Amazon and DVDs

So, I have an Amazon account. One I haven't actually used to order anything in about a year and a half, but I have one. A few months ago I started toying with the idea of becoming an Amazon Associate (tm), so I tried logging into my account. Um, what was the password again? Try all the usual combinations, no go. Okay, click on "Forgot your Password?" They want the last five digits of my CC or the zip of an address I've shipped to. Well, that's just peachy. I lost the credit cards I used there two years ago and none of the zips I remember of my last five addresses (in the last three years) works.

Okey-dokey, create a new account. Play around with Amazon, create a Wish List, and go on with life. Recently, I wanted to log back into Amazon. Duh - what was that password again? Sigh. And clicking on the "Forgot your Password" link doesn't work this time either because I haven't associated a CC or address with the new account because I haven't actually BOUGHT anything with the account. Double Sigh. Write a letter to Amazon Customer Service. The nice person who answers it confirms that, yes I DO have two accounts associated with the same email. If I'll call this nice 800 number or overseas free number, we can see about resolving this situation. BTW, it doesn't say that anywhere in the FAQ or Help. And none of the categories for Customer Service email address this. But I digress.

I called the nice overseas free number and spoke to a nice young man about my account. Unfortunately, because of security concerns, he can't unlock either account unless I can give the last five digits of a CC. Oookay, I haul out every CC I have and the past statements from the old ones and try each. Nope. He speaks with a manager and the only solution is to - you guessed it - create yet ANOTHER account. However, once I have a CC associated with the new account (at the same email address), I can call up again and THEN we can close the other two accounts.

So, I created another account. And decided I might as well buy something with the account, I mean I love reading, right? Well, I can't think of any books I want that I want to pay shipping on. That I can't probably get cheaper at the used bookstore on base. Oooh, how about DVDs??? So I searched around a bit. Roswell - a TV show that I LOVE and never saw most of the first season of - is out on DVD. At the end of the month. Oo, oo, Gilmore Girls is out too! At the beginning of May.

At this rate, by the time I find something I want to buy off of Amazon - that's available now- I'll have forgotten my password again! But don't worry, I picked something easy this time. I think.

Lost in Translation

This is a movie starring Bill Murray and Scarlott Johnson that came out in the States some months ago, is already on DVD there and just arrived in the theaters here in Germany. Bill and I rented it last night from the American rental store.

I'd read a couple of positive reviews, or at least a couple of websites I read mentioned positive things about the movie. I have to say, they watched a different movie than I watched yesterday. The concept is wonderful, and the entire film has moments that are visually funny or situations that could be hysterical. However, they are dealt with so dryly or subtly, that the film just d r a g s. Plus, there are long segments with no dialog, no explanation, where one of the characters goes off to explore Japan. Beautiful music, beautiful cinematography, but B O R I N G. And the situation you keep expecting to go somewhere never seems to resolve. I kept expecting it to get laugh out loud funny (come on, it's Bill Murray!) but it just never did.

Ag, this film was a chore to get through. The finished product was definitely Lost in Translation.

Lorraine American Cemetary and Memorial

Today Bill and I travelled to Metz, France to try and visit a large Flea market there. We got there 30 min before it closed though. :( Next time we're getting up earlier! In any case, since we were in the area, we went to visit the Lorraine American Cemetary and Memorial in St. Avalon, France.

My grandmother's (on my mother's side) first husband is buried in the American cemetery in Luxumburg. Through the link above, I found his plot information [Update: the link didn't work so I modified it to take you to the search page. For grandma's first husband, put in "Dobeck". Or put in any name you know.]. If I'd known last summer that he was buried in Luxemburg, I would have stopped by that cemetery personally and taken a photo of his grave. [As an aside, I WAS there as a child. I remember us stopping at a cemetery and searching for his grave. We knew he was there, but for some reason we could not find his grave. Or maybe we did? I'm not sure, but I know we spent a long time searching for it.]

Below are photo's I took at the Lorraine Cemetary today. Click on each for a larger photo.







George Washington is on the far right, King Arthur is the next in. I assume the large central figure is Peace/Liberty. I forgot to take note of who the two on the left are. Btw, if you click on the Lorraine Cemetery link above, you will find a very similar photo to my first one above.

Fotolog

Has just lost a paying customer. They weren't coming up at all for me. Of course, I just tried it again while I'm writing this message, and it came up very fast. Argh. I'm giving them a week. Then I'm cancelling my subscription. $5/month buys more reliablity that this.

Update: I just tried accessing the site again, in order to upload a few photos from today. Sigh. Not available again. Absolutely no error message, just doesn't load. Times out. So I go searching on the internet for anything ANYBODY is saying about Fotolog. And I found their Discussion Board here. They've just gotten some investment money and the main guy is quiting his full time job to focus 100% on Fotolog, which was just a hobby until now. So, they're hiring a team and will be focusing much more attention and energy on fixing the site's problems.

My dilemma now is - do I stick it out and hope it gets better or just quit and maybe re-join when things get better (if I'm still interested)? Sigh. Like I said, I'll give them a week. Then I'll decide.

More books to read

I just found (via Blogslut) a list of books to find and read. In fact, I'm already in the process of reading one, Quicksilver. Reading of that book went on a Christmas hiatus though, and I haven't started back up.

Anybody read any of these yet?

New photos

I took about 30 photos on Saturday and I'm not that happy with many of them. However, I posted six that don't totally suck at Fotolog. Be patient. They're fixing bandwidth and server problems. Even so, it's very hit or miss. This will probably be my last month over there. I like the forum, but I'm getting tired of the performance problems. I'll just turn my blog into a photolog.

Anyway, click on the link over at the right to see the new photos.

Earliest Childhood memory

Since the trip down my memory lane was so fun and drew such a response, I'm posing a question to my audience: What is your earliest memory? Or most significant early memory from childhood? Click on Comment to join the discussion.

My earliest memory is a mish mash of probably two different events. We were living in Colorado - where brother #1 was born. I'm riding my tricycle (red, natch) in front of our two story house and Dad is shoveling snow. I'm fairly certain this is two different events, but they've always been tied together in my head for some reason.

The next significant memories have to do with our move to Texas (birth place of brother #2), specifically living in the trailor park for a few months and then buying our new house there. Those are very vivid to me.

It's amazing

what you can get done around the house when you get home on time and don't turn the computer or TV on. I've boxed up and put away all things Christmas, put up a couple of Valentines Day decorations and in general straightened up. My house looks nice again. :)

Blog sister

I have a blog sister! My blog convinced Janine to start blogging. Welcome Janine! :) I'm looking forward to hear your slant on your slice of life.

New blog

I'm still working on the design. Ideally, I'd like to do something with the background like this (a website of a job applicant to our firm) - scroll down the page and look at the background. I just need time to play with it.

Anyway, that's just the progress report. You'll know when it's ready. I think I'll stop mentioning it now.

If you can't say anything nice,

don't say anything at all. Right?

Okay, let's just say it's been one of those days. And if it keeps up, either my boss or I am going to need therapy. Maybe both of us.

The Bed is finished

Yeah! I haven't laid in it yet, so I don't know how it feels, but I did sit on the edge while making it. Pictures to follow soon. Oh, speaking of photos, I uploaded a few to fotolog in the last couple of days - go check them out (via the link on the right).

States I've visited

I saw this over at PapaScott, and went to create my own:




I'm just counting actual states that I've purposely visited/lived in, not just driven through. Otherwise Alabama, Mississippi and the entire East Coast would be read. The only reason Lousianna is red is because I have a vague recollection of visiting New Orleans - I believe we dropped our van off there for shipping to Germany when we first moved to Germany.

I'm sure my parents will mention a couple of other states that I'm missing, but don't remember visiting.

Updated: with Missiouri and New Hampshire based on remberences jogged by my comments. ;)

Camera memory

I bought a bigger memory card for my camera yesterday - I now have a 256MB card in there. Which means I can take 216 (!!) pictures at the highest resolution, and 1401 at the lowest. Wow.

Test url

Okay, if you want to see how my work is progressing on the new site, you can look here. I've got a couple of test entries there, and the comments are turned on. Feel free to look around, and leave a test comment or two. The comments require an email address, but it shouldn't display the email address in the comments. However, if you give a url, it will link your name to that url.

Give it a whirl. Keep in mind I'm still tweaking the interface, so if you get there and it looks all f'd up, I'm probably working on the CSS Style Sheet. I won't be doing that until this evening though (gotta get out and get my shopping in before the stores close), so have fun.

Update: no, the comments do not require a VALID email address (though it would it certainly be nice of you to GIVE one), and if you do not provide a URL, it links to your email address. I'll have to see if I can change that.

MT, one step further

I've manage to get MT installed and working. Now I'm playing around with settings. And trying to customize my template so that it is unique-ly Anna/American Girl in Germany (tm), and not obviously a default template. I forsee many hours spent in front of the computer this weekend. Wait, how is that different than other weekends?

Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof

Here are some photos I took this evening while waiting for the Sbahn. Click on each to see a larger version:

Moveable Type

I'm in the process of installing MoveAble Type to my new site. It's a more sophisticated blogging software than Blogger - MT is to Blogger what MS Word is to Wordpad. Lots of features and functionality that Blogger doesn't have yet or isn't as robust as MT. Anyway, I've run into a problem that I don't know how to resolve, so I've got a question open at my hosting company's Forum. I should have an answer there soon.

I plan on playing with it all weekend and then starting the move from Blogger to there starting next week. Hopefully this transfer will go a LOT less painlessly than my Work Permit saga! Knock on wood.

Work permit, part 3

I just called the nice lady at the Arbeits Amt to see if I'm legal or not. Nope, I'm not legal, a letter has been sent to my work explaining exactly why. Mick calls up to speak to the nice lady, thinking I've misunderstood. Nope, I didn't misunderstand. See, Germany has 4+ million unemployed and my company has to search for a copetent German before they can hire me. Regardless of the fact that I've been working here for more than a year. Irregardless that Mick has been searching for over a year for another co-worker and hasn't found anybody he likes (or anybody that likes us) enough to hire - German or otherwise. So now my bosses have to write another letter and I have to go to another office, etc.

We haven't received the letter yet, so we don't know exactly what we need to do. More information as I get it.

Snow, snow, snow

We've been getting a lot of snow in the last couple of weeks. Most days it's just a flurry of flurries that melt within a couple of hours, but last night here we got about an inch. Down by Bill's house, he got about four inches a couple of days ago. And on our walk last weekend, there was about 2-3 inches on the ground. Snow snow snow. :) Yea! It's a banner year for Frankfurt which hardly ever gets snow.

Storm stops train

I just read the following in my daily CNN News roundup:

"A storm carrying the threat of heavy snow for the Northeast coated a wide
swath of the East Coast in ice Tuesday, stopping trains, closing schools and
courts, and knocking out electricity to a quarter-million people."

Hmmmm.....I know what they mean, but I've got this visual of a storm blowing so hard it actually STOPS a train. Or slams a school door shut. I think better wording is in order.....anybody else?

First, these are a little

First, these are a little disturbing, but hey, if it floats a guys boat, I'm not going to say anything - unless Bill wears them! [Update: I _meant_ that I would have a problem with Bill wearing them, and WOULD say something if he wore them. Ya'll are weird. ;)] However, this version would be a perfect gift for a certain youngest brother of mine.

What? Stop glaring daggers at me, Joe. Hee hee. How about it Brett?

Oh, found via Dave Barry's Blog. Yes, that Dave Barry.

Putting away Christmas

I'm finally packing away the Christmas tree and ornaments. The tree has actually been apart and in pieces on my floor for a week now. And all the ornaments are collected in one area, just waiting to be wrapped a put away for another year. Don't believe Bill if he says I'm only doing this now because he threatened to take photos of my living room to post to his fotolog if they weren't put away this week. ;)

Actually, with the late work and visiting the government offices last week, I just had no time or energy left at the end of the day to take care of it. Oh, speaking of, I should find out tomorrow if I'm legal again. Working permit wise.

Odd dream

Last night I had a weird, a bit disturbing, and frightening dream. Somebody was re-enacting the Sept. 11th WTC falling down. With a real building and real people were about to die. I got the feeling that the people KNEW what was going on. Why? Because I was in the building. It wasn't very tall and didn't look anything like the WTC, but it was definitely a re-enactment. I was frantically trying to finish packing my things to get out of the building (late as usual) and yelling at my mom to get a move on. She was reading or writing emails.

I remember eventually driving off. The building never blew up in my dream, but it was always on the verge of it. Weird, huh? I have no idea what it means.

Patron of the Hour

My fotolog was featured as the Patron of the Hour at Fotolog.net today! I was at work and busy and didn't check my mail all the often or I would have been able to have seen my fotolog on the front page. But hey, it's nice to have lots of people looking at your fotolog! :) Especially since I've been really aggrevated at their slow performance lately.

Fotolog

I have photos on Bills computer from my trip to Metz after Christmas. I want to upload some to fotolog. Fotolog is recognizing me as a member, but the upload screen is saying I have an invalid username and password. Arghh. I'll try again later.

Bowling

Bill and I went bowling last night. Cosmic Bowling. While we waited for the lane, we ate a sandwich and had a couple of drinks - by the way Bacardi Silver tastes pretty good. However, that drink I had before starting to bowl really affected my bowling. :( I stopped drinking the second one at the end of the first game and my third game was really good! No more bowling and drinking for me. I bowled an 89 [! :(], 105 [:(], and a 159. On my last game I only had three open frames! Bill bowled very consistently (even with two beers!): 137, 130 and 132.

Bed

I have bought a bed. Yeah! One that fits my mattress, I like, fits my decor in the bedroom (light beige wood) and was in my price range for a cheapo bed. It is not sitting in Bill's basement and only needs to be brought up to my apartment. The only hard part of this is the slats for under the mattress. The Germans don't just use pieces of wood going across between the sides of the beds. Nope, they have a system of small flexible pieces that go across. It's is as large as the finished bed. Or the mattress. In hindsight we probably should have bought this part up by me. We put it on top of Bill's car yesterday and drove slowly the long way back to his house.

We might be able to bring this all up to Frankfurt on the train with us. Otherwise Bill will have to secure it down on his car top better and drive it up to Frankfurt.

Christmas Letter readers

Hi - is there anybody reading my blog because of my mom and dad's Christmas letter? Not people who were already reading it before they received my parents letter, but because of that letter?

Could you just leave a quick "Hi" in the comments section? It'd be interesting for me to know that you're here.

Oh, and if Aunt Candy is reading (somebody in her time zone stops by a lot based on my stats) - I'd definitely love it if you could leave a comment. I'd also like to start an email correspondance with you! :)

My youngest brothers paycheck

My youngest brother was complaining to me last night about taxes. See, he's working his first real paycheck job where taxes get taken out (he's had plenty of work doing yard work and dog sitting, etc). The poor guy: his $350ish paycheck was chopped to a measly $290ish by the bad tax man.

Analogy time. In Germany, that $350 would be chopped to about $200 after taxes. And instead of a 6-8% sales tax, make it a 16% one (7% for food). Oh, and that $20 you pay to fill up the RAV4, make it $50. Oh, wait, they've just upped the tax per liter of gas 5 cents. Better make that $55 for a full tank of gas.

That makes it sound not too bad after all, huh? Of course, everything is relative, and when you haven't been paying taxes, even that little bit feels like a lot.

New Photos

are up at fotolog. I know you've all been waiting.

It's hard actually having a real life when you're dealing with government agencies for three out of four days and then working until 8pm each night trying to finish debugging two important projects.

Next week, normal hours! Maybe!

Update: Oh, and I forgot, on the four day I went to visit the German tax guy that Stefan uses. So I can finally file my taxes in Germany and get some of the money back they've been taking. So really, four out of four days dealing with government agencies!

Work permit, part 2

I went back in this morning with the completed paperwork from yesterday. The wait was even shorter today, and the lady was almost decent. She took the paper work, said if it's approved, my work permit will be mailed to my office. I can call on Tuesday to see if it was approved or denied. Until then, I'm not supposed to work.

I went to the office and told this to my HR boss. He said that, if I wanted to, I could sit at my desk, of my own free will of course, and look at some things and they wouldn't stop me. Told the same thing to my immediate boss and he said "Ha ha, witzig. Zu diese Thema dass wir haben gestern gesprochen.....". Auf Englisch, "Ha ha, funny. About those things we talked about last night....". So, of my own free will, while visiting my colleagues, and checking email and websites, I gave then some hints about how to debug a couple of processes. All while not working. Until about 8pm. That was nice of me, don't you think?

Work permit, part 1

Yesterday I looked on the website and found which of the two Arbeits Amts deals with my work's area code, and this morning I went there. First, the street address is right, but the address doesn't come in succession with the others. I was looking for 7 and the street went from 3 to 9. I had to walk all the way down to the end of the street and where it dead ends at the railroad tracks is where number 7 is. Of course, from the map, it looked like the Ubahn station was closer than the Sbahn station, so that's what I took. However, the building is directly on the sbahn tracks. Sigh.

Then the lady inside tells me I need to go to the OTHER Arbeits Amt. Double Sigh. Get on the Sbahn, go back to into the middle of town, and walk in the general direction of the street. I have a general idea where it is, but no real idea. So that entailed walking around a bit, finding a Strassenbahn station to look at the map there and eventually findiing it. Then finding the right office, taking a yellow number and waiting for the lady to call for it. Which is fun because she just calls for the next one. Which means you have to speak to your neighbor to find out where in the line you fall. Very modern system. The wait wasn't too long, just 10-15 minutes. Then the lady quickly berates me for not knowing that OF COURSE my work permit isn't good for Frankfurt, because it says Munich on it. Then flings some forms at me and tells to have my boss fill them out and then I can come back. Very nice. This was the attitude the guy at information on the ground floor had too - like everything was SOO obvious and we were SOO stupid not to know it already. Well excuse me! Have a nice day too!

And I couldn't find this information on the website - as far as I can tell it's got LOTS of information about searching for a job and the hours to come in and do that, but the hours for the work permit are different and obviously only handled at this one place, not the other. It must be buried somewhere on the website that is OBVIOUS to them.

So my boss has the forms and I'll try again tomorrow morning if he's finished with them today.

The residence permit, part three

Today I went to finish getting my permanent residence permit. Well, not permanent, because you only get that after you've applied for a two year one three or four times in a row. So, I went to get my resident permit renewed, not just the temporary one they gave me three months ago while we waited for my folder (literally) to arrive from Munich. I got there 10 minutes after they opened. An hour later, I got a number: 47. The counter was already on 18. Sigh. Sit. Wait. Read. Speak a little with the cute guy across the way who kept eyeing every cute girl. Mostly about the British guy who came in and was speaking really crapping German and English to the people explaining that he really really needed something or other for tomorrow. Wait somemore. Continue reading. SMS boss about how two hours have gone by and the number is only up to 30. Almost finish book and realize my number is next (four hours later). Go speak to the nice lady about getting my residency permit. Only to discover, I've been working illegally for the last year and four months.

See, they need a valid working permit before they'll give me the residency permit. I had one (so I thought), but it expires at the end of this month. First, she said I needed to get it renewed before I could get the real residency permit. Then, she went and spoke with her colleague. And came back and asked if the company name on the work permit was my current or former company. It's my former company, but the work permit isn't dependant on my company, right? I mean, that's the way the people at my last company (who got the work permit for me) explained it. Right? Um, no. I should have gotten a new work permit when I moved here to Frankfurt. Sure enough, if you flip the work permit over and read the small print, that's what it says - in English no less.

So first I have to get a correct working permit and THEN I can go back and get my residency permit. But I won't have to wait in line for four hours next time, they start a new system of MAKING APPOINTMENTS in February (imagine that). Yea!

Next item on the agenda: find the hours for the Arbeits Amt here in Frankfurt and get a correct working permit. This week!

Flippin' fotolog

It's not letting me upload again. No error message, nothing. It's incrementing my allowable daily upload counter though....just not actually UPLOADING. Sigh.

Update: They did upload. They just didn't show up in the 10 minutes I looked before I went to bed.

Two movies last night

I rented two movies last night, Bandits and Good bye, Lenin!. I didn't realize until I popped the first one in the DVD player that it was only in German. Most DVD's have English as an option if that's the original language of the film. That's okay, I put the German subtitles on so I could read them when the talking got too fast. The funny thing I noticed though was that the subtitles don't say everything. Words are skipped and phrases are changed.

Anyway, I really liked Bandits (Banditen auf Deutsch). It's quirky and Bruce Willis. Which is always a good combination for me (see: Hudson Hawk). I also found that the soundtrack was very good! I'm going to at least buy the DVD (sometime). The funniest part for me though, because of the German voices, was when Cate Blanchett's character is reciting a line from a song in English. The song is Total Eclipse of the Heart, and the line is "I don't know what to do. I'm always in the dark." The funny part is the German actress says "I'm always in ze dark". It's even funnier because the other lines of the song, in English, with the word "the" in them, are said PERFECTLY. It's even funnier to hear the German actor (for Bruce Willis's voice) answer back in English with the rest of the line. Only because it is said so. matter. of. fact. I can imagine this same voice over actor saying "Papers please!" LOL.

Good bye Lenin! was also a very good movie. Very heart warming and funny story about the lengths a son will go to, to protect his mother from the truth. Alex's mother is a strict Party line woman in East Berlin. Just before the Wall falls, she has a heart attack and goes into a coma. Eight months later, she awakens, no knowledge of the Wall coming down, the change in currency, nothing. The doctor says that any kind of shock to her system could cause another heart attack and she would most likely die. So Alex sets up her room as it was before (a tenant has moved in since then), and trys to pretend nothing has happened. He breaks the antenna on the radio so she can't listen to news casts and goes out to find old brands of food. When that doesn't work, he finds old bottles and puts the new brands into the old brand bottles. Eventually she asks for a TV and he sets up one with old DDR TV programs, and even films fake newscasts to explain the little changes that she does see. Very well done movie. I enjoyed it with the German subtitles again. It's a German movie and has no options for English. Which is as it should be. I missed a lot of jokes and didn't understand some parts - either the dialect or words I don't know yet, but I got the general gist of them.

Update (26.02.2004): I did buy the DVD for Bandits a week or so later and watched it in English. Funnily enough, I didn't like the actors real voices because I'd already heard the German voices. But still a good movie. :)

Stair photos

I've seen so many cool stair shots in the last couple of weeks over at fotolog, including one Bill took on our Cologne trip and another he took yesterday. Since I've gotten my camera, I've been trying to emulate these photos. So far I hate all my efforts. I guess I just need to keep practicing there.

New Hair Color

Head over to my fotolog to see pictures of my new temp hair color. Some of you probably won't even notice a difference.

Yahoo and the Spam Filter

Everytime somebody leaves a comment on a photo of mine at fotolog, I get an email. Well, I've received over 10 comments in the last 10 hours, so Yahoo let the first few through, and then determined that I was gettting "spammed" and put the rest in the Bulk email folder. Sigh. They did the same thing to my mothers emails when she sent me over 40 or 50 "jokes" in a 10 hour period.

Tinfoil hat

No aliens are going to be reading my thoughts for the next hour, that's for sure!

Chocolate Brown

I am about to attempt to temporarily dye my hair Chocolate Brown using a non-peroxide temporary hair dye. This is different from the foaming wash in red rinses I've tried before. I have to put this goopy brown paste on my hair, then tinfoil and wait 30-90 minutes. I did a test strip yesterday where I waited 30 min and it just seemed to make that strip a slightly darker red. So, we'll see. If it turns out remotely chocolatey brown, I'll attempt to take a picture of myself and post it to fotolog. Or maybe this blog. In any case, I'll inform all my bored readers how it turns out. And Mom, it's not permanent. I just want to see what it'll look like. ;)

Foxtrot

Um, am I dense? Does anybody understand this Foxtrot cartoon? I get 99.9% of them, but this one is escaping me. <scratchs head>



Update: Erik explains it in the comments section. As I don't watch TV that often (and when I do it's mostly CNN or MTV) and it's most probably an American only commercial anyway, that explains why I didn't understand it. Thanks Erik!

Cologne Photos, part 4

Head on over to my fotolog for more Cologne photos. As an added bonus, another Ducky photo! Oh, and don't be shy about leaving comments over there.

RyanAir

I love Ryanair. If at all possible, I will always fly RyanAir within Europe. I just bought the tickets for Bill's and my trip in March - it's his birthday trip and he wants it to remain a surprise, so I'm not saying where we're going - for only 75Euro, roundtrip, for the both of us! And the flights themselves are only 30Euro, the rest is fees.

We will be travelling from March 4th to March 8th. I bought a guidebook for the city. I'll probably know more about this city than any other I've visited before I get there! I'm getting really excited about this trip. :)

Math and Linguistics

The science of stylometry analyzes pattern in written words to ascertain authorship of said written words. I found this Bookish Math article at Science News full of interesting information on this area of science . Found via Transblawg.

German news in English

This looks interesting. It'll probably make me lazy in reading my Deutsch though. Found via PapaScott.

Illiteracy

A witty piece about promoting illiteracy can be found here (found via Blogslut.)

German Medical co-pay

Ah hah! It gets better. I thought (because I don't really follow the news) that the new German Medical visit co-pay was for each visit. NOOOO! It's once per quarter. Sigh.

Go to this American-German bloggers site for even more detail.

Update: just in case it's not clear how ironic I'm being here, read my last post about this topic here.

GWOD

German Word (Phrase) of the Day: Ich drucke dir die Daumen!. Literally translated, "I'll push my thumbs in for you!" However, the meaning is more "I'll keep my fingers crossed!" Apparently Germans (possibly Europeans, as Rado - from Slovakia, is also familiar with it) make fists with their thumbs inside instead of crossing their fore and middle fingers.

Interesting!

Update: Germans and Slovakians do the thumbs gesture differently. Slovakians put the thumb inside the fist and Germans press the thumb against the fore finger. Even more interesting!

I'm soo proud of myself

I sent Lileks a link. He goes to said link, finds another link of interest. Posts it to his "Cool Link of the Day" on his daily bleat (see the link on the right and when you go there, click on his Monday bleat). Then today I go to visit LT Smash, and he's got the same link! He found it via another blogger (that I'd never visited) and she found it via Lileks. It's amazing this ripple effect, huh? :D

Mind is blank

I thought of at least three other things to post throughout the day today, but I forget now. Duh. I need to write drafts of ideas into the blog and then complete and post them in the evening. I'm just afraid I'll get too caught up in blog posting and surfing while at work.

Oh, go check out Rion.nu today. He's got some beautiful pictures of a Simpson pinball machine. Really breath taking. And I never thought I'd say that about a pinball machine!

Update: Oops. I fixed the link. Rion.ru is a Japanese/Greek/Arabic (I can't tell, but the characters are not from the Roman alphabet) website and and Rion.nu is a cool NYC photologger. His photos are sublime!

Update 2: Ummm.....Oops. Rion.nu's author just emailed me. He is a, um, SHE. So everywhere it says he/his above, put a she/her.

Posted by Jinglelady at 12:25 AM | Comments (0) | Previous Blog | TrackBack

Proposal for (another) German Social program

Bill has a unique proposal for the German homeless/hobo population here. It would be interesting to see this implemented! ;)

GWOD

German word of the Day (from awhile back): der Flaschenhals. Literally, bottleneck. As in "What is the bottleneck to this process"/"Was ist der Flaschenhals fuer dieser Prozess?"

I heard this in a meeting where my boss and our sysadmin were discussing bandwidth bottlenecks on the server. I'd never heard the word before, but it breaks down very easily: Flasche = bottle, Hals = neck. For some reason, Flaschenhals sounds completely funny to me, but bottleneck is 100% normal and not funny. It really takes learning another language to realize the quirky way words are put together.

Further German Integration

As proof of my continuing integration into the German language, I'm now talking to myself in German. What? Don't look at me like that, everybody talks to themselves! Und ja, ich antworte mich selbst auch! (Hilfe Stefan, Sandra - ist das richtig formuliert???)

Cologne/Koeln photos, part 3

I've uploaded them over at my fotolog, now that it seems to be working better again. They must have been down for a much needed server upgrade yesterday. Go check them out! They're cute and beautiful! And Ducky is there (say "Quack!")!

When I get my blog up and working at the new site, I'll be doing a mix of photos on the blog and a photos on fotolog. I like both forums. Maybe the nicer better quality photos on my blog and some of the more quirky off beat photos there.

What would YOU do?

You're the (relatively) new guy at work. You don't understand 100% how everything is done. You're asked to help troubleshoot a project and given a task of filling a script for 14 days. You start the script for the first of the 14 days and look in the log file to see how it's progressing. You don't see anything. Hmmmm.....you start the script again and look in the log file again. You still don't see anything. You KNOW something should be printed out to the log file.

What would you do at this point?

A. Ask the colleague you are helping if you are doing something wrong.
B. Run the script 10 more times in test. And just for good measure, in case you're not doing it in the correct place, run it a couple of times in production. THEN, ask a different colleague (who has no idea what you are doing) if you're looking in the correct log file.

ARGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!

Koeln Dom photos, part 2

The reflection of the Dom in the Hauptbahnhof windows.



An entrance to the Dom.



Detail of the arch on the door.



Another detail of the arch on the door.

Learning lessons

I have to be careful of the size of the photo. I've been sizing my photos as 1024 x 768 for the fotolog site and I guess their software has been resizing the photos to a manageable size. I have to resize the photo below twice for it to appear that size. Before it was just too HUGE!

First Cologne pict

Okay, this is a test. Here is the Cologne Cathedral (Dom). This is the first thing you see coming out of the Hauptbahnhof in Cologne.



Taken 10.01.2004 in Koeln, Germany. Copyright Me and this blog

Fotolog down

Argh, I'm getting frustrated with Fotolog. They are either slow or down too often for my tastes. I like the form of having a gallery and the Favorites and people commenting on it. However, last night it wouldn't let me upload, and tonight they're down for some reason - website won't even resolve. So, since I can't post pictures to Fotolog right now, I'm going to post the pictures to my new website hosting and then link to them from there. Wait a bit and some photos should appear from Koeln.

Lileks

I have a daily round of links that I check. Most of them are over there on the right under "Links of Note". One of them is The Bleat by James Lileks, a columnist and author. A couple of weeks ago I found the Satan's Laundromat photolog and then last night I thought "Hmm....this photolog looks like something Lileks would like - quirky NYC photos". So, I found his email at the Star Tribune where he's a columnist and sent him the link.

He responded!! To quote: "Thanks for the kind words and the nifty URL - much appreciated!"

How cool is that? :)

Art after Work

Thursday evening Bill and I went to the Nackt! exhibit at the Staedel Museum Art after Work. It turned out to be a little different that I thought it would be. I pictured a tour guide taking us around and explained a little history about each painting, but that wasn't the plan. The tour guide (a very nice American woman, possibly Art teacher or curator) took us around to about seven different paintings and discussed them with the group. She gave some background on the painting, explained a little bit about the styles used and what she thought the painter was trying to convey and then asked for input from the group. She tried to center the discussion around "Virtue vs Vice", ie., is the naked woman painted meant to portray a Virtue (romantic love) or a Vice (prostitution or objectivication of her genitals). This made the discussion much more interesting for me. Paintings I would have walked by and said "Ooookay...." or "Ewww" made more of an artistic sense when discussed this way.

For example, there was a painting of a seemingly beautiful woman, but all done in Yellow and her body was a mass of curly-Qs. Quite ugly. However, when she told us that this was a lifesize doll of the painters former mistress (and therefore lumpy) that the painter had made to deal with his obsession of her, the painting made more sense. Still ugly, but viewed in terms of self-therapy, much more interesting. Another painting used a variety of perspectives that I found disconcerting and not very professional. However, the tour guide explained the painters technique (painting things as a human sees them - the eye looks from different angles), it made more sense. I'm going to see when their next Art after Work is, and try to attend it. Hopefully for another exhibit. I like this kind of forum.

Photos

I have plenty of photos to upload to my fotolog, but Fotolog is messing up. It's not accepting my photos. Of course, maybe it is, just not showing them. That happened once. I uploaded the same photo four times once because it didn't seem like it was accepting them correctly. They finally showed up five minutes later and I had to delete the three duplicates (triplicates?).

Anyway, you'll have to wait for the spectacular photos tomorrow. Sorry.

Back home

Bill and I had a wonderful time in Koeln/Cologne. Very nice city - I think it's much more interesting and culturally diverse than Frankfurt. However, that's based on an eight hour wander around the city. Could be that it's not true. I'll ask Sandra at work - she's from there originally.

Much more later. I'm off to bed to rest my toes and rest up for what looks like a stressful day of bug finding/fixing tomorrow afternoon.

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth

I've been super busy at work. And then I took the laptop to work to install Oracle. It's been travelling back and forth to work with me the last two days.

And now, I'm off to Koeln (Cologne) for the day with Bill. I'll write tomorrow if I have the chance....I might have to go into work tomorrow. In fact, I'm fairly certain of it.

New use for the camera

I just used my camera to take pictures of the whiteboard. I have to type up what I wrote on the whiteboard, and this makes it easier. I don't have to write it down and then type it up, just take a picture, download it, and type what's in the picture. Cool! :) See, I'm using the gift from work to be more effective at work.

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Sorry, I had to get that out. A coworker has been at my desk for the last 1 1/2, 2 hours asking me questions. After 50 minutes of one line of questioning, he said "Well Mick said that perhaps the easiest solution is to do this........". After he'd just spent 40 minutes asking me "Well, what about THIS possibility, or that possibility or . .. or... ". OH, was I MAD! So I got very curt with him, told him how to do both possibilities, and told him to have fun figuring it out. I thought he'd leave. But NOOoooo, he had another question. OH, and another. And, another. And the last one was wondering about what to do if the customer decided they wanted such and such. Such and such isn't specified and would make NO SENSE!!!!!! So I told him to worry about what IS specified, not about the various different possibilities, and then I grabbed my keys, said I had to go somewhere, and left. It worked - he left.

German taxes

The Germans wonder their economy is doing so bad. The freaking taxes are killing it! And any try at even minimal reform has the Conservatives and the older generation (who has it SOOO good!) screaming. Schoeder was finally able - after much stalling on his part and then much wrangling with the opposition - to implement some reforms for this year. As a result, I get 10Euro a month more in my paycheck per month. Woo hoo! Oh, and now there is a 10Euro co-pay when you visit the doctor - there wasn't one before. Wah, boo hoo. You'd think the old people had to pay an arm and a leg now. Well, I guess when they've been paying nothing for years for all the cheap stuff, 10Euro per visit IS an arm and a leg.

Anyway, for more information on how bad the taxes are, go read Bill's entry on how much he has left after taxs, rent, electric, etc.

What a Difference

real photo editing software can make. My camera has these different effects you can choose: sepia tone, black and white, vivid, low sharpening, etc. Today was a really grainy overcast day and as I came out of the Hauptbahnhof after lunch, I thought the hotel across from it looked very interesting in the lighting. So I tried an experiment and took the photo in black and white. Just now, I downloaded the picture and viewed it with my favorite quick and easy viewer, Irfanview. The picture looks horrible - very grainy. I thought that the camera made it look like that until I opened the same picture in Photoshop. Wow, crisp, clear, very nice looking. Whew. It's like looking at two different images. I guess I'll be using Photoshop to look at my black and whites from now on. Of course maybe Irfanview has a better display mechanism for bw now - my version is about a year old.

Anyway, you'll have to wait until tomorrow to view the picture on Fotolog, I've already uploaded my daily limit of six photos. Check them out!

Resolutions

I have two resolutions this year.

One: visit a museum exhibit at least twice a month. I'm arbitrarily picking Wednesday and Thursday evenings to fulfill this. I will NOT be working past 6pm on those days. I'm making an appointment with myself and I'm keeping it. This Thursday is the Staedel Museum and the exhibit Nackt! (Naked!).

Two: take a trip every month to a place I've never been or not fully explored. I'm alternating the trips between local day/overnight trips in Germany and farther away weekend trips to someplace in Europe. This Saturday is Cologne/Koeln. March is a secret still as I'm taking Bill there for his birthday, but it's a long distance three day weekend trip. I haven't decided on February yet, but it will probably be another local day trip as March is busy with the secret trip and a trip to the States to visit family. I WILL see Prague, London and Paris this year - all on the cheap, but I WILL see them. I'm also considering an early summer vacation to a resort in Grand Canaria. I'm making up for lost time last year when I was way too broke to even consider going hardly anywhere - moving three times in a year and spending nine out of twelve months either jobless or getting your pay late from a bankrupt company will do that for you. I'm not 100% out of that hole yet, but the edge is very near. Another reason the next two months will be local trips only.

Those are my only two resolutions. Wait, I have another (not fully articulated until now, but it's been bubbling)....

Three: Communicate directly with my brothers. For too long we've been getting information about each other through Mom and Dad. I will be communicating with them at least once every two weeks either via email or a phone call. Whether they reciporcate or not, I'm going to be putting it out there. I really hope they actively return my emails or phone calls because I miss talking with them and want us to be closer than we are.

Interesting car

Click here to see it. I tried to put the image inline and it worked for a little while but now it's not working. No idea why because all the code is correct, but there you go. Click the link to see the car.

Heh. :)

Comic below

Sorry for the crappy compression on the comic below. Just click on it to see the full size version. I really should save it, resize it and then use it for the link (as the full comic doesn't mesh well with my template), but 1) I'm not sure of Illiad's policy on doing that - I know Dilbert's author does not allow that; and 2) I'm not using my new hosting capabilities yet. I'm still playing over there.

Update: I just went and read the User Friendly FAQ and it's confusing. I can download and display my favorite comics on my website, no problem (Question 2.21). However, the answer to Question 2.23.1 seems to contradict the other answer (in regards to displaying and linking to the cartoon). I'm confused. I guess its saying if I do this on a regular basis, that's a Bad Thing ™. But if it's a one off thing, it's okay? I don't know.

HEH :)

New batch of photos

Now that I'm a Gold Member ahem, Gold Camera subscriber at Fotolog, I'm allowed to upload six photos per day. So far today I've uploaded five. Three from the last couple of days and two from today. I'll more than likely add another from today in a couple of minutes. Go check them out!

Domain and Hosting

No, I did not forget about my domain or hosting, nor was I procrastinating. I was waiting for my Paypal account to be verified. But, in the last 24 hours, I've bought my domain, purchased hosting, and bought a Gold Camera subscription at Fotolog. So now I can play with my new domain and post more than one picture per day at Fotolog.

For now, this blog will remain at this URL. Do not try the new URL until I say something is there. I'm going to play around over there first. :)

Dick Clark

I have a day-by-day Calendar of Foxtrot. Last week, the cartoon mentioned Dick Clark. My co-worker Stefan read the comic and asked me "Who's Dick Clark?" So I mention he's the guy who covers the ball drop in Times Square every year. Blank look. Okay, how about he's the guy who doesn't look like he ever ages? "Is he the guy who does The Price is Right?" Um, no, that's Bob Parker. Hmm....American Bandstand? More blank looks. Okay - I guess Dick Clark isn't that well known in Germany.

How can you NOT know who Dick Clark is? I'm sure there's some famous German celebrity's that Stefan would be amazed that I didn't know about, but Dick Clark? That's just odd. Especially for a guy who's pretty hip to entertainment news and who's long time boyfriend is American. Hmm....

Weekend gone awry

My weekend is all wacked out now. I wasn't planning on being back to my apartment until Sunday evening. I was going to spend the last weekend of the holiday season with Bill and his son. BUT - for reasons beyond my control and for the peace and harmony of Bill's life, I'm back in Offenbach a day and a half early (don't ask, I'm not going to discuss it on this website, but Bill and I are fine). Which has me thinking that tomorrow is Monday and I have to go to work.

On the other hand, I have an extra day to do things around my house - take down the tree, clean the kitchen and bathroom, etc. I might even do all that. At least half!

Green shoes

I've officially gone one step closer to being a European. I've bought green shoes. Green shoes that look like tennis shoes but aren't. Of course, to be even CLOSER to being a European, or at least German, I'd have to buy butt ugly red shiny leather shoes. But soft green leather fake tennis shoes is close enough. Hey, they match my new sweater. ;)

Why I mentioned Yes

I have these four CDs full of MP3s that a friend gave me. I was listening to one of them at work yesterday and it seemed that everytime I thought the current song was crappy, it was a Yes song. There were a couple of other crappy songs by other groups, but consistently, the songs by the group Yes were ALL crappy. It just brought to mind the story about my ex boyfriend Matt. And yes, Erik, there is a song or two that I like by them. Just not many. :)

Just say NO to Yes

Have I ever mentioned that I do not like the group Yes? No? Well, let me explain why now. Actually, see, I don't know if I ever would have liked Yes because I didn't listen to them before this happened. However, this cemented my dislike of the group.

The year is 1992 and I'm dating this guy in Atlanta, Matt. Matt was interesting for other reasons (a minor stalking after we broke up and I moved away and a story involving socks), but this is about his love of the group Yes. Matt LOVED Yes. Every CD they had ever done - he had it. They remastered a recording? He bought it. Somebody made a recording of a concert and sold it on the blackmarket? He had it. A band member put out an individual effort? Yes, he had it. All told, he had over 30 CDs of just Yes related material. I don't know how many tapes or LPs.

So one day before we're about to go out to a movie, I teased him about his balding spot. Bad Anna, I shouldn't have done that. Sensitive subject. My punishment for this was listening to a live recording - very LOUDLY, in an enclosed car, with Matt singing along at the top of his lungs - of two Yes songs mixed together. Mmmm, so lovely!

Did I mention I have an aversion to Yes?

Locked out

I got to work early this morning - I took the train in with Bill. I'm also taking the train home with Bill, so I needed to go straight to work. And I did. BUT - I couldn't get the door open! We've got two locks on the outter door and one is funky. I thought both were unlocked, but the door STILL wouldn't open. Okay, fine, I'll go upstairs (our office is split between two floors) and do something up there. I couldn't open that door either! I had to stand around for 50 minutes before Stefan came in. Fortunately I had something to read. Oh, and it turns out one of the locks on our door turns the other way. So I was actually locking it, and unlocking the other one. DOH!

Happy New Year!

I hope everybody (who reads this) had a wonderful time bringing in the new year. I did! I spent it with my sweetie. The club we were in had a fireplace and we were sitting in front of it snuggling when the New Year rang in. A perfect beginning!

Before we left to go out for the night, we went over and shot off firecrackers with William. Germans sell firecrackers in the grocery store for two days before New Years and they're only allowed to shoot them off on New Years Eve and New Years Day. The streets were littered with little red papers and sticks on New Years Day! :)

my blonde moment of the day

I didn't buy a weekly train ticket this week because of the holidays. I figured I won't be using the train enough to make it cost effective. The weekly ticket is just cheaper than four daily passes, and two one ways are cheaper than a daily pass. So, since I'll be going in to work only four days this week, and not at all on the weekend, it's a little cheaper to buy one way tickets or a daily pass (if I plan on using the train more than twice) than the weekly pass.

So I bought a daily pass today. Went to work, nobody checked. Left work and did a little shopping - nobody checked. Got on to go home, and two sbahn cops were there. I'm feeling smug, I have a pass. I sit down and start reading. A couple of stops go buy and they start coming around. A seat away from me, I start looking for my pass. Yesterday's one way, another one way, argh!!!! Where is it???? I KNOW I bought it. Look all through my wallet, the book bag, both front pockets. NOOOO. So the sbahn cop starts writing me a ticket. Damn. WHERE is IT? Okay, one last place, check the BACK pocket. Whew! There it was! HA! He had to tear up his ticket. Na na na na. So what if everybody was staring at me?

Argh

GoDaddy.com has an option to sign up a domain with a proxy company. This is supposed to hide your address so that spammers can't find your email and address so easy. Which sounds like a good idea.....BUT. I'm not so sure. I tried searching on Google and Google groups for information about this service and reviews. Mostly I'm finding pissing and theological discussions from Spam fighters. Some think this is the best service since sliced bread, others think hiding your information on the registration process in any way is A BAD THING(tm), and others think spammers use this proxy server to hide themselves and therefore the entire process is tainted. Argh. I don't know what to think anymore. And it's late, so I'm going to bed.

New colors

I was searching around tonight for a new blog design for Bill's blog and I came across a blog design with these new colors. It had a pretty background and a couple of other pretty graphics, but I decided to stick with my design and adopt the new colors. Also, with blogspot, I can't host images (yet).

In the next week, I'm going to buy a domain name and get a webhost. I've found a host that offers 300MB of space, unlimited email addresses and a 5.5 GB transfer rate for $4/month ($44/year): Total Choice Hosting. Also, they allow a variety of languages and databases, so I can host my blog there and eventually move to a more robust blogging software. Yea!

Domain Name

Should I go with jinglelady.us or jinglelady.net? What do you think?

Language Barrier

Today I went to Metz, France and now I finally know how other people feel when they visit a foreign country. I felt frustrated most of the day by my inability to communicate with other people. I know maybe five words in French and I understand NONE of it! I can figure out sign meanings and some things do not require speaking - the point and gesture methods work for ordering food, for example. However, if you want to ask where a good restaurant is, that doesn't work. Walking around a town for a few hours on a holiday day didn't require me to interact with too many people anyway, so I made the best of it.

In Germany, I'm so used to being able to understand 80% of what is being said, and being able to make myself understood. I do not like the feeling of not being able to communicate. I think if I lived in France or Italy, I'd probably feel a lot more homesick than I do here in Germany. Eventually I'd pick up enough to get by, but I probably wouldn't enjoy myself very much.

Metz, France

Bill has to work tomorrow (sucks), so I'm going to go sightseeing. I'm going to take a two hour train ride to Metz, France and walk around for a few hours. Take some pictures, natch! :)

Merry Christmas to All!

And to all a Good Night! :)

I spent Christmas today with Bill. He was soo nice - he gave me a set of crystal wine glasses. They are really pretty. I'll post pictures of them soon. He also gave me a big bottle of my favorite perfume. I gave him a Polish Pottery cookie jar and a book about Hiking in Ireland.

His son and Carolyn came over for dinner and presents. William got some really nice presents from Dada and Santa. A game boy, a guitar, some Legos, a Bioncle, and lots of little toys (couple of stuffed animals, Hot Wheels cars, etc). We all had a nice time.

I took lots of pictures with my new camera, but now I need to figure out how to filter red eye out of some of the shots. I'm going to buy a "Gold Camera" membership at fotolog soon so I can post more than one picture per day. I'll post the pictures then. :) In the meantime, go check out my or Bill's fotolog. I posted a couple of macro shots in the last two days and Bill posted some pictures from today.

Oy! to the World

A couple of years ago, I heard about this Christmas album on NPR. Oy! to the World by the Klezmonauts. It's the oddest Christmas music - Jewish Klezmer meets traditional Christmas music. I LOVE this album. It's part of my staple of Christmas music now. A Hebrew version of Jingle Bells, an oboe Good King Wincelelos (sp?), and a very lively tune called "Santa, Gey Gesunderheit (Go in Peace)". Lovely music, funny, and spirited. You can download samples at the website linked above. Enjoy!

Bad Anna

I goofed off all evening. Well, not entirely - I did get my laundry done and the video returned. But I still need to finish wrapping Bill's gift(s) and fold the laundry and wash the dishes and pack a bag for the weekend. Guess it's a good thing I have tomorrow off now, huh?

Happiness is

coming home after work and realizing you have the next 5 days off. :) Talking with old friends on the phone wishing them a Happy Christmas.

Just being happy because it's Christmas season and I have somebody I love to spend the next 5 days with.

Camera

My camera is soo cool. :) My colleague showed me some of the things it can do today. Wee! I'm going to have fun!

I have options for coloring, lighting, shutter speed, film speed, and macro! I can take macro shots! I put my camera about an inch (maybe less) away from my keyboard and it focused perfectly!

SNOW!

We got a couple millimeters of snow! And I have photographic evidence of it! :)

Today was nice and sunny this morning. Cold, but sunny. At lunch time I made a point of going to a spot I'd noted earlier as being a good place to take a picture of the Hauptbahnhof. I wanted to catch it in the sun because with German weather, who knows when the next time I'd have a sunny day? Twenty minutes later, the air was full of big fluffy snow flurries! For about five minutes, but hey! It snowed! :)

I know, I know, my friends in the NE of the USA are saying, "big flipping deal! We've had x inches for the last month!", but it doesn't snow that often here in Frankfurt, so I've got to take what I can get.

Oh, wait, it's snowing some more! :D

Incredible Air Fare

I just found a one way flight on Ryan Air from London-Stansted to Frankfurt-Hahn - small charter airports an hour away from each city - for 50cents!!! With taxes and fees, the entire flight is less than 20Euro!

Crazy or what?

Happy 1st Birthday Kaitlyn!

My littlest niece is one years old and one day today! She turned one yesterday. Happy Birthday sweetie!

Her due date wasn't until the middle or end of January this year, but she knew that Aunt Anna was coming home for Christmas, so she made an early entry, just for me! ;) And then scared the poo poo out of all of us by forgetting to breathe on New Years Day! She's all okay now, and growing like a little girl should.

Work Christmas Party

Yesterday I went into work, stayed 10 minutes, and went back home to sleep. I just could not function. However, the Christmas party was yesterday evening, so I put the alarm on for 5pm. Bill and I met back at my work at 6pm for the party. I am soo glad I went! Not only did I have a good time, but I got a really cool Christmas present from my bosses!

The bosses had us play a film trivia game. They played little snippets of film dialog, and we had to write down the film title. All the dialog was in German (naturally!) by the voice actors who do the dub-overs. This made it hard for me, because I don't know the German voice over actors (actors always have the same voice over actor - Robert de Niro always has the same voice) and how they sound. It made it _really_ hard for Bill because he doesn't understand too much German. But, he still helped me on at least three movies. However, we still managed to tie for third place! Woohoo! It helped me a lot that our bosses would give small clues about who the actor in the scene (or sequence of scenes) was. After it was determined that we were tied for third, us and the other couple had to redo the quiz, but this time with the video clips, not just sound. Bill and I got a couple more doing this, but not enough. Oh well! :) It was really fun. The funny part was the big boss was almost broken hearted that we Americans did so well at the German language film trivia. :)

Then came time for the gifts from the bosses. Each of us (13 altogether) received a Canon IXUS digital camera! Woo hoo! It's the size of a 1/4 inch credit card, takes 4.0 mega pixel still photos, and has some kind of capacity for taking video (I'm still wading through the German manual). What a NICE gift! I was contemplating buying myself a digital camera this Christmas. Now, I don't have to! :D I'll probably eventually get a higher end digital camera, but this one looks extremely nice and I'm going to play with it for awhile. It came with a 32MB card that allows me to save 26 pictures at the largest resolution, 51, 86 or 163 at the successive smaller resolutions.

I've already taken the camera out today and taken two pictures (hey, I'm sick). Go to fotolog to see the first - a wider angle view of the front of my apartment.

Sickness and Management Skills

Yesterday I felt so horrible, I went home half way through the day. Okay, I went to lunch, came back for an hour, THEN went home. Honestly though, I felt like crap and sounded like it. I stayed in bed all afternoon, with the heat up, under a thick blankey. Drank tea, drank water, took vitamins, and read. I actually felt good when I finally went to sleep. This morning, I wake up, and think, eh, I feel sick, but okay. I give myself time to wake up, eat breakfast, get the phlem out of my throat, and at 9am, I think, okay, I'll go into work. Call the boss to tell him I'll be an hour late.

Him (sounding sick himself): "Shit."
Me: "What??"
Him: "Rado isn't here either."

Well, la de da. What can I do about that?? I can't help it that Stefan is on vacation and his projects are falling apart, I'm sick, he's sick, and Rado's not there. And what does "Rado's not here either" mean? Is he sick? Late? What? Mick tends to over dramatize the worst possible scenario.

Me: "Well, I'll be there in an hour or so."

Of course since then, I've done nothing but hack up a lung. Lovely. But, I'm still going in. With my Advil, vitamins, cough lozenges, etc.

Sometimes I think my boss should take Management 101.

Insightful Commentary on Iraq coverage

Can be found here. The author is Orson Scott Card, science fiction writer (official site, collection of similar essays on his related site Ornery American).

I enjoy everything OSC writes (that I've read so far). His Alvin Maker series is a thoughtful and magically alternative history fantasy series. I've only read three books of the Ender series so far, but I'm always on the look out for the next book at the used book store. It's a philosophical science fiction about how humans deal with new species as they go space-faring. Very well thought out. Okay, that's a very general overview description - there is plenty of adventure in the books too.

In any case, the essay linked above states and encapsulates a lot of how I'm feeling about the Iraq coverage. I have to say I didn't vote for Bush, and really did not want him to be our President. However, I feel he's grown into his position and is executing it admirably. My co-workers will probably heavily dis-agree with me, but I applaud his announcement of who will be allowed to bid on the primary reconstruction contracts. Country's that try to tell us it's illegal are blowing smoke up their own arses (it's our tax money, we can spend it how we like). They're just sour because our President is sticking to his guns.

I don't follow the news in detail. If anybody wants to get into a political or news debate with me, I'll lose everytime. I tend to wait for the events to pass and read up on them afterwards. Things flux too much as they are happening and I don't like that much. However, my gut feeling from what little I do read on blogs/websites and follow on CNN is that we are doing good in this war. President Bush is doing (overall) a good job. I do not understand the constant media negativity. I was extremely surprised to learn that Bush's surprise visit to the troops at Thanksgiving is apparently a constroversy (Turkey-gate) and people are putting about that the Turkey he's holding in the pictures is plastic. Whatever.

I freely admit that my view of the currect political situation is influenced by living over here and getting 80% of my news and information from blogs and news sites. I would most probably have a different view if I was still living in the States. NPR is my favorite radio station there. Unfortunately, I can't receive their news programs over here (it's not the same listening via Real Player 12 hours later). NPR tends to be more leftist, while it appears that I'm reading more right-of-center blogs/websites. It's funny, I've always considered myself to be a liberal (leftist). I'm definitely not a right wing religious nut. Please don't ask if I've been SAVED or EVER describe me as re-born. I definitely have leftist tendencies, but I'm not totally left. It's a bit of a mix. About like most people probably. :)

Okay, enough rambling. I'm off to suck on another cough lozenge, read my free copy of Quicksilver and fall asleep. Good night!

Firebird and Phoenity

My FAVORITE browser is Mozilla Firebird. It's an offshoot of the Mozilla browser (the open source development project that eventually builds the Netscape browser). This browser is light-weight - no mail client, chat client, "free" add-on product placement icons, etc; has a ton of cool features, and is highly customizable. Right now they are at version 0.7, so it's not quite a production release, but in my normal everyday browsing at home and at work, it functions WONDERFULLY. Any bugs that I encounter aren't show stoppers and are mostly very minor anyway and I can wait until the next release of the software for the fix.

Firebird, and Mozilla in general, allows tabbed browsing, which I find to be one of THE best features of the software. Instead of opening a new window to visit a new website, or using the same window over and over to follow links -- makes it hard to dual task read websites or compare information or even remember how you ended up on this other site, instead each window opens as a tab in the browser. Then, another clever person built an extension (add-on) for the Mozilla browsers to allow the user to highly customize how the tabs work: top of the screen or bottom? Links outside of the current website open in a new window? Javascript windows open in new tab? Bookmarks open in new tab? All kinds of cool features. See here for more information.

Another cool feature of Mozilla browsers is pop-up ad blocking! SUCH a life saver when surfing the web. I'm hardly ever annoyed anymore by those pop up or pop under ads anymore!

In any case, Firebird recently had a new build available: 0.7. The old release 0.6 was nearing four to six months of age, so it was time to play in major bug fixes and new features. Wonderful! Well, almost. Mozilla.org changed their website navigation about the same time, so things that were very obvious before (ie, instructions on how to upgrade), weren't so obvious anymore. It took me nearly an hour to install my new version so that it worked correctly and then tweak it to how I like to use it. They've since improved the navigation of the site.

Another feature is the ability to change the skin/theme of the browser. This means the look and feel, ie, icons for the back and forward buttons, thick or thinness of the window frame, even menu options! (See here for the entire list of available themes for Firebird.) My favorite is Phoenity Lite. This theme uses up the least amount of screen real estate and is crisp and clean. I LOVE this theme. Unfortunately, it didn't work with the new version of Firebird. :( Installing it caused my screen to jump up and down. Yuck. Oddly enough, it DID/does work on my work computer. But the instructions clearly state that it is not compatible with the new version. :( I downloaded another interesting theme that was good as a temporary theme (Doodle), but honestly, I didn't like using my browser anymore. I like using it TONS better than Mozilla or Netscape or IE (bleck, ick, EWWW), but I just didn't want to browse anymore at home.

HOWEVER, today I went searching to see if anybody updated the theme, and YAY!! somebody had! Woo hoo! Happy browsing Anna again! Yippee! It's a temporary fix, and I'll have to keep looking for updates, but I have my theme back! I am sooo JAZZed about this? Or can't you tell by the number of capitals and exclamation points (ausrufezeichen)???? :)

Reindeer Anna photo

If you really want to be scared, click this link. ;P

Sick and Tired :(

I was going to post the promised commentary on that interview this evening. However, I worked longer than expected, just finished my dinner, I'm FREEZING (radiator is turned all the way up, but because I'm not moving, it's not helping), and I'm sick. All last week I felt like a cold was coming on, but it never really manifested itself. Well, Sunday morning I woke up to a phlemy throat and sounding like a truck stop smoking waitress. Now I'm starting to get faint body aches. Lovely.

Oh, I'm really trying to get along nicer with the new guy (his work and explanations go into painfully exacting detail and he sounds like a goody two shoes), and it's working for the most part. I just make myself deal calmly with him. However, him asking (at 8:20pm!!) if I'd like to see what he's worked out for the project proposal does not help! I'd just returned to my desk after being in Mick's office for an hour helping finish another project proposal. I just wanted to close up some windows, check email and Instapundit one last time and then leave. NO I don't want to read your proposal and listen to your exacting description! Go HOME!

Saddam captured!

Woo hoo! We done good over there!

Here are two blogs that are running commentary on his capture:

The Command Post

Citizen Smash

Go read. :)

Blue Milk, Turtle Parking and War

All things Bill and I learned from each other this weekend. Blue Milk is what his son calls Skim milk because it's thin and transparent and slightly blue (I never noticed that). Turtle parking is Handicapped Parking spaces. Apparently the handicap sign looks like a turtle to his mother (I'll have to check next time I see one). And War is a card game that Bill had never played before! So I taught him. And he KICKED MY ASS! :P Being SLIGHTLY inebriated at the time on Rum and Coke had nothing to with it either!

Reindeer Anna

I have a headband that has antlers attached to it. The antlers blink for about 30 seconds when you push the discreet button.

I wore this headband last Friday along with my bells earrings. My co-workers all (mostly) thought it was cute and then later when Bill and I were walking through the Christmas market, I got a lot of amused looks. However, towards the end of the night I forgot I had them on for a period. A little girl was walking by me and kept brushing against me. Annoyed - there was a LOT of space on the other side of her - I glared at her. She just looked at me and kept giggling. Which made me wonder about the contents of my purse (on her side). So I checked it, and glared some more at her. She just kept looking at me and giggling. Whatever, I walked faster and got away from her. Only about five minutes later did I realize she was MOST LIKELY giggling about my headband. DOH! Silly Anna! I feel so bad about it now. Poor girl was probably wondering why I kept glaring at her.

On Sunday in Heidelberg (the failed RothenbUrg trip), I amused a group of older British couples in the bar we ate dinner at with the headband. "Here comes Rudolph! OH, Rudolph blinks!" And then later in the evening a girl came up and asked me where I'd bought the headband. I had to disappoint her and tell her I'd had them for a few years. Thanks Mom!

First Christmas Card

I've just received my first (only?) Christmas card of the season! From my parents! :) It's taped to the back of my door now.

Interesting article

Via the CotV from last week, I found another website called The Speculist. It's a blog written by a tech writer. Or at least that is my impression from my quick 10-20 min look through his blog. Anyway, I found an interview he did, printed it out (20 pages! Only 10 though with a neat little printer utility called FinePrint), and read it over the last couple of days on the train ride to and from work.

It's an interesting article. The interviewee, John Smart of the Institute for Accelerating Change, pontificates on where he thinks the future of mankind is headed. It's an interesting point, and also somewhat scary. Throughout the entire interview, he links and references so many other pieces of scientific and even sci-fi fiction literature, most of which look worth a following up. However, it would take me at least four to six months to read everything he references! Go read the article, or wait for me to digest the information, sleep, look through a couple other links in the interview, and then post a more coherent summary in the next day or two. I'll probably be adding a few more books to my Amazon wish list as a result!

St. Nicolas translation

In my last post I said "I also received a gift from St. Nicolas! Woo hoo! :) He left a small red bag for everybody on their desk. Inside it is a couple of Lebkuchen, a pair of Lindt chocolate truffels, a big chocolate St. Nicolas, a couple of nuts, and an apple and an orange. I like this bag a lot. "

St. Nicolas, zweites Teil (part two)

Ich habe auch ein St. Nicolas geschenk bekommt! Woo hoo! :) Er hatte ein kleine rote Tasche für alle uns hier am Arbeitplatz verlassen. Drin ist ein paar Lebkuchen, ein paar Lindt Schoko Truffels, ein grosses Schoko St. Nicolas, ein paar Nüsse, und ein Apfel und ein Orange. Ich mag diese Tasche ganz gern.

Total Darkness

It's 5 pm here, and it's completely dark outside. YUCK! Well, in only 14 days or so, the trend will start reversing and then I'll have 10pm sunsets to look forward to again in the summer. :)

Christmas markets, St. Nicolas Tag and Baby fish

Today Bill and I set out to visit Rothenburg, an pretty med-evil age town here that has a nice Christmas market. We arrived there around 1pm, only to discover we travelled to Rothenberg, not Rothenburg. The funniest part was Bill thought he'd be funny as we came into the town and try to scare me by asking if I had navigated to the correct town. LOL. Oh well, we weren't too far from Heidelberg, so we walked around the downtown area and Christmas market there and had a nice dinner too.

Saturday was St. Nicolas Tag here in Germany, the day were all German children put their shoes out the night before and hope for sweeties and small toys from St. Nicolas. Bad children receive switches. Bill got some chocolate truffles and William received an assortment of candies, a 4d Dinosaur puzzle, and a couple of bouncing balls.

Baby fishies! Today when we arrived at Bill's house and fed the starving fishies, we discovered baby fishies! Lots of baby fishies! Bill hurriedly improvized a glass divider for the fish tank to prevent any possible fish food accidents with the larger fish. Especially a larger white fish that is quite aggressive to the other fish. All three of us delighted in observing the new fishies and speculating which fish had the babies. We think it was the Molly fish - she looked pregnant for a long time and now she doesn't look pregnant anymore. And the new fishies are little black things, so it's possible. We'll know for sure in a few days probably.

Janine got her box

Woo hoo! She emailed me saying she got the box sometime in the last week. She was sick after Thanksgiving so she's not sure the exact day it arrived to her work. However - nearly everything came through okay! Just one large platter broke, so that's not too big of a deal. One piece out of 60 or so is very good odds! And she's thrilled with her new dishes and the Christmas presents I sent her. :)

Mom and Dad - your package is going out today. And after that I have one more package to send. Yea! :)

Poor Pluto!

I guess poor Pluto did something pretty awful to wind up in cuffs!

Carnival of the Vanities

One of the original link fests - linking to interesting posts in the Blogosphere in the last week - is the Carnival of the Vanities. There are always interesting posts and new blogs to discover by reading it.

For example, today I clicked on the link for Dean Esmay's post on misconceptions about the Crusades, which lead me to an essay by Thomas Madden which goes in more depth. Which lead me to thinking about my long held thoughts and disbelief over the fact that the Middle East used to be the center of learning, science and culture during Europe's Dark Ages. What I cannot fathom is how it went from being this center of learning and culture to the current morass of backward bickering nation states. I searched on Amazon for a history of the Middle East that could enlighten me about this, and found The Muslim Discovery of Europe by Bernard Lewis. I added it to my Wish List. I think I'll order it in a few weeks.

Anyway, the Carnival has posts for every interest: politics, current events, science, art, sex, etc. Go have a look and lose a few hours crawling the blogosphere. ;)

Healing Foot

Today I took the brace off my foot at work after lunch. The bottom of the brace was slipping towards the middle of my foot and rubbing the sides wrong. So I just wanted to give my foot a break. Besides, everything was feeling great! Well, after an hour or so, a dull throbbing started. Not prominent, but enough to remind me when I moved the foot. I didn't over exert my foot or re-injure it though. This just served to remind me that even though my foot feels great with the brace on, it is still healing and there is a reason for the brace. I was starting to feel a little bit like a fake ("look at me - I hurt my foot and have this huge brace, but I move just fine!"), but I realize I'm not. The foot does need to heal.

Sex Ed

Michele, from A Small Victory, posted this message to Raising Hell. A hysterical story about telling her son how the birds and the bees work, early one morning while in a rush. Soo funny! :)

Amazon Associate/Wish List's

Does anybody have experience with either of these? I'm considering joining the Amazon Associate program - I either put small ad links on my site that lead to Amazon or put a search box on my site and I get 15% of the sales that generate completed orders originated with my id.

I've also started to put together a Wish List on Amazon. However, for the life of me, I can't figure out how to easily put a link from here to there. Sigh.

Not that anybody would follow the links and buy anything, but hey, I can hope, right?

Update: Hmm, it seems O'Reilly has a book out called: Amazon Hacks, full of all kinds of information on how to better tweak your usage of Amazon.com, including information about the Associate Program. Guess I'll have to check this book out.

Sex in the City

My radio is trying to get me to subconsciously want to buy Sex in the City DVD's. Three times now during the DJ blah blah blah, the Sex in the City theme music has been playing lightly in the background. And I only know it's the Sex in the City theme music because I watch Carolyn's season 2 DVD's.

TV mix experiment: Goldfish

Bill brought me some Goldfish yesterday for my TV mix, and I'm experimenting with them now. I've got about half a bag in the oven now with a little bit of the butter worchestshire spice mix. I'll let everybody know how they turn out.

Update: The first taste test is going very well. I like! :)

Leg brace

I picked up my leg brace today at lunch. It helps quite a bit. Takes the pressure off the stretched ligament. On the other hand, it rubs my leg a little bit, but I'll live with it. With the brace on, I walk almost normally.

I think my colleagues might think I exaggerated the injury a little because I don't noticably walk different or seem to be in pain. Oh well.

New acquaintance

On the train home tonight I met a new acquaintance. I was hauling home the rest of the books Mom and Dad sent in the "body bag" and this guy sitting across from me commented on it. I was a little leary at first, but he seemed an okay guy, so I continued the conversation. I had to return my video a stop before my normal stop and that is his normal stop, so we got off the train together. After I returned my video we went and had a coffee together. It was a nice conversation. We exchanged numbers and we might be again in the future for coffee. Hopefully this guy turns out better than the "photographer" I met on the train last time. Just a nice person to have coffee with occasionally or go to a museum. We'll see.

Yip! Yip!

Walking out of the office tonight, I crossed paths with a couple that was walking with their little dog. Yip! Yip! Wrowrf! Lol! It was sooo small! It would have fit in my hand, and probably weighed less than 2 pounds. And it barked at me the entire block long until our paths split and then it immediately started yipping at somebody else. Too funny. :)

Ouch

I sprained my ankle today. Well, at least I pulled a ligament. There is a part of the office between our room and the door where the floor is higher (goes over the car drive through under us) and we have to walk up four stairs and then down four stairs to get to Mick's office. I ran down them (Mick was yelling for me to come back), missed one, stepped on the side of my foot, and down I went.

I have a stabilizing leg thing (air cast schein) that I have to wear for 2-3 weeks. However, since my calves are sooo big, they have to extend the velcro strap thing and I can pick it up first tomorrow. Yippee.

Dunkin' Donuts!

Woohoo! A little piece of home! :)

Stefan went to Berlin this weekend and he mentioned that there was a Dunkin' Donuts there. I asked, if he remembered, if he could bring back two chocolate covered sprinkled donuts for breakfast on Monday morning. He remembered!!! And brought a whole dozen! Only three are chocolate covered sprinkles, but that's okay, because I can't eat 12!

Have I mentioned lately how nice Stefan is? :)

Weather commentary

The radio DJ just described the weather outside as "alles aenders als schoen". Everything BUT nice. :) I haven't been out yet, but it does look particulary crappy - gray and sullen.

My newest book trilogy obsession

Last weekend I visited the used book store at Ramstein and picked up two interesting looking books: a murder mystery short story compilation and Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey. It's a fantasy set in a Renaissance-like alternative universe and the central character/heroine is a trained courtesan and spy who like S&M games. Cool, huh? I finished it around 2am last night. This is the first book in a trilogy, and the third book just came out in Hardback last April. So if I look long enough at the used book store, I'll probably be able to find the second book and then eventually the third book in paperback. In the meantime, I should re-read this one so I can get the mythology straight. Yeah, that's it. ;)

Tidbits: an answer to a riddle

My family uses Tidbits - small rounded rectagular cheese crackers - in our Chex TV mix. Well, we used to. This year none of us could find them ANYWHERE to complete the mix. And this is sad, because it's my FAVORITE part of the TV mix!! By themselves, I do not like Tidbits, but they are AWESOME in the TV mix with the butter, worcheshire sauce, and spice mix. Mmm yummy!

So I decided to google for Nabisco Cheese Tidbits. And I found an answer at Answers to Ask Liz 2003 over at NBC. To quote:

Q: Why can't I find those crackers called "Cheese Tidbits" anymore?

A: For your answer we contacted Nabisco, the company that makes Cheese Tidbits. And it says, unfortunately, the reason you cannot find them in your local grocery store is because Nabisco discontinued the product at the end of 2002. It wouldn't say why because of proprietary reasons, but it does still make "Cheese Nips", which is widely available.

I'm guessing the holiday spike in sales isn't enough of a reason to keep the product around. So, I'll have to experiment with Goldfish or Cheese Nips or Cheez-Its. Sniff.

Readership

I apologize to my readership. Quite a few of you (Janine, Erik, Mom, Bill) have chastised me for my light blogging lately. I've thought of several things to blog during the days, but for some reason I never get to Blogger to post it. I'll be better! I have to anyway - Mom's giving my blog address out in her Christmas letter! So I expect a spike in hits in a few weeks. :)

New Picture at Fotolog

Yes, FINALLY! There is a new picture over at fotolog. Check it out.

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!

Yesterday Bill and his son came up to Frankfurt to visit me! Yea! :) We were thinking of walking around the Christmas market a little and then coming back to my house. However, William was a little sick the night before and still wasn't quite feeling himself. So we went straight to my house. Bill and William were SUCH a help to me. They both cleaned up the leaves off my porch from the vine and then they cleaned up the vine so that it's now just on the railing, not going crazy between the railings! William was a real big help putting the Christmas tree together and putting the lights on it. Then while he relaxed and watched my one DVD (Hudson Hawk), Bill and I put the ornaments on the tree and put lights in the windows.

After this, I made Chex mix and all three of us went down to the river to feed the ducks and swans bread. Those ducks are greedy! I'm used to swans being meaner - based on my experience with swans at the corporate park where Peterson's was located for years. These three were actually pretty even tempered. They only goosed the ducks if they were directly underneath them. :)

Finally, we did go back down to the Christmas market to walk around long enough to get a crepe and a fruity alcholic warm drink (pictures of the booth to appear soon on Fotolog!). Then Bill and William had to return home via train.

It was so nice having both of them up here to help me put up my decorations and start the festive season with me! I really can't express how nice that was. Thanks you two!

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving

I hope everybody had a good healthy dinner and ate too much!

Me, I came home, did some laundry, fixed two egg salad sandwiches for dinner, and read until 1am. :)

Free book

So this new book comes out - Quicksliver by Neal Stephenson. I've heard of this author - he's written other sci-fi-y tomes (such as Crptonomicon and Snow Crash) that have been reviewed and commented on by geeks at Slashdot and other places. And many in the blog-o-sphere were awaiting the release of this new book in the States last month.

Turns out my boss bought an English trade paperback version of this book just before the US hardback came out. Which, actually, isn't that uncommon here. I could buy Red Rabbit by Tom Clancy in paperback here MONTHS before it came out as a paperback in the US.

Anyway, to get to the free book part, it seems my boss hates the cover of the version he bought. Really dislikes it. This version is published by an English publishing house, and he loves the cover of the one that is published by the American publishing house. So - he goes and buys the American hardback and gives me the trade paperback. Good deal, or what?

Oh, btw Mom: you can add Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and Orson Scott Card to the list of authors I like to read. However, I've read most of one series and part of another from OSC, so you'll have to ask me specifically about books from him.

Wah

Either my connection is total crap tonight, or something major is happening with the Internet backbone in America. I can't reach a lot of sites that I normal can. For example, Yahoo. So if you sent me an email in the last six hours, I can't read it. Not that many people email me, but a couple of important ones do now and then. ;)

Now I'm really of to bed to read my book.

STRESS!

Argh....today was soo full of stress. I came in today (15-20 min late as usual) to find my boss yelling at me about something on a project not working correctly. This was because his partner, and the one who interfaces with the Customer all the time, was yelling at HIM. Finally - after an hour or two - everything was cleared up and it was found that our team WASN'T to blame for any of the errors that were found. The customer is stressing because there is a HUGE meeting tomorrow afternoon to present the project to several high up VPs and bosses. So, they are stressing our bosses, who in turn stress us. Argh!! And another project had to be finished and that took time.

On top of all this, I have two other projects, both sort of time critical that have been simmering on the back burner for the last two weeks and I haven't even touched in that time.

However, Stefan, Sandra and I all went out this evening and had dinner and then drinks. Mike had told us of this bar he thought was cool and we think we found it. However - it was completely EMPTY! We stayed anyway and had a drink. Nice atmosphere.

Off to bed. :) To read, of course!

Thanksgiving

For some reason, I have the feeling that this is a three day work week. It's not. I don't have Thanksgiving off and have no plans for the day or the holiday in general. However, Bill does, and therefore it seems like a three day work week for me.

Well, I guess I do have SOME plans. I plan on making my TV mix on Saturday and putting up my Christmas decorations. I've asked Bill if he and his son would like to join me and maybe go out to a Museum or some other appropriately kid/seaonal activity. We'll have to see how agreeable his son is to taking the train to Frankfurt on Saturday.

Moke! Moke! Fiber! Fiber!

(anybody get that reference?? ;)

Just came back from a dentist appointment. I had my fillings replaced with a composite material. And now, my lower jaw is all numb. I can't say S sounds. Stefan asked me to say a sentence with a lot of S sounds, and "Stefan ist Stupid" just wouldn't come out right. LOL!

Breath in, breath out

In, out. Ah. I just got back from literally running to the movie rental store to return the movie. They close at 11pm, and I finished with the movie at 10:54. I'm all out of breath. I probably would have been done a few minutes earlier, but somebody either directly above or right behind me is either 1) moving in and hanging pictures/furniture on the wall or 2) snaking every drain hole in their apartment. This went on intermittently from 8pm to 10pm. The noise was so loud in my apartment, I couldn't hear the TV. So I had to pause, wait, rewind a little bit, watch, repeat. Really, not so bad, but it did get a little annoying.

As for the movie, well, I'm not British. It IS funny at bits, but it's more ironically funny than laugh out loud funny. And parts of it are brutual. Nothing that you see on the screen, but it's implied. It probably would have been funnier if I was watching it with friends (who like British humor) than by myself. All in all though, it is good. Not classical good that I'll want to see over and over (see: Hudson Hawk), but I would watch it again. I guess I just felt like I'd seen parts of the film before because many of the plot devices are in Snatch. Of cource the director made Snatch after this film.

Bube Dame König grAs

I am about to sit back and relax in front of the TV with my crusty cheese, a new favorite liqueur drink (Spanish liqueur called 43 and lemon soda - goes well with milk too), and watch Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (Bube Dame König grAs auf Deutsch). I saw Snatch a while back and quite a few people have told me that if I liked Snatch, I would love this one. So......we'll see! :)

Ah...Friday

It's finally here. I made it in to work ontime, early or within 10 minutes of start time four out of five days this week! WOo hoo!

I have to confess - we have a new colleague at work. I'm supposed to be his mentor. And I'm trying my best to do a good job doing so. However, he's getting on my nerves a bit. I have to give him slack though - he's STRAIGHT out of college (his graduation was his second day of work), and this is his first job. I have to wonder if I had the same goody two shoes, read the specification in minute detail, and make everything? an ? open-ended? question? outlook when I first started my job. Sigh. I could go into more detail, but this is a public blog and I don't hate the person, and he might read this someday. Anyway (sowieso).......

Gooey weird cheeses

I can remember Mom hosting parties or just sitting in front of the TV and eating crackers with cheeses that had white crusts on them as a child. I always hated the white crusty gooey cheeses. "Ewww...noo! Yuck!"

However, I am sitting here with a store brand version of Camembret and LOVING it. It tastes sooo good. I've even eaten Brie in the last six months. I draw the line still at smelly cheeses still though.

Heck, I used to not eat Bratwurst when we were here before because I didn't know what "Brat" was. It's just a sausage. Gee - I guess I'm growing up, huh?

Why is this news?

Having decided that I'm hopelessly out of touch with the world, I signed up yesterday to receive news alerts and a daily round up of news by email from CNN. Today, in the daily roundup news email, the top story was the very exciting and very informative news story that Air Force One was rocked by strong winds as it landed in Maryland yesterday.

Exactly why is this the headlining news story?? Why is this even news?

German Grammer

In my elementary school English class, I learned that a noun is a Person, Place, or Thing. Today, in the German class that is my work, I learned: ein Nomen (auch bekannt als ein Substantiv) ist einer Gegenstand, ein Person, oder einer Sachverstand. This translates to Thing, Person, or Issue/Circumstance. Hmm.....

This just in . . .

Blogger has a sense of humor! :)

Here's an Onion article about - gasp! - a mother finding her son's blog. By the way, the Onion is a satire website. And, here's a tongue in cheek FAQ Blogger wrote in response.

Long day & weekend roundup

Because of the Auslanders Amt (see post below), I got to work around 11:20am. Therefore, I didn't leave work until 9:20pm. And then I called Mom. And then I called Bill. Now I'm posting to my blog because I haven't posted in five days. What a long day.

I have beautiful pictures of flowers that Bill and I bought this weekend. And Bill took pictures of me being domestic and cooking (gasp!) lasagna for him for dinner. :) Which I have a WHOLE lot of leftovers of now. I never learned how to make portions for two people - there were six of us growing up (including the parents). Oh, and yes Janine and Erik, it was the Wilkins family Polish lasagna. LOL. [See, I made lasagna once for Janine and Erik. And was promptly told that THAT wasn't lasagna - maybe Polish lasagna, but definitely NOT Italian. The next week Erik made lasagna and showed me how REAL lasagna was supposed to be made. Nice, but I grew up with my version, I'm keeping it. :P]

Hmm.....let's see. Our weekend didn't consist of much. Just grocery shopping, laundry, watching Matrix 2 (so we can eventually see Matrix 3), and going to the sauna. While grocery shopping Saturday, I bought chocolate. Lots of chocolate. Of the 120 in groceries, about 20 was for food for me, 20 was for personal items, and the rest was chocolate. NONE of it was for me (okay, the bag of bite size Twix was for me). And I'm not done. I have more chocolate to buy for other people for Christmas. I have a whole bunch of stuff stacking up in my house that I need to finish packing up and send out. If I do it in the next week and a half, it'll probably make it to the States for Christmas.

Tomorrow morning I get to go sift through more German red tape so I can get my tax card. This orange piece of paper tells my employer how much tax to take out of my paycheck for the next year. Lovely. I need it before the end of the month so I can get my 13th month of pay next month. To help pay for the chocolate I'm sending to the States as gifts. ;)

Resident Permit, part two

Okay, I finished the process of de-registering from my old town and registering in my new town a couple of weeks ago, so I decided this week I would return to the Auslander Amt to finish the process of extending my residency permit. Since the opening hours started at 7:30 this morning, I figured could show up when they opened and be done by the time work started at 9am. WRONG! So WRONG!

There was a line out the door when I got there at 7:35. After waiting in line about thirty minutes, I finally got my number to see a real person - number 30. At 8:45 I sms'd Stefan to tell him to tell Mick I'd be late as they were only on number 13 by then. At 9:20 I received a phone call from Stefan because something wasn't working and could I please come into the office. He hadn't received my SMS. Of course, my phone battery is running low. However, I found a wall outlet, plugged the phone in, and called him back - oh, sorry, he hadn't seen my sms, have fun! Yeah right...they were on number 19 by this time.

Finally - number 30 is called at 10:40. The guy looked through my paperwork ("this expired a long time ago!" - DUH), had me sign a sheet, gave me a temporary residence permit and told me to come back in two months with another letter and a copy of my work permit. Why do I have to return in two months? Because my original folder - literally a FOLDER - for my residency permit is in Munich. They have to send for it and wait for it to arrive. Then I can come back and finish the process.

So much bleeping red tape. And now I have to search through my papers to find my work permit paper. I remember the lady in Munich giving it to me and her saying something about it being good until Jan 2004. Do I know where this paper is?? No. Well, I have a vague idea, but no idea where that vague idea is in my stack of papers.

To be continued............

Wine Decanters

I learned about wine decanters yesterday. Stefan went to buy bier glasses as a gift for some body at lunch yesterday, and I wandered around the store while he was making his purchase. I saw a table full of decanters, and they were all different shapes and styles. I knew that most of them were decanters, but some where not obvious. And even when they were obvious, they had these weird cup tops with holes on top.

Luckily, Stefan explained them to me. The tops with holes serve the function of straining the cork and sediments out of the wine as it's being poured into the decanter. And the funny shaped ones are duck form decanters - you pour the wine IN via one spout, and pour it out via the other. Presumably the cork and sediments filter to the bottom.

Interesting, isn't it?

Most Loving Boyfriend

I have a wonderful boyfriend. One I probably don't appreciate enough. He makes me happy, makes me smile, loves me to death, and makes me a better person. He 100% accepts me as I am, and because he believes I'm such a good person, I try harder to be that person. I love him.

Okay, enough on the sappy boyfriend front. A couple of people have told me that I'm too sappy towards my boyfriend on this public blog. Well....I'm in love with a great guy. That's it. :) I'm holding on to him as long as it works for both of us, and hopefully it works for a long time.

Love you babe!

Feeling better

Sorry about the depressing post yesterday. [ ha! get it! Ah, nevermind.] I felt much better at the end of the day. Spoke with my mom and worked out some things that were hanging in the air there, went to work out last evening, and just in general improved my outlook. Really, I was feeling much more upbeat and happy by the end of the day. I still am. :)

And I'm going back to the gym tonight to work out again. Happy happy joy joy. That's me. :)

I am speaking ze English German

I've been told by two seperate people today that I speak German with English grammer. In fact, my boss said, that he likes to listen to my German, because he learns English grammer that way. LOL.

Specifically, I don't put the verb on the end of the sentence. Mike pointed out a couple of examples to me at lunch, and now I'm going to be thinking about it. It's hard to move your mind around to that kind of thinking though. Ah, well, I am speaking more German, and it's getting easier - I'm even correcting myself. Which makes some conversations very confusing, because I correct myself before the person I'm speaking to has a chance to process what I said originally.

Light Bloggin'

Sorry for the light blogging lately. I've got a major depression trying to take it's hold in me, and I'm trying not to succumb to it. Really, I know I've got nothing to be depressed about, but still, it's there. The last couple of weeks it was a light depression that I was doing really well at holding off, but this last couple of days it's gotten deeper.

Sigh........anyway. I'll work out of it. In fact, working out helps a lot - I like working out, I love how my body looks and changes while working out. Honestly. It's just getting off my butt, and out of work in time to get a good workout at the gym.

Taking it easy

I'm taking a relaxing evening. Doing not much. The weekend was so full, I just need to do nothing.

Hmm....we have a new colleague at work. He's just finished his college work and while he's used Oracle and studied it, he still needs to be shown the ropes. I've been designated his mentor. Which is kind of cool because I like helping other people learn things, and it'll keep me a little bit on my toes.

My boss got a brand new, very nice laptop. He hates it. He doesn't want WindowsXP ( I think he resisted Win3.1 when it came along!) and there was some problem with his USB Mouse that locked up the entire computer. He had to format the drive and re-install everything. He'll probably like it just fine when everything is set up and running though. :) It's quite nice.

Brrr......I'm cold. Gonna go lay down under a blanket.

Pumpkin Photos

The pumpkin photos are up on Fotolog. Click on the link to the right (in the sidebar). Does it look a little sinister, or what? :)

Pumpkin Carving

William and I carved a pumpkin last night. He came up with the design, and I carved. He helped scoop out the insides too. It turned out really really well. I took a couple of pictures with Bill's digital camera - I'll post them later. That was a lot of fun. It's been years since I carved a pumpkin!

I also roasted the pumpkin seeds last night. I've tasted a couple and they don't taste bad. Kind of nice. I just seem to remember the ones we roasted as kids being crisper. Hmmm.....guess I need to experiment a little with this over the next couple of years. Maybe I should have let them sit out to dry out before roasting them?

Oh, for pictures of some really wild pumpkins, go over to Extreme Pumpkins. Click on the Photo Gallery and also on Early Contest Winners 2003. Neato, huh? Gives you ideas for next year. :)

Update: Fixed the Extreme Pumpkins link. I was linking to .org, and it's a .com. Oops. :)

Rest of Saturday

For the rest of Saturday, I went grocery shopping in the commisary with Carolyn - picked up some CheezIts, some bread, chips and shampoo.

Then we went shopping at a bazaar they're having at a nearby base. So many cool things! Venetian glass, Italian gold, Russian china, Holland furniture, cockoo clocks, etc. So many very nice things, and really, not too expensive. Not as cheap as going to Russia or Italy to buy them, but it's all in one place. I remember going to these bazaars with Mom when we lived here. Oh, Mom, I saw that tea cart (same style) that you were always looking at buying and never did. That same stall had a VERY pretty wood inlay table. It would look very nice as a little side table in a hall entryway. Sigh. Only $298. This other stand had the most interesting mirrors and coffee tables I've ever seen. This company took the tiles from old printing presses, and put them all together and put a nice finish on them. Soo cool and neat looking. Very nearly like having a piece of functional art. I'll have to see if I can come back for a Spring Bazaar and maybe look at buying a mirror then. The Venetian glass stand had the coolest keychain fobs. Brushed silver and in the center a piece of the colorful Venetian glass. That's on my list for the next bazaar too. Or maybe the next trip to Venice! ;) I saw a couple of small things that I either did pick up for Christmas gifts, or I'm planning on going back today and buying. Oooh....and I saw the PRETTIEST ring. Green amber, with flecks inside. It was beautiful! And I've never heard of nor seen green amber. I asked them to put it aside and I would come back today to buy it (I didn't know the bazaar was there and so therefore didn't bring any money for it - probably a good thing). That was from a Polish stand selling little Polish dolls and other pieces of Amber jewelery.

Slumber Party

Carolyn invited me to go to a "Slumber Party", aka F*ckerware Party with her yesterday. Hee hee. >:) It was interesting to see 14 or so women openly discussing the uses and properties of various creams, toys and implements. <big evil grin>

I signed up to have my own party up in Frankfurt. I'll have to see if I can drum up enough interest though. I don't personally know too many women in Frankfurt, but I know a couple and my American colleague knows a lot of women, so between all of them, maybe there will be enough interest. ;)

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. :)

Back from Dentist

Mouth is very numb. Interestingly, it seems to affect this side of my mouth differrently. I felt the numbness more on the other side, but this side seems to be more affected. And tight, for some reason.

I wanna go crawl in a corner & read for an hour until it wears off & then go get something to eat.

Wow....this is slowing my reaction speed (noticing spelling errors) and my concentration. Sigh.

Dentist, Part 2

About to go get the rest of my Scaling and Planing down on my mouth. Yippee! More numb mouth fun-ness this afternoon! :)

Die Bahn, Die Bahn

Bill mentions on his blog how he's experienced most of the Deutsche Bahn experience in the last few months (he commutes about two hours one way on the train daily). What he fails to mention, is the truly inspiring experience we had last night on the train.

I told him that I'd like to catch the 7pm-ish train back to Frankfurt because even though the entire trip normally takes two hours, for some reason on Sunday evenings, it takes four to five hours. And since he's got to get up early, I didn't want to get in at midnight or 1am. So, we did it. Got on the train, no problems. Only, there's a spot on the track between his house and Mannheim where they're working on the track. No trains can go over it at all. We have to get off one big town before Mannheim, get on a bus, and go to Mannheim there. No problem, it just adds a half hour to an hour to the trip. We finally get on the train at Mannheim (having run to make the connection or we'd have to wait another hour for the next train!). The only problem with this train is the VERY loud, VERY upset Romanian woman with child yelling at her boyfriend/husband for the ENTIRE hour, hour and a half. He did something to piss her off and she was giving him what for the entire time. Insulting his age (he was about 10 years older than her), his race (he was black), and the fact that he wouldn't talk back to her. She just wouldn't stop! Some kids behind us kept laughing at her which probably just inflamed the situation. The conductor asked, then YELLED at her to be quiet or get off the train three times. I thought for sure we'd have Police people waiting for them at every stop, but they never appearred. Finally, at the end he DID talk back to her (a lot quieter than she was talking) and what does she say?? SHUT UP! My freeaking gawd. No wonder some men hate women! I finally had to mutter (very loudly) "THEN SHUT THE F*** UP!!" after she said something about how everybody was watching and listening to them. She actually did shut up for about a minute after that.

German blog entries

I've been thinking that I want to start writing some blog entries in German. If I do, I'll provide English translations. :) I think it'll improve my German skills a lot. A week an a half ago I was reading a lot in this German book I've got [I put it down, because it's not getting to the point too quickly & the author has this annoying habit of skipping several hours between paragraphs without warning. Also, as a commenter said, there aren't any chapters! I'll pick it back up soon.], and while I was reading it, my German was GREAT! I thought. Not so great this last week.

So, I figure writing auf Deutsch will improve my skills. Like I said, if I do, I'll provide a translation. :)

Translation

Here's the translation of the German message below:

Do you think a personal blog entry would work for extra credit from Frau Blanner?

I'm doing okay today, but I didn't want to wake up this morning - went to bed to late and drank to much wine at dinner with friends. :) Hmm, what else can I write in German? Oh....you didn't explain too much about your Germany trip last summer....what did you do? See?

Do you understand this?

Hi Brett!

Glaubst du das ein persoenlish blog Eintrag werden funktioniert fuer bonus Punkte von Frau Blanner? ;)

Mir gehst gut heute, aber ich moechte nicht heute morgen aufwachen - zu spaet ins Bett gegangen und zu viel Wein getrunken beim Abendessen mit Freunden. :) Hmm, was noch konnte ich auf Deutsch schreiben? Oh....du hast nicht so viel erzaelt ueber deine Deutschland Reise diese letzte Sommer....was hast du gemacht? Gesehen?

Verstehst du dass?

Heh heh heh. I'll post a translation of this message when Brett tells me she's read it. I want her to excercise her German lessons. And maybe, if she translates it, she'll get extra credit from her German teacher. And if you're reading this too Frau Blanner - Viele Gruess aus Frankfurt! :)

No more numbness

All gone! Just a little soreness in the back where she injected the pain killer. I was actually surprised it didn't hurt more when she injected me. I remember getting that injection - what 10, 15...crap, maybe 20 years ago? - and it hurting a lot more. Okay, I was much younger then.

I never thought I'd see the day when I described something as being 20 years ago! But then, we first moved to Germany 21 years ago. Crap.

My mouth is numb

I got half of my "Deep Cleaning" - otherwise known as Root Scaling and something (help Janine!) - done today. Went okay and pretty fast. I was out of there in about 45 minutes. That was an hour and a half ago. And my mouth is still numb. It's starting to itch though, so I guess the pain killer is wearing off.

She wanted to re-do my fillings today too, but we hadn't talked about that for today. And that's going to cost me 320 out of pocket to do. Maybe in December.

I have a headache. From the the pain killer, I think. Sigh.

Work today

Was really off. The day started with me turning off my alarm because I thought it was the weekend. Therefore, I woke up later than usual and got to work about 10 minutes later than usual. But that was okay because the network was down. And didn't come back up until about 10:45. So we couldn't work. We talked a bit about things we need to work on, and then I played around some more with Perl. I had a specific task in mind, and eventually figured it out.

Later in the day, the internet went....but this time it was a planned outage to upgrade something.

And I found out the new guy has been asked to leave the company. He's a little odd, but he and I get along. We do have a couple of common elements to draw us together though - Americans living in Germany, and hailing from New Jersey. Okay, I don't hail from there (I don't hail from ANYwhere - maybe Michigan, if being born there counts for anything), but I did live there for five years. And apparently I'm a cool intelligent chick because I "get" Perl. :) Back to the leaving the company bit: details are still hazy, but I've heard he's staying around until Christmas time. Work laws in Germany don't let companies just up and fire you. Not only do you have to give three months notice, but THEY have to give YOU three months notice. Sometimes this comes in the form of "You're fired, stay home, we'll pay you the three months to stay home", but still, you're not just shut out in the cold. He's back in work tomorrow, so I guess I'll hear the full story then.

Google

Hey! I show up in a google search for jinglelady -> link.

Hmm...it seems jinglelady.com is taken. But I knew that (I'd just never actually gone to the site before). I'm considering registering jinglelady.net and putting this blog there. I just need to get my butt in gear and find a cheap domain registration and hosting services. Maybe that'll be my Christmas present to myself. :)

Update: I'm the first link in a google search for jingle_lady! link.

MMmm Mmmm!!

Hottie alert. Wow.

English Word of the Day - EWOD

Today I taught Stefan the word procrastinate - aufschieben.

Heh - so I guess it's also a GWOD. Since I should learn this word in German too. :)

A couple of days ago he got two EWOD's - barf and whatchamacallit. :)

I only teach the best words. Hehe.

No Questions??!

Geez - either I'm an open book and everybody already knows all they want to know about me or I'm really boring. And since people are always telling me that they find my blog amusing and they enjoy reading it.....I have to assume the former.

Sigh. Okay.

Cul-de-Sac

I was surfing today at work, and somehow ended up at this link: Cul-de-Sac by Suburban Blight. She compiles a weekly list of interesting blog entries from the week before. I found so many interesting tidbits here, I can't list them all. Just click on the link and go look.

It's official

I'm an angel. :) Bill says so. Hee hee.

The colleseum in Rome

Here at fotolog. I tried linking the image here, but either I've completely forgotten how to do an img tag, or Blogger has some mechanism for not allowing img tags to appear, because all I get when I do the img tag is a line.

That, or Fotolog has some mechanism for blocking images from being shown on webpages other than it's own.

Whatever, click on the link above or at the top of the sidebar column on the right (it's a little box at the very top).

Questions from the audience

There is a blog site that hosts what it calls the Carnival of the Vanities - wait, let me search for the link, ah, here. It's a weekly event full of links to other blogs with interesting posts from the last week or two. The Carnival travels each week to a different blog host, and I haven't figured out that mechanism quite yet. I just know that Instapundit links to the correct host each week.

Anyway - this last week, one of the posts was the answers to questions that the blogger solicited from his readership. And I thought, well....that's a really good idea.

So, here's your chance folks: between now and Wednesday evening, email me or post a comment with a question (about me) that you would like me to answer. Something about me you'd like me expound on; a detail of German life you'd like to know more about; something weird, wacky & off the wall; etc. Please keep the questions PG - my mom, dad, and youngest brother's girlfriend (hi Brett!) read this! :) I'll post the answers by Friday evening. I promise. I would say Thursday, but I'm going to dinner at a friend's house then. :)

Family Dynamics

I've just gotten off the phone with my middle brother. He was involved in a car accident last weekend, only he didn't bother to tell anybody in the family until they found out through other channels. It was a serious enough accident that he was airlifted to a regional medical hospital because of head injuries. He seems to be okay, but he has fractures in his facial bones that go up through his sinus and forehead. He has an appointment with a plastic surgeon on Monday to look at his face.

Why didn't he contact anybody in the family? Because he was afraid of my parents' reaction. My brother & his wife are going through a tough time right now as a family and all kinds of emotions, accusations, and legal things (not related to my parents) are happening because of this. Because of this, relations are strained on all sides. Also, my middle brother has a history of strained relations with my mother.

My feeling on this : Regardless how strained your relationship is with your parents, if you are involved in a serious accident that requires you to be hospitalized, you should at least notify them. Because no matter what they DO love you. And care what happens to you. Be decent and contact them. Don't wait for them to hear an exaggerated story from a friend of a friend of a friend.

And while I'm on the topic of family dynamics, I have a story to tell about my oldest brother's son Johnathan. The one who has just turned six and I treat and love as nearly being my own son.

See, Johnathan's daddy and mom are going through a rough patch financially too. And they're working it out. For awhile though, it looked like things were getting really hairy. So, in a birthday card to my brother, I offered to let Johnathan come and live with me if things got really bad. Now, I know I live across an ocean from them and it would be difficult to implement this offer. However, it was completely sincere. I haven't heard one word from my brother about the birthday card, small gift that came with it, or my offer since then.

Then, this week, as I was on the phone wishing Johnathan a Happy Birthday, HE mentions my offer. "Aunt Anna? You know how you wrote Daddy in his card how I could come live with you? Well, mommy says that I can't. Sorry."

Wha? Huh? Who mentions things like this with a five year old? In what context could this POSSIBLY come up? I'm baffled.

Going Out

I went out last night with a colleague & his girlfriend. We went to a couple of bars & a couple of discos. I had a good time just going out and talking and being me among new friends. I haven't felt like that in a year or so since I left Munich. It was great just being able to speak freely in English and about interesting topics.

Roswell

I have missed this show!

I woke up late (got in at 4am, woke up at noon), and I've just been watching TV since then. I didn't realize so many of the sitcoms & shows that I used to watch and love in the states were shown on Saturday afternoons. Cool! I have to watch TV on Saturday afternoons more often. :)

New photo

Click on right.

It's Fall

So, the colors have changed. If the changes turn out horrendous on my monitor at work, or any of your monitors, they will continue to change until the right combination is found.

Birthdays

I need to get some Happy Birthday announcements out. So....

Johnathan - Happy (belated) Birthday! Woo hoo! Now you're six and can stop telling everybody you are five and a half. Instead, in about a month, you'll start telling everyone you are six and a half. :)

Janine - I wish I was there to go out and celebrate your birthday with you this weekend. Have a drink (or two) on me!

Erik - Happy Birthday old man! Whew....the big four oh. Get sloshed, it's all downhill from here. :) Just messing with ya....have a happy birthday. Let me know if you get some. ;) For the record: I know a few very sexy virile 40+ year olds, so it really isn't all down hill.

CNN reporting the future

I just heard the female anchor announce that Sweden held a memorial service for it's slain public official (ambassador?, I forget) on Friday. Yes, tomorrow. I realize she's probably reporting from Atlanta and therefore is (at least) six hours behind Swedish time. However, I'm six hours ahead of Atlanta time, and it's still 10:30 pm on Thursday here.

What's even funnier is she hesitated before saying it. Which means she read it and knew it couldn't be true, but she said it anyway!

Nothing exciting today

Read some blogs, did some work. Figured out how to better use Perl to handle a highly repetitive copy, paste, delete edit I was having to do. Made the job soo much easier!

I've gotten used to not seeing the news and being extremely out of touch. I've been reading some of Bill's Newsweeks lately, and it doesn't seem like I've missed much. I've picked up the highlights from the few blogs I read. However, the other filler stuff is really interesting. I should get myself a subscription to a weekly news magazine. I really miss reading my Scientific American on a monthly basis. However, it's 10Euro per edition here! Ack. I can get a yearly subscription for 55Euro though, so I'll probably eventually do that. Or I could read it online. Hmmm. I can't seem to keep my attention on longish pieces on the internet though - that's what reading print material on the Sbahn to work is for. :)

Ducky!

Click the photolog link to see Ducky!

It was a toss up between him and the picture of the American Diner. However, Ducky's cuter! :) Sorry about the size - still getting used to editing stuff in Photoshop. I thought the size would be okay, but it's a little larger than expected. Ah, oh well.

Missing my family

Yesterday at work we had to tentatively say what days we wanted for Christmas/New Year's, so that we can assure that somebody will be in the company each day over the holiday's. Since my finances are still a bit strained from the last two years (moving & moving & moving again, German taxes, student loans, etc), I've told Mom & Dad that I probably won't be there for Christmas this year. I might try to make it a little earlier or in January, but I'm not sure.

IN ANY CASE, I told my boss I didn't have a preference for days. He said that if I'm not going home, I should pay for Mom to come here. Which kind of hurt because I would LOVE to do just that. But he doesn't know that or that I can't afford it and neither can she. Rough economy, Dad working three jobs (none of which have health insurance) just to keep them in the house & paying the bills, etc.

And see, Bill has a son. They're talking about what to do for Halloween. And I know he'll want to spend a lot of time with his son (who wouldn't??) over Christmas. Which is leaving me 1) wondering what I'll be doing for Christmas, 2) REALLY missing my family, esp. my nieces & nephews. Particulary the nephew I'm closest with because we know each other the best. We have a real bond. When I'm home, he's the son I don't have yet. And I feel it slipping away.....he's growing older, going to school, making friends. Aunt Anna isn't so special or so important anymore. Then there's his oldest sister who seems like she's finally chilling to me -- at least she speaks to me on the phone and know's my name now. And their smallest sister who turns one at Christmas. She sounds really cute and precious. Finally, there's the three kids of my middle brother who I still don't know (two step-kids and his just turned one) and because of various family dynamics I don't see much when I am there.

Sigh - just feeling a little sorry for myself. And I'm over the worst right now. That was yesterday's & early today's depression.

New photo(s)

Click on the link to the right.

Note to Self

Do not eat spinach quiche and broccoli together ever again.

Janine: Thank you for the Maalox! :)

Blog-iversary!

I missed my Blog anniversary. As of last Saturday, this little experiment is a year old. Woo hoo! :)

Moody

I'm finding that I'm a little moody lately. Combination of that time of the month, work (boss being an insensitive prick), and weather change. That, and this time of the year has been a time of big changes the last two years. This time last year I was interviewing at this company & planning to move here.

New photo

There's a new photo (finally!) up at fotolog. Click to go see a sappy picture of Bill and me.

Tomorrow: cool pictures of the fest at night time.

Wine Fest

Today Bill and I are heading out to a wine festival a little north of his place. They have rides and sell wine by the half liter glass. Should be interesting. :)

If we take his digital camera, I'll post a picture or two of the fest this evening.

Frankfurt Car Show

Bill and I went to the Frankfurt Car show yesterday. First of all, it's huge! I've heard it said that Frankfurt's car show is bigger than any other, even Detroit's. Very possibly, this is the only car show I've been to.

Saw lots of new cars, a couple of concept cars, and lots of parts of cars. The only really exciting thing I saw was the new Chrysler Crossfire. That is one sweet car. On the cute and neat scale was the SMART roadster - a really hot looking two seater sporty car from SMART. Also, on the neat scale was the new Ford StreetKa, a convertable version of the little Ford Ka. It looks cute & sporty. Not very practical or well made or probably safe. But very cute. Oh, also on the "how interesting" scale was a Diahatsu (sp?) Ai. It's a little boxy cute looking car. Looks like it would be an electric car, but the sign said it was a gas car. It must be a concept car because the show floor lady said they didn't have brochures on it, there is only information available in the internet.

Enough morbidity

Sorry everyone. Just felt I needed to commemorate 9/11 in my own way. Back to the regular day to day stuff.

9/11 footage

Wow. I've been watching CNN special footage (non-stop, no commercials) for the last hour. Oh my frickin God. I have never seen all the live footage together. As I wrote below, I just saw bits of it while on vacation in Jamacia. The speed with with those airplanes slammed into the towers....my goodness. I've just been amazed, heartbroken and weeping.

And I've never seen footage of the people jumping. I've heard of it, and seen a couple pictures, but witnessing it.

Sigh.

THERE WILL BE NO PEACE

A poem I found at this site. I agree that it is completely applicable to American post 9/11.

9/11 - Did it change me?

I've been reading a lot about how 9/11 changed peoples lives. And I've thought about if it changed MINE. On the whole, I think no. True, my life today is very different today that two years ago - I live in a different country and I've held two different jobs here. In December 2001, I uprooted myself and moved to Germany. For the most part, I can say that 9/11 had nothing to do with that. Well, in a way it did. That event depressed an already depressed IT market in Florida right at the time I was looking for an IT job. Which is to say, there were NO jobs available. I was working part-time at Target to pay my bills.

So, since I was looking anyway, and seemed to be a bit at loose ends (having just broken up with my long-time boyfriend, moved to Florida, having no kids, no property, etc), I decided to broaden my horizons to include Germany. I'd lived there before as a child and re-visited it a couple years before with my boyfriend. I really liked what I saw on that visit. I started thinking of getting a job in Germany then. However, my boyfriend at the time didn't seem keen on the idea of moving