You've Got to Spend some time, love...

Hello and Good morning from Germany.
The weather has been very nice -- we went to the Netherlands yesterday and I am excited to report that the cord jacket that I have always wanted- you know the one, with the leather elbow pads, the one that smoking professors use?
I would provide a pic of it, but the ones on the web dont do it justice-- but I am sure that there will be plenty of pictures taken with it on... :)
Lili's parents also bought me a rather terrific Wool jacket from Polo as well. All in all, a great Christmas for books, but I do miss my own family, they seem so far away from me during the holidays.
We are headed to England in a few days, which I am very excited about. It will be very cool to see my cousins and hopefully loads of other people that I have lost contact with. We are staying on the Isle of Wight through New Years and coming back to Germany on the 3rd and I fly back out on the 7th.
Its been a good trip thus far-- and it hasn't been as spendy as one might think-- but as always, you spend too much :).

Photos later... Read more!

Merry Christmas, with Mariah even...

The Holidays are a time for peace and reflection.  Taking this time to be with my wives family in Germany is special as much as it is relaxing.  We share this time together, but there is also a lot of time for individual thought -- even if Mariah Carey's Christmas album is playing on the hi-fi and it is right now.  :)

I am currently reading Robert Fisks latest work -- a collection of essays he has published and the more I read it, the more I am reminded of my father and myself.  Fisk is a man of his own will and nature-- and the declarations he makes when he isn't reporting are spot on with the theories I have grown up to know, but without the sometimes cynical approach that comes with realizing that things in our lives are the way they are for a very specific reason, even though it doesn't appear that way.

The latest essays that I have been reading focus directly on the written words-- the power of them and the power of their destruction-- namely the laptop that I am writing all of this on-- the fear by Fisk-- and I do take this with a grain of salt, is that something is really lost in the lack of writing things out-- and having a copy of those materials-- when this laptop becomes the mainstay of our communications, it does simplify things, but that in turn, complicates things.  Without having those handwritten notes about certain things, we leave the archieves of our work up to the machine-- so much of my writing is on this site-- what if they simply ran out of capital and closed up shop?  What if their server room caught on fire?  Where would my words be then?

Also, as I am writing this, you, the reader, will read it as soon as I click that little orange button-- this is an amazing power-- the power to instantly send information out to the masses, but there has been a huge cost for all of this information overload-- this distribution of thought and opinion is killing off the gatekeepers of information, the press-- and that is never, ever going to be a good thing-- especially given the tough times that are right around the corner.

Luckily, I have thought of this and I do have backups of my data here on the site-- it has been copied down long ago-- just in case.

But the point remains the same, writing and communication is suffering because of the overload of communication that we get from a variety of sources throughout our daily lives.

So, on this Christmas day, I want to thank you, the reader, for taking time to listen to me ramble on in this wonderfully dreadful medium of communications...

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..In Germania

I have safely arrived in Germany a few days ago and have seemingly recovered from the jetlag. Looks like I got out of Seattle just in time, as the news reports have the area looking quite dismal as predicted. The incliment weather seems to affect Seattle more than any other place-- due to the hills and lack of resources in getting the roads and commerce taken care of.
When Jason and Apple took me to the airport, it had snowed the night before, so it was a slight challange to get up our little hill, but we made it to the airport without any problems-- however, the storm bore down just hours after my flight left Sea-Tac.
The flight was far from the worst flight I have had-- Delta tries to do as little as possible to be anything more than slightly accomodating, but for the measly $505.00 I paid for a round-trip ticket, I can hardly complain about it all that much.
I am happy to report that everything is fine in Germany. Lili was crying when I got out of customs, which took much longer than usual-- my bags were literally one of the last ones out of the plane and it was so good to see her. My father in law, Uwe, was also there and were all delighted to be re-united once again for the holidays.
The first night we stayed in a nice hotel in Koln city center and arrived at the house yesterday afternoon. Lili's parents headed off to their company Christmas party and then they will head off the Bremerhaven for a couple of days. Lili and I are going to the Christmas Market tonight to meet up with her friends, eat some food and drink as much gluvine as we can stomach. She is yelling at me to get ready, so I will finish this off later.
Stay varm in Seattle! Read more!