German Cold Cuts Lunch

 
When we moved to Colorado Springs 6 years ago, we had no idea how many retired military lived here.  Being raised in a German household and family I was also pleasantly surprised how many German folks live here. too.  

The benefit of that is there and several German restaurants and delis.

One of the newest is Schnitzel Fritz.  Not only do they serve hot meals, but have a small selection of German products and also have a large selection of German meats and cheese. 

We had out of town guests for lunch and wanted to serve something out of the ordinary, so we did a platter of assorted cold cuts and cheese, along with real German rye bread & pumpernickel  Yummy!!!

The Golden Kappa

A post inspired by Haikugirl's Not Everyone's Kappa Tea. ^^ She has cuter assortment of  Kappa there!

Here's a Golden Kappa found on the street of Kappabashi.

Kappabashi (Kitchen Town where you can find all sorts of restaurant equipments and cookwares) has adopted the Kappa; a mythical Japanese water creature as its mascot of sorts although the origin of the name Kappabashi was either due to the practice of locals hanging out their ‘kappa’ raincoats on the nearby bridge or from a merchant named Kihachi Kappaya who funded the project to build Shinhorikawa River for water management.

The Kappa on the other hand is one of the many Suijin 水神 (water kami, water deities) in Japanese folklore. They are depicted as flesh-eating water imps who live in rivers, lakes, ponds, and other watery realms. They are generally portrayed with the body of a tortoise, ape-like head, scaly limbs, long hair circling the skull, webbed feet & hands and yellow-green skin,with a tortoise shell attached to their backs and with a hollow cavity atop its head.

Kappa are usually seen as mischievous troublemakers. Their pranks range from the relatively innocent, such as loudly passing gas or looking up women's kimonos, to the evilly sinister such as drowning people and animals, kidnapping children and raping women. When benevolent, the Kappa is supposedly a skilled teacher in the art of bone setting and other medical skills. In addition, the Kappa is always portrayed as trustworthy despite its many evil ways. When captured and forced to promise never again to harm anyone, the kappa always keeps its promise.

The defining characteristic of the Kappa is the hollow cavity atop its head. This saucer-like depression holds a strength-giving fluid. Should you chance upon the quarrelsome Kappa, please remember to bow deeply. If the courteous Kappa bows in return, it will spill its strength-giving water, making it feeble, and forcing it to return to its water kingdom.

Any addition or further insight to this kappa story by you folks over in Japan is most welcome!

Ready, Set, Go!

There are countless Shibuya crossing photos out there and here's my mediocre effort to capture it. I wish there were more people at the crossing, but hey!  I can't subject my two boys to endless waiting just so I can take nice photos.

 Ready...Set..

Go!
Now, I wonder why was that guy in black suit standing still right in the middle of the crossing?





Have I Told You Lately How Much I Love VENDIO

Well I do.  I have been a subscriber for over 10 years when back in the day, listings and photo uploads were difficult for this eBay seller.

Vendio is an eBay 3rd party provider for listing and post sale chores.  Plus lots of other tools, including image hosting, watermarking, customer follow up, inventory tracking and oh so much more.  

A few of my most favorites are:-

Listing Form & Template - Once the template is created, new listings only require info specific to that item. 


Scrolling Gallery - Has individual listings scrolling across the top of my listings to show all the varied items we sell.

Image Hosting - After I edit photos in Picassa, I upload to Vendio in just a few clicks.  No fuss, no muss!!

Watermarking - Each photo has my info placed where I choose.

Customer List - Can be sorted in many ways.  I like sorting by category so I can target certain customers for sales and notices.

Vendio Store - Free with subscription.  With just a few clicks new listings can be added to the Vendio store too.

Submits listings to the Search Engines


Customer Support - Several ways to contact them and they reply immediately or will call back shortly.  They are fantastic.


and for those who need it Product Sourcing where you can search by country. 

Vendio Home Page 

 

Black Hawk, CO

This last weekend we drove up to Allenspark, which is just south of Estes Park. My daughters wedding is coming up at Wild Basin Lodge on 7/3. Since they live in Chicago we went to check out a few things for them. 

There is still a lot of snow in the high country.  This is Meeker Peak and we were over 8000 feet above sea level along this road. 

On the way home we stayed overnight at the new Ameristar Hotel in Black Hawk, one of 3 gambling towns in Colorado.  

All 3 towns were mining towns back in the day and still have the old west feel. 




We played the penny slots at the Ameristar, Isle of Capri and Fortune Valley in Central City which is just a mile from Black Hawk. The only real new machine we found at all of them was a community Wizard of Oz.  Most of the others are not anything very new or different.  The penny machines minimum bet is 30 cents or more.  

 The hotel room was one of the nicest we have ever stayed in.  Especially nice when we had a coupon for a drastically reduced room rate.  ;-))


We walked away with enough to pay for our trip, hotel, food and had left over too!! So we will be looking for more of those machines next time we go up there or to Cripple Creek which is only an hour from our house. 

Kobe, The Port City

Admittedly we have yet to explore much of Kobe yet, as the only stop we made there was to look at one of the filming site of Ultraman Mebius' 2006  movie titled Ultraman Mebius & Ultra Brothers (ウルトラマンメビウス&ウルトラ兄弟).

So what exactly did we do in Kobe other than going to the Waterfront? Let Mommy go in and out shops looking for clothes, that's what. I still have a pair of pants that I love dearly, bought at Uniqlo Kobe in my wardrobe.

A point of interest for Muslims - the first mosque built in Japan is in Kobe. Hajjah Halela's daughter got married at the Kobe Mosque on March 19, 2011. I hope she doesn't mind me sharing and linking up that post here. A Z Haida, who used to stay in Tokyo while doing her PhD visited Kobe Mosque way back in 2008, the same year we visited Kobe. ^^

What about Kobe beef, you ask? Eerrr... Kobe beef  isn't exactly high on our list of things to eat.

Converging@Yellowstone, on to Mt.Rushmore OLA

Old Faithful 5:00 PM, June 6, 2011

The North Entrance to Yellowstone is in Gardiner, Montana, 6 hours away from Glacier National Park. It is a 7 hour drive from Jim’s (Bill’s son) home in Boise, Idaho and a loooong 10 ½ hour drive from Suzanne’s (Bill’s daughter) home in Westminster, Colorado.  But they came to meet us there. We were at Yellowstone (and Grand Tetons) last year but this time around was different because Jim, his wife Anna and children Madeline aanother bear jam ond Ben and Suzanne and husband Dean and children Devin and Cassie joined us there.  Unfortunately, we still missed Bill’s daughter Cristine and Mitch from Anchorage.

another bear jam on a Yellowstone road

Besides, it was late summer when we came last year and this time it is still late spring. Snow still covered the eastern part of the park and some mountain tops. The colors seemed less vibrant and the gushing less spectacular this time. Wildlife was not yet all out grazing to begin another round of stocking up for the next winter. But Old Faithful remained faithful to the expectant crowds (every 93 minutes it gushes for 5 minutes). At Fountain Paint Pot, we were lucky to see the outburst of the Spasm Geyser which erupts for 30 minutes every 12 hours!

the Entrance Arch at Gardiner, Montana

The children had loads of fun, frolicking on the grassy area in the middle of the cluster of cabins, 5 miles from downtown and the Arch.  They had rented one with 2 bedrooms and a great patio at the back. With the campfire and smores and the ‘pasalubongs’ we had for each one, it was a real party on the first night.  The children entertained us with original song and dance routines (not yet ready for prime time!) The next day was a busy tour around the Park, spotting wildlife and watching geysers, the girls in one car and the boys in another! It would have been perfect had Jim been spared from intestinal flu!

Ben, Devin, Madeline, and Cassie entertaining us!

It will probably be another year before the Colborns (especially with Cristine, Bill’s youngest daughter) so far away in Anchorage, Alaska) can get together again. Perhaps late September 2012 when we will most probably be back in Colorado! That will be an 8-hour drive for Jim and family but since the kids will be in school we may have to drive out to Boise in our little Saturn! Till then, skype will have to do!

Bill on Last Stand Hill @
Little Bighorn Battlefield Monument

But, Mt. Rushmore beckoned and we have 3 lovely weeks to spend around Rapid City, South Dakota. We are here now and can’t wait to tell you about the treasures we are finding every single day in this state! But, before that, let me tell you a little about Billings, Montana. We stayed there for the night and bought some RV stuff and groceries that we needed. We also had a quick stop here in 2009 when we were making our way from Suzanne’s home in Denver to Claudine’s home in Calgary.

the Indian memorial at the Battlefield

That was when, surfing through the Net, we discovered there were two interesting attractions in Billings: the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument and Pompey’s Pillar. The former is a memorial to the U.S. Army's 7th Cavalry and one of the Indians’ last armed efforts to preserve their way of life. Here on June 25 and 26 of 1876, 263 soldiers, including Lt. Col. George A. Custer and attached personnel of the U.S. Army, died fighting several thousand Lakota and Cheyenne warriors.

Pompeii's Pillar

Pompeii’s Pillar is one of the most famous sandstone buttes in America because it bears the only remaining physical evidence of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, appearing on its trail today as it did 200 years ago. On the face of the 150-foot butte, Captain William Clark carved his name on July 25, 1806, on his return to the United States through the beautiful Yellowstone Valley. Captain Clark named the Pillar in honor of Sacagawea's son Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, whom he had nicknamed "Pomp."

Clark's signature on the rock

Next Stop: Spending Sunny Days in South Dakota, Parts 1 & 2