Madness

The NCAA tournament is upon us and the analysts and sports media incessantly push the "madness" down our throats. There has been some good stuff so far, but though you think you know madness, you don't. Matt Howard hitting a last second layup to beat Old Dominion and then a (very suspect) free throw to beat Pitt was exciting, yes, but not all that mad. Jimmer Fredette carrying his entire team (and Mormon nation) on his back to advance to the sweet sixteen like Stephen Curry, Wally Szczerbiak, and many others before him is impressive, but not mad.

Charlie Sheen's antics are completely fascinating. It has yet to be determined if it's legitimate madness.

Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland was less mad than it was strange.

This dog we saw today while out walking is...lovable, but still, not mad.

 Next door to the building we live is a small boutique clothing store named Sexy Woman Absolute Joy. What is currently being displayed in the window is... madness.

I hope the reflection in the window doesn't make it too hard to see what I sincerely hope is not the next new fashion craze. I thought by moving to Europe, I was escaping nonsense like this. Do we really need MC Hammer overalls? Do we need overalls at all? I've never hit anyone in my life, but I imagine it would be hard to resist punching someone in the face if I saw them walking down the street in this getup. You can't tell this from the front, but the outfit is completely open on the sides of the torso. It's incredible. I will admit that I am by no means on the forefront of the fashion world, but I would love for someone to explain this outfit to me.

Happy bracket-ing and Hook 'em Horns.

Coming to America and Airplane Reviews

We recently returned from three extremely busy weeks in the US. In between three work weeks for both of us, we had the opportunity to visit with lots of friends and family over the weekends. We met our new niece Ella, celebrated the 90th birthday of Jenn's grandfather, Bobby, played with our nephews and young cousins, and spent lots of quality time with siblings and parents. We also ate some excellent American food including poboys, Tex-Mex, breakfast tacos, sandwiches, and a few hamburgers.

It was good to be back, but surprisingly we were very ready to return to Bratislava. Life is nice here. It's slower, low stress, and life doesn't revolve around Charlie Sheen's nonsense.

We had the worst routing on any of our international trips, due to the airfare being unusually outrageous. The airlines want you to believe it's the increase in fuel costs, but they sure use that excuse a lot. We used some of my upgrade stickers to fly first class from Dallas to Boston. We watched this year's Oscar winner, The King's Speech. Jenn was so disappointed when she found out that the movie wasn't only showing in first class, but was also screened in economy. How quickly we forget where we came from. (So she doesn't get mad at me for saying that, I should explain that she was very excited because she thought it was so worth it to upgrade to first class because we got to see such a good movie and was upset when she realized we still could have seen it in coach).

I thought the movie was very good. The acting was great, but I also thought they were very showy roles. It wasn't the best movie I saw in the past year, but I can understand why others thought it was.

I had a steak quesadilla for lunch which was mediocre, but I ate it. Jenn had a grilled chicken salad that didn't impress her much. The warm chocolate cookies for dessert were great though. The real treat of the day was getting bumped to business plus class seats for our international flight from Boston to Madrid. It makes such a difference flying business internationally. The seats are nice and recline all the way. We didn't use our personal TV's because there was nothing we wanted to watch. They announced they would be showing True Grit on the big screen, but it never came on. Our three course meal wasn't bad. The shrimp appetizer was much better than we anticipated. It takes a great deal of courage to eat shrimp on an airplane, but we braved it and ended up just fine. The braised beef ribs were alright, but it was kind of cool having braised beef ribs on an airplane. I skipped dessert and can't even remember what Jenn had.

We both got some sleep after that for the remainder of the flight in our fully reclined seats. It was awesome. I don't ever want to go back to economy seating. Unfortunately, we had to on our flight from Madrid back to Vienna. It was hard to swallow. There were no warm nuts, no cookies, hardly any leg room, and to Jenn's dismay, no Kings Speech. Don't worry though, we survived and arrived safely back in Bratislava.

It's back to regular old life and getting back into our routine. Winter seems to be over, but it looks it'll be cool and rainy for a while before the sun shines again. Spring is near.

Non-Digital Images

I lost my camera. It happened at some point over the last three weeks while I was back in the US for work. I think I left it in my hotel room when I checked out for the weekend, but they say they can't find it. I consider myself above average (85th percentile perhaps) in responsibility, so when something like this occurs, it makes me reevaluate that and everything else I once believed to be true.

The first reaction for most people when they lose something is to blame others. I've been known to do that in the past. On a teen trip to Israel in high school, I accused Rosemary Lahasky of stealing my t-shirts. I wasn't particularly nice about it either. I don't remember much about it besides that I yelled at her a lot and in front of other people. In the end, I realized I hadn't packed as many t shirts for the trip as I originally thought. Not my finest moment. I'm sorry, Rosemary. Accusing others is natural when one loses something because it avoids looking in the mirror and recognizing the true source of accountability. No one likes admitting their faults or owning up to mistakes.

I never thought it was anyone else's fault. I knew it was mine. I held out hope it could be found. I called several people at the hotel, the lost and found at work, and Hertz, to see if it was left in the rental car the team was sharing. No luck. As the operator at the Westin Hotel told me when she was obviously tired of dealing with me, the camera was gone and I needed to accept it.

I was left without a camera. Fortunately, I'm pretty good about downloading the pictures off of the camera (see the 85th percentile above), so the only pictures lost were from previous two weekend trips to New Orleans and Miami. In this world of Facebook, Twitter, etc., it begs the question, if the moment wasn't captured and recorded digitally, did it actually happen? I question whether in a few years, we'll be able to remember anything. Think about how many phone numbers you know by heart.We take pictures of everything documenting the very minute details of everyday life. Children today will not have to remember anything because their entire lives are recorded on digital video or in images.They will have terrible memories because they will never need to utilize that part of their brain.

Though I will probably forget the two iguanas hanging out on the rocks next to the pool at the Ritz in Miami, I will not have a problem remembering meeting my niece, Ella, for the first time. I'll also remember my nephew Ben losing his front two teeth. I had some great pictures of my cousins Sasha and Zach playing with their older cousins (my nephews), Ben and Josh, some of which were of Sasha dumping sand on their heads as they tried to dig an enormous hole. I'll remember the wonderful and incredibly relaxing time we had at the beach with Judith and Rachel (my sisters), Brian (my brother-in-law), and Melissa and Shai (my aunt and uncle).

We take pictures of everything because we don't want to miss a moment, but maybe the lesson here is to focus more on the moment because pictures and cameras can be lost. The other lesson is to put my name and contact information on my new camera. Or maybe there is no lesson at all. There is, however, the undeniable and overriding fact that losing stuff sucks.