Archival Blogging

After reading about this, I never appreciated the redundancy of a blog.  Free storage for my rambling thoughts and photos.  Instant access to everything I've written from anywhere.  Assurance that I was here and other people knew it (thanks for those comments!). 

I took much more away from the story than the realization that blogging has many virtual upsides, but it got me thinking about other journals that I have started and left languishing.  What would happen to those journals if my house burned down?  I have turned exclusively to blogging as my record in recent years.  But the old stuff....the stuff that I wrote before I blogged....would be gone.

Having said all that, I have decided to share entries from my journals with you.  Not in succession, but random writings that I feel are worth preserving. 

Today's entry is from my travel journal:

Jan. 25, 2008
I write this on my first night in Athens, Greece.  I am following Big Daddy on a business trip.  We arrived this morning after an overnight flight.  Mama is keeping the kids.  Action lost his second tooth this morning and Mama has been able to email us on Big Daddy's blackberry.  It's nice to be in touch "real time" even though we are 8 hours ahead. 

This is a welcome trip after a busy Christmas.  With 13 of us at the house, I still have decorations left to put away.  Christmas was great - one of the best, other than missing Big Daddy's daddy.

We spent most of the day figuring out the Metro, the local customs and trying to find somewhere to eat.  Greeks don't eat breakfast, have a late lunch at around 1:30 pm, a coffee around 5 pm then dinner at 9 pm.  We ate at a fabulous restaurant in the Athens Hilton, where we are staying, called Milos.  The waiters were standing around talking to each other when we arrived at 8 pm for a "late" dinner.  We had the restaurant to ourselves for about an hour.  The wait staff was very generous in helping us select our dinner.  We bought two different fish, sea bass and scorpion fish, along with assorted eggplant and zucchini.  We also shared a tomato salad.  Everything was wonderful!  The bill was surprise - 350 euros (around $600) for the four of us (Cindy and Phil were having dinner with us).  The market price on the fish was 85 euro per kilo!  When we left, everyone said goodbye like we were family.  We had been there 3 hours!  Off to bed to catch up on sleep for our first full day in Athens.