Will – Day Two
I *promise* not to make this the ‘baby blog’ – but there are a few more pics online from William’s second day.
Will hanging out on Tuesday morning
See the entire photoset at:
William Davis Teskey
I *promise* not to make this the ‘baby blog’ – but there are a few more pics online from William’s second day.
Will hanging out on Tuesday morning
See the entire photoset at:
William Davis Teskey
I’m very proud to announce the birth of my son.. William Davis Teskey.
Will was born at 5:36 AM on August 28th, 2006 in Minneapolis after about 12 hours of labor. We didn’t go to the hospital until midnight – so there was only about 5 hours there before he was born. He’s 21 inches long and just a little over 8 pounds. Everyone is doing great and he should be coming home very soon.
Will laying on the incubator ten minutes after birth
See the entire photoset at:
William Davis Teskey
Many would consider us a little crazy – but one day before Heather’s due date, we went to the STATE FAIR! It was an exercise in determining what, if any, foods at the fair may induce labor. Of course, I just had to try some of everything as well..
Heather and Beth with their French Fries
Here are a list of foods that we determined to NOT induce labor:
Ugh – yeah, we did eat all that in retrospect. That was for lunch and dinner, though.
Beth and Heather with some ice cream
Probably one of the high points of the trip was seeing the new “Miracle of Birth” center – there is nothing cuter than a fresh litter of piglets squirming around.
Except, of course, for little Baby Teskey.. due to arrive ANY DAY NOW…
EDIT: I guess they do – but it takes 24 hours. Now – which one caused it? Or.. was it a combination? Hmm….
Our final day on the travel really was kind of a non-day.. a non-day that lasted for about 32 hours when you take time zone changes into account. It started early with a trip to the airport in Vienna – which had the potential to be painful due to Bush’s visit. Fortunately, he wasn’t due to leave until later that day.
The flight to Amsterdam was much rougher than expected – it was the first time in almost two weeks that we saw clouds and bad weather. By the time we landed in Amsterdam, it was a pretty constant rain that felt great as we walked across the tarmac to the shuttle bus.
We had to do a pretty quick transfer since our plane got out of Vienna a little late. We reboarded an A330 and settled in for the long trans-Atlantic flight. We settled in, got our beverages when airborne, and fired up the movie “Tsotse” on the viewer.
I’ve had really bad luck with in-flight beverages lately. I think I’ve dumped half a dozen of them over the past year. I usually miss everything, but I’ve had ‘em hit me before. My previous best was having a beer run down the handrail into the woman’s purse in the seat behind me when I was in First Class. This flight was right on track with these – my headphone cord caught and flipped my fresh glass of diet Pepsi right into my lap and between my legs to make an icy puddle under my butt. Great – 6 hours of flying with a wet butt. Heather gamely said “Why don’t you go to the bathroom and get some towels?” Looking at my soaked lap, I decided I’d just wait it out. Mercifully, the dry airplane air had me dried out by the time we were over Newfoundland.
Our entire flight was punctuated with some little 4-year-old Banshee shrieking at the top of his lungs for eight hours. Yes, eight hours. Is it possible to check them as luggage? Even the flight attendents were upset about that one after the flight!
Well, that wraps up my story. I’m sort of amazed that it took me two whole months to complete this travelogue.. when I set off on documenting this, I don’t think I intended each episode to be quite as long as they turned out. Ultimately though, I really wanted to capture what we did and to really give a feel for what it was like. This project was as much an exercise to capture the trip for my own memory as it is to share it with others.
Check out all of the pictures at:
Behind the Iron Curtain 2006
More classic footage on Larry Graham weekend 2006 on the Defenestrator!
For those “not in the know” – Larry Graham was the former Sly and the Family Stone bass player, the leader of Graham Central Station, and most recently – Prince’s bass player. He was solely responsible for inventing slap bass – and he can still throw down wiht the best of them.
Ah.. nothing like a little Friday afternoon bass slappin’ from Larry Graham – the inventor of slap bass…
On our last full day of touring, we planned on spending the day hitting the high points of Vienna that we missed the day before. It was also the last day with Beth – so it was a bit sad for everyone (especially Beth).
We had a quick danish at Therese’s house and waited for Therese’s mom to come over to babysit. Thomas gave us a ride in on the now-deserted streets specially cleared for President Bush’s motorcade later that day. On the way in, we got a chance to see some of the suburban Vienna sites as well as both Therese’s and Thomas’ office.
After we were dropped off, we stopped for a quick sandwich snack and made our way back to St. Stephens. We made our way down the Graben to where the Royal Lippizaner stallions train and saw them going from stable to training yard. As we were walking toward the Opera, Heather finally found her statue of a woman giving birth – shortly after complaining there were no pregnant statues!
One crazy sign of the times was a team of military and street workers busily checking underneath every single manhole cover for explosives – just in case. Once again – another preventative measure with Bush in town.
We hopped off of the tram at the Hofburg. Our mission today was to see the Sisi museum and the Royal Apartments. Both were great tours – but I could have done without the endless collection of dishes and silver services on the way in. If you’ve ever had the desire to see 200 sets of placesettings for 50, there’s your chance. It was interesting seeing the Royal Apartments – since they represented the end of an empire that lasted for centuries. Things are pretty much unchanged from when Franz Josef lived there – and helped start WWI from there.
We had lunch at the Buffet Trzesniewski – a Vienna institution where they serve a large variety of finger sandwiches and these tiny beers called a “Pfiff”. There is about 30 different sandwiches – most some variety of egg salad – that you walk up and point to as they load them on to your plate. I had four – mushroom, hot pepper, sausage, and artichoke. Though I was seriously checking my masculinity by eating there in the first place, I at least had the dignity to get a large beer rather than the Pfiff!
Dinner that night was at a local restaurant in Leopoldsdorf – a wine garden where they served a young white wine made to be spritzed. Though I felt pretty emasculated (again) at having a wine spritzer on the same day as a little egg covered finger sandwich – Thomas assured me that there is no sissy stigma associated with a wine spritzer like there is in the States.
The spritzer was very good – but the food blew me away. I had been craving German – and this did not disappoint. I had Schnitzel and a dumpling – and I’ve NEVER had a dumpling like this before. It was like a very savory herbal highly compressed Thanksgiving stuffing ball. It was so delicious! I devoured my meal while sneaking bites to little Jakob – who happens to love Schnitzel. The whole meal was crazy cheap – only 65 Euros for 5 people including drinks and the works.
I ended the night by staying up and hanging out with Thomas in their TV room and enjoying a couple of beers. The end of the soccer game was on – and did I mention how much of a soccer fan I am? Afterwards, we saw the German “Conan O’Brien” – and got a good laugh at a blind soccer game where the coaches tell their players everything to do.
Next time – homeward bound.
Check out the rest of the pictures at:
Behind the Iron Curtain 2006
After editing a mind-numbing two hundred and twenty-nine pictures, I finally have ALL of the pictures from our trip to Eastern Europe online. Just added: Vienna!
… for the end is near. I actually agreed with Michael Moore on something.
“The continued decrease in attendance (for Hollywood films) is not because of piracy, videogames, or the Internet, it’s because the movies aren’t very good anymore,” Moore says. The fest sellouts, he says, show an aud demand for better fare.”
He nailed it on the head – I can count on one hand (and have change) the number of movies that I’ve seen in the theater over the past year. The reason I don’t go is that I keep looking at the listings and deciding that none of them are worth seeing. Even the “big ticket” movies are pretty smelly these days – I saw Pirates of the Caribbean II last week and I got a pretty good nap.
Here is a link to the complete article:
Michael Moore says that movies suck now
Once again, Monday the 19th started early. Really early (like, 6:30). Who gets up at 6:30 on vacation? Those that want to get time in the Grand Market before catching their train to Vienna! Beth and Tamara had grand promises of getting up and joining us – but they got to bed really late and weren’t up to it.
Heather and I jumped the metro and popped out right next to the market and popped in at about 7:30. This gave us about an hour to browse around and find food, souveniers, etc. It was fantastic – there was a great bakery right inside the door that provided a yummy cinnamon roll and would later provide us fantastic strudel on the way out. There were lots of vendors with fresh produce piled high – all of it dirt cheap by US standards. The meat and cheese vendors were plentiful too – but it was a little early for that. Some of the most interesting things were in the basement – where the stinky things were. The fish vendors were down there with their big tanks full of catfish – as were the pickle vendors. If you could pickle it – it was for sale. There were even some things that I don’t think you can pickle that were pickled. Our only purchases were the baked goods and a Goulash kit for Tammy as a thank-you for watching the house.
As it turned out, it was. We started by going to the domestic ticket window by accident. We got to the international window with 9 minutes to spare, and I fidgeted all the way through them handwriting a ticket. Mind you, the next train was four hours later.
Things really derailed when the ticket window mis-endorsed Tamara’s Eurail pass. This essentially voided a multi-hundred dollar pass with no possibility of refund. Tamara looked like terrified as she tried to get help of some sort from the agent without any luck. Ultimately, we just had to cross our fingers and run to the train with one minute to spare. Of course, the platform was jammed with people waiting for the next train that we pretty much had to push out of the way. As the conductor was whistling and waving for the train to go, we yelled out “WAAAAAIIIIITTTTT!!!!!” and he frantically waved off the engineer stopping the train long enough for us to jump on. We received a pretty stern finger waggle for our last-second dash.. but we were on the train!
Being that we boarded at the last minute, we weren’t able to find four seats in the same compartment. Heather and I squeezed in one with German businessman and some Mexican schoolgirls. Beth and Tamara joined a nice Japanese businessman and some others in the next compartment. We were the lucky ones – Beth and Tamara’s heater was jammed on full blast and it was like a Turkish sauna in their compartment. I wouldn’t have done well with that. Fortunately, they passed the time by trying to communicate with a Japanese guy in about 6 languages.
When we arrived in Vienna, Therese met us at the station with little Jakob. Since Heather was spending the day with Therese, we packed our gear into her car and said goodbye to the two of them so we could go out touring. Before leaving, Therese handed us a list of directions on how to get out to their house in Leopoldville.
We didn’t really have a plan for the day – but thought we’d start in the center of things at St. Stephens. When we exited the 140 degree U-bahn, we were greeted to some very large protest banners exclaiming “BUSH GO HOME”. Bush being in town while we were visiting obviously was another in a long chain of surprise events on our trip. The irony wasn’t lost on me – they complain that he’s trying to build an empire – yet they complain when he comes on a good will trip. I don’t get it.
Our original plan was to take a ring tour on the tram – but we were thwarted by a lack of Euro coins and no bill changer when we boarded the tram. We improvised by buying ice cream to get change – and somehow didn’t make it back onto the tram. Since we were near the Hofburg at that point, we made our way to the treasury to see the Austrian crown jewels.
Though they aren’t as diamond encrusted as the British crown jewels, it’s obvious the Hapsburgs were in the same league. They did, after all, rule the lion’s share of Europe for 500 years. Though impressive, the oddest thing was the giant collection of dead saint parts on display with all the reliquaries. It’s just kooky seeing a crystal candlestick containing the skeletal finger of St. Norman the Frog-Footed or (insert part here) of St. (pick name here) the (animal name) of (city).
When we finished with that tour, we walked down the main shopping street in downtown Vienna and stopped at a grocery store (Josef Meinl) that made Kowalski’s look totally ghetto. We gawked at the hundreds of chocolate bars and settled on some cold beverages (yep, it’s still really hot). The very helpful cashier opened ours – and Beth’s was rigged to explode. As she opened it, it showered the cashier with sticky orange goodness. To her credit, she remained calm.
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