6/26/2006 Happy Birthday Tom Yoder.

I had all manner of dreams, including dreaming that Molly was riding her bike and bouncing on her front tire.

We finally got ourselves into Tiszafured. The plan was to check email, then some grocery shopping. I was going to check email and do some work at the Flamingo while the family went to have fun. I had my bike so I could ride home.

I stopped in Poszclo to get bananas and orange fanta at the Coop, there were three pretty poor specimans, but that was all they had so I got them. I ate two of them.

We finally got to the flamingo. First a guy didn't want me to park where I started to park, and then he wanted money for me to park where I was. Not all that much money, but still, it was all weirding me out. I was having trouble, I hadn't eaten enough. I knew I was lacking in resourcefulness...then Heather called and came over to tell me the Internet at the Flamingo was down for the day.

Well that was all the fuck.

Heather still had shoes to exchange, so I pulled out and went across the street to the coop to score more food. I finally bought a roll, some yummy chocolate, and 100 grams of greasy smoked salmon. That was a reasonable but not inspired choice. It did help.

We went to Spar, I went to the Tourinform with Spencer. They were sort of no help. I was trying to figure out how to tell them that the Internet was down, and find out if there was another internet option, but I failed. I went back to Spar and wandered around while lots and lots of food was purchased.

In fact, almost too much food was purchased to fit in the car with us. We returned home, unpacked, had lunch, then packed again.

Molly and Leah decided to ride bikes to Meszo... We drove. We had a bit of confusion, but the Tour inform woman spoke english with a cute accent, and once Molly and Leah arrived on their bikes we got things sorted out. I dropped heather and the little kids at the pool.

The last thing spencer said to me was to show me our secret language. Blink the right eye, then the left, then the left, then raise your eyebrows twice. That means "I love you."

I returned to the internet cafe 'Eclipse' and spent 4 forints a minute (a little over a dollar an hour) on catching up with my email. It took almost two hours.

Then Molly and Leah and I went across to the best ice cream shop yet. We had yummy yummy ice creams while watching these guys do amazing tricks on their bikes, including the front wheel bouncing that I had dreamed Molly had been doing.

Then we got Heather and the little kids. Molly rode home. spencer was having a major melt down...he was outraged that Heather had purchsed his floaty tube, rather than renting it, or some stupid thing. Maddy showed amazing restraint. Then we chased after Molly. She had been trucking!

We caught up with her not all that far from Negyes. The little kids shouted 'Go Molly, beat Daddy.' And she did...after a fashion :-)

That fashion being that I drove slowly behind her for the last bit.

Then we swapped out folks. Heather grabbed the brownies they had made (with fresh keifer), and Me and the Little Kids headed to the marina at Tiszlaveld to gift brownies to our kind hosts from yesterday.

They were having dinner it seemed, or just finishing, so the brownies were a hit, but it didn't really seem like the right time to hang out. Maddy took her turn having a melt down, but we sort of ignored her, and I drove along the dike road West from Tiszaveld to the Bridge West of Neygus. It was pretty nifty.

Maddy got out of her funk when we started passing hay bales set so close to the road that I had to pay attention in order to miss them. She and spencer worked at grabbing hay out of them as we passed. She said something about putting some in her journal.

And then we were almost home and I tried to put plan B into action, walking to the Pub. Right before that Laszlo came by with eggs, in a reused paper bag, and milk. Spencer had a frog, as he normally does, and Laszlo laughed and laughed at that. I took the eggs and milk in, and by the time I got back out I saw the tail end of the kids following the Pied Piper of Neygus through his gate.

They returned a bit later. Maddy said he 'forced' them to pick blackberries...

Then we walked to the pub. We all were sticky, and swatting at mosquitos, both real and worse, imagined, but we made it. And said hello to people.

Then we had the ceremony of picking soda. The kind lady had little cups and poured samples of different drinks for the kids.

Maddy got her desired borga...something. Spencer had Sprite, so I had the Citronella he originally requested.

She poured the drinks into normal sized glasses and we enjoyed them and chatted, and I worked at keeping them happy. Almost totally succeeding.

And they recognized different people. The fellow who kissed my head was there, and nodded at me, but didn't try to repeat the action. The dairyman who poured the milk into our containers was there. Heather had dreams of the kids going to get the eggs or milk or bread, and that has happened.

We started back, and ran into Molly and Leah who were on a stroll that included letting us know that dinner was ready. We made our way back. spencer played at being a world cup soccar player, using a pinecone as a football.

When we returned I slipped into cold cold water. Spencer came in with me, though he wanted much warmer. Then dinner was great pork chops, and potatos and salad and fresh milk.

then the girls started watching office space and I went in and read more of Peter and the Shadow Thieves. I finished reading and looked in to see a soundly sleeping Heather. I was in time to come out and watch the very end of the movie with the girls. No more than the last 6 minutes, if that.

--- How special. Now it is 2:47 am, I'm in that weird place. I lost the raw images for about 50 pictures from the 24th, because the new OSX does an ugly, non-intuitive and dangerous thing. See the 'readme.txt' file in the wa/pix/europe directory for more information.

On the plus side, I have suceeded in making some CD backups that have verified for 6/20 through (if the current one works) part of the 26th.

I've now lost images on two trips. On the Puerto Rico trip I lost 15-20 images completely due to an error on my part. I had this 'best practice' of copying from the card, but not deleting, so I'd have 'an extra' copy. But then things went to hell when I needed space on a card and got a little too enthusiastic about deleting things that I'd 'copied.'

On this trip I didn't actually lose the complete image, just the raw mode.

And it is 2:51 am and I feel pukey. oh well.