Happy Halloween!

I'm wearing my Trick or Treat shirt (which Mom also gave me, thank you Mom!) and brought in one of my new Halloween bowls to put some sweets in for work. I had to explain Trick or Treat to my colleagues and made them say it to me before they could have any sweets. ;)

Boo Shirt

I have a Halloween shirt with BOO written in VERY tall letters and in a pattern that makes your eyes go crazy looking at it. I'm wearing it today. :)

Two stories to go with this shirt. First, I wore this once in college and went to the grocery store with it on. A man came down the aisle I was standing in and said "Woah - that's the biggest boo I'VE ever seen!" Yuk, yuk, yer soo FUNNY.

Second story: Last night I went to work out and thought I grabbed my blue Peterson's shirt to change into. I didn't, I grabbed this one. I realized this when I was in the changing room. Fortunately I had my Insolvenz 2002 tshirt too, otherwise I'd have had to REALLY scare the people in the gym by working out in this shirt. THAT would have been too funny. :)

Nothing exploded

and all the traffic is back to normal here on our road, so I guess they either found nothing or defused whatever they found.

Bomb threat

Stefan, Mick, and I just returned from lunch. We were in the main downtown area and had to walk - about 15 min. - back to work because all the S-bahns were stopped. Either somebody called in a bomb threat to the Hauptbahnhof, or a bomb was found there. All the stairways and entrances are closed and the streets are blocked off. I'll write if anything more happens. I fully expect all the trains to be delayed because of this for the next few hours though.

linux expo

I went to the Linux Expo here today at lunch with a colleague from work. It was free, and interesting. We got in free with a pass from Oracle to visit their "unbreakable" Linux booth. Hey - I got an Oracle magazine, a couple CD's, and a cute Window suction cup "Oracle crossing" sign. :) What was really funny was that I started noticing I was getting a lot of looks from the guys. Wow - a female at a geek conference! Woo hoo! :) She's passably cute and presumably understands geeky things! LOL. Seriously, the female to male ratio must have been about 50 to 1. Even less if you subtract the female booth attendants.

Books!

The body bag (leichen sac auf Deutsch) has arrived! Woo hoo! I have smut to read for the next month now. ;)

Explanation: Mom sent me an M-bag (rip-stop plastic canvas bag) full of romance novels. Cheap to send, just takes 4-7 weeks to arrive. Cool! :)

New blog look

I just helped Bill re-design his blog a bit. Added comments, a site counter, and changed the look. Go check it out! We'll probably tweak it some over the next week, but that's the new design. :)

American Phrases

For Which There Exists No Translation:

1) To Go Postal
2) Shit Happens

Gee, can you tell what kind of week it's been? :)

No, really, it hasn't been that bad - there's been worse!

Polish Pottery trip, Part 2

Sunday morning Carolyn and I took our time waking up. I actually woke up kind of early (8ish), so I took my time getting ready, then went out to take pictures of the city skyline from the bridge over the Elbe (a river in eastern Germany). In someways the skyline reminded me of Venice, just not directly on the water. The buildings look very 18th century Baroque. It's quite pretty. What was interesting to me was to see how much "shoreline" there was between the river and the other bank. Just last year this river overflowed it's banks and many buildings first floors were under water! Now there's about a quarter mile shoreline between the river and it's bank. What a difference.

When I got back to the hotel, Carolyn was ready, so we went out for breakfact and walked around the old city a little. Directly across from the cafe we ate at is the old FrauenKirche (Church of Our Lady). The cafe menu said it took 6118 days to built (nearly seventeen years!) and was destroyed in one night of bombing in WWII. Even more amazingly, it remained as rubbled ruin for the last fifty years. They started rebuilding it about 10 years ago, and it's nearly finished now. There is a visitor center with exhibits of how it looked for years, and how they're rebuilding it. Quite amazing.

At check out we had a little snafu because Carolyn honestly thought the Daylight Savings Time change was that Sunday and it wasn't. So we checked out an hour late and the desk clerk got all huffy on us ("We wait for you!"). And they talked in German about the situation in front of us. So, after Carolyn left to go get the car, I insisted on speaking only German to them. And they insisted on speaking only English to me. Argh....Germans can be so picky and difficult when it comes to infringing on their schedules!

We had no problems on the drive home - was a breeze! And then Bill had dinner waiting for us when we got home.

Busy Week

Sigh .... so busy this week. Yesterday in the afternoon at work was full of last minute changes and errors found in a website we built for the customer. Then again this morning was full of the same thing. Monday evening I went to the gym. Tuesday, Bill came over for dinner. Wednesday, I was GOING to go to the gym, but work went long, so I went out to dinner and drinks with Stefan and Sandra. Tonight I was going to make it to the gym, but I started some house work first and then Bill called and I missed the last Sbahn that would be feasible to actually get a workout in before the gym closed. So I got some Indian food for take out, came home and did things around the house to straighten up. The house looks much better!

Even though I did things around the house tonight, it felt like a night off for me. Just doing things for myself, in a leisurely way. Ahhh.

Polish Pottery shopping

Carolyn (Bill's ex) and I left out of Kaiserslautern Friday around 11am heading for Dresden. After a small snaffo at one of the interchanges (we went the wrong way), we didn't have a problem the rest of the day. Well, there were a few traffic jams and a few accidents that combined to make our six hour trip eight hours, but other than that, everything went fine. The weather was beautiful - clear and cool. Carolyn and I actually had a good nonstop conversation on the ride up, hardly any awkwardness. Nothing more than could be attributed to two people getting to know each other. I was pleasantly surprised.

We made it into Dresden about 8pm, relaxed in the hotel room a little and then headed out to get some real food. Dresden has a cute old city restaurant area about a block square right next to the old Church of Our Lady that they are rebuilding. A Hilton hotel with a sushi restaurant, four or five nice dinner places, a cafe, a wine celler, and a night club. All packed into a small street block. This is just the old city downtown. I'm sure Dresden has other cool areas like this, however we just visited this one because it was right next to the hotel. We wanted to eat at the spanish Tapas place, but it was completely full, as the waitress quite rudely told us. So we went next door to the business-y looking steak house and had a very nice dinner. Then we went back to the hotel and crashed!

Only to wake up at 4am the next morning! So we could be on the road by 4:30 and in to Poland by 6am when the factory stores opened. The first store already had a bus there when we stopped, so twenty or thirty American women were already in there picking their way through the wares. It wasn't quite what I expected. First off, it was small. And while there was a great variety of things, I didn't see too much quantity of each. Carolyn immediately started shopping, but I really wasn't sure where to start. I guess I wasn't expecting to have to make a decision on what to buy so soon. I thought I'd get a chance to look around, and then make decisions. NOPE. If you do that, the line for the cash register just gets longer because the busses keep coming. And the stock gets depleted. So I started looking around and making my decisions. I found some mugs that I'd seen in Bill's house that I liked and picked out two patterns I liked. Then four egg cups, a wicker basket, and a couple other odds and ends.

Carolyn asked a bus driver if he could keep an eye on her car while we were in the store - it's not uncommon for German cars to get stolen in Poland. Especially nice BMW 3series sedans. Apparently a Polish person can sell her (stolen) car on the black market for 1000 Euro. Which is quite literally a years salary! So they flirted, he watched her car, and gave us tips on where to shop. Carolyn found a few new stores on advice from him. We saw him on and off throughout the day, so it was nice to have somebody to talk to while we waited for each other to finish shopping.

We visited about eight more shops through out the day. I picked up a couple octagonal bowls, a scalloped bowl, a heart shaped platter, and a few other things. OH - the cutest is a cracked egg looking salt and pepper shaker. Each half of the egg is a shaker. Cool, huh?

We finally made it back to the hotel room around 8pm that night. Took a shower, a nap, and then went back out for dinner. The Tapas place wasn't so busy that night so we ate there.

Okay, that's enough for now. I'll wrap up the trip details tomorrow. That's the bulk of it anyway.

Fotolog

I just finish going through the pictures I took over the weekend. Download them, resized and cropped them. So I went to go put up a new picture, and the fotolog site is down. They've been slow lately - I think they got mentioned on a few websites and one of the founders was on CNN the other day, so they've probably just gotten an influx of new accounts.

Well, as soon as the site is back up (and I notice it is back up), I'll post a new picture of wall to wall Polish Pottery. :)

Back from Poland/Dresden

I made it back last night. And I'm at work this morning. Carolyn and I had fun, shopping almost non-stop for about 12 hours on Saturday. I've got a few pretty Polish pottery pieces now and ideas of things to get in the future. AND, I know where are the cool shops are now.

Okay, I'll write more about the weekend later, just wanted to let everybody know I'm fine and I had fun. :) Oh, I've got (hopefully) very nice pictures of Polish pottery and the city of Dresden too, so I'll download them off the camera tonight and start posting them online. :)

Off to Dresden/Poland

Well, Carolyn should be arriving here in the next thirty minutes to pick me up. We're heading to Dresden first and then EARLY (like 5am) tomorrow morning, we're going across the border to visit the Polish pottery factory outlets. I don't know that I'll buy too much, but it's going to be fun. There'll be three of us girls (me, Carolyn, and a friend of hers), so we should have a good time.

Bill is very generously letting me take his digital camera, so I'll have some pictures to share on fotolog when I come back.

So, expect an update on Monday. Nothing till then. Ciao! :)

ducky

I forgot Ducky! :( I even went home at lunch to finish putting together my weekend bag. I didn't remember him until Bill just reminded me! There's no time now to go home and get him. Darn. I feel like I just kicked a dog or let a kid down. :(

NaNoWriMO

No, that's not gibberish, it's the acronym for National Novel Writing Month. I found this link through A Small Victory.

NaNoWriMo is a website the encourages you to write a 50,000 word work of fiction during the month of November. Just because. Well, just because lots of people want to write and if they have a support group and a time deadline, they're more likely to actually DO it. Bunches of amatuers writing for the fun of it.

Every now and then I get a creative writing itch. (Which I guess is fulfilled quite a bit by writing this blog.) And I've been kind of considering joining the site and writing . . . something. I'm not sure what. It has to be fiction, so an autobiography is out. Unless I fictionalize it. I could write erotica, but well....I couldn't post that here. Heh heh (I'm sure you wanted to read that, right Mom? Dad?). Anyway. ("Sowieso" oder "Wie auch immer" oder "auf jedem Fall" auf Deutsch). Hmm...I'm getting off topic. Oh, what to write about. Well, it doesn't have to be good, it's a first effort after all. And it's not like anybody on the NaNoWriMo site is going to actually read it, they just put the text through a word counter script. But, if I'm going to go through the effort, it should be at least interesting and readable, right?

Long and short....I'm thinking about, thinking about ideas. And yes, fishing for ideas or topics from the audience while I'm at it. :)

I'm off to bed now.

titusville blog

Okay, I was chatting with Mom on the phone tonight and I forget how, but the subject of the possibilities of Titusville bloggers came up. So I went to Google and typed in "blog Titusville". First, there aren't that many, but a bust at a Tituville meth lab pops up a lot! Second....well, I found one real blog from Titusville. What happens when you combine first rate Titusville High School education and a 14 year old teenager of Hispanic descent? The answer is "My Blog". This is too funny for words. And actually kind of sad.

Brett - any clues? Just, ehem....don't be too obvious about asking around. I'd hate to embarrass the girl or get her into trouble.

New fotolog friend

I found another cute white puppy dog on fotolog. (high pitched girlie squeal!) His first photo says he's a Westie, but I swear he looks a heck of a lot like my Mom's White Miniature Schnauzer. In fact, he looks like Squire's twin in most of the pictures. Naturally, Squire is handsomer! :)

Leaving

I'm not waiting. I'll find out in the morning if I have any new virii...the initial scan before installation didn't reveal anything, so I'm guessing I won't.

Off to the gym. Woo hoo! :)

Anti-Virus

Agg...I just installed a new anti-virus product at work and I'm sitting here waiting for it to finish doing the first real scan. It . is . s o o . . . slow. I would leave it and go home, but I'm afraid it'll ask for input in an hour or so since it's the first run through.

Back to the gym

I started going back to the gym last week. On the first visit, I finished my exercise card (each visit, you mark what you've done on each machine). Sooo, that entitled me to a Personal Trainer™ visit, new routine, new card. I like the new exercises better - they're working more of the muscle groups I like to use. Leg bench presses, over arm pull downs that exercise (and surprisingly, stretch) my shoulder muscles, and an arm machine that requires me to push down on the handles and exercises my triceps and upper breast muscles.

I really feel good about this new routine. Tonight will be the third time it is done, and the fourth gym visit in two weeks. I'm going to dedicate Monday and Wednesday nights to working out in the gym.

Injection back girl

Somebody searched for these search terms on Italian Google (google.it), and found my entry about my dentist visit. Weird, or what??? :)

Frankfurt Book Fair

Frankfurt has, supposedly, the worlds largest book fair once a year. Last year it happened right after I started my job here. I waited to the last day to go, and I got there too late. The fair closed at 1pm and I got there at 2pm. Sigh. So this year, when it came around again, I was determined to go. The fair closes tomorrow, so I asked Bill if he'd mind going today. Of course, he said, OKAY! So we went. And I was not too terribly impressed. Lots and lots of books. But hardly any for sale. All new titles, all kinds of genres. All the German books looked interesting, but I was interested in English books (ease of reading, etc). Although, I have to say I found an interesting audio book CD - a guy reading silly poems in English and then in German. The poems were cute and funny, and it was interesting to hear how they translated to German. However, not for sale.

The map said there was three halls for international booksellers, so we wandered over there. Every land you could imagine was listed, with the exception of England or USA. We wandered around anyway, and saw some fabulously interesting photo narrative books. However, most of the books were in a variety of languages, so while they looked interesting, they were completely un-understandable to us. FINALLY, we happened to be passing by an information booth when somebody else asked the lady where English books were. She answered in an exasperated tone (like this was the MILLIONTH time somebody asked - sorry, but it's not obvious!), that they were in Hall 8. Hall 8 was ALL the way at the back of the fair. And, get this - you had to go through a security checkpoint to get into Hall 8. None of the other halls, just Hall 8. Wha? Just because the books are printed in English, there might be a terrorist threat?? Or was it the over whelming numbers of English speaking people in the Hall? Did they think we would attract a terrorist because we wanted to mill around and look at books in our native language? Sadly, that's probably exactly the thoughts behind the security checkpoint. So a disinterested lady had me open my backpack and looked at the few papers I'd picked up, my wallet, and my tampons. Woo hoo.

I have to say that the book fair was a big disappointment for me. Oh, I enjoyed walking around and looking at the books. I can spend hours in Barnes & Noble or HugenDubel, or nearly any bookstore just looking and browsing. It's just the fair didn't seem to be geared towards consumers. More towards people who sell to consumers of books. There seemed to be a distinct distain for the common reader. Which makes you wonder WHY the fair is opened up to the general public - anybody with 9Euros and a few spare hours can come in and browse.

I don't think I'll go next year.

The Saving Graces

I just finished this novel, The Saving Graces by Patricia Gaffney. This was a very good book! I found it at the used book store in Ramstein and picked it up on a whim. It looked like it would be a good mindless women's fiction novel that would eat up a few hours reading time. I just spent the last two hours crying over the events in the novel - very cathartic. Four women form a women's group and they meet once a week at one of their houses and have dinner. For the last twelve years, they've helped each other through life, but this year each of them goes through their own personal crisis and the story is how they all help each other through it and grow stronger for it. Each chapter is told from a one of the four women's viewpoint, and it's interesting to hear each character's voice.

I would highly recommend this book. :)

silly kid rhymes

Bill and I were talking about silly kid rhymes this morning and trying to remember some. Anybody know this one?

Miss Susie had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell,
Miss Susie went to heaven, the steamboat went to
HELLO operator, please give me number nine,
and if you disconnect me, I'll kick you from
BEHIND the fridgerator, there stood a piece of glass,
and if you sat upon it, you'd break your little
ASK me no more questions, I'll tell you no more lies,
the boys are in the bathroom...........

and then something about flies and girls and DARK DARK DARK.

And there was a similar one to that (not so risque for a kid).....I can't remember it. :( Anybody? Joe? Brett? Norm?

Fertig!

Whew! The mattress is finally in the bedroom. When Bill comes over this weekend, I'll take pictures with his digital camera and post them on my fotolog.

So, the bedroom and kitchen are spic and span. Sometime this weekend the bathroom is on the list.

Floor(s) cleaned

Ah......the bedroom floor is spic and span clean. :) Mopped it. Remopped it with fresher water. Did the hallway floor too. Then the kitchen floor. And then used a towel to dry them all up. I don't think my floor has ever felt or looked so nice. The day I moved in they had just finished laying the laminat down, so I think I'm fairly accurate in saying this. The person who laid it down mopped it, but it's always had shiney streaks (even after mopping), and now it doesn't. I guess the secret is to dry it up with a towel afterwards. :)

The mattress is still in the living room, but it WILL be moved into the bedroom before I go to bed. I'm just taking a break now to check email, drink something, and eat some soup.

Worst * Accoustical * Song * EVER

I just heard the worst accoustical version of a popular song EVER. The plugged in version is a kind of peppy, inane, moany, feel good love song. The accoustical version is HORRIBLE! This guy's voice screeeeches on the high notes. I have no idea why they are playing it on the radio. "If you are not mine, then why does your Vooeeeiice reSOND in my HHHHHHHeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaddddddddddddd." ARGH. Ug. SHUT UP!

Thank goodness I have DSL and Internet Radio stations exist.

The bedroom saga

I have a one bedroom apartment. And in the bedroom, I had a single bed. Now, because a single bed is small, and I want something larger and also because I sometimes have guests (and hope to have others eventually....hint hint), I bought a small double mattress (it fails American double size mattress dimensions by an inch, maybe two). And I eventually plan on buy a bed to go under it. I bought this mattress a week or so before Janine came to visit, and I installed it in a corner of my living room. And ever since she left, that is where I have slept. My bedroom gets a visit from me once a day - when I need to pick out clothes.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided this was silly - I should be using that bedroom! So I dismantled the bed. And then, because I have impeccable housekeeping skills -- NOT (although, I have to qualify this and say my housekeeping skills are 200% better than some members of my family), I decided the floor needed to be cleaned before the big mattress could go down there. And that is how the bedroom has remained until a couple of days ago. - a dusty floor with a mattress and box springs on their side, off on the side. This last weekend I was determined to clean the floor! I managed to get the side rails out. Monday was going to be the day! The slats came out. Tuesday - Tuesday is IT! Various small things came out. Mattresses were still there. OKAY - WEDNESDAY!!! Well, the mattresses came out. And I cleaned off the bookcase. And removed all assorted papers. The floor WILL be cleaned tomorrow. :)

Only, now I'm not so sure I want to move back into the bedroom. It faces the street. Where there are a couple of bars that stay open to 1am and once every couple of weeks people spill out loudly onto the street as they leave. And every other morning a dump or garbage truck arrives at 7am and beep-BEEEPs and chung-CHUNNGs. And the window blind has a gap of an inch, maybe two on the side where the sun comes into my eyes in the morning (no curtains yet). In the living room, the windows face an office building that makes NO noise and the walls are soo bleeping thick (made of concrete brick you know - not that flimsy wood and sheetrock nonsense - no siree) that when the living room door is shut (EVERY room in a German house has a door & the doors are all sealed), I don't hear the noise from the street. And the blinds completely cover the window. Which doesn't matter, because the sun doesn't make it to this side of the building until 11ish. Of course, I'm also staying bed way too long in the morning....maybe the noise would help force me out of bed.

Me .... get out of bed on time for work? Naaah. I've tried EVERYTHING ....

Sigh. I'm still moving back into the bedroom. Probably this week, if not this weekend.

Translation

Okay, roughly a day has passed, so I'm posting the translation to yesterdays German post. Note: my German grammer is not 100% correct, so while this is what I meant to say, it might have come out a little different in German. :)

Meine Deutsch Tolerenz

Okay, jetzt ist es Zeit fuer meiner Deutsch Eintrag fuer dieses Woche. Ich habe ein ganz gutes Gefuhl ueber meine Deutsch Erkenntniss. Ich habe bemerkt das ich habe viel mehr Deutsch in die letzte Woche gesprochen. Und ich verstehe mehr und mehr. Aber, gerade wann ich denke dass, ich habe Problem mit die EINFACHSTE Worte. Zum beispeil, gestern ich habe fuer die meinsten von die Tage nur Deutsch gesprochen. Dann, ich moechte etwas ueber meine Wochende erzaehlen zu Stefan, und alle meine Deutsch Worte wurden weg!

Ich glaube dass ich habe ein Deutsch Tolerenz - wie ein Alkohol Tolerenz. Jeden Tag dass ich spreche Deutsch es geht hoher, aber wann es ist erreicht, dann kann ich kein (oder nichts so viele!) mehr Deutsch sprechen.

Auch, wann ich lese etwas kompliziert auf Deutsch - ich verstehe die meinstens. Aber, wann ich muss es weider erklaeren, ich kann dass nicht auf Deutsch. Oder ich KANN, aber es ist ganz besser und einfacher zu erklaren auf Englisch. Merkwuerdig, oder? Ich finde es so.

Lang und kurz - ich bin froeh (und ein bischen stolz) ueber mein Deutsch Erfahrung. :) Ich muss aber an meine Aussprache arbeiten.

RSS

I've heard about RSS aggregators and I've looked into them off and on over the last two or three months. Well, I've just found a web-based one, Bloglines and I'm going to experiment with it over the next few days. Supposedly, I can use it to manage my links on the right, which would be nice because right now I have to change my template if I want to change them, and that's a pain in the patootie!

Oh, I know....lots of my readers right now are saying "RSS wha?". Okay, here's a short & sweet explanation. Websites that are frequently updated can put the contents of their updates into a standards compliant format that is straight text. Also known as XML (if you don't know what XML is, don't worry - it's a standard). RSS is the name of the XML standard that these feeds are written in. Then other pieces of software, called Aggregators, look at this RSS feed, and present it in a nice format for readers.

Soooo......instead of visiting those 10-20 sites you read everyday, if they have an RSS feed, you can subscribe to it in your Aggregator, and read all 10-20 of them in one place. And if an entry looks interesting, you can click on it and go to the website to read the entire thing.

Did that make the muddy water any clearer?

how could this be??

According to this USA Today article, a poll they conducted says that 48% of Americans believe allowing gay unions "will change our society for the worse". Who are they asking??? Did they delibrately call the most conservative homes in the Bible Belt or what?

Gee, I guess you can't tell I'd be part of the 50% that "say they would be an improvement or have no effect", huh?

Feeling good

It's amazing how good you can feel just by being a little proactive and doing things yourself. :) I'm actually getting things done at work. AND I'm speaking a lot of German, more so than usual. :)

lunch with bill on Friday

On Friday, I had lunch with Bill at his work. He works in Frankfurt, but we usually can't have lunch together, because it takes soo long to meet up, that there's no time for lunch.

So I took the Sbahn and then the bus to get to his work. I got off the bus, and he was walking to meet me. Just put a huge smile on my face. :) It was great to see him for the first time in five days.

Got me signed in to the base, and then we went to the cafeteria. It reminded me of a the dining hall at college. :) And they had CORN DOGS!!! Woohoo! :) Had that, a salad, some peas, and a little bit of ice cream. They had FoxNews on the TV. It's like a little microcosm of America there on the base. After lunch he took me to see his office and showed of the machines. He works in a little windowless box that's cold because of all the computers in there. Poor guy. :) Then it was time for him to get back to work, so I came home.

I was plenty awake to meet him for lunch, but when I got home, I was pooped. Guess I didn't have enough sleep! So I read a bit, and fell asleep until 8pm when Bill woke me up with an SMS. Spent the evening on the internet.

I WILL be more active today. In fact, I'm working myself up to going to the gym for the first time in a couple of months. I need to get a little bit more back in shape.

Dancing Thursday night

Went out with Mike's girlfriend & a friend of hers. We started at a nice bar and stayed there for a couple of hours talking and drinking. Then Mike joined us and we tried getting into three different discos around town (all over town), but they all had long lines out the door. Finally, we found a disco that didn't have a line at all. Cool.

At first the music was a bit off (mixing parts of different songs I didn't know), but it got better, so we started dancing. It was fun watching the different people - the guy dancing very erotically with himself in the mirror (seriously! that's all he did for three hours!), the guy who seemed interested in me and would dance with me for a few secs and then wander around the room. And then come back and look at me. The other five or six guys who I could tell were checking me out, but the minute I looked them in the eye, they looked away and ignored me. Until I wasn't looking at them again. Hello? What is that about?? Finally though, one of those guys did start dancing with me - right before I had to go home. Oh well, doesn't matter anyway, cause I've got a lovely loving boyfriend. If he'd been there, I'd have been all over him and other people would have been starring at us. :)

Speaking of going home, I used the Night bus that runs between 1:30 and 3:30 on Friday and Saturday evenings when the Sbahn doesn't run. I just assumed that it would be running this Thursday evening too and it didn't occur to me that it might NOT until I was walking to catch it. Fortunately it was, so I got home around 4:10am. Whew.

This is why

I love my brothers. Norman just responded to my email from Monday. :) With eight emails! The subjects were the following

Hi BLOG
I BLOG
AM BLOG
responding BLOG
to BLOG
your BLOG
email BLOG
Funny BLOG

LOL :) See, he has a sense of humor.

Basically, between working lots of hours at work where he's not allowed to surf the internet, and taking care of his kids in the evenings he's not had a lot of time to respond to emails. :) In fact, he wrote these emails at work, and between answering the phone (he works for a company that takes orders for DELL computers and associated services), it took him an hour to write the emails.

Brothers

I emailed my oldest brother on Monday. It's Thursday. No answer. I know he's on the internet a lot. Argh.

Cute puppy

At lunch today I saw the CUTEST (high pitch girlie squeal!) little puppy in front of the Hauptbahnhof. He was a little tan spotted and white beagle. Sooo cute! He started to cross the road with his master and then stopped halfway and started to poop. Right as the light turned green for the cars! His owner has to pick him up in mid poop so he could finish on the sidewaldk. That was too funny!

cooties

How would you explain Cooties to somebody who doesn't know what they are? For example, the phrase "I don't have cooties"... For me cooties aren't germs. They're something imaginary and icky that you don't want to have. Or is that just me?

Mind you, I'm having to explain this to both an American AND a German colleague.

hidey ho

Hi everyone! I'm still alive. I know I haven't posted to the blog in two days. I'm reading new books I picked up over the weekend, so that's taking up a lot of time. I'm in my "I don't like life too much right now, so I'll go hide in a book or three for a few days" mode. I'm not depressed per se, just a bit bored at work and a bit worried about finances.

I'll cheer up and post some over the weekend. I'm going out dancing tonight. Tomorrow is German Re-unification day, so we have it off. Interestingly enough, it's not the day the wall came down in East Berlin OR the day they officially re-united. It seems to have been placed here because, well, I don't know. Maybe because there are no official State/Church holidays in June, July, August & September and the next one is in November? Break up that long stretch of no-holiday time. :)