A Well Kept Man

I apologize for the lack of interesting stories today. You see, I started my morning by going to the Hotel du Police (which is apparently the police station) to get a parking permit for our car (this will let us park our car and not have to move it every hour to avoid getting a ticket). So as you can imagine this required me to bicycle up into the city and back down to our apartment after this adventure. Of course nobody there spoke English and my French is only useful in the grocery store, but for some reason I felt it necessary to speak Spanish to them (fun times). They somehow knew I'd be coming because they knew my name before I told them ("Mr. Seeber? Mr. Seeber? Ah Yes, blah blah blah blah" ... the blah's were in French).

As we all know in the States when you need to do something at the city offices (like get license plates, or marriage license, or stamps) you need to produce ten forms of ID, fill out a two inch thick stack of forms, all while being stared at by an unpleasant city employee; Now imagine me trying to get a parking permit in a foreign country where the forms are in French, and the city employee not only is offended by my lack of French speaking ability (she didn't seem to care I did know Spanish, and a little German for what it's worth), but seems somewhat conspicuous of my American uniform (or maybe it was the sweat permeating through my shorts and t-shirt...thankfully being American I chose to wear deodorant). Ugh.

Actually, it went fairly smooth, and after getting the temporary pass I proceeded to the post office to pay for the permit (the Swiss apparently are trying to avoid directly paying the police for favors, unlike certain jurisdictions in America). I would guess I biked another 8 km today, which combined with my earlier adventures adds up to more exercise than I attempted since college. Unless you count mowing my city size yard in Minneapolis which is just large enough to cause a drop or two of perspiration (and 15 minutes of my time).

Needless to say when I got back to the apartment I decided I needed to rest by planning our late August vacation to Ireland (we'll be going 21/8 through 27/8 so don't steal our stuff while we're gone - In case you're wondering I used the European date system, that's August 21-28 for those not yet initiated). After this and a light lunch (consisting of two Jambon, Gruyere, and Dijon mustard sandwiches, a peach jaune (yellow flesh peach), some chips and cookies), I decided I needed a nap. Well, when you haven't regularly exercised for a while and you all of the sudden start again your body gets tired much faster.

I slept for three hours, maybe more as I wasn't looking too closely at the clock. Thankfully I was up in time to run to the store to pick up some dinner items and have it ready by the time my boss came home, although she apparently called me (and supposedly we chatted) during my nap. Can't say I remember much of it, but with all of this exercise hopefully my brain function will improve as well.

It's supposed to rain tomorrow, which means if the weather people are anything like they are in the states then it will be beautiful and sunny. I think we're going to hit the Lausanne city market in the morning and then maybe go out to Broc to the Nestle Callier Chocolate Factory tour if we are so inclined.