness they bring me. Thank you, Ryan for being the best daughter-in-law ever, for making Jon happy and for giving me this blog. Thank you, Jon, for all the hugs from the time you were born until today and for always caring. And thank you Sarah, for being my friend as well as my daughter and trying to keep me out of obssessive mode by making pointed comments when I am too over the top. A special thanks to my wonderful husband, John, the smartest man ever, who has always stuck by me even when the worries took on a life of their own. God, that was maudlin but it needed to be said.

So, in addition to the worries, what will I do with this blog? I’d like to catalogue some of my diet tips. I am embarking on the hundreth or so weight loss attempt, many succussful. Perhaps writing down the wisdom of 35 years of dieting and then rereading it will help my effort. Maybe it will help someone else.

Also, I am quite the crossword puzzle fan. New York Times, primarily. If you’ve ever done one, have you ever thought, “Oh , yeah, I’ll remember that?” And then, of course you don’t. So I am hoping to put in some “words of the day.” I think that a person remembers things in lots of different ways; sometimes by reading something, sometimes by saying it out loud, and sometimes by writing it down. I will be curious to see if this will help me remember some of the arcane things that I come across each day.

I had a very merry Christmas, I hope you did too.

Prague, Czech Republic. October 12-15, 1999

My written narrative ends at this point so John and I have put our heads together to try to remember the three days we were in Prague.  Eileen drives us to the train station and we take a train to Prague. The train ride takes four and a half hours and we are in Prague by early afternoon.

We are somewhat flummoxed when we get to the station in Prague as there does not seem to be any onward transportation to get to our hotel. But people are helpful and direct us to another nearby building.  By helpful I mean that they want to walk us to the building and we are somewhat freaked out by them. We buy a ticket for the tram/bus and it takes us near to our hotel which is an old converted convent near the river. The picture below from the internet is where we think we stayed. The name has been changed.

Hotel Casa Marcello

Our hotel is near to the Vitava River and there is a pleasant walkway that takes you into the city. From the river you can see the castle complex looming over part of Prague.

View of castle complex from across the river

I cannot pretend to know what order we did things in but let’s say that since we only had part of the afternoon left that we walked into the city and saw their famous mechanical clock and the city square. We may have searched fruitlessly for the entrance to Tyn Church whose towers are very visible but whose entrance is not.

Famous clock

We also walk back and forth over the Charles Bridge spanning the Vitava River. It is a famous, now pedestrian bridge and has many statues of saints and lots of artist and performers plying their trades. John and I need to take pictures of one another on the bridge holding our Prague tour book (in case someone might have mistakened us as locals!)

John with Prague travel guide
Mary on bridge

The first night we are in Prague, we are very interested in trying some authentic Czech food and find a restaurant where we eat a very heavy meal of goulash and compressed bread dumplings. Not known at the time, but the gravy served with the goulash is made from a beet and beef stock. When our bodies finished processing our dinner, our poop is a very disturbing color! It took us a day or two to figure out whether it was something we ate or we were dying!

The second day we are in Prague we visit the castle complex. It is enormous and consists of many buildings including a cathedral and an old church. We rent an audio tour guide to help us navigate.

Castle tour

After our very lengthy tour we are looking for a way to get back to our hotel when an elderly gentleman sees that we are flummoxed and offers to help us. Once again we are taken aback by the friendly, helpful people but we warm to him and let him escort us to the correct stop for the tram/bus. During our conversation he thanks us (Americans) for winning World War II. It is very touching. He tells us how he had lost most of his hearing due to artillery concussions. I wonder if he walks along that stretch of road daily finding lost Americans to thank.

On both the second and third nights we eat at Taverna Toscana, a downstairs restaurant near the mechanical clock. We are happy to eat Italian food after our bad experience with Czech offerings. Our waiter speaks six different languages. While we are  there he waits on tables that he converses with in English, Spanish, and Italian. He tells us that he wants to emigrate to the US but that getting a visa is very difficult. We feel America is missing out on an exceptionally talented and able man.

On our last day we visit the Jewish quarter and cemetery. We also go to this area with Sarah on a subsequent trip. It is a somber and anguishing visit. So many people slaughtered. It is so unimaginable that it is a good thing that these monuments to the horror exist.

Later that night we go to a concert in a church. As you walk around Prague people in period costume dress are hawking tickets. I do not remember what we heard. Maybe Vivaldi? Smetana?

  Outside venue for concert

We catch the train back to Vienna where we end up sitting across from a family from Danville, CA. It is a small world.

It has been a long and interesting trip through Europe. Most of the places we visited we will visit again over the next twenty years. There is always something new to see and learn.

 

Vienna. October 12, 1999

Today Eileen, our intrepid tour guide, takes us into Vienna again to visit the art museum or Kunsthistorisches Museum. They have an extensive Flemish and Dutch section which includes a Vermeer. There are also many fine Brueghel, Rubens, Raphael, and Titian paintings represented in their collection. John and I love going to art museums so we had a splendid time.

Mary and John outside the art museum in Vienna
Vermeer’s The Art of Painting at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna

After our visit to the art museum we stop at a Spanish restaurant for lunch. John has a potato omelet and pork chop and I have a chicken breast. There are lots of vegetables which is a real treat since Germanic food is heavy on protein and starch.

In the afternoon we visit St. Stephen’s Cathedral which we had been to when we went to Vienna with Oracle. It is a large Gothic structure. I have to admit that the churches all start looking the same after a while. (I will change my mind about this as the years go by.) Interestingly the architect put his likeness in two different places in the cathedral.

St. Stephen’s Cathedral or Stephansdom in Vienna (Wikipedia photo)

Tonight for dinner we have pate and wine for dinner. We laugh and talk with Eileen and Jim for a while but we need an early night since we are exhausted and will be traveling to Prague tomorrow.

Visiting the Kendalls, Grinzing and Vienna. October 11, 1999

We are staying with our very good friends, Eileen and Jim Kendall. They were our next door neighbors in Massachusetts. Jim recently accepted a position with the U.N.’s IAEA. It is wonderful to see them again and exciting to be in Austria. We will also take a short trip to Prague while here.

Eileen, Jim, and Mary at the Kendall’s apartment in Grinzing

In the morning we take a ride up to Kahlenberg overlooking the city of Vienna. We see some farm animals and I am remembered always as calling, sheep, sheep, sheep, and having the sheep run over. According to this picture, there are some goats there as well.

Mary, Eileen, and goat friend

Next we stop at a church in Kahlenberg dedicated to the Polish king John III Sobieski. He was the commander in the Battle of Vienna which took place at Kahlenberg Mountain near Vienna in 1683. Vienna had been besieged by the Ottoman Empire for two months. The battle was fought by the Holy Roman Empire against the Ottoman Empire. The H.R.E. prevailed and a church was built in honor of Sobieski.

Mary and Eileen near the church dedicated to King John III Sobieski
Mary and John near Kahlenberg Mountain

After lunch back at Eileen’s we go into the Vienna and visit the Hofburg palace. We take the audio tour describing the rooms. The audio talks a lot about Elizabeth, the wife of Franz Josef, who was very discontent. She had homes all over the world and spent her time traveling around. She was also an exercise fanatic.

Mary and Eileen at the palace

After returning to Grinzing we have a dinner of wine and hors d’oeuvres, my favorite!!

Mary and Eileen

Mauthausen Concentration Camp and on to Grinzing, Austria. October 10, 1999

The day starts off rainy again as we leave Hallstatt. We go through the mountains and it is a beautiful drive up to the A1. The rain stops by noon. We drive to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. “As at other Nazi concentration camps, the inmates at Mauthausen and its subcamps were forced to work as slave labour, under conditions that caused many deaths. Mauthausen and its subcamps included quarries, munitions factories, mines, arms factories and plants assembling fighter aircraft. In January 1945, the camps contained roughly 85,000 inmates. The death toll remains unknown, although most sources place it between 122,766 and 320,000 for the entire complex.” (Wikipedia) There are barracks and a museum. We see a short film on the horror. There is a gas chamber. Many memorials from different countries are represented on the grounds. It is a somber and difficult visit.

John at Mauthausen
View approaching the camp
Jewish memorial

Then we drive to the Kendalls, buying a map along the way. They have a lovely apartment in Grinzing, a suburb of Vienna. We have a wonderful time visiting and eating Eileen’s great dinner. They will be putting us up for the next couple of days.

Hallstatt and Obertraum, Austria. October 9, 1999

Today starts off rainy. We watch the little train on the other side of the lake and the little ferry crossing the lake make their rounds. As the rain lets up we make our way to the pre-historic museum and then do some shopping. As you can see from this picture of the museum, Hallstatt is built on a narrow strip of land next to the lake and the mountains rise right behind it.

Hallstatt Museum (Wikipedia)

Later in the day we drive over to Obertraum and take the Dachsteinerbahn, a gondola, that goes up the mountain. We go up two stages and then walk around in the snow to take pictures! The day clears up for us and we have a beautiful vista of the lake, Obertraum and Hallstatt on the way down.

The gondola
A waterfall
It is winter up here on the mountain!
John in the Austrian snow

When we get back down and into Hallstatt it is overrun with tourists! It is such a small place that it does not take many tourists to make it crowded. They will need to find a way to manage tourism while still reaping the benefits economically. We find a place to have some pizza and beer as an early dinner or very late lunch. After that we are ready for a quiet evening reading.

 

Salzburg and Hallstatt, Austria. October 8, 1999

Today is our departure day from Munich. After a false start trying to find the Autobahn 8, we take a route we are familiar with. We go west out of Munich and then get off and turn around heading east. For some reason either they did not make an east entrance or we simply cannot find it!

Traffic is pretty heavy and we get to Salzburg around 1 PM. We look through their cathedral and then take the audio tour of the Residenz, former home of the Prince Bishops. It is very elaborate, like a smaller Versailles. There are lots of Alexander the Great frescoes on the ceilings. We see many original and period furnishings with many fine mirrors and clocks. We enjoy the tour very much.

Mary listening to the audio tour at the Prince Bishop’s Residenz, Salzburg

We look around for lunch but cannot find anything so we push on to Hallstatt. It is a beautiful ride through the mountains, lakes, and villages. Hallstatt turns out to be a tiny town on a lake. What a beautiful setting. Our hotel, the Gruner Baum, is not as charming as I had hoped but we have a deck overlooking the lake and a very large bathroom. Alas, it is a no shower curtain kind of bath/shower combo.

Hotel Gruner Baum

John on the deck overlooking the lake
Mary on the deck overlooking the lake
The lake

For dinner we go to the Gersthofen Zauner. I order Vienner schnitzel and John has spare ribs. We also order a salad and cauliflower au gratin in hopes of eating some vegetables.

Restaurant

The television in our room only has two stations. Both are in German so we do not stay up very late!