Wednesday Wife

I went to IKEA yesterday with my "Wednesday Wife" - Dr. Di.

On most Wednesdays, I walk our friends' two dogs, and then I walk over to my "WW's" home. We talk for a couple of hours, I drink coffee, insist on her NOT putting out any snacks, watch as she pretty much ignores me by putting out a bunch of snacks on a lazy Susan, and then proceed to happily spin the lazy Susan and... systematically devour every last crumb.

Yesterday, we mixed things up a bit.

Dr. Di picked me up at home, and we went furniture shopping. Of course, I had to wear a pair of Mephisto walking shoes I have because the leather perfectly matches the leather furniture in their living room, and Dr. Di wanted to buy some throw pillows. That was a bit weird, but... whatever.

Our first stop was IKEA. I bought a pair of scissors, and Dr. Di proceeded to buy a couple of gigantic bags of stuff - neither of which contained even one throw pillow. After going through the checkout (with my pair of scissors, and Dr. Di's two gigantic blue bags) I decided I "needed" a couple of hot dogs, as I normally do on one of my 3-4 visits to IKEA per year.

Let me just say: I don't know what you're up to, IKEA, but... I DON'T LIKE IT!! IKEA has obviously changed their hot dog recipe. The hot dogs don't look the same, they don't taste the same, and they do NOT have that nice snap when you bite into them like they always have in the past. Plus, when I bit into the wiener, the inside poked out of the casing on the back end, and it pretty much reminded me of when a male dog sits down and shows himself off in all his glory.

Um... I finished the hot dogs anyway, but... I'M ON TO YOU, IKEA!!! I'm boycotting those wieners from now on!!!

After IKEA, Dr. Di and I went to Möbel Pfister (nothing purchased other than coffee and coffee cake in the café) and then OBI (nothing purchased). Finally, at Micasa, Dr. Di found some pillows. Of course, she had to have me stand in the aisle where she repeatedly put different arrangements of throw pillows around my shoes until she found a combination she approved of.

Thankfully, there were no witnesses!

Finally, we ended up at Office World.

Let me just preface this by saying that Dr. Di's husband, Dr. Andy, often calls Dr. Di on her mobile phone on Wednesdays while he's half-way around the world on some business trip. Usually, when he finds out that I'm sitting in his dining room, talking with his wife, drinking his coffee, and eating his snacks off of his lazy Susan, I end up hearing a loud "Neeeeeesht guet!!!" (not good!) coming from Dr. Di's phone. I can pretty much predict what he'll say when he reads the following:

At one point, while at Office World, I actually accidentally called Dr. Di "hon'" (short for honey) like I call Mrs. TBF.

"Neeeeeeeeeeeeeesht guet!!!!!!!!!"

Copenhagen 2009 Recap

Last weekend's visit to Copenhagen, our first in eight years, was a triumphant success!

Our friend, Dr. Andy, who lives here in Basel, actually works for a Danish company and has a studio apartment in Copenhagen where he occasionally sleeps when he's not living here in Basel OR circumnavigating the globe on one of his many business trips.

Got that? Good!

Here are a few bullet points from the trip:

Copenhagen is a really nice city, and I could definitely live there. The locals seem happy and worry-free, they probably speak the best English of any non-native English speaking country in Europe, the shopping is good, the restaurants are good, and the quality of life seems exceptional. Zürich and Geneva usually rank higher than Copenhagen on the "most livable cities" list, but I personally would probably choose Copenhagen.

Copenhagen is very expensive. We stayed at a place called 71Nyhavn Hotel which was a five minute walk from Dr. Andy's apartment. It was nice, but it wasn't fancy or luxurious, AND it cost about CHF 300/USD 290 per night - NO breakfast included. The VAT is something like 25%.

Liquor is expensive. A 50 cl/16 oz beer costs about CHF 10/USD 9.70. A glass of wine at dinner cost something like CHF 30/USD 29 PER GLASS!!

We went to Christiania (you can read about it here) on what just happened to be its 38th birthday. Lots of hippies, flea markets, people openly smoking pot, dogs roaming around without collars - cool place!

The World Cup of Archery just happened to be taking place right by our hotel. A Venezuelan woman won, and a Danish woman came in second (awwww!). We sat and watched the exciting competition, mesmerized for hours with tens of thousands of archery fans. Ok... there were only a few hundred people watching... we watched for a few minutes, and... well... archery pretty much sucks as a spectator sport.

Tuborg is better than Carlsberg!

We had a great dinner at Kong Hans Kælder. Top-notch/friendly service, the food was great (other than the minor issue of Dr. Andy biting down on buckshot while eating his wild mallard course), and we happily wined and dined for 4+ hours in the oldest building in Copenhagen!

Click HERE if you'd like to see all of the pictures from Copenhagen.

Road Warriors...

Dr. Andy, Dr. Di, and the kids came over for some grilled flesh (clearing assorted meats out of the freezer) this past Saturday evening. They come over fairly often, so no big deal... right? What made this evening different was that Dr. Andy returned from a business trip and came directly from the train station to our apartment where he met the rest of his family.

Still no big deal???

Well... then how about these facts? Dr. Andy had in the past week flown to South Africa, the plane had to make a quasi-not-quite-an-emergency landing in Rome due to a door that didn't seal up properly, had to return (flying "...at low altitude, but high enough to get over the Alps") to Zürich where he spent the night, flew out to South Africa the next day, then flew to South America a couple of days later, spent a few days in South America (where he might have taken another flight...not sure), had a three hour delay in Sao Paulo which resulted in him being switched to a flight to FRANKFURT, and then had to take a three hour train ride from Frankfurt to Basel.

Who says business travel is glamorous?

Even after this debacle, Dr. Andy still seemed none the worse for wear, and he and Dr. Di ("Yes, I'm wearing a down vest in August! What about it?") managed to stay at our place until 1:30 a.m.!

Yesterday morning, it was Mrs. TBF's turn to jump into a taxi and become a "junior" road warrior. I say "junior" because her flight to Munich was delayed by only one hour, and it was spared the need for any quasi-not-quite-an-emergency landings. However, she gets full road warrior credit for staying at some dinky hotel in Holzkirchen (about 30 minutes outside of Munich) in a room with a toilet that trickled all night, and construction that began right across the street at 6 a.m.!

I guess that's why they get paid the big bucks!

Japandy!

We celebrated Dr. Andy's birthday this past weekend. Some time back, Mrs. TBF decided on a menu of sushi and grilled steak with an Asian marinade. Hence, we decided that the theme of this dinner party would be... JAPANDY!

Pretty good, isn't it? I came up with that one, and Mrs. TBF is still seething about it!

Dr. Andy's birthday was actually last month. But due to travel/work conflicts, we were unable to celebrate until this past Saturday. Even this date proved to not be perfect since Dr. Rammy and Oliver were unable to attend due to a prior commitment in England, but we still had a nice, intimate gathering.

One of the sushi offerings was a Mrs. TBF creation: steak tartare sushi. Go ahead, Google it. You'll see that sushi AND steak tartare come up often in the same paragraph, but NEVER as "steak tartare sushi." I'm telling you, Mrs. TBF invented steak tartare rolled up as a sushi roll! And???? It's GREAT!!!!

As an aside: I once came up with what I thought was my own invention: the oyster martini. It was probably around 2004 or 2005 when, on a Friday evening, I was sitting at the dinner table with a martini and a plate of raw oysters. Suddenly, I came up with the idea of scraping an oyster off the shell - oyster liquor and all - right into my martini. At the end of the drink, when the gin is still just barely covering the oyster, you just slurp the whole thing right down.

Try it! It's great!!!

I called Dr. Andy, and I told him to come over to try my invention - the "oyster 'tini." He came over, tried it, and praised my creativity and inventiveness. Unfortunately, he Googled "oyster martini" after going home and came up with hundreds of hits. The next morning, he came over and broke the bad news over a cup of coffee.

Oh well. I guess one inventor per household is enough.

Thanks, Andy!

It's been five years (tomorrow) since I last skied.

Five years ago today, a bunch of us guys went to Gstaad for a ski weekend. The first night, we just had a group dinner and stayed up into the wee hours. The next morning - a beautiful, sunny morning - we got up early and hit the slopes. The first run went fine. Then, everything changed.

To make a long story short:

Andy and I ride up the chairlift for our second run.

Our bindings get tangled up as we get off the chairlift.

My one leg goes one way, and the other leg goes the other way, and I feel a sharp pain in my right knee.

Thud!

Andy thinks a helicopter rescue may be necessary.

I shrug off the helicopter rescue and tell Andy I'm fine.

Andy and I snap these pictures of each other (yes, I was still heavy back then) on what turns out to be my last day of skiing...EVER!

I end up skiing the rest of the day.

The next morning, I wake up with pain in my right knee which is now the size of a honeydew melon.

I am dropped off at the Gstaad train station for the long, solo train ride back to Basel where Mrs. TBF meets me on the train platform.

I hobble around for a few weeks (I never did go to the doctor), and make the decision to hang up my skis for good. The glass knees just can't take it.

Do I miss skiing? No. I wasn't very good at it, and I just didn't enjoy it enough to make it worth the hassle. Plus, I found skiing in Switzerland rather...intimidating. I wasn't scared, but I wasn't exactly in my comfort zone either. It's one thing skiing at Wilmot Mountain in Wilmot, Wisconsin with a vertical drop of a few hundred feet, and quite another thing skiing in Switzerland at several thousand feet, thin oxygen, potential for avalanches, etc.

Skiing at Wilmot? Maybe a broken leg.

Skiing in Switzerland? Maybe...death.

Thanks, Andy! You did me a favor by "taking me out" (that's how I always refer to it)! I think I'll celebrate my five year anniversary this Sunday by soaking in a nice hot bath with a martini in hand.

...much easier on the knees!

Bluetooth

The low-tech version, that is.

Dr. Andy and I went to a wine tasting in Basel this past Saturday afternoon. We were there for a couple of hours, and we sampled (and bought) a lot of wine. Really, if you added up all the sips, we probably each drank only the equivalent of two glasses of wine. However, there was a lot of slurping and swishing and at one point I said to Andy: "I hope my teeth aren't as blue as yours." As turned out, they were even bluer.

Time to break out the Crest Whitestrips.

Friday Flashback: Last Day Of Work

This Sunday will mark the eighth anniversary of my last day of work. Just in case you're keeping score at home, that comes out to 2,920 days since I last traded my time for money.

Mrs. TBF says I am now completely unemployable. Me? I'm not so sure. I think, if I really tried, I could probably land a minimum-wage job somewhere in the world. Of course, I always have my friend Dr. Andy to fall back on. He's a VP of sales, and he's always telling me that "...we could use a guy like you!" So far, he's offered me sales positions in Paris and Moscow. But my deal-breaking demands of a mid six-figure salary, only working three days per week, and only working between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. (with two hours off for lunch) on those days seems to have scared him off...at least for now.

Here's a picture of me on my last day of work - September 21, 2000. Since I had a company car (the white Chevy Impala on the right), my boss (Randy) had to drive me home in his car. Actually, he first took me out for dinner, and THEN he drove me home. That evening I took off the "work uniform" for the last time, and I've rarely worn a tie since then. Nowadays, on the rare occasion I do wear a tie, I really have to think about how to even tie one. Back in my working days I used to do it every single morning, without even thinking about it, when I was half-asleep.

Seeing this picture now has me thinking about Randy - all 5'6 AND 1/16th" of him ("When you're as short as me, you count every 1/16th of and inch!"). I'll be back in Chicago in just over a month, and it's been several years since I've seen him. Perhaps I should meet him for lunch and test whether I'm completely unemployable or not by asking him if he'd hire me back.

Hopefully, his answer will be NO!