This evening I am planning to actually get to Utrecht. I blew it off last night, as I found the souvenirs I was looking for in the local City Plaza.

Here are a few pictures and a video from the last day or so.

I did a little research to figure out what sort of sight-seeing I can fit in the Glockenspiel Museum (actually Speelklok Museum) and the American Pilgrim Museum (Leiden) are both open at times I can get to them. I might be able to see a little bit of Amsterdam too. My students suggested a place in The Hague that has a cool huge model of all of the Netherlands. That one is a maybe. There is a 20 mile long dike that looks like it would be interesting to drive over, but it's out of the way.

I'm off to Utrecht! More tomorrow!

Today, I have a very slow internet connection (5kb/s)... patience is its own reward?

The class I am teaching is having no major technical difficulties, and is going quite quickly. Unfortunately, the forecast for Friday is heavy rain, so the sight-seeing will be damp (or at least, indoors).

Last night, I had service at a restaurant so slow that I paid for my water and walked out. Oh well, it looked like a nice place.

I bought some sweet looking pastry in a grocery store, but they didn't suit my taste. Sweet yes, but even Little Debbie makes better stuff.

BTW, there are some tall men here, but I think the thing that makes me think the people here are tall is that there are quite a few women taller than 6'0". The men aren't especially gigantic compared to the US (but compared to Egypt, yes), but the women are. How can that  be? I wonder if hormones in the food and water in the US leads to early termination of growth in our women?

Tonight I will try to go to Utrecht to walk around. Maybe I'll get to the Glockenspeil Museum.

Here is a picture from Saturn.

Saturn's rings are getting more nearly edge-on to the Sun, which is revealing some interesting features.
This picture shows the shadow of one of the moons but it also shows a few little snarls in the outer rings.

The next six weeks will be very interesting for those entertained by Saturn's rings.

Here are a few more pictures.

 - I got up this morning feeling pretty good. The students are all sharp, and things are going very well... The classroom is a little on the warm side. The alternative is that it would be quite chilly.

 - I need to remember that in Dutch, the letter g is pronounced like a loud h (at least sometimes).

 - Tonight, I think I will make it down to the pool for a little while. I realize that I've been letting things slide a little bit lately.

 - The people here are taller than in the US.

Today is shalmestere 's birthday! Yay! Tomorrow is some big French Holiday.

I may have miraculously adjusted to the time change in one day. I've been using my sleep everywhere and anytime policy, in which I simply sleep often enough (on the plane, and in the hotel) in the first day that Whenever I decide to start my actual day I am not underslept.

Congrats to Josh Becket who got is 100th win in grand style.

Here are a few pictures, including the one to the right here of a strange type of evergreen.

The trip was mostly uneventful.

The Netherlands is a small country. Maybe it's about the size of Delaware. I'll have to consult an atlas. It was a lot of ancient windmills and modern wind turbines.

It has many open fields with sheep and cows, but it's bereft of parking spaces.

I'm going to sleep now.

I'm at Terminal A's lucky Gate 13! It looks like I'll be departing on time (5PM) It'll be a little tough to sleep on the plane, as it would be like taking an evening nap, but it will be morning when I arrive, and I can't check into the hotel until much later in the day, so the pressure to get some sleep is high... I'm not really a responder to pressure.

Still, the weather looks great, and I've got my maps all printed out for tomorrow's tour.

I'll be back late next Saturday morning. The new schedule has me working at home the week after that.

I'm hanging out alone (no one else is awake this morning), getting ready for my trip to Utrecht. I'm going to leave the house at about 1PM, and stop by the office to print out a few things, including some maps. My flight leaves at 5PM and goes straight to Amsterdam (actually the airport is a bit South and West from Amsterdam, but close enough.

I'll be renting a car, and driving South to Leiden, where I will walk passed the closed-on-Sunday American Pilgrims Museum right behind Hooglandskerk (an old church). Also in Leiden is some stuff about Leeuenhoek (the microscope guy).

After that, I think I'll drive to the Hague, and then on to Utrecht. My hotel is in a City a little South of Utrecht called Nieuwegein (which I assume means "New Wagon").

I had thought to try going to Belgium and Luxembourg just to say I'd been there, but looking at the map, I'll only do that if I'm really strapped for something to do. It looks like it is quite a drive to Ghent... and besides, as a non-beer-drinker, what does Belgium really have to offer me that the Netherlands doesn't (assuming I don't have time to do justice to any museum)?

So, that's the plan. I wonder if there are any improv clubs in Utrecht.

Side note: today is my estranged sister's 47th Birthday.

I drove into Cambridge to hang out with PGraph this morning. More pictures here.

Note also that they tour blog indicates that before I left them (while we were in Tosci's) they spotted a Boston Babydolls poster. I didn't know about this. I could have pointed them to Alex and Abby.

During the morning & lunch we talked about a lot of things, including showmanship, Commedia, and things that our troupes have in common, and as differences.

We also stopped in a shop named Kofuku in Harvard Square. A good time was had by all.

I saw PGraph perform their Screwball Comedy show at ImprovBoston last night with a few members of i Sebastiani, and munchor , Jess, and their friends Eric and Whatsername. Pictured to the right are Val of PGraph fame and Mike Bergman of i Sebastiani.

Here are some more pictures (two detail pages on flickr) from Yesterday, though I caught the theater more than the show.

PGraph was great, though I'm thinking they were a little tired from travel, and their recent participation in a 40 hour Improv Marathon in Austin. Fortunately the people I told to come becuase PGraph is great couldn't make such a comparison, and saw a great show (in which a much sought-after single doctor falls in love with a librarian (Much Ado style)). BTW, the show was *well* attended for a Thursday night show. I wish I knew how IB got the word out.

I'm going to spend a little time with them later this morning as they see the sights in Boston. Maybe we'll see the tall ships. Tonight they perform in Providence in a darker show called "Villainy". I'd like to see it, but I need to get ready for my travel to the Netherlands tomorrow.

In other news:
- I'll probably be in St. Louis the week after I'm in the Netherlands. Christian will take over directing the Pennsic shows while I'm away.
- Blue sky and Sunshine this morning! Yay!

Last night, Tim Wakefield won again. This was his 175th career win as a Red Sox member (17 behind Cy Young and Roger Clemens). He had one walk. His next walk will be his 1000th as a Red Sox member (he already leads this category), likewise too more wild pitches will get him up to 100. Once again, he did not hit anyone, so this stat has been sitting unmoved for a couple months.

In other news:
- I'm going to see PGraph do the Screwball Comedy improvised play at ImprovBoston tonight. Will I by a $50 merch T-Shirt? Maybe. $50 is pretty steep, but I do love these guys. I bought the ticket online here. $10.00 + $1.50 fee for the electronic convenience.
- The Sun is out, and the boardroom is giving me a lovely view of scores of sailboats on the Back Bay below the Boston Skyline and Beacon Hill.
- I got my annual review today. It was quite favorable. Yay! Also, I am not going to be busy the week between the Netherlands and Pennsic, but I will be flat out for the rest of August and September. I don't know where yet, though Wilkes-Barre seems like it will account for one week.
- Our receptionist has a figure like Scarlett Johansson and dresses the part. I take it as a personal challenge to not be distracted by her. Sometimes I worry that it makes me seem unnaturally stand-offish.

Here are a few images from yesterday.

Last night, we had a practice largely for the ICOD show for Pennsic, with a few substitutes. Generally I think that the main crew are doing very well with the show, but there was a lot of low-energy last night. Next week Christian will be running the practice because I'll be out of town for the week.

Fritz tried out a new vocalization bit that was hilarious. Hopefully he doesn't go so far with it as to become incomprehensible.

Piper needs to get louder, but she was doing well with coming up with zapping one-liners. I think we'll have to run through the bits where Anne and Bess are on stage together so that Bess can find a groove for her role.

There was some discussion about which play to perform in later August (after Pennsic). I was very pleased to hear Mollie say that she liked the ICOD show a lot. I like it too, but I wrote it, and can never escape my own personal bias.

In the end, we wrapped it up early on account of tiredness.

In other news:
 - Happy Birthday munchor ! We'll see you tomorrow night.
 - ImprovBoston tomorrow night! Don't miss it!
 - Restoring your collection of images from flickr is a tedious process. I had deleted all of my India pictures from my hard disk, and realized I wanted them back. It took about seven hours of high-attention tedium.
 - We're confronting Josiah about his lack of care about telling the truth (except for everyone else in the world).

Here are a few pictures (and short video) from the last day or so. I was buoyed by the three days of Sunshine. There's a little black spot on the Sun today, but I haven't been able to see it on account of the clouds and rain.

I've been getting work done, but I also made a trip to IKEA to pick up some bookcase stuff, and also a laundry basket to replace the one I destroyed a couple nights ago when I tripped on a suitcase that had been left in the path to the bathroom, and fell into something destructible that broke my fall (same principle as the styrofoam in your bike helmet - it protects you once, then toss it out. Anyway, for the first time in my adult life, I think I have more bookshelf space than books. It's a nice feeling.

Piper did some of the assembly of the shelves. I think that getting more storage furniture for her room might be the next priority for this kind of thing. It's important to have more places to put things than you have things. She's not there yet.

Tomorrow is munchor 's birthday via the Gregorian Calendar. Help him celebrate if you can.

Thursday I'm going to ImrpovBoston with as many people as I can to see Parallelogramaphonograph perform an improvised Screwball Comedy (genre piece). They are great. Don't miss it.

Hmmm. I think I need to replace my Camelot avatar. The current one (Cleese and Chapman) kind of reflected the mythical nature of the place prior to move-in.

I picked this up from Phil Plait (The Bad Astronomer) in Discover Magazine.

I'm at work, doing some prep for my trip to Utrecht, and absorbing some material about the new version of the product. It was nice having sunshine... I wonder when we'll get it again.

Denise is picking up a new car today. When will this wild spending spree end? I'm thinking today.

The pool at Camelot is operational. We have a few things to work out as far as the rules go, but it is definitely a nice pool, which has so far been kept at a nice temperature.

Today is a back to work day after a long weekend. I'll be going in to the office on Tue, Wed, & Thurs.

Here are a few more recent pictures.

Here are a few more pictures (and a couple of videos) from the last day or so. (Pictured above is a seagull above the wake of the ferry). I'm currently recharging the camera battery. Speaking of which, I got a tiny amount of salt spray on the outside shutter for the lens, and now the camera is a little lazy about opening the shutter. Hopefully a wipe-down is all it will take.

Last night we all went to a Dairy Queen in Edgartown (not many off-island chains are allowed), where the kids had soft-serve ice cream dipped into some kind of liquid waxy candy. I had an ice-cream equivalent to Banana Cream Pie, which was good, but too big.

There is a buzz on the Island about the Obama's coming for a couple weeks in August. They will stay somewhere on East Chop, where some of the bike-riding pictures were taken. Nice place.

The traffic from Woods Hole and the Cape on a beautiful blue-sky early afternoon was light. The traffic going the other way looked unpleasant.

I'm on the ferry from Oak Bluffs to Woods Hole. We'll be back in Camelot in a few hours. The weather is glorious. I left a Cosmic Wimpout game at the cottage for future visitors.

So the Sun came out, and we went to the Reed's Point beach in the morning, and then suffered the Edgartown traffic to get to Katama (South Beach) for the early afternoon. It was misty at first, but the Sun came out there too.

Josiah had indicated that he wanted to stay home and play gameboy, but when we finally crossed the wide beach, and he saw (heard | felt) the surf, he was excited. It was great. Piper liked it too. I got into the water and played in the surf as well (no shots of that because I was behind the camera when it was not being kept safe way up the beach from the spray.

I did a little work-work this morning, before discovering that it was a work holiday for me today. Oh well. It's been a great day! We head back to Camelot tomorrow.

Here is a link to more pictures and a couple videos.

I'm in the Oak Bluffs Library doing work.... except I just figured out that today is an official work holiday. I wonder if I can unsend those emails and resend them on Monday ;).

The weather looks a bit more promising today, so I'll get out and around a little bit. The kids are at the beach, so maybe I'll bike-ride without them.

In other news:

- I've been talking to my mother about what to do with the cottage.