Somusing

Salt Lake City's freeways are liberally adorned with billboards to try to distract eyes from the road at all times. Ok, fair enough. But in recent years the percentage of them devoted to liposuction and other plastic surgery has grown rapidly. Now it seems to be something like a quarter or a third of them.

Maybe they're just the most annoying to me and therefore the ones I most often notice. In any case, this is my least favorite of all:

It's totally unattractive, from the lame verbiage to the ugly photo and hideous "graphic design," it's the supreme loser, all right.

And here I am making more people look at it! Sorry.

Last Friday, we woke up to a hot air balloon coming our way:

We often see them in the sky north of us, but they almost never come south. This one went almost directly over our house and then, to avoid power lines, went west and landed in a small park down the road.

The kids and I drove the half mile or so to watch them take it down, and I learned a little about flying hot air balloons from one of the ground crew. (Now that must be a pretty boring job--following a hot air balloon in a van and trying to figure out where it's going to land.) Did you know there's no steering? Just up and down. Wind currents change direction at different elevations, so they steer by going up or down and seeing where the wind takes them. Interesting. And kind of scary. (Maybe they have a way of knowing which direction the wind is going. I don't know.)

That was our morning adventure. Friday's nighttime adventure was attending a star party at Craters of the Moon National Monument. Viewing conditions were perfect--no moon and no clouds, and it's far enough away from major cities that there's very little light pollution. A bunch of amateur astronomers brought their telescopes and let everyone look through them. We saw Jupiter and her moons (are planets she?), a ring Nebula, Andromeda, a few twin stars, like Polaris and the Cub Scout star, so named because one's yellow and one's blue (I didn't know there were twin stars that orbit around each other), and some other stuff. It was also cool just to sit back and look up. Beautiful.

The next morning, we explored Craters of the Moon for a while. It's a pretty weird place, full of only recently solidified volcanic rock. (Not recent like last week, but recent compared to the rest of the earth. Of course, Hawaii's volcanoes are even younger and some are still erupting, and Craters of the Moon certainly can't beat that. But driving a few hours and seeing volcanic stuff is a pretty good deal.)

Also, there were caves. This one was tiny (the picture was taken from the entrance) and it looked like a stone tent from the outside:

But other caves were pretty huge inside, and we could get far enough away from the entrance that we couldn't see any light from outside. I find caves slightly terrifying, but Jon talked me into going into every one of them, even though I wasn't wearing the best cave-exploring foot apparel:

We had three adults and eight kids, the youngest two of which were four years old, and everyone did great. (I think I was the biggest baby, and I just kept my mouth shut most of the time. No need to frighten the young people by thinking out loud.) Jon would be so much more adventurous without me.

I realize that it's starting to look like Jon is out traveling the world! and hiking! and living life! While I just sit at home and read and watch online TV. But really, I get out, too.

Behold one of the practice organs at BYU in Provo. Yes, it's a whole pipe organ inside a tiny room, just for practicing. There are many of these in the bowels of the HFAC (Harris Fine Arts Center), each sequestered in its own room, along with other practice rooms that merely contain pianos. (Bor-ing!) I used to practice on these organs when I took private organ instruction as a freshman and sophomore at BYU. My teacher was Douglas Bush, who is a world-renowned organist. I did not appreciate this at the time. Isn't there a saying about something wasted on youth? (It's late and my brain is shutting down. Also, I'm old and can't remember what is wasted on those ungrateful youth.)

(By the way, the HFAC is named after Jon's great-grandfather, Franklin S. Harris, who was a president of BYU. In fact, there's a picture of Franklin S. Harris hanging in one of the halls of the Super 8 in which I'm staying, a Super 8 where the decor is dedicated to BYU memorabilia. Otherwise it would be pretty weird to find a framed photo of Jon's great-grandfather adorning the halls of a Super 8.)

This week I'm attending BYU's Organ Workshop, where a bunch of organists get together and pretend like playing the organ is normal and that other people care as much about the organ as we do. It's wonderful, and I love it. It makes me want to go back to school and try again. Maybe twenty years later, I'd be more dedicated and studious. Anyway, it's a fantastic four-day workshop with classes and concerts and an inspiring hymn sing. Tomorrow we're going up to Salt Lake for a demonstration of the huge pipe organ at the LDS Conference Center, a recital on temple square, and a Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearsal. Last year at this same workshop, participants were allowed to play for a few minutes on one of the temple square organs (Conference Center, Assembly Hall and Tabernacle). I got to play the organ in the tabernacle, an unforgettable experience.

Yesterday I hiked Table Mountain, in front of the Grand Teton, with Scoutmaster George Bates, our sons Jacob, Phin, and other boys from their Boy Scout troop. Here we are at the top:

Here Jacob took a picture of me while I was getting a little rest but trying not to fall off:

Today was Battle of the Tetons back at Treasure Mountain Scout Camp, where boys tried to sink each other's canoes:

Our troop didn't win, but made it to the finals.

On my last post, I forgot to tell you guys about me and Dad going to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, where she was in hiding for a long time. It was really cool! The Secret Annex, their hiding place, was bigger than I thought; I'm surprised that they could actually all fit in there and not be noticed. The stairs were so steep, they were more like ladders! The museum actually had the original diary, too! It was amazing to see all the old rooms and stuff. I actually just finished reading our copy of the diary myself, and it's really interesting. I can't post any pictures of the museum, though, because they didn't let us take any pictures. I did get a picture of Greenland, though, as we were flying over it on our way back to Minneapolis. Here it is:

It's really cool, isn't it? This is my last post, I think, so see you later!

Hey, everybody! On Thursday Morning in Amsterdam, we went around and saw some stuff. Then we had to go and catch our 8 hour long plane ride back to Minneapolis. On that plane flight, we flew over both Greenland and England. Here are a few photos:

One of a canal in Amsterdam. They were really cool; I wish we had had enough time to go on a boat tour.

Amsterdam also had a lot of houses that were leaning over really bad. Check it out!

That's crazy, isn't it? There was also this really weird clock that went counterclockwise and had the numbers spaced all crazy.

When we got to Jackson from Minneapolis, we drove home. Once we got there, I ate dinner, gave everybody their postcards, and then pretty much went to bed. I was pretty tired! I have pretty much gotten over my jet lag now, though. It was really fun in Europe, but I'm still glad to be home. Thanks for comments and stuff. See you all later!

Sorry for not posting for so long. I haven't had access to the Internet for a while.

Yesterday morning we left Berlin to go to Jena. When got to Jena, we found our hotel and then went to church. After that, we went and met Dad’s friend Doreen, that he met on his mission, and her boyfriend Didi, and they took us out to lunch. They were really nice. After that, we walked around Jena and looked at some cool stuff with them. That was really cool, because they have old city walls from the Middle Ages. The way they worked was they had a square city wall, and three gates around it. Most of the walls are mostly missing, but they still have some of the gates and the corners. Here are some pictures:

After that, at about 4:00, we checked into our hotel and Doreen drove us to her brother Henry Gottschald’s house. He is a friend of Dad’s that he knew on his mission, too. We stayed over there and talked for several hours, and then we came back to the hotel. Here is a picture of their family:

Three of their kids were playing, so we don't have a picture with them in it.

It was really cool to go to church and hear everything spoken in German instead of English. Our hotel room is pretty nice. One weird thing, though; you have to put your room key in this scanner thing in the wall for electricity. Here’s a picture:

Weird, huh? Here are a couple of other pictures of our hotel room.

In the morning, we got up and ate breakfast, then went to catch our train to Dresden. It was like 15 minutes late, which was annoying because it made us miss our next train and have to wait for the next one. So, we had about 45 minutes in Leipzig to look around. We went into this really cool church with pink and green decorations in the inside. Here's a picture:

Cool, huh? After we got to Dresden we walked around for the couple of hours we had and saw some cool stuff. There was this really cool palace grounds place called the Zwinger, and that was awesome. We also saw the Frauenkirche, that was burned down in the big bombing of Dresden during World War II, and that was cool too, but we didn't have time to go inside. Here are a couple of pictures of Dresden:

One of just one single part of the Zwinger:

And one of the Frauenkirche. This church was just a pile of rubble when Mom and Dad were her on there missions.

After a couple of hours in Dresden, we got on our train to Prague. On the way to Prague we saw a lot of really cool Czech towns back in the countryside. When we actually got to Prague, we walked around a tiny bit and then went to find our hostel. I got us lost a few times, but we finally got there. We then dumped our bags there and Dad took a nap, 'cause we were both really tired. After that, we walked around a bit and found the Internet for the hostel. Dad wrote some e-mail and talked to some people from Dublin, who recommended doing the free tour of Prague in the morning. So, the next day, we did just that. At 11:00, we went to the Old Town Square and went on the free walking tour they have of Prague. They took us to some pretty cool places. After that, we decided to go on the Castle tour, which was run by the same people but actually cost money. That was really fun too; they took us to some really cool places in the Castle Quarter of the city. Here are a few pictures from those:

This is actually the Old Town Square, where everybody met for the first tour.

This is kinda funny. It's a paper bag dispenser we found in a park for you to pick up your dog's droppings.

One more thing now: We were looking around in some of the little shops around the Old Town Square, and we found a store that had this huge Russian nesting doll that had like 100 separate dolls that all actually fit inside of each other. Here are three pictures of them:

That's crazy, huh? Well, I need to wrap it up, so see you later. Bye!

Today me and Dad didn't wake up until after noon, and we didn't go to LinuxTag at all. Instead, we walked around and saw some stuff. First we went to this cool church. It was bombed in the war, and they made a kind of ugly (from the outside) memorial church that is really cool inside. There is a bunch of blue glass in the walls, and when the sun shines through it, it looks really cool. We went inside both of them. Here are some pictures.

The inside of the new church:

Sorry about the blurry picture. I had to turn the flash off. The inside of the old church:

And the outsides of both of them. The tall one is the old one, and the newer one is short and sqaut.

After that we went to Checkpoint Charlie, and that was really cool too. Here is a picture:

After that, we just walked around for a while. We saw a group of break dancers dancing as a kind of tribute to Michael Jackson, who died yesterday. They were really good, too. At about 6:00, we went out to eat with Davor, and now we're home and I'm writing this blog post. It's pretty late, so I should probably go to bed. :-)

Yesterday me and Andrea went to Schloss Charlottenburg, and it was awesome! We went on a tour through the building, and then walked around in the garden out back. There are a lot of old paintings and stuff in there. Sophie Charlottenburg, who was a queen of Prussia, collected porcelain, so there was a lot of that. After that we went back to the gardens; they were awesome. Here's a link to the Wikipedia page.

Schloss Charlottenburg

There were a bunch of ducks and little birds. Here are a few pictures:

Those ducks were pretty funny-looking. After that, we went home.This morning we went to LinuxTag again, and I got to play Frets on Fire. It’s just like Guitar Hero, but with a lot more songs.

That was pretty fun! Tonight we went to the Linux Nacht (Linux Night), a party. It was pretty fun. They even had a live band there!

After the party we walked around Potsdamer Platz for a while. The buildings over there are all really new. Check it out:

We also saw a memorial thing with info about the Berlin Wall. Sorry for the blurry picture.

We had lots of fun yesterday and today. And Mom, there was a Mindstorms booth, but I didn't see it until right when we were leaving. I'm going to check it out tomorrow and post about it.

Today is the first day at LinuxTag. Yesterday we set up the Interchange booth, after meeting Davor. Here is a picture of the booth from then:

After that we went to the apartment and Dad, Stefan and Davor worked on their Interchange presentation for a while. Here is a picture of them:

At 10:00 or so, we went to eat dinner and didn’t get back until past midnight. I was, obviously, pretty tired and went to bed. Check out these photos from last night!

Now we’re at LinuxTag and I am writing this post. We are sharing our booth with another project, so it’s pretty crowded. There is a booth for Linux Gaming, and it is sweet! There are tons of games for you to try, even a Guitar Hero for Linux. It's called Frets on Fire. It uses a Wiimote guitar from Guitar Hero. They also have a booth for FlightGear Flight Simulator., and they have these huge setups with three giant monitors each and the whole controller deal. I got to fly it, and it was awesome! I even landed, admittedly not on the runway, but It was awesome! Here is a picture of the flight simulator.

Here is a couple of pictures of the Linux Gaming booth.

Now me and Andrea are going to a palace. It's in Charlottenburg. It's going to be sweet!