Time Waster

This line art sledding is a blast, but a big time waster.

New Car

This is my new car. After four years of driving cars that I couldn't stand, I've got one that I love again. About four years ago when my lease on my Chevy Impala was up, I went car shopping and bought a car that I hated for three years. It was a dumb decision in a lot of ways:

1. I bought a two door car. Try fitting three kids and three car seats in a two door car. I also found out the hard way that Nate got car sick in the small back seat easily. Nothing like vomit to kill the new car smell off right away.
2. The car was gray. That's not really a color, is it?
   
3. It was a 3 year lease. After hating the car at day 2, I was stuck with it for a long time. Not to mention that leases (or Fleeces, as Dave Ramsey calls them) are a sucker move financially.
   
4. I didn't include Cathie in the decision. She was gracious and after talking about it on day one, never rubbed it in. My kids on the other hand would tell me daily how they hated my car.
   

As penance more than anything, when my lease was up, I got Cathie a new car and drove our other mini-van around until now. The van was slowly dying, but it was paid off. The power steer was leaking like a sieve, but it worked for the most part. I was able to deal with it because it at least had a nice stereo, and somewhere along the way driving was instilling some spec of humility in me.

So a few weeks ago, I looked at the budget and figured we were at a point where we could make the move and I'd buy the car. Who's the first guy I call? Bob. Bob Rays is what Malcolm Gladwell calls a Connector:

What makes someone a Connector? The first--and most obvious--criterion is that Connectors know lots of people. They are the kinds of people who know everyone. All of us know someone like this. But I don't think that we spend a lot of time thinking about the importance of these kinds of people. I'm not even sure that most of us really believe that the kind of person who knows everyone really knows everyone. But they do.

Bob knows everyone and has a guy for everything. Everything. He has a slurpee machine guy, a video game repair guy and I'm sure he's got a left handed unicyclist guy somewhere in his Rolodex. On top of all that, Bob is a sexican - half Mexican, half Syrian. Bob loves to negotiate. Everything is negotiable. Brad tells this great story of one time when they were on vacation and they went out to get firewood. They found this little old lady selling it on her front lawn for a couple dollars a bundle. Much to Brad's embarrassment, Bob proceeded to negotiate with her, trying to get the best deal, cutting her prices in half, as Brad tried to disappear. We refer to the art of the deal as "Bobbing" someone down on price.

So I called Bob and he had a guy to hook me up with the car. He called his friend Dave at Livonia Chrysler, whose team took great care of me. You'll hear people say that all the time, and then give you the same deal they give everyone else. Not so here. Being a friend of Dave's got me treated like royalty at the dealership and everyone went out of their way to help me out with every aspect of the deal.

Anyways, I've got the car. I'm sure it will make me happy forever. Just like "stuff" always does for me.

Football Practice

We had football practice last night, trying to teach the kid show to do a double and triple-reversal (similar to the triple lindy). This involves some somewhat complicated in-motion action from the kids, the completion of multiple hand-offs on the fly and actually getting them to move before the quarterback hikes the ball. There's a million things that can go wrong in the play, but if it works, the mis-direction makes for a pretty significant gain. Practice was like herding cats getting the kids to put all of the elements together, but we eventually got it and when they did, the kids were pretty proud of themselves.

London Pictures

I posted my scenic pictures London online here in the Kurt Family Photo Gallery.

David Kuo

Buck sent me this very interesting article from TIME.com: Why a Christian in the White House Felt Betrayed by David Kuo. I think it shows how tough it is to do good on such a large scale in such a political system.

Small World

What a small world. One of the my co-workers in in Europe used to live in the states, working in Ann Arbor, living about 10 minutes away from where we live. One of the companies we met with from India has a large facility right down the street from where Cathie and I lived in Livonia.

I picked up souvenirs for the kids at Heathrow airport and hung out for a while in the KLM World Club lounge. I flew into Amsterdam, hit the duty free liquor store (20 Euro for a 12 year bottle of Jamesons), bought some more souvenirs and the boarded my plane. I watched movies (Lucky number Slevin, A Scanner Darkly and Click) while I sat next to Anastasia, an 80 year old woman from the Ukraine. Anastasia spoke almost no English and it took me about 30 minutes to help her fill out her customs information and immigration forms. Questions that seem pretty simple, like "What city did you fly out of" or "What's your middle name?" don't translate well into English. Just saying the words slower doesn't really work either. Eight hours straight on an airplane in coach is painful, especially after you burn through both laptop batteries. The seat back had these cool little interactive computer systems you could select movies and play games on, but mine seemed to be the only one on the airplane that kept crashing (it was Linux based, and not Microsoft based as you might guess).

Lessons Learned

Random things I learned this week in London:

• The British love gossip as much as the US does, maybe more. The newspapers and TV are filled with the stuff.
• Maybe I just don't notice it in the US. Madonna's baby adoption was the biggest piece of news all week here.
• British newspapers are a lot more risque. Going through the Detroit News, I don't typically expect to find pictures of naked women.
• You can only bring one bag through security at Heathrow. No carry on luggage plus suitcase stuff here.
• My Northwest Gold Elite status gets me into the KLM World Club without any additional membership.
• You can say just about anything with a British accent and it sounds polite.
• You need to look the opposite way when crossing the street over here than you do in the US British food is pretty horrible.
• Calling someone a Numpty is similar to calling them a numb-skull, which is scottish in origin (that sounded very Willish.
• On average, the Brits don't have the same kind of dental hygene that we do in the states (not including West Virgina, Arkansas and Alabama).
• The US is not all that beloved outside of the US. Sometimes being the top dog is tough.
• Make a copy of your passport and keep it separate from your actual passport (thanks Dan for this tip AFTER the fact. Losing your passport can put you in a world of hurt, but you can book an appointment at the U.S. Embassy online.
• A five hour time zone change is tough coming this way, but not as bad going back.
• I'm barely functional with european currency: quid, pence, pound and euro - especially the change. There were times when I would just hold a handful of random change out and let them pick out the right denominations for me.
• When riding in the passenger side of a European car, get in on the right otherwise they'll think you want to drive.
• There are a million pubs over here.
• TV over here is pretty horrible.
• Budweiser is an import here, and lots of people drink it. It is the king of beers after all.
• England uses the metric system, except for miles (the measurement system, not the guy).

Tuesday

Wow, it seems like a really long week so far. We had another long day of meetings today, finishing up around 7pm. My company happens to be a Ducati racing sponsor and they were out in the London office that week selling gear. We got to check out the racing bikes:


and the executive team that was out here this week (you'd be surprised at how much mockery I got from my orange shirt):

We headed to the pub from there for dinner, where I got the chance to try Bubble and Squeak (mash potatoes deep and cabbage patties deep fried and topped with egg and a holindase sauce) and bangers and mash (weiners and mashed potatoes) along with lamb with apple mint jelly. The food over here is pretty much horrid.

Each time we've gone out to eat, the people we're with have explained to us the crime problems in London and told us we should always bring our bags into the resturant with us. Apparently it's a fairly common occurance to have someone jimmy the boot and nik'd his gear (break into your trunk and steal your stuff). All of us brought our gear into the pub except for one in our group. About half way through our dinner, someone came in asking "Who owns the Grey Mercedes wagon right out front?" Innocuous question, right? They went out and here's what they found:


Normally, this wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, right? A stolen work laptop is bad, but not the worst thing in the world. Unfortunately, the briefcase had my colleague's passport in it along with his travel itinerary. We spent the rest of the night helping them get an appointment setup with the U.S. Embassy to get a replacement. What a crummy way to end a good trip. We all learned a great lesson about what to do if your passport is nik'd. Bottom line, put it in the hotel safe.

I fly back tomorrow through Amsterdam, getting in tomorrow evening.

London, cont.

We went last night we went out to dinner to an Indian resturant. Apparently, Indian cuisine has surpassed traditional British food as the most popular food in the U.K. I learned that there's nothing I like about Indian food except the giant potato chips they give you as an appetizer.
Walking between the buildings, we walked by a guy with a Falcon mounted on his glove. Apparently, they use these to keep the pigeons at bay. They fly them around the building, take down a few pigeons here and there and the word gets around in the bird community to stay away.
I've been learning even more great phrases that I'm hoping to come back and incorporate into my everyday conversation until it gets annoying:

• Cheers - Thanks
• Cheerio - Hello/Goodbye
• Nick/Pinch - To Take
• Boot- Car Trunk (Jimmy the Boot - Break into your trunk)
• Hops are Beckoning - I need a beer
• Lift - Elevator

I went to bed about midnight last night, fell asleep right away and woke up 15 minutes later. I laid there wide awake until about 3:30 AM. Getting up at 2AM EST for 12 hour meetings is a killer.

Downtown London

My co-workers and I met up at 2pm to head into downtown London to do some sightseeing. Andy, the husband of one of our UK co-workers is a cab driver and he and his wife took us downtown. Imagine a big, bald man with a thick British accent and you've got Andy. Andy used to work security for rock bands back in the 70's and we were able to pry some amazing stories out of him. He told us about being responsible for Keith Moon (now dead drummer for The Who) and having to try and get him on stage while he was pounding pills and drinking heavily. He told us a story about running security a club where the Sex Pistols played before they got big and spending time with Sid Vicious's girlfriend Nancy Spungen (who the movie Sid & Nancy was made about). We kept asking about bands, and he kept sharing stories - ranging from Led Zeppelin to Cream. One of the best stories was about how he ended up punching out Ginger Baker of Cream fame.

Andy was also telling us about the camera systems all over London. The freeways have a set of average speed cameras which photograph all of the cars over a stretch of road and if you were speeding, they send you a picture of you driving the car, your average speed, and a ticket. The cameras are all over London to film the cars making any traffic violations. It's possible to come home after a bad day and have lost your license. There are cameras everyone around London filming people and doing facial recognition as well. The whole thing is a little scary.

We got to London and started off by going up in the London Eye, a giant ferris wheel that takes you hundreds of feet above the city and gives you an amazing view of the city.

From there, we walked around and saw place after place: Hyde Park, Picadilly Circus and Buckingham Palace to name a few. I wanted my picture taken somewhere, and learned that there are few things more ackward than the "single guy having a picture taken by another guy" picture - both during, and after the picture:

You couldn't get close to the guard at Buckingham palace, but I did run into this guy downtown. Up close, this guy was really intimidating. I didn't want to get too close, as you can see by the picture:

We ended the night down in the Picadilly area, hitting a bunch of cool pubs before we got picked up and stuck in traffic downtown for an hour. I'll never complain about Detroit traffic again.

Tags: London, Ginger Baker, Sid and Nancy, Buckingham Palace, Keith Moon, London Eye

Butt Crack of Dawn

This time change this is crazy. I'm heading to bed right now, and our first meetings are tomorrow at 8am (3am EST). Ouch. Five hours difference.

Londong Calling

I made it to London. I slept about 5 hours on the flight to Amsterdam and I keep trying to convince my body that it's noon right now, even though it's pretty sure that it's 6am. I wandered around the Amsterdam airport for a while browsing the shops and then flew into London. I made my way through customs and found my driver waiting for me. It's crazy seeing everyone drive on the wrong side of the road. My hotel is about 20 minutes outside of London. Myself and some of co-workers from the states are going downtown to go sightseeing this afternoon and then meet up with some of our European colleagues for drinks. I figure if I can make it through the day without sleeping and get a good night sleep tonight, I should be alright.

Amusing language heard so far:
Lift - Elevator
Queue - Line
Loo/W.C. - Bathroom
Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey - The French

Tiger's Game

I figured I'd be able to get to the airport in Boston, find a bar and settle down to watch the Tiger's game. There's not a single TV in this airport except for the flight monitors. ESPN has a pretty sweet setup for watching MLB online. It shows you where every pitch was, exactly the path the ball followed after it was hit as it's moving and virtually every detail you can imagine on what's happening with the game. (My brother Dan gets all the credit for showing me this.)

The Bama

I got Jimmy Buffett's new album, Take the Weather with You. This is the album that Eli, Brad, Bob and I saw him tour on a few weeks back. His first song on there is called Bama Breeze, a tune about a place that I've been to - The Florabama (called so because it sits on the border of Florida and Alabama) I was down in Mobile, AL a few years ago working on a project with two good friends Greg Kandra and Glenn Anderson. Glenn's a native southern boy who takes a fair amount of flak for his love of NASCAR and roadkill, and he took Greg and I on a tour of the finest parts of Alabama. We drove for a while and pulled into this dive on the ocean that looked like a liquor store. We went in, both Greg and I pretty skeptical of where we were at, in the middle of nowhere. Behind the liquor store was a crazy set of disjointed bars, all of the looking like they'd been cobbled together in someone's spare time, complete with women's undergarments stapled to the ceiling. Greg and I still weren't convinced, but Glenn told us to trust him. On my way to the bathroom, I was looking at the memorabilia on the walls and it finally clicked where I was at. There were picture of Jimmy Buffett and a bunch of other famous people along with lyrics of all sorts of Buffett songs involving the Florabama. This was one of the bars where Jimmy Buffett had made it big and still comes pretty frequently to play and hang out. We hung out, had a few beers, and watched some great Carribean style musicians. The place was destroyed a couple of years ago during a hurricane and has since been re-built, but I'm not sure how it can have the same kind of character it originally did.

Tags: Jimmy Buffett, Take the Weather with You

Boston

I'm in the Boston airport with a ridiculously long layover before my flight to Amsterdam. I rarely talk to the people sitting next to me on the plane but for some reason I asked him the simple question, "Is Boston home for you?" He proceeded to talk... and talk.. about himself....and I kept asking him questions. It got amusing after a half hour, so I kept asking him questions mostly to see how long he would go without him going outside of himself in the conversation. After about 45 minutes, I was able to get my iPod on and read. Gosh, I hope I don't do that to people when I get talking - just talk about myself over and over.

Tags: Boston, Amsterdam

Undefeated!

We won again today. The other team's first play was a three-way reversal that really confused our Defense and ended up in a touchdown. The kids played great and we took the lead early in the 4th quarter and won the game. My Grandma needs to hear about this. She laughed pretty hard when she heard I was coaching Nate's football team. I only wish I'd of thought ahead of time to put some money on the game with her.

I'm heading to the airport in a few to London Heathrow via Boston and Amsterdam. I get to London at 10am tomorrow morning. To make things even sweeter, I'm in coach for the nine hour flight to Amsterdam.

Bathroom's in Heaven

Eli, Mark Kohne, my Dad and I met up at BW3's in Brighton to watch the Tiger's game. I hit the head and found the most perfect toilet in the world. I started talking with the guy in the urinal next to me about how wonderful this is and he made a great point. The only way it could get better is if there was a TV in the crapper.

Thursday

Jess Shinn, Delaney Defelice and Katie Green were kind enough to watch our kids and clean our house last night while Cathie and I went on a date. To top it off, the Warroway's brought over an amazing dinner. We went to see a movie, Employee of the Month, which we both liked. A little predictable, but a good, mindless laugh.

Dwight Quote

"When my mother was pregnant with me, they did an ultrasound and found she was hjaving twins. When they did an ultrasound a few weeks later they discoverd that I had resorbed the other fetus. Do I regret this? No. I believe his tissue has made me stronger. I now have the strength of a grown man and a little baby."
--Dwight Schrute, The Office