Sunday, July 8

I'll Be Back

And so I return to the low lands after frolicking in the hills of Austria. But counter to what you may think, I have very little to say right now, if only because I wish to say it all first to my husband as I recount to him the adventures of my weekend alone.

Well, my weekend alone, with a girlfriend.


I will give you one hint though: Glorious.


And I will tell you, dear friends and readers, and readers who are my friends, I missed you. I actually had a hankering, an actual craving to get at a keyboard to blog. Yes, I recognize that makes me an addict indeed.

But if I am, then certainly so are you.
You came back to check on me while I was away, admit it.

My desire to blog or to at least check in on my commenters was quickly dampened when I realized that the only computer available to me for a good portion of the weekend was *gasp* a dial up connection. (Anno, my deepest sympathies are yours.) But beyond that the computer was outfitted--and rightly so, since I was in Austria-- with a GERMAN keyboard. Should you think that is not a challenge in and of itself, I direct you to this passage from an email I tried to send to Jennifer over the weekend. I just wanted to ask her a simple question and put a simple question mark behind the sentence and yet it took positively FOREVER to find the key with the correct symbol. And from there it just went completely downhill. Look, I will show you.

"okay, see? that took me like 2 minutes to find the dang question mark on this keyboard. Also I have to go back and fix every y since the z is in it´s place... and where there should be the apostrophe is this: Ä... and don´t even ask how long it took to find that colon!)"


I also sent an email to my sister in which I gave up on the backspace key almost entirely. With the z/y misunderstanding fiasco problem thing tripping me up I decided to type uninterrupted and uncorrected. As a result, most of the email looked something like this:

"...zou should reallz scope that out and see. Well, onlz if zou want to.
okaz, I alreadz miss zou. Where are zou going for familz trip? I love zou Mindo, more than I can saz.
hehe. that all looks funny with z´s where y´s should be.
(it took me a long time to type that last sentence)
Love,
jenn "

After that, I didn't send any more emails.

But I took photographs--lots of them, I sampled Austrian cuisine, I learned some German words.
And I--dare I admit it here? I relaxed.

Amongst the smattering of Austrians I met this weekend, the first response upon learning that I was an American was a decided 'cool', spoken in English and accompanied by a thumbs up gesture. Venturing further into conversation the second--mentioned with a mischievous grin--was 'Don't you agree that Arnold Schwarzenegger would make a very good American president? He's Austrian you know'

That there must be what they refer to as National Pride.

12 comments:

  1. What? Me? Miss you? Pshawwww.

    Okay, fine. Busted. I did miss you. Heck, (there it is! The proverbial Utahn "heck")I even BLOGGED about you. And then you were gone. Sniff.

    Glad you're back. I give you... um... five minutes to talk to your hubby and get back to me. Kay?

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  2. What me miss you? And an addict? I concur with Ms. Brillig - Pshawwww.

    Not to dampen the Austrian pride but I sure am glad Arnold cannot be president. That pesky constitution won't allow it.

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  3. It's about time! How dare you disappear like that??
    And typos are the great thing about writing e-mails anyway... Italian keyboards are loopy, too.
    Glad you liked Austria- I wasn't too crazy about it when I went there. All that schnizel (sp?) and suaerkraut...

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  4. The week hasn't been the same without you. So glad to see you back! Count me as another impatiently addicted reader waiting for your next post...

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  5. I'm totally an addict! I'm going away for a week in August to a place with no internet connection available. Sigh. I'm glad you had a good time. Mom's weekends away are so important. Then again so are dad's weekends away.

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  6. Yay, you're back! I hope you'll share some of your pictures.

    I missed you!

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  7. I like Buck's "signature". Don't we all love Jenn?

    I'm taping my fingers....

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  8. 'Kay, Jenn. Time's up...

    :-)

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  9. brillig-
    You know, I only point out your addiction to make my own appear less startling...

    SMID-
    Uh, yeah... how 'bout NO on Arnie for Pres. Good thing those who mentioned it were joking. They were joking right?

    jennifer-
    um. I do believe someone recently went AWOL around here with some lame excuse like "moving across the ocean"?
    I skipped anything on a menu with that word "kraut" in it. Nope, not for me...

    anno-
    I am glad the admiration and missing appear to be mutual. It would be embarrassing if I was pining for a community which did not notice my absence!

    ae-
    I knew I was in good company!

    buck-
    jenn adores you! Photos coming soon.

    SMID2-
    hehe. Patience darling, I am working on it. Also working on laundry which isn't nearly as much fun.

    brillig2-
    Sheesh. All this pressure and anticipation. Sure hope I don't disappoint.

    (thanks for coming to check on me again, again.)
    You too SMID! Gosh, I got me some great friends.

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  10. Well, I commented on your latest post earlier but just now got around to this one. All right - I'll admit to missing you just a little, even though I'm too late to get in on the "great friends" comment. So, where are the pictures? There's been plenty of time to at least post pictures while you were telling other folks in person about the trip.

    SMID - constitutions can be changed ... sometimes without any input from the people that are supposed to vote on such things. Just ask George Duhbya.

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  11. darling dear friend jami-
    consider yourself among the good ones.

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  12. A weekend away...In Austria no less....sounds utterly DIVINE!

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