May/June(2005)

Before I knew about blogging, and after I'd just moved from Denver to Portland leaving many good friends, I would send out periodic update emails. I just found on in my email archives. Blogged for the first time ever, I present May/June 2005 update (which I'm not going to reformat)

May/June 2005 update

May and June were very busy months.  Work was non-stop busy for me right
up
until we left for vacation, but once I was on vacation, things were just

great.  I didn't work the entire time and got a new perspective on
things -
always a good thing. It seems that I will need to accept that I'm going
to
have to travel more frequently with this job that I anticipated, so I am

trying to Accept it rather than Fight it. That said, I have no travel
booked
as of now, so I am excited about that. I'll take what I can get.

We just returned from our vacation in London, Amsterdam, and Prague.  We
had
a great time,
but were ready to come home, particularly to escape the high numbers of
people, cramped quarters, and high prices that define life in London and

other European cities.  While I had a wonderful time, this trip - more
than
my past European trips - made me very thankful to
live in the US with all of the luxuries that I often take for granted.
Some
highlights and impressions of our vacation:

England - London and Worcester
In addition to meeting and playing with our nephew (7 months old), we
attended his Christening while in England.  He's just adorable and I'm
so
pleased that he and his parents (Damian's brother and his girlfriend)
will
be joining us in Portland for Christmas this year. We spent some time
touring around London and Worcester (where Damian's dad lives), but
mostly
just caught up with Damian's family. My mom also came with us on our
vacation, though she stayed in England while Damian and I went to
Amsterdam
and Prague.

Amsterdam
We only spent about 4 hours in Amsterdam before heading to Rotterdam to
catch up with some old friends of Damian that evening.  It was my first
trip
to Amsterdam - beautiful city.  We toured Anne Frank's house and then
just
walked around the shops along the canals.  No visit to the red light
district - gotta save some fun for later in life!

Prague
Prague was like a fairy tale city - it's clear why so many movies are
filmed
there with its beautiful architecture.  I am not very fond of Czech
food,
but that didn't detract from the beauty of the city or our enjoyment of
our
time there.  We tried something new there and stayed in an apartment
rather
than a hotel.  I would recommend this to anyone traveling with more than
one
other person as it's cheaper than a hotel and the same price whether you

have one person in the apt or 6 people. The only downside was the lack
of
ammenities of a hotel (concierge, being around other tourists, daily
cleaning of room, etc). We also found that our apartment was right above
the
Adult Erotic Video parlor, but it turned out not to be an issue and
provided
some interesting viewing when walking past it. During one of our tours,
we
got to talk with the tour guides a bit about life under Communism, which
I
found to be very interesting.  There was also some sort of Hell's Angels

gathering in the city during the time we were there. Who knew they went
on
vacations together?

Damian and I have decided to resume our more healthy eating and daily
trips
to the gym.  Taking a bit of advice that Rachele gave me for "lazy"
people,
I'm easing back into the gym routine by not focusing on performing well,
but
on just getting my butt to the gym and doing something that resembles
exercise.

Finally, to further my goal of reading more, I'm adding a Books section
to
my update. Most books will get a thumbs up because if I don't like a
book,
I'll typically stop reading it. If anyone has book recommendations for
me,
send them on as I'm always looking for a good book.  I'm more picky
about my
books than my movies, so I find it hard to find things I can get into.


Movies:
- Mr. & Mrs. Smith - Fun for what the movie is supposed to be
- Lords of Dogtown - Awful, skip it
- Batman Begins - Awesome. I usually hate the comic book movies likes
this,
but this one was great!
- The Longest Yard - Pretty funny
- Cinderella Man - Very good despite having two of my least favorite
actors
in it: Russell
Crowe and Renee Zellweger
- Crash - Fairly good, but predictable.  Kind of pretentious.

Books:
- Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone - thumbs
up.
- Scribbling the Cat: Travels With an African Soldier - thumbs sideways
- Do They Hear You When You Cry - thumbs up (true story about an African

refugee running from FGM)
- Life of Pi - thumbs up