To the Rescue

I’ve been following the recent activity on Wall Street. The loss of one of the biggest houses, Lehman Brothers, marks the end of an era. Lehman had been one of the most respected companies, up there with Morgan Stanley. Over the years we’ve lost many firms like Drexel Harriman Ripley, Eastman Dillon, Loeb Rhoades, Hornblower & Weeks, etc. They’ve been assimilated into other companies, but the loss of Lehman is very sad. It’s too bad that some of the old money on the Street couldn’t come to their rescue.

This is what I’m waiting for with AIG. The price is now so low that it would be attractive to someone with a lot of capital, someone who would be able to revive the company, someone with the discipline to take over and run the company. Someone like Hank Greenberg.

I’ve always thought he wanted to get the company back. Now is his big chance. He could be a hero to his loyal employees. Where are you Hank? Why not come to the rescue. You and your sons could come back and save the jobs of thousands of employees. I’m sure they wouldn’t even mind if you changed the name of the company to, “Greenberg & Sons”. They miss you at 70 Pine.

Gargoyles

I don't know when I first heard about them. It was either in elementary school at St. Sylvester's or Bishop McDonnell High School, but I ever since then, I have been fascinated by gargoyles. This trip through France was the perfect place to see them. They were all over the churches, and I got a few good shots.



The angle on this one looks like he's ready to jump.

My camera has a great zoom. This gargoyle was quite high up and I was on the ground.

Airport

I'm back from my latest geographical exploration and have managed to take back my blog. Unfortunately, Crash made me promise to allow her to write from time to time. For a while, I'll be writing about my adventure.

I had a wonderful time in France, but I want to purge my memory of the worst part of the trip so I can have only wonderful memories.

I arrived in Paris at Charles deGaulle Airport around 8:30 AM on a weekday. Now, I'm not a frequent traveler and this was my first trip overseas, but I expected the plane, an Air France flight, would connect with a jetway. Instead, they rolled a set of stairs onto the tarmac to meet our plane and we had to walk down those stairs. Then we got on a bus to take us to the terminal where our passports were stamped. I've been told this is quite common out of the United States.

On the return trip, we had a flight from Strasbourg at 6:45 AM to Paris. Again, we had a set of stairs rolled up to our plane on the tarmac. There was a difference this time though. From the plane, we walked to a bus which took us to a terminal. Then, we had to walk to a train which took us to another terminal where we had to go through security all over again.

This airport, while huge, is new. I can't understand why they could not have made the terminals closer, particularly since all the flights were with the same airline (Air France).

Now that I have done my complaining, I can concentrate on remembering all the good times of this trip, such as the wines, cheeses, chocolates, and architecture. Did I mention the wines, chocolates and pastries?

Homecoming

Oh! I'm so happy. Mom is due home from her geographical exploration in France. I'll be glad to see her, but I can't let her know that. Please keep my secret.

She has to be punished for leaving us and having fun without us. I think I'll run to the door when I hear her key in the lock and then, when she comes in, and then just walk away.

She's has to do some serious bribery to make up for this time.

Sharing

Sometimes when the windows are open I like to sit in them and watch the world go by. It's fun, but one day Crash decided that she wanted that same window even though all the windows were open.

We almost had a fight but I decided to be the better cat and shared the window with her.

Family Album

Aren't we cute. We're so good. I think we were just resting until we could think of more mischief. These are our beds that our mom bought for us so we wouldn't get our hair all over the furniture. When we discovered that was the reason she gave them to us, we decided not to use them anymore and now we sleep right on the furniture.


This is a nice picture of me. It looks like I'm smiling.

Here's Burnie in the toy box. He doesn't like to share his toys.

Here's Burnie looking so innocent.

Decoration

A little while ago my mom made a decoration for the table. It had lots of fun toys in it, but we weren't allowed to play with them.

Burnie kept getting us into trouble because he just wouldn't leave them alone and he was very noisy whenever he went on the table and moved the eggs. I got away with it a lot more because I was very quiet and nobody knew what I was doing.

The fuzzy chicks were a lot of fun to play with. I'd throw them up in the air and catch them and then bat them around the floor. One time I even killed one of them. That was bad.

It's a good thing they weren't real.