So I shaved off the goatee I’d been growing over vacation. It was looking way too little like this, and way too much like this, or maybe on a good day this. Anyway. I look ten years younger. The wife had been protesting, so I couldn’t shave it off right away. Had to wait a few days. But it’s a relief.

Now if they could just fix the shop windows in Vienna. Walking around today, they all, without exception, made me look shorter and fatter than I swear to God I am. They must all be so old they’ve gone concave.

Then I bought a notebook at one shop, and “White Apples” by Jonathan Carroll, an American living in Vienna, who Gaiman fans would like, a lot of weird things happen in the book, and outside it, like when I was sitting on the bench in front of the movie theater waiting for my wife and daughter to show up so we could watch Charlie’s Angels II (great film!!!!) (just kidding!!!!) a very large drunk guy materialized in front of me. Instead of warning me that White Apples doesn’t get such great reviews on Amazon, he said, “Grng” a few times, sort of gesturing. He was talking, but I couldn’t even have told you which language. Then he tore a page out of the book.

There is no point, in my philosophy, in fighting drunk guys. Especially when they look more than a little thick etc and are way bigger than you. No honor either way – they win, you look bad, you win big deal you beat up a drunk guy. So to spite him I left in the direction opposite where he was pointing. I guess I had his bench, see. Later I saw him and another wino friend sitting there.

In the morning I took real pictures with an analog camera. In the evening I watched my daughter’s face at the wine tavern where we kept getting things we hadn’t ordered, and thought what a good cure she is for homesickness, the way her pretty face so resembles other pretty faces in my family – dark hair, light skin, green eyes, freckles, big mouth.

“Look! A falling star! Just what I wished for at the wishing fountain! Now I can make another wish!”

The weather has been hot, we’ve been sleeping in the back yard in a tent with a see-thru roof and watching the stars fall. The cats can’t figure it out, they are concerned about us and crawl up onto the tent and look at us until we knock them back off.

Mosquito-wise it’s really good, fewer bites than in the house.

Moon last night was almost full – it’s full tonight. And Mars up over the neighbor’s house, bigger than it has been in what, 2000 years? Back when I was doing belly flops right and left. Cannonballs. You name it.

Today I go to Vienna all by myself and walk around until it dawns on my that I am lost without my wife or a kid. I’ll take a camera to buy a little time – I can take pictures when I start feeling lost. Go to a cemetery and shoot headstones maybe before giving up and going to the English bookstore and browsing. Go into St. Stephen’s Cathedral and absorb stories or just history.

We went to the Music House yesterday, which is quite nice, except the interactive touchscreens were hard to figure out and a waste of time in general – cutting-edge 1999 technology. The percussion things, like rocks covered with anemones and clams and urchins made of hardish rubber, you hit them and they played brief sound samples, so you could get a fun rhythm of burps and squeals going, were wonderful on the other hand.

They had things on the wall, funnels and hemispheres, you stick your head up to them and hear Tokyo subways or a monkey ooking in a space capsule.

Interstellar space is entrancing. I listened to that the longest. Chinese singing sanddunes are a close second, though. Oldest daughter and I mixed a 3 minute CD of alarm clock sound, farting, Lisbon street sounds, the Blue Danube Waltz and us singing, but then decided not to buy it because, you know, €7.20 for a 3 minute CD?

Another hot day. House of acquaintances. Parents of eldest daughter’s hot friend in fact. They show us their pool. Part of my wife’s secret campaign to get my okay for a pool upgrade. I do a belly flop, tell my kid, That was my first belly flop in — do the math in my head — thirty years.

Gah.

Sitting around a table on their terrace later on, eating apples from their tree, and currant juice from their currants, admiring their ornamental squash plant. Plant of ornamental squash, whatever. Eating banana cake, very popular with the wasps this season as well.

They have other visitors, a woman and her blind friend, guy thirty five or forty. Someone says Internet, he talks about accessible technologies, interesting. Not as interesting as the wasp walking laps around the rim of his drinking glass, dipping down now and then to take a nip of currant juice.

Around and around, as we watch in silence.

My wife and I were in a diner. Just sat down when I saw EeksyPeeksy at the next table. “Look,” I whispered. “EeksyPeeksy.” He was even eating French toast. “He writes so beautifully about French toast.”

Then the six-year-old kicked me in the head and I woke up.

Yesterday we went to two abbeys/monasteries. Maybe one of each, I’m not good at telling them apart. One was in Melk, where “Name of the Rose” starts, you may recall. Great exhibition there. Not sure about what, but very impressively done. Many tour buses too, from all over. Got funny looks from Americans who heard me speaking American with the little one, and her answering in Austrian. She was after me to carry her on my shoulders all morning and I kept saying no, it’s too hot today and you’re too heavy.

We passed a fountain full of coins. What’s that she asked me. You throw in a coin and make a wish. I gave her a coin, she made a wish and looked up at me. I picked her up and carried her on my shoulders.

Fancy library at Melk. Fancy baroque gardens. Nice view of the Danube valley.

Hot driving home too. Tired. It wouldn’t be a family vacation, would it, without bickering in a hot car? Stopped at a roadside stand and bought two kilos of small, bruised peaches. Today, the next day, already looking soft, which means:

Peach Daiquiris tonight.

You can make them like this, Perfect Peach Daiquiris, but I’ve never tried that recipe because it has eight ingredients and requires a blender, which we do not have. Instead, I use our ice cream maker, add pureed peaches, lemon juice, brown sugar and a little water and mix until it freezes then either serve to kids or add rum and mix a little more and serve to adults. If you put the glasses into the freezer beforehand you get the extra frosty thing which is also a nice serving touch.

The six-year-old, whose life goal as I’ve mentioned is to run a disco and live upstairs prefers to invent her own drinks. Most recently, she had me mix blue curacao, lime syrup, banana syrup, lime juice, orange juice and fizzy mineral water in a shaker with ice cubes, served over ice cubes. Of course the fizzy mineral water squirts everywhere when you shake it, for extra entertainment, dad making everything green in the kitchen.

We call it a Gamma Fizz.

Woke this morning to what sounded so much like a kid coughing that even after I figured out it was a neighbor hammering, I still checked my kid’s bed which was empty because she was sleeping in her sister’s bed.

• Lack the necessary faith and strength of conviction to be a decent atheist. Check.

• Swat too many flies to be a good Buddhist. Check.

I just have this aversion to the “spiritual but not religious” box on the surveys, you know?

Vacation, you know. We decided to do something every other day, and rest in between. Do nothing. Today was a do nothing day.

There were flies swarming a pickled pepper on the counter when I walked into the kitchen just now. They formed the shape of a “6”. Practicing, I suppose, for tomorrow morning when I walk in to see the full crew making a “666”.

And hear the devil’s voice telling me to mix pina coladas. But I have no crushed ice, I’d say. But you bought those plastic forms to make ice cubes yesterday at the hardware store, the devil’s voice would say. Oh yeah, I’d say. I forgot, I was really tired, I thought I was dropping my kid off to rowing practice I’d say. In the blazing sun, and they Shanghaied me and made me practice starts with them in the middle of the Danube without any sunscreen, I’d say. Poor guy, the devil’s voice would say. And that’s not all I’d say. Afterwards my kid made me run a mile with her to cool down, I’d say. She has her dad’s sense of humor, the devil’s voice would say. Heh, I’d say. And then I had to go the hardware store with my daughter, I’d say. With her hot friend, don’t forget her hot friend, the devil’s voice would say. Yeah right, I’d say. And I sent them looking for scented antimosquito candles while I got biodegradable garbage bags and those plastic icecube things, like plastic bags with individual ice cube pockets in them, I’d say. Exactly, the devil’s voice would say. And I’m still sunburnt and sore and have a headache, I’d say. Let me make those pina colada’s, the devil’s voice would say. And my wife would eventually come downstairs for her coffee and say, what no coffee yet? Try one of these drinks, I’d say. You have to try one of these drinks.

Then I’d swat a couple flies.

My father in
hell pushes
buttons that
do nothing.