I remember having a conversation with a guy in a bar in Nashville, TN about the Lisa and whether or not he should buy one for his office. The Mac had also just been released and Apple was promoting the whole “mac office” idea with a Lisa as the server (and it’s whopping big 10 megabyte hard drive).
For years I used to dial in to a BBS system called the Jack-Mac-Attack that ran on a Lisa. It was pretty cool stuff back then….
Extra points if you recognize the actor in the above commercial.
The year is coming to an end. Today I shipped the last two boxes of things home and it looks like I’ll have one large box and one large suitcase, plus my backpack for the plane.
Leaving a place always generates ambivalent emotions. I am happy to be going home (even though I won’t be able to get into our house until the first of August. I’m looking forward to summer in Vermont, to getting back to work at the Inn and to mowing the lawn of my house (even if I can’t really get back inside). I am definitely looking forward to getting back to work at Fair Haven in the fall.
Of course I’m also sad to leave Spain. I love Spain (though as I’ve written before, I’m not crazy about Pamplona). Navarra is a beautiful province–similar geographically to Vermont. I love the history of this place. I love the small villages. I do wish people in Pamplona would smile once in a while at strangers. It’s easy to tell the immigrants–they’re the ones who smile back when I pass them on the street. Native Pamplonans only smile at people they already know–they frown at everyone else. It feels very cold to me.
I will miss the inexpensive, excellent wine. I will miss the pinchos. I will definitely miss excellent coffee in virtually every bar. I will miss bicycling to work (though I hope I never ever have to teach English again). I will miss all my Irish friends from ESIC–and Etienne as well, even though he’s from Gibralter… ;-)
I’m definitely looking forward to my night in Madrid on Sunday–my favorite city. I hope to make it to the Prado for the afternoon, and then I have tickets to the rejoneo (a type of bullfight on horseback–a beautiful thing). Un día guiri!
I don’t have the actual statistics, but my best estimate is that more than 50% of the passenger vehicles on the road here in Spain are diesel. What’s most interesting to me is the number of cars here that are diesel that simply don’t exist in the US in a diesel version. Fords of every stripe, Jeep Cherokees, Saabs, BMWs and more. From luxury to basic transportation, most of the cars and all of the trucks here are diesel.
In just a few days I’m headed back to the US and I have a couple of months to buy two vehicles to replace the cars we sold before coming here. I’ve been doing some searching and while there are a few diesel vehicles in the US, they’re pretty rare. I’m really hopeful that I can find a diesel for myself. Given my commute in the US, in which I hit 60 miles per hour within 2 minutes of pulling out of my driveway, and maintain 60 miles an hour until 2 minutes before pulling into the parking lot at the school, a diesel would be the perfect commuter vehicle for me. Most of the models I’m seeing are getting 45 miles to the gallon of diesel, which would mean that I could get back and forth to work on one gallon of fuel instead of the two gallons it would take me on gasoline.
Why is the US so backwards with respect to transportation? Our trains suck and don’t go anywhere, and our cars suck gasoline. I guess I’m focussing on the many negatives of life in the US as my return date nears, but forgive me if I continue to think that the US could have the best if we’d only get our heads out of our asses and get rid of the repubtards permanently.