“Honeymoon”

“Honeymoon” (May 2010)

OK so I just got married so here are some pix of our wedding and then honeymoon through Europe:

BOND! JAMES BOND! JAMES BOND! JAMES BOND! JAMES BOND!

Venice:

Venice with me and Lanie:

Venice with me and Lanie:

Can you spot the American in this photo? Where’s Waldo?!??

Let’s see.. what random file-format changes do I want to make in X-Plane 10? Hmmm… let me consider… so many to choose from… hmm….

I guess it LOOKS like a pretty tight ship…

A typical main street in Venice!

A typcial main street in Venice!

On to Maranello, Italy, where the Ferraris are made. Maranello is a very blue-collar, working-class town… where the best cars in the world are made!

This is my first glimpse of a real Ferrari 458 Italia.

458 Italia test-drives available here! I DID things to this car. BAD things.

The Ferrari museum!

NEIGH! NEIGH!

“Modello in scale 1:3 per galleria del vento”? What does that MEAN? Curse my limited Italian!

Talking about Ferraris before the factory tour: (which did not allow cameras)

View from one of our hotels:

On the highway through north-eastern France!

Our amazingly-boring rental car.. but CHEAP! So I was not afraid to crash it.

Me and Lanie are lost… if only we could find a suitable land-mark to orient ourselves…

Oh yah. Going all euro-nuveau or something in the furniture store:

(now is time on Sprockets when we observe furniture!)

So I am stroking a big hard cock! So what? What’s it to you?

Lanie in Paris:

What does one find in the Louvre Museum?

OK, now if I could just find my way to the Mona Lisa… it’s around here somewhere…

OOOOO! ART!

Lanie in Paris… after enough coffee.

GARGOYLES ON A BRIDGE! Oh gawd I love gargoyles. The one on the right will hold his breath until you try the vin-rouge du maison!

Me and Lainee in Paris…

“Rue” means “Street” in French. So, this is the street of some-are-hard.

La Tour Eiffell! Many people thought it should never be built! Many thought it should be torn down after construction! The list of reasons that I don’t listen to anyone else’s opinion about anything grows daily!

THIS IS A GAS STATION IN FRANCE! A FREAKING GAS STATION! THIS IS A GAS STATION! OMG! A FREAKING GAS STATION!

CURSE MY IMPERFECT FRENCH! WHAT DOES ‘OFFRE DU MOMENT’ MEAN? IF ONLY MY FRENCH WERE BETTER!

In French, this says “You do not have the priority”. I can have only one response to that!

Me and Lanie in the South of France:

In the South of France, cats live in igloos!!!!!

…unless they are watching us have dinner! The view of the sea in the South of France is really nice, and the weather very nice for outside dinners!

Now on to Spain! I keep my Starbucks order on my shirt to save precious seconds when I place my order and the barista asks me to repeat something.. I just point at the shirt.

Also, when I get dementia (really really soon, probably) and they find me wandering around, dis-oriented, they will know my Starbucks order.

OK, here it is. Dis-oriented wandering. That was quick. Dis-oriented wandering in the Spanish countryside.

Look! Windmills! In Spain! Lots of them!

The wind in Spain blows on the plains in the main.

Then we got caught in a traffic jam in Spain. One of the buses was fileld with kids that seemed to be very amused by a certain blowup doll, making it wave to everyone else in traffic.

WHAT? WHAT IS HE DOING? OH MY GOSH!! WHAT TYPE OF DOLL IS THAT? WHAT SORT OF THINGS ARE THEY DOING TO THAT BLOW-UP DOLL?

I admit that, perhaps, my tailgating the bus and putting my hands down my pants and undulating wildly with my tounge sticking out in all directions and vigorously jerking my hands up and down in my pants while driving MIGHT have encouraged them a LITTLE BIT…

WHY DO I KEEP ENCOURAGING HIM!?!?! WHY WON’T I STOP SHOWING THESE PICTURES?!?!?

OK, out of the traffic jam and on to Madrid… to meet with Spanish X-Planers!

At dinner with the Spanish X-Planers:

X-Plane 10 will only simulate hot-air balloons, nothing else! Hear me out while I explain why this is a good idea!

We are in Spain now!

OK no thinking about X-Plane for the next 5 minutes. Now, only beer.

Now to Genoa, Italy, hometown to Sergio Santagada, author of X-Plane textures and artwork and many planes!

Umm… A bunch of plants!

Me and Lanie and Sergio at Portofino:

Me:

Sergio:

Me and Sergio gaze out at the power-point presentation showing all the screenshots of X-Plane 10 that is JUST off-screen!

Munich airport in Germany!

Food court at Munich!

BEER-GARDEN at the food-court! Let’s get drunk!

German people’s ideas on customer-service are slightly better than American. In America, we are told only to complain if we do not get a RECIEPT.. this is to keep the workers from stealing from their companies. In countless ways, right now, America sucks! (Sorry! I am saying it because it is true right now!).

AH, Europe!

The perfect, glistening airport of Munich. WOW.

On our way out in a magnificent Lufthansa Airbus A-340. Lufthansa is so stupendously amazing, the A-340 so amazingly smooth and quiet and comfortable, that the flights to Europe and back were mini-vacations in themselves!!! Biz-class in the Lufthansa A-340 shown here:

…And the view out the window:

And finally back home to South Carolina, where our cat Tee-Tee does not seem to be particularly stressed over our 2-week absence. (Though, to be fair, Tee-Tee is pretty dumb, and we had really good friends house-sitting, so I am not sure that Tee-Tee ever figured out that we were gone!)

…

Late in the evening in Spain…