Anyway, the rest of this post will focus on the other “fantastic” thing  – one that is quite literally about fans. I know, I know,  I keep complaining  about how hot it is here in the Eastern U.S. But one thing that is different from the heat back in Bolzano was that you didn’t really find many different types of fans available, let alone air-conditioners. So it’s been fun to have the chance for both things back here in the U.S. I mean, in both Italy and Germany we had free-standing fans, but here in the U.S. we’re finding that ceiling fans have become ubiquitous.

And it turns out that they make for some great photo ops, due to some  unexpected ways in which the shape seems to morph when you photograph them to create some “fantastic” (in the unbelievable sense) fans.  I had some fun one night in CT photographing the ceiling fans in our  bedroom to try to capture this in a photo. When you look at the photos below, keep in mind that there is no actual outer circular ring around the motor section;  it’s an illusion of the motion and the small strip of metal that is on just the end of each blade. Fun! I also had a little fun later changing the colors a little bit, just to punch them up a bit, as my father used to say.

Anyway,  I guess it just goes to show that some good can come from being in the hot weather and needing a fan.

See what you think.

Fan Fun #1

Fan Fun #2

Fan Fun #3

Fan Fun #4

Fan Fun #5

Fan Fun #6

Chris and I had mixed lucked last week in London.  We enjoyed visiting museums, favorite restaurants, etc. as planned until Wednesday night. Then we both came down what is euphemistically referred to as Montezuma’s Revenge. Ugh. Not a serious illness, but seriously not fun. Ah well — we’ve been lucky to avoid it on many a trip, so I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later, with all the traveling we do.

We were still a little under the weather on Saturday, so we spent the night at a hotel at the Newark Airport to rest up before driving to Vernon, CT, our real first stop on the Plan G tour. Weather-wise it was a dark and stormy night, but the hotel was very comfortable and we both slept through the major storms.

It was a bright and sunny Sunday morning when we then went back to the airport and took the Air Train there to get from one side of the airport to the other to pick up our rental car.  As the Air Train curves around at one point, it offers a spectacular view of the skyline of NYC. It went by too quickly  for me to dig my camera out since we were carrying all our baggage. However, I found this photo on the web, on a blog called Urban Gypsy NYC:

Skyline of NYC from Newark Airport (photo from Urban Gypsy NYC blog)

Nice view, eh?

Anyway,  we’re now in Vernon, CT staying with my in-laws, Stan and Judie.  They are graciously hosting both us and our stuff.  You see, our main task this week is scheduled to start tomorrow when most of our worldly possessions arrive here. That all has been in storage in Washington State for the past 7 years, and we’ll be sorting it and deciding what to keep longer and what to discard and give away.  We’re hoping we can get through most of those boxes before the ship lands with our stuff from Germany.

The “G’ in Plan G is currently for “gather”, I guess.

Stay tuned…