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.