mychai's Diaryland Diary

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Bitche, France; Ear hair; and flaming pizza

This was the first weekend with the new BMW.

Before I talk about the weekend, let me make a quick note about DMVs. Yes, the dreaded Departments of Motor Vehicles. They are universally the same.

If you wanted to get together a delegation of every King, Prime Minister, President, or any other cultural group leader in the world, and if you wanted to hold the meeting in a very neutral location that everyone would recognize as a familiar place, hold the meeting at a DMV. But in order to have a person talk, he must hold a number and wait for three hours.

That would end of all wars, that DMV meeting. Everyone would get pissed off, say, "Screw it. This fight for God isn't really all that worth it. Hey, Former Enemy, wanna go get a beer?"

You'd have to make it really hot and steamy in the building and have a dozen screaming babies and little black kids (about five to eight years old) running around, tripping over your legs while scuffing up your boots, and calling each other "Niggers" and "Bitches" while their moms laughed loudly at how cute their chirren were.

If I'm ever President of the USA, this is where I will hold all of my meetings with foreign officials. At my local DMV.

Anyway, it took me two-and-a-half hours to get the car registered in my name. I am now the happy owner of a slightly "experienced" BMW.

Its maiden voyage under my name was a Saturday jaunt into France.

I have a lot of pictures, but since my HP computer is on the fritz... again... I can't get them online at the moment. I am learning very quickly that HP computers suck the donkey. It won't even get past BIOS setup before restarting itself.

Anyway, our first stop was in Bitche. Just because I wanted to get a picture of Christina in front of the sign with her head covering the "e". The picture is perfect! I wish you could see it.

After Bitche, we went to Haguenau, the nearest French town with a population of more than a few hundred. There is also free parking in Haguenau, which was nice. You never find free parking in Germany.

We -- and when I say "we" here, I mean Christina -- found a really nice clothing store. I went in at first, thinking we would be in there for just a few minutes. Well, a few minutes became fifteen minutes, which became a half hour. The store was hot. I had to pee. I was feeling really claustrophobic, and Christina wasn't picking up on that at all.

I saw a little outdoor cafe when we entered, and I told her I was going out to have a beer and people-watch. She knows I could sit and people-watch all day long, so she knew I wouldn't be bored. So, outside I went and drank a nice French beer and got this bread stick thingie with herbed cream cheese that was just delicious.

She spent an hour shopping and ended up buying a really nice coat and some gloves. She showed me the exact same coat on Victoria's Secret Dot Com, and it was half-price in France. I have a frugal girlfriend.

We walked around Haguenau for a little while longer. I bought a huge loaf of bread for 2�, which was the most exciting purchase for Christina. She called everyone back home when we got back to brag she bought French bread in France.

Other than everyone speaking in French -- which is notably nothing like German -- Haguenau was pretty similar to most German towns of that size.

They had a community building -- still being used quite extensively by the town's youth -- that was built in the 1500s. There was a large church right in the middle of town that had an actual bell being rung by an actual person every hour. A little stream ran through town. And there was a large marktplatz that was pretty active on Saturday.

The cool thing was that everyone in France assumed Christina and I were German. I have been building up my German wardrobe, and Christina has red hair typical of a German woman. French merchants would come up to me, take a look, and talk to me in German. Or they would say something in French, I would look at them funny, then they would laugh and then talk to me in German.

I love having people assume I am German. It's so cool.

On our way back, the sun had already long since set, and we were getting hungry. Right on the German/French boarder (on the French side) was a little farm house out in the middle of nowhere. It was lit by blue neon edging around eaves. That's the only way you would know it was a restaurant.

We went in, ordered up a liter of wine and sparkling water and looked at the menu. They asked if we wanted a menu in German, which was nice. German menus I can understand.

They served Pizza. And that was all they served. But it was their specialty, and boy-howdy did they have some good pizza. And it came with a little twist:

The pizza I ordered was on flatbread, baked and yum, with a fresh tomato sauce, creme fraich (on pizza? Yeah, and it was damn good!), fresh mozzerella cheese, and parma ham. The twist was they served it with a shot of some kind of liquer, which they poured on the pizza and lit it on fire! By the time the flame goes out, you have a perfect, *HOT*, steaming, crispy pizza. It was fantastic!

Christina's had artichoke hearts, baby asparagus, tomato sauce, some kind of cheese (I forget), and one olive. It, too, was good beyond belief.

We stuffed ourselves for 7� apiece and left fat, dumb, and happy.

So, the BMW works great.

I wish HP computers would work just as great. I haven't thoroughly liked that pile of junk since I bought it. It doesn't have an Intel (*swoosh* ding-ding da ding!) processor, and the non-name brand ran slower than Christmas dinner with a dysfunctional family. The keyboard keys either wouldn't work or would fall off. And they are impossible to put back on.

I'm seriously considering boxing it up and sending it to HP with a letter saying I want my money back. I would do that if I could get all of my stuff off of the hard drive.

Anybody know how to boot a computer that won't boot up past loading BIOS?

Dude, I want a Dell.

My birthday is in a week and a day.

I know I'm getting old because when my dad called wondering what I wanted for my big day, the only thing -- and I mean the only thing -- I could think of to tell him is a whole carton of my favorite deoderant:

They don't have it anywhere over here, and it is the only deoderant that works on me.

So, I am getting about a dozen individually wrapped tubes of deoderant/anti-persperant. Give me a pack of tube socks, and I will be set.

My birthday's more-or-less been an afterthought this year. Twenty-seven is an odd number to celebrate. Nothing notable happens at twenty-seven. I got my first ear hair this year. I'm getting deoderant as a gift. It's divisable by 1,3,9,and 27.

Now, twenty-nine will be a wild and crazy birthday. It's the last year I can say I'm in my twenties. It's a prime number. It's just crazy.

But not twenty-seven. Twenty-seven is ear hair and deoderant. Booooring.

Well, I am officially rambling, so I will call this one done.

Have a good Wednesday, everybody.

1:35 a.m. - Wednesday, Oct. 06, 2004

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