December 2003 Archives
We decided to go mass at St. Matthew's (Sv. Matěj) church because every Christmas for the last thirty years they have had a nativity scene made out of gingerbread. Some of the figures are original but a lot of them (including the Holy Family) are made fresh each year. The detailed decorating is simply amazing -- the icing looks like embroidery or filigree.
The Sv. Matěj church is a smallish gothic structure from the 17 hundreds (I think). And it does not have any heating. We got there in time to only find seating for my parents, so Jfer and I stood during the mass on the cold stone floor. The temperature that morning was in the lower 20s (Fahrenheit) and it pretty much was freezing inside the church the entire time. It was kind of neat watching the priest's breath turn to steam. But we were sure glad to be back in the car with the heater going full force on the way home.
There is a big difference between going to church in Switzerland and the Czech Republic. While we made it on time, people kept arriving throughout the service. I don't know if it's a busy parish or if they came for the nativity. There were quite a few people after mass taking a closer look (and pictures).
Rita was going back home early in the morning. My parents were taking her to the train station in St. Gallen where we were to say goodbye to her. As usual, we took our sweet time getting up, so I ended up racing to the station on the highway (illegally, too). But we made it on time, since there was no one on the roads at this god-awful hour. We said our goodbyes and helped Rita on her train, hoping she'd make the transition to the plane without any problems (which she did).
After resting for a while at my parents' we loaded up the car, stopped for some on-the-road groceries and headed out of the country. Crossing the borders so anticlimactic these days -- the Swiss and Austrians just waved us through and we didn't even notice when we crossed into Germany since there aren't border crossings between EU countries.
The drive was pretty uneventful. Jfer was enjoying her iPod and I was reading most of the way (between the naps, that is). We crossed into the CR without any problems, although they did look at our papers this time. We made it to Prague in the afternoon and hung around the house before heading out for dinner at a nice pizzeria.
Three big pizzas, a calzone, a bottle of wine and espressos: $20 -- you've gotta love the Czech Republic.
Didn't do much on my name's day (although Jfer didn't forget and gifted me with the Whale Rider DVD, book and CD -- she always knows exactly what she want for my name's day). We watched the kids in the morning and then why my mom showed up we ventured into St. Gallen for some more -- you guessed it -- shopping.
Then it was a goodbye dinner for Rita and we packed and went to bed.
Jfer and I managed to make it to church on time on Christmas Day. Dominik was playing piano accompanied by a cellist friend, so we didn't want to miss that. The music was OK, but you could tell they were both a little rusty. Dominik now only plays piano "if there's money involved" according to mom. During the mass, Fr. Manser made a plug for Spring, Summer, Winter and Spring (again) which supposedly is "one of the best movies, ever". If it makes to Austin, I'll try to see it.
After church we had lunch at my parents and they then took us for some sight seeing around Appenzell hills. We ended up visiting the church in Appenzell and the cathedral in St. Gallen to check out their nativity scenes. Pretty nifty (and relatively warm compared to the outside).
Christmas Eve Day turned out perfect. We decided to go sledding before lunch, so Jfer and I borrowed a sled from my sister and dad drove the three of us up to Voegelingsegg where there is a good sledding road. It was cold but the sky was blue and the fresh snow everywhere was a blazing white. We had a good view of the lower laying areas which were partially covered under thick fog banks.
Rita was initially not too thrilled about trudging up a steep hill only to descend it later in semi-controlled fashion, but we all ended up having a blast. Jfer and I went on one sled while my dad and Rita used the other one. Nobody got hurt even though we had some off-road incidents that landed Jfer and me in deep snow.
After sledding we went back to my parents where we were joined by my sister's family for a traditional lunch of Vánočka and hot chocolate. After lunch Martina and family went home to decorate the tree, Moritz stayed at my parents and we went shopping for chocolates and other stuff to bring home.
Dinner at Martina's was delicious, as usual. The fish head soup, fried carp, potato salad (I even had little bit of that) and everything else was a hit. After dinner Martina rolled out her Christmas Cookies (seven different types, which Jfer wants to beat next year) and we sang carols in Czech, German and English before we descended on the gifts.
My mom is always grumbling about there being too many gifts, and I had to agree that she had a real point. The kids would have been quite happy to play with the first gift they opened and we almost had to force them to go on and fetch some more.
I made out like a bandit (and later had to take a big chunk of things off my Amazon wish list). I'm not going to enumerate everything, but Jfer got me a cool lens and hood for my camera. My mom was giving out home-made stain glass sun catchers and she made one of a bat for us -- and it came in a box with tickets for Die Fledermaus that we were to see in Prague.
After the kids went to bed it quieted down nicely and we spend good time together gorging on Xmas cookies and playing with Moritz' train set.
The weather on Monday was crappy so watched the kids and then went shopping in St. Gallen (and visited my sister in the store where she works). I was starting to get used to my parent's old Opel, icy roads, defective wipers and no power-steering notwithstanding.
The weather on Tuesday was glorious so Jfer, Rita, Dominik and I took the Mazda to Lucerne. We stopped at Dominik's apartment in Zurich to pick up some stuff and inspect the mess (amazingly clean for three guys living together).
Lucerne was very cold. We enjoyed the view of the mountains, saw the usual (the bridge Kapellbrücke, the Lion Monument, etc.) but spent most of our time at the Gletschergarten Glacier Museum. I'd been there with school way back and it was a blast like before. We probably enjoyed the Mirror Maze the most.
On Sunday Jfer and I made it late to church. We got up late (as usual) but also didn't anticipate the time it takes to scrape ice off a car and that one of the roads would be closed for sledding. It was bit embarrassing, since in Switzerland everyone makes it to church on time (unlike here or, as we found out, in the Czech Republic).
We walked to my parent's from church with Rita and Dominik, enjoying the lovely weather and the fresh snow. It's great to have snow before Xmas and we were glad for the winter jackets we bought for the trip.
After lunch we drove up to the Schwägalp where my parents walked around while we took the gondola up to the top of Säntis (check out the web cam). Although it was in the lower 20s °F, there wasn't too much of a wind and the view was spectacular. We got to see all the way to Italy, France, Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein -- that's six countries if you include Switzerland.
On the way home we stopped in Stein to visit the Appenzeller Schaukäserei, a cheese dairy where you can watch them make Appenzeller Cheese. After learning all there was, we went to their restaurant and enjoyed a cheese platter with five of their flavors. And Rita ended up buying a two-pound wedge of Surchoix.
Saturday's weather wasn't too pretty, so we went and spend some of it in St. Gallen shopping. Didn't get too much, but visited a lot of stores.
In the evening we went to Martina and Urs' concert. It's a four-person acapella group and their Xmas concert was a lot of fun (and one of the reasons we traveled so early). A mix of Blues, Jazz, Gospel, Pop and Rap (you think what white Americans rapping is funny, you should hear it with a Swiss accent). I think my favorite song was their rendition of "Byla Cesta Ušlapaná", a modern (I think) Czech carol.
One of their most successful songs was "Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer". We were a bit taken aback when they began it with "You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Nixon..." Later Urs explained (and I remembered) that "Vixen" is slang for "a man who pleasures himself" as my sister put it. I guess some things don't translate that well...
Aah, Christmas time with the family -- it doesn't get much better than that.
We started our second "once-every-three-years Christmas with my folks" on Dec. 18. As last time, the excellent Bookgroup Xmas party was the night before, so we didn't start packing until around 11pm but finished by 2am.
The trip went without problems. Elizabeth took us to the airport, we managed to connect with Rita in DFW and the flight to ZRH was uneventful. I was spoiled by my last international flight with AA. Their Switzerland planes are a bit older and you don't have your personal TV so we had to suffer through the Hulk.
My sister picked us at the station in St. Gallen with a surprisingly sullen Moritz. By the time the night was over, he was his ebullient self and truly bonded with Rita.
We took a nap but managed to stay awake and alert throughout the raclette dinner with the family.
Tim alerted me of EFF Austin's eVoting round table so I checked it out last night. The main presenter was Dr. Dan Wallash from Rice. He was part of the team that did a scathing analysis of Diebold's eVoting system in July. The talk was pretty good, although I'd read the majority of that info on-line.
While room was filled mostly with über-geeks, there were a few government people there (county or state election types) and even a lawyer from Hart Intercivic, the company that makes the eSlate DRE (Direct Record Electronic) system that's in use in Travis County, among others.
I took about 130 photos at Elizabeth and Dale's party. When I downloaded them to my Mac, somehow iPhoto ended up with an empty roll and the pictures were erased off my Compact Flash card. Oy!
The card came with ImageRescue, but for some reason the software did not recognize the card, event though it mounted fine on my computer. Vey!
After gnashing my teeth for a while, I decided that maybe it was because of my OS upgrade and tried to use the PC version of ImageRescue (the Flash Card came with a Mac and a Windows version of the software -- pretty nifty). To my great joy (and a bit of surprise) I actually succeeded in recovering most of the pictures. Yay! I'll see if I can weazel version 2.0 of ImageRescue out of Lexar...
Couldn't they have waited another couple of weeks before they nabbed him? Think of all the poor little kids that'll now be disappointed...
A couple of weeks ago my ex-roommate reclaimed his dresser that he had traded/left with me a few years back (there apparently are no statutes of limitations for this kind of thing). We were frantically looking for a replacement and couldn't find anything simlarly sized and reasonably priced in all the stores we looked.
Thank god for IKEA. I have to confess that I like the look of most of their stuff. Sure the quality is so-so and I always have to think of Fight Club whenever I shop with them, but their stuff is fun and cheap. So we surfed their site and found the OTTENBY dresser. The dimensions looked perfect and since it's solid wood, it doesn't weigh a ton. And we have pickup-owning relatives in Houston who just happened to be coming to Austin this weekend. We got our dresser delivered yesterday (Tim and Felicia--thanks a million).
This afternoon I assembled that baby. I really enjoy putting these things together and it took me about 1h 45min from start to finish. I only had a few parts left over (the drawers didn't really need all those dowels, did they?) The wood finish is lovely, the drawers slide out smoothly and the size is great. Of course, ash doesn't match anything else in the study, but I don't care and Jfer views this as reason to go book shelf shopping.
We've been to five parties so far, will miss a bunch this weekend and still have one to go.
We started it with the John Aielli's Capitol Sing Along last Saturday. The weather was perfect--wintery cold without being unbearable. We hooked up with the Trenthams and had a good time. The sing-along was OK--they had too many holiday-pop songs and not enough carols for my taste. And Aielli's attempts to have the crowd do difficult songs a-capella was a bit misguided.
Sunday was the annual Burgess party, again to perfect weather. The food was great, although by the time the chilli was ready, I had stuffed myself with appetizers and couldn't eat any.
On Monday we went to Zilker to carol around the Holiday Tree with some old-time Madrigallians and to celebrate Kayla's birthday. Kudos to Cecily for organazing this--it's always one of my favority holiday events. We brought Homer along and he was a big hit with all the kids, partially due to his cool blinking light.
Wednesday was Jfer's company party at Castle Hill Cafe. Their company has grown significantly since last year's party. And it's got a nice vibe--Heidy must be doing a good job.
Yesterday was Christmas/birthday party for Courtney and Matthew at Elizabeth's. As always, she was a great hostess and the food was delicious. Some gifts were unwrapped and i scored some pretty cool loot. The biggest hit was probably the Alcohol Breath Analyzer we got Rita. I don't think it serves it's intended purpose, though, since everyone tries to see how high they can get it to register (maybe that's why it tops out at 0.12%). I was disappointed that the alarm clock that I gave Jfer lasted less than an hour before the light burning out. Luckily it's one of the few presents I bought locally.
We only have the book Group party to go to on the eve of our trip. I'll miss out on my company party (we only got a final time and date yesterday). It's probalby not going to be as cool as last year's, anyway.
So much to covet and so little to actually need. Apple has a bunch of really cool toys that would look great under the Christmas tree. Their new 20" iMac is an example and so are the 20 Gig and 40 Gig iPods. For some reason Amazon.com seems to have the best prices on new Apple hardware.
Actually, the one thing that I really could use and appreciate is this Belkin FireWire hub.
While I've been busily doing lots of my Xmas shopping on Amazon.com I decided that I should try to support local merchants as well. So I headed over to BookPeople to buy a couple of books that I heard mentioned on NPR. They didn't have either one in stock but "expected some more sometime next week". Since I don't make it downtown that often, I declined their offer to reserve them for me--I'm sorry, but Amazon is just too convenient, not to mention less expensive. Apparantly this happens often when books get reviewed on radio--you'd think that they plan ahead in anticiaption of the demand.
Still I managed to find a nice calendar for my parents. After I payed for it, I noticed that the wrapping table was being staffed by Save our Springs Alliance volunteers and I figured getting it wrapped by them would make a good local contribution. I swear I'd never seen such incompetent gift wrappers before. It took them forever to wrap the calendar ("hey, I've never wrapped on of these before" and "we didn't get any training"?!?) and on their first attempt they cut a too-small piece of paper off their roll. The exact same problem happened to the guy in line after me, although his stuff was being wrapped in a box they were familiar with. The actual wrapping looks horible--exposed uneven cuts, lots of bits of tape all over the package. Ridiculous!
I did have a good local experience at Holland Photo where I went to order some enlargements. Very pleasant, helpful (and cute) sales clerk. We'll see how the prints turn out.
We decorated our gingerbread cookies last night. Jfer invited Christina and Anna from work and after we dispatched a couple of pizzas I mixed up the glaze and we went a-decorating. I was surprised how quickly we got the job done. Four people is about right--you get plenty of cookies to play with but not so many that it becomes a chore.
It turned out that my guestimate on the number of cookies was woefully inadequate (not unlike my project estimates at work...) Instead of 150 cookies I eventually counted 270 (give or take a ten) and this didn't include those that were "tested" for quality assurance purposes.
I discovered that while I doubled the dough recipe, I had to tripple the glaze recipe (a pound of powdered sugar...) I also learned that you really want to take spoons out of a blender before turning it on...
