Nature's Palette...

We've been having some really nice sunsets lately. The sunset earlier this evening had some very nice shades of orange. Unfortunately, I couldn't get as much color saturation with my little digital camera as I would have liked.

Gonna have to shell-out for a bigger/better camera one of these days!

AND,...

...for those of you who have been wondering. The fake "natural" garden is coming along quite nicely. If you'll recall, this is how it looked last September when the work was just beginning. And this is how it looks now.

You know, the proper way to maintain a prairie-style garden is to do a controlled burn every year or two in order to simulate the burns caused by lighting strikes that result in prairie regeneration.

Hmmmmm. I wonder if the landlord would go for that.

An Orange Weekend...

The weekend began on Friday evening with an orange sunset.


Later, we fired up the rooftop "blast furnace" and were successful in producing orange "devil horns"!!!


On Saturday afternoon, we decided to venture into town to witness the "Orange Crush" of 100,000+ Dutch soccer fans descending upon Basel for the Holland vs. Russia Euro2008 quarterfinal match. I have to say that although the Dutch fans were a bit messy, they did make for some good people watching, and they did actually seem to behave themselves. It was pretty hot outside, and the Dutch looked like they were drinking A LOT, so I'm thinking there had to have been some pretty nasty hangovers the next morning. The hangovers were probably made worse by some really nasty sunburn AND by the fact that Russia ended up advancing to the semi-final by beating Holland.

I'm really going to have to sit down one of these days, focus, and force myself to watch an entire soccer match. I just don't know if I can do it. For some reason, a game that often ends up in a 0-0 tie after 90 minutes of play just doesn't mesh with my short, North American attention span. I mean, there are hardly even any shots-on-goal.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRING!

Oh, and don't even get me started with the "flopping"!

A defender doesn't even touch the guy with the ball, the guy with the ball goes down in a heap acting as if his spine has just been severed, the ref calls a foul on the defender who makes all sorts of faces and gestures to no avail, and then the guy who just looked like he was going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life just gets up and continues playing.

OK....

......

......

SOCCER HAS GOT TO BE ONE OF THE WUSSIEST SPORTS (second only to cricket) I'VE EVER SEEN!!!

There, I said it!

Our Sunsets Are Safe!

Earlier this year, a small, old apartment building was torn down right by our apartment building. Then, a couple of cranes (the Swiss "national bird") appeared right in line with where the sun sets for a good part of the year.

Seeing that there are a couple of tall apartment buildings sandwiching the construction site, I began to become concerned that another tall building was going to be built, thus blocking the only remaining view of sunsets from our balcony.

This morning, I walked up right next to the construction site for a closer look, and I'm happy to report that the building has been capped and will go no higher.

We will be enjoying many beautiful sunsets from the comfort of our balcony (and rooftop) for the weeks, months, and years (?) to come. Now, I just have to go out an buy a chainsaw...

...SO I CAN CUT DOWN THOSE DAMN TREES!!!!