Category: Life

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Mouse Droppings




Creepy Chuck E.

Originally uploaded by steven_d_krause.

I meant to blog about this about a week ago, when Will’s Chuck E. Cheese party actually happened, but, well, it’s been kind of a strange week with the strike and everything. So a lot of this is kind of fuzzy memory.

I do recall saying to Annette when we went into Chuck E. Cheese before Will’s birthday, “Isn’t it unfortunate that a place that serves food has a rat for a mascot?”

“Chuck E. is a mouse,” said Annette.

“Whatever.”

In any event, Will and his friends had a good time, as I think is apparent in this set of photos from the event. Still, I think this is the last time Will will want this sort of birthday party. Most of the other kids who were having parties when he was there for this event were closer to 5 or so.

Will’s getting to be a big boy, doncha know.

I had fun too, though I have to say that my experience was spoiled/tainted by some of Annette’s past students. I can’t remember how this all came about, but she apparently was talking with some students and asked who it was who got selected to be in the actual Chuck E. Cheese suit. Without missing a beat, these students said “the newbie.” And, apparently, the actual Chuck E. Cheese suit, which is unbearably hot and uncomfortable, smells like the sweat of all of those who have worn the suit previously.

That thought makes this little silent video of Chuck E. dancing all the more creepy.

Anyway, happy birthday (belated) Will, and please don’t make me go back here.

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More Europe Photos (and Two Movies, too)

Just for some of my millions of curious readers out there: I uploaded some more photos and updated my “Europe 2007” set on Flickr– click here to see the set, or here to go directly to the slide show. Basically, now I include stuff from Germany and Austria.

I also have uploaded a couple of short movies that I took with my camera. There’s this one from Florence, where we’re driving across the river and then come up on the Ponte Vecchio (about 6.3 MB). Then there’s this one from Mittenwald, when a herd of goats came through this touristy lake area. About 4.8 MB. Be sure to note the shepard walking through with his goats.

When I get some time and inclination, I’ll put more of this stuff together into a more complete movie, kind of like thie thing I did for our Museum of Science and Industry trip.

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The Beer Watcher: A New and Local Option?




U-Brew Coming Soon!

Originally uploaded by steven_d_krause.

I went to pick up some videos for “family movie night” tonight (a pretty much weekly event in the Krause-Wannamaker house during the school year– tonight it’s going to be part 2, possibly also part 3, of the Back to the Future series, per Will’s request), and right next to the video store that I usually go, I noticed this: a “home” beer and wine brewing/making store.

It’s a work in progress (right now, there is some kind of campaign headquarters for Debbie Stabenow and Jennifer Granholm in the back), but it looks promising. Best of all and not obvious from this picture: it looks like this is a place where you can actually do the brewing there. From my peeking in the window, it looks like there is some sink and cooking space being constructed. Since the biggest problem with home brewing is the equipment and the potential for mess, this is very promising indeed.

Stay tuned my friends, stay tuned….

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Beer Watcher II: “Oh look, we made homemade ‘beer'”

As my millions of loyal readers will recall, our latest beer efforts have been a wheat beer. See previous beer watching episodes for this season at here, here, here, and here. I didn’t have a chance to have a tasting of the brew until now. And you know what? It tastes like beer.

Well, sorta. It tastes like kind of bad beer.

I can’t tell you exactly where we went wrong, or even if we did entirely went wrong– maybe I just don’t like the kind of beer we made (though I’ve had wheat beers before). But this particular batch tastes, well, homemade. And the reason this is both surprising and disappointing is that the last batch we made was very good, and the one before that (which Bill HD made himself) was also very good. So I don’t know….

Anyway, I’m looking forward to season 3 of the Beer Watcher. And once I do some emptying at the sink, I’ll have plenty of bottles, too….

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Innsbruck/Getting Ready to Fly Home/Misc.

Annette, Will, and I took a daytrip to Innsbruck yesterday. That’s the kind of thing you can do when you are in Europe: take a day-trip via train to another country entirely. Well, I guess you can take a day-trip to Canada too, but try that with a train and see how it goes. Anyway, Innsbruck was nice and surprisingly (to me, at least) touristy. We went to a very neat folk art museum, which is a nice relief from all of the Virgin Mary w/baby art we had been looking at in various churches and museums lately. Speaking of chruches: we went into this one in Innsbruck (I can’t remember the name now) that had about 15 or 20 of these giant bronze statues of kings in armor and queens and such all around a tomb. Very freaky. The waitress we had in the cafe we ate at spoke English with a New Zealand accent, and when we asked about that, she told us she had lived down there for 8 months working on a horse farm. And learning English, I guess.

And today is our last day in Mittenwald. Annette and I did a little more shopping while Will and his grandparents are out hiking. Mittenwald has been a lovely place to visit and stay, but I think when we come back (and I am sure we will as long as Annette’s parents keep coming here), we will probably make it for 3 or so days instead of a week. Tomorrow we leave for Munich to get to a sort of “staging area” for our flight, which leaves Monday morning.

Jeez, our timing on flying to Europe seems grand, doesn’t it? Actually, we have been able to keep up on the news here, and I don’t think it will be too big of a deal. As I discuss in the “miscellaneous” part of this message, the TV access we have had has been both good and bad. In any event, the big problem appears to be in the UK. According to this site for Delta (which is the airline we are taking back), the only concern is no liquids on-board. That’s fine; just as long as they let us pack our schnapps.

And now, to the miscellaneous part of things: I have about 14 minutes of Internet time left, so I thought I would post a few last thoughts about our trip in no particular order:

  • TV in Europe is strangely similar and strangely different from that in the U.S. For example, you know that guy who has these infomercials with this weird running machine? They were on like six different channels at the same time one day in Italy. There is some kind of puzzle game show on constantly here in Germany where I am pretty sure the host is just kind of yelling at the viewing audience. Speaking of TV….
  • We have watched a great deal of MTV in the room because it is pretty much the only thing in English. What is weird about MTV here is you have American bands in rotation, but you also have these European knock-offs of American acts, and I can tell you there are few things more strange than German or Italian rap acts.
  • One of the most memorable things for me on this trip was seeing the David. It was very surreal seeing this most famous sculpture in the world, something I have of course seen in images and copies a zillion times, up close and personal for real. It was too real, if that makes sense. Two other observations about that: right next to the David, just to add to the surrealness, is a computer simulation of the statue. You can use it to rotate it and see it with different light and shadows and such. Second, and this is really for my father, David does not appear to me to be circumcised.
  • The food in Italy was better than it is in Germany, but I have to say that a) it wasn’t as good there as I thought it would be, b) we live in an age where you can pretty much buy the same things in the US, and c), between these two countries, I do not need to eat any pork products for a while.
  • Italy is super-duper expensive, while Germany is bizarrely cheap. So if you are on a budget, you gotta go German.

I’m about out of time, so that will be it for now. More photos and more info after I get back to the US…..

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Stupid Americans/Language Skills….

I found this funny little bit of video from a Canadian TV Show— it’s on YouTube, but you can find a link to it and more examples here on boing-boing. It is one of those things that is certainly on my mind while I am here being a stupid American– or trying not to be too stupid of an American.

In Italy– specifically, the very American-heavy tourist center of Florence– just about everyone spoke English well enough to communicate and they were perfectly comfortable doing so, too. I did feel like I wish I would have known a little more Italian, that I would have actually listened to the CDs that I bought and/or taken a class or something. A little would have been better than nothing.

Now, compare that experience with Germany. Where we are at is popular with the German tourists, and some Italians too, but not so much with English speakers. But that’s okay since Annette speaks very solid Germany, her mom is actually German (though she has been in the US for so long that some of the natives here confuse her with an American who just speaks perfect German), and I have some rudimentary German skills. So here’s the thing: here in Germany, we are trying harder to speak German, and we kind of have to try harder since the locals don’t have that great of English skills.

It has been interesting. My most common German phrase is “My Deutsch ist sehr schlecht” (which means “my German is very bad”). However, I have learned that:

  • They like it when you try. Often, Germans will say (back to me in German, usually) something like “oh, your German isn’t bad at all.”
  • A combination of German and English pretty much will get me by.
  • I feel like all those failed years of college German are coming back to me rather quickly, and I bet if I were here for another two or so weeks, I’d be in pretty good shape, Deutsch-wise.
  • The Germans sometimes like practicing their English on the stupid Americans. We had a nice chat with a guy in the train station (who worked for the train station) about the automatic ticket machine. Several of the choices on this machine we used to buy train tickets to Innsbruck tomorrow were irrelevant. As I read the instructions (which were in English), I said “oh, that doesn’t matter” out loud. It took this guy a while, but he had a lightbulb moment (“ah– auf Deutsch, sag man ‘machts nichts'”). So I spread a little love, I guess.

I would upload some pictures, but I’m running out of time. I might have one more post before we come home on Monday. The short version: yesterday, we were in Munich, which was okay– too many tourists (again), and just a lot of walking, though we did see some cool churches and a fun market area. Today, back in Mittenwald. Will went hiking with the grandparents while Annette and I shopped a little. I bought a very cool Mittenwald Brauerei hat, and a snowglobe (of course). I suspect there will be some more gifty shopping for friends and family on Saturday, in part because we didn’t get much of a chance to do that in Florence and in part because stuff is dramatically cheaper here. Tomorrow we’re going to Innsbruck; Sunday back to Munich to get ready to get on the plane on Monday.

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As we leave Italy….

Will and I are at an Internet cafe right now while Annette rests from our travels for today to Fisole, which is a little and very scenic town just out side of Florence. This was our last big trip/stop in Italy; tomorrow, we get on the train toward Mittenwald.

And, to top it all off, I figured out how to upload photos. I think. Anyway, these images are all gigantic– I don’t think this semi-ancient PC has any way for me to edit them down– so be aware that the links you click here will open big images. Oh, and I don’t have my guide book so I might have to correct some of the “facts” of what we are seeing later.

Okay, away we go:

I tried to upload a bit of video I took with my little camera, but it didn’t seem to work. Oh well, maybe in Germany….

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Greetings from Italia!

Not surprisingly, I guess, finding Internet access in Florence has turned out to be easy. Really REALLY easy. I don’t think there is going to be a way to upload any pictures on this trip (I just don’t imagine this somewhat ancient PC will talk to my iPod, which is where I download my pictures from my camera), and besides, I don’t have that much time. However, since 15 minutes or an hour’s worth of time costs a euro, I figure I might as well give my millions of fans 15 minutes worth of what’s new over here:

  • On the whole, Air France rocks. While Annette had some seating problems with her leg (it’s too complicated to go into right now, but let’s just say that she probably would have been better off seating-wise without making a special request), they did have a food service that included free wine, the service in general was great, and each seat had individual screens for viewing a variety of different things. I watched the Hitchcock movie To Catch a Thief (I think they had it because it’s set in France) and Will watched an animated movie– something “hedge.” Annette read.
  • Running through the airport in Paris to catch our connecting flight, on the other hand, did not rock.
  • Our hotel totally rocks– not exactly a “room with a view,” but it’s plenty big, it’s clean, it has a nice kitchenette, and the people who run it are very nice.
  • Spent Sunday just trying to stay awake as long as we could and get adjusted; most of Monday wondering about, mostly by the Ponto Vecchio and this very cool park kind of in the hills looking down on Florence (great views); and today at the Uffizi (the big art museum) and Santa Croce (one of the big churches), both of which were beautiful. Tomorrow is “Dave.”
  • So far, we have one really good dinner, one so-so dinner, one pretty okay/good lunch (pizza), and one really good lunch.
  • Annette’s leg is bothering her, so we are spending tonight in. Will and I went to find a grocery store (with directions from the guy who runs our hotel) and got lost several times. It was nerve-racking and fun at the same time.

I think that’s about it for now– I’ll post more updates if I get a chance, but believe me, there will be pictures in the future. I think I’ve taken about 100 so far….

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The Eagle Crest Death March

Bill at Eagle CrestBill H-D., Steve B., and I had scheduled yesterday’s golf outting at the Eagle Crest Golf Course a couple of weeks ago, long before we knew about the current heat wave, “heat advisories,” and “cooling centers” opened in metro Detroit. I was a little concerned, Annette was very concerned, and Bill H-D. and Steve B. were not concerned at all. Bill said in an email something like “the day we can’t golf because it’s too hot is the day we’re too old.”

I’m officially too old.

Well, that’s not completely true. I felt okay after the first nine holes, though I was playing like shit and I do blame the heat for much of that. I also blame the course. The last time I played Eagle Crest (which was last year), they had these cool video things in the carts that were a GPS system (how far the cart was to the center of the green), a score keeping system, and a little narrative about each hole. Well, they got rid of those, and, besides the fact that you don’t have the gizmo to play with, you lose a lot of information about the course. For example, Steve B. hit it into water on his drive on #2, not realizing there was even a pond in play. (Of course, this does not explain the other two balls he subsequently put into the same pond). The yardage marking for #4 was off by at least 30 (maybe 40) yards, which I blame for my own problems of shooting it over the green by about 30 (maybe 40) yards, and which also lead to my call for a free mulligan and Bill H-D. accusing me of being a socialist.

But I digress.

Steve B. tees offAnyway, I don’t think I drank as much water as I should have on the front nine because by the time we got to the back, I was feeling it. I always thought that this “heat index” measure was kind of bullshit, but I got to say that by about #14 or so, it was 97 degrees and the heat index to me felt it was pegging at about 175. It was not pretty. I got to the water station and filled up my liter jug for the third time, and Bill H-D. said I looked a lot like Bugs Bunny in one of those desert cartoons: “waaa-ter… waaa-ter….”. Felt like it too.

But I got some more water into me and I bounced back, sorta. I even managed to bogey the very difficult “signature hole” of Eagle Crest, #16, and that was with a lost ball. Still, I had a 117 overall, sunburn, and a nasty heat-inspired head-ache.

So, note to self: no more golf during heat advisories. I’m still kind of feeling whipped from the whole thing this morning.

Indian food

On a happier note, we did have a nice Indian food meal with the golfers and the golfer’s families at our place. The chicken was certainly a hit.

Also on a happier note: it’s supposed to be rainy with a high of 79 tomorrow, and mid-80s Friday and Saturday.