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Over Sea, Under Stone

Cooper, Susan. Over Sea, Under Stone, Aladdin Paperbacks, 1965, 196 p. Stop me if you've heard this one before: Three young people, two boys and a girl, are on a quest to find a mysterious object before it falls into the hands of an evil, almost indestructable man. Along the way, they are befriended by a mysterious, bearded old man who mutters wise things and protects them from bad things. Yes, it's a quest store and no, it has nothing to do with Harry Potter, Ron Weasley or Hermione Granger. Rather this book was written more than 40 years ago, long before J. K. Rowling had her flash of inspiration about a school for wizards and the adventures it held for the students there. Of course, the quest story is old, going back hundreds of years and the one archetype that continues to inspire authors like Cooper and Rowling is King Arthur. And like Arthur, most of the time we find a Merlin character around to keep the hero out of trouble or at least alive. In Rowling's books, the M
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Home

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After a flight delay in Toronto and circling around the airport for a while, my connection from Amsterdam finally landed in Detroit a couple hours late. It made for a longer day. It's always a long day when it starts with an eight hour flight. But it ended well, and I got to sleep in my own bed. Often, after a vacation, I arrive home and it seems like the visit to the far away place was a bit fantastical. Home is the same as it was when I left. Everything is in the same place. It seems like nothing has changed. Except that I was gone for a week or two or three. I had the same kind of feeling unloading the car and unpacking my bags. There were the books, CDs, chocolates, and stroopwaffles that I bought but I was back in the same place. Except there were the alterations in how I think and my outlook. So here are a few of those changes. In essence, they're the things I'll miss about being in Amsterdam. Bicycles: I love cycling but it's a different proposition when bike
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Out of Amsterdam

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Since arriving on September 28, I've been out of the city a few times. One of those was the trip to Delft with Amanda. I also took the train up to Groningen. Groningen is the name of a city and a province. The ride to the city was a couple of hours from Centraal and was enlivened when I got on the wrong train at one of the stops I was supposed to change trains. Fortunately, I ended up where I was supposed to; it just took longer. Explanation: There are two types of train lines: Sprinter and Intercity. Sprinters have more stops and are more like the "local". Intercity trains have fewer stops so theoretically get to the further destinations quicker. When I was supposed to change, I jumped off my intercity onto a sprinter. It was headed in the right direction and I managed to connect back an intercity train in Zwolle. The train system in the Netherlands is great. The trains seem to mostly run on-time or only a few minutes later and there are a lot of them. Going to Groningen
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