Nasty end to the Amsterdam trip

A couple of months ago I did what until then was my shortest trip to Europe: Depart Houston on Monday, arrive in Paris mid-day Tuesday, return Saturday.

The Amsterdam trip I just finished beats that by quite a bit. I left Houston on Tuesday, arrived in Amsterdam on Wednesday mid-day. Left Amsterdam on Friday mid-day, arrived home Friday evening.

It was a very weird trip. Our office is near Schipol Airport about a block from a Radisson where I stayed. After arriving, I showered, changed and went straight to the office. That evening I had to do some work to prepare for my talk on Thursday so I didn't get into the city at all. Had dinner at the hotel with five other folks. Six people at the table, six different countries. The entire day Thursday was spent in the meeting, including my one hour talk. That evening I joined a group of UK folks for dinner in Amsterdam. We rode the train from Schipol and then took a tram because it was raining. After dinner it was raining again so we all piled into a cab and returned to the hotel. I never really did see anything of Amsterdam.

I've got a bunch of pictures from my two previous trips there this year but I did want to see the city with leaves on the trees.

I never even took out any cash while over there. I was either with someone who was picking up the tab or I used plastic.

The economics of this trip still kind of boggle. Four days of my time taken up to do a one-hour talk. But I seem to be the only person who was qualified to do it. So it's nice to be needed.

All in all I hope not to do any trips this short again.

The nasty end to the trip came as I headed home from the airport parking. Some kid in a Honda Civic rear-ended my pickup on the road from the parking lot to the freeway. Just enough rain had fallen to make the roads nice and slick. He was driving too fast and when I slowed for someone turning off in front of me he locked up his wheels and smacked my truck. Slightly scraped the rubber coating on the bumper of the truck and seriously mashed in the front of the Civic. I'm bettin' a good $5,000 damage to it. My bumper went above his so it mashed his hood back to the radiator and did damage to both front quarter panels. I don't think his car was drivable, it was leaking either radiator fluid or oil or both. There was a cop handy so all the info got recorded. The cop sent me on my way after making sure I had the kid's insurance info.

I had someone rear-end the pickup about 5 years ago with pretty much the same results. But that time I ended up with a nice neck snap. A few days later I found myself in a lot of pain. It took a couple of trips to an orthopedist and an MRI to discover that I have a degenerated disk in my neck and the pop from the accident had caused a nerve pinch. I'm really hoping this one won't have the same results.

Killing time at IAH

Got to the airport with a huge amount of time to kill. So dinner at the airport version of a Pappadeaux restaurant.

Agatha Christie at the Alley

On Sunday night we went with some friends to the Alley Theater for their Summer Chills murder mystery. They do one or two of these every summer. We saw "Death on the Nile". Only just O.K. The cast was mostly Alley resident company players. The play was directed by long-time Alley actor James Black.

Dinner before hand at Pronto Cucinino on Montrose was very good. Dessert afterwards at Birraporetti's next to the Alley was also good.

Amsterdam again

Off to Amsterdam tomorrow evening. This is my third trip there this year. Or ever for that matter. A number of years ago on a trip to Vienna I passed through Schipol airport but my first actual visit to the city was last January. When I was there in the winter I said I would like to see it in spring or summer. So it looks like I'm getting that chance.

Going to be a heck of a lot cooler there than down here on the third coast in Houston.

I'll doing a 1 to 2 hour talk on Thursday at an internal company event. For that I'll spend 18 hours on an airplane (counting both ways) and just over 48 hours on the ground in Amsterdam.

Got the camera back

I managed to crack the LCD on my Canon SD800 point-n-shoot on my last trip to Paris. Got it back from the repair shop, charged $135 to do the repair. About half parts and half labor.

Now I'm in search of a protector for the LCD. One of the main points in favor of a small camera like this is the drop-in-pocket size. I had carried the camera in a jeans pocket or backpack across 4 other international trips before I broke it. I don't want to go to a camera case and lose the size advantage. I've come up with a number of stick-on LCD protectors aimed to protect against scratches and smudges. There are some for high-end digital SLRs that look like what I really want. But I'm not sure any of them will fit the little Canon.

Most boring Fourth of July ever

Our daughter and her husband are spending the week in Puerto Vallarta and we are catsitting. Her cat terrorizes our cat. And Gertie the greyhound isn't quite sure if she's allowed to chase down and eat this new creature so she's sort of living in tension.

Our fourth, however, was a completely lost day. We ended up with no plans at all and the weather was ... dampish. A couple of inches of damp, in fact. So we just hunkered down and did absolutely nothing useful. I went the whole day without stepping outside the house. Reading, napping, generally recharging. Boring. But I think I needed it.

Two batteries in four days

In a feat of timing the batteries on both vehicles died this week. Both original batteries, one from 2001, one from 2003.

That's one of those things that can be real annoying as it usually seems to happen when you're far from home. Both of mine were amazingly painless, though.

Alice's Honda battery was stone dead when I came out from church. A friend there got me jump-started and I took it straight to the NTB store near our house. Since they're open Sundays and weren't busy at all I had a new battery in less than an hour.

Today when I jumped in the pickup to go to work my battery was dead. I've got a battery charger and managed to get enough of a charge on it to get it running and went over to the same NTB store. Mid-day on a week day is another good, non-busy time so again I had a battery in less than an hour and got on about my day.