by Ralph
on December 23, 2014
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This won’t be a full post, more a quick note with an update on our travel status. We are in France. It is wondeful but different from our expectations. We enjoy the off-season benefits of no crowds, easy parking and carefree driving (even as I adjust to a stick shift after many years away. But we also miss the activity and bustle of the tourist season a little.
Entertainment at the Christmas Fair
I have posted reflections on my other sites and pictures on my Facebook page. France surprised us but not in unpleasant ways, It seems I even manage to miss home, in the form of Starbucks.
Today we are visiting the town market- which is not in the historic fortress city – to prepare for Christmas Day. Christmas Day is always complicated because we never know what will be open. We plan a quiet day at home with perhaps a walk or two to check out Christmas festivities, maybe even a late night Mass on Christmas Eve.
The French are wonderful hosts. They display none of the hostility I remember from my visit to Paris 40 years ago. They don’t pretend to be anything but proud of their nationality and don’t compromise for tourists but they are gracious and friendly hosts. We can’t complain, except for the lack of coffee bars.
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by Ralph
on September 8, 2014
Time flies when you are having fun: heck, it flies even when you aren’t. We’ve been back from Belgium two months now and I still haven’t put up a post on my blog.. I guess I could claim that nothing has happened- but that would be a lie. I could say that I’ve been busy which only raises questions about my priorities. Finally I could just give the whole idea of posting on my status a pass and plow forward. I’ve decided to come clean and confess that I’ve got a flaw. I can’t multitask.
Brussells Airport Hell
It’s not the worst flaw I can think of. It doesn’t keep my from chipping away at my to-do list. It just slows me down because I get lost in the weeds when I try to tackle more than one thing at a time. Combine that flaw with an inability to recognize important tasks and give them priority over urgent ones, sometimes a turtle is faster than me. What keeps me from total failure is dogged persistence, my wife calls it bullheadedness. If I start something, I will finish it. Just don’t expect it tomorrow.
I can meet deadlines, pay bills on time, show up for appointments and the like because those deadlines are real and have consequences that I recognize and fear. When it is me that sets the deadlines, those deadlines lose urgency and I have a harder time staying on target (and who is afraid of me?). My inability to stay on target has kept me from posting since returning from the trip and not a lack of interest. [continue reading…]
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