Been too busy lately to write much here . . .
My old colleague Lance is in town this week (in olden days, we worked together on the same small project; now we're just belong to different tentacles of the Hamburg octopus) -- on Wednesday night, Shelby and I met up with him and went to the DOM. We caught up over a sit-down meal of Wurst, Pommes, und Bier (that good-for-you carnival food again), and then went out to ride some of the more outrageous rides. A fun night.
After that, it was all buckling down and working for the weekend, trying to clear the board so that we can go to Vienna tonight with a clear conscience (my conscience -- I'm sure that Shelby will have no problems).
The pre-weekend started early this morning, when I went to pick up a rental car to drive Scout out to her Hundehotel in the country. The car was a 10-Euro-a-day Smart car; when the rental agent took me outside to show me the car, she asked me if I knew how to drive an automatic! Only in Germany. (Actually, the Smart had a semi-automatic "Tiptronic" transmission, which was a genuinely new thing for me.) I came back to the apartment to pick up Scout, and we set off. We've been having gusty winds here for days, and the puny two-person Smart was getting pushed all around the road; I quickly got sore wrists from making abrupt corrections back in the right direction.
Eventually we arrived out in the boonies where the Hundehotel was located. It was a substantial complex of brick buildings at the end of a dirt road -- interestingly, at the head of the road was a sign in English and French that said "HOTEL IS FOR ANIMALS ONLY. NOT A HOTEL FOR PEOPLE." I wonder what happened to make them up a permanent, professional sign, in those particular languages . . .
Scout did her usual thing -- whining pitifully, looking at me with a sad, take-me-home expression -- until . . . sniff-sniff . . . "is that a farm next door?" Waggy tail time!
I think that she'll be fine. (At least until she gets the nail clipping and tooth-brushing that we paid extra for.)
Back on Monday after we get back from Vienna!
Posted by Kevin at April 2, 2004 03:25 PM