I was traveling away from home when the attacks took place in Mumbai. It took a minute for me to realize that I had been very close to one of the sites. Here is a picture of the Taj Hotel I took from a Ferry by India Gate.

Small world.

Why am I not surprised that there is a sausage parade in my home state?

If you think life seems too hard think about someone like Roz Savage who is attempting a three stage row across the Pacific Ocean. No matter how big your TODO list is it can’t be that big. I had to laugh when I read her entry entitled “If it was easy, everyone would be doing it“.

Brugge, originally uploaded by timbu.

I spent last week in Brussels. While most of my week was spent working, with very little oppourtunity for tourism other than checking out local restaurants, I spent Saturday in the picturesque town of Brugge.

I haven’t been to Europe since I was five. My memories of Germany are vague at best. Walking around the Netherlands & Belgium brought a lot of memories back. The architecture, the cobblestones, the windy streets all seemed more familiar than they should have.

The strongest & strangest memory was the tangible sense of fear that I must have felt as a child about falling off the steps leading up to the trail and getting stuck between the platform and the train. Every time I boarded or exited a train, I had the sense of doing the same thing as a small child. I’ll check with mom and see if there is a reason for this “memory.”

Just got back from San Francisco. The highlight of the trip was a bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge. The picture above was taken in the famous City Lights bookstore. This is the same bookstore that published “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg which landed the owners in court on obscenity charges. The bookstore had an amazing selection of books, particularly in the poetry section.

Inside City Lights Bookstore, originally uploaded by timbu.

Winter Carnival Fireworks (-10 deg), originally uploaded by timbu.

I accidentally caught the end of the winter carnival fireworks. As luck would have it I had a guest from India with me. He may have seen better firework shows, but never colder!

Roo, originally uploaded by timbu.

I spent the first half of the month down under. I’m finally back and nearly dug out from being absent from life for almost two weeks.

I went to the Wargo Nature center with my son and his friends recently to learn about how to tap maple trees and make maple syrup. It didn’t take long before I was back in third grade, remembering when I did the same thing on a school trip. The third grade field trip I remember featured thick gooey mud on the trail to walk out to the trees. It was so thick I ended up having the mud pull my boot right off my foot and stepping right into some very thick mud in my socks – twice. Thinking about those old rubber boots with felt liners and Julie’s post about “the in between” made me think about how and why this time of year used to be my favorite.

I lived in Richland Center, Wisconsin from kindergarten through third grade. The streets had quite a high crown and very deep gutters. When spring came we would get these fantastic overhangs of snow and ice from the edge of the street extending into the street a few feet. By March there would be water running underneath these ice ledges. Every day after school we would wander around town jumping up and down on these ice shelves and in the process damming up the streets with water that could no longer run to the storm sewer. I would come home soaking wet, head to foot but full of sheer joy that can only come from jumping in puddles and damming up the streets.

Last weekend I kept a sharp lookout for street ice shelves like that but couldn’t find any proper ones to jump on.

Mothman, in case you have forgotten, was spotted in Point Pleasant, West Virginia.

I, of course, froze up and forgot this bit of trivia when I was asked in public (ironically by the person who took the photo below).

2004 Ohio and West Virginia, originally uploaded by amykjensen.