Moving Houses and Chasing Dogs

With Laura and James moving into their new house with their 2 doggies in tow, it is eerily reminiscent of our move to Myerwood many years ago.

In 1979 Cindy and I moved onto Myerwood from Plano on a Thursday. (Laura and James - 6 streets over on Gulfstream coming from temporary residence in Plano on Thursday.) The last "items" we moved that day that had turned into night were our 2 pooches Billy Bob,the cocker, and Precia, the cockapoo who I had married into but had begged to adopt because she was, well, precious. (Laura and James have their two corgis Henry and Norman who James also begged to adopt.) Let's just hope these similarities stop here.

Back then, dogs stayed outside in the backyard. That's just the way it was. Only foo-foo dogs stayed indoors. At least that's the way I was raised in the Grove. So, that first night on Myerwood I "walked the property" to ensure there was fence all the way around and gave it the thumbs up. Good night Billy Bob and Precia - it was time for bed after an exhausting day of moving.

The next morning we awoke excitedly to a Friday vacation day looking forward to unpacking and setting up our new house. We go outside to feed the dogs and our hearts sank when there were no dogs to be found. In the light of day I "rewalked the property" and found a hole where the dogs had dug under the fence and escaped. Oh no.

So we hop in the car and start slowly driving the streets of our new neighborhood. No dogs. Nowhere. This was not going well. We decided to find a store where we could buy some posterboard, and came home and made "Lost Dogs" signs. We struck back out and every telephone pole we could find we nailed up our signs. We could only hope some Good Samaritan had taken them in and would bring them home to us after seeing the sign.

When we arrived back at our house there was a note taped to the front door: "We have your dogs at Hockaday School. Come around to the Construction site to pick them up."

It was entirely too soon for someone to have already seen a sign and been to our house and gone. Besides...Hockaday is on the south side of Forest Lane and we didn't go that far putting up signs. This is mysterious indeed, but we quickly got in our car and headed to Hockaday.

We drive around the school and back to the Construction site where a new building is going up. There are 3 or 4 men and two dogs - Billy Bob and Precia - huddled around a small open fire - the dogs lying on blankets. It was a chilly Spring morning and the men had built a fire. When we identified ourselves they said the dogs were comfortable (no kidding!) and enjoying the fire.

They proceeded to tell us that they saw these two dogs trotting south down Welch Road and the dogs came to them when the men stopped to check them out. Their tags had a Plano address, and the men said they didn't figure that someone from Plano would drive all the way to Dallas and dump dogs as cute as these. (insert smiley face)

The story that follows is as amazing evidence of perserverance as I could ever imagine - short of personal life or death situations!

Now bear in mind, this is 1979. No cell phones. No internet. No mobile devices. Not even answering machines for your home phone.

The dog tags had our Plano home phone number so the Construction guys used their office phone to call that number. They got the message, "This number has been disconnected."

The other piece of data they had on the dog tags was the Plano Vet phone number where the dogs got their vaccinations. They called and the Vet's office said, "No, we don't know where they moved to. But we think they both work for ARCO downtown."

The men, not to be denied, call the main switchboard at ARCO and ask for Larry Jefferson. They are connected to my ringing phone in my empty office. (Remember...there are no answering machines.) Fortunately my Secretary wasn't down the hall gossiping about "Who shot J.R?" or whatever and answered my phone. "No, I don't know where he moved. But seems like they were using Ebby Halliday Realtor."

Moving steadily along, the men call Ebby Halliday's office. "Yes. (Hoorah!) Larry and Cindy Jefferson are our clients and they just closed on a house at 4521 Myerwood Lane."

Mystery solved!!! These men found our house, posted a note and took great care of our doggies until we came to pick them up.

It was a helluva beginning to moving into a house that continues to provide sunshine into our lives. May the same hold true for Laura and James.

Epilogue

Couple of posts ago I said that sleep on the plane would be needed. Had no idea how accurate that would be. We had noon flight from Heathrow after 4 am wake-up and 7:30 flight from Copenhagen. Ninety minutes after take-off, after rounds of drinks and getting the appetizer, I lean back in my chair feeling very, very comfortable. The next thing I knowed (shoutout to Bob), I wake up, look at my watch…and it’s EIGHT p.m. straight-up! I had just slept over 6 hours! I flip on my tv screen to “Journey” to check the map and see that we’re over Arkansas…an hour from home. I have never felt so refreshed in all my life. Not to mention eliminating the clock watching on a long flight like that.

Of course the poor people that walked off that flight with bags under their eyes because of my snoring were wondering what the hell had just happened to them. First time in my life I ever slept like that on a plane. I attribute it to the British Airline seats that allow you to “raise your window” so you’re isolated from your seat mate (Cindy was on a different flight home.)Photo below was taken just before the snoozefest.

At any rate, home now and wonderful to be here surrounded by family today. Great to see everyone and catch-up on everything that’s going on in their lives. Matthew is on the brink of just skipping walking and going straight to running. The Rangers looked just like they did 4 weeks ago when I left, not sure what all the fuss has been about.

Got nothing left to say for now. (Hit the “Applause” sign.)

Thanks for tuning in. Everyone have a great week and knock’em dead.

Finis

This morning I did my usual – after breakfast I walk outside to check the weather. With hardly a cloud in the sky and with the temp crisply in the upper 50’s, I announce the day as, “Spectacular!” An hour later it was raining and continued until late afternoon. So much for my weather forecasting skills, as well as last day plans.

This ended up being a perfect day for museums and an early afternoon Pub visit. Saw a great Egyptian and Greek art and sculpture exhibit and then to the Danish National Museum which had great historical artifacts. Seeing how people lived in the 11th century is so much different than visiting Betsy Ross’ house.

Okay, so much for history. We then found The Dubliner where all the rain-soaked people ended up watching French Open tennis and the Europe Cup. Met a new friend from Cyprus, an architect with a Danish fiancé.

After the rain stopped we hopped a cab and headed to the other end of town to see The Littlest Mermaid statue. This was built because of the famous Fairy Tale by Hans Christian Andersen and is considered a national symbol of Denmark.

We then had early dinner at Wagamama as we continue to try and go to everyone of these around the world. Actually this is only the 5th one. With the early dinner we just knew we would be back to the hotel early tonight and get ready for early wake-up on Saturday to fly home. Only one problem. When we went to the train station there had been a train accident and our train would not be running. We then followed some people that were going to the same place we were. This led us to a different Metro station where we caught a local subway to the airport. From there we had to get off and wait for another train to where we are staying. Oh well. What’s another 2-hour screw-up? You’d think the local train system was related to American Airlines.

But, with that, that’s about it. Saturday is travel day and look forward to getting home after being gone 4 weeks. I'll check back with you on Sunday after experiencing that Texas heat!

Various pictures from today will follow. This morning we had Copenhagen Seniors parading around yelling and blowing whistles. And it appears they were graduating from the Naval Acadamy. None of them are around tonight – Surprise, Surprise. I’m sure they’re all passed out somewhere.

Until later, “Cheers!”

If this is Thursday it must be Copenhagen

The final city of our Scandinavia Trifecta. Not counting Stavanger - the Midland/Odessa of the trip, but can certainly hold its own with the big boys.

Copenhagen contains many canals that ring the city, so we did a boat tour that covered a portion of the city. Nonetheless we saw lots of neat sights and expect more tomorrow.

While we haven't had a bad meal yet, we ended today with the best one yet. We picked a fish restaurant and stumbled in. Once again we were in over our heads. White table cloths and people dressed very nicely and when the Maitre'D asked, "Reservations?" Uh, no. But, then somehow they found a table for 2 to "squeeze" us in. Lucky for us. Great, great food, service and atmosphere. Menu had many different ways to go but we went with the Sustainable Menu - all local - 4 Courses. Plus some little extras they included tonight. If I tell you that the first 3 courses were trout, mussels and torbot (a local fish) your mental image would not be accurate for what was on these plates. (Desert was a rhubarb ice cream with rhubarb and white and dark chocolate accents.) As you can tell by the type of establishment this was, Larry did not have the courage to pull out his camera and photo these dishes. Thus, all I can do is just tell you how wonderfully pleased we were and glad we found this place. Was the first time we've come out anywhere after dark on this trip, since it doesn't get dark now until around 11 pm. But, we found our way to the train station and back to our hotel.

Part of our day we spent going to Tivoli gardens. Beautiful park. Flowers, ducks, and amusement park. When I asked a lady for directions to Tivoli Park. She said she'd never heard of it. When I spelled it, she says, "Oh...Tuu-lee." (Like 'Julie.') I, of course had said, "Ti-vole-ee."

I'll post some pictures below from the day. We'll see how many I can post. The only food item pictured was a Chicken sandwich at a sidewalk cafe today. I'm sure I have returned to blimp proportions after all of this.

One more day. Looking forward to sleeping on the plane home.

Later.

Stockholm

Ah, Sweden. It conjures up illusions of beauty. When you get off of the plane in Stockholm, there are large photos of Bjorn Borg, Greta Garbo and Ingmar Bergman. Of course, what immediately comes to mind to me was Tiger’s Ex. But, I digress. Stockholm IS a beautiful city. The architecture is wonderful, the people are beautiful and it has plenty of sights to see.

Compared to Oslo it’s a bigger city and so there’s more to see and do. Stockholm is part of an archipelago that actually is comprised of 30,000 (!) islands. We didn’t attempt to go to all of them. But, we did attempt to see the city highlights by taking a hop-on/hop-off boat and bus. Luckily we took the boat while the weather was great. Beautiful trip and very comfortable. After we started the bus tour, the bottom fell out of the clouds and so we remained on the bus. And remained…and remained. Until finally there was a let-up and we made a mad dash for the Grand Hotel for an unexpected afternoon drink and snacks. This is the best hotel in the city and we were definitely the most underdressed of all the people in there. The Grand is just down the street from all the major embassies, plus add in the uppercrust of business clientele and we were hoping they’d not throw us out into the rain...even after we took our shoes off to dry while we ordered drinks. Oh well, if they can’t take a joke.

With a bigger city means some more big city hassles. In Oslo, as in all of Norway, the pedestrians have the right of way. You get use to walking up to a cross-walk and traffic screeching to a halt. Not so in Stockholm. Also lots more traffic lights and less roundabouts. It is surprising that in a city as big as Oslo is (~600K population) most intersections are handled by roundabouts. Stockholm (1.2 million) is more what we’re used to as far as traffic lights. Can make for long waits when you’re on foot. Okay, sorry for the Snoozefest. Not sure how exciting I can make this.

I can tell you my formula for getting around is like this:
City to city – Air (all our flights were $100 or less as long as you’re flexible on what time you go.)
Airport to City Center – Train (usually around $30/person)
City Center to Hotel – Taxi (anywhere from $15-$30)

As far as cost, Norway is the most expensive country I’ve ever visited. Sweden is only slightly less. That means, for example, that a cheap bottle of wine in a Norway restaurant will cost you $60 but only $50 in Sweden, compared to $30 in Texas. Of course, a mid-day hamburger at the Grand Hotel will set you back $30. All 3 countries in Scandinavia have their own languages and their own currency – though all are very similar. Just have to get rid of one currency before going to the next…but make sure you have the next after you get there.

Food treats: In Norway it was reindeer steak. In Stockholm it was Swedish meatballs...but of course!- the common phrase answered when you ask a local an obvious question.

Anyway, I took lots of pictures of buildings (more snoozing!) so that’s mainly what you’ll see here. Also have some people on scooters (whatever you call those things but they look like a great way to get around on – without having to exert energy – and isn’t that what we’re all about!), a Photography Museum with the Morning Mix DJ’s ad on the building, clouds before the rain, me eating a macaroon, and the last restaurant I would consider eating at in Stockholm. But…I am looking forward to Mi Cocinos when I get home.

Next stop Copenhagen.

Weekend in Oslo

Oslo – Capital of Norway and largest city. Nice tight little town, only about 600,000 population. A port city for cruise ships and large ferries that travel to Denmark and Germany. The Oslo Fjords are famous and beautiful, but I have to think the fjords around Stavanger and along the west coast to Bergen are much more spectacular looking.

We took two tours of the city – one by boat and one by hop-a-bus. Visited some good museums which celebrated their maritime history including the Vikings, my favorite. They were back in 900-1000 and 3 different Viking boats had been recovered as well as many of their belongings. Amazingly when someone associated with the Vikings died, they buried an entire boat and much of their belongings including dogs, jewelry, accessories, etc. The Vikings Museum had 3 boats and displays of the articles buried and uncovered – though they spared us the animals.

Visited the Nobel Peace Center which was very impressive. Will post a couple different blogs on it. Below are pictures from Oslo including the Opera House and assorted boat views. Leading off is the majestic Parliament Building and the Grand Hotel.