Spring has sprung, Pepe le Pew style!

All those who know me know I prefer warm weather and really look forward to spring. Well, we had a little, itsy-bitsy warm up of about a day and a half and that was enough, apparently, to get ole Pepe le Pew stirring and marking his territory.

Richard and I were sitting on the sofa yesterday doing computer stuff (that's a whole other posting - I was infected with a trojan horse!) when we started smelling Mr. le Pew. We thought it was coming from outside, of course, but the smell was getting stronger and stronger. We have a wooden porch in the front that we've often thought could be housing skunks underneath. (We had a mom and 4 babies hanging around most of last summer.) After stepping outside and trying to find the culprit just to have an answer as to where this was coming from we decided to check out our basement. WOW! We were blown away by the powerful stench. I started getting a headache immediately and the cat (why she would choose to be down there is anyone's guess) threw up. The smell was strongest toward the front of the house so we checked all around and up in the ceiling rafters but couldn't find anything.

After having the Consumers Energy guy out just to make sure it wasn't a gas smell (when we went into the basement the smell was a combination of skunk and rubber leading us to believe that maybe it wasn't a skunk, maybe it was either gas or an electrical burning problem) Richard cut a hole in the wood porch so that we could look under to see if the skunk, possibly dead, was under there. But - nothing. We found nothing.

It's getting better but the smell still lingers. We had to have our bedroom window open last night because the smell made it upstairs and made it hard to fall asleep.

The nice thing about all this was waking up to the sounds of the morning with the window open and the sweet smell of the fresh air. It made me happy to know that spring is only a month away. I love sleeping with the windows open and listening to life outside. Especially when the trains go by...

Has anyone else had any dealings with skunks yet this year? Anyone know of a skunk deterrent that we might think of using this year? I don't want these things hanging around our house again.

OBAMA! OBAMA!!

Are we happy, or what!! See the smile on my face :)) ! We are living through one of the most defining moments in our nation's history. I keep getting teary-eyed whenever I watch and re-watch bits and pieces of yesterday such as the one below.



Isn't it inspiring to see them like this? They seem so solid and so in love.

Barack is quite an orator, isn't he?

Beyonce is so beautiful. I saw the movie Cadillac Records (I highly recommend it) in which she plays Etta James, the original singer of 'At Last.' Beyonce played Etta so well; she's a terrific actress. (I feel about Beyonce the same as I feel about Dolly Parton - great voices but I prefer to see them on screen.)

When I went to vote in November, I took my 12-year-old daughter, Hannah, with me because I knew it would be a time in which she would want to have memories. When it was our turn to take our ballot to a standing table to fill in the 'bubbles' with our pen, I let Hannah do it. I wanted her to be able to say that she filled in the ballet bubbles for the first African American that was elected to the highest office of our land.

And, again, yesterday I took her out of school to watch the inauguration. They weren't going to officially broadcast it in her school; it was up to each individual teacher and I thought it was too great a moment to miss. I'm not sure what she will remember but I know she will at least take away the importance of the moment.

Even though I was only 4 1/2, I remember when John Kennedy was assassinated. I remember that my mother screamed at the television and then ran to her bed face down sobbing and sobbing. I have a memory of her hugging me but I'm not sure if that really happened or if it was something that I wanted to happen. Then I remember watching the events unfold on the television with her after she was able to leave her room.

If I had it to do over again, in hindsight, I would do things a bit differently as far as the months and months before the election. I would have attended as many cities and stops where both Obama and Clinton were speaking. I would have done everything to get close, to get an autograph, to pick up something that they dropped, to grab some 'thing' that would hold special meaning later on. This moment is only going to be a 'first' once. History was going to be made one way or another. And if it had been Hillary who won, all the pride and happiness I am feeling right now with the Obama win I would still be feeling with the first woman to be elected, probably a bit more personally.

I'm proud that I helped elect this man. I'm happy to see so many African Americans beaming and crying with joy. We broke down a barrier. I can't believe it has happened in my lifetime but I'm OH SO HAPPY it did!

A budding poet

Pride gushed through my veins with force the other day when my daughter, Hannah, shared a poem with me that she wrote for her language arts class. She said it was no big deal, that she threw it together in 4 minutes before class when she remembered it was due. Her name was mentioned in the afternoon announcements along with a couple other kids whose poems also caught their teachers' attention. Hannah's teacher wanted to have it published in the school newspaper but Hannah says she told her no, she didn't want it published.

So I thought I would publish it here. Her teacher gave her a "WOW! 10/10A."

Middle school
Above five, beneath nine
After innocence, before responsibility
Through the small doors, across from the big doors
That lead to confusing turns
Toward success

I discovered Discover!

When I was young, I used to like to lay on the front lawn at night and contemplate the night sky. Where I grew up there were no street lights so it was easy to see the Milky Way and all the constellations laid out before you, making it easy to ponder and wonder. I would look up and say "For every star there could be an Earth orbiting around it - a planet at just the same distance from its star as we are from our sun. There could be more people out there."

In the February issue of Discover magazine there is a short article that I find fascinating, First Light for Alien Worlds. Here is part of what the article says:

Achieving a feat that seemed impossible not so long ago, a team of scientists working with the Hubble Space Telescope captured the first visible-light image of a planet orbiting another star. On the same day as this announcement, last November 14, came the report of a related breakthrough using the ground-based Gemini and Keck observatories in Hawaii, with which astronomers captured the first infrared image of three planets orbiting a star. A week later, another exoplanet candidate was spotted in infrared - this time by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope - orbiting the hot, bright star Beta Pictoris.

I just wish that more could be discovered during my lifetime. I wish I could know, before I die, that what I think is logical is, indeed, fact. How thrilling it would be to find out that there is life similar to ours within the Milky Way! Can you imagine how that could change the priorities of people here on Earth! Maybe we would start focusing on working together to obtain more knowledge of and work toward communication with those beyond our Earth.

And to think that I am not a fan of science fiction novels or movies.

Wow! This post is LONG overdue. My daughter Courtney and I took a trip to Berlin and Paris in May of 2007. She speaks both languages having had 5 years of French between high school and college and then in college changing her major to German and international studies, spending her last year at Wayne State University studying in Munich, Germany.

There are a lot of pictures to look at here but that was the original intent of this blog - travel and pictures. I'll be posting in two parts. First, Germany then Paris.

Richard happened to be flying out on the same day as we were so we all headed to the airport together.
Courtney and I flew into Frankfurt and had a long layover so we rented a room at a quaint little hotel recommended by our cab driver. I can't remember if this picture taken from the plane when we were flying into Frankfurt or into Berlin.
Courtney has had bad experiences with luggage on flights as shows on her face in this shot in Frankfurt. Not to worry; our bags came through just fine. (We were on Lufthansa, I believe.) When she went to Germany for her last year of study, British Airways lost her luggage for a week! There she was, knowing no one and on her own with no luggage except for what she carried (which wasn't much.) They never did reimburse her for anything. In blog part two of this trip I'll tell you of another British Airways blunder.
Hotel rooms are very tiny in Europe and this one in Frankfurt was no exception. Plus, there was no elevator.
Here we are just after checking in.
And the tiny bathroom with sliding doors that slide against the wall to save space; the shower is to the right, sink in front of you as you step in and the toilet to the left. Very space efficient.
Looking left out the window...
And looking right...And Courtney doing what we came here for. It was a wonderfully warm day in Frankfurt. One thing that I find amazing is that the windows in cities in Europe don't have screens on them. They just open to the world! No bugs to deal with.

Here is a video I shot of this tiny space they call a hotel room.


On our way to Berlin; Courtney grabbing a bite to eat in the airport.
Once we got to Berlin, we had to take a couple trains to get close to the hotel at which we had reservations. Here we sat waiting for the train at 8:45 pm.
After getting as close as we could by train, we had to walk the rest of the way which was about a half-mile. It was getting dark by then and this shot was taken on our way. This tower is called Fernsehturm and is the second tallest structure in Europe and rises out of the center of the famous square, Alexanderplatz.I didn't get more pictures of what happened next but it was quite a bummer. When we got to our hotel, Arena Hotel, which was located in an area of downtown Berlin, the woman at the desk told us that we couldn't stay there because they were being shut down. She said they had just been told by the authorities that morning and couldn't continue to operate. She told us that she had made reservations for us at another hotel and they would pay for both the cab fare to get us there and for renting the hotel room. We waited quite a while for the cab to arrive and when we finally got on our way we drive...and drive...and drive...Way out of the city! Good thing Courtney could speak German because we finally said something to the driver and told him what happened. He stopped the cab and made a phone call and told us that he knew of a better hotel for us to stay and it was in the city. Yes, it was a better hotel, about triple the price come to find out at checkout. The driver told us a price but somehow he was wrong. Oh, well. It was nice to stay in a hotel that had spacious rooms.
After we cleaned up a bit we went out to a hostel where a friend of Courtney's, Adrian Dosti, works. Here's a little video of them seeing each other again.

I had never been in a hostel so I took a video of the inside common area.

Their mutual friend Federico (I call him "the cute boy from Italy") arrived a bit later and you could tell that they really liked being all together again. The four of us spent a day sight-seeing in Berlin.
This is the Brandenburg Gate, the only thing remaining of what used to be a series of gates through which visitors entered the city. It was completed in 1791 with an extensive renovation prior to Germany's hosting of the World Cup in 2006.
The former Berlin Wall ran through the plaza on one side of the Brandenburg Gate, which was closed from 1961 through 1989. The wall is gone now but the outline remains perserved in the street so visitors can picture what the area looked like when it was fully divided. In 1987, President Reagan delivered his famous "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" speech just inside the West Berlin side.

I took this video in the plaza of the Gate. There are a lot of performance artists that hang out there.


Other art in the plaza:

This is the Reichstag building, the country's capital building. It first opened in 1894 as the center of government. It was refurbished, rebuilt, and reopened in 1999 as the capital of unified Germany.
A street view near the capital.

On our way to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (translation: main train station) we walked through an open park and through the Holocaust Memorial, designed by architect Peter Eisenman. It opened in 2005 and is made of two parts, the above ground part that takes up a whole city block, and below where there is an information center. The ground level part is composed of rows of concrete slabs of various heights. Quoting Wikipedia, "According to Eisenman's project text, the slabs are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason."


Here are a couple pictures of Courtney's friend Adrian walking through the memorial.

Federico and Courtney walking through the sculpture.The park on the way to the hauptbahnhof had one of those cool fountains that kids like to play in and get wet.

Also inside this park across from the capital is this sculpture. The only information I can find on it states that it is a memorial to the 96 Reichstag member of the opposition parties killed by the Nazis. I thought it was quite a stunning piece.

As you can see, the names are part of the slabs.

Now, on to the Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It is a very modern building, huge enough to house stores and such. It reminded me of a mall here in the US with trains running through it. The station sits alongside a pretty river, the river Spree.
This was pretty cool. There were chairs set up along the river facing the hauptbahnhof. Anyone can go sit and relax. Another view of the river. These next three pictures are taken inside the train station.

Of course, a trip to Berlin is not complete without seeing 'The Wall.'

Here is a hole in the wall. There was a gap in the wall and you could see the other side, along the river. There was a lot of creativity displayed on the wall.
We saw a young artist finishing his touches. These shots were taken while crossing a bridge on our walk from the wall to the shopping area of downtown. Trains and cranes everywhere! It seemed like the whole city was undergoing a transformation.
This is the famous Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gadachtniskirche. Gadachtniskirche translates to 'memory church.' After an allied bombing raid on Berlin in 1943, only part of this church was left standing.The church was known for its beautiful glass mosaics decorating the interior.
I wanted to experience the bus in Berlin so we took a short ride while we were exploring downtown. Here's a cute girl I saw on the bus!I caught her trying to take my picture. I call it 'Taking me taking you.'We actually saw a small, green park in downtown while looking out the bus window.
A busy downtown. The building shown in the background is called The Hackescher Markt.
This is The Sony Centre on Berlin's historic Potsdamer Platz. It consists of a complex of buildings grouped around a central atrium. Eight individual buildings are used for offices, apartments, cinemas, and an art museum. I thought it was perfect photographic material.I believe this shot was taken somewhere around the Sony Center.This was a cool store window display. I got a kick out of this vehicle. I think I remember these being 'for hire.' I could be wrong, though.

We took a break for lunch.
I had to get this picture for Richard. Adrian ordered wienerschnitzel, as you can see. Richard is a BIG fan of the German staple.
Here are a few pictures taken in various train stations.
Cute ad.Nothing's free! Gotta pay to pee!

Sometimes there were button pushers to close and open the doors to the trains. Looks like a fun job, eh? I guess you could have fun with it if there were belligerent people :) !
We stopped to grab another bite and drink later on and I took a few pictures using a cool color setting on my camera. Here are a couple of TCBFI and one of Courtney.


And I'll end this posting with a few more pictures taken out and about. It was a fantastic trip, especially spending the time with my daughter. Watch for the second posting, the second half of this trip: PARIS!