One Of My Favorite Things...

...is to watch people falling asleep in public. I find few things funnier than a person nodding off, suddenly jerking awake, and then looking up at everybody and wondering why they're all staring at him.

I'm even chuckling right now thinking about it.

The 2+ hour train ride from Lausanne to Basel last month provided a worthy subject. First, the guy spent about ten minutes "digging for gold" - that, I tried to ignore. However, soon the eyes grew heavy, and the head began to nod.

I got my camera ready.

A couple of minutes later, Mrs. TBF said: "NOW!"

Snap! Photographic gold!

Another one for the "falling asleep in public" collection. They go into the file with this one from somewhere over the Atlantic in January 2007, and this one from Tokyo in October 2007.

Maybe one day I'll publish them all in a coffee table book

Peep Show

For the third time in a week, there's an elevator repairman (as viewed through our peephole) working on our building's elevator.

I'm beginning to get worried.

I sure hope he doesn't have to shut that thing down long-term - which I define as more than two hours - due to having to wait for some part or something. That would really suck!

We live on the 4th floor, which would be correctly called the 5th floor by North Americans, but is INcorrectly called the 4th floor by Europeans due to their erroneous insistence on labeling the (North American) 1st floor as floor 0. Or, often as "EG" for Eingang in the German speaking parts of the world. Hey, I'm not one to start conTROversy or anything, but calling the first floor you see ZERO when you walk into a building is just plain...well...stupid!

So, getting back to the elevator. It would really suck if we had to take the spiral staircase in the center of our building to/from the TOP FLOOR on an on-going basis. Speaking from experience from the few times I've done it, it's a dizzying enterprise, and one which I would be happy to never have to do again. Plus, the thought of having to climb all those stairs with a bunch of groceries or after having done forty minutes on the elliptical trainer at the gym seems downright cruel.

I might have to go live in our storage unit on the ground floor (compromise!). Or, maybe I should go into hermit mode and just not leave the apartment. Or...

Let's just hope the damn thing gets fixed!

UPDATE:

Our elevator has been repaired. At least, I THINK it's been repaired.

A short time after posting, I heard a ruckus coming from the hallway outside our apartment. A quick look through the peephole revealed TWO arguing repairmen - one was shaking his head saying "nein!", and the other one was emphatically pointing at a page in the manual.

Things were not looking good.

However, a little while later, the repairmen were gone and it appeared that the elevator was as good as new. Just to be sure, I've decided that a grace period of a few hours is in order: I'm letting the other residents in the building be the guinea pigs. I don't need to be free-falling down an elevator shaft from the fifth... I mean, fourth floor.