Pick-A-Day

December 2004
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The States

So, I was out of the States for a record four and a half months-and now that I’ve been in the states for just over a week, I have a few rambling things to note:

First, driving is easy and it’s fun! I haven’t forgotten anything, especially driving in Wyoming during white-out conditions. The aforementioned 18-20 care pile up on I-25 was two miles north of the Colorado-Wyoming state line, and in the 5 minutes before my sister and I arrived at the accident site, visibility was down to less than a tenth of a mile. I had slowed considerably so I was able to avoid smacking into anything. To by-pass the accident, we ended up driving 10 miles along the I-25 frontage road, 8 of it dirt.

Second, I have completely adapted to the German keyboard. I tried tying a few notes on my father’s computer, and although only two letters are different (the Z and the Y are swapped), it’s the other things that are different that annoy me now: the quote marks, the @ symbol, and the rest. I think I want a German keyboard for the rest of my life.

The three newspapers that I can see from where I am sitting (Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post, and New York Times) all have the same photo of the devastation in Sri Lanka on the cover. It is a powerful photo, but I find it hard to believe that it is the only photo. I read the article in the New York Times that said there was no adequate warning system for tsunamis in the Indian Ocean-so people died unnecessarily. This is very frustrating. Fortunately the two people I know from that part of the world, were not directly impacted.

Denver has, at last, a decent radio station. The last decent radio station was KXPK-96.5 The Peak. That frequency is now a Spanish radio station and I was left trying to rekindle old favorites that are now programmed far far away. In my random spinning I found Jack. 105.5 FM – a rather eclectic mix of music that I like.

The snow has melted-in Denver. Last week my sister and I were watching 7News for the weather forecast, when one of the stories before the forecast was a live report from their sister station, rtv6, live from Bloomington, Indiana. It was most excellent recognizing everything around town. I was, however, very happy that I wasn’t there shoveling the Klein Schloss’s driveway. 19 inches of snow is a lot-especially on that hill.

Wyoming won its bowl game beating UCLA in the Las Vegas Bowl. This was very exciting news-first bowl game in 11 years, and first victory in a bowl game since 1966!

The great thing about being in the States, is that sitting in the coffee shop, I am able to listen to other people’s conversations. In Germany I have managed to tune out almost everything. In fact, when I hear English in Germany, it sometimes takes me a few minutes to realize that I am overhearing English. Basically when I wander Weimar, I live in my own world where I avoid interacting with everybody to the best of my abilities.

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