When time stands still you figure “what’s one more week gone by, I’ll catch up on my blog eventually.” Now that I find myself with oodles of time on my hands, I can rectify the situation.
Last I left off, Steve and Lauren were coming to town. One of the last times I’d be able to host anyone from home for quite some time.
First stop: Pike Place.
After exploring some smelly and not-so-smelly shops in the underbelly and loading up on snacks top-side, it was off to Ballard Locks. Neither Steve nor Lauren had ever been.
Birds certainly love this area.
The larger of the two lock systems was down for maintenance. Spot the port-a-potty down there to get a sense of scale.
From there it was off to Alki Beach for some sunset views.
The next day was pretty rainy, but we managed to get some fun in after work. Spent some time exploring Bellevue Square, then grabbed dinner at Mox Boarding House, where you can play games while you eat. The cafe portion was pretty darn full but we snagged a table in the gaming part of the establishment, where we could eat our food take-away style. Didn’t leave much room for games so we packed up and headed back home for a harrowing round of Castle Panic. Steve & Lauren had brought a set with an expansion which was dang fun.
Tasty Italian shop with self-serve samplers.
Right in the childhood.
I asked them if they carried anything more hard-core than Warheads, and they pointed me to this. I didn’t feel like testing it out.
The next day was a trip around Whidbey Island. Headed up to the top, up and over Deception Pass, played around a bit at a beach up there, then headed down to Coupeville which is like the Grand Lake of Whidbey, for some lunch. From there it was across the island to Fort Casey, then down south to the ferry home, stopping by briefly to catch the sunset on another beach.
We took my Tesla, which was not fully charged when we left. Ended up cutting it fairly close range-wise. One of those drawbacks to EVs, which I became much more familiar with two weeks later.
It was very windy.
Saw these paintings on the wall of the restaurant we ate at. Liked them so much I went to buy them but they only took cash or check. The tale wasn’t done yet though, and the next installment will complete the story.
The next morning it was time to say goodbye. One of us clearly didn’t care how their hair looked.
Just a couple posts more and we’ll have overtaken the present. As Captain Jack Sparrow said, we’re catching up. [Would’ve been an embedded jiff but that one’s seizure-inducing.]
If you recall from last post, our brief stint in Paris on the way back to Seattle was even briefer than planned, so much so that our luggage didn’t make the trip, so we landed on Monday with an assurance that our luggage would be delivered on Wednesday, and up to $200 reimbursed on purchases made to get through these trying times.
Unfortunately I’d be on an airplane headed down to California on Wednesday for a quick visit with a team I work with. Would’ve loved to get some shoes on Air France’s dime, but didn’t have the time.
The trip was pretty standard, but made more interesting by the resurgence of my back issues. For no reason that I could tell, it got about as bad as it had been the first time it had gone bad, over two years ago. At that time I’d been prescribed some muscle relaxants and had left the unused pills in my backpack, for a rainy day. Never had a use for them till this trip. I think they were still effective? Or it might’ve been a placebo effect. In any case I recovered very quickly, so, woohoo.
I spent the following weekend at home trying to no avail to clean my car. I tried a manual car wash and was dismayed to find that after blasting the car’s surface twice-over with hot soapy high-pressure water, I could still run my hand over it and leave dirty smudge marks. Tried later with an automatic touch-less car-wash, with similar results. (That one was funny though, ’cause I pulled up right behind another Tesla, and saw a third Tesla line up after me. I thought I was in the right spot, but guess not?)
The next day was Third Sunday, and in true Jeff fashion I had avoided dong any lesson prep work until the evening prior. I usually find the Come Follow Me teacher’s manual has a good skeleton for a lesson that I can fall back on if nothing else strikes my fancy, but in this case I found a neat article that emphasized that this week covered the first time Christ’s name had been used in the Book of Mormon. Excerpt:
We can learn something from Nephi as well. Even though he was the older brother and the prophet-leader, he was willing to learn from his younger brother. Nephi did for Jacob exactly what Nephi’s two oldest brothers never did for him. Nephi listened to Jacob. Nephi encouraged Jacob to receive revelation. He then encouraged Jacob to teach and preach what he shared. Nephi was not bent on total rulership as were Laman and Lemuel. Nephi had the humility to listen and learn from his younger brother Jacob. He did not use his position, his authority, his influence, his experience, or his own access to revelation to be beyond learning truths great or small from those around him.
Now, since I read and loved books like the Homecoming Saga, I’m used to wondering what things might’ve been like “on the ground” back then, instead of through the lens of history. Was Nephi perhaps a bit curious why that revelation went to his brother and not him? Absolutely zero use in digging into it of course.
One other thing I found interesting was some of Jacob’s language in 2 Ne 9, when he uses the phrase “I know that ye know”. I wondered how it might sound if I were to use such phrasing in my own lessons or talks, how much more the point might get across. That led me to show the table one of my favorite YouTube vids, about speaking with conviction:
What’s funny is that immediately after watching this together I said something like, “If we were that much more confident in our lessons, I think we could really help bring the Spirit. Or I dunno.” Hard habit to kick. Had to follow up with, “No, wait, yes I do know :)”
The next Monday was a holiday, and I was looking to organize a game night, but then I remembered I’d have the HOA board over for a meeting. Prior meetings had been held down at the local library, and I’ve always thought, why go all the way out there when we could just cross the street to one of our houses?
So I offered to host and hope to make it a pattern. The place had gotten a bit dusty and scattered after all that travel, so I spent the day cleaning it up, put out a nice cheese+meat spread, the works.
Five minutes after the meeting was scheduled to begin, I check my calendar and yes, the event is scheduled for Monday night. I then idly check my email and notice to my chagrin that I’d made a mistake when creating the event and it was actually for the next night. Cancelled a perfectly good game night for no reason. At least I had a clean house.
So the next night rolls around and while we did have a meeting, it was the quick in-and-out kind, so the spread once again went uneaten. So you all get to enjoy instead.
The next day it was off to Utah for recruiting! Everything went more-or-less smoothly. Very cool to see Mattie and her team at the competition.
As was tradition, the AnderSibs went and got sushi after the event. Too crowded at the restaurant so we went to eat at Mattie’s place, which I’d never been to.
It was around this time that my back decided to make another small nuisance of itself. Oh well.
Sunday was a very fun family get-together.
Caught an exceedingly early flight Monday morning off to Boston for a quick visit with a team I have started working more closely with. Got to see Libby for a quick breakfast meet-up, which was lovely. Looking forward to more work visits there.
Flew back to Washington just in time to meet up with Steve and Lauren, and I’ll tell all about that visit next time.
So, it was off to Freiberg. We three set off in a rental car I’d picked up from the airport, and had arranged to return in Dresden just prior to heading off from there to Prague later in the week.
The autobahn was terribly fun to drive on. Contrary to popular notions, it is not a blanket rule that autobahn == no speed limit. There are sections of the autobahn without a speed limit, which are chosen judiciously based on road curvature and whatnot. I wasn’t a madman or anything, but I think I got up to a bit over 100mph. Roughly equivalent to what you might find me doing on an empty stretch of road to the Cabin.
We arrived at the Freiberg temple and checked in for the night. I nodded off at around 8pm. Luckily I got a room to myself, because I was up at 1am the next morning with a fever, a cough, and a very empty stomach. My early mornings galavanting around cliff-sides in Mallorca had finally caught up with me. I don’t recall falling asleep again that night, but I might’ve. At 5am I’d had enough and decided to stumble out to the car, through the snow that was now falling, to get an orange I had left in there the day prior.
Being mostly useless that Tuesday, I left temple-going to Amber and Lesley. Headed in to town to grab some powderized aspirin, which was quite effective.
I’d never gotten the chance to put Amber on the insurance for the rental, so I’d be forced to drive wherever we went. Thankfully by the time the other two were done with the temple, I was back in working order. So off we went to Freiberg town center.
Shop just for teas.
Not creepy at all.
We headed back to the temple for dinner, then started watching “3 Idiots”. Didn’t get far into it before we had to turn in due to the curfew.
The next morning we did a couple of temple sessions. I opted out of a translation unit, which was a fun experience, trying to match what I recalled to what I could make out.
Afterwards, Lesley stayed behind to do more temple work while Amber and I drove off to Dresden. Lovely city with amazing architecture. We had lunch at a great Italian place, checked out a transportation museum, and ducked into a modern art gallery.
During the war there was a shortage of rubber, so someone tried experimenting with replacing rubber with springs on bike wheels. Didn’t turn out very well, as you could no longer brake and the springs were horrible as shock absorbers, especially on cobblestone streets.
This seismograph is there so the carriage owner has assurances it hasn’t been jostled. Talk about paranoid.
Back to the temple for dinner, then watched a bit more of 3 Idiots before calling it a night.
The next morning we were off to Dresden to return the rental car and catch our bus off to Prague. Ran into a few issues on the way out.
We got a bit of a late-ish departure from the temple, which ate into most of our time budget. There was a train that ran between the car drop-off facility and the bus station, and we could no longer afford to miss it.
I forgot to fill the car up with gas. Normally I don’t allocate time for such things when traveling for work, since I use hardly any gas. We’d traveled quite a ways though, so I didn’t want to get stiffed with a hefty fee. Even more time eaten up.
After heading off from the gas station to what Google Maps claimed was the drop-off point, we realized we’d been led astray, as it was just an office building, not a parking garage. We were right next to the airport, so clearly we were in the right vicinity, but we didn’t exactly have time to wander around looking. So I drove us back to the gas station and rushed in to ask the attendants where the parking garage was. Unfortunately they only knew enough English to tell us they didn’t know any English. There was a group of what looked to be high-school-aged kids in at the time, so I cried out, “Does anyone know any English?!?” Some kid answered and pointed me in the right direction. Thanked him profusely.
We rolled on in to the parking garage and found an attendant, but for Hertz rather than Alamo. Asked him where the Alamo facility was and he had no idea what company we were talking about. Rolled around the garage fruitlessly for a few minutes, before deciding to head to the exit and see if it was on a different floor. Time was ticking. Just before exiting we spotted an information desk that had the Alamo logo on it, along with plenty of others. Parked the car and anxiously awaited an attendant, since we weren’t totally sure we’d made it to the right place. But the attendant went ahead and checked us out, so off we went to the train entrance.
Made it on the train, to the bus station, onto the bus, and into our seats, after asking Goatee Guy to move along.
Arriving in Prague, we wheeled our luggage off to our Airbnb, then set off to grab some lunch. Headed to Sansho’s, an amazing Asian place, which we went back to later on the visit. After that we walked around and stumbled across the National Museum.
Cow tongue, if you can believe it. Didn’t find that out till days later.
From there we caught a subway back to our lodging, and turned in for the night. We finished 3 Idiots, then I watched the latest Star Trek Picard episode while Amber pretended to be interested.
Next morning we headed to Cafe Mistral for an amazing breakfast.
From there we went off to the Klementinum, a compound sort of place with solar clocks and other neat mechanical thingies. Plus an incredibly awesome library full of only-editions.
Weren’t allowed inside, had to take turns peeking in from an observation area.
From there it was off to “Tourist Alley”.
Cute shop that 3D scans a figure and laser-“engraves” it in glass.
This one definitely crossed the line from cute to creepy.
Decided to head back to our lodgings and drop off the shopping we’d picked up. It was a couple hours until the next thing on our itinerary, and we took the very uncharacteristic option of actually taking a nap. It was glorious.
Nap complete, it was off to the theatre! Specifically the State Opera House, to see La Boheme. They helpfully had English subtitles shown above the stage. My very first Italian opera.
Decor on the ceiling.
The next morning we hit up Prague’s cathedral, at just the right time to see some amazing sunlight through the stained glass windows.
Then began a quest to get some Prague fabric for Mom. My very first day I spotted what looked like a perfect place right next to where we picked up our keys. Headed back and it turns out most fabric shops in Prague are closed for either all or most of Saturdays. Spotted one that looked to be open for another half hour or so, 25 minutes away by public transport. Made it just in time, with a minute to spare, only to be turned away, as their clock was 3 minutes fast and they thought it was already closing time, notwithstanding my protestations to the contrary.
Googled another place and it looked to be open till evening, so we headed back to the center of Prague. On the way, since we now had time, we stopped by an art gallery that looked neat.
Made it to the fabric shop, which turned out to be Italian fabric rather than Prague-ian, but no matter. It was fun calling Mom and having her and Amber collaborate on picking out samples. I’m actually glad the first few places were closed because I never would’ve thought to call and consult, and would’ve gotten not enough of entirely the wrong thing.
We then headed back to the apartment, watched Bernie, then headed out for a late bus back to Berlin, on which we watched The Man from U.N.C.L.E., a bit apropos given its setting.
Sunday was church followed by family dinner and game night.
Monday morning was the sad goodbye.
Our flight from Berlin to Paris ran half an hour late, cutting our already short connection perilously close. Made it on the plane with minutes to spare.
