We rarely experience cooking related notifications, possibly because we have newer smoke detectors. Or possibly because I’m not allowed to fry anything, ostensibly for health reasons, though I suspect that this is probably more due to Mary attempting to minimize the number of Mike related accidents per annum. So far our smoke detectors have never warned us of a fire (which means they’re 100% effective, since we haven’t had a fire in the house) but have been very, very good at notifying us when their batteries need to be changed. And this will occur, only at night, most commonly at three in the morning, for maximum effect.

We seem to have something like 15 smoke detectors, as well as two carbon monoxide monitors, an emergency hand-cranked weather radio, two temperature sensors for outside, and a special NASA designed asteroid impact warning klaxon. Ok, I made the last one up, but if NASA developed one, I’m pretty sure Mary would buy it. She likes to be prepared for every possible disaster. Though when I suggest that, if we’re going to cover all the bases, we need an assault rifle with an attached chain-saw for possible zombie outbreaks, she just starts backing away, slowly.

My own personal infographic related to smoke alarms would be entitled Deaths From Use of A Smoke Alarm. And it would look like this:

There should be a segment for dogs driven insane by the beeping too.

I wonder if anyone has looked to see if the decline in deaths from fires is partially or completely offset from deaths associated with trying to change the battery in the smoke detector? I should see if I can get a grant from the National Academy of Sciences.

But as it turns out, I do know that preppage is not a word, at least not one recognized by the panel made up of officious professorial types, that I envision working on authorized dictionaries and the like. I’m sure there has to be such a panel, primarily because it’s a convenient way of sequestering away those self-same officious professorial types from the real world. Otherwise the professors would be wandering about and confronting guys wearing camouflage ball caps with slogans like ‘Git R Done’, and they’ll point out that ‘get’ is misspelled and ‘R’ is just a consonant and not an actual word. Then it all goes downhill from there, and before you know it there’s a couple of broken professor types and a guy named Butch with slightly skinned knuckles. Anyway, since this is my blog and it’s not like I’m making much money at it, I figured that as partial recompense I should have free reign to make up and use words of my own peculiar construction. Which is really difficult, I would have you know, because the automatic spellchecker thingy is always trying to turn words like preppage and the like into real dictionary approved words, so I have to try and trick it by adding an extra ‘s’ or something and then going back and deleting the s. It’s a pain but I persevere. Mary has pointed out that I can turn off the automatic spellchecking feature, but this is coming from the same woman who’s pointing out that preppage isn’t a real word so I’m pretty sure she has some sort of ulterior motive. Probably something to do with emphasizing the usefulness of English Comp Lit over Introductory Pig and Poultry Care and Management.

Preppage consists of a total of eight distinct phases, primarily because as an engineer (since I don’t much care for animals, Engineering was the natural next choice), everything is better when you break it down into phases. Sure, your typical liberal arts major will lump everything together in a huge jumble, like Pack Bags, but that only gives you one checkbox to check off, whereas my method gives you a total of eight checkboxes. Now doesn’t that sound like you achieved a lot more than just throwing some clothes in a bag? Of course it does, if you’re an engineer!

Phase 1 is The Counting. This usually entails a calendar and one or more hands with a minimum of four fingers on each, with which I can calculate to the nth degree of accuracy, the number of days we’ll be gone on the trip. Oh, and ‘nth’ as in nth degree, is engineer shorthand for saying, a numerical result between minus a lot and positive infinity, that is currently unknown. Engineers like to use terms like ‘nth’ and ‘currently unknown’ a lot, because it sounds really impressive to people that didn’t take their maths during college – like English majors.

Anyway, after we determine an accurate count of the total number of days we’ll be gone, we proceed to Phase 2. Phase 2 is known as the Determination. During the Determination, we figure out roughly what kind of things we’re going to be doing on the trip, and then create a list of all the different articles of apparel we’ll need, as well as subsidiary gear such as laptops, cell phones, sunscreen, water purifiers, karaoke machines and beer helmets.

Immediately following Phase 2, as you may already have figured out, is Phase 4, because, of course, we skip any numbers that are divisible by 3 and 176. I won’t bother explaining why we skip numbers divisible by 3 and 176, because I already described the ‘nth’ function, and that’s enough math for one day. Anyway, Phase 4 is the Realization. At this stage we Realize that we cannot do all the things we planned on doing because of various impediments. Such as a spouse who differs on plans to go windsurfing with nude models, no matter how cool it might be, even disregarding the fact that Richard Branson did it first. Because of this and other reasons, we start limiting the number of activities, and thus dispensing with items of apparel and gear that are no longer needed. Though I might point out that the naked windsurfing doesn’t actually require apparel (hence the naked), and one could probably rent the windsurfing equipment once you get to the destination. Questions about where I’m going to find the naked model can be seen as attempts by certain others to deflect me from pursuing adventure.

Phase 5, is the Sorting. In this phase, we look through our closet and determine if any of our clothes fit, are unstained, have all the buttons, a working zipper, and no hanging threads. Immediately following the Sorting we come to Phase 5.5, which is the Panicking. For instance, at the end of the last Sorting I conducted, I had a total of one pair of jeans, and a pair and a half of socks, that were deemed acceptable to be worn out in public, according to Mary. My standards are not quite as exacting, and I will try and get away with shirts with small, unobtrusive stains or pants with only a little bit of fraying at the hems. So the Panicking normally leads to a series of frenzied forays on-line to various purveyors of clothing and assorted accessories.

Phase 7, (because 6 is evenly divisible by 3, remember?), is the Fitting, the Disbelief, and the Defeated Acceptance. First, we try on our recent purchases, then we express disbelief that these clothes can be sized correctly, because we were sure that the last pair of pants we bought were size 36 waist, and there is no way we gained enough weight to require a size 40 waist. After Disbelief, we come to Defeated Acceptance, and order some more clothes, with the correct waist sizes or go naked from the waist down. Which would be perfectly alright, if I were allowed to indulge in a little naked windsurfing

This man did not perform his Preppage correctly.

Phase 8 is the Packing. This never goes well. The amount of stuff we have piled up to load into our suitcases invariably exceeds the capacity of the suitcases by a factor of three, or more. And this is for winter travel. For summer travel it’s even worse, which at first you’d think was strange, but then you’ve never travelled with someone who believes a five gallon container of SPF 90 sunscreen is an essential. Of course in her defense, without the sunscreen, Mary has a tendency to combust when exposed to even a single ultraviolet ray.

After the Packing comes Phase 10, the Unpacking and then Repacking, which is repeated until such time that it becomes clear that no amount of zipper tugging nor jumping up and down on the suitcase is going to get it to close. Then comes the final phase of preppage – Phase 11, the Decimation. Just like the ancient Romans, we will sacrifice one in ten of the offending articles of clothing. Then comes the Ninemation, where one out of each nine articles of clothing is eliminated, and so on till you’re left with two pairs of shorts, a t-shirt, six mismatched socks and a dinner jacket, all of which will now fit in your suitcase, if a trifle snugly.

Now you’re ready to travel, but that’s a whole nother kettle of fish.

Once in a great while one of us will occasionally say something like, “Hey, this view of Hong Kong harbor is amazing! Let’s take a picture.” Usually though, it turns out like, “hey, this view of Hong Kong harbor is amazing!” Pause. “I wonder how good the dim sum is in this place over on the corner?” And we’ll miss out on another shot at immortalizing our adventures, though I should note that the dim sum was better than average.

Anyway, this last couple of months I decided I’d try my hand at taking more pictures while we’re gallivanting about. And after an epic series of trips, I got home, downloaded the snapshots into iPhoto, and sat back to admire some mad photographic skillz. We have a decent digital camera, but chose to run exclusively with the iPhone in order to pare down the number of electronic devices we were toting around. Not that, in the end, it would have made the slightest bit of difference.

At least it's not taking a picture of my crotch

Most of the photos I took were out of focus, and when they were in focus, it was because I was taking a picture of something I didn’t intend to photograph in the first place. For instance, every third photo on my iPhone is a picture of the screen of my iPhone. And yes, BattleNations is an awesomely good game. This is some feature of the iPhone that I have, so far, been unable to turn off.

In my defense, I ..... oh, the hell with it

The photos that weren’t out of focus, like this one of a picturesque retail establishment in Valencia, suffers from compositional defects like the thumb obscuring the upper left corner. Or it might be a finger – who can tell?

It's a symbol of Spanish culture, right?

In a similar vein, I continue to wantonly waste pixels on pictures like this movie poster, because for some strange reason, advertising it as Gato con Botas, instead of Puss in Boots delights me immensely.

In my defense, I find that when using the digital viewfinder, I cannot see more than a dim and fuzzy image. In bright sunlight, using the digital screen to compose my pictures is hopeless, and I’m better off just randomly snapping pictures in completely arbitrary directions. Mary, though ever helpful, demolished, carefully and exactingly, the battlements of my excuses. I had a box full of photos from eons past digitally scanned, and Mary through the liberal use of graphs and charts revealed that, even back in the old Instamatic days, extending through Point and Shoot years, and right up to the end of the SLR era, the majority of my photos were blurry and out of focus.

So Mary is now the official family photographer. Because PowerPoint presentations have a price. I will function, as I so often do nowadays as the loyal (to all appearances) Sherpa, carrying the gear and supplies needed on our treks through deepest, darkest wherever. And when another amazingly beautiful and richly historical vista presents itself, I will shout “Hey, there’s a tapas place on the corner!”

Anyway, back to today’s subject, taxi drivers. New York cab drivers are on the phone from the minute you get into the cab till you alight at your destination. If you’re very, very lucky your hackney driver will have a hands-free set. I should point out that this appears to be a pretty rare occurrence, and should not be counted on by any prospective riders. I haven’t a clue whom the cab drivers are communicating with, though I’ve come to suspect that it’s with each other. I mean who else has the opportunity to converse on the phone all day? One fact that I can state with confidence however, is that the every cab driver will be communicating in a language that is emphatically not English. I believe that the current breakdown is approximately 30% Eastern European, and 55% percent dialects from the Indian sub-continent. The remaining 15% are either some obscure dialect like Udmurt, or possibly Quenya. I have a theory that the cabbies are all part of a vast conspiracy, dedicated to concealing the location of all the best Sri Lankan restaurants.

In LA, by contrast, it seems as though cab drivers have taken a vow of silence. We jump in a cab at the airport, give the driver our destination, get our answering grunt in reply, and settle in for a quiet albeit not stress free drive. The truth is that I can deal with taxi drivers in NYC because god knows I don’t want to drive there. Plus, though cabbies will attempt to gun it when they get a chance, the traffic in NYC means that they’ll never have more than a block free to get up to speed, so they can only get it to sixty at best. Except on the Expressway and then only between the hours of 2:15 and 3:30am. I don’t know what Expressway they’re talking about, and whether there’s more than one but outside Manhattan itself, everything seems to revolve around taking the Expressway.

Back in LA, having someone else drive you around seems unnatural and weird. I feel unsettled not having the wheel, and since the cabbies will be doing a minimum of ninety on the freeways, there’s always that little frisson of fear. Of course it being Southern Cal, everyone else is doing 90mph too, except the vacationers from Dubuque, who will be plodding along at the signed 65, and putting theirs and everyone’s else’s lives at risk. Rocketing down the freeway in a cab at a velocity that can best be expressed on the Mach scale, shouldn’t be that big a deal, unless of course, you meet the Dubuquians (Dubuquters?). That being the case, I can deal with LA cabbies since they do not spend all their time on their phones. Of course, this means that there is all this quiet time to fill so the drivers all seem to have the radio on and tuned to talk radio. And it’s usually the weird talk radio, where they’re discussing the newest plot to take away our freedoms and/or force us to eat locally sourced organic food. The ‘They’ in these circumstances seem to be from a rotating cast that includes, but is not limited to: the government, the socialists, communists, Birchers, the Bilderburg group, the Trilateral Commission, the UN, aliens, lizard people, and the Sri Lankans, which you just knew were going to be involved in there somewhere.

I like to make fires and then sit in front of them. Not a fire in a fireplace, inside, all warm and snuggly, with a glass of a solidly decent cabernet. No, I mean fires built in a fire pit, outside, in sub-arctic temperatures, or if you’re very, very lucky, during or immediately after a snow. Where it takes me longer to get on all the cold weather gear than it takes to build up the fire in the first place. A lot of the fun is in the building of the fire. Starting with some newspaper, adding twigs and pine cones, then building a little pyramid of larger and larger branches, all in an attempt to see if I can make a fire, from raw materials, just like they did back in settler days. Though with a barbeque lighter. Which settlers totally would have used, if they had access to a twenty-first century industrialized supply chain.

So after I get my fire lit, I like to sit in front of it, sip some coffee, and think little thoughts. Fire gazing, I’ve come to the conclusion, is not conducive with deep thinking. It works better with small things, like whether the roast chicken I served last night might have been better with thyme sprinkled on the outside before roasting, and why is it that everything in life that is bad for you tastes so wonderfully great, like crispy chicken skin and Thai curry.

Mary will go and enjoy the fire with me, once or twice a year during the fall or spring. My fire thing, however, sitting out on nights where the temperature plummets to single digits, or when it’s snowing, my thing, I do alone.

First thing. If you do have the opportunity to go to Barcelona, don’t stay at the W Barcelona. We did, but really wished we hadn’t. This makes the second time in about a year that we’ve sampled the rather doubtful offerings of the W chain and we have come to the conclusion that the W is just not our cup of tea. Or glass of beer, in my case. The relentless drive to be hip, trendy and cool, is wearying and although I hate to admit it, Mary is probably quite correct that we are neither trendy nor hip. I’m still holding out, probably in vain, on the cool though. If I had to point at one specific factor that I think most detracts from the experience, other than the constant and unremitting music from bands I’ve never heard of and don’t particularly like, it’s the consistent incompetence of the staff. They are obviously hired for their youth and attractiveness, and the inability to perform the simplest of tasks, like totaling up a bar tab, is as far beyond their capabilities as is high-energy physics. Still they are pretty young things.

Anyway, skipping any more probably libelous jottings about the W, we can consider the attractions of Barcelona. As a tour guide we hired reminded us, many times, Barcelona’s attachment to Spain is a lot more limited than Spain’s attachment to Barcelona. Barcelona and it’s surrounding environs, Catalonia, have suffered less from the current recession than the rest of Spain, and as a result would like to keep more of their tax revenues to distribute at home. Catalans apparently dream of a world where they were, if not independent once more, at least considerably more autonomous. And indeed, Catalonia would still be independent of Spain proper, if their rulers and armies were a little more proficient at the art of war. Sadly, Catalonia has a long and distinguished history of failing at the defending the realm game. Still they make a damn fine tortilla.

Tortillas in Spain, or in this case, Catalonia, are not the thin disks of ground corn meal that are used to wrap delicious hunks of carne asada, but instead something similar to a frittata. Fun factoid for the day.

We wandered about Barcelona for three days and would go back immediately if the opportunity arose. The city contains one of those wonderful old town areas with the narrow medieval streets winding higgedly-piggedly, a real delight if you don’t have to drive through it. Twentieth century warfare wasn’t especially destructive here, so lots of the original city plan is intact. Down each narrow alleyway there lurks an interesting cafe, or shop, and so exploration is fun and relatively risk free. As we were warned over and over, pickpockets are a scourge, but we never had any problems.

Another nice aspect of Barcelona, and one that endears it to Mary especially, are the markets. Each neighborhood has it’s own market and the selections are enough to make you wish you could settle down for three or four months, rent a little pied-a-terre, and cook and cook and cook with the wonderful looking produce and meat. Well, that’s Mary’s idea of what I should be doing with my time.

In Barcelona, they don’t have tapas, well they have tapas, but they call them pinchos. Pinchos are almost always served on top of a piece of bread, even when there is no real reason to have a piece of bread along. With the pinchos, one should have a glass or three of Txacoli, a white wine that is poured from a height of around three feet above the glass. This aerates the wine and gives it a little more oomph, which is what they say, but I think they really just like it as it makes for a bit of a spectacle.

I’m reasonably sure there was some cultural stuff we did, because Mary would never pass up on an opportunity to experience culture. It’s kind of a blur since I tend to remain focused on the important things in life, and in Barcelona that would be pinchos and Txacoli. I believe there were some architectural highlights pertaining to Gaudi. Perhaps some museums too.

While we were in town, the annual Christmas market was in full swing and that was pretty cool. It’s kind of cultural too, if you want to look at it that way. They have dozens of booths that sell all sorts of pieces to put in your own miniature Nativity scene (the kind that sits on a side table – not the life size ones that people with too much time on their hands set up in their front yards). This seems to be a big thing in Catalonia or maybe it’s just Barcelona. It was never quite clear. They have everything. The Three Wise men, carts, and wagons and foliage galore. Animals from far and wide since, well it was a stable after all, though I must confess a bit of surprise at seeing elephants and ostriches, for instance. Were they popular farm animals during the Roman Empire? And then there’s this little bit of Catalonian culture. As Mary remarked, Catalans have some decidedly strange ideas.

Sure, you might point out that encountering a can of Coke isn’t that big a deal in today’s world and normally you’d be right. But in this particular case, (heh, case…. oh, come on, yes, it’s sophomoric but that’s the kind of thing you’re going to have to expect if you read this blog), as I was saying, I was given a can of Coke that had a label printed on it which specified that the beverage was for “on-board airline and maritime consumption only”.

Now, I’m a reasonably intelligent guy, went to college, majored in engineering, took a bunch of physics and chemistry classes, escaped with a solid set of C’s and D’s, and yet I have no idea why a specific type of Coke Cola is produced for maritime and airline use. Is there some sort of restriction on the amount of high fructose corn syrup for sodas offered on planes and ships because there’s a worry about the effects of HFCS rush on passengers stuck in combined spaces for extended periods of time?

And what are the legal ramifications of removing and consuming a can of this variety of Coke in a non-maritime or non-airborne environment? Is one liable for arrest, and who would be the agency that keeps track of scofflaws who dare to drink maritime Coke while standing on the dock of the bay? The mind boggles. Then wobbles.

Even Google, my old, dear friend and confidant, could not illuminate these questions for me. So for now, I will just have to share this mysterious, and perhaps forbidden knowledge, with the three people who accidentally stumbled on this blog.

The overriding impressions I come away from modern Casablanca with are 1) don’t eat the fresh fish because it’s neither particularly fresh nor, apparently, is it put on ice while awaiting sale. 2) All men, especially those in sales, have aspirations to be the Moroccan version of Henny Youngman. Really, I never saw a place where everyone is such a comedian. Or at least trying to be. I almost bought a rug just cause the sales guy was cracking me up, and not because he’s all that funny but its a Borscht Belt kind of humor that most people in the States are too self conscious to mimic.

Overall, I’m glad we crossed this off the bucket list – Casablanca that is, not the visits with the amateur comics. Don’t think I’ll ever go back but it was worth a quick stop.

So on this last trip, we only had a full day before we were to move onwards, further into the dark heart of Europe. We decided to check out the Tate Museum, which is a depository for hoary old paintings from hoary old artists like Turner, Constable, and Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. Ah, I know what you’re thinking – you’re thinking now would be a good time to go and have a few of those Little Debbie Snack Cakes that you were saving for the kids, but what they don’t know, they won’t even miss. Go ahead – treat yourself, you deserve it. If you have to justify it, think about the fact that you’re saving the children from a lifelong addiction to sweets, which inevitably lead to obesity, diabetes and eventually confinement to one of those motorized scooter thingys. When you look at that way, you’re a blooming hero! Oh, it wasn’t the snack cakes? Well, if your question is who is Marcus Gheeraert the Senior or Older I can’t help you. I don’t even know who the Younger was, since the only reason he came to our attention is that he painted this.

Yes, this is why we go to art museums. I mean, yes, it’s true that if it were left up to me, all museums we visit would be filled with lots of swords and exotic firearms and big planes. Mary feels, rightly, that I need a little of the old civilizing influences so I go to art museums, and then afterward we can go to the pub and have  pint while we discuss why the man in the aforementioned painting is not wearing any pants. Sometimes, like in the case of Captain Thomas Lee we manage to have several pints, while we thrash out his pantslessness.

According to online references and the little note placard next to the painting in the museum, Capt. Lee is wearing the dress of an Irish light infantryman from Medieval times. It’s certainly apparent why they were called ‘light’ infantry, as when you’re going without pants, you’re travelling pretty light. Might I point out though, that Ireland is frequently cold, often rainy, and almost always both, and going without trou is either a sign of great personal hardiness, or just a touch of the insane. So that old saw about ‘mad dogs and Englishmen’, well you have a better idea now how they acquired that particular moniker.

Canadian Border Services Officer (hereafter known as Officer Sir): “Good evening. Identification please.

Pause.

Officer Sir: “When was your last visit to Canada?”

Me: “Oh, well, that would be something like twenty-five or so years back.”

Officer Sir: <Quizzical look>

Mary: “Oh, no dear. Remember that cruise we took up the West Coast? It stopped in Vancouver, and we flew back from there!”

Me: “Oh, yes, yes we did. That was maybe ten years ago.”

Oficer Sir: <Arched eyebrows now>

Mary: <Ever helpful> “Wait – there was also the trip to Montreal. That was three years ago!”

Me: “Ah, yes.” <Sinking feeling – do Canadians have their own version of Guantanamo?> “You see it’s not as though we think Canada is so boring that we can’t remember visiting it. There was, in my case especially, an entire period of my youth that was filled with experimentation with various exotic substances, that may have resulted in more than a few long-term memory problems. It really has absolutely nothing to do with Canada, which we think is a splendid country. See, we’re here visiting and willing to spend our now thoroughly debased coinage in your fair realm. And we’re really looking forward to a good doughnut or twelve.”

Mary: <Hissing> “Stop now, or I’m going to have to hire a whole bunch of lawyers. And that’s for me. You’re going to rot in some Canadian penal facility till you’re a wrinkled husk of a man!” To Officer Sir: Though I’m sure it would be a perfectly nice penal institution as penal institutions go. It being Canada and all”

Officer Sir: <With a glare that kind of belies the whole ‘Canadians are a warm and welcoming people meme’. Followed by a silent wave through, and entry into deepest, darkest Canada.>

Me: <As we are pulling away, but not till we’re safely out of earshot.> “Wow, not even a ‘Welcome to Canada!’ “

Mary: <Glare>