Tuesday was our last full day in the Big City and we still had a full day’s use of the CityPass to take advantage of so naturally, we were once again up and out early in the day. This time, our destination was a bit outside the city center and was looking like it would take close to an hour to get there: The London Motor Museum.
Continue reading “London 2014: Day Seven & Eight – Cars and Cards”
With the Con basically behind us, we were all set on Monday to start really exploring London and making full use of our CityPass. Of course, in order to do this, we figured we needed an early start so we were up, had breakfast and were on the train by 9:15, heading out to the Tower of London. This seemed the best place to start, to reverse our trip of Thursday. Do the Tower, then the Bridge, then The Globe. Made perfect sense. Continue reading “London 2014: Day Six – There’s popular and then there’s POPULAR!”
When Sunday morning rolled around, we weren’t sure what we were going to do. We had originally intended on spending the day at the Con, but the one main event we wanted to see, George R. R. Martin discussing Game of Thrones, had been cancelled by George the day before (and what a hassle that was to find out – It was listed in the printed program but then Ruta had shown me the Con’s app for making life easier and it was not listed there so we ended up at three different locations and talked to four different people before someone confirmed it had indeed been cancelled). And while there were bits of programming we wanted to see, we also wanted to see more of London (it’s a big place, after all). Continue reading “London 2014: Day Five – Hitching a ride with Hugo”
Thursday started bright and early with breakfast at the hotel, which was kind of weird. Most hotels, if they offer breakfast, it’s usually a continental style, with pastries and coffee. Hostels often offer similar. This place had a kitchen so you could make what you wanted and offered up eggs, bread, cereal and some fruits. So we had scrambled eggs and toast before heading out for our day.
First stop, as planned, was the British Library. There was an exhibition on about British Comic Books until the 19th and since we didn’t know when we’d get another chance, today was our day for it (Monday and Tuesday were already blocked out due to the London Pass – to be explained later). Continue reading “London 2014: Day Two – Walking the walk, talking the talk…”
This trip actually started a few months ago when AAron and family couldn’t make it to LonCon3, the World Science Fiction convention, this year held in London. Since they couldn’t go, but had already gotten memberships, Rasa and I took them over and planned a tourist trip around the con.
Of course, this wasn’t the only way AAron was involved. See, we were flying RyanAir which is notorious for how cut-rate they are. Until very recently, they would only allow one carry on bag, no more than 10kg, and anything else would be charged an exorbitant fee. They’ve since loosened policy a bit, but not much. In any case, we still weren’t checking any bags, but we had the ability to take two onboard. Continue reading “London 2014: Day One – Getting there is half the fun”
A few days back, my friend Monika asked what my weekend plans were and if I wanted to go to Anykščiai, a village of about 12,000 people in the north midwest area of the country. Now, for those playing at home, Monika is a great friend and in the past we’ve done some great road trips like to Tallin and Finland, just to ride the roller coasters (of course, that trip was before I was blogging so no good record of it exists outside of incriminating photographs). Now, though, Monika has a car so there’s a whole new world open to us. Add in the fact that LAST year for my birthday, she gave me a stuffed creature and a book of 100 sites to see in Lithuania in which I had to take pictures of the creature and I was falling behind due to my lack of independent transport. Continue reading “The Stones of Anykščiai”
Remember last October when I filmed a tiny little scene for the ABC series The Assets? The show was supposed to air in January – in fact, my episode was supposed to air the week I got back to the States. Would have been fun to watch it with the family.
Unfortunately, ABC decided to cancel the show during it’s initial run and it wasn’t until this summer that it ended up airing all 8 parts.
But now, rather than put you through that grinding ordeal of having to watch all 8 hours, here’s my scene (I’m the guy with the silly mustache – the other guy is the wonderful stage and screen actor Jonjo O’Neill who has enormous street cred as McGillop on the Doctor Who episode – “The Day of the Doctor“)
On my birthday I got a gift certificate to go and spend a few hours at the Vichy Water Park in Vilnius and yesterday, we decided to go.
Now, for me, water parks are a bit of a double edged sword. About 29 years ago (’85 or so), I was in Salt Lake City and happened to make friends with a guy whose mom ran a scuba shop. Continue reading “Wet and Wild”
Landing back in Helsinki I found my way back to Jennica’s place and we decided to go out for dinner and visit her friend Emma. We’d met Emma on Thursday night when I got in and we’d taken Donna, Jennica’s dog, out to the dog park for her late night business. It’s interesting… in a lot of cities, the dog park has become the best place to socialize. Jennica has met several good friends at hers and my friends Al & Teya do the same down in San Diego (and they don’t even have a dog!). So we met Emma, who’s a chef and evidently the restaurant she works at is pretty good. Also, they were changing the menus on Monday so a Sunday night trip for dinner seemed appropriate. Continue reading “Again with the Zoo”
No Extroverts on Mars, Please.
“Bell said that usually extroverts are good on teams because their tendency to speak up and engage with others makes planning easier. She added that because extroverts are outgoing, they know more about their teammates — their strengths and weaknesses. That helps team coordination.
However, the unique properties of long-haul, confined missions add new elements to that usual dynamic.”
Basically, if you talk to much, in a small space, people are gonna wanna kill you. And since I’ve gotten yelled at for talking to people in an elevator, this may just be the end of my dreams of interstellar travel.
So last week I get a call from a number I don’t recognize. The problem here in the LT with screening calls is that, well, you can’t. There is no answer-phone system easily discernible (which is to say I can’t access it. I think one exists but the instructions are in Lithuanian and besides, I get very few phone calls and the ones I get are usually students and since this was the last week of instruction and studying for finals was about to begin, my initial thought was that the call was from a panicked student wanting to know what chapters in the book were absolutely going to be on the exam because, well, job and no time to actually study. Continue reading “The Audition”
A couple of months back, I was approached by my friend Aiste about helping out at a charity auction. Aiste is a writer and filmmaker. She’s also one of those people who knows absolutely everyone and is involved with all sorts of great causes and events. Through her I’ve had a couple of interesting adventures here in Lithuania so when she asked if I’d like to play auctioneer I naturally said “sure!” The cause this time was the International Women’s Association of Vilnius’ annual Blossom of Hope charity event, this time being done up as a 20s themed gala with a silent auction, a live auction, dinner, and live entertainment in the form of singers and dancers. And somewhere along the line, I went from auctioneer to host and MC. The last couple of years they’d had a Lithuanian and a translator but this year, since a good number of guests would be from various embassies, the organizing committee figured a native speaker would be the way to go and I got drafted. Continue reading “Going once…”
Szeged is located along the southern border of Hungary, just above Romania, and is home to Szeged University, one of the best schools in the nation. I had absolutely no reason to ever go there except to see it. My colleagues at school had spent some time there while attending university and kept telling me how beautiful it was. Continue reading “Szeged”
So after much deliberation and hemming and hawing, I decided spring break would be in Croatia, where I had NOT gone during the winter break. And it would be a part of Croatia I hadn’t seen when I was here in 08. So I was looking at Split and Dubrovnik. I was also looking at going with some fellow Americans, Chris and Laurel, and a Lithuanian, Rolanda, decided to join us as well. Continue reading “Croatia”
The trip to Vienna, like all my trips since I’ve been in Hungary, really started on Thursday night. See, my bus to Austria left from Budapest at 7am which means I needed to be there by 6:45 which means I needed to spend the night in Budapest since there are no trains or anything else which will get me there that early. This also held true for any trips which had me leaving the country. Continue reading “Vienna”
Getting the Hang of Thursdays 