rob’s place

Apparently the messiah let me a comment on my other blog this weekend (so they claimed). So here’s the upside: the messiah reads my blog! The downside: he/she uses geocities.com for their website and hotmail for email.

I wrote this messiah back because I wanted to talk to him/her.

It bounced.

Guess you can’t reach all messiahs.

made it, originally uploaded by orangejack.

I finally made it to The Netherlands. My flight from Orlando to New York was good. Flying into NYC on a clear day really makes you reconsider sitting in the aisle!

NYC to Amsterdam was good too (BTW, it’s kinda appropiate to fly from NYC to Amsterdam). I thought I’d have the entire row to myself but someone came and sat with me. Bummer, but it was good. I got to talk to her some about visiting this country. They showed The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe on the plane so that was nice too. But only got about an hour of sleep when they woke us up for breakfast and landing about 7:10 local time (that’s 12:10 am back home)!

Found my bag, was asked no questions at security, passport stamped, nothing to claim, purchase a train ticket, and off I went.

The weather here has been funky. It’ll be sunny, then windy, then rain, then sleet mixed in, then sunny again. I’ve really not visited Amsterdam, and probably won’t. I’ve spent all my time so far in Utrecht.

Oh, and do you know the difference in Holland and The Netherlands? Well do you remember your SAT stuff? Holland is to Carolina as The Netherlands is to the United States.

Holland is a province. Well, not really. There’s two, a North Holland and South Holland. So there’s no “Holland” like there’s no “Carolina”. I’m in Utrecht, the capital city of the province Utrecht. Tomorrow I go to Doorn, Utrecht. Oh, so the Netherlands is the country of all the provinces, kind of like the United States.

Despite the weather, it’s been nice. Everyone is wearing orange for the Queen’s day. I dig this queen! I bet she’d like this site too, being all orange and all. Maybe I’ll send her an email.

Only trouble with the celebrations is that most things are closed. Both shops and restaurants! So eating has been a bit of a challenge.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I’ve uploaded about 30 photos so far. Some of the photos have some story and explanation I’m not going into here.

Since I’m going to be out of the country during the NFL draft this year, I’ll have to just let you know about this NFL 2006 Draft Map now.

Thanks to Google Maps Mania.

[tags]nfl draft[/tags]

fasten seat belts, originally uploaded by orangejack.

Today I’m getting on yet another plane for another long trip. I’m heading to the Netherlands later this morning.

I’ll post updates some, but my response time (and sometimes comment approval time) will be slower than normal.

UPDATE: If you have Google Earth, you can download this to see the three main places I’ll be (at least I think where’ I’ll be). I’ll try to update this file, but no promises!

Sorta. Official Google Blog: A great day for 3D

How much does gas, on average, cost per county in the US? This map will tell ya.

Thanks, White African!

In many churches, the “opening” song in the service is called a prelude.

These same churches usually call the “closing” song in the service a postlude.

So I’m wondering, if you have a “before-lude” then an “after-lude”, would the rest of the service just be “lude”?

Oh, it’s spelled “lewd”? Guess that was rude of me.

TVSquad is one of my favorite blogs. They listed Five Reasons to not turn off TV during ‘TV Turnoff Week’ and I just had to laugh at the last one:

And, finally, one of the most important reasons to watch TV:

You’ll miss an episode of Lost: Trying to keep up with an episode of this show is like trying to keep up with a Dennis Miller monologue. There are so many plot threads going on at once that you really need to watch every single episode to have an idea what’s happening. If you turn off your TV and miss just one episode, you will lose the entire continuity of the series, which will most likely cause you to lose sleep and stop eating. Then, you’ll be in the hospital, which will cause you to lose your job. Your wife will divorce you and move in with the air conditioner repairman, your children will get arrested for using BitTorrent to download episodes of Lazytown, and, yadda yadda yadda, you’ll be beating people over the head with clubs so you can grab the dead carcass of a brontosaurus.

Well, it started off funny.

I’ve been reading through a book of poems. It’s a collection of 101 Famous Poems. In fact, that’s the name of the book!

Today I read Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Tennyson.

All I could think of was that scene from the Little Rascals where Alfalfa was reciting the poem and firecrackers were going off in his back pocket.

So much for being cultured.

Anywone been to The Netherlands? I’m going there this weekend and have a couple days off. Any suggestions what to do?

visitor, originally uploaded by orangejack.

We had a visitor last night. Big dude. Check out the short story.

Dried pears are called dried pears.
Dried bananas are called dried bananas.

Dried oranges are called dried oranges.
Dried peaches are called dried peaches.

Dried apples are called dried apples.
Dried pineapples are called dried pineapples.

Dried berries are in morning cereals.
Dried melons can’t exist.

Dried grapes are called raisins.
Dried plums are called prunes.