Sprizee :: A simple girl replete with complications

I just flew in from Paris...

and boy are my arms tired.

But seriously folks. I am tired. And sick. With a cold. And a bad one at that. In fact my last full day in Paris was spent entirely in the hotel room cursing the continent of Europe for not having any Nyquil. I'm mean really, no Nyquil? Dayquil I could understand but this I just don't get.

I can put up with the tiny bathrooms and the overpriced closets they call hotel rooms and the lack of hot water and the unending abundance of smelly, poorly supplied public restrooms (which mind you often charge you for the privledge of copping a squat)... yes, I can put up with all that... but no Nyquil? Unacceptable.

I can find no valid excuse for this. There is an abundance of sugar in the world (I'm sure Birdherder would have you know it's technically not sugar but high fructose corn syrup.... ummm, yea.... don't forget to push your glasses up further on your face when you finish that sentence) and prohibition is definitivetly not standing in their way and everyone knows that Nyquil is by far (I think that bears repeating BY FAR) the best cold curing/numbing/hallucinogenic medicine in world, I take that back... universe, so I really see no plausible explaination for it.

At any rate, I survived by spending my last day in Paris quarantined in my hotel room. On the bright side, I was able to catch up with French tv which included watching an episode of Dawson's Creek, of course, dubbed in french. Not quite as charming as seeing the Arch de Triumph and in a language I don't understand but whatever. I also caught Dr. Strangelove (one of my all time favorites) and thank the lawd it was subtitled which meant the sound was in English. Hurray!

A few more hours of CNN World and/or BBC* with a bad cold and no Nyquil would have surely drove me to jump out the hotel window head first. Thank you Stanley Kubrick. You're not quite as wonderful as Nyquil but what is?

*Don't get me wrong. I love the BBC but these were the same stories every half hour. Think of CNN Headline News, except with cool british accents.

Big hands. Oh my!

So I just saw a 500 year old guy named David. Perhaps you have heard of him? His hobbies include standing very still and killing Goliath. That and also being a masterpiece. And let me tell you, he is all that... and then some. Pretty. Damn. Cool.

Tomorrow I have a date with the Ufizzi (which I may have just mis-spelled but please excuse me because I have been walking around all day and I am about as tired as one can be without actually being asleep).

Also I have experienced some great Italian cuisine including Spagetti Carbonara along with a red Vino Della Casa last night and some pumpkin ravoli in a cream sauce today for lunch with a Vino Pinot Grio that was to die for. That's right. The food is just as good as people say it is... maybe better. Of course that may just be all the vino I've been drinking lately talking.

But I'm not one to rush to judgement. Therefore I'm taking the burden of figuring out just how good the food really is by testing the waters again tonight. I know, I know. For you I'll do anything. I'm just that nice.

Did you notice that I finally found the damn apostrophe key? It's about time.

Ciao.

I am currently in Florence...

In a laundry mat doing some laundry and I can't really see what I'm typing that well. Anywho, Keane is on the radio singing Everybody's Changing and life couldn't be more prefect unless maybe if I had a panini in my hand. I better go fix that.

Ciao!

And so on and so forth...

Okay, really quickly.

I am currently in Vienna. Just walked by the Opera House (which, for the Seattlites in the crowd and Birdherder, is directly across the street from Starbucks). I arrived here yesturday from Prague. Prague was exotic and beautiful and breaktaking. Vienna is more of the same. In a word, this Europe place... kicks ass. Okay, that was two words but you get the picture. Tomorrow I leave for Florence, taking an overnight sleeper car. Then it is on to the Italian Riveria and up to Paris. I definetely plan to come back. That and also to make another trip to H&M before I leave this beautiful continent.

If I was in a complaining mood, I would tell you all about the horrors of burning your mouth so severely that you would go without eating much for days on end and start crying uncontrollably because of the pain of those burns after a delicious meal at the Four Seasons in Prague, but I'm not in a complaining mood so I'll save that for a raining day... when I'm back in Seattle sitting at my desk at work and craving more Europe even if it means another scalding hot cafe latte that is fated to burn my mouth.

So far...

I am currently in Berlin fighting with a German keyboard that has a spacebar that works whenever the hell it feels like it, which to be precise is not very often. Also, apparently, on a German keyboard the y and the z are in different places and I can not find an apostrophe to save my life, which explains why I am not using any contractions, or the at symbol or even some fÜcking quotation marks, however there are some other cool characters which I have no clue what to do with. Öh bÖy!

At any rate, the weather so far has been fabulous. Chilly but not a drop of rain. I arrived in Amsterdam Sunday morning after not being able to endulge in an ounce of sleep on the flight. I have to admit I was pretty damn jealous of this guy a couple seats away from me. He slept the whole way over - but not me, no sir. Anyways, after dropping my bags off at the hotel I went over to The Anne Frank House. I was determined not to take a nap and fight off the urge to sleep with every bit of will I could muster. Unfortunetely for me, after lunch at The Anne Frank House the only energy I could muster was enough to get me back to my hotel in time for a nice long nap.

Enter the massive Jet Lag. So far, since I didnt just suck it up the first day, I have been suffering the effects of living in one time zone with my body clock on a different planet, namely the one back in Seattle. Symptoms include waking up at 1AM in the morning, 3AM in the morning, the urge to take a nap all day long, forsaking shopping for more sleeping (???), forsaking eating for more sleeping (???) and a preference to sitting in an Internet Cafe surfing Net to actually going out and exploring a new city you have never been to before.

Actually that is kind of a lie. At the moment I am taking a well deserved break from walking and sightseeing. I have been walking around and looking at all these beautiful old building since Sunday. Today after arriving on the train, settling into the new hotel, getting my bearings (and locating the nearest H&M), I find myself in semi-familiar territory... minus the confusion with the z and the y and a few missing/extra characters on the keyboard.

Leaving.

HFH just called me. She's on her way to take me to the airport and she'll be holding to one set of my keys until my friend James picks them up from her. I should be moving my butt down to the garage of my building to meet her but I just couldn't go without saying goodbye.

I just called my Mom & Dad, and then my Aunt. Had to say goodbye to them too.

And last night Sally dropped by to pick up the other set of keys. My friend James is going to be staying at my apartment while I'm out of the country. Seriously, I've got some really good friends and I'm going to miss them.

Yes, even you.

But I know you will all be here when I get back. Really leaving now. Ciao.

Unos, dos, tres, catorce

One, Bush is a* moron. He just said "internets". Seriously, internets??? If we re-elect this guy... I'm moving to Canada. (shhh America, I'm kidding. I still heart you. It's the 47% voting for W I need to get away from... or kick in the shins once or twice.)

Two, I'm still hoping Bush will blurt out "line?" during the debate. How awesome would that be? Well, anyways Kerry is kicking his ass. Thank you God. You're pretty cool sometimes.

Three, traffic on the way home tonight... ugh. 1 hour to go 15 miles. I've had better days. Oh and I got a couple calls but my cell phone decided not to ring and it went right to voicemail. Fantastic. Except not.

Fourteen, if you asking yourself what happened to 4-13 you obviously need to listen to U2's Vertigo again. Duuuuh. Oh, and catch the debate recap here.

P.S. Still not packed.

P.P.S. Fuuuuuuuccck. I forgot Dogbert at the office. Guess he's not going on the trip.

P.P.P.S. The last post was crap. I apologize. Consider it a warm up for when I stop posting altogether on my trip and start living life without being connected to the Internet. What's that W? Oh, right... sorry... internetS.

Okay, your turn.

I stole this directly from Johnny. Hey, he's good for somethin'... sometimes.

1. Where did you live growing up?
2. What did you want to be when you grew up?
3. Who was the 'scary neighbor'? (Or scary neighborhood group/object)
4. Who was the 'good' neighbor? (Can be friends, family, etc)
5. Who was the hit pop star when you were 14?
6. Who was your secret high school crush?
7. Did you ever tell them/did they ever find out?
8. Will you pimp hand them at the ten year?
9. Ever get revenge on anyone? I know you did!
10. Relate an embarrassing bathroom moment in thirty words or less.

1. An undisclosed area in Washington State. Before that? San Diego, CA
2. Architect, then I found out how much math was involved
3. Gavin P.S. He’s still creepy. Don’t believe me? Okay, Mr. Smartypants. How’s this for creepy? He a) bought a wife from Russia …years later she left him b) had hair transplants/plugs/gross-things-sticking-out-of-what-use-to-be-his-bald-head and c) always wore a hooded sweatshirt. Can you say unibomber?
4. Everyone except Gavin.
5. Nice Try. You almost tricked me into doing some math.
6. The brother of this guy that I ended up dating after high school.
7. No, no, and NO.
8. No, I’m so past that.
9. I’m too passive aggressive and impatient to take revenge.
10. Well, there was this one time when I took a photo of my security badge in a federal building and then posted the photo on the internet. Does that count?

Shatner. Just as cool as ever.

http://shatnerhasbeen.com

Period. End of statement.

Consider yourself warned

I should come with the following disclaimer:

I can't spell.

I am easily distracted by nearly everything I come in contact with including buying new clothes, chatting on IM, and blogging. This list clearly excludes work and actual things that need to get done, like... oh, I don't know... packing for my trip to Europe. Crap! I'm leaving in t minus 72 hours.

If I get a funny/interesting/decidedly-not-spam email from a friend (or a stranger for that matter) I will fight the urge to forward it to anyone and everyone I know. Sometimes I lose this battle.

I can get stuck in front of a computer for hours at a time, accomplishing almost nothing, unless you count watching The Daily Show via streamling media accomplishing something. If that's what you consider getting things done, I'm going places people.

All my work gets done, on time. I know it's hard to believe with all this talk of procrastination but I know when to put the pedal to the metal and when to sit back and coast. Truth be told, right now I'm fighting the urge to break out in song, "...know when to hold'em, know when to fold'em, know when to walk away, know when to run..."

My camera is an extension of my body and each time the battery dies, I pout. Afterall, if I'm not capturing what's happening around me on film (or more often... in pixels) what's the point?

I am that person that buys stuff on ebay that you couldn't give away. Years ago I bougt a rotary phone on ebay just because I thought it looked cool. Ummm heellooo? There's a reason why they don't make rotary anymore.

P.S. I've still got that phone. It's canary yellow and very retro. I have no idea if it works because that would involve me actually hooking it up, and apparently that was just too much work for me. It's still in the box they shipped it in.