| February 15, 2006 - Too many trips, too little time |
| Dear Friends, I haven't ever written about my trip to Scotland and Hungary over Thanksgiving, and already I have other trips planned that I wonder if I'll ever have time to write about. Remember how I reported in my last entry that I had identified a need at work that I proposed myself to fill? Well, management sent me last week to Boston to get training in the subject matter I proposed. It was fun and I got to stay in a beautiful hotel where the training was being held. Not only that, the food there was excellent. Tomorrow I leave for Iceland where I'll meet up with my friend, Laura, from Scotland. She and I planned the trip kind of on the spur of the moment. Since my New Year's resolution was to have more fun, I had just been looking at prices for flights to Reykjavik and realized that they're very cheap in February. It's actually not that cold there right now, but winds in Iceland can be fierce enough to rip a car door off. That's never happened to me while I've been there, but a friend of mine had it happen to her once. Anyhoo, Laura has proposed that we go on an excursion to see the northern lights. I think that would be pretty cool, but the tour company has a warning on their webpage that you only have an 85% chance of seeing them on any given night. Not only that, the exchange rate right now is even worse than it was in March of 2005. So much for our booming economy we've heard so much about, right? Back in 2001 when I lived for a month in Reykjavik the exchange rate was 100 Icelandic kronur to 1 American dollar. Now it's around 63.50 kronur to the dollar! Then the weekend of March 4, I head off to the Bustling Metropolis for a wedding reception. My friends, M. and F., are flying in from London to get married. I've been invited to their wedding brunch; the ceremony is family only and will be quite small. Then they zip back to London and will shortly thereafter move to Zurich. They're living the life I always dreamt I would live when I was younger. But, unfortunately, I lacked the self confidence to ever do anything like that. It's really amazing I ever managed to move as far away from my family as I did, considering how much griping my mother did about the fact that I was moving. Later in March I head off to Hotlanta. My friend J. has a deal where, if you stay two nights in the Four Seasons Hotel, you get the third night free. Because it's fairly pricey, he felt he couldn't afford it on his own, so he asked me to go along. Now, my dears, we had had drinks at the Four Seasons in Budapest, which was located in a building called Gresham Palace. It was gorgeous and I can easily see myself getting used to that extravagant lifestyle. Unfortunately, my budget only allows me to view hotels as a place to spend the night rather than as a permanent residence for my evil, yet fabulously rich, twin. But it will be fun to experience it at least once in my life. Since I haven't yet written about Hungary and Scotland, who the hell knows if I'll ever write about these upcoming trips? I guess if you're curious, you'll just have to keep checking back. By the way, I'm reading Das Nibelungenlied. It's written in Old Middle High German with a modern German translation on the facing pages. Unfortunately, I don't understand a word of Old Middle High German (except here and there), so I'm reading the modern German translation. It's actually pretty interesting in a florid medieval kind of way. Ta ta! Next entry Previous entry Go to diary entries Go back home |