A Shelf For Books

What did day 1 in our new place consist of?

As I said, we woke up at 10 AM. We ate breakfast, and then I suddenly felt sleepy again. I laid down. When I woke up it was 12:30 and my friend needed help moving a bookshelf up the stairs. My wife looked at my dopey just-woke-up expression and suggested that I wait before helping with the bookshelf because "it is going to require some brains." But I was sort of awake so stumbled down to help.

This was a doozy of a bookshelf; seven feet high and four feet wide. And the stairwell in our apartment is a doozy of a stairwell. I'm pretty sure the builders didn't have a blueprint. They just built the first story, then built another on top of that, then built half a story on top of that, then built another half slight higher, then another story on top of that, then a little room on the roof. When you walk up the inside, you could easily imagine the outside looking like something drawn by Dr. Seuss. Every turn of the stairwell is a different size, shape, and dimension. The stairs themselves vary in height, from 7 inches to nearly 13. The ceiling above the stairs wiggles and waggles, some places 10 feet high and then in one place only 6 (a real head-banger!). Only one thing is consistent the whole height of the stairwell: it is only about 4 feet wide.

You can understand, then, how daunting of a task it was to get this bookshelf up the five flights of stairs to the apartment. The maneuvers could be described thus:

- flip the shelf on it's side
- hip-check the door
- rotate the bookshelf 45˚ on the z axis between two doorways while standing in a shower (why do we have a shower at the bottom of our stairwell, anyway?)
- wiggle the bookshelf back out of the shower and around the corner
- grunt and groan around the y axis while ascending a 46 degree incline
- lower the bookshelf onto it's face while slowly rotating it around a corner
- ease it back onto its side while continuing rotation
- lift bookshelf above heads to clear neighbor's table sitting in the middle of the stairway.
- rotate bookshelf 90 degrees while flipping it onto its face and lowering it to a horizontal elevation
- wedge it hopelessly into a corner
- After consultation with the females, we decide to lower the bookshelf to a vertical position (or as close as we can get it) and try to lift it straight up the middle of the stairwell, as if it were some kind of elevator shaft.
- Wife voices concern about the paint getting scraped off of the wall.
- I do my best impression of Hercules while my friend lets go of the bottom of the shelf and scrambles to the steps above me.
- We take off some more paint
- At last we are able to lift the bookshelf out of the abyss, flip it on it's back, rotate it 90˚, flip it onto it's side, hip check another door, rotate it 45˚ to diagonal, wiggle it through a doorway in minute increments, turn it another 90˚, slide it around the corner, trip over the pile of books that will eventually go on the shelf, and VIOLA! All done. Nothing to it.

That was the start of the day… part 2 to follow

We're Here!

After 29 hours of travel, we arrived safely "chez nous." It was a very boring trip on the whole, which is exactly how we like it. Here is a brief overview:

8:00 shuttle to the airport
8:30 Got our tickets from a rather helter-skelter agent at the airport and watched our bags being dumped on the conveyor to baggageland.
8:45 Stopped in security because my wife was trying to sneak out of the country with one of those gel-filled wrist support things in her hand luggage. For shame!
9:00 Found our gate, then went to find my cousin's fiancée. She works in one of the vendor booths at the airport. It was a slow morning so we managed to monopolize most of an hour.
12:00 boarded the plane to stop #1
2:40 Landed at stop #1
3:00 found our next gate, then walked from one end of the terminal to the other and back again in search of a sandwich that cost less than $7. Finally found Subway, which was faithfully selling $5 Footlongs. Hurray!
4:40 Just settling into our seats on the next flight when we heard an announcement that something on the plane broke and they were calling mechanics to fix it.
6:30ish finally underway.
1:15 AM 2 movies and a couple hours of restless sleep later, we landed at stop #2
1:30 got through security more quickly because this time my wife put her deadly and volatile wrist support in a separate tray
6:00 after a slight delay, we boarded our last flight
11:00 Landed at our destination
11:30 got through security
12:30 finally completed the visa process and retrieved our luggage
12:45 colleague drove us to our apartment
And so, after 29 hours of travel, we arrived. We had supper, unpacked most of our bags, sent a quick email, and finally went to bed at about 5:00 (10 PM local time).

When we woke up, the fun began...

Moon of Honey

That's right! I'm only about 4 months behind on my life. So here, mostly in pictures, is our honeymoon:

Our cozy little cottage on the hill:

What a view!

The lowest of the Dolgoch Falls:

Footpath above the falls:

Treeline on Penygader:

The Valley below Penygader:

From the summit of Cadair Idris, highest peak of Penygader:

Sunset over Penygader:

Lake below Penygader:

Castel y Bere, the ruins of a Welsh castle:

Hills around Castel y Bere:

Caernarfon Castle:

Looking across the battlements:

Conwy castle and city walls in a torrential downpour:

Ruins of a Roman hill fort, now a sheep pasture!

Mount Snowdon, covered in clouds.

Valley behind Mount Snowdon:

Welsh Ruins at the foot of Mount Snowdon:

Shakespeare's birthplace: