It’s all “Dutch” to me…

I’m using the B&B landlord’s PC. I managed to hook up the iPod successfully (even with Dutch instructions).
The plane ride was uneventful. When we arrived in Amsterdam we found out George Bush would be visiting. There were some protests. Getting “Stop Bush” fliers handed to us by the local dissidents was a hoot.

Cynthia and I hooked up with my friend Carl and his lovely lady Suzanne. We did some sight-seeing by foot on day 1 and managed to stay awake the whole day before crashing around 7:00 pm. That meant we were awake better than 24 hours and allowed us to (mostly) overcome jet lag.

The next day we went to the Van Gogh museum. Very nice. That evening was spent with Carl and Suzanne at their place. We had a lovely dinner and if I hadn’t been overcome by a hefty sinus headache we would have been up all night engaged in wonderful discussion. As it was, the evening was still mighty fine.

Today was spent taking the train to Liden and on to the Keukenhoff to check out the Tulip festival. It was spectacular!

Tomorrow is on the Bruges Belgium for chocolate and beer. I’ll update as I can.

Word of the day

During the course of writing my column I had to do a little research.
During this research I discovered that there is a word used to describe the practice of joining two words together in order to form a new word.

The word is “portmanteau”.

I had only heard the word used to describe a small travelling case. As it turns out, Lewis Carroll likened a word such as slithy ( a combination of lithe and slimy) to a small travelling case or ‘portmanteau’ in his book Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.

I like portmanteaus.
I make them up all the time.
I just never knew there was a word for it.

One of my all time favorite portmanteaus was created many years ago by Greg Henkel, my friend and fiddle player in the Flying Fish Sailors. His portmanteau was “extravabonanza”, a combination of the word extravaganza and ‘bonanza’.

Stephen Hawking, Ray Romano, The Simpsons and analogies

Commencing countdown, engines on.

If my impending trip to Europe were to be compared to a black hole you might say I have reached the event horizon. Time is slowing down as I am pulled into a singularity that is my vacation…

The next few days stretch out before me in what seems to be an eternity.

It’s an odd feeling. Matter is energy and I am vibrating at a whole new frequency. Soon I will be invisible to the naked eye of employment (if only for a short time). Who knows what wonders await on the other side?

I guess I do since I have been planning for so long now.

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