May 7, 2023

Seattle Part Un….

Back in early April, I was voluntold to travel to Seattle to attend a meeting with a potential business partner to the company I’m contracted to. They needed someone technical in the discussions as the primary members were business types with little to no technical expertise. I’ve not typically done this in the past, but all of the others who had were, for various reasons, not available. So, lucky me I got to spend 10 hours of plane time for 2 hours of meeting. Yay! The benefit was there was going to be ample downtime to go out and exercise the new to me Fuji XF16-80 lens I bought with…

April 30, 2023

Escape from Hungary

My family and I were at a lovely retirement dinner on Thursday, which is a tale for another day, and we were talking about some of the interesting experiences that Melanie and I have had as a result of my travelling for the company. One of the most interesting experiences is what we affectionally call our “Escape from Hungary”. I had had some work scheduled for the Mediterranean in late August of 2015. So Melanie and I decided that she would meet me in Vienna, and we would have a short tour around Eastern Europe. Our plan was to start in Vienna, spend a couple of days, catch a train…

April 15, 2023

Yorktown Battlefield

Before we start, a heads up. I’ve turned commenting on in the site. Comments have to be approved so your witty remarks won’t be immediately posted. Let’s see how this works out. I’ve also set WordPress to accept comments on posts less than 14 days old. Seems logical. Anyway, it’s all a work in progress. Melanie and I decided to spend New Years in Williamsburg getting to know our new “home town”. I used some Hilton points to book a room at the Embassy Suites in Williamsburg. All in all, if I’m honest, I can’t recommend this facility. We have stayed here a couple of times and it’s just not…

October 23, 2022

waiting

So after the tumultuous series of events in Athens, there was nothing left to do but press onward. Digging in, what I found was conflicting and not completely clear on the path forward. The one thing that I found was that a “Letter of Recovery” from a doctor was required to board a flight back to the states. My flights had been changed to Wednesday the 30th, so there was nothing more to it than obsess over the situation. That’s one of the things I excel at, obsessing over things not in my control. Always been that way, not any better nowadays although I am better at not getting into…

September 25, 2022

March 25th

Friday, March 25th was to be a day of preparation to return to Virginia. My flights were booked for the next day, and the number one task was the COVID test necessary to reenter the United States. On Thursday I had asked the clerk at the hotel the best means of doing that and they said there was a service available to come to the hotel. It was a bit spend at 100 euro, but was, allegedly, very easy. The earliest appointment available on Friday was 1100, so I figured I would just have a leisurely sleep in, get my test and then go out and do the rest of…

August 7, 2022

Transitions

I know I promised you the first glimpse of Greece, but life has interceded and for no other reason than to get this off my chest, we’re going to diverge from the core theme a bit. My relationship with my mother and father has been tenuous at best for all my life. My parents came together as the result of a child conceived out of wedlock. At the time, in 1957, the thing to do when this happened was to get married. In those days that was the result. Not so much nowadays. That child was me, and my creation was the beginning of 36 years of unhappy marriage for…