Raving Amicks

From Munich, we flew in to the airport in Kiev, Ukraine, where Vlad’s uncle kindly picked us up. The next day, we wandered out to see Kiev’s Golden Gate, which was a lot of fun to climb inside. Nearby was the kitty statue pictured here with me.

To get to the Golden Gate and just about everywhere else that we visited in Kiev, we went by subway. Subways in Ukraine tend to be highly stylized, with mosaics and marble and granite used to beautiful effect. This seems to be fairly common in eastern Europe, and it was one of my favorite aspects of the trip. A few subways were also very deep, presumably for protection against nuclear warfare, with high-speed escalators just to get people in and out in a reasonable amount of time.

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Hey y’all. Mindy posted some pictures of our new wine glasses a while ago and it’s high time I ‘splained ‘em.

These wine glasses are the sequel to our fantastic beer glasses and they use the same serious-business, full-body tempering (apparently using heat and not chemicals). The tempering requires an increase in glass thickness, but results in strong and stable, long-lasting glassware. They’re extra short for stackability, which also adds a bit of stability. I like ‘em, and Mindy’s even warmed up to them.

I conned Mom and Dad into getting a set of 12, cuz I had to order ‘em by boxes of 48 for $200. I found the best deal at ReStockIt.com with free shipping and some sort of discount (they have sales a lot). I’m going to give the 6 of them I have left over to Dieter. Hopefully these will hold up to the harsh realities of Dieter’s roommates. I’ll be bringing them down the next time we come to visit, hopefully in the next week or two.

I can’t believe I made the train today. My bus came a couple minutes early and I was pretty sure I was screwed. The only other bus I could possibly take was ten minutes up the hill and even then I doubted it could get me to the train on time.

So then I whooped out my tubephone and discovered that the ten-minutes-away bus was leaving in less than five. And since I had nothing to lose at this point, I huffed it up the hill with my overfilled backpack and suitcase.

Wouldn’t you know it? I just barely made it. Which is good too, cuz the train also left early (though, with me on it). Hooray for creative bussing!

And now, if you’ll direct your attention to the eastern sidebar… and assuming you have logged into your Raving Amicks account, you will notice that I have updated our stalker page for Mason. Please peruse it at your leisure.

I have a big pile of media equipment under my TV, so when Dieter suggested that someone try out the Belkin Conserve, I got all excited and started running around the house plugging random things into holes. The Conserve is designed to force electronic devices – which usually continue to slurp and gargle power even when they’re off – to truly dislodge and leave the power in the wall where it belongs. We have one 26” Samsung flat-screen TV, as well as an Apple TV, an electric sheep, and five video game consoles (Wii, PS2, N64, Super NES and NES), which means we have ample equipment with which to test out the Conserve. (more…)

Here’s the picture of that cool tavern sign I told you guys about. I just put it up on my wall a couple hours ago. It replaces the venerable Japanese-styled cloudy mountain painting, which goes back into the poster tube.

Keep a close eye on your boobies, lest they wander into my trappe!

UPDATED 2x at end…

I just wanted to let everyone know that Mindy and I have begun our trip without any problems. I found some free wifi at the airport, yay! BTW, Mindy and I give Korean Air all thumbs up!

UPDATE 1 (4:17 PM on Wednesday, December 3rd): Mindy and I have been hanging out in Mumbai for a bit now. Our flight to Hyderabad should be boarding soon. We’re safe, but tired. And could probably use a shower.

UPDATE 2 (1:57 AM on Friday, December 5th): We continued our trip to Hyderabad without issue, and boy is the Hyderabad airport nice. It’s only 1 or 2 years old and is way better than both the domestic and international Bombay airports. Parthu surprised us by being there when we arrived (I was just planning on calling him and waiting). Unfortunately, it looks like he got a little sick, but still was very helpful in getting us to our hotel, and the hotel was pretty much exactly what we had hoped for. I’ll update with a new post later.