One month from Sunday we leave for
Europe.
Don't ask me how that happened; it just
did. But for whatever reason, I’m actually farther ahead at work
than I normally am. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve finally
figured out what I’m doing, or if it’s because June and most of
July sucked so much weather-wise that I couldn’t go outside and
play, forcing me to stay inside and work, but I’m at a very
comfortable point in working ahead to leave.
And that’s a good thing.
I think I may have mentioned in here
before about how when I go on vacation, I have to work ahead to be
able to go on vacation. Because I have such a specialized job, I
can’t just slough it off on my coworkers, or wait until I‘m back
from vacation to deal with it. It has to be done before I leave, and
it has to be done by me. So every year we go overseas, I know that
starting in June, I have to begin working ahead. And since the
weather didn't cooperate, I actually started working in May for a
vacation I‘m taking at the end of August.
But it looks like it’s working out.
Aside from the stuff I need to do here,
I still have a list of things that needs to be accomplished outside
of work, and one of those is getting our trip Blogspot site back up to speed and ready to go. Leaving a
story and pictures on the site works quite well; every year
we seem to have more & more people checking in every day to see
what we were doing, and we certainly don’t want to leave them
hanging. Besides, we've now been using it for six different trip
(this being the seventh) and before we go it's kind of fun to look
back and see what we previously did, especially when (like this
year), we're partially re-creating an adventure we first tried in
2014.
If nothing else, it's like our very own
electronic scrapbook!
Finally, I’m also starting to review
my French. We’ll be in French-speaking areas a little over half
the time this year, so I need to be ready. Like I mentioned a few
months ago, I've been looking through all my notes and reference
books, including a huge 800 page French-English dictionary we bought
a few years ago. It’s a cool book, if only because it has a
section in the middle with phrases that English-speaking people going
to France or French-speaking people going to the U.S. or the U.K. can
use. And it’s there that I made an interesting discovery, one that
probably speaks to a major difference between French people and
Americans--
Did you know that, in French, there is
not an equivalent to the phrase “All you can eat”? Nope, there’s
not a French translation for that. They actually use the English
words “All you can eat” because, apparently, the French and their
language can’t fathom the concept of “All you can eat”. And if
THAT doesn’t speak to a major difference between the two cultures,
I don’t know what does.
Amazing what you can learn while you’re
getting ready for something, isn’t it?
Anyway, that's what coming up in a
month. Coming up this weekend? Art on the Rocks, among other
things. I'll be around there tomorrow morning, so maybe I'll see
you. If not enjoy the nice weather, including (believe it or not) a
Sunday that's actually supposed to be sunny & warm. Yes, in
2017. Go figure!!!
8-)
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