338.January 28

Amsterdam, Holland

We danced all night on the rocking and shaking ship and I took a shower at 05:00 and got to sleep an hour. I have a strong memory of fixing the drain pipes on the broken urinals in the mens room on my level. We left the ferry at 07:00 and were in Holland. Our bus stopped for breakfast on the way. Holland is flat obviously, as it is below sea-level. We took a canal boat tour of the city and then went to the hotel. The first place I went was the Vincent Van Gogh Museum. I saw "Drawbridge at Arles", "The Potato Eaters", "Sunflowers", and many self portraits. Over 200 of his paintings are there. Then a group of us went to the Medieval Torture Museum, which was horrid. They had the devices in dark rooms and then lit drawings from old books that showed how they were used. Descriptions were connected to them. Then we ate at an Italian restaurant and I have a picture of some of my companions. Yum. We rested until 21:00 and went to the Red Light District. Women lined the windows, and men offered their bodies to the women in our group. On the way home we stopped at a coffee-pot house called "The Bulldog." One from our group bought something for us to smoke and we stood around with Heineken and talked and felt shady, liberated, and mysterious.

1994

Boulder, Colorado

Oh, did I tell you I was leaving for Colorado? Perhaps I mentioned it, but the time to leave came so fast that I didn't do much planning beforehand. We are at some Luther friends house in Boulder. Tonight, Christina is going to pick me up, any minute now, and we will do something. The ride took nearly 15 hrs in Cynthia's car, which got really good gas mileage. She drove most of the time. She paid for gas on the way out, I'll pay the way back. Tomorrow I will get to climb the mountains that are all on the other side of Boulder. We are in the foothills of them. They are so huge and beautiful. I feel so much different when I am around such natural wonders. I only see mountains in paintings, and when I was in Greece or Switzerland. I feel great when they are near me. It is 7:15pm now, Friday night. It hasn't snowed in Boulder yet this eyar. The usual temperature is 65, but this is a cold weekend. It is still warm though. I will drive back on Tuesday for my Wednesday classes.

1995

Rachel and I watched Akira Kurosawa's "Dreams" last night. One of the short films in it was a painter travelling through the landscapes of Vincent Van Gogh. He meets up with Van Gogh, played by Martin Scorsese, and then he actually starts walking through the paintings. It started at the gallery that I mention above from 1994 in Amsterdam, or at least had a lot of paintings that are housed there.

2010

The girls had another day off of school because of -18 farenheit weather, but I took the Mercedes to work and the roads were very passable. I had lunch at work. It seems to be a long time since I've been to work, but there were not many fires for me to put out or start.

2014