Garmisch-Partenkirchen

(Click on photos for a larger version.)

Hamburg Fischmarkt

Amsterdam.

December 19, 2010

Happy Freaking Holidays!

This is volume 20 of this holiday letter.

Next summer it will be 20 years since I moved the Pacific Northwest. I can't believe it. I always assumed I'd end up back in California.

How many people in the world wake up one day and realize that they've settled into some life decision that they'd assumed was temporary at the time they made it? I'm not knocking it. I'm perfectly happy where I ended up.

I want to travel back in time and hold hands with my 25-year-old self and assure her that everything is going to turn out okay. I think she'd be appalled to find out where she was going to end up. But my current self likes it so screw her, what does she know?

Spinal Tap

Hey, you know if I do a certain kind of seated-twist yoga pose (sorta like this) and I'm twisting to the right, if I move just the right way I can make a sound like the creaking timbers on a pirate ship. I've never sailed on a pirate ship, but that sound you hear in the movies.

I took a class with a new teacher and we were doing that pose and she came over to adjust me and I creaked.

She snatched her hands back and said: What's that noise?

Me: MY SPINE!

There's no point to that story other than sharing the least humiliating item in the "my body does weird stuff" category.

Highlights

Bob was on sabbatical from Jan to Sep and we took advantage of the opportunity to travel in the off-season and went to Germany and Netherlands in March. We visited family in Germany including my two spry-for-their-eighties aunties. I got to enjoy all my favorite German candies, cookies, chocolates and beer in endless quantities.

Our flight went through Amsterdam so we did our first visit to that city and looked at Van Goghs and historical stuff and maneuvered the public transportation scene. I tried to sneak a tulip bulb mountain home with me but it wouldn't fit in my bag. Lots of photos and details here

A couple of other things we did: we celebrated Dad's 80th birthday in Orleans. I watched a zillion soccer games both World Cup and Portland Timbers. I'm now a Timbers season ticket holder so there will be plenty of tiresome soccer talk in the future.