Cynthia – Page 10 – The Bald Heretic – Short, bald dude with a goofy beard

It was 50 years ago today

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CYNTHIA!
You may be vintage, but you’re a classic and you’re still in mint condition!

Fun Facts For 1957

A postage stamp was 3 cents

The average cost of a new car in 1957 was $2,100

Gas cost only 28 cents a gallon

Average price of a new home was $19,000

A family’s average annual income was $5,000

The Wham-O Company produced the first Frisbee

American Bandstand began it’s 30 year syndicated run

Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated for his second term as President of the United States

IBM sold the first compiler for the FORTRAN scientific programming language

Major John Glenn flew an F8U supersonic jet from California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds setting a new transcontinental speed record.

The Soviet Union launched Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth.

The laser was invented by Gordon Gould.

First flight of the Boeing 707 airliner

Rugby World Cup

I don’t know if it’s a big deal in the US right now or not, but the Rugby World Cup has been VERY big news over here. Right now we’re in the hotel room and watching the final between England and South Africa.

Keep in mind that Cynthia and I have never watched a rugby game in our lives and the rules elude us almost completely.

As of now, I am trying to sort things out watching a game I don’t understand being described in a language I don’t speak.

Cynthia’s getting bits and pieces, but basically we’re just figuring it out on the fly…which, due to our current travel fatigue, is amusing us to no end.

If you were listening in right now you would hear things like:

“What’s the deal with the green hood-headed guy?”
“Ooooo! He looks like he’s getting squished ow ow ow!!”
“They’re just kicking it back and forth”
“The referee has knee socks to match his spiffly blue shorts”

Cynthia’s rooting for South Africa. I have thrown my lot in with England.

Windblown Cynthia

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Warning

Cynthia quote:

“The irony is that you are standing there taking a picture of a sign that says it’s dangerous to be standing there”.

TeleMadrid

In our downtime we’ve been checking out Spanish TV.
The only option in English is a European version of CNN which covers a LOT of information about the global market (yawn) …

There’s one station that has taken very odd American shows and dubbed them into German … ???

Cynthia’s currently hooked on a TeleMadrid show called Metro a Metro, a game show that uses the Madrid Metro as the the playing board and the contestants advance by answering questions about the City.

Cynthia shouts out answers in Spanish and has been getting some of them correct, including one about the Metro itself.

It’s rather surreal…

Segovia

Today was our first “day trip” during our vacation.

Segovia is located about 50 miles northwest of Madrid and makes it an ideal one day visit as it only takes about an hour to get there by bus.

I was particularly interested in Segovia because I wanted to see the Roman aqueduct that still stands there.

To get to the bus station we had to take the Metro, the underground subway system in Madrid. No big deal, right? WRONG!

I don’t think I fully appreciated Cynthia’s fear of the underground until today. I knew she was not fond of the subway from our trip to Paris but I learned the hard way that Cynthia’s literally terrified of being underground. She’s got no problem being up on a rickety ladder hanging a quilt or whatever, but get her in a subway station and she can get rather freaked out.

To get to the bus station we would have to catch the subway train to the Principe Pio stop which entailed one transfer. It was quite a journey with poor Cynthia nearly hyperventilating the whole way.

Once we reached Principe Pio she was fine. The fresh air reinvigorated her and we headed over to the bus station, bought our tickets and boarded the bus to Segovia.

We were laughing and having a good time when all of a sudden the bus entered a tunnel. It was quite a long tunnel and again Cynthia was a bit freaked out.

We cleared the tunnel and before long we were pulling into the bus station in Segovia.

The weather was threatening to rain all day. Menacing clouds gathered above the mountain tops and the day bounced back and forth from cloudy to sunny. I think this made for an interesting day of photography.

Right as you walk into the city center you see this wonderful old church

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If you look in the upper right-hand corner you can see the cathedral in the background

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All very nice, but the main attraction IS the aqueduct

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So exciting that even William the Sheep needed to have his picture taken in front of it

We checked it out and then walked on to have a closer look at the cathedral. It’s more Gothic than you can imagine!

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From there it was on to the Alcazar

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We opted not to pay the entry fee to take the tours and just enjoyed the spectacular weather and scenic views

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After that, we headed back to our hotel in Madrid. Cynthia did much better in the tunnel and on the subway. I think that now that she understands it a bit better we’ll have less trouble. This is good since we have to utilize it for two more day trips from Madrid alone…

Ojo Rojo

I’m officially on vacation. We don’t fly out till Thursday, but it has begun. We felt it would be good to take a day before we left and tie up some loose ends so that’s what tomorrow is for.

We are in the final countdown and running through the go/no go sequence for launch before our flight on Thursday and we hit a minor snag.

Cynthia had noticed her eye turning very red Sunday evening. I assumed it to be a subconjunctival hemorrhage and probably not anything to worry about. Cynthia was not so sure.

On Monday it got a little worse and when we woke up this morning Cynthia informed me that it had gotten much worse and began to panic a bit. It was decided that she would go to the eye doctor as soon as his office opened and she would let him have a look.

I endeavored to stay positive and upbeat. Still, if there was a serious medical problem it would obviously put the trip we have been planning for the last 6 months in jeopardy.

I was sticking with my amateur diagnosis as Cynthia pursued the advice of someone who actually studied medicine. There was a tense moment when she called and said “I have good news and I have bad news.” I asked for the bad news and she told me that as bad as it looked now, it was going to look a lot worse over the next few weeks.

I asked for the good news and she confirmed that it was a subconjunctival hemorrhage and her doctor had said it wasn’t serious and that she should not worry and that she would be fine to travel.

Yay! Cynthia’s going to be ok!
Yay! The trip is still on!

The eye really doesn’t look that bad. She has to hold the eyelid open before you can really see the problem. The doctor says it’s normal for these things to grow as the eye heals so it may well spread over a larger part of the eye and become more noticeable.

On the plus side, Cynthia’s not in any pain and it’s not affecting her vision. She is worried it will show up in th the holiday photos. Several people, including my boss and Cynthia’s doctor, tried to reassure us by suggesting some photoshopping to clean up our vacation photos if what we are now affectionately calling Cynthia’s Eye Bubo showed up in any of them.

On a side note, spare yourself the squirmy discomfort of performing a Google image search on the term “subconjunctival hemorrhage” as the results are rather distressing.

Head In The Clouds

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Cynthia seems to have her head in the clouds as she admires a painting by David Bodart on display at the M2 Gallery in the Heights.