(Catching up on past events)
Snow in Pearland. Last time this happened was Christmas Eve, 2004. The picture is of the front of the house at about 11pm. By then the snow had stopped and temps were hovering just over freezing. It was all gone by morning.
Off to the right on the driveway, you can see the material for the new roof.
The new furniture arrived for the breakfast area arrived last night. Since I'm on vacation, I assembled it this morning. Kind of a retro-modern soda fountain set. The size and the angled corner bench fit in the space like they were custom designed for it. I think this puts the proverbial period on Alice's decorating of the breakfast area. Ha! What am I thinking!?
Today, we had a rare Saturday without projects to take up our time.
Alice came up with the idea of making the trek to Millie Bush Dog Park out in the far west Houston suburbs. We go to a little dog park about 10 minutes drive from our house several times a week to give the hounds some room to stretch out and run. But Millie Bush is a 40 mile one-way drive so it hasn't been on our regular agenda. The place is huge, 13 acres, with two big dog ponds, one on each end. And doggie showers so you can wash the mud off before the trip home. Seriously.
About five minutes in, we're mosying in the general direction of one of the ponds and Tucker's ears stand up. He goes "on alert" and then takes off at full gallop towards ... what? There's a little white dog, sometimes he flashes back to racing and thinks little white dogs are that dang rabbit he could never catch. But no, he flies past the white dog and literally launches himself out into the pond!
Over the course of the next hour or so he is in and out of the water. And the really odd thing is, he only goes in when he sees another dog in swimming. Lots of labs running in and out fetching balls and doing normal dog things. Every time Tucker sees another dog in the water he goes flying in after it and follows it out. I swear he's acting like a lifeguard! "Hang on, buddy, I'm coming".
Greyhounds swimming are ... interesting to watch. He's got pretty much no body fat to help him float so it's a lot of work for him to swim. After a while he had really exhausted himself. Also, it was a little cool. So he'd come out and be shivering with his teeth chattering. I finally had to put a stop to it and walk him out away from the ponds.
The last picture looks like "Nessie", Tucker, the Loch Millie Monster.
Got another project knocked out. I started on this one the weekend before Anna was born. Didn't make any progress the weekend of her birth. One final day on Saturday the 8th got 'er done. Plus some spackle and paint in the corners done on Sunday evening.
This is made from 1x12 with crown molding attached to the top and a small chair-rail like molding along the bottom. The long side (to the left) is about 7 feet, the other two segments are around 4 feet. It stands off from the wall only 2 inches as we don't intend to hang curtains behind it.
Tricky bit was figuring out how to attach it. I did some consulting with my neighbor Paul who used to do finish carpentry. He came up with the method I used. Two-inch deep blocks predrilled and screwed into the wall above the window frame where the studs are doubled up. Then I used the nail gun to attach the cornice to the blocks.
Once again it was handy to have both a table saw and radial arm saw.
On the 9th, we went to the 14th Annual Greyhound Reunion at Gulf Greyhound Park. We were there two years ago, just after we adopted Gert but missed it last year due to my travels.
The first picture is Tucker trying to get the rabbit! They ran some practice races just after we got there. Tucker was very excited! He barked and then jumped up onto the table. When the race was over, he had no clue how to get back down so I had to lift him down.
The previous years the reunion had the run of one floor of the track betting areas. This year the other floor was closed due to damage from Ike so there wasn't much for an open space for the dogs. This made the whole thing less fun. We were in the little spaces usually used for bettors to sit and watch the races with dogs laying in the aisles.
We all got to go out on the track and have the dogs introduced. As part of that we were able to get a good look at those wascally wabbits that the dogs chase.
The grandbaby has arrived! On Halloween, her due date as guessed by the doctor back in February. Six pounds, eight ounces and nineteen inches long.
This was my first chance to hold the little tyke. She had mostly been sleeping but opened up her eyes and really seemed to study me. Probably thinking "Oh, please tell me I'm not related to this goofy looking person!". :)
I think that this comic pretty well summarizes the exciting content of my blog.
Update: link wasn't right... which pretty much ruined the whole joke.
I got back from Mexico City the morning of Friday, October 10. The trip was mostly uneventful.
Arrived Sunday night. There were five of us on the same plane, me and four of my students. Yes, four of the students came from Houston. Makes little sense to me, too. The hotel had sent a van for us, charged to one of the rooms. Beers at the hotel bar and dinner at one of the hotel restaurants was about as much as anyone could stand that night.
Class was ... class. Four days of lectures by me and labs for the students to do. I was fighting off a sinus infection the entire week and mostly right on the edge of losing my voice. That made teaching extra interesting. Seven students from the US, the rest from Mexico and points south. I know there were students from Panama, Brazil, and Argentina. Possibly some other countries.
Meals at lunch were at a mall food court near the office. It was all decent food, better than you'd find in an American mall food court. I have to keep lunch pretty light when I'm teaching. It's one thing if the students drift off after lunch, but entirely different if the teacher gets a nap.
One evening I met up with some of the students and we walked down a street near the hotel with very expensive shops. We had dinner at a place called Garabato's. Good, cheap, and crowded. They had a killer dessert tray but I had filled up on dinner.
Class wrapped up at 4pm on Thursday. The Houston group, including me, had a 7am Friday flight. We decided to ride the double-decker tour bus. One guy in the group spoke a little Spanish so he was tasked with getting directions. Didn't work out so well. We did eventually find the bus. It was only later when the bus stopped across the street from the hotel that we found out how far we had wandered in the process of not being able to understand directions.
Pictures in this post are from the bus tour. We rode it from the hotel to the center of the city, the Zocalo. The line of riot police in the picture with the police are are around the corner from the Zocalo where there was a demonstration going on. That's only a small part of the police presence at that spot. Note the full riot gear. So what do the crazy norte-americanos do? Get off the bus near there, of course. Again with vague directions where to catch the tour at a later stop and even vaguer plans to find somewhere to eat.
To make a long hike into a short story, we wandered for quite a while, maybe close to an hour. Narrow little streets, even narrower little shops and not another gringo face to be seen anywhere. I eventually convinced myself that nobody knew where we were going so called a halt to the march. I pulled up Google Maps on the blackberry. Between that and the mostly useless map from the tour bus, I did get us set off in the right direction. We made it to another bus stop barely in time (with some traffic dodging jay walking).
Dinner ended up being ... back in the hotel, room service while packing for most of us.
Then a 2:45am wakeup to be down at the lobby by 3:30am to be at the airport... 45 minutes before the check-in counter even opened up.
Final image from Mexico City, blue screen of death on one of the monitors at the Delta counter.
Note: I'm doing some throw-down blog posts to outline the events of the last three weeks. Details will follow as I have time to load pictures and do the writing.
Note: I'm doing some throw-down blog posts to outline the events of the last three weeks. Details will follow as I have time to load pictures and do the writing.
My trek started at 3am Friday morning, Singapore time, when the alarm rang. Flight was at 6am.
It's easier to do this one all in Houston Time as I was covering 13 time zones and a crossing of the dateline again. So 6am Friday the 12th in Singapore is 5pm Thursday the 11th in Houston.
Projected path of Ike looks to have dead aim on Houston and right over our house. My planned landing in Houston is 4:20pm on Friday the 12th with the last leg being straight down from Minneapolis. Talked to Alice again. Then in line to board I overhear a guy saying he's heading for Houston and that the airport will close at 2pm on Friday. Not good.
Seven hours to Narita airport, Tokyo arriving about midnight Thursday night Houston time. At the connections desk I book a flight to Austin instead of Houston. They can't assign a seat. Bad sign.
Ten hours to Minneapolis, arriving about noon (Houston and Minneapolis time) Friday. After customs, at the baggage recheck, I have to sort out somewhere to send my bags that will match up with where they can get me. Can't get a seat to Austin but seems I can to San Antonio. After security and checkin to the flight, I talk to Alice. Plan is for me to get to San Antonio and use a one-way car rental to get to Houston. Projections for Ike have moved east a bit, which is good. Puts most of Houston including our place on the "dry side". Called Hertz to get the rental car set up.
Bit over a three hour flight from Minneapolis to San Antonio, arriving 5-ish. It's now been 24 hours since I took off in Singapore. Ambien-forced sleep on the ten-hour leg but still exhausted. Also starving, NWA is a per-for-snacks airline and I'm cashless. Never took time in Mpls to get money or food. Have multiple voicemails from Alice. Trying to get bags and listen to them is beyond my capabilities so I wait until I have my bags and my rent-car agreement and can sit down.
Gist of very long voicemails is that they don't want me driving in to Houston at this point. I'd arrive about 9pm and the outer edges of the storm are already causing rain. What we'll find out at some point is that the inbound freeways were being closed at 6 or 7pm. Aryn has been online and rented me a hotel room at a Holiday Inn Express in San Antonio. Damn good thing she did that or I'd've had to sleep in the car. San Antonio hotels are bursting with evacuees. Alice and I talk some more. Aryn has "bullied" her into coming up to their place. That puts everyone together, a few miles further from the coast, and in a more protected location. I find the hotel and check in. Then we talk some more. I'm really not sure this is the right thing. Really wanting food, water, and to get on the road home to be with them.
I get talked out of leaving but still feel guilty for being in a comfortable hotel room while they get pounded by Ike. I walk across the street and get pizza. Want beer but there's none handy and I'm not feeling like driving anywhere so I settle for a big lemonade. Settle in front of TV on the Weather Channel until maybe 10 or 11. Then a full belly and exhaustion overrides worry and I get a little sleep. Miles calls at 1am. A bit after that I get a couple of texts from my daughter. Power just out there. Wind and rain whipping.
After a bit I take an Ambien so I can sleep. Drive to Houston tomorrow.
Updated: Added screen grab from radar archive. Houston at 2am on Sept 13.
Note: I'm doing some throw-down blog posts to outline the events of the last three weeks. Details will follow as I have time to load pictures and do the writing.
Note: I'm doing some throw-down blog posts to outline the events of the last three weeks. Details will follow as I have time to load pictures and do the writing.
Note: I'm doing some throw-down blog posts to outline the events of the last three weeks. Details will follow as I have time to load pictures and do the writing.
Co-instructor and I flew to Sydney on Thursday evening. Travel inside Australia is like a flashback to ten years ago. You show up at the airport, walk thru the metal detector, and get on the airplane. The only thing that had to come off or out for inspection was the laptop. No removing of shoes. No pulling out of the baggie of liquids and gels. I remember when it was this easy at home.
We're at a Sofitel again in Sydney. The Sofitel in Melbourne is much nicer than the Sofitel Wentworth in Sydney. The rooms are crackerboxes
The entire day Friday was devoted to customer visits. It drizzled on us almost the whole day. Except when it was downright pouring. I had an umbrella until the wind between buildings turned it inside out.
This is the day that filled me with angst. I'm still a pretty introverted person and my job is slowly sliding me into stuff that has been outside my comfort zone. Doing sales calls, even in a technical role, is right out there. But it actually went quite well.
From Monday through Thursday I taught a about some of our software products. I had a co-instructor for this run, someone with more experience with the main subject of the class than I have had. It was a nice, small class of eight students. All very involved and asking good questions.
And that's about it. Really. Here I am in Melbourne, Australia for the first, possibly only time. What do I see? Hm... The hotel, one block walk to the office, a food court where we eat lunch, the conference room where we do the class, and a handful of restaurants. When I have the chance on these trips, I'll stay in the city for a weekend to get a chance to see some sights. But for this one, we're booked on a flight to Sydney Thursday night so we can do customer visits there on Friday. Melbourne looks like a really nice place, though. I hope I get back some day.
Couple of pictures. The top one is a nice sunrise out the hotel window, which is where I took almost all my pictures in Melbourne. Hot air balloons seem to be a popular advertising medium. Several would drift across the city early in the morning. I'd see them out my hotel window. I guess they were advertising.
September 1 is the official first day of spring in Australia. No worrying about the equinoxes for them. The park that our classroom/conference room overlooked has trees planted in the shape of the Union Jack. All done back when they were a colony, of course. You can make out sort of part of it in the picture. It's the trees that haven't yet leafed out.
I love Australia but I don't much enjoy the process of getting there.
This trip is especially excruciating since we added on a jump from our original destination of Sydney down to Melbourne. We built in a long-ish layover in Sydney to allow for any issues in customs or late arrivals of our flights from California.
Not a whole lot of interest here so feel free to look at the pictures and move on.
My first flight leg was on Continental from Houston IAH to Los Angeles LAX. Because of all my travel last year I've got "status" on Continental so I get a better choice of seats, can use the short lines, and do early boarding. Not so the rest of this trip where I'll be on Qantas. For some insane reason, Qantas doesn't do anything except airport check in. I managed to get an aisle seat way in the back. I used to do window seats but ... aging... need more trips to lavs. Sigh.
My flight leaves LAX about 11pm Friday night. Fourteen and a half hours later and across the international date line, I'm on the ground in Sydney at 6am Sunday morning. My co-instructor for the Melbourne class arrives a bit later on a flight from San Francisco.
Customs is very busy but a breeze. A visit to the ATM, then we hunt down the transfer to our Qantas domestic flight to Melbourne. Coffee in one of the few things open. "Skim milk" does not register with the girl at the counter, "skinny" does.
Short 90-minute flight to Melbourne and a taxi ride to the Melbourne Sofitel arriving around noon. It's about 28 hours since I left the house in Pearland.
The Sofitel is a very nice place! The hotel lobby is on the ground floor but rooms start on the 35th floor and go up to the 50th. The floors between the lobby and the 35th are an office block. I'm on the 48th floor looking more or less south.
After all that travel last year, this is the first trip where I've got a working phone. Got a company-issue Blackberry a month or two ago. Not just a working phone, but full function email, web browser, Google Maps, etc all work here in Australia.
We scout out the building where the company office is and then wander down a random street in search of food. And wine. Most things in the area seem to be closed but we find a little Italian cafe. Good food, a glass or two of nice Australian red wine and exhaustion hits.
I spend the rest of my day going over material for the class.
Finally took the time to sign up on Twitter. If you think the blog here isn't enough info about my mostly boring life, get even more boring details by following my tweets here.
Did a short trip to Oregon for Dad's birthday on the 25th. He's in good shape, thankfully. Still very active. Still can't sit in one place for more than about 5 minutes. I hope I'm in that good of shape if I make it to 80.
I got to see my brother, Mike, and his new girlfriend, girlfriend's children, and girlfriend's grandchild. But I didn't manage to see Mike's kids or ex.
The trip was short because of my impending trip to Australia and Singapore. Arrived mid-day on Saturday and left Tuesday morning. I did the air travel on miles and managed to snag a first class ticket for the trip home. That brings my Continental miles down to ... not enough to do anything.
About 5pm yesterday I got an email asking me "Oh, did we tell you that the Sydney training has moved to Melbourne?". Ah, no, nobody bothered to inform the instructor.
Non-refundable plane tickets were sorted out a couple of weeks ago. Houston to L.A. to Sydney for me. SFO to Sydney for my co-instructor (my safety net!). And for me, a trip on the following Sunday from Sydney to Singapore for round two of this class.
So now we're going to Sydney, allowing 3-1/2 hours to clear customs and re-check baggage, then on to Melbourne. Instead of an early morning arrival, shower and all day to get settled and discuss the class, we'll get to Melbourne in extra-exhausted state about noon. Door to door will be something like 30 hours. Ick.
Returning to Sydney Thursday evening, on to Singapore on schedule. Home on Friday the 12th.
And now they're making noises about a run of this class in Latin America and Eastern Europe in October.
I'm on a two-at-a-time unlimited plan with Netflix. There's a distribution center here in Houston so I typically see two day turnaround from when I put a movie in the outgoing mail to when there's a new one in my mailbox. I haven't seen delays in the ... two or three years I've used the service.
<>So today I realized that I hadn't seen the usual "We've received..." email from stuff I sent back earlier this week. On checking the website I find this:
Our Shipping Centers Are Mailing DVDs
Delayed DVD Shipments Are Being Sent Today (Friday)
Click here to learn moreWe’re happy to report that all of our shipping centers are resuming normal operations (after 3 days of issues). If you should have been shipped a disc Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, it will ship today (Friday). Your Queue may not yet reflect what we have received and shipped. We expect your Queue to be up to date later tonight.
We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. To all of you whose shipments have been delayed, we’ll be automatically applying a 15% credit to your next billing statement. Or, if you are new to Netflix and your first shipments have been delayed, we recognize that this is not a good way to begin your Netflix membership and we’ll automatically extend your free trial by a week.
Again, we apologize for the delay and thank you for your understanding.
The Netflix Team
I wonder what the "issues" were?
OK. It's been way too long since I've posted. Got some stuff I'll be catching up on. Soon, I hope.
The family reunion was a great success. It ran from noon on Saturday August 9th to noon on Wednesday August 13th. We flew Houston to Billings via Denver on Frontier airlines, got into Billings at 7pm on the 9th and got to the camp about 8:30 after a 5-minute stop at our motel.
Frontier airlines is the one that Southwest spoofs on their commercials. Fees for everything. We had two flights each around two hours. They wanted $3 for a "snack" (bag of chips type snack, nothing substantial). Each seatback had a nice video display. You could watch it run ads for free. Or watch TV for $6. I ran the brightness control down until it dimmed out of view. Soft drinks were still free. But a bottle of water sold for $2.
Anyway. The reunion was a good time. I hadn't seen my mother since Aryn got married in April 2005. And hadn't seen my brother Jerry or his wife in probably 5 years. They all came to the reunion two years ago but we had just moved so skipped that one. I think we were still rebuilding the kitchen or had just finished it.
We had Mom's one surviving sibling, Uncle Ben with his wife. There were several cousins from my generation. A good number from my daughter's generation, and a gaggle of young kids who are my cousins grandkids. Folks from Alaska, Washington, Minnesota, Texas, California, and Montana. I think that's all the states represented. There was way too much food and I attempted to eat all of it.
I think it's been close to 20 years since I've been in the Montana Rockies. Beautiful country!
This article asks if you can trust a business to the Google cloud for mail, documents, etc.
Right now I'm thinking ... no.
GMail has been down for at least the last four hours.
Posting this long after the fact. Just so nobody gets too worried, all was well.
We're having a family reunion in the mountains of Montana in a few days. They're expecting close to 80 folks for this one. Probably.
Seems there's a little 10,000 acre forest fire just over the ridge from the place we're all hanging out. Two good sources of information are InciWeb and the City of Red Lodge Cascade Fire site.
Some of the family, including us, are staying in Red Lodge in a motel. The reunion site is the Billings Lions Beartooth Mountain Youth Camp. The fire is just west of Red Lodge and just north of the camp.
When we moved into this house in April of 2006 we tsk-tsked about the back yard. At that time the house was 11 years old and had exactly zero plants back there. The contents of the back yard consisted of an incredibly ugly and broken gas light stuck smack in the middle of the yard and a big wooden play set (swings, climbing stuff).
In the first month we got the play set taken away. Gave it to someone. "This can be yours but you've got to disassemble it and remove it." That left the gas light. I eventually dug that out of the ground and capped off the gas line at the meter.
Time and money have finally freed up to do something in the back. First step is in the picture above.
We now have about 1,000 square feet of gauged slate laid down over what was two separate sections of concrete. The concrete sections were joined by a narrow walkway. We had that dug up and filled in with new concrete to make it all one big patio. Then the slate was laid down over the whole thing. The picture is of the larger space. What looks blue in the picture is shades of grey picking up reflections of the sky. It is sooooooo much nicer than the plain concrete.
Next up, build a pergola and put in some beds. And do a dry creek in the lower part of the yard. And rip out the ugly retaining wall. And regrade the area where the wall is. And... oh, my aching back.
Fourth trip to Amsterdam, first one in the summer. Well other than the one last July when I was on the ground for a shorter time than I was on airplanes coming and going.
Had a lot of fun this trip. No "coffee houses" for me, but other fun.
Statues are from Rembrandtplein. They're figures from a Rembrandt painting (follow that Wikipedia link). When I was here a year and a half ago they had just been erected. I was sure there was a sign saying it was a temporary thing.
The manager of the software consultants arranged some activities. One was a tour of a distillery where they made a liqueur. Good Stuff. Free samples. Several.
The distillery visit was part of a walking tour which, of course, had to take in the Red Light District, "De Wallen". I've wandered thru this area before but never noticed the sculpture set in the cobblestones next to the Old Church. Oh, and this area is way busier in the summer than winter!
I didn't have this happen much during my heavy travel last year. My flight to Amsterdam is delayed 3 and a half hours due to the plane being late arriving from London.
Update: Since my year of massive travel gave me platinum status I spent the time in the airport sucking down free bloody maries in the lounge. And Continental credited me with 4,000 extra miles for my inconvenience.
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| Looking upriver along the Seine. All the pictures I'm posting here are 640x480 reductions of stuff taken with the 7-mpixel Canon SD800IS ("Img" in the name) or the 6-mpixel Nikon D-40 digital SLR ("DSC" in the name). I haven't done any processing other than some cropping here and there and the down-convert to the reduced size. |
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| In the distance is La Défence. You can see just a bit of the big square Grand Arche. |
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| Looking down the Champs de Mars at the École Militaire (Miliary School, Napoleon was a graduate). |
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| Les Invalides. The dome is the church where Napoleon's tomb is now. The green space just beyond the dome is the Musée Rodin sculpture garden. |
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| Green space that starts at the left edge and goes up and right is Jardin des Tuileries. At the end of that is the Louvre. |
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| The Grand Palais. |
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| Extreme zoom on Sacré-Cœur. |
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| Late afternoon view. Just like the colors on this one. |
For some unknown reason, the transit strike didn't happen. I never saw any mention on the news but my limited French skills might have caused me to miss it. Great! Let the sightseeing continue!
First order of business for today was to check email. We thought we'd hear the gender of our first grandchild today but not yet.
Alice needed a bit of extra rest so I ended up doing lunch on my own. Just another café on Kleber. There are a half dozen or more within a couple of blocks of the hotel. A nice leisurely lunch with a carafe of wine, then finish up with a little espresso. Ah... what a life! :)
Sightseeing today started out with the Musée Rodin, next to Les Invalides. Rodin's works are amazing. Everybody knows The Thinker and most know The Kiss. The Gates of Hell is ... disturbing. Lots of other works displayed here.
After the sculpture garden and museum, Alice needed a quick bite then we took the subway to Pont de l'Alma, famous now as the place where Princess Diana died.
There we took a Bateaux Mouches sightseeing ride on the Seine. It's a great way to spend a couple of hours or so.
From Pont de l'Alma down the Seine past the Grand and Petit Palais, Place de la Concorde, Jardin des Tuileries, Louvre and Orsay museums, Notre Dame, a loop around Ile de la Cité and Ile St Louis. Then back past the same stuff and on to the Tour Eiffel and on to the miniature Statue of Liberty.
Got a huge number of good pictures on this little float.
Final sightseeing item for the day was to go up the Eiffel Tower. Alice doesn't do heights very well so I was a little surprised that she'd do it. Yes, she is gritting her teeth in that picture!
We took a cab from there to the Champs Elysée to find dinner. I had a half memory of an Asian place recommended in one of the guide books we had along but didn't have the guide book or a good enough memory. We ended up in a place that had good food but I think we were the only people over 30 in the place. Then a nightcap of ice cream and espresso at one of the cafés by the hotel.
Wednesday of our week we visited Le Marais district to the east of the Louvre.
We started out at the place where the Bastille used to be. Nothing there now but an obelisk in the middle of a traffic circle. From there it was a museum death
march.
The Victor Hugo home is part of a square of 1600s era buildings called Place des Vosges. There was a very long line when we first arrived but it was all 20-something young women. We figured out that it was not the line for the Victor Hugo home. No line there. All I learned in the Victor Hugo home is that I haven't read much written by Hugo. After touring through the home we tried to get a wine and cheese break at a cafe in the square. But it was lunch time and they wouldn't serve us unless we ordered a meal.
From Place des Vosges we walked to Musée Carnavalet. Lots of interesting paintings of Paris over the centuries. And a nice formal garden in the center. We only made it thru the 16th century before deciding to move on.
We picked out a random cafe in a small square for lunch. Cafe food such as salads and sandwiches and house wines have all been excellent.
Final museum stop was the Centre Georges Pompidou with it's external plumbing and modern art exhibit.
About the coolest thing was the giant spider sculpture in the entry space. Modern art is sometimes interesting but very often weird. We both think that a lot of the pieces are scams being perpetrated by the artists and critics. Like three identical gray canvases, each with its own identifying plaque. Or the life size red fiberglass rhinoceros.
While I was dropping my backpack off at the "cloak room", Alice struck up a conversation with a couple from Chicago (they took the pic of the two of us). As we were about to part, they asked if we had heard about the transit strike. Um... no. Seems there was to be a general transit strike beginning this evening or at midnight. Could be bad. Very bad. We and the whole city gets around on Le Métro, the buses, and the trains. If those were down we'd be fighting with the entire population for the cabs.
Back at the hotel, the desk clerk had not heard of any transit strike. We arranged dinner for 10pm and took a bit of time off our feet, recharging our batteries and those of the cameras.
Dinner was at Le Sheffer, a neighborhood bistro. It was close enough that we could walk back to the hotel if there was indeed a strike. It was really excellent! And it felt like a little neighborhood hole in the wall. Le Métro was still running when we headed for "home". But there was a was a sign I couldn't read up in one station and at the hotel the clerk had posted a sign stating "General Transit strike tomorrow!".
If so, we've still got the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe in walking distance. And plenty of cafés with wine!
