Janingalina

car dealership joy

2009-01-14T04:50:00.001-05:00

who ever writes that in a subject line? me, apparently.

you know how they have to make everything in Germany complicated? like they can't have All-Season tires, they've got to have summer and winter tires? and if you don't have your winter tires on in the winter and you're in any kind of accident, then you're like automatically at fault, at least partially. yeah. i haven't let that bother me to this point, but it's snowy and i'm heading to the alps this weekend, it's probably time to put the winter tires on.

last night i pulled picknick's winter tires down out of the attic - it's a trapdoor/ladder affair, and i have to say, a little rickety. so i'm always nervous and extra careful when i'm taking big unwieldy things up or down the ladder. it went ok, but was a lot of work. i felt like an ant making lots of trips to get the whole leaf back to the nest.

first i pull down the trapdoor, crawl up into the attic. crawl back down when i realize that one of the lightbulbs is out and i can't really see up there. cannibalize a lightbulb from my apartment to replace the attic bulb. find my tires in the far corner of the attic.

take tires from attic corner to the top of the ladder (1, 2, 3, 4).

with a deathgrip on the left side of the ladder, brace tire against shoulder and side of head, hold with right hand, descend ladder (1, 2, 3, 4).

tires piled in the entrance to my apartment. take tires down stairs one at a time (1, 2, 3, 4). piling in entryway of the apartment, bottom of the stairwell.

pull car around so that it's parked illegally, but not too far from the door of my apartment. run tires out to the car, stack carefully in trunk (1, 2, 3, 4). try to close the liftgate. fail. grr. reposition. fail. grr. reposition. success!

this morning the mechanic at the dealership asks, "would you like us to store your summer tires here for you?" me: "You would do that? Oh God, yes!"

it's a small fee, but this way i don't have to run through above process 3 more times when i put summer tires up in the attic, pull summer tires down to get them re-installed, and put winter tires back up in the attic. 4 times! because i'm going to give this lease car back in the fall, so i'd need to pull the winter tires down again for the giveback.

so, money massively well spent. :) i'm a happy customer and i haven't even gotten the car back yet.

blognote: a 2008 roundup is coming. really. i'm going to try to revitalize this space a little in the coming year. please bear with me, i have really great intentions. Thanks so much for reading. :)

i am sterdam

2008-10-25T16:46:00.002-04:00

nick and marts came to visit me in europe, http://www.farkinfinally.com/

pictures and stories from my partners in crime (and probably m'self) will be gathering there.

catchin up Croatia, July

2008-10-09T17:56:00.002-04:00

i may be the worstest blah-ger that ever was.. but here for your amusement are pix from my july vaca. we took off at like 3am on monday the 7th. i slept in the car as hannes drove us south. we stopped in passau so he could pick up an "oops, my passport ran out and i want to be able to get back in" ID.

I woke up somewhere in Austria. We ate the salami sandwiches i packed for breakfast at a rest stop in the alps.

we got into slovenija ok, but getting out was a trick. actually, we got out ok, but were selected for "random" search at the croatian border.

this is the nice dog and guy who looked through all of our baggage and every bit of my car, and needed to have Tampax Tampons explained to them.

go figger. and in the afternoon we arrived in nin, croatia and found ourselves a cute little apartment for a few days. first we slept off the 8 hours of driving, then an evening stroll yielded pictures of boats

and roman ruins sticking out of the earth like broken teeth.

i will add what i can to the narrative when i can..

for now, i'm well, happy, and still bouncing 'round Europa.

Scotland, Part 3, Harris, St. Kilda and Iona. + Glasgow

2008-09-07T07:48:00.001-04:00

Day 4. A Sunday. On Harris, nothing is open. One can't get a cab because they don't break the sabbath. One can't get tweed, because that would also be breaking the sabbath.

Getting on the Zodiac to head for Harris, I was reminded by several members of the group not to forget my camera. They were used to seeing me kitted out with the whole photog backpack. I had decided to observe in my own way, though. And Harris became an island, that if you were not there, you don't get to see. I needed a day to experience it by myself, without the lens between me and the landscape.

Also, so much of these islands are shaped by wind. So much of the experience there, the feeling of wildness, has to do with the wind whipping over it, bending the grasses and knocking down potential saplings. I couldn't catch the wind on film. not yet. so on Day 4, i went to experience it.

Day 5. St. Kilda

It's a lonely and forlorn place, inhabited for thousands of years but evacuated in 1930. Now sheep wander amongst the stone cairns once used for drying seabirds, abandoned blackhouses, and dry stone fences.

in the summer work parties carry out preservation tasks while seabirds breed and rear young.

I climbed up the hill, looked out over the cliff on the backside of the island and took pictures of kittiwakes on their nests.

Later we sailed past the tiny bird islands just north of Kilda. All the white on this sea stack is Gannets and Guano.

Gannets can only nest on sheer rocks that have an almost-constant high wind blowing by because they're big and bulky, and takeoff is an issue for them. Better if they can just drop into the air-stream.

Here's a pic of one taking off from the water (i had to work to get this one!), which the cruise company later used in some of their paperwork. check me out! i'm now a credited nature fotografin!

anyway, as we cruised around this island, thousands of gannets wheeled overhead. for the record, those buggers are a huge mass of dive-bombing muscle and have a 5.5-6 foot wingspan.
these are the best pics i got of them kettle-ing overhead..

and some gannet closeups for ya:

it was a big day for nature photography. :D

After all this birding excitement, we spent

Day 6. Iona

The island of Iona is where Christianity first came ashore from Ireland. We visited the beautiful Abbey there. And while I'm not such a fan of the Catholic Church, it was quiet, peaceful and lovely.

Mom and I bought Fair Trade chocolate at the gift shop (mm!). Then while M&P hunted Corn Crakes in the irises, I went to the beach and played with crayfish and hermit crabs. I didn't get their pictures (we were having too much fun together), but I did take the view from my little spot on the beach.

That afternoon we sailed through the Inner Hebrides, past Castles of the Rich and Famous

I wandered abovedecks after a little nap, and was the first one to spot the Basking Shark (badly photographed here)

(or was that nessie!?)

That afternoon was the last Wildlife Roundup, in the bar, where everybody compared lists of what they saw that day.

Landing in Oban, we bussed past Loch Lomond to Glasgow, and took leave of our Cruisin Companions.

Then it was just me, Mom and Dad in Glasgow.

Mom visited with Dr. Livingstone, I presume.. just in front of the Glasgow Cathedral

And then I took both of my parents to St. Mungo's. (ok, not the hospital for magical mishaps and maladies, but probably - hopefully? - as close as we muggles will get).

There we learned more about the actual St. Mungo himself.. (click and check it actual size at flickr if you like)

before we left, we visited the kelvingrove museum. we arrived before opening hours, so we sat in the window of the coffee shop across the street, M&P (who still have jobs at Ford *knock wood*) had fun spotting the Ford cars that are different in Europe, checkin out the Fiats and Vauxhalls and all the other weirdo tiny-euro-cars.

I took a picture of the ceiling inside the Kelvingrove, because i just love ceilings that look like they're carved from butter.

and why does the museum have an organ?

cool though.

so that's it. the next morning we went to the airport and headed back to our respective homes. :)

i think i'll have to go back next year though, i feel like i really missed something with skipping Fair Isle and missing Jamieson's in Lerwick, Shetland.

...

2008-08-21T16:40:00.001-04:00

and she breaks the silence with, not pictures of scotland, germany, croatia, or estonia, where she's been..

but with a new dress. a dirndl to be exact.

and I'd like Ein bier bitte!

danke!

the problem is..

2008-07-16T06:48:00.002-04:00

i´m collecting up stories to tell and pix to show faster than i can tell/show them.

the last installment of the scotland adventure will be coming soon. but not too soon. because this weekend i´m headed up to some gravel pit/strip mine near dresden to freeze my tuckus off and finally finish up my scuba diving creds. w00t!

and the delay before this was a week working in sweden and then a week in croatia. in sweden i stayed over a weekend and got to do some fun urban shopping and ethnic food eating. there was also a destination-less road trip in which i drove south along the west coast, stopped at some little beach towns, and saw moose, deer and cranes on the side of the road as i drove back north on an inland route.

croatia was a blur of beautiful adriatic beaches, grilled squid, and gelaterias. poor me. ;) mentally, i´m still a little bit on the beach down there.

so. expect more scotland pix. sometime after this weekend. after that there will be croatia pix. hopefully i get both out before i meet a friend in estonia for a long weekend, and then proceed to be in sweden working for two weeks. because the chances of me updating then are very minimal. i´ve already got my pass to the Wayoutwest Festival in Slottskogen (central park in Gothenburg).

i love summer. :D

ps, if I owe you an email, you´ll probably get it in the near future. i´m really trying to catch up! :D

Scotland, Part 2: Shetland, Foula, Orkney

2008-06-29T17:49:00.002-04:00

On Day 2 we landed at Sumburgh on Shetland.

Our first bird that day was the Terrible and Infamous Thrush Nightingale.

really, a retiring little thing, rarely seen and content to sing in the lower branches of whatever undergrowth is at hand. the fact that this one posed for me was quite out of character.

Then we saw Shetland ponies with foal. Everybody say aaaawww...

And finally, on to the ruins! Layer upon layer of ancient dwellings were to be found at Jarlshof.

After crawling through as many of the wheelhouses and broch's as one could stand, there was more birdwatching. mmm.. oystercatcher. and for me, sheepwatching.

In the aftenoon, we headed over to remote Foula, where basking seals ignored us in the harbor.

Foula is a small island that supports about 10 crofting (subsistence farming) families. I was offered a lift to the other side of the island by a guy on his way, so I piled in.

This sea-stack is what was awaiting me at the other end. along with some cute sheep, fields of peat, and cranky bonxies.

bonxies, better known as Skuas or Jaegers, are fairly large, very mean birds. they fly right at your head when you're on their turf or nearing their nest.. needless to say i didn't stick around that part of the island long.

Next I saw a pretty skylark singing on a fencepost. i didn't know exactly what it was, so it was temporarily named the Foula Fencepost bird. There were quite a number of them.

Foula was fun, because it was sort of like a petting zoo. I got to pet the sheep, there were dogs, bright frogs, and the shetland ponies were on the march.

just don't try calling home from here.

Day 3 - Orkney

I think Orkney was one of my favorite places on the trip. I got a little cagey from being hustled place to place and on-and-off of buses, but there really was a lot of serious cool shit to see. Maes Howe, an ancient Pictish burial mound was really exciting. You know, in the way that only ancient astronomical chambers built around standing stones and graffiti'd with viking runes can be exciting.

We only have a few outside pictures, because the National Trust doesn't allow photography. I will say, though, "Extremely cool." The megalithic stones were brought to this place from miles away. The 4 cornerstones strongly resemble standing stones, and aren't loadbearing, so they were probably there long before the mound was built, long, long ago.. This is one of those ancient works that lights up special on the sunset of the winter solstice.

The viking graffiti from many years later said things like, "I am a viking, and I'm writing high up" over the main door.

Then it was off to the Ring of Brodgar, a massive circle of standing stones about a mile from Maes Howe. It was large in diameter, so I couldn't really catch all the stones at once. suffice it to say, it looked like a ring of broken teeth. it was on a small strip of land between two lakes.

i really like how the ring was inside of a channel, which separated it from the surroundings. rumor has it that cutting through the solid rock to dig the channel would have been more difficult than mining and setting the stones.

just a piece down the road were the Stones of Stenness, another standing stone circle. this one smaller, and with fewer stones remaining. it was built at a later date, and the stones were a lot larger.

i found it very interesting that two of the smaller stones within the circle seemed to "sight" on Maes Howe. (that lump in the middle).

by midday we were toddling around skara brae, which seemed much like jarlshof in that it was a bunch of old dwellings on top of each other. fun for the "flintstone" aspect of the architecture, but that was about it.

oh, not entirely true. they had a good gift shop where i picked up a book on runes and The Orkneyinga Saga, a hilarious account of the earls of Orkney. How can you not just love stories about guys named "Thorfinn Skullsplitter" and "Einar Buttered-Bread" I very much recommend this one, i find it a bit more readable than Beowulf.

In the afternoon we trekked past the Italian church, but not being big on either WWII history, or churches, i went out with the birders and skipped stones on a lake.

We spent a few afternoon hours exploring kirkwall (where i bought some yarn of north ronaldsey wool), and then headed back to our boat in Stromness (a very cute little town, where M&P and I stocked up on beverages and had a dinner of fresh fish and chips, fried right on the pier).

As the boat pulled out, we sailed past the island of Hoy. The sun was low, and I think it lit up the red sandstone beautifully.

And then we saw the Old Man of Hoy, a sea stack standing out on his own.

oooh.

stay tuned for more tales of islands and isolation as our travels take us to the Outer Hebrides and beyond!

Robot Quickie

2008-06-17T03:17:00.002-04:00

just a quick one inbetween, here.

am i the only one that finds Discovery News hilarious? Now we have robots that feel pain, and monitor when they've been inappropriately touched. I just imagine hearing the pink-sweatered asian girl-bot programmed with HAL's voice say, "Bad touch. Bad touch, Daaave."

then, there are the lovebots that'll purr in your ear when you molest them..

i love that we're going both ways at once.

on a completely unrelated note, I'm not moving to Sweden, but I get to fly back and forth staying a couple weeks here, a couple weeks there. so i'm pretty excited about that. plus, i think it just increased the gypsy-factor of my lifestyle by like 10 points. woo!

Scotland, Part 1 in which we arrive and depart

2008-06-16T00:17:00.002-04:00

it is a little-known fact that i was raised by birdwatchers. serious birdwatchers, one at least second-generation. now that i'm out of the closet about that one, it shouldn't be too surprising that when i asked my parents to come visit me after I moved to Europe, they suggested a birding cruise. always up for nature-y and new, and wanting to see things like standing stones and chambered cairns, i was all for it.

understand that when we started talking about it in October 2006, the May 2007 cruise was booked. so we had to wait for May 2008.

In the meantime, I had time to read about the monuments we'd probably see, and catch up on some of the fiction written about these locales (Sir Walter Scott's The Pirate). I scoured my copy of Lonely Planet Scotland, because that's just what I do, and I took my new DSLR camera to a photo course (in german) so i could capture images that would be more than tourist snaps. specifically, i wanted to be able to photograph some of the remotest islands of the UK, and the wildlife that considers only these nearly inapproachable bits of rock to be suitable habitat. I'm pretty well thrilled with the results. it was too many photos for one post, so i'm breaking it up over the course of our itinerary.

first, we arrived in aberdeen. I got there first, got the lay of the land, saw an english film (with english sound! not dubbed in german!) and generally tried not to buy too many books.

I picked mom and dad up from the airport - lookin a little rough from their transatlantic journey. after some strategic napping, and with regular feeding and watering they were on their feet, and we were off!

our big mission in aberdeen was to find ourselves some wellies. before we could even start shopping, though, we saw kilty men in the cemetery! (and had our picture taken in front of them)

there were bagpipes, and a bunch of guys with big gold chains - mayors, maybe? - and they all went on a little parade. we were very happy to find that the stereotypes are true!

and then we ate haggis.

right after haggis we all scored wellies at an outdoors store, for about 10 quid apiece.

In some of our between-times, we ate things like rock cakes and treacle. we are all big harry potter fans, and we just had to find out about Rock Cakes and Treacle! treacle is just a weird britword for molasses. so now we know. but treacle toffee is definitely yum. The Rock cakes we had were really just raisin cookies. Not bad raisin cookies, just raisin cookies.

We had an extra day, so we visited the Castles Balmoral and Crathes in Royal Deeside. Balmoral is the summer cottage for the queen of england and her pals. It was nice for its facade and gardens, but mostly for its Royal famousness.

I also caught the not-at-all-elusive european robin on film ..er.. electrons.

Crathes was not so impressive from the outside, but inside there was much more to see. It was all still furnished in antiques. The ceilings had been painted in the 1700's, and was still visible. Crathes castle also had a very Lewis Carroll Queen of Hearts Topiary garden.

Then it was time for our Cruise to start!

We tried to board the boat in Aberdeen. We were sure we were supposed to be on the boat BEFORE 4pm. so we tried around 2pm with all our bags and gear. ha. we were supposed to be there AT 4pm, so we spent the between time chilling out at the pub in the train station. there was ale, and we chatted about the Stanley Cup games with some very nice Canadians.

When we did go back to the Quay AT 4pm, we found there was a bit of a waiting line. the harbor security was practically undressing everybody before we could get on the boat. i could only shake my head, and be glad that the tour leaders were walking up and down the line chatting with their new charges.

After an hour wait, and watching my parents get strip searched (weird!), we got on the boat and settled in. As we left the Harbor, we came right out on what they were calling "lumpy seas". that means the boat does a whole pitch, rock and yaw dance that put 90% of the group at the altar of the porcelain goddess.

the next morning, i will call it the morning of Day 1, we were supposed to land on Fair Isle. the rough seas kept us from arriving.. kept me from getting a genuine fair isle sweater. verdammnt nochmal! i was ready to swim to shore, but was advised not to, even though wool stays warm when wet. now i'll just have to go back on my own. the other thing i was looking forward to on Fair Isle was walking amongst the nesting puffins. they burrow, so we wouldn't see the young or the eggs, but puffins are so darned cute, i wouldn't mind just hugging the adults a bit. ..see this photog's website for some good puffin pix.

We kept cruising, and by evening the seas had calmed. our first shore excursion was to visit the Iron Age Broch (tower) on the small, uninhabited island of Mousa.

To get there, we duded up in our lifejackets and got to ride in a little rubber Cousteau boat!

we have it on good authority that the Mousa Broch is the tallest remaining example of this kind of architecture, popular in the northwest isles about 2000 years ago. it's constructed from an inner and an outer skin, with a stairwell in between. wonder of wonders, we were allowed to climb to the top (this would never happen in the US, had we such relics). I submit for your enjoyment, some of the pictures from Mousa.

stay tuned for the next episode of our scotland trip (we're a serialized photonovella!), in which the intrepid vacationers climb into an ancient burial chamber graffiti'd with runic script! Do they survive to tell the tale?!

quickie

2008-06-09T17:08:00.001-04:00

this is the quick update -

the prospects that i'll moving to sweden have gotten darker. we shall see.

i was just in scotland for 2 weeks with the super-'rents. it was _awesome_ spending time with them, discovering the fun things about scotland (treacle toffee!), wellie shopping, visiting the furthest removed islands of scotland in cool but sunnybeautiful weather.

i took _many_ pictures in schottland, some of which i'm pretty proud of. there will be a photo-heavy post and recap soon.

i got home in time to see some of the first Euro Cup games (soccer). Right now i'm chuckling because the 2 hosts, Austria and Switzerland, lost their first games. Lucky for the german-speaking world, germany won. the germs all have their flags out and are having a feeling of national pride. it's cute. and it makes the whole environment here more cheery. funny is: the italians losing to the dutch today (the italians were world cup champs in '06 when i was here on my look-and-see trip).

bis bald!

Holy Shit was that Cool.

2008-05-07T23:02:00.001-04:00

So it's Wednesday. I am in Sweden. I'm working on Volvo projects here because I wasn't "challenged" in Germany, and the Swedes needed help fast.

There is so much work here, I can't really wrap my brain around whatall needs to be done. Today was one of those days where I was bailing as fast as I could, but the water kept rising. By this afternoon I was thinking about running naked through traffic.

Some coworkers had a better suggestion. We ran the Vår Ruset, a 5k (clothed!) women's only race in Gothenburg's Central Park, Slottsskogen. Follow the link, there are pictures there. Leaving work, I followed crazy-driving Rossanna and instigating passenger Anja (whom we have to thank for arranging the event) through downtown rush hour traffic to make it to the park. At the park we met up with Lotte, Kathrin, Ana, and Anna. It was tough, though. There was a crowd.

19,000 women.

19,000 women ran through the city park at 7pm on a regular ol' Wednesday. no shit.

It was like a really good mountain bike festival atmosphere. There were vendors, and music pumped out over PA's. But really, I thought the mountain bike races I'd been in with 2000 people on bikes were a big deal. That was nothing to Gothenburg's Wednesday night 5k Women's run.

And sponsorship! It was sponsored by Coop, a big grocery store chain. We signed up as teams, and each team got a picnic bag of selected sample foods for after the race. There was bread and wraps, smoked turkey, salad, sunflower seeds, cream cheese, liver paste, pretzels, crostini, sparkling apple juice, yogurt drink and bars of dark chocolate. Along with paper plates and napkins, plastic cups and silverware. All in a big reusable shopping/tote bag with the name of the race (and of course the sponsor) on the side.

The weather was perfect, just under 70deg, sunny and gorgeous. Our little team was sponsored by the Company, so we all wore logo shirts and took a couple of PR photos. The run was also pretty good, it was a little hilly, but not terrible, and they had all kinds of bands set up on the sidelines cheering us along! I remember a dixieland jazz group, a rockabilly band, an italian folk group, a marching band (with flaggets!), and a small symphony. There were also 2 water stops along the way.

And you see, I run a little bit, but really i still consider myself more of a bike-rider. I keep trying, though. This time, I ran about 2k with Rossanna, until it was time for me to walk a little bit. I got my good little 5k workout, and at the end of the race we all got medals and goody bags!

First we got the bag and then we walked through chutes being given different products at stations along the way. I'd open my bag and say "Trick or Treat!!" Goodies included spaghetti noodles, single-serving cereal boxes, headband, tear-open foil packets of shower gel and moisturizer, pear-juice juicebox, chocolate soy-milk juicebox, breakfast bar, roll of toilet paper, and a promotional pantyliner! how great is that? ha, also in the bag was a bookmark for the Anti-Genital-Warts-and-Cervical-Cancer vaccine, Cervarix.

I passed my spaghetti and some of the other things on to the girls who actually live here. There's no reason for me to be schlepping a package of spaghetti noodles through an airport the day after tomorrow. I am keeping the TP, though. It's the first toilet paper i've won from running. that's special!

The party atmosphere was fantastic. All the teams sat out on blankets eating their little picnic dinners. And seriously? 19,000 women. That was a lot of picnics!

I'm also considering this a dry-run for August. Several of us from the office are going to run the Tjejemilen, a 10k event in Stockholm. It turns out that one is also a Women-only run. (I'm totally blown away by the turnout and participation. it was amazing.) We've learned that it might just be a good idea to bring your own bottle of wine to the after-race picnic.

After this race, I'm not so worried about the Stockholm event. It was a really good, positive environment. I just hope I can make 10k. :D

fotoless.

2008-04-11T06:25:00.002-04:00

no pretty pictures this week, sorry. i`ve been playing with the camera a little, but this week`s photo class was a discussion of pictures. what makes a good photo, what`s good lighting, what`s a good motif.. etc.

i`ll be missing next week´s class (boo!) because i`ll be in sweden on a business trip. woo! my homework is to take portraits and bring them with me the week after. can do! (i`ll show you some too)

i have no timeline for the sweden move right now. it`s complicated because i`m not an EU citizen. we`re using a theoretical date of july 1 right now. i`ll be staying with the same company, just moving to a different office, and i`m already trying to learn a little swedish (not going superwell yet). i`ll be on the West Coast of Sweden, in Gothenburg (Göteborg).

I start taking over projects on Monday.

I`m really extremely giddy about the whole thing.

Whenever I do move up, I`ll get to drive my car (Picknick!) up through Germany and Denmark, where we will take an overnight ferry to Sweden. Then I`ll be driving up the West coast of Sweden to get to my new place. It sounds like a pretty awesome road trip to me.

In more camera news, I just downloaded the english language manual for the cam, because it`s going to be quicker to read and make more sense to me than the german one. yaaay interwebs! after work I go pick up my new flash from the post office. more (ordered off the) interwebs yippee!

accepted

2008-04-02T05:22:00.004-04:00

step 1 in approximately 3000, the swedish boss has told my german bosses that he wants me to move up there. the german bosses are happy to let that happen.

now the company has to get permission to give this job to a non-european person.

then i have to apply for work and residence permits for sweden.

and at some point i've got to find an apartment up there, and move my junk up.

but in the meantime i'm tying up loose ends on my current project and starting to work on Volvo projects. Woohoo!!

in other news, the photo course was really fun last night. we took night-shots. i didn't think to bring my tripod with me. *shrug* i still got some cool postcard-esque shots. Most of the shots in that photostream were taken when it was dark with a long(er) exposure and a high-speed film (ISO 1600). Here are my fav's:

Catchup - March 200 8

2008-03-24T04:37:00.002-04:00

And then there's been March.

It's been mayhem. It's been wonderful and shit and a whole lot of confusing.

First off, i decided that for the Scotland trip (nature cruise in may, with the 'rents) I absolutely need a better camera. One with interchangeable lenses so i can take great pictures from far away, and have more and more control over the photos.. This, of course, means Digital SLR! I talked with some camera savvy friends here and at home (via the magic of the internets). i read a bunch of articles and decided on a Canon 400D. I picked up a 70-300mm tele lens, but i'm still working out which other lenses i'll need.

in order to avoid being one of those folks who lays out a whole wad of cash for a good camera/lens kit, but shoots all her pictures on Auto, (and to reduce the experimental learning curve to get better pictures sooner), i'm taking a photography class at the Adult Education center in Bamberg.

i also signed up for yoga, 15 sessions for 30€! can't beat it! and next weekend will be an intro to Afro-Brazilian dance seminar with the girlfriends. should be a hoot.

The first classes took place in the first week of March. That first weekend, I visited Karen, who was in Cologne on Business.

I shot the first pics with the new cam. At first i was just sort of snapping. I loved the colors at the flower stand, had to get a shot of the Cathedral from the bridge.

I had a very Austin Powers moment, with Karen in the square. "Yes, Loving iT! Give me more! Grr! Sexy, Bay-bee, very Grrr! Yes! Yes! NO! NO! ach, i'm spent."

There was some general touristing.

and the world is thiiiiis big. we ran into my only coworker in Cologne, right in front of the cathedral, where some punks were having a pillow fight. yeah. no kidding.

in the cathedral i started fooling around with the cam, i tried playing with focus on the long rows of votive candles, and i pulled out the tripod and attempted saturated pix of distant stained glass windows.

I especially liked that last glass window, because it looks like it's not receiving the transmitted image. like it's a 404, or tuned to the static channel. :)

We had an extra-lucky encounter on saturday. I'd found a yarn shop on the internets, and Karen remembered the address! So even though it was after 5 (because we needed a caffeine hit - at Starbucks!) and everything usually closes by 6 on Saturdays, we set off on foot to cross town. We got there just before 6, and found out that they'd been closed since 5. But, because we had our noses pressed against the window, they let us in!

Karen got her much-anticipated german sock-yarn infusion. I found exactly the yarn i'd want to make this cardigan - a pretty blue Malabrigo and a coffee colored merino from GGH. ok, i still need to get the Rowan Kidsilk haze.. but still. kismet (and a little plastic rectangle!) brought me a sweater's worth of yarn!!

Sunday morning, K and I bopped around her neighborhood. We found an excellent coffee shop with attached quiche-café. We had apple-onion-ham quiche and Latte macchiatos. Doesn't K look cute with her Euro-Scarf?

and the quiche was just as yummy as it looks. then we lucked into an antique market. i got the cutest handbag, some silver pie servers and buttons for the sweater. success!

then on the way home, i was supposed to get on a train from the Cologne Convention Center headed towards Würzburg. ..yeah. there were people who'd been standing on the platform for more than 2 hours. The rails were blocked somewhere, so the trains that were going in the direction i wanted to go had been blocked for more than 2h. I sat and chilled, and contemplated. The train came, and I tried to get on the first one, but it was so packed that i ended up back on the platform. The second train came and i got in and got a seat - next to 6 Americans travelling for Siemens. That was a riot. I think they bought me beer because I said, "Oh! I snowboard with your legal department!"

Even though my departing train was delayed about an hour, i got home 4 minutes later than I was supposed to with my original itinerary. I caught a faster train from Würzburg.

Then, second weekend of march I flew to Gothenburg Sweden. I finished my Valentine Socks (started in Feb on the Zillertal Ski-weekend) on the plane up to Sweden. That meant I had brand new handmade wool socks to wear for my first sightseeing in Sweden. w00t. ..they are fraternal twins. :)

This Gothenburg excursion is what my company calls a "Look and See" trip. You go on one of those if you're thinking about relocating. My job in Germany has been "below expectations" since I got here, so after months of trying to get it right here, the management is thinking of sending me up to replace some expats-going-home in Sweden. There was a lot of uncertainty before the trip - was it going to happen or not? i had to do a whole lot of wrangling and calling Embassies before I could book the tickets. Just to give you an idea, tix got booked Friday afternoon and I flew Saturday morning.

Gothenburg's pretty cool. Much larger, more english-speaking, and just sort of cooler than Bamberg. Lots of ethnic restaurants. Lots of people, bars, shops, 7-11's. really. that's where we bought our tram tickets. heh.

Do street-cars get Road Rage?

The work situation up there seems really good, and I felt really comfortable in the city. I saw some apartments, went to the grocery store, learned about how the health care system up there functions.

I walked through the city, and snapped some pix with my new paparazzi camera.

The crocuses were up in more than one park. It snowed the next day, though! I like the style of the big brick apartment buildings. They're kind of Victorian. Makes sense, because many were built in late 1800's early 1900's.

Later in the week I drove out to the island of Öckerö. There's no bridge, so you drive onto a car ferry and it takes you over for free. That was a pretty cool thing. And the island is full of cute little fishing villages.

The flights home worked out great, and I was home just in time for a 4-day weekend. I think it's the first weekend i've been home for about 6 weeks. Heh. Friday night I went out with my friend Nadine (who's torn her achilles tendon, and is on crutches), we drank wine and played Yahtzee with her boyfriend and his pal. Then Saturday I bought some mad german kitchen knives (Saturday is the only one of the 4 days when any stores will be open) and stocked up on vegetables to cut. I was so inspired by the quiches with Karen in Cologne that I made one of those this weekend - broccoli and mushroom with swiss. very exciting.

It's been nice to lay around in my own place for a bit. but i'm starting to get a little stir crazy. :)

Catchup: NYE - end of Feb 08

2008-03-22T16:25:00.002-04:00

so, like an idiot, i wrote a big catchup summary and mailed it to myself, and promptly forgot about it. ha. that's why i've been gone for 3 months. that, and it's been a little crazy in jessica-land.

lemme tellya 'boudit.

in december and january i took a scuba diving class with 2 girlfriends. we got through all of the theory, and did all of the practice sessions in the pool without any major problems. scuba seems cool, but i'm not going to put any more money into this little hobby until i can get myself under more than 2 meters of water, and see how i like it. that should happen at our open water test weekend at a lake somewhere near Dresden at the end of April. (god willin' and the creek don't rise)

I was in Barcelona over New Year's. I was the mustachioed bandit twirling everyone's girlfriends on the dancefloor.

I was especially inspired by an earlier visit to a Dalí exhibition. Special thanks to my coworker Christian for making me feel so welcome, and doing some dorky tourist bus-riding with me. :)

later in the month, i started a knitting night. you got it, Stitch 'n Bitch Bamberg! We've been meeting every Thursday at a cozy little café that has good things to nosh, a nice waitress, and good music on the PA. what more could one want? oh, also we always seem to get the good booth in the back to spread out at. muy bueno.

the first night i taught 3 chinese coworkers (2 chicks 1 dude), a spanish/french coworker, and a german girlfriend from around town to knit. I felt really accomplished, teaching knitting in my 3rd language to people who were mostly learning in their 3rd or 4th language. At this point Wei's finished her hat, Susanne's finished her hat, Katja's still working on socks, and Sandrine has about 6 inches of what will be a very colorful scarf. Me? I spent a couple weeks screwing up the heel on Hannes' second birthday sock. Literally, i knit and ripped it like 10 times, until i got just the right combination of focus/free-time and spanish red wine (mmm! Rioja!). anyway, meeting up with the friends to knittel, quatsch and enjoy refreshing adult beverages makes Thursday nights a highlight for me. it's cool that i'm able to share something i really enjoy with friends i've made here, and to do it where/how we do is just great. i can't wait for it to get warmer, because then we can move knit-night to the biergarten!

i went snowboarding with the siemens lawyers again! funny how there are no hill-pictures from this trip, just pix from the bar at aprés-ski.

i managed to get Serious Klaus to smile and dance around a bit, ditto the Slow Swiss Boy Michael. it was good fun. Saturday i rode with the whole group first thing. Instead of taking it slow, we started out on a black diamond, rad. (for reference, black diamonds in the Alps = Shit yourself in Michigan). I managed that ok, but on the second run into the valley of death (which took me 3 hours to get out of last year) i slid about 10m down a vertical wall of ice. In the end, it only took me about an hour to get out of there this time. But that was the end of the line for the snowboarders and the skiiers, we went our own ways after that. I spent a very fun and challenging afternoon riding with Stefan and Patrícia, who both ride better than i do. And then Aprés-Ski! the most fun part of skiing. We met up again in Moosewirt, the disco crammed into a log cabin. it was a very fun drunken debacle. hooray. after that we headed across the slope for schnitzel at the next restaurant.

Sunday morning i woke up sore, but not too hung over. I couldn't keep up with the others anymore, though, so i rode all day by myself, meeting up with the group for lunch breaks and pauses. i was rockin good tunes in the ipod, and takin my time floating down the mountain. i took time to sit and contemplate, to look around me. the alps are amazingly beautiful and i love having a chance to be out there.

after skiing, there was a period of relative quiet. i was sick on and off and just kind of ticking along slowly.

ok, there was a small exception to the quiet, Fasching. It's like if you roll all the drinking from Mardi Gras, and the costumes from Halloween together, and have it for months before Fat Tuesday. nadine and I hit the town as a pirate and a german girl. there was much dancing, much drinking, and a good disco-time.

In mid-feb Hannes and I went to Thüringen, the next province north of Bavaria, part of the one-time East Germany. There are signs showing where the wall was when you're driving into the area. First we went to the Garden Gnome Museum, because Gräfendrodach is the hometown of the Garden Gnome. Unfortunately, we got there about 20 minutes after it'd closed for the day. (which it does at 2pm. damn!)

But then we went to Erfurt, the capitol of Thüringen, and it was pretty. We did the touristy thing, ate german food, went into german churches, took a hike in the German mountains, ate more German food. It was a very Deutsch-touristy weekend. And that was when the flowers started to bloom here.

Then next weekend was so warm I went for a long bike ride with pals Sandrine and Laurent. We were planning to do like 5-8km, and ended up doing 35-40. which was fun, but i did it in a dumb skirt and knee-socks, because i thought we were just going to pedal a little bit, then drink some coffee or something.

we did get out into the country-side. saw some horses, ate some ice cream with coworkers. we sat outside in t-shirts and ate ice cream. it was probably about 60F.

Then, holy hell, i had the best time snowboarding with Stefan and Patrícia. We went to Zillertal, where there are like 5 ski areas connected by a little toy train.

first we rode a big train down there, though.

We stayed in the green Valley

have i mentioned that i love trains? and mountains? and snowboarding? ...so yeah.
this is what it looked like on our first day:

We started in Gerlos and rode through like 4 ski areas over to the other end of the valley. after lunch we rode back.

The next day, the weather was sketchy, so we rode the train to the end of the valley, and the bus up to the glacier. It's almost all above 3000m. On the glacier, the weather was pretty clear. All the lifts were open, and it looked like this:

Day 3, the weather even wonkier. We were on the glacier again, because the snow there was really better in comparison, but the weather was still sketchy. The morning was good riding. I switched up my binding setup, so that my front foot has a more aggressive angle. that helped a lot, and by the end of the day i was pulling some good carves. :D

early in the day it looked like this:

The weather was very changeable. It would snow one minute and be clear the next. In the afternoon, though, it got to be white-out conditions. We were riding down a hill and stopped for a little rest (the runs are kilometers long!). Then the wind blew, and I couldn't see P 5m below me. then she was there, but i kept sitting for a minute. then she disappeared again. I thought, "shit, as soon as i can see, i'm getting off this mountain! this is dumb!" but fun.. :D

Lunch was in this cozy little hut next to a cave. the kaiserschmarrn was fantastic! it's a dish best described as scrambled french toast with apple sauce. mm.

We quit early. Luckily in Zillertal there are other cool things to see. We headed to the Sennerei, where they give tours of the cheese-making facilities. We missed the tour by about 20 minutes, but we bought a bunch of fresh, local-made Alpine cheese, some Farmer's bread, and some Olives and had ourselves a picnic dinner back at the pension. (that's a temporarily abandoned "Settlers of Catan" game in the background. It got a little cutthroat after dinner)

The last day of the trip was extremely frustrating. The weather was beautiful, but there was reportedly hurricane-strength winds at the higher altitudes, so almost all the lifts were closed. we tried to do the bunny-hill, but that didn't last long. most of our ski-day looked like this:

thank goodness the hot choc had a little rum in it. certainly helped console us. the ride home was crazy though.

we all had our boards and bags and all our shit. which we were prepared to schlep through like 4 trains to get home. well, one train wasn't running at all because trees fell on the rails or something, so we got to take an extra bus, a subway, and another train. We got home 2 hours later than expected, completely exhausted. but damn, the first couple days of the trip were SO worth it!

Janinga's Year in Review 2007!

2008-01-08T14:55:00.001-05:00

My 2006-2007 New Years' Eve happened in Prague, with a certain Miss Sheila. Fab way to begin the year. 2007-2008 New Year's Eve happened in Barcelona, it started in an Irish pub with a couple of Scots, and proceeded with coworker Christian and his girlfriend at a Discoteca.

Even though it's 2008 already, I would like to tell you about my 2007.

January came in with a bang, Sheila and I were in Prague, then Berlin. But after she left Jan was blah. i was stuck in a stupid furnished apartment in a no-horse-town waiting for my household shit to clear customs so i could move into the apartment i'd found. It took about 10 weeks, but my junk did manage to cross the ocean from America to Europe.

February I unpacked and finally got hooked up in the internets (allowing me to communicate with you lot, and the fam). I saw homeboys Thunderbirds are Now! in Nürnberg, bought a new bike and leased a car, mixed it up a lot at Ikea. I also got to see Ok Go in Nuremburg, where i became acquainted with the Films. I bought the ceiling light fixtures and had them installed. First Snowboard trip to Austria with the Siemens Lawyers.

March - Second snowboard trip to Austria, with Brose coworkers. Building of extensive closet systems from Ikea. Soccer practice started.

My first soccer game was played in April. Easter was silly, I tried to spend the 4 day weekend in Salzburg, but that old Salt Castle was only good for 2 days, then I went home to Bamberg and rode my bike around the countryside. In the end of April i met Hannes, who became my love interest and travel partner for most of the year.

In May Hannes taught me to eat Weißwurst, we went to the Devil's cave to see the cave bear skeleton and the stalactites/stalagmites. I also threw the famous Tiki Housewarming party, and then we ran off to Croatia for a little beach vacation on the Adriatic.

June took H and I to Füssen for a visit to Neuschwanstein. my fancy dancy sofa finally came.

July was long. It started with a quiet little barbecue/4th of July party. H and I went to NL for a cold rainy week of camping.

August brought the Berliner Beer Festival with Alex, Jens and the Wondertwins. Supersis Ginny came, and we hopped around the Grecian Islands, avoiding the wildfires and watching Albanian MTV before bed.

September I attended a couple of soccer games, visited the Frankfurt Auto Show. Then for fun I went to Oktoberfest and Venice (on the sleeper-train!) with my protogées, the Wondertwins.

Oktober Mark took a couple of us to see pro-soccer, Nürnberg played Frankfurt and won 5:1 (unbelievable number of goals). I had a bad attack of Green Slime Lung, and as I got better Hannes and I flew down to Rome. There was also Bockbier in Franken, and I threw a little Halloween party.

November I was in MI for 3 weeks! Fam, friends, Thankschristgivingmas. beauty.

December, was spent getting used to being back in germ'ny. There were some Christmas Markets, some Glühwein, and I started taking scuba classes (in german). After Christmas I got fed up and flew to Barcelona to be in a big city and get some more sun.

In 2007 I was in 11 countries:
Germany
Czech Republic
Austria
Italy
Slovenia
Croatia
Netherlands
Greece
Vatican
USA
Spain

2007 By Bicycle:
I bought a lovely little city-bike, Bella, with the girlie top tube, and lights and fenders. I rode it mostly around town to the bars, to work a couple of times, and do a few of the outlying breweries. it was one of my favorite things this year to go visit different breweries. dinner would be brotzeit (cold cuts), or some sort of sausage or pork shoulder and a half-liter of the local brew.

I did one little mountain bike tour with my coworkers Matthias and Christian, and that was pretty great. That was right before Johannesfeuer, where they celebrate solstice in the villages by lighting bonfires and drinking beer.

Some of my favorite 07 vacation moments involved bicycles - riding down the coast in Croatia, riding through a nature preserve to a Modern Art musuem in the Netherlands, and riding around the lakes in the foothills of the Alps in Füssen.

In 2008 I'd like to ride more. I found some websites for mountain biking in the nearby nature reserves. I've started looking into some of the ways to travel with bikes here (including taking them on the trains). There are supposed to be a lot of hotels/inns that accept bike travellers. I want to learn more about that.

2007 as a Footballer! (soccer player)
The spring season went well, I played about 20 minutes in each game. I went to practice at least once, usually twice a week. We won enough games that we moved up to the next league, where I wasn't really good enough to get any field time. I dropped out near the end of the season because sitting on the bench is too boring for me. I love to cheer, but i wanna play too. I've looked into joining a not-so-good team so i could play more, but you have to be home for the games - and i found i sort of resented having to schedule my travel around them. so there will probably be no organized soccer in 2008.

2007 knitting:
cool projects included finishing my first pair of socks! working up a thick wool/alpaca fair isle hat to keep the ears warm. i tried a yarn swap/secret pal thing, and it was cool, but i'm a little too distractable for that kind of thing, i think. on the needles now is a dark purple wool/silk cable yoke pullover, the forever leaf shawl (that's how long it'll take me to finish it), 2 pairs of fingerless mitts for friends, and a pair of socks for another friend.

I read a tonne of the Yarnharlot, and started listening to the Cast-On podcast.

in 2008, i think i want to knit more socks. they feel great on the tootsies, look cool, there's an over-abundance of sock yarn in germany, they're small, easily transportable, don't take forever, and did i mention, kinda fun to knit?

also in 08, i'm trying to incite a stitch and bitch circle. i think ideally for me, we'd meet about once a month. most of the girls here don't knit yet, even though a lot of great sock yarn comes out of germany. it was mostly the grannies knitting socks for people, and the younger women (while they learned to do it in school) don't knit things for themselves.

2007 Books I Enjoyed
I read a whole pile of books, because at first i didn't understand very much of what's said here, but also because i really love to read.
- Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series
- Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently Books (i read them every coupla years, and i still laugh out loud)
- Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness
- Harry Potter 7 - i cried a little when one of the characters died.
- Lonely Planet Everything
- Y: The Last Man - a great graphic novel about the one man who lives after a plague wipes out all people with Y chromosomes. Read it, it's cinematic.
- Tankgirl Comics started up again! woo!
- Frank Herbert's Dune - now i know why it's a classic. very imaginative.
- Melville's Moby Dick - i'm not quite through it, but the first half is extremely entertaining
- Crazy Aunt Purl's Drunk Divorced and Covered in Cat Hair - she has a great voice and talks a lot about how knitting helped her brought her back around.

2007 Music:
The radio here isn't really worth listening to. Instead, I was plugged into the Ipod almost the whole time. My 2007 Mix CD includes:
- First we Take Manhattan - Leonard Cohen
- Bohemian Like You - The Dandy Warhols
- Seven Languages - Camper Van Beethoven
- A book and No Disasters - Some by sea
- Smile - Lily Allen
- A Good Day - The Films
- Worry About You - Ivy
- From Debris - Matt Pond PA
- Rub Alcohol Blues - The Fiery Furnaces
- Road Leads Where It's Led - The Secret Machines
- Tiny Cities Made of Ashes - Modest Mouse
- Our Time - Imperial Teen
- Skullcrusher Mountain - Jonathan Coulton

While someone put together an amazing collection of recent/choice indie music before I left for germland, associated computer storage problems prevented me from enjoying all of it. Of the collection, I especially liked The Ditty Bops, The Fiery Furnaces, The Magnetic Fields, The Epoxies, and Erin Tobey.

The rest of this collection will figure heavily into my 2008 playlists, as will the Bucovina sound that's getting pretty popular. It's basically eastern european traditional music with electronic beats.

2007 Food:
- i finally made soft boiled eggs, using the egg pick, and egg timer. eating it with an egg spoon out of my egg cup (which makes a very handy shotglass as well). very euro, yummy breakfast.
- i also learned to make coffee with a french press. Mmm!

2007 Travel Review:
- Prague - the czechs love a party, and the cultural scene is really hip.
- Berlin - one of my favorite towns in Europe, def my fav in Germany so far. A leisurely breakfast in the spinning TV tower beats waiting in line for the glass dome at the Bundesrepublik any day.
- Salzburg is not worth a 4-day weekend.
- Croatia is beautiful, but the 8hour drive is a bit stressful if done all at once (in pounding rain)
- The Netherlands - can be done by just going to Amsterdam, and then making day-trips from there. Ride the trains, don't take a car. A'dam is wonderful, the canals are beautiful, it's interesting to look at the women in the windows, and the pannekoeken are sort of like taking an omelette and replacing the eggs with pancake batter.
- Oktoberfest - really overrated, but it was a good laugh.
- Venice - beautiful and amazing - they really have no cars there, because they have no streets
- Rome - was gorgeous, but with the crazy traffic, no overview of where the busses go, and its crappy subway layout, it was a good weekend, but not the most relaxing.
- Barcelona - Fanfrickintastic. Go shopping, eat Tapas, drink coffee, listen to spanish guitar on the streets, or in the churches. Consider buying a chipmunk as a pet from the vendors on the street.

2007 - What I Could Have Done Without
1. Work's been weird and dissatisfying. I've wandered from department to department. I'm learning a lot, but not doing much that makes me feel accomplished. That's been a drag.
2. Slicing my finger open, driving myself to the hospital, being sewn up with no anaesthetic.
3. All the parking tickets (i swear, the rules about parking change every 3 minutes here)
4. Missing my peeps in the Americas.

2007 Things I LUFFED:
- Podcasts - i started listening to the Cast-On podcast, This American Life, and some assorted buddhist and travel podcasts.
- Ikea - they had all the closets and light fixtures i needed for not too terribly much money.
- Movies on Ipod - A woman I respect shared with me a pile of pirated movies, costume dramas ripped to ipod-watchable format. woo! a pile of Jane Austen and also, all the harry potter movies!
- Snowboarding in the Alps, it got me out of Germany for a bit, gave me some social interaction, and was just frickin amazing. Nothing in Michigan compares.
- German Bakeries - fresh bread any time. Deelish.
- Fränkisch Breweries - I live in the part of the world with the greatest density of breweries per capita. I never thirst.
- Leberkäse - it's a slice of hot bologna loaf on a fresh roll with ketchup, usually. Makes a fantastic hangover breakfast, available at your local butcher.
- Hot Pot - boils a liter of water in about 35 seconds. good for tea, and as a time-reducer for boiling anything (noodles, eggs, sausage, whathaveyou).
- Thermal Baths - There are a bunch in the area, it's kind of fun to go sweat naked in a sauna with 40 germans. Weird, but relaxing. Plus the hot saline swimming pools are very nice.

All in all, I have to say that 2007 was an amAZing year for me. I was for the most part, healthy. I am now pretty much fluent in German. I got to see some places/things that I really wanted to see. Noone died. Some friends and some family got engaged/married. Everyone I know was pretty much well and comfortable, and doing what it is they do. Looking back, I can only be happy.

2008 promises more adventures, and less of the initial set-up and language-learning crap from last year, so press your thumbs for me. And Prost!!

Home Visit

2007-12-27T13:48:00.001-05:00

Hi There!

It's been forever, eh?

Well in November I was home in MI for 3 huuuge glorious weeks. Wow, so nice to be there. It was great to see the fam, the friends, and to go shopping at Target.

One thing I really want to say is Thank you for reading. and Thank you for telling me you read.

people i hadn't seen for a while came up to me and said they read. apparently, i have a cadre of very quiet readers. thanks for letting me know in person, feel free to comment if you feel so moved!

I think I put about 2000 miles on the rental car in those 3 weeks.

i got to be in traverse city for the iceman afterparties. i visited people i missed all over the metro area, including my hairdresser who hasn't seen me for almost 3 years, what with the headshaving and all.

I also got to spend Thankschristgivingmas (that annual 4-day weekend event) with my mom, dad, and sister up at the 'rents cottage.

there was much shopping. clothes here are cheaper, and cut more like i'm used to. and i hauled back a PILE of english language books. last year i read a tonne, and sort of wiped most of my good-intention book buys out. so now i'm stocked with Heinlein, Asimov, Hemingway, and some miscellaneous others. It should keep me until i get back for TCGmas next year.

there was eating! mom cooked up amazing turkey dinner, and a big christmas roast, dad helped. ginny and i ate and washed dishes. i am very thankful that i could be cloistered up in the quiet cottage on Lake Huron for the long weekend.

here are a couple things i miss about the states: barbecue sauce, on everything. drive up atms. mexican food. wide streets. and of course my peeps.

All in all, I have to say I miss the crap out of the US. Europe is fun and all.. but i think i'm going to move back to the states when my time here is up. We'll see how things develop, but that's my feeling right now. the germs just make everything a lot tougher than it needs to be (except beer drinking of course, they make that easier).

ok, that's what I've got for now. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas holiday, and a great New Years. Guten Rutsch!

I don't feel like it.

2007-11-04T12:16:00.000-05:00

I.... haven't been posting regularly. I've been to cool places, done cool things, but just don't feel like writing great reports about them. partly i'm lazy about uploading pictures, partly it's snowballed and it'd take me too long to catch up. so here's the summary, and then let's move forward.

1. I went to Oktoberfest with the American interns who were here for the summer months. it was sort of a last hurray before they left, and we had a blast. Ok, there were some almost fights and some slapping, but still, public urination included, it was a heck of an experience.

2. Said interns and I took the night train to Venice. We looked for hotels in Munich, but they were way too expensive, so we took the sleeper to Venice and spent Sunday and Monday in town there (riding gondolas, eating delicious things, drinking cocktails and listening to classical music in St. Mark's square). It was brilliant. Then Monday night we caught the sleeper back to Munich, and the Intercity Express back to Bamberg, i caught a taxi home showered and was at work by 10am. not bad considering i went to sleep in another country the night before.

3. I was really sick. It started out as a cold. Then I went with Mark, and Stephan and Partícia to watch a soccer game, and on Monday it moved into my lungs. The doctor wrote me a note to be out of work for the week.

4. After a few days lying in and recuperating I figured I was strong enough to head to the DMV and get my germ driver's license. What a catastrophe. I should really know by now that I can only deal with German bureaucracy when I'm personally full strength.

if i were staying for just 1 year, my Michigan Driver's License would be valid for a year. But because I'm staying for longer my MI DL is only valid for 6 mos, so i've been driving illegally since July. they needed to take the MIDL from me to check authenticity, so then i had NO driver's license. the nice lady at the office told me she couldn't possibly give me a temporary license, and that the new germlicense would take 3-4 weeks to arrive, so she welcomed me to ride my bike or use the bus system. i love the helpful civil servants here. LOVE THEM!!

So after a few visits to this office, and the police, and more visits to the DMV office, it took only a week and I was once again a legal driver. I didn't really miss it too much because in the middle of my license-less time:

3. Rome! Hannes and I spent 4 days in old Roma. It was really fascinating. That is a city that's going ON, and has been for thousands of years. I was most impressed at the Etruscan museum, examining grave goods from 700bc. That was cool. Then we rented a tandem bike that was a deathtrap, ate more good stuff, visited the Colosseum and rode the touristy double decker bus around while some unions or somebody demonstrated near the train station.

4. Then I got home again, on the 29th, worked the 30th, did a cool city-tour of Bamberg ending at a great restaurant, worked on the 31st and threw a Hallowe'en party! It was small, but I think everyone had a good time. Mark, Flo, Hannes and Alex came by. Mark brought a pumpkin carved by the lovely Katja, and Alex brought chili. I supplied the candy and zombie movie - Shaun of the dead.

5. I had November 1 off to celebrate All Saints' day. Woo, a nice way to sleep off the Hallowe'en hangover.

6. I've gotten hooked on Podcasts. I love that they're like little radio shows in my native language. In fact, I can hear some of the NPR shows I liked in MI right here over my computer. Ooh the magic of the Internets. so I'm listening to a bunch of back issues of Cast On, This American Life, checking out Lonely Planet podcasts for places i've been or want to go, and have been checkin out some Buddhist podcasts to see if I like any of them.

Now, dear readers, I think we're caught up. That is the news with me. Well, that, and I fly home soon. I'm practically coming out of my skin about that. It'll be my first trip back to the States since I moved here last December. woo!

Eyecandy Sunday

2007-10-21T07:08:00.000-04:00

Now that I bored you with the tech details, umm... about a week ago.. I hear you ask, "Ok Fancypants, where are the picture-filled posts?" and rightly so.

Here's some Fall-in-Germany porn for ya.

Hannes and I went for a hike in the Steigerwald on a cool crisp (still!) October Sunday. We've sort of started doing little trips on Sundays because all the shops are closed, and I don't have soccer games.

We visited this church

Which is attached to a huuuge beautiful cloister, which was turned into a prison about 150 years ago. Cloister? Jail? Not much difference, ya say? well, the one has razorwire carefully concealed.

On another little hike, we walked through some fields and there were sheep!

on that same wander we got to overlook some adorable little Germ villages

I really like the cliffs in the Fränkische Schweiz.

So that's what I've been doing with my Sundays of late.

Techie Schtuff

2007-10-16T16:30:00.000-04:00

I've changed the link in the sidebar to add my new photo stream. I've moved over to Flickr because my web browser (Flock) works with Blogger and Flickr so that all I have to do is drag and drop them. I love this feature because it means I don't have to be doing a tonne of html editing to make sure the photos and linx work right.

I'm going to keep my Smugmug account for a while yet. I like that site for how it presents photos, and I've spent a lot of time uploading content there. Unfortunately it's not as easy to use with other applications.

That said, new pixtures are up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/janinga/

Cars and Phones

2007-10-04T06:49:00.000-04:00

17:27 I leave my desk for the parking lot. Soccer practice starts at 18:00
17:29 I call Hannes back.
17:32 I reach my car, start it up and head towards the soccer fields, still talking to Hannes.
Conversation ranges from dinner tonight to his work schedule, to what we're bringing to a friend's birthday party tomorrow.
17:47 H says, "It's 10 to 6, you have soccer at 6, you better get going."
17:48 I say, "I'm halfway there. What do you mean I have to get going?"
17:49 H, "You're talking on the phone and driving?! That's not allowed, you can get a ticket."
17:50 "Pish, that's a dumb law." I say, and we keep chatting along on our topics.
17:52 I see a cop car coming the opposite direction on a 4-lane road.
17:54 I turn onto the street where the soccer club is. The cop is now behind me. I clap the phone shut mid-sentence.
17:55 I park at the soccer club. The cop never flashed his lights or did the siren thing, but he's parked behind me, him and his partner getting out.

In short, I got a 65€ ticket for talking on the phone, and probably a point on my license (though i have no idea what that means here).

Interestingly enough, when I handed over my Michigan Driver's License, the cop said, "This is an Operator License," he can read, "Where does it say you can drive a car?"

WHAT?!!?! It's a driver's license. Of course I can drive a car!! I can drive motorcycles too! shit. well, all I could do was point to where it said "Lic Type 0" and say, that's probably the code for I can drive cars.

brilliant.

so now i've got to go get myself a germ driver's license. yippe. just what i want to do, spend more time dealing with the bureaucrats here.

Mr. Nice Copman took a picture of my license, and said he'd talk to the Ami's and see if it was really a driver's license, if I was really allowed to drive cars. "Good luck!" I said, "This license worked for buying a car, getting insurance, and registering the car. I don't see why you'd have a problem with it."

Scheiße. See, I go having a great weekend and Germany has to balance itself out by throwing bureaucracy, rules and fines at me.

Knit Prezzies! + Projectbrag

2007-09-30T14:16:00.000-04:00

The gal tasked with spoiling me in the punk rock gift exchange did a great job!

She sent stitch markers, fun needles, soft sage-y sockyarn, and fun bright handpainted yarn.

Best, though, were the already-knit fingerless mitts.

Woo!

Now for what I've been knitting. The Bud Hat.

I started this hat when I got the Harry Potter 7 book on tape from Mom. It's extra-thick because of the fair-isle floats on the back, and I used a fold-over Picot edge for the bottom part so my ears would be extra warm.

The yarn is from Miss Marts, I managed to get 2 great hats out of the alpaca blend she gave me for Christmas/birthday 2 years ago.

The hat was finished at the Jazz/Blues Festival in Bamberg. I sat at a picknick table with strangers, drinkin beer, listening to mediocre jazz under the stars, and knitting.

Thanks to everyone who helped bring this hat together. :)

Greece the Photodokumentär

2007-09-19T15:31:00.000-04:00

for the record, this bombshell had nothing to do with the wildfires in greece. i don't know what you're talking about.

or at least i wouldn't if it weren't for all the concerned friends and family sending heartening vacation messages like, "Greece is burning! Get Out NOW!!" and "64 died trying to escape fires. be ready to evacuate!!"

ok, that's still not entirely true. gin and i got 10 TV channels, for the first few days of our trip 9 of these channels were broadcasting pictures of forestfires with incomprehensible greek captions. the tenth was Albanian MTV - you do not know what you are missing without Albanian MTV.

That said, we had a great trip to Greece.

First she came to Germany for a couple days. I picked her up from the Nürnberg airport. Luckily she was just in time for the Sandkerwa (annual founding festival for the church on the bar street).

We ate a traditional Weißwurst breakfast accompanied by chocolate chip muffins and Bamberg's famous Smoked Weissbier. Nothin but culture.

We caught some trains to the Köln/Bonn airport and hopped a plane to Heraklion on Crete.

My bad museum karma carried on into Greece, where the Archaeological museum on Crete was mostly closed for refurbs, and half of Knossos was closed for.. because i was there.

the one room of archaeological treasures that they _did_ have open was fascinating. full of treasures from the Minoan culture.

There was some wandering around seeing the sights in the city, eating ice cream for breakfast, y'know the usual.

We had some laughs over the signs posted on islands:

The first for how much Parking (in Greek) resembles Napkin in English. The second just for the english translation itself. I believe the city would have been called something more like a "Traditional Settlement" but i love the irony.

After a couple of days that didn't go to plan in Heraklion, we caught a boat to Ios. It was supposed to be the gay party capital of the Cyclades, but that's not how we found it. Our hotel overlooked the bay, where the sunsets were pretty nice, especially since we were able to pick up beers from the fridge downstairs.

The whole Island was pretty quiet when we were there.

The path into town:

The Church in the main square:

Windmill on a hill

Gin and I spent two days in chaise lounges under sun umbrellas on the prettiest beaches on the Island. We took a ferry (glass bottom!) to Manganari the second day, and had lunch at the Taverna right on the beach. White sugar sand, clear blue water. No pictures, because it wasn't a fully-suited beach. Sorry folks.

Then we moved along to the island of Santorini, which is a Caldera. Click the link, Wiki's got a cool satellite picture of the island.

We stayed in Oia, on the north side of the Island. Well, see, first we tried to book a room at a hotel in Oia at the tourist office. But when we got to that hotel, it was about 2km outside of town, and not reachable by vehicle. We had to walk through a tortuous maze of (very traditional!) little white stone houses. The only way we found our way home that first night was to follow the little blue arrows spraypainted on the walkway. We stayed one night there, spent the day in Oia, and then moved to a swish hotel/spa in town.

Oia is the sunset capital of the island and every night cruise boats dump herds of people out to see the sunset. They line the streets.

and when the sun goes down they clap. We clapped too.

The city was very pretty by day and at night:

The next day we took a boat like this:

around the caldera. We stopped on the new volcanic island in the middle and climbed to the top.

and then the boat took us to a place where the volcano vents into the ocean, creating a hot spring. of course we jumped overboard and swam to it/in it.

All of the cities are perched on the edge of the Caldera

Which makes getting things onto and off of the island a bit of a logistical headache.

The second night we watched the sunset from the balcony of our hotel.

I prowled around the city a little bit afterwards, trying to catch it, and shop, and soak it in.

The next day Gin and I wrote postcards by the pool

and got "The Pesto Treatment," olive oil massages with a basil exfoliation in the hotel's spa.

it's a hard life.. and sometimes all that massaging wears a girl out

In the Santorini airport we met an 24yo American girl who was very excited to be running around in her bathing suit. From Santorini we flew back to Crete, and the next morning we flew to Berlin, I left Ginny in her pal Phoebe's apartment before jumping a 4h train home myself.

It was so much sun, great food, and a loooot of laying on beautiful beaches. I think I might have to go back next year.

Adventure Update: Beer

2007-09-12T17:13:00.002-04:00

Besides being a very smart comic overall, i relate especially to this xkcd. this year's country count keeps going up, as does the number of monuments/mountains/volcanoes scaled. i swear. if there's something cool, I've either got to climb it or put it on my head. but schtill...

Let me proceed today with some of the recent beer adventures. There have been many, some without photographic documentation (9pin bowling at the Weißbierhaus), but more with photodocumentation. and that's just what everyone wants to post, right? drunk pictures of themselves.. ah well, i figure you at home probably miss the antics.

August 03 the american interns, Alex and I jumped a train to Berlin to meet Jens for the Berlin Bierfestival. beverages began around noon and proceeded past midnight.

back LtoR: jens, chris, eric and alex before the mayhem began in earnest

the night went something like this:

the next day some of us were a little delicate, but we still ended up seeing cool things in berlin.

then there was a little more drinking, including the signature drink at the bar called Molotow Cocktail
and then there was some getting lost on the way home because the streetsigns were a little confusing, but then we found the train station, filled with fellow beer festival-ers headed to wherever. but they were all happy and singing songs, so that was pretty great.

August 15 - Maria Himmelfahrt (Mary's Ascension - Really!)
We had a day off of work thanks to the devoted Catholics in our area. Woo! I spent this holy day with the interns Chris and Eric, and Chris' visiting girlfriend Berryl. We decided to further our educations and do the Bamberg Beer Diploma. One must visit each of the 10 breweries in Bamberg and drink a half liter of their finest. This translates to 5L of beer in a day (all of this must be accomplished in one go). Unfortunately the Diploma is no longer officially offered because of "Personal offences, fully puked on bathrooms, and regular altercations" So we had to get our education in secret.

We started with the traditional Weißwurst/Weißbier breakfast at Schlenkerla (famous for its smoked beers). The Ami's had their first Weißwurst and learned to peel it. yumm..

I will say that Berryl, especially considering her lower body mass, did a tremendous job, downing somewhere on the order of 8 strong beers. Chris, Eric and I managed to earn the Diploma, although it was pretty close in my case..

The Bierdiplom day looked something like this:

Somehow 2 beer mugs from different breweries ended up in my "beer taster backpack" which we all picked up from the tourist info stand. it came with a bunch of beer coupons, a drunkard's treasure map, and some extra glassware/beermats in case of emergency.

let us also say that some extra beer mugs got into my pack when i was in the bathroom. the waitress at the last brewery noticed and asked for them back. she got her mugs. unfortunately, though, the bathroom was not left as nice as i'd found it.

Beer Event 3: Sandkerwa

Thank frickin god there's a church on the bar street in Bamberg. (there's a church on just about every street in Bamberg) And God bless the people who thought up having Church Anniversary parties. My sister was in town for the Sandkerwa.

Some special beer is brewed for the occasion by Mahrs Bräu:

The party went something like this:

The streets were like a wall of people:

(kinda shaun of the beer-drinkers, eh?)

Sept 22 i'm headed to Oktoberfest with these guys. Expect more pictures of us flipping each other off. Somehow that seems the height of sophistication after we've each had a gallon of beer.

Greece 2

2007-09-01T04:08:00.000-04:00

Grandmaster BK wins the prize for best response to the news that I'm in greece, with his

Pan-Hellenic pickup lines:

- Excuse me, is this where they keep the urns?

- (Pointing to stylishly torn jeans on another
person): Euripides?

- (Slowly spinning, with arms held majestically aloft
in a public square): Wow, Ancient Rome is really
magnificient!

the sister and i are having a fantastic time, involving octopi, volcanoes, and a looooot of olive oil. pictures when i get home. lots of amazing, post-card pictures when i get home. :D

ps. we are in the islands, not on the mainland where people keep dying in wildfires. no fire here, just a lot of smoke on the horizon - which makes for interesting sunsets. servus!

Punk Rock Knitters

2007-08-27T17:29:00.000-04:00

i'm normally totally averse to using this space to answer questionnaires, but i want to get a boxful of knitting prezzies from some mysterious punk rock girl somewheres, so i'm gonna play nice (more or less) and answer some questions for the good people at the Punk Rock Gift Exchange

1. Why are you punk?

because pink was already taken.. because i was not H enough for phunk. because all the other people with unusual piercings are punk, right? because punk has been watered down into an efficient catchall word for non-fitter-inners. ..so i kind of fit in there. hey, and then there's the music.. let us not forget about the loud simple, kick you in the gonads music. :D

2. What are your five favorite things? (these don't have to be knit related)

bicycles! and adventures! and gin! also books and yarn in lots of colors

3. What are your three favorite things that you have made with knitting/crochet?

i wear my fingerless mits all the time, and scarf and hat like mad in the winter. i'm always really proud of something when i make it myself, especially when i designed it myself too.

4. What five things would you love to see in a swap box someday?

yarn! (something luscious? unique? pretty much any!), knitting books/magazines that i haven't seen (especially non-english, or interweave spring 07 - i was moving and my subscription hadn't caught up to me), stitchmarkers, something special from the area of the swap-buddy, and maybe knitting accessories - fancy needles, funny measuring tape, project bags, sheep jokes.

5. What are your three favorite yarns? What are your three least favorite yarns?

cascade 220 is a real workhorse, i fell in love with Jo Sharp silk road aran tweed, and noro silk road. wow, kind of a theme there, but one's tweedy and the other has long color stripes.

least favorites include acrylic-y stuff, pink/blue/yellow baby pastels, and hemp - feels like knitting barbed wire! ..which come to think of it, would be pretty punk. maybe i don't qualify....

6. What are your five favorite delicacies?

chocolate, good teas (especially blacks), pesto, fresh bread, and good beer!

7. What are your three favorite guilty pleasures?

trashy TV series on DVD, big fantasy/scifi novels (especially Robert Jordan and Isaac Asimov), and iiiiiiice cream.

8. What are the five things you look forward to every week?

free time for sleeping/knitting/tinkering, a long bike ride, fresh bread at the bakery, emails from my friends back home (michigan), and playing soccer (football).

9. What do you collect?

bicycles, friends, embarassing stories.

umm.. i have a little start on yarn, roving and fabric stashes (i spin and sew a little too, just to subvert the patriarchy)

10. When is your birthday?

january 15

11. Do you have any wishlists?

on amazon.com and amazon.de, and i have a hearts list on etsy.

12. What would you like your pal to know that is not covered here?

hmm. i'm really looking forward to this. i love meeting new people and getting surprises, especially by post.

i live in germany, speak and read english and german, and pretty much just read spanish. i'm a engineer, so i'm pretty good at following instructions/pictures when i want to, or improvising a solution when i don't feel like following directions. i just knit my first pair of socks and was pretty darned proud. i like putting stitch patterns (lace, color, cable) into things that i make. oh, and my favorite colors are rich ones, saturated. i lean towards reds and oranges especially, but also blues/greens/purples.

hope this helps!

Crete

2007-08-26T09:21:00.000-04:00

Heraklion is happening. The intrepid sister has come to visit. We stayed 2 days in Germany, drinking beers at the big religious festival (anniversary of founding of the church on the bar-lined street). The street transforms, with special discos opening just for this weekend.

We drank vodka brause (put pop rocks into your mouth and wash it down with a vodka shot) and danced our pants off. in the morning we drank smoked hefeweizen and ate sausages and pretzels with sweet mustard.

then we took a cab to the train station, and a train to the airport, and a plane to Crete. tomorrow we will try to find our way out of the labyrinth at knossos before the minotaurs eat us.

it is warm and beautiful and relaxed here. the hibiscus flowers are blooming bright red. we visited a byzantine cathedral (painted to the gills). the people are charming and warm. all the girls are in skirts and little dresses (us too!). there is much drinking of coffee, and we are looking forward to octopi and ouzo. *eee* greece!

Nether Lands

2007-08-21T02:13:00.000-04:00

On July 20, Hannes and I hit the road again. This time, he drove (yaay!) and i passenged, knitting and reading as we crossed Germany and headed into Holland.

Friday night we got to Den Haag (the Hague). Saturday morning was beautiful and blue, but i had such a headcold, it was hard to enjoy it. What I liked in the Hague was that it just looks different. It's different from Germany, even though it's only about 6 hours away.

We saw some rad old cars

some cool bikes (oh my, the Dutch and their bikes! they do a lot of personalization)

I cajoled the boy into coming into this cotton fabric shop with me

and as part of our compromise, i visited a coffee shop and an art gallery with him

Our hotel was next to the NutsHouse and the Nuts Savings Bank

After we left the Hague we headed to Scheveningen. (a name the Dutch Resistance used as a codeword in WWII because the Germans and English can't manage to say the name right). It's a resort town on the North Sea. But it was cold and windy that day, so we dipped our toes in the ocean and had lunch at a restaurant on the boardwalk before moving along.

Next we camped in an area North and East of Amsterdam called Flevoland. It was probably in the mid-60°F's, or 15-17°C. It rained and we learned that our new tent is truly waterproof. Woo! so we stayed dry. we bought ourselves a present - Yahtzee, with the scorecard in Dutch. Dobbel Blok it was called, which is Kniffel, in German.

The campsite wasn't too scenic, but we made little trips out and aboot. First we went to Urk, a cute little fishing town on the coast of Ijslmeer.

These great views courtesy of the Lighthouse in Urk.

Which, surprisingly, lets you climb all the way to the top, and walk around the light on the tower.

Later we visited Arnhem, rented out bikes, and rode up to the Hogue Veluwe nature reserve.

We rode over the paths, through the dunes and the sparse pine forests. They have over 1000 free white bikes at the park, for people to use, but we were glad to have our own.

In the middle of the park is a modern art museum with a huge collection of older Van Gogh paintings. They were mostly dark and unhappy paintings. I was really drawn to this picture, though.

I saw her and thought, "I'd really like to have a drink with that gal, I bet she's got stories." Turns out she's Mata Hari, painted by Isaac Israel.

We also did a day trip to Amsterdam, before relocating there. Can you believe, they need parking structures for bicycles?

Amsterdam was beautiful, but none of my pictures really turned out. It seems a little more Vegas than Vegas, but at the same time old and picturesque like nobody's business.

Odd notes on the Netherlands. Peanut butter is called Pindakaas, and it's delicious there. At the breakfast buffet we learned (from illustrated single-serving packages) that the Dutch put butter on their bread, and then sprinkles. That's right, you may know them as Jimmies. Those little candy cylinders that one normally gets on ice cream. They put it on bread, and it's breakfast.

They also have chocolate spread that's like frosting, but counts as part of a healthy breakfast.

Pannekoeken - pancakes. The dutch first sautée veggies and meats, then pour in a pancake batter that doesn't rise much. So it's kind of like a mix between omelettes and pancakes. And when they eat sweet Pannekoeken, they use syrup called Stroop which tastes a lot like molasses.

Neither Hannes nor I were adventurous enough to throw whole herrings down our gullets. Maybe next time.

Füssen June 7, 2007

2007-07-11T07:59:00.000-04:00

Ok, a month late, but here we are.

I had June 7 off to celebrate... umm.. blood and love of christ? probably. so i made it a 4-day weekend and did a little travelling.

It pinkled rain all the way down to Füssen. Hannes and I took the "Romantic Road" because it was in all of my tourist guides as a really scenic drive.

Well, we kept getting stuck behind semi's on 2-lane country roads. It was pretty, but the only feature that made it more Romantic than any other country road in Bavaria was the castle we drove under. but also we got to see cows, which aren't allowed on the autobahn.

the first night we were there, we set up our tent, and visited the thermal baths. we got to swim around in saline water from geothermal springs at night and look up at the lit castles of Neuschwanstein and Höhenschwangau. There were also Saunas. J think around 12 of them, we did an Aromatherapy sauna in the Panorama room. A German man in a towel told jokes and poured apple-scented water on the furnace, while 30 or so naked strangers (about 50/50 men and women) sat on wooden benches and sweat.

in this picture you can just make out Neuschwanstein in the distance, it's halfway up on the right hand side..

there was bike riding around the lakes, in the foothills of the alps.

and swimming in some really green alpine lakes..

and roman soldier chainsaw art on the side of the bike path

we took a brief stop at the cyclist gas station (beer!)

then did a little wandering around the city of Füssen proper,

when i was suddenly invested in stocks

(ooh! look! a torture device! maybe i can fit my head in there!)

good Bayrisch food (Schweinehaxe - pig shoulder with sauer kraut and a Semmelkloß - bread dumpling)

it was really relaxing. no stress, just sort of figuring our way around as we went. lots of wandering around on 2 wheels.

finally, right before we left, we took the tour of Neuschwanstein, which inspired the Disney Castle.

The tour was awesome, but they shuffled us through a bit too quickly for my taste. The inside of this castle is _really_ richly done, it was a lot to absorb in 20 minutes. Unfortunately (for me) photography inside the castle is VERBOTEN. I held off and bought the book at the end, but it didn't have closeups on the architectural details I wanted to see.

Ah well. We were graciously permitted to take photos out the windows of the castle, looking over Alpsee, and Schloss Höhenschwangau.

I didn't get a really good postcard shot of Neuschwanstein itself, my pix were a bit piecemeal.

ah well. next time i'll climb up to mary's bridge and get the postcard shots. a fairly standard tourist photo was managed, though:

on the drive home we took the autobahn. it took 2 hours less than the drive down there. and now we know. :)

blood sacrifice to the domestic goddess

2007-07-10T02:18:00.000-04:00

wow. it seems that even though i've jumped on the nerd wagon with Flock, the nerdy bloggerfriendly web browser (which does tabs like firefox, yaay), my posts still don't write themselves! shock and awe.

ah well. including pictures is way easier, though.

flag cakes from my little 4th of july shindig. i had a couple of people over for Jesus Burgers (so named because i learned the recipe from a guy who looked like jesus. no jesuses were harmed in the making of these burgers).

the cakes are so from a JellO ad in Woman's day a couple years ago, but they usually go over ok.. except i couldn't find real jello, and had to substitute Quark for Cool Whip. and that was weird, because quark is some kind of yogurty cheese thing.. but it was the best i could come up with. *shrug* noone spit it out.

and these are the socks i was working on this weekend.

i grafted a toe!

right before i savaged myself with a bread-knife and got to visit the folks in the emergency room.

see what all this domestic tom-foolery does to a girl?!

i need to ride my mountain bike this weekend. or shoot something. jeez.

coco-coffee

2007-07-01T06:14:00.000-04:00

i don't consider myself gifted in the kitchen; i'd rather mix drinks than cook. also, i'm typically anti- kitchen appliances, usually they just take up too much counter space and don't get used enough.

that said, yesterday i bought a hot pot. it boils a liter of water in like 30 seconds. and i said to myself, heck, if we're boiling water like that, it'd be a good idea to have a french press so i can make coffee at home (i drink a lot of tea, but coffee's a once in a while thing when i'm oot and aboot).

last thursday i saw a "wife swap" program over here, in german. it was a minor triumph that i was able to look at the lace i was knitting while watching/listening and i understood everything that happened on the show. woo! my german's improving.

ok, it was absolute trash tv, total crap.. but it inspired me. there was this enormous fat woman that swapped. talk about an amazing bad example. she was enOOORMous, fat dumb and lazy. it was like MTV's Scared Straight. it made me want to eat fresh veggies and go running more often.

in the fresh food vein: friday night i made up a little chicken tikka masala, which turned out great. ingredient remaining in my fridge: coconut milk.

see where i'm going? i know, i'm a little all over the place.. so this morning i made my first french press coffee. and i thought, "what the hell? i'll try it!" and poured the coconut milk into my coffee instead of the skim milk. MMmmm.. ok, prolly fattier than the skim milk, but sooo yummy.

ah well, it's sunday..

so that's my new brunch suggestion, coconut milk instead of cream for your coffee.

shit, look at me, i'm making brunch suggestions. aaaaah!!

Let's go to Croatia!

2007-06-24T15:56:00.000-04:00

Why not? There hasn't been a war there for like 10 years. And they're advertising the hell out of their Tourist industry all over CNN Europe.

The drive down was interesting, but also kind of crappy.

It rained a bunch, but the Alps were gorgeous.

Photos were taken while i was busy passenging... my gentleman driver, Der Hannes:

We drove past castles in Austria

and through these Alps in Italy

In Italy the traffic was crazy. It was raining like hell, and a dark 10pm when we decided to stop for the night. Údine was the town we stopped at. Údine is all traffic circle roundabout things, with vague signs and sometimes they even point in the wrong direction to confuse the non-Italian-speaking visitors. Oh, I can tell you that makes it more fun. Did i mention we were also hungry?

After going through 173 roundabouts, getting dizzy and throwing up, we found a cheap hotel for the night. When we asked the owner dude where to get food, he said the kitchen was already closed, but we could take crackers and marmelade from the breakfast buffet.

Which we did, but then we walked out and found the most delicious pizza joint in the world. My pizza had pepperoni, some kind of marinated mushrooms, and a smoked semi-hard white cheese, in addition to the usual tomato sauce and mozzarella.

The next morning we took off as early as we could, after a little brioche and espresso in the dining room decked out like the inside of a ship. We drove further South and the weather broke a little bit. In Triéste we stopped at a scenic lookout and i got my first view of the Mediterranean.

Also at this scenic lookout, we found the Wild Cats of Triéste

They were not nice cats, but they live there, so we left them in peace after a few pictures.

After driving through Slovenia, we got to Rovinj, Croatia.

We found a vacation condo, and stayed with an old woman named Maria who spoke only Croatian and German (she was a guest worker near Stuttgart in the 60's). Two bicycles came with the apartment, so we had transportation for getting around town.

Our first full day there, we rode up and down the coast a bit to get the feel of where we were.

We played on the rocks a little, and sunned..

squinty

It was really day 2 that we spent any time on the beaches. It's still funny for me to swim in saltwater.. i'm used to not seeing the other shore, and it still being freshwater.

Then there was some wandering into the old town of Rovinj, with its slippery stone streets.

its laundry on the line

and general charmingness.

We walked up to the big church on the hill, but as I was wearing shorts, it was not permitted to enter.. but the way up was gorgeous..

One of the things i liked best about this harbor town was the fresh fish. Calamari wasn't just like deep fried rubber bands, it practically melted in my mouth.

Nets. but not internets.

Happy Fishercats

sunset on the oldtown

I really liked Croatia, the people were laid back, it was really cheap, and everyone spoke German. Hannes doesn't so much speak English, so we chattered away in German the whole time. It was funny, there were a few English couples around, and they really stuck out like sore thumbs with all the Croats speaking German to the other tourists.

We drove home all in one day, it took about 8 hours of driving, through 5 countries. We stopped in Italy for pizza just South of the Austrian border. This was in the ladies room, instead of a toilet..

yup, i managed not to pee on my shoes or fall down. but it was a struggle.

Outside, though, the town was gorgeous..

House warmed? Check!!

2007-06-19T15:40:00.000-04:00

Saturday, 26 May, 2007

Tiki Housewarming Party. Einweihungsfeier.

What a weekend. It started with a visitor unexpectedly cancelling on Thursday, I ended up working an extra day (when i would have been picking him up from the airport). Then i was running around with my head cut off trying to get ready for the party. cleaning, shopping, basting the chef... it was tough work!

When the first guests came, there was still a case of sparkling water in the front hall, and i was working on the bean dip. heh. they were good enough to haul up the last of the supplies while i put together a 4 layer dip.

ok, and i'm not usually one to blog about cooking, because really, that's not one of my gifts. but MAN! the bean dip was a hit!! it was just canned refried beans, some sour cream, a couple jars of mediocre salsa, and shredded mozzarella cheese as topping. i couldn't even find orange cheese over here. all in all, i'd say it was an unispired layer dip. but when the guests came it was DEMOLISHED!! i was ecstatic.

i also grilled up some satay, made guacamole and assembled a fruit salad.

but on to the peoplepics! Matthias brought a taste of Michigan for me - Bell's Oberon!!

Mark wanted to taste what i claimed was "good american beer" because he didn't believe it existed. ta-da!

ok, he wasn't terribly impressed, but he said it was passable. me, i was giddy.

speaking of Mark, he brought me a traditional german housewarming present - bread and salt!

gemütlich.

some of the guests chilled out in the living room

fréderíque, patrícia and irene

many of the guests took refuge on the balcony, because it was cooler outside.

Patrícia learned the updraft joys of skirt-wearing by standing near the fan in the kitchen. stefan also partook in some skirt-joy.

a good portion of the former-michigan-residents crew was in attendance.

christian nitsch, alex and matthias schnapp

and a lot of people came in festive clothes.

jörg, hannes, mark (who normally eschews color completely) and joachim.

we met mark's elusive girlfriend katja, who likes ska concerts, but doesn't want to waste her hearing on punk (which is probably why i hadn't met her before)

near the end, there were some absurd statue of liberty photos taken... not quite sure how that started, but for your viewing pleasure:

and then there was a little kitchen dance-party

before the real experimentation began:

i had a great time, and was really glad to be able to host everyone. superthanks to everyone who was able to make it. especially the great folks not pictured (because someone was a little tipsy and less-than-focused on party documentation).

Lula and Mischa brought a tasty Spanish Tortilla, Fréderíque and Denis brought a lemon torte, and a sweet little plant i'm trying not to kill. Ben brought a little japanese maple, which will have to be watered when i'm on vacation, so i'd better get integrated quick!

matthias and alex also brought a beermug from their favorite potter, which i now use almost exclusively! beer comes in 0,5L bottles, which are larger than my pint glasses. but the beer fits perfectly into the mug, which is pretty and nice in the hand and mouth interfaces as well. :)

Sandrine and Nadine came decked in flowers, bearing candle torches.

My landlord and his girlfriend made it, although the people living directly under me weren't available for comment. Many guests also brought bottles of wine, which will be enjoyed to their fullest (even though i may not always remember who brought what.. alcohol may have been a factor, but thank you. :D ).

Stefan and Patrícia, whose social interaction is nothing short of fun to watch

brought a lovely chocolate mousse, and helped with lugging, toting and guacamole prep.

room for living

2007-06-19T05:56:00.000-04:00

I've been travelling a bit, so there are more stories/pictures forthcoming, especially croatia and the mad fairytale of füssen.

but right now: living room additions.

art! picked up in rovinj croatia

the artist is Austrian, but his Serbian wife, runs the gallery.

and my neeeeeew sofa! italian leather, leck mich am Arsch.

it took 3 months to get here, but it finally arrived on the backs of 2 strong (swearing) delivery men.

when I haven't been travelling, I've been cleaning and organizing and sorting sh*t out. you wouldn't believe what a pain it is to not have built in closets! I've been building armoires and stuffing them full. yarnstash drawer pix will also be forthcoming.

anyway, now the sofabed is now in the guest bedroom, and one can walk through the room to the window, and access the bookshelf.. brilliant!

Mid May StalagMites

2007-06-03T14:23:00.000-04:00

May 12, Hannes and I went for a Sunday drive, about an hour to Pottenstein in the Fränkische Schweiz (Franconia's Switzerland). My tourbook for Bavaria says Pottenstein's Teufelshöhle (devil's cave) has the best and biggest stalactites/stalagmites in the area.

We parked at the cave and had lunch at the trout farm/smokehouse.

fish, brötchen, meerrettich (horseradish):

Then into the cave. Bears came into the caves to die 80,000 years ago, and many couldn't find their way out.

but the rock formations are the real highlight.

it takes 13 years to deposit a millimeter of calcium on these things.

on the drive back i couldn't help but stop by a little bridge over this river. it's spring water, so we froze our feet off in it. but definitely worth it.

we were happy campers.

May Holidays!!

2007-05-17T14:53:00.000-04:00

Here's one thing I love about Germany, Beer for Breakfast. it's traditional. really!

here's another thing i love about germany: religious holidays. i'm in Bavaria, which was a very catholic state back in the day and still is to some degree.

Here are the holidays I get off in the next few weeks:

May 1: Labor day.

May 17: Cristi Himmelfahrt - Christ's Ascension

May 28: Pfingsten - Pentecost

June 7: Fronleichnam - Feast of Corpus Christi - A celebration of the Blood and Love of Christ.

August 15: Mary's Ascension

I'm hardly working at all this month!

april showers/may flowers

2007-05-07T06:32:00.000-04:00

and here we are a month later..

I was really off-kilter after salzburg. I don't know what it was, I think I got tired out and had some kind of massive cognitive dissonance. Either way, I just couldn't make myself feel comfortable and happy again. so I spent a coupla weeks feeling crummy. really terrible, actually.

I was still going to work, though not super-productive, and I was still playing soccer (hoping some running around in the fresh air with new friends would help).

one day a pal I met through work invited me to a sweaty basement to hear a punk band play. suddenly, everything got better.

we walked to the show, had a coupla beers, and he introduced me to some of his friends. I hit it off especially well with one of them. since then, I've been more able to get my act together. I've been feeling more like myself.

I've been to a couple more shows, met some more of the nice german kids with the big tattoos and piercings in their faces, and it's going better. I've learned to eat weisswurst, the german breakfast sausage served with sweet coarse mustard, pretzels and beer.

I pulled the mountain bike down and started riding around the woods here. I almost cried I was so happy to find a trail.

the trail i found sort of dumped out into this field. i rode around some other bandito areas and then turned around and rode up this hill (below). i live just on the other side of the castle.

the descent to get back to my apt is suuuuuUUuper fast. there's a grade of 15% at one point. my new goal is to be able to climb up the backside of the hill on the trail without getting off my bike.

------------

this weekend I discovered that the rundown area of town is a more interesting part of the shopping district. there's a cool second hand boutique (so I don't have to wear the clothes everyone else is wearing), an asian grocery store, a used-bike shop, and some other small clothiers.

------------

I delved into the fascinating world of Tchibo - imagine if starbucks (similarly famous for selling coffee in bean and brewed forms) started selling underwear, bike parts, insurance, garden furniture, and kitchen utensils. it's a very strange store, and I'm fascinated. I bought some underwear at Tchibo the other day, but haven't tried the coffee yet.

------------

I learned about milk. you can buy milk in foil/paper tetra-paks off the shelf that will stay good for 3+ months unrefrigerated, or you can buy regular fresh milk out of the refrigerator at the grocery store.

------------

I'm getting lessons on language and everyday germlife from my new german friends. in return they get to see their homeland with fresh foreign eyes. kind of a cool tradeoff.

so here we are. it's going well. I'm getting my life back, it's got some new players and a different backdrop, but it looks and feels like my life again.

this week some folks from our Detroit office are coming to town, so there will be some english speaking and some beer drinking. I have a soccer game on Saturday, and am probably going to see a cave with stalactites/stalagmites on Sunday. :) it's going better.

Easter in Salzburg

2007-04-16T17:12:00.000-04:00

In Salzburg I really liked the castle.

I walked through a couple of really nice parks, too:

the modern art museum was interesting, but one of the exhibits knocked me way off my axis - seeing twin towers cleanup pix in Austria was just a little too much for me. I think I had the cultural Bends for the whole week afterwards.

i did a little shopping, but mostly i enjoyed spring and the easter decorations.

salzburg was cute, more pix here, but there just wasn't enough to keep me busy for 4 days, so i cut bait and came home. i was kind of proud of myself, learning to read train and bus schedules on the fly! i'm a bit handicapped, coming from a big town devoid of public transport.

sunday i spent the afternoon lazing. easter monday i was out on the bike for what turned out to be about 4 hours.. haha. oops.

but i saw cool things, like these easter decorations:

this town in the distance:

the road winding on

and the Levi Strauss birth-house and Museum in Buttenheim. That's right. Buttenheim. hehe.

and then this easter basket showed up at my door. woo!

HAPPY EASTER!!

Salzburg - I'm out the Door!

2007-04-05T07:46:00.000-04:00

Today I am at the office in jeans and sneakers. right after work I'm going to catch the train through munich down to Salzburg. *eee* I can't wait. I might be a little overpacked, but I'm just so excited. this is my first real travel-by-myself explore-europe weekend.

Salzburg translates directly as Salt-castle. I want to tour the castle, and see the Modern Art Museum. Hopefully I'll get a little shopping in and maybe an Easter brunch. I don't think it'll take too much work to avoid the Sound of Music tours. *hope*

last night I shopped a little at the "mall" near my office. I bought train snax and found 2 english language books I wanted! I also picked up an album by the Kings of Convenience. Hooray for Norwegian music! between them and Kim Hiorthøy, I'm convinced.

I picked this knitting project kind of at random. Jenn asked me a question about it, and after i figured it out I decided I would knit it up myself. I found my circ needles last night and packed the shrug into my rucksack, so it'll get a good start on the train. watch out! I've been hoarding this red and orange single ply yarn forever, so I'm pretty excited to see how it knits up.

Closets and Couches

2007-04-01T12:50:00.000-04:00

I have experienced some improvements in living conditions of late.

For one thing, the blasted Schränke (closets) are built. so now my clothes hang up.

Ta-Da!

Before I left Detroit I threw out my third-hand couch, the one that was at least 20 years old and didn't owe me a thing. In fact, there was a little debacle with the apartment complex who would get charged a fee by the dumpster service for furniture removal. I gladly paid the $35 so i wouldn't have to haul the thing to the dump in my pool-car in my last 2 harried days of getting ready to leave.

Ok, so that was the old couch. and i thought, "I will get a new couch when i get to Germany" hah. that was before i figured out i'd have to buy my own light fixtures and build closets.

in the interim i was going to lounge in my eames chair, which, after 7 weeks is still at the furniture repair joint. so i've been here with hardwood floors, 90° dining table chairs, and chilling out on my good america bed (german beds are usually 2 twin mattresses in a queen bed frame).

finally, i have the most basic things taken care of. i have had time to do a little bit of real furniture shopping (aside from Ikea).

you would not believe some of the crazy things they sell in furniture stores these days, the couches were so weird. a bunch of them looked like leather minivan bench seats. they had whiplash headrests and stuff. what's that about? then there were some with adjustable arms or backs, where the frame was on some kind of ratcheting catch/pawl system. I don't know. I liked one of them, but just couldn't figure out how I'd live with it. a couch is such a central piece of furniture, it has to be formal enough for entertaining, but comfy enough for those days when you stay home sick and watch crapTV in your pajamas all day.

I sat on a bunch that looked great, but had no spring in the seat, or were too low, or felt like I just plunked down on cardboard.

I settled on this one, because it felt like a couch is supposed to feel, and i think it looks pretty classic. I ordered it in dark cocoa leather, with an ottoman for extending the lounge-surface. i can't wait. but it's going to take 10 weeks to get here.

10 weeks is a long frickin time to continue to be without a couch. I was going to order a sofabed off the ikea website, but they wouldn't let me order the one i wanted. Friday i got so fed up and motivated, that i went to the ikea and picked it up.

I should say, Picknick and I went and picked it up. She is both my best imaginary friend and favorite internal combustion vehicle.

I was wrestling the box containing the steel frame off a pallet onto a cart when a nice german guy came up and asked me (politely in german) if i would like some help. I wanted to say, "I have to do this myself, because if i can't get it onto the cart and into the car, there is no way i'm hauling it up 2 flights of stairs myself." but i wasn't really prepared, and i couldn't find the words just on the fly... i kind of stuttered something and he asked, "What do you want?" in clear english. "Nothing. Thank You." I replied.

I did manage to get the frame (6'x3' and about 70 lbs) onto the cart. I scored the last red corduroy couch-cover, and found the cushion/mattress that i wanted. Everything checked out fine, and then it was onto the task of getting it into Picknick. Another kind german offered to help me load the big box into my car, and this time i accepted the offer graciously.

With the back seats down, and the front seat leaned all the way back with the headrest removed, I was able to get the frame into the car and close the liftgate. Woo!

Picknick and I drove home and I hauled that crazy box up my 2 flights of stairs. One. Step. At. A. Time.

Now, it is assembled, and I have lounge surface again! i can veg in front of the TV. I even watched a DVD this weekend to celebrate.

When the leather couch gets here, this interim sofa will be in the guest bedroom/library and function as secondary sleeping arrangements. How grown up! I'll have a guest room!

At the very least, it's getting more comfortable around here. Gott sei Dank!

leaf ant

2007-03-15T14:42:00.000-04:00

This is what i feel like this week. and i'm kinda proud of myself.

German apartments don't normally come with light fixtures, closets, or kitchens. I lucked out with a built-in kitchen. But the rest has been up to me.

Enter Ikea!

I had some four 2.36m closets delivered. I am about 1.7m tall. I managed to build them all up myself. uprighting them was a trick, but i managed.

the 4th and final closet body got built yesterday. all 4 are now screwed together (it took a little power drillin, but that was fun). I even managed to hang a huge heavy mirrored door last night.

now I've got to put the sliding doors on the 2 big closets and hang the second mirror door.

I had this big heavy old steelcase desk that just doesn't fit the new joint, so it got unscrewed to components and hauled down the 2 flights of stairs piece by piece.

today is Sperrmüll day, it happens in spring and fall, where the garbage men pick up big pieces of garbage - furniture, appliances and the like. I was just in time.

My First Austrian Ski-Weekend

2007-03-08T16:55:00.000-05:00

I rode to St. Anton Austria in a bus with a pack of Siemens Lawyers.

We stayed in a cute little Austrian Guesthouse. i loved the decor.

Breakfast was a buffet with cereal, coldcuts and brötchen, and yogurt.

the front yard looks like this:

Ulf and I made friends Saturday morning, we decided our tocques matched the other person's getup better,

so we swapped.

it was rainy/snowy all day.

we took a couple of breaks to dry out and warm up.

Aprés Ski at Mooserwirt was a massive highlight.

It was right on the hill, and their motto is "Mooserwirt, probably the worst Skihut on (Mt) Arlberg"

Imagine the best clubnight ever, in a rustic log cabin tricked out with sound system and disco lights.

everyone sweaty in skiboots and snowpants.

sometimes even their helmets

with bartenders carrying trays of beer and shots through the sea of hot salty bodies.

Sunday the weather was amazing azure clear.

this is the league of out-of-bounds boarders

there was a bit of horsing around,

but it was all good fun.

True, the Alps kicked my *ss, but I had an amazing time. I'll be back to try again..

Bank Notes

2007-03-07T07:14:00.000-05:00

here we pay for just about everything with debit cards. so Thursday when I went to buy my soccer shoes and my debit card was refused I got a little worried, but payed with a visa.

I called the bank the next day, they said if my card was locked I should take it in to my branch. ok, this is Friday. I have 60€ in pocket, and am leaving for the Austrian Ski weekend (pix soon) at 2pm.

I went to the bank at noon. I explained the problem. The guy took my card and went into a back room for 20 minutes. I waited, examined my cuticles, and waited. He came back and gave it to me saying it should work again.

I took it to the ATM and no go. I went back to him. He came with me to the ATM and I showed him how it didn't work. He told me that he fixed my magnetic stripe, but it could be the smartchip that was locked. To fix that they'd have to send it to Card Services office in Munich, it would probably take a week.

My face lit right up when I heard this news.

Fine, I said. Give me some money to tide me over, and send the card to Munich. Ok, so he wrote up the slip and checked the computer. Guess what! My card was fine, my Account was locked!

Why? He got a coworker to come over. Turns out they wanted to see my passport and get a copy of my work permit. The phone number on file was a pool cell phone i gave back a month ago, so they couldn't reach me. When they couldn't reach me they did the one thing that guaranteed I'd come in: Shut off the money. ha.

so she made more copies of my passport, gave me some money, and sent me on my way.

And it only took an hour! bah. I love it here. it's going really well.

New Shoes!

2007-03-01T15:01:00.000-05:00

Monday I start spring training at the Fußball Verein, or Soccer Club, as you like.

I played in elementary and high school. This time I bought better shinguards. Schinbeinschone (was how it sounded in the store).

Soccer is lots of running, but also some of kicking! And spikey shoes and tall socks. all good. :)

Picknick: VDub in za Haus!

2007-02-28T15:27:00.000-05:00

Meet Picknick:

She's not a GTI, but I had to link these videos

Repreeeezenting Deutschland

Let me hear you say Vvaat!

this is her backside:

she's got backup sensors, heated mirrors, heated windshield squirts, heated seats.. she's all kinds of warm and quiet. her benzin (gas) motor runs a lot more quietly than the diesels i've had on longterm loan.

I asked that an MP3 input be built in special. turns out it's a direct iPod jack, and not just an Aux input.

so now i don't have to listen to scheiß german radio. woo, no more Wham! and the iPod is controlled by the cd player buttons when it's plugged in. Picknick's a clever gal.

she also likes to party. you can tell, because she comes with her own bottle opener, standard:

every good partygirl does.

speaking of parties! she came with an italian pasta-party in a basket

note the two bottles of wine. Why does a german car come with pasta? your guess would be as good as mine.

One more note on the cleverness of this car - VW wins points for best use of a logo badge. It works as the lift-gate handle. i stared at it for a couple minutes trying to figure out how one opens the trunk.

How's that for a cool unpimped Auto? Veedubz in the Hizzaus!

Pictures

2007-02-27T14:07:00.000-05:00

You may notice more pictures being posted lately, i've finally got my access sorted out and am trying to share more of what I see.

This is the view North from my doorstep. You can see 3 of the 4 towers of the King's Cathedral.

Looking South you can't see much, but to get to work I drive between the King's Cathedral and St. Michaelsberg, pictured below.

Keen observers will also notice i've added a link to the sidebar under my profile. I've started to keep a gallery in Smugmug where I just sort of dump the latest pics i've taken from in and around Bamberg. Sometimes something catches my eye and I want to share. It'll go in Smugmug, and if I'm not too lazy, i'll blog about it. :)

DMV / Sec of State

2007-02-27T14:00:00.000-05:00

These are the opening times for the DMV in Bamberg.

I had to register my car and the license plates before i could pick it up. When did I go? 2pm on Friday. When do they close on Friday? 11:45am.

11:45?!

Yes. 11:45. it's very clearly marked there.

imagine how nice it would be to work in this office that is open just more than 50% of the normal work-hours. lovely.

i finally got in yesterday at 8:3o. it took me 20 minutes and cost 20€. no biggie.

Wheels Up!

2007-02-26T13:31:00.000-05:00

I had the best bike ride Sunday. It stopped raining around 3. I kicked myself in the head, saying "You'll feel better once you're on the bike!" I loaded the iPod with my Ride It Like You Stole It mix, pulled on my lycra and had the most wonderful feeling, almost like putting on my own skin. ok, that sounds kind of weird, but it felt very Right.

I pumped the tires up to full pressure and nearly killed myself taking the bike down 2 flights of stone staircase in my hard-soled bike shoes. guess we aren't going to do that again.

I started down the hill, and turned at the bottom, taking a road with gentle but constant incline. I rode past the hospital, noted a little nature area that might be good for fat tire riding, and kept going.

I went screeeeeaming fast downhill into Bug, a little village. through Bug and I found a bike-lane that ran along the river, next to a forest and out into the farm fields through one hamlet - 10 houses, chickens scratching in the back yard, wood piled up next to the houses, tractor parked on the curb. sun breaking through clouds. it was perfect.

I was on the road by 4:30, home just after 6. My computer died on the boat ride over, so I have no idea how far I went. I looped around Bamberg, using street signs to find my way back. along the river into the city, past joggers and dogs, under bridges, back into the baroque/gothic/rococco of my new hometown.

With a "Gruß Gott" salutation to a passing neighbor, I scrambled the bike up the stone stairs in my slippery shoes.

I gulped down my Supertang recovery drink, happy as clams.

later, I put up my new-to-me bike-stand (thanks tim!). and this is what my front hall now looks like.

aren't they pretty? :) I'm dorkhappy to look at them every day, instead of having them exiled to the second bedroom, which functions as cold storage for the moment.

Amerikaners

2007-02-21T15:29:00.000-05:00

I'm a little embarassed. This picture comes from the local grocery store.

While Berliners are Jelly Donuts, Amerikaners are lemon-cakes that are frosted half-white and half-black.

This cake-mix + 10 minutes of baking will give you 14 mini-Amerikaners.

Segregation anyone?

Nürnberg, Nürnberg, and soon more Nürnberg.

2007-02-20T13:06:00.000-05:00

the concert last week was fab. the short story is: good show, i yelled a request, but they didn't play it. instead they dedicated their live performance of this dance to me..

woo!

so that was pretty cool. i thanked them for it afterwards, and they were all really cool guys. we did some shots, and i got a ride home from the father of an indiekid i met. that was nice, because i totally missed the last train home.

since then, I've signed a lease on the Golf, ordered closets from Ikea, and figured out that you can go into the Beverage Markets and buy a mixed case of beer. So my newest science project is Hefeweizen tasting. I picked up 20 different kinds. heh. I love science.

Looking over my list of exciting things, it sounds like a lot of the fun is acquisition, but really it's more of getting comfortable and figuring out how to make life a little less strange here.

sunday i had a good exploratory adventure! i went to nürnberg to the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Wow, they had cool stuff. pix soon.

this thursday i'll be headed back to Nürnberg for a Thunderbirds are Now! concert.

I was asked if i'd drive an hour to see these bands, or if i'm just going to get a good home-feeling. Even in MI i had to drive 45 min to an hour to get to these shows. So it's both for me. I like the bands/music (seen both before). I hadn't been to a show since the night before Thanksgiving. that's a really freakin long hiatus for a girl who would usually take in 2-3 shows per week. sometimes more..

So now i'm finding the scene here, keeping an eye on the papers, ordering subscriptions to the Who's Doing What Where magazines for Berlin, Nürnberg, München.. I like to keep busy.

Next weekend will probably have some bike riding. I want to do a little more exploring of the surrounds. But that's very weather-dependent. I might also go looking for a couch again.. It'll be nice to have some cushy lounge-surface that's not my bed. but it probably won't get here before the eames chair comes back from the shop :( *shrug* ah well.

it's going pretty well. tonight is middle eastern food with a friend from work and her bf, and a guy i met at the Foreigner Pubnite. I'm going to ride my bike to meet them. hooray for the little things!

Kleinigkeiten - Little things

2007-02-14T09:20:00.000-05:00

Nothing huge has passed since Saturday, but there are lots of little things.

My HR dept is reading through a VW Golf lease agreement - I'm looking at 3 years in the Golf TOUR If it all goes well, I might be able to pick up the car on Monday. That is, if I sign the purchase papers and follow the 17 step dance to get insurance and license plates.

I'm crossing my fingers, but not holding my breath.

All of my ceiling light fixtures are up, so my wall switches are now more than decorative - they're functional! I still don't remember to turn the lights on when I walk into a room, but I'm sure I'll get used to having fixtures again.

I visited Ikea again. I picked up a few necessaries, and a couple things I just wanted, but mostly I did recon! I sat on couches and decided that Ikea does not have the couch for me. I hated them all with the exception of one leather sofa, but the only non black/brown/white color it comes in is an ugly burnt orange. so that won't work.

with that cleared up, I went on to research closet guts. there are no built-in closets here, so I have to buy some closets that will stand in my room. I figured out that I want real drawers which go on rollers, not the baskets that just slide in and out. I didn't have time to configure the whole thing, though. which turns out to be lucky! I can config it online, place the order, and save 30€ on delivery. whoa-ho! The closets are over 2meters high, and there's no way I'd be able to (or even want to) haul those boards out of Ikea, stuff them in my rental Golf, and then schlep them up 2 flights of stairs. Delivery is not a luxury, in this apt, it's a requirement. I've gotten soft.

the moving company picked up all the leftover boxes and packing material from my move, so now there's room just about everywhere, but especially in my front hall (where the bikes will live).

After the packing pickup I stopped by the Rathaus (city hall). The girl at the Infothek was able to give me Yellow Sacks! This is the special garbage bag you need for recycling plastics. The Germans call themselves Umweltschutzmeisters Or Masters of Environmental Protection. All of the garbage is separated here, plastics and metals in the Yellow Sacks, glass goes into green/brown/clear collection points on most streets, food waste goes into Biomüll, Compost. Old Paper is collected on the curb once a month, and everything else goes into Restmüll.

The garbage thing has been a great mystery to me, and with my Yellow Sacks I think I can do it right.

I went online and bought a train ticket to Nürnberg and printed it out! eeee! I'm learning! I used my discount card, and earned BahnPoints. Not sure what they're good for, but it can't hurt, right? (Imagine trying to navigate NWA.com in a foreign language and still managing to earn all your frequent flyer miles)

So tonight I'm going to Nürnberg. OK Go is playing. I hope they play Crash the Party.

You're not the prettiest girl in town
I'm not the only boy with sullied
clothes and a sullen frown,
To hell with Valentine's, to hell with perfume
To hell with chocolates and picnics
And Sinatra tunes

Cuz while
the rest of the girls are drowning in roses
and songs he composes
And
while the rest of the guys are all trying
All trying so hard

[Chorus]
Oh girl, let's crash the party!
El Dorado on the lawn
(hey, hey, hey)
Let's burn holes in the carpets
Kicking, shouting,
dancing on the tables all night long

that would make my day.

my plan for the next few days:

Wednesday: Ok Go in Nürnberg
Thursday: Auslander Stammtisch (Foreigner Pubnite)

For the weekend, I might just go back to Nürnberg, they've got a lot of shopping, a cool museum and a big castle. Someday I want to stay in the hostel there, it's actually in the castle walls.

oh, I also found a new way to get to work. Instead of skirting around the whole city, I head west, go up steep narrow one-way streets to the cathedral area, turn at the top of the hill. Then I get to ride down a long steep cobblestoned downhill that dumps me out closer to work. it's hilarious, it's all one way streets with huge mediaeval walls built on either side. sharp blind corners and the sort of thing we just don't have in the states. I'm a happy girl. It's a great daily reminder that I'm in Europe.

Such a Day! New Bike Joy!!

2007-02-10T11:50:00.000-05:00

Today I bought a new bike, the red one. It's a Diamant Ubari, and i am madly in love. Diamant is a german brand, made in Chemnitz, i think.

It's a bike for riding around the city. You can tell because it's a girlybike with flat pedals and a kickstand. so i can wear a skirt and flipflops and ride it to the biergarten!

It's got the mandatory lights on the front and back, they're powered by the front hub (some kind of friction collector, thank you shimano!). Check out those fenders! I know, but don't be too jealous. just come visit me and i'll take you to the store so you can buy one of your own.

It's got Magura hydraulic rim brakes, and a bell that makes that scraping RINGARINGA sound. :D i'm a happy girl.

here they call a bike a Fahrrad (sounds like far-rod). Mine is going to be a Barrad. RINGARINGA!!

Ski Weekend Planned!

2007-02-09T13:31:00.000-05:00

*eee* A coworker's boyfriend works for Siemens Legal. His department is going on a trip to Austria, and they had 2 extra seats. So I'm in!

We'll be staying here, and snowboarding here, in the St. Anton area.

Hopefully I'll make friends with some of the lawyers on the bus. They'll come in handy if any of my Shenanigans in Österreich land me in hock. :)

Here's how I want to spend the weekend:

and then like this:

It's what they do here!

Caught in the Internets!

2007-02-06T19:03:00.000-05:00

The log-on info came today, i managed to get it into my DSL router, and convinced my computer to let me use this as an internet connection.

i'm turning mental cartwheels. ..but going to bed now. it's late.

interNOT

2007-02-05T11:07:00.000-05:00

well, on the 25th the internets didn't come. it has been a debacle.

it still is.

on the 24th, I received a second DSL splitter. I had yet to receive a DSL modem. knowing I had an installation appointment the next day, I marched myself right into the Telekom store, and asked for a modem. I took them some discussion, but in the end I walked out with a free modem. "Woo!" I thought, "Score 1 for me, being all prepared and shit." right.

The installation guy from Tkom came on the 25th when I expected him. He had to do something to the wires in the wall to make the phone work, but he assured me it would let the internets still work too. Ok. Well, I had hooked up my laptop to the Modem to try to get it ready for its big date with the internets. The first setup page went well, but the second asked me for some Username Password stuff. I looked through all of the papers Tkom has given me. Nothing that resembles the requested information.

I asked the installation guy. He tells me, "Oh, no, you need your Access data. It comes in a different kind of envelope, the kind that tears of both edges, and the back is all black so noone can look through it.."

"Oh," I say, with utmost dejection.

Next I called the Tkom hotline. Sweet. I managed to get through their automated menus to a real person. I asked them to speak slowly, please. I explained my situation, and asked for the Access Information like the installer told me.

"We've already sent it. But it came back to us.. Was your mailbox labelled correctly?"

My mailbox had just that day gotten the right name on it. "Ok, we'll send it again," they told me. "It should take 2-3 working days."

Understand, dear reader, that I have been hooked on the internets since my Mom was getting her Master's degree in 1992. She was hooked up with the University of Michigan on one of the earlier incarnations of the internet. I have been twitching and feverish in my last 2 months without a home internet connection. No kidding, there have been cramps, and sweating, even a little delirium.

It's how I'm going to stay in touch, you see, with my family, friends and loved ones on that other continent in that other hemisphere. At work I'm behind the Berlin Firewall, barely able to access personal email. Myspace is verboten, and web-camming is just a weird idea at the office...

I had to give back the company cell phone on the 31st, so no more free calls home. This is where I was counting on the internets to come in.. Well, my Access Info should have come last Tuesday/Wednesday, Jan 30/31. It did not. I figured the Deutsche Post system is a little wonky, maybe I'd give them another day or two. Thursday came and went, no security envelope. Friday, nothing, but I was caught in meetings all day. Today, finally, I called Telekom again.

The nice lady who answered found that a week and a half ago I requested Access Info. and they just didn't send it. She promises this time it's going to go in the mail. I swear, if I don't get it in 2 days, I'm going to be calling them up and using what the Germans call Schimpfworte. That's cuss words to most english speakers..

technology. where would I be without it? oh.. wait..

Meet the Neighbors

2007-01-24T12:51:00.000-05:00

Move-in day, around 20:30 I was getting pretty hungry. I figured I'd get dinner, then go over to hallstadt and collect the remainder of my belongings there. I walked to the italian joint at the end of my street. it was my first visit there. I put on my good wool coat, a red tocque (it didn't quite match, but I wanted to wear it). I also wore a fav beat up pair of jeans and green sweater, all just arrived!

as I walked out the door I got hit by the first snowflakes of winter. at the end of january, but still, I was elated to see them. it was nice that it waited for me to be all moved in. it was just dusting down as I walked into the restaurant. the italian owner was on me as I walked through the door, all Prego! Prego! and Bella all over the place. I took a seat and he recommended the Merlot, and a linguine dish.

the restaurant was quiet, i could hear one table in another room. his german wife, and probably a sister or a cousin (italian), and a nephew (italian) were sitting at a table across from me. they Salut'ed with me when my wine came. I read and enjoyed my wine while my dinner was being prepared. While I was waiting, the owner dude noticed it was snowing, so he called his sister in italy. they talked about me a little bit, and then he put me on the phone with her. So I told her it really was snowing, and have a good evening. the cousin at the table across from me laughed, and we all smiled together.

Dinner was great, it was tomatoes and ham and onions over linguine. I had a second glass of wine, toasted with the other table, and started reading again. Then they got another glass of wine, so we toasted again!

I love these people.

After I finished my book (Treasure Island, a first time read for me), I paid the check and was pulling my coat off the rack, when the owner came over and insisted I had a glass of prosecco. I am not one to hesitate too much when alcoholic beverages are being offered. So I drank the bubbly, and toasted my good fortune.

It was late, and I was a bit too tipsy to drive over to hallstadt in the snow, so I just walked home and put my pajamas on.

this morning there was an inch and a half of snow on the ground. I put on my only boots (3" heel) and some of my just-arrived clothes, pleated blue wool skirt and supersoft brand new red sweater, and trucked on into work. it's still coming down pretty good, I think we're up to 4".

tonight I'll go collect the remainder of my things from hallstadt, and haul them up to my new digs. oh, I was ecstatic to sleep in my own bed, and to start getting my self settled in. it's nice to have a home again. it makes me a little less of a vagabond.

I realized yesterday that with the trees bare, I can see the castle from the window in my front hall. they light it up at night. so that's pretty fantastic.

tomorrow I get the internets!

Red Letter Day!

2007-01-24T12:33:00.000-05:00

the best thing happened. I moved in!

I am such a happy girl. in fact, I was overcome a couple times while I was unpacking. I've wanted this for a very long time. After 2 mos of living out of suitcases, chasing down the right paperwork at the City Hall, talking to real estate agents on the phone, slowing down their prattle to an intelligible speed, and seeing countless apartments.. I'm in! My stuff is here! I live here now!!

Now it's all for real.

the 3 movers needed about 3 hours to move the 111 boxes (by their count) and all my furniture up to the 3rd floor apartment. (thank god for the movers, otherwise I would have needed a ground floor apt)

So they're hauling all my junk up, and I'm feeling like I have a tonne of shit, but then it only took three hours with a stop for breakfast. One guy, near the end, looked at me and said, 'bikes, skis, camping equipment, you do it all, dontcha? you must be top-fit!' I told him I'm one busy girl.

almost everything came through unscathed. hell, I unpacked my martini glasses (the most impractical, delicate glassware I own) without a chip, but my eames chair is damaged. I threw out the 20yo handmedown couch i had in detroit, so I'm couchless.

Over the last 2 mos of tumbleweed living i had passionate vivid fantasies about sitting in the eames chair reading a book, with a cold cocktail near at hand. i even bought it a new reading lamp. alas, no. :( this was another moment of almost-tears.

the good news is: my landlord has an antiques shop, and he sells a lot of 50's Modern furniture. he was in my apt to see the moisture between the panes of a window, and noticed the chair. "Pure Design! is it one of the old ones?" so we had a nice little chat about it. i'm sure he's going to be able to recommend someone to restore it for me. plus, i'll probably have the cushions professionally TLC'd. the former owners were none too kind to it.

after the movers left, I unpacked. most of the kitchen things are in their right spots, there are now books on the shelves, and clothes in racks. I have a little list of required furniture, but it'll come soon enough, and really, I'm pretty well set for the moment. Even the spinning wheel came out unscathed. I'm just happy and a half.

in the kitchen i put my cocktail shaker, a couple martini glasses, and swizzle sticks on a shelf with my tiki drinks and classic cocktails recipe books. i'm trying to take it slowly, and love every little minute of it.

my tool box was about the last thing I found. go figure.

Appliance Delivery and Light Fixture Shopping

2007-01-22T23:19:00.000-05:00

First, I took delivery of my new washing machine and refrigerator. what about the dryer? you ask. the helpful saleslady who took care of my on my first visit to the Best Buy (Codename: MediaMarkt) ordered me 2 washing machines and 0 dryers. So I asked the delivery guys to install only one of the washers, and take the other one back to the store. They assented to a point. it turns out I was missing a critical interface piece (that belongs to the house, not the washer itself), so the washer is only mostly installed.

I then made a visit to their store. I explained the washerwasher 0dryer situation to a new saleslady, and she helped me order a dryer.

the area that I'm putting these appliances into is a cubby about one machine wide, and two machines high, right behind the door to my bathroom. that is the only place for it. as you can imagine, I had to make sure the dryer could go on top of washer. well, it turns out the first saleslady sold me a notgreat washing machine, which will move a lot on the spin cycle and might just shake a dryer right off of it. well that was just great news.

at this point I almost cried. standing amongst the refrigerators wearing their Energy Consumption tags I took a deep breath and told myself, "This is nothing. There is a solution and we will find it together. Even if they have to bring the first washer back, and deliver a new one. We will find a solution."

after some brainstorming, we figured out an intermediate piece that would go between the washer and dryer and would help the dryer not jump off. either way, I'm advised to please be at home when I run my first load of doubledecker laundry in case there are any suicide attempts. this I can do. worst case, I think I can rig up a safety harness for the dryer. but serious development of that concept will wait until it's proven necessary.

point of interest: the dryers here don't vent to the outside, instead they have a condensation tank. all the water from the clothing is condensed into the tank, which can then be emptied down the nearest drain.

After my successful visit to MediaMarkt, I test drove another Focus. I'm this close to buying one. I just have to get a couple more papers in order first.

I went to ikea and solved my lighting problem. I also had a yummy salmon dinner in their little Cantina before I went shopping (it helped a lot, especially the raspberry cake). I got ceiling lights for all the rooms, some strategic rugs for bathroom, bedroom and entryway, a reading lamp, and a bedside lamp that looks like a tulip!

No headache, raspberry cake and a tulip lamp. I was going to try to avoid ikea because it's like fast food furniture, but in the end i decided i would take the easy way out and call it a cultural experience. the local germs really do buy a lot of their furnishings there.

extra bonus: i get to drive the autobahn to get there, and it's only about 30 min away. very accessible.

tame adventures in settling in.

2007-01-22T04:48:00.000-05:00

Saturday was 2 kinds of adventure: 1. test drive 2. shopping in Bamberg.

The test drive was a diesel focus. over here, the focus is a higher level car than the fusion (which is a jacked up fiesta, and kind of mini-van-y). later this week I'll test drive one with a regular gas engine.

In town I did some unsuccessful shoe-shopping (these girls here must have no meat on their calves at all, a major factor when trying on boots). but I had a good time and got to investigate some of the shoestores.

I was a happy girl as I sat at the foot of a statue eating a slice of pizza and watching the people go by. Nourished, I decided to check out one of the clothiers on the square. Lucky me, I found some great shirts, and a cute little dress.

Thus bolstered, I took up the unpleasant task of light fixture shopping. have you ever been light fixture shopping? this shopping is a special kind of hell for me. the lights in the store all make some kind of high-frequency electrical noise, and you have to crane your neck to look into bright lights, and who knows what kind of lightbulbs are in the demo models anyway? so it's really hard to judge whether it will light your room well or not.

the apartments here are bare boxes. there are a few wires dangling from the ceiling, but nothing remotely like a light fixture.

so I need ceiling lights for the:
entry hall
bathroom
kitchen
living room
bedroom 1
bedroom 2

I went to the department store on the square. all the fixtures were €60+, with some of the ones that I liked being in the €450 range. for the record, €1 is about equal to $1.27 at the moment. so imagine my joy at spending this kind of money on something I'll chuck into the mülleimer after 3 years.

I tried making lists, but I couldn't get the attention of the sales-clerks. I was being slowly overtaken by a pulsing icepick headache. And those light fixtures were ridiculously expensive. I gave up. I went home. I took some ibuprofen, put down the blinds in my bedroom and closed the door. It was dark as a cave and I slept for 2 hours.

here's my new plan: my new washer, dryer and refrigerator are being delivered this afternoon. after they get here I'm going to play hookie and head for the nearest ikea. the website says they have cheap light fixtures (around 20-30€). I bet they've also got cool lamps for less than 450€, and I can check out the couches and schränke (armoires. the buildings here also lack closets).

sounds like a boondoggle!

Sheila and I in Nürnberg

2006-12-25T09:05:00.000-05:00

sheila and i took the train to nuremburg today. the RE train took about 35/40 minutes, it was 25 for both of us on the bayern ticket.

we started towards the christmas market, enjoying the scenery, goofing around with the civic artwork.

We got to the most famous Christkindlsmarkt, Сhrist Сhild market, in the world. I tried on a great hat, but delayed purchase indefinitely.

we started drinking the gluehwein from fancy boot mugs. the puppets were scary.

but i liked the fruit people.

sheila spent some time with the nutcrackers.

and a technology ignorant passerby took this great pic for us in front of the crazy talking santa.

we climbed to the top of a hill and wandered around the castle.

we watched the sun set over Nuremburg, and took some touristy photos. the bright spot in the background is the xmas market.

we walked past one of the old city gates on our way to a traditional german dinner at a pub that Albrecht Duerer used to hang out at. George Washington slept here. really.

we spent a few hours indoors, warming up. so when we went back outside we FROZE!
so we just had to buy some wonderful whale hats.

i think it was the combo of brand new whale hats, and our souvenir boot mugs. but we were geeked. nuremburg's a party! at least when we're there.

then we got the warm fuzzies listening to a brass band play christmas carols in the square, in front of the big church. white christmas lights like candle flames on all the trees and some of the buildings. mitten-muffled hands clapping. it was very christmassy. we enjoyed.

Well, I got here. I live in Germany now.

2006-12-03T11:13:00.000-05:00

i got here. the flight was far from uneventful, though. i sat next to this silent, old, shiny bald german guy. i was asleep before we left the tarmac and woke up in time for the first beverage service.

halfway through my movie i paused because there was a woman in the front of coach talking to the stewardesses. she was pretty pissed off, wearing a white headscarf, a longsleeve tshirt and jeans. well, she kept not getting what she wanted. i could tell because she got louder and unpeeled the headscarf and shook it at them.

there was a passenger guy up there trying to mediate. at first she was yelling in another language, and then in english. something about she loves saudi and wants them to get along better with america. well, this went on for about an hour. and i get a little sensitive to things like that, so mostly i just stayed put and paid attention.

the flight attendants announced there was a bit of a disturbance, and asked us to all stay seated.

a little while later they led her down the aisle with her hands ziptied behind her back. we could still hear her shrieking from the back of the plane, but at least she was bound. :D they didn't give us as much beverage service, though, because of the security problems.

after she quieted down there were several unhappy babies.

all told, i was pretty exhausted when i got to Frankfurt. so i loaded my massive bags into the rental car (Ford Focus CMax, it's basically the Focus wagon) and tried to figure out the navigation system. I got to Bamberg, so it didn't go too poorly. i also figured out how to hook up my ipod, so i wouldn't have to listen to Germany's horrific radio stations.

it all worked out. i got to bamberg just in time, i was starting to fade out. i'd driven ~2 hours and it was around 10:30am (4:30a my time). the navigation system got me lost in the city, but my forays in July got me found again.

when i got to the hotel, i found that they'd expected me a day earlier. so they'd charged my card and given up my room. but they called the more expensive hotel across the street and got me a room for 2 nights there. the lady at the desk there said i could have the 85€ room, if i'd just come back around 2. lucky for her, there was a 95€ nonsmoking room available immediately. i brought in my behemoth bags and slept for a couple hours.

i'm not doing great with the adjusting to the time zone. i slept 11a-3p, went for a walk and got dinner, and slept again from 7p-12a. I was then awake until about 4a. and got up again at 9a. today's going better. i read my book and lingered over breakfast. i went for a walk through the town, and went up to the Altenburg (Old Castle). it was a long walk uphill. i checked out all the views from the different turrets and walked back into town. i found a nature path with some signs on it, so i learned that an Amsel is a crow. Then i walked to the Bishop's Residence. In this area the Bishops were both secular and political leaders up through the 1800's or so. I took the tour of the Residence, they have some beautiful tapestries that i couldn't get close enough to, and some amazingly painted rooms - one reception hall was deemed not large enough for the current fashion, so it was painted with all kinds of stonework and angels and stuff, but in perspective, so if you stand in the middle of the room it looks a lot larger. heh.. some people had too much free time.

then i checked out the galleries. they have some 15-17century euro art and some special "old german" galleries that have a lot of religious art going back to the 1300's or so. it was neat, because with what i learned reading about the symbolism in the Unicorn Ttapestries, i was able to pick some symbolic stuff out (strawberry plants, violets, herons). i geeked out a little. :D

after touring the Residence i stopped for some bratwurst in the christmas market and drove into the office for some connectivity.

Yesterday on my walk I spent a little time in the Christmas market, and tried to get into a new restaurant. It was feeling really foreign to me, so I bailed and went to the restaurant in the hotel I normally stay at. I had hot gluehwein (with an orange slice in it), tomato soup (their cup=our tureen) and some noodles baked with ham and onions (yummy and very typically german). tonight I'm not sure where i'll eat, but I'm going to spend more time in the christmas market. i think i'll get a cup of hot wine and walk around.

yesterday i was just a little too timid with my german to actually buy anything. today i've done a little talking, though. it's going better. so i might just get some nuts and xmas cookies. :D

i took some pictures today and i'll take more tonight. the town's all lit up and decorated for christmas. it'll be a little while before i can get them downloaded and put up, my power/connectivity situation being a little sketchy.

moving progress

2006-11-27T20:41:00.000-05:00

well, i did it.

i sold my car.
cancelled my insurance
took all my food to the food bank
picked up some last minute clothing essentials - ok, had a full-out shopping spree, but you can't go to europe without some new clothes! (plus cheaper here than there)
emptied out my safe deposit box - not much in there anyway
got the webcam - Skype here I come!

books got donated to a northern michigan library
things are being given away, stashed or otherwise disposed of.
i'm almost done with my craft projects for the holidays.
i did xmas with the fam, it was great! 4 days at the cottage chillin, playin games, and eating until we burst. awesome.

it's just been a bit overwhelm-y. the tears started on Sunday. they're coming in brief but vigorious showers. the shopping really helped today. heh.

ok. still no contract. but that's a detail, right?

I like what Karen suggested during one of my meltdowns, "Just think, 'What would Elizabeth Taylor do?' She'd probably "borrow" a fur coat. Think big."

The bombshells they are a-flyin.

Stops 3 and 4, Salsa and Swing!

2006-11-20T17:33:00.000-05:00

Salsa at the Sky bar in Royal Oak. Jenn and Brian showed up, Brian brought some pals. We salsa'd through the lesson, and a little bit afterwards, but the music quickly shifted to Merengue. I like Merengue, but after an hour or so, we were pretty well done.

So we proceeded to Luna during 80's night. There was more drinking and dancing. It really got fun. There was another Coney Attack at National afterwards, and then homeward.

The Big 3 Swing Dance was phenomenal. There was a ~10 piece jazz band playing songbook classics. Little old ladies were out dancing with the grandfathers, just like when they were in their 20's. Young swing kids dressed in vintage military uniforms and dresses and really cut up the dancefloor. There was some East-coast swing, and some West-coast. Jenn is talking about taking lessons, and Brian seemed interested in them as well. Woo! It was a great night of gin, Jazz, and East-coast swing. Brian's a great dance partner. Plus, the Masonic Temple is just lovely.

Second Stop, Matt Pond PA!

2006-11-08T10:50:00.000-05:00

matt pond PA at the Magic Stick

Jay chaufferred, and was on the list, so I got to be +1. Cryptic Brian the Scientist showed up. He's always good fun.

The show was great. matt pond was wonderful, as usual. They make very pretty music. I danced. The CD's are good, but the live show is just extramuch.

It's funny, the show started really early, doors were at 6:30, it was all ages. when we got to the garden bowl I ordered a double gin gimlet. ooh. that's how you know it's going to be an evening! (jay drove, so I wasn't feelin too responsible) matt pond wrapped up, and straylight run was coming on. I'd had 2 double gimlets at that point. we checked our watches and it was 9:35. 9:35 and piss drunk on a Tuesday. it was perfect. then we all went to the lager house for more good bands. the Pernice Brothers were a bunch of older smoking guys who didn't look like they would, but they played beautiful ballad-y songs.

truth be told, I think I might have overdone it a bit. eating today is a delicate proposition, and it feels like the back of my head's blown open. I checked in the mirror, and it's not.

I believe I'll take a nap at lunch today. Maybe that'll put my horses back together again.

work and circuses

2006-11-07T22:52:00.000-05:00

This is what it's like working next to the Palace of Auburn Hills: Some days the dump smells like wet death, and some days it's all horses and elephants parading by. :)

First Stop, Iceman!

2006-11-06T14:38:00.000-05:00

BIKE RIDE
It was a cold Iceman this year. ~27F when we left Kalkaska for the 28 mile bike ride to Traverse City. It stopped snowing a little ways out, and turned into a really nice ride. It took me about an hour longer to ride it this year than last, but I had a great soundtrack and was just lovin' life. I didn't cramp, no serious back or knee pain. I just put my head down on the hills and did my best. The Fat Girls class took off with the Beginners, who were a dizzz-asster in the sandpits. Once I got around the least technical of them the ride got better and faster.

They called my name at the 17-mile mark, Williamsburg Road, and that's always a nice pick-me-up. I was also announced at the finish line. I saw Nick and Marco as I was coming up the hill, through the gates. I was just all tired and done at that point, 3:24 minutes of bike riding and I just wanted to drop the bike and drink some Supertang. Warm clothes, cookies, and beer made it all better. That, and about an hour soaking in the tub back at the hotel.

BEST COMPLIMENT
After warming up and cleaning up, before the awards ceremony, I got the nicest compliment. Nick, Marty and I were standing in line for dinner, and Marts said, "I've got yours too. When we get to our table I'll tell you why." I was surprised and interested to hear.

A bunch of our friends didn't show up for the race. They hadn't been training enough, their pinky fingers hurt, or whatever. Point being, they didn't come up for the ride or the parties. Me, you couldn't say that I've been training. You could say that I've been drinking my ass off, and ride my bike once a month or so.

Marty said, "You just came up here, put your clothes on and got on your bike. And you beat me. That took grit." Girl's got character. Maybe someday I'll be less self-involved, and will give great compliments like that. Don't hold your breath, but maybe.

AWARDS CEREMONY
My pal and coworker, JOberon, bought the first beer of the raucous evening. We waited through awards, and I got my medal for third place Fat Chick, and my $50 drinkin money, and we wandered out. As we were leaving, John hollered after me, "Get real drunk and don't kick anybody's ass" I love it. It's going to take a while to establish a rep like this in Europe.

AFTERPARTY
The Bells party at Union Street was very fun this year. The Studiotones did good cover songs, and there was plenty of drinking and dancing. It was fun to spend time with drunken coworkers and drunken mountain bikers. I was pretty happy about the whole situation.

It was nothing like last year's debacle, but it was a good start to the going away parties.

Farewell Tour

2006-11-01T17:58:00.000-05:00

Wow, here we are. November 1. I fly out on December 1. I have 30 days left in this country. eep!

September and the first part of October were really dragging for me. But the last part has been great, and just sped by.

So here we are. Consider occupying some of your November with these events:

2006. Let's get it Over with.

2006-10-10T00:39:00.000-04:00

This year has been tough. I said that last year wasn't pivotal. I think this year was. It's been turbulent and knocked a lot of things off their axes.

I haven't been cycling as much, soured off of racing a bit from last year's failures in the Expert class. I broke up and got back together about 17 times, that left a mark. My car got backed into twice while I was parked and a back window was smashed out. I did knit a lot, but not near as much as I wanted to. There's been a lot of turnover at work, friends breaking up or divorcing, considering suicide, or struggling through their own trials. A few people I'm close to moved away - one to Georgia, one to Texas, two to Washington State, two back to Germany.

January - Sewing Machine, Sault Ste. Marie Canada Board trip. Ford took a big old crap and really whomped our industry with their "Way Forward"
February - Ski trip to Boyne with old friends and new ones
March - Visited Sheila in AK
April - Scarlet Fever, Cabin Fever, Pia moved away.
May - Grandfather was in and out of the hospital, lots of family time.
June - Grandfather Passed, Funereal events. Lumberjack with the 'Rents, temps in the 90's, I got heat exhaustion and only rode 50 miles. Grandma diagnosed with Cancer
July - Gramma in Chemo. I was in Germany during the World Cup, great visit with Pia and decision about my potential job there. One cousin bore first wedlocked kid of my generation
August - Gramma in Chemo. A different cousin got married
September - Gramma's Cancer in remission. Hardest struggles about Germany job, I almost quit my company.
October - Great Aunt Passed. Boss/Friend returned to Germany.

It just seems like it's touched everyone this year. Coworkers have lost Mothers, Brothers and Fathers.

I'm just ready for it to be done. My year will end early, or at least my American 06. I'm off to Germany December 1. So I'll be doing all of my retrospectives in November/December. Betcha I'm the first one on the retrospective bandwagon this year..

Tough Broads - Auntie Et, Reprise

2006-10-09T21:23:00.000-04:00

Great Aunt Ethel, Auntie Et. She passed today. She lived alone in Ann Arbor, in a small house with 20-some cats always coming and going. The house has been donated to shelter people training for missionary work. The cats have been taken by other aunts and cousins, cat-ladies down to their toes.

Late one weeknight in 97 or 98, my friend Stephanie and I carried her out of the U of M hospital, packed her into the back seat (not the back-back) of my teal Escort Wagon and drove her to her house a few miles away. We had to carry her up the front porch stairs on our linked arms. For a small woman, she was heavy. She'd tripped and broken her foot in one of those freak delicate-old-lady accidents. She always wore Permanent Press Sears plaid dresses, the kind with a tie belt, patch pockets and a big zipper up the front.

She was a knitter. Usually knitting for babies in her church. Layette sets. Amongst her things there was a thank you note my mom had written back in 1980. This is yours truly in an orange Et original:

I've inherited a bunch of her needles and some yarn. I won't be attending services, but I'll be thinking of her. She always remembered our birthdays.

Friendship stretching

2006-10-07T21:34:00.000-04:00

In stretching and struggling to accommodate new circumstances, a person's internal problem solving methods become visible. Decision making patterns come to light and their true values show through. Advsersity is historically a great time to learn about one's self and others.

In 8 weeks I'll cross the dark Atlantic and start a new phase in Germany. Already some people are pulling away from me, concerned about an imminent "loss" (like Europe is so far away!). Others are drawing closer, trying to be part of my last few weeks.

It's sad and cold to me that some of the people in my life are making it an early termination. Like, if I'm not going to be here forever, then I'm not worth knowing. I'm not trying to start much in the way of new relationships, I'm just trying to prolong the magic with the people I've so enjoyed.

I'm trying to look at this as a lesson. I try to be the kind of friend that stays in it 'til the end. I don't want someone who's been part of my life to feel like I'm cutting them out early because they're facing a change, especially one they choose for themselves.

I don't want to step out early, not be there. I want to be a friend that holds hands and raises toasts as people I know and love move into new phases.

Grandma's Shawl

2006-07-31T12:04:00.000-04:00

My Grandfather was diagnosed with cancer in the spring. He was in for his second hospital stay over Mothers' Day weekend. I went with my parents and one of my aunts went to Grandma's house to celebrate the holiday. Grandpa's health was a big topic of discussion.

Aunt Mary is a crocheter. She said something along the lines of, "If Dad comes home, it's going to be in a wheelchair" (he'd lost a lot of muscle mass and was really weak from the chemo). A little more discussion followed and her decision was that he should have some lap blankets, because a man that we love, who is that sick, should not be cold.

I thought that was a great idea. But if she had the lap blankets covered, I should work on something else. Grandma was going through a lot while caring for her spouse of 62 years, and his prognosis wasn't good. I started a prayer shawl for her.

Among knitters there's a tradition of knitting things for people. When someone you know is going through a rough patch, often a prayer shawl is created, sometimes knit by multiple people. I'm not especially religious, or even very Christian, but I like the idea of knitting something with a focus. Putting your mental and emotional energy into a thing, and staying mindful while you make it. This, to me, is a prayer shawl.

A few years ago I had knit a sweater with a big heart on the chest, I was in lurve, and on a romantic trip with a boyfriend. Later we broke up and I wore the sweater once or twice, but it just didn't turn out the way I expected it. So I ripped it out and balled up the yarn again. I used this New Zealand Merino Wool, already imbued with some love and sentimentality, to start Grandma's Shawl.

I knit it on some Boye interchangeable needles that Grandma had given to her sister Ethel 40 years ago. When Et went into the nursing home, the needles came to me because I'm the only family knitter now.

I started the sweater after I visited Grandpa in the hospital, the day after Mother's day. I cast on with the red wool, and kept both Grandma and Grandpa in my thoughts. The shawl progressed, I took it to work for our knitting lunch.

I made the most progress over Memorial Day weekend, during the all-night watch we held in Grandpa's hospital room. I sat, with aunts and parents and cousins, knitting and helping with the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle. It was a long night, there was much knitting.

After that, I knit at home. I'd put music on and knit for a few hours, staying present with the work.

When Grandpa passed, I knit at the viewings. I kept the project near me the whole time. Having something to do with my hands was reassuring. I love the colors. Knitting this shawl, was a comfort to me.

Out of Folk Shawls I chose a traditional shape from the Faroe Islands. I'd knit it before and it would be easy to remember. Faroese shawls stay on the shoulders and don't really need pinning because of their 3-panel shape.

The neckline is cast on first,

and the center panel is knit straight, but the side panels have a yarn over at each end, so they expand triangularly as you knit. It makes for a shoulder hugging, easy wrapping sort of shawl. I like them for ease of wear, but they're also pretty, and offer a good structure to be creative within.

The side panels were done in the Shetland Fir Cone lace pattern I picked from the Big Book of Knitting Stitch Patterns, with a garter stitch center panel. The fir cone pattern is funny, because it puckers when it's knit, and it doesn't lie flat until it's blocked. So a bunch of the shawl looked like it was made to resemble egg-cartons.

Near the bottom of the shawl, in the center panel I knitted up a St. John's Cross. The pattern for which was inspired by some Swedish Viking armor, and converted to a knitting pattern by a Elsebeth Lavold, published in her book Viking Patterns for Knitting. It's a symbol for good luck and prosperity.

Finally, I used a handpainted variegted yarn for the edging, a Victorian lace pattern, called Herring Bone Faggoting (little sticks) that I pulled out of Barbara Walker's A Treasury of Knitting Patterns.

I bound off the shawl, with a K1 *Sl1L K2 K2togTBL on RH needle pattern, that allows for a lot of give at the edge. Finally, I wove in the ends and blocked it out. The fir cones went flat, the faggoting opened up, the shawl turned out beautifully. I love blocking shawls, because they look like butteflies pinned to a board. However, no butterflies were harmed in the making of this shawl.

And the best news? Gramma likes it.

decided

2006-07-27T23:14:00.001-04:00

i thought i'd take a month or so of sabbatical between my gig here in North America, and my gig over in .de.

i figured, my program launches in October. I'll take most of November and all of December, travel around the country, the do the holidays with my fam.

but then i went to germany. i fell in love with the bakeries (pretzels with baked on pumpkin seeds) and train travel (the ICE is high speed, has a dining car, and is fast, quiet, and less troublesome than actually driving).

and now i want to go back as soon as possible.

so i told the HR gal, I want to move in Oct or Nov. I'lll catch my sabbatical after i do the working in .de thing. so now she knows where my priorities are.

from here, i continue to sit on my hands until an actual job offer materializes. but my thumb is out. i'm serious about Deutschland.

Guster

2006-07-26T00:08:00.000-04:00

I love Guster. On this day I was glad to be a self-supporting, expendable-income-having adult. Nick, Marts, and I were able to upgrade from soggy lawn tix to pavilion row K or something, for $12. And drink the $7 big-as-my-head beers.

The extra cost sort of added to the disappointment though. I ended up paying ~42 clams post-ticketmaster-assrape-charge, and Guster only played for an hour and fifteen. They did 2 encores, the second was a single song. They also looked kind of tired. Like they were up there playing, but would rather be taking naps in their tour bus. Like they had been on tour for too long, or had too aggressive a schedule, and couldn’t make their songs as boppy as they normally are. They lagged a bit. Still, a so-so show is better than no live music at all. Next time, though, I'll probably give them a pass.

Berlin and getting home.

2006-07-17T00:58:00.000-04:00

As I returned my rental car (and filled out the damage report) I met 3 American GI’s right off the Bamberg base. One claimed to be a German, but was in the US army. I’m not sure how that works, maybe it’s a dual citizenship thing. But she said she’d been living in the US for the last 15 years or so, and didn’t really speak any German.

The two men she was with spoke only English as well, but with heavy southern accents. The poor girl at the counter, her English was Ok, but seriously. One of those guys had lived in Germany for 2 years. He couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to say please, or ask for rental car rates in the native language of the country he’s been staying in? The counter girl gave me a "can you believe this?" look. I returned with an, "yeah, sucks. sorry." facial expression.

I understand not knowing the language if you’re just passing through, but gimme a break. I guess it’s pretty uncommon for the GI’s to know German. I guess it pisses me off because Americans are widely believed to be monoglots. And I’ve been busting my brain trying to learn German, which will be my third language. It’s easy enough to muddle through the vocabulary and pronunciation, it’s just the grammar that’s tricky. Sometimes I just forget the word order and start blurting, at least they know I’m trying, and can pick out what I’m trying to say. It’s the honing of the language that will be the most difficult and time consuming.

Anyway, this wasn’t supposed to be a rant about ignorant Ugly Americans. Really.

So I returned the car, caught a taxi to the train station. I was perfectly on time and jumped right onto the train, moments before it went speeding across the countryside. I did crossword puzzles as sleek white train wended between foothills, then mountains, and came out in fields of modern windmills somewhere south of Berlin. It was neat to see how the terrain changed as we progressed. Every city has a spire, the big church in town. Steeples make great navigation points.

I arrived at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (main train station) and navigated myself to the inner city Sbahn trains, kind of like Chicago's L trains. I got off at the right station and hoofed it towards my hotel, asking directions of passersby as I progressed. I really had no idea where the thing was, and carrying my huge backpack (full of office, tourist, and bike clothes) it felt like a very long walk. I did eventually find it, and checked in.

I walked around the block trying to find something to eat. On the main street, Potsdamer Strasse, there was a Cabaret, an expensive cocktail bar, and some cheapie fast food joints (Turkish fast food). I turned down a side street that looked promising, but didn’t like the looks of the cafes I found there. I completed the circuit around the block, speeding up to get past the hookers. There were probably 10 of them, getting into cars, getting out of cars, standing on a dark street showing off their big jugs.

I grabbed a Doener Kebap (kind of a turkish chicken gyro with extra veggies in half of a pita bread. And then wandered into the spendy cocktail bar. It was mostly men, sitting together in pairs, talking intently, sometimes laying a hand on an arm to emphasize a point. The bartender in front of me wore a jaunty little sailor hat, and poured drinks with happy go lucky energy. I ordered some Hemingway Gin drink and decided to watch the time pass. A tall older Dutchman came to my end of the bar to order a drink. We spoke for a little bit on books and Berlin. He offered me another drink, but I headed back to the hotel. It had been a long day.

Saturday was the Love Parade. I got up and walked around looking for food/coffee, an ATM, and where the heck do they keep the Tiergarten? Behind the Brandenburger Tor, or Brandenburg Gate of course. And you could tell it was the Love Parade from the cinematographers in cherry pickers.

I used my travel pass and caught a bus to the Main Train Station. There I found acceptable food and an ATM that probably charged me an arm and a leg. Ah well.

I took the bus around the city a little bit, watching out the windows. I also walked on foot and got to see some chunks of the Berlin Wall.

Some ultra-modern aspirin tablet architecture:

The Love Parade. What’s to say? The techno was great. I expected the Floats to be more imaginative.

It was something to be part of the 1.2million people on a 4km stretch of road. Everyone was nice, I got into some conversations (in German) with people. The beer was astoundingly cheap. 2.5 euro per halfliter can. Needless to say, I got completely tanked and spent some time sleeping under a tree. It was a tree in the middle of a field. Pretty much all of the bushes were in constant use as urinals.

Oh yeah, the whole gig was taking place in the Tiergarten, an old hunting preserve that is effectively Berlin’s Central Park. Lots of litter on the street toward the end of the night. I cut my foot on some errant glass. but at least in Berlin they litter and have Graffitti!!

on the way out, i was adopted by some wannabe club kids. they marched me over half of berlin, trying to find the next bar. we went past a full club, a goth club, and finally ended up in a catacomb-like club under their L train.

there were 4 rooms, each with high arched cielings of brick and a good DJ playing a distinct type of techno. I enjoyed it. Right up until i realized that it was 3am, and i was asleep on one of the big leather chillout couches.

i got back to the train station, had a McD's cheesburger to help me sober up, and then ate a hot Banana and Nutella crepe because I could. I caught the L train back to my shitty hotel.

In the morning I got up early, caught a bus, then took the L train to the main station, switched trains and headed out to one of the outlying stations, where i could catch the subway, so I could get to the spot where i could get a bus to the airport. it took a bit of doing, but i got to the airport about 3 hours before my flight took off for Amsterdam.

Tegel airport sucks. They check you in at the gate. When i got to my gate they were still checking in passengers for the 10:45 to Munich, and I had to wait over an hour before they started checking luggage for the 12:10 to Amsterdam. This means I had to wait until my mammoth backpack was checked before I could grab breakfast at the airport bakery.

Bitching aside, I got home. Safe, sound and in one piece. Plus I got to enjoy a big bottle of Heineken in the cafeteria of Schipol airport in Amsterdam. That made me a happy traveller.

All in all, I'd say Bamberg is a cute little town that I'll enjoy living in. I'll have to spend some time in Munich, and Berlin has a lot to offer me in terms of nightlife and mayhem. I like all of its paradoxes. I'm ready.

cars and borders

2006-07-14T06:20:00.000-04:00

CARS
today's adventure was locking my keys in the trunk. i've got this loaner beamer 318. i put my backpacks in the trunk, which took some shoving and finagling (because i've still got a crate of pia's water in there), so i set the keys down to manage things. when i was done, i popped the lid shut, feeling very proud of myself, and looked at my empty hands. ach!

long story short, the bmw is a very secure car, hard to steal. and since there were no wire coathangers about, we had to call the BMW dealership. they sent a guy who broke out the taillight in a very professional way, and released the latch.

perfect. now i have to return it, because they don't want me driving a busted up car. but i think i'm just going to turn it in and ride the train to Berlin. that sounds funner (and more relaxed).

BORDERS
The land around bamberg changes character very quickly. one minute you're in the forest, the next a field, the next a town. the towns are small clumps of buildings. not much outlying, nothing like suburbs. the woods are just that, no houses in them. just woods. very structured, very scripted. everything is regelmeßig - following rules, regulated, orderly.

there's no graffiti in the bathrooms. how am I going to learn funny little poems auf Deutsch?
it's very hilly in this area. i'm convinced there will be good mtb'ing somewhere nearby. you can't tell me that the german kids are so well behaved that there aren't any bandit trails. i don't believe it.

cut and aligned

2006-07-13T04:04:00.000-04:00

the haircut went fine. i sat in the chair at the salon, and the woman asked, "what is there to do for you?" in german. i told her i wanted it shorter, and she asked how short? ...oh, a number one. but everything's metric over here! so we started out with a 3mm guard, and then went to a 2mm. beauteous. 10€ and 10 minutes later, i was all hübsch and cute again.

Saturday and Sunday were the Samba festival in Coburg. I stayed at Pia's parents house. wow, gorgeous, huge, and old. They rent out the top floor as an apartment. Her parents planted fruit trees when each of the kids was born. Mumsi took me to the Veste, the big castle on the hill, and I got some pictures, but most of the weekend was spent wandering around the city, listening to the drum groups. There were drinks with my boss from the US, I attended a Mass at the Catholic church, and lunched in little outdoor cafes. no surprise to the euros, but it has me charmed.

Sunday night I was back in Bamberg, and the Italian fans were out all night chanting about how they won the World Cup. I got very little sleep. then I had the pleasure of attending an 8 hour meeting in technical German (the TTT, door sytem technical day). It was a hotel conference room without A/C, filled with 35 shooters in suits. And me in a skirt and sandals. heh. So it was hugely warm, I got to give my presentation early, and then spend the rest of the day figuring out what was being said. We had a delicious heavy german lunch and went back into our technical sauna. by the end of the day my brain was a gloopy dribble coming out of my left ear. Dinner at a biergarten on the hill and a nice long walk home helped restore me.

Tuesday I hosted a meeting of people who design a certain plastic component. There were maybe 20 of us, it was at the Hallstadt office, so it was at least partly air conditioned, and it was a daylong open discussion. I think everyone was really engaged, and they decided to have this meeting again, in connection with the TTT. w00t. i'm a trendsetter.

Tuesday night Pia took me to the wooded area and set me loose with the bike. She said, "when you want to go back, go in the direction of Gaustadt." So, instead I went towards Mühlenburg. I learn the most by getting myself lost. So I took these fire roads, up some pretty steep hills. I didn't take any of the side trails (though i hear there's not much singletrack to be had) and rode in the woods for awhile. It was nice, quiet, and refreshing.

The woods abruptly ended, and so began the fields. They grow wheat and barley in this area, and something else i didn't recognize, but I came out in the hilly golden farmland just as the sun was touching the top of the trees. I rode for a bit on the paved path between the fields, then found myself in the little town of Mühlenburg. from there, it was easy to get back. There's a paved bike path a few meters to the side of the road. I pedaled the 7km back to Bamberg, quite proud of myself, not having to ask for directions. It helps taht the cities here all have huge church spires, good distant landmarks.

Wednesday was a visit with HR, talking about the red tape requirements of life in germany. we walked to the cathedral, through the rose garden, and had lunch at the Brasserie. Afterwards we stopped at the post office, and visited an apartment for rent. i think i have a pretty clear idea of how they live here. i can definitely do it.

now i just need to find a job. the org structure wasn't released, so i'm still waiting. but the design manager seems keen to have me, though.

this morning i picked up 2 big pretzels with pumpkin seeds (currently my favorite treat) and a sweet roll with elder berries for 1,5€. cha-heep. i'm currently enamored of the bakeries. and the outdoor cafes, and biergartens. mein Gott! i'm honeymooning. next, by all accounts, comes culture shock. we'll wait and see. i think I'm pretty well suited to life here. train travel is super easy, the work adjustment will be tough, but not like joining a new company, and that language barrier is coming down already.

here's what i've been able to do in German so far:
1. order food
2. chat
3. ask questions
4. understand answers
5. pay and tip
6. ask for things from people at the store (butcher and baker, candlestickmaker is tomorrow)
7. get deposit back for glasses at standup bars
8. get a haircut

my business presentations have been in English. I understood a good portion of the TTT, and the round table the next day was a lively mix of people asking questions in german, answering in english, and coming back again in german. They seem pretty well bilingual here.

though i felt like i lost the game when i was asking for something at the front desk and the lady switched to english on me. rats!

6 inches off

2006-07-07T06:42:00.000-04:00

so i'm in germany. and everything is just about 6 inches away from normal. the cars are smaller, the beers are bigger (no complaints there). and everyone wears tshirts with english sayings on them, but have no idea what they mean! way to look smart, kids.

tomorrow will be a new experience. i'm going to the 'friseur', what the germans always call the hair cutter. my shave has been turning into a shag, and i need to be tidied up a bit. i haven't taken my shaved head to a hairdresser before, much less one that doesn't speak english.

good luck to me! viel glück!

in good news: the director of the design team over here is talking about being able to guarantee me a job around the first of the year. so with more luck it'll pan out. *german dance of joy* *deutschefreudtanz*

got my mind right

2006-07-06T11:45:00.000-04:00

the night before i left for .de for this trip, I visited my shrink. that lady rocks.

basically i was looking at my life as forking in 2 directions. i'd been to all of these great family events, but they had all happened in the last 2 months. i had a boy saying he wanted to marry me, and start a family of our own. i want a family. really i do. and i plan to be married before i take on any dependents.

but i was seeing my life as being one of two things, 1. marry the guy now, because i'm in the family mood, but still kind of terrified and thinking it's probably not the right thing for me. or 2. flitter off to Europe, be far from my family, ditch this marriageable gentleman, and see what the old Continent has to offer.

It helped to look at it this way: marriage is a dress that i see other people wearing. it looks good on them. i don't know how it feels, but it looks good. it's a dress i've already tried on. it itched, i couldn't really breathe, and it had RUFFLES. i'm a slinky dress kinda gal, ruffles don't suit me.

so last time i tore off the ruffles, unzipped it, and felt a lot better. i'm still not ready for that dress. i can't take long enough strides in it.

Europa it is. and only 6 time zones from most of my family. A quick plane flight over, something I can definitely do, especially with the extra vaction time (27 days/year + 12 holidays), and the guaranteed one flight home/year. 's alles gut.

preparations and decisions

2006-06-28T23:08:00.000-04:00

so this trip to .de is going to be a look and see trip. i'm going to go check out the company in hallstadt and surroundings, figure out if i could live in their apartments, shop in their grocery stores, bike shops, yarn stores, and whatever.

mm.

a decision. a committment. this is what is needed.

the company is pressing forth, though, with the assumption that i'll be choosing the move.
i still have a decision to make. and i'm freaked. i'll be fine one minute and gasping sobs the next. i'm trying to hold it down at work, save those feelings for later. but i well up now and then.

thank god my shrink is going to fit me in tomorrow before i leave.

with that whole grandfather thing that just happened, and the happy family wedding i attended with scott this past weekend, i just keep thinking about what i could/would/might be missing in the lives of the people i love.

my mom and dad were so sad when my sister moved away. i just know they're going to be sad again, and plus i'm going to miss the hell out of them. grandma is getting up there, and not doing so well these days.

Jane, get me off this crazy thing... called "love".

recovering from the LJ100

2006-06-21T07:19:00.000-04:00

yow. so monday i didn't ride. tuesday i got on the bike for about half an hour, rode a bit, tried not to push it. my knees are still sore inside. but i got off the bike at 7:30pm and laid down. just for a minute.

suddenly the alarm was going off. it was 6am. hmm. someone was tired.

lumberjack - race recount

2006-06-20T07:00:00.000-04:00

This weekend I completed 50 miles of a 100-mile race. I didn't win. I didn't finish. I'm really happy with my results.

It strikes me as difficult to explain this to people who aren't athletically competitive, because it took me going out of my way and trying it to understand. In fact, I didn't really get it until I did an endurance event by myself.

This weekend I took part in the Lumberjack100, Michigan's only 100 mile mountain bike race. I'd done the Ore to Shore, 48 miles, and most of it on snowmobile trails. The Lumberjack is 100% singletrack - meaning, it's all narrow winding trail with roots and rocks, logs, switchbacks, and lots of sand.

It was my second attempt. The race starts at 7am. We've got to be onsite by about 6am. Lately I'm sleeping until about 7:30, so getting up at 5 is a shock to my system. Last year I tried to eat breakfast at that unnatural hour. 10 miles into the trail my system rejected it. Or, more accurately, Ejected it. After that I couldn't really eat, but managed to get 48 more miles under my belt.

This year, I skipped breakfast. That was a good move. On the trail I relied on bottles of water, packets of Gu (sugary syrup with lots of electrolytes and vitamins), and Jelly Belly's Sport Beans. In the pit area I ate a couple of pop tarts. This year, stomach was not a problem.

3 weeks ago my grandfather was ailing, and passed. For a week or two I spent all of my free time and energy on the family activities associated with that event. Afterwards, I just didn't really feel motivated to get myself back on the bike. So it'd been about 3 weeks since I'd ridden at all. On top of that, the Wednesday before the race I pickled the hell out of myself on a business trip with some coworkers. There was beer and wine and mixed drinks and shots, and a little bit of dancing on the bar. I think my body didn't fully process that alcohol out until ~20 miles into the race course on Saturday.

It was also the second hot day of the year, with temps around 93, high humidity and bright sun. Last year I scored 58 miles in perfect conditions - it was ~70 and overcast, beautiful for riding.

So, it was hot, I hadn't been training, but I'd been abusing my liver. Will the excuses never stop, you ask? I'm giving background, not trying to pass the buck. These were all my decisions (ok, not the weather..). But I'm proud of all of this.

I went 50 miles, got 2 of 4 laps in. The first lap was good, but slow. During the second lap, I started cramping about 5 miles in and stopped at an aid station around the 8 miles mark. I'd been going 3mph up a slight incline and my Heart Rate Monitor showed 180bpm (my max HR is ~195). I didn't feel like I was pushing it, but I did feel tired. When I got off the course to rest and regroup, I had a resting heart rate between 100 and 110bpm. Normally I'm 67-74 resting. I sat in the shade, drank water, ate a pop tart and tried to figure out if I could finish a second lap.

My Mom encouraged me to keep my options open. She asked, "How do you want to think of this tomorrow?" It was about noon. I'd been on the bike for ~5hours. I knew that I could probably make the rest of the lap, and wanted to give it a try. Slow and steady, "You're just out for an afternoon ride," my Dad said. And I did have all afternoon to finish those miles. I took most of it, too.

The ride was beautiful. It was breezy sunny, and went through some gorgeous terrain. Bench cut trails that had probably been made in the 30's by the CCC. Passing under fluttering oak trees as the trail went along a high sandy ridge.

I spent those last 17 miles cramping, popping electrolyte caplets, drinking water, walking the bike. Riding down the hills.

Near the end my jersey stopped being soaked. I'd stopped sweating and started getting goosebumps. Bring on the Heat Exhaustion. I made it to the end and set my bike down. I sat in a chair and our Super Support Gal, Miss Marts, made me some recovery drink.

I think it's hard to explain this to people, maybe because I couldn't understand it myself. But I didn't win. I didn't even finish. I pushed really hard, and am proud of that. The race will be there next year. Maybe I'll give it another shot.

It was really cool that my parents were there. They're such good cheerleaders. :) Nick, Marts, and I had breakfast with them on Father's day. I was sore. Back, knees, hands, shoulders. Sore but happy.

I did that once!

2006-06-06T18:20:00.000-04:00

I was sitting in a comfy chair at Borders Books. I had a pile of books about Germany, travelling Europe, and hostels in my lap.

I was flipping through a book called Europe By Rail, it had a nice picture of a train on the cover.

This girl (22ish, bleached blonde hair that was unkempt but tamed with a headband, brown tank top with sparklies, long 'distressed' jeans, and flip flops) came up to me, and caught my attention over the top of my book.

"Oh! I did that once!" she said.

"Oh? Eurorailling?" I asked.

"No. Shaved my head."

Of course. Why didn't I guess that?

Joe Dodd - Closing the Book

2006-06-03T18:36:00.000-04:00

Grandpa's viewings were fun. I got to chat with family from out of town. Many of whom I'd heard of but never met.

A couple of my coworkers came, which surprised me. I hadn't been very vocal about the details of the arrangements. They came, stayed for a little while, and sent some really gorgeous flowers. As they left I cried big alligator tears into my Dad's hug. I can hold my shit together when stuff's going on. But when people are all sweet and caring to me, I just fall right apart.

Scott came, looking totally sharp in his shirt and tie. He met Grandma, said Hi to my folks. My 8month pregnant cousin Betty flirted a little. It was fun. I walked him out and he gave me a huge hug. It was very good of him to come.

The funeral was run by Grandpa's nephew, which might make him my second cousin... Either way, a very sweet man and an elder in his church in the UP. All the grandkids (except Ginny, who was on a boat in the Pacific) stood up and said a few words.

We all told stories about Grandpa Joe. There were always stories about food - usually barbecue related, but also including stories of cracker parties and his famous peanut butter, american cheese and mayo sandwiches. Not to mention his cooking practices - how to tell when the meat's done and other grill skillz, or the fact that dinner's not going to be any good if you forget to Baste the Chef.

And I think everyone hit on what they learned from him. There were stories of natural sciences, pickin up sailors, engineering, and military life. He taught us all different things. He always had a story, and was happy to share.

When I visited, as the only other mechanical engineer in the family, he'd talk about problems he'd solved. Tell me about fixing typewriters, diesel engines, his first job - working for the Otis Elevator company back when they were making Anti-Aircraft guns for WWII.

My Dad, Joe's son in law, told about his impressions of Joe as he started courting my mother, that he was always warm and welcoming. Dad was really prepared, all of us grandkids just got up there and cried a bit and gave our broken homages. Dad had it all written down, anecdotes and all. (Note to self).

Joe's brother and sister also spoke, about how Joe was a great family member - attending all kinds of graduations, anniversaries and birthday parties. He loved children and spoke to them as smart little people. They also spoke of him as a good role model, as a father and husband.

The service closed with about half the room singing along to a recording of Tura Lura Lura, an irish lullabye he sung to us all.

Grandpa was buried in the family plot, on a hill under a big shade tree. With military honors. The flag went to Grandma.

We then proceeded to the Racquteball Club for a dessert first buffet with open bar in his honor. He was toasted and feasted.

He'll be missed. But we all learned from him, and carry that with us.

Like, who else knows how to use a wristwatch as a compass? That's an old Joe Dodd trick.

Let me tell you a funny one.. he'd say.

how he went

2006-06-02T09:42:00.000-04:00

Sunday I spent the whole night at the hospital with my parents, two aunts and a pregnant cousin. These were not the aunts I've been close to while i was growing up. We're a breed of strong minded women, and there have been a lot of feuds. But I was glad they were there.

These two aunts spent the night crackin wise and flipping everyone off. My Dad and I went on a 1am fast food/playing card run, and when we came back one aunt went over to grandpa's bed and said, "We just got some cards, Joe Dodd, and we're going to play Dirty Hearts, but we're not going to deal you in, because you CHEAT!"

I just about laughed my head off. The man can barely raise his hand, and needed help turning over in the bed, but if he could have he'd have been sharking us at Hearts.

We did the allnighter after they took him off all his meds. We waited with him while his body metabolized all the potassium left in his system. My folks dropped me off Monday morning. I caught a couple hours of sleep and then went back to the hospital (very easy, as i live ~4miles away). I found Grandma and one aunt there. Gradma and I had lunch, we split a personal pizza in the cafeteria, mended some fences and caught up. I split out after a couple of hours and went back to the techno fest.

After I left, I hear that Mom and more of her sisters went to the hospital. They took a little stereo with them and played some WWII love songs. Grandpa was dancing in the bed, they were doing the Can-Can in their chairs. Sounds like it was a party.

When I came back after work on Tuesday, both my folks were there, as well as one of the aunts and the pregnant cousin. When I got there he told me that the bedsore was a pain in his ass. A little while later he told a story about Bootleggers in the Navy - using blankets like cowboy bootleggers did in the stories he read as a boy.

Because Grandpa was in Hospice, they could give him whatever he wanted, basically. So they brought in some Chardonnay. My Dad put it into a plastic cup with a bendy straw and offered it to Grandpa. He pushed his oxygen mask up and took a coupla sips. He smiled, smacked his lips and whispered, "Ooh, that's nice.."

He was dead about an hour later.

After we did what there was to be done at the hospital, we headed over to hte Max and Ermas. My aunt from Texas ordered 10 margaritas as she sat down. Thinking ahead, I asked for 3 orders of those hot chocolate chip cookies. Because if that's one thing we know how to do, it's drink and eat cookies. :) Everyone that was in town showed up to that dinner.

Today is the viewing. It starts with lunch at Grandma's house, a family open casket viewing, and then public closed casket viewings (with a generous break for dinner).

Saturday will be the funeral - 3pm at the funeral home, then we're headed to the cemetary for military honors. Then we're off to the Racquetball Club for a buffet dinner, open bar and some dancing.

My peeps love to party. :)

nobody likes

2006-05-28T16:32:00.000-04:00

nobody likes hospitals.

but they go.

my grandfather's there right now. lung cancer, liver cancer, heart attack. not going well for him. it's been a tough year. and tonight all the fam's going to be there. because they're going to quit with the medication and let him go.

he was always a presence in my life. a tough old bastard, and the other mechanical engineer in the family (my sister and i used to play with his PE stamp, to make awards for each other). but we weren't exactly close.. see the 'tough old bastard' part.

what i'm afraid of tonight, is watching my mom and her sisters lose their father. also not fun will be the grandmother losing her husband thing. yow.

The next trip to Europe

2006-05-26T13:00:00.000-04:00

So many events to pack into such little time. It's official. I'm headed to germany for the first two weeks of july. This will be part vacation, part technical conference, and part sniffing out a new job.

Our company is headquartered in the cute little village of Coburg. Almost every building in that town has the company logo on it.

My plan is to fly on june 30th, Friday. Arrive Saturday morning July 1, knock around a bit, and head out to the unspecified part of my trip - some sort of vacation from the 1st through 5th or 6th of July. Miss Pia was going to join me, but it's sounding like she's been too ill and missed too much work to join. So now I'm not sure if I should go check out the first couple stages of Le Tour de France , or if I should wander myself into the countryside, maybe Czech out Prague.. *badump tschh* Suggestions? Partners in crime? Feel free to volunteer.

Then it'll be a day in the office at Hallstadt on the 7th, and the annual Samba Festival in Coburg July 8-9. It's a bigger deal this year, what with the town being officially 950 years old (older than European knowledge of my home continent). Check out the Bildergalerie - photos from last year's samba fest. My, they have fab costumes. On Sunday, July 9, I'll be watching the final game of the World Cup Soccer matches, with a beer in one hand and a wurst in the other. It's the culture, dontchaknow.

Monday 10 July is an international technical conference on door modules (my special part of the car). 8 hours of technical german discussion. w00t. Tuesday and Wednesday 11-12, I'll be part of a round table on a new sort of component we're using, the program I'm working on was the company's first attempt at getting one into production, now they're being designed in Germany and Sweden too. It sounds kind of boring, but it's going to be pretty fun from a nerdy engineering standpoint.

Thursday and Friday the 13-14, I'll be checking out our benchmarking center, rubbing some elbows, meeting some people, trying to talk my way into a job. Our new org structure will be announced on 01July, so I'll be trying to sneak my way in.

Saturday 15Jul is the return of the Love Parade, after a 2 year hiatus. Every techno/trance/house club in Berlin (and some from elsewhere) gets a flatbed truck to turn into a float, and they parade down the main streets of Berlin with ~2 million club kids dancing and getting naked all around. My kind of party. So I'll probably be in Berlin on the 15th, and fly home all hung over and nackered on Sunday the 16th.

That the plan right now, anyway. :)

Jade

2006-05-10T21:12:00.000-04:00

More than just a green stone, not so much the flirtatious girl, or woman of easy virtue (though i sometimes claim those as my own). I've been a jade in the "to tire or dull through repetition or excess" sense. The french call it ennui and mean: a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction, boredom.

Me, i've just been dull. disinterested. and callous.

you know the feeling when you're listening to someone talk because you know you sort of want to know what they have to say, but you wish they'd hurry up and say it and be on their way because you have better things to do like get a coffee, surf the net, and twiddle your thumbs? or when you don't notice how the other person in the conversation is doing, because you're so happy to have an opportunity to jabber away yourself?

i've been having this lately. quite a lot, actually. work's been spectacularly boring. the kind of frustrating boring, where you remember how 3 years ago you were on fire all the time, loved coming in to 'do battle' and spent 10-14 hours/day at work. there was some wheeling, there was some dealing. agreements were made, work was done, weekends were worked.. ok, not super healthy, but a major adrenaline fix and serious ego boost. my work was 'important'.

lately there has been a little boring work, a lot of answering of computer questions (how do i do this in Powerpoint?), and a lot of waiting for other people to give me info to start me on the avalanche of boring that I know is waiting up the pike.

so i've been restless. no doubt some of it has to do with the weird winter we just had and all the cabin-induced fever. and i'm willing to bet some of it is the waiting to get out of Detroit and on to another location, another project, another rollercoaster.

during the day i'm fidgety, want to go ride my bike and play outside. until i'm done with work, that is. Then i only want to go home, eat something and lay in front of the TV. Maybe knit, maybe sew. But mostly lay, and watch the stories. Not healthy. the bike thing surprises me, but i'm trying to feel out this new phase with the bike anyway, so i haven't been pushing it too hard.

Today I rolled into work at the crack of 9:30, and around 10, I made a 4:40 appointment with my Chiropractor. After doing some new kinds of boring paperwork at the office, I headed out. Pat, the Chiro's receptionist, was having a crappy day. we chatted and she put me in on the massage table, cranked it up a little higher than normal and it work my back for about 15 minutes. it's like a wave that moves up and down the spine, pushing and moving and massaging. so relaxing, i usually start to dream a little when i'm on that table. Then the good doctor cracked me into place, did some nice hands-on pushing my muscles to relax, and they ran the vibrator over my back.

It made me think. I hadn't done anything cool for myself in a while. Oh, i've been out doing some very productive binge drinking, but i haven't been treating myself to long bike rides, or walks in the park by myself, massages, pedicures, or yoga..

Last summer I was taking Wednesdays to Yoga, and then walk in the park, watch the cottonwood sees float on the air currents, and consider social heierarchies while watching the mallards conduct their business in the stream.

It's Wednesday, so off I went to Updog Yoga in Rochester. I love their studio and have been an occasional attendee for a couple of years. Heidi's Basic II class is fun, and kinda playful. Last year I did my first handstand there. Tonight was great. They were happy to see me, recognized me though it'd been months, and the class did not disappoint in the challenging department. I also like yoga for the meditative quality, and tonight's little takehome message was great. It had to do with luck. And how lucky are you? Push the boundaries a little. Try your luck. But be aware of how lucky you are every day. We did one challenging pose (balance on right foot and right arm, with left arm holding left foot straight out and up towards ceiling) and she joked about being so lucky, because you have another side of the body to try it with. So we switched, and balanced on the left side, with the right up in the air.

Luckyluckylucky indeeeeeeed.

Lately I haven't been as 'plugged in' to my world. I've been grasping and trying to hold it tight, instead of letting it flow and enjoying it as it passes. I've been trying to wring something interesting into my job (because i act out when i'm bored, and it would be best if I could keep that under wraps for a little while longer...). I've been a little nervous about the relocation prospects, and trying to jam as much into my time as possible. I've been stretching to grab onto Scott and squeeeeeeze every last bit of enjoyment out of him before I get tossed to another continent.

Which is hilarious, because at first, I was the one saying "slow! slow! you can't hold me by grasping!" but here I am trying to do that with him and our time together.

Ach.

So, here we are. Yoga was good and happy. And i'm going to try to be there again next week, cool people in the class.

After yoga I went to Trader Joe's, my local hippiefun grocery store (Whole Foods is the more serious hippy market), and picked up a bunch of food that i'll eat as lunches, in salads, as dinners, and snacks (do you ever have the problem that you buy food that sounds like a good idea, and then you never want to eat it? so you buy snacks out of vending machines or stop for takeout?). And made myself a very yummy southwest chicken spinach salad. Happily complimented with a Cuba Libre (with Nicaraguan rum, blogger fuel of Champions).

Good lord, life is good. and it's raining. lightning/thunder with a soaking rain. it felt good to take my bags of groceries into the house while being pelted with fresh water. I'll have to read that hiking magazine and start planning my next trip. wuhu.

Racing my Neuroses

2006-04-26T08:37:00.000-04:00

It's April. I've had serious mental illness about racing already. I've finally come to admit: I don't have either time or desire to train enough to be competitive with the women in the Expert class. They're talented and devoted, and I'm too much of a slacker to keep up.

I spent last summer beating myself up for being last-place Expert (all season) and driving myself crazy and being depressed about the training I wasn't doing enough of.

The week before the Whiskey Creek stage race I started on a new saddle. It's kinda roadie, and it's an ass hatchet at first, but when I get used to it, it's wonderful. So I wasn't used to it yet. I did pretty poorly at Saturday's races, and on Sunday at the XC race I was almost crying as I got on the bike, my keister hurt so much. But I perservered.

As I was going out for my sixth and final lap of the sandy sandy course, the winner of my class was at the finish line cheering me on. I almost cried. No, really, nice of her and all.. but I was in ass agony, and there she was, already drinking her recovery drink and I was going another round with the sandy hills. I should have stopped then.

But it only made me more depressed and crazy about the bike. I was determined. I started getting dropped on the Thursday night Rhino rides every week. Oh yeah, that was good for the bike self-esteem. (But fun to ride with Linda who would hang back with me as I gasped up the hills).

Then I was angry at the (rented fully) bike in Oregon. That I couldn't whiz right up the hills (read: mountains), and when I got back and rode my own tinkerbell hardtail I got all tentative, and less interested in racing/riding.

I think the hard truth is that with the training I do, I'm a sport rider, and I can be cool with that. I'm not ready to give up enough to be a competitive Expert rider. I have too much joi de vivre, too many other interests.

It took a lot of mental haranguing, angst, and a few tears, but I've decided to race Sport. I knew I wasn't cut out for Expert this year, but my Inner Critic expected everyone to say "Couldn't hack it? eh? Gave up? Quitter." I was pretty disappointed about it at first, but I'm ready to have a fun summer. Ride my bike, hang out with my friends, go camping, do some backpacking.

The more relaxed attitude of a Sport rider suits me better. It means I can have that deep fried cheesecake for dessert every now and then. I can go ride all the singletrack I want. Or not. It means that when I look at my bike, I smile. When I go out on my bike I'm happy. I can do this Sport thing, get all the riding and exercise I want, and focus on all the other parts of my life that are fabulous, and not to be missed.

Thanks to all my friends who've been all supportive and understanding. And to everyone else who didn't say what my Internal Critic expected you to say.

knitnotes

2006-04-25T08:08:00.000-04:00

my pal datawhat had a link to these people who do graffiti type tags with knits.

from there i found..

a tank cozy

and bleeding things which are categorized as knitting, but look a whole lot like crochet. *shhh* don't tell anyone. ..but they do count as messed up fiber art, which i so enjoy. :)

plus also, i just got to the you knit what blog, which is a lot like the Go Fug Yourself blog
but not as celebrity, and not as funny, but with knitting patterns, which I dearly love to lampoon. dear god, I'm not a pattern girl myself, but I read the knitting books for the pictures (screw the articles!), and holy humping heyseus, those knitwear designers come up with some crazy shit and want us to make it/wear it. yak.

and i want to wear this on september 19th. ahoy mateys.

Cabin Fever is just Bad Latitude

2006-04-19T08:37:00.000-04:00

The cabin fever has finally broken.

I'm feeling easier now.

February and March are the worst for me. I get cagey. More intense. I drink more. I put on weight. It's not fun, and it's not pretty. I want to ditch everything and leave, but even when I travel, it's not enough.

This winter was extra tough because I couldn't do any of my favorite outdoor winter sports. It started snowing on Thanksgiving, and kept it up for most of a month. Then on Christmas day it started raining. And we couldn't keep any accumulation after that. It's no fun snowboarding down an ice sheet, or even a dirty slushy hill.

True, I wandered up to Searchmont and Boyne, and got a great powder day in AK, but that was the extent of it. No local skiing to speak of. I made one foray into XC skiing in December, when we had a foot of snow. That's it. In 3 sentences, all of my winter outdoor activities.

I did a bunch of treadmill running at the gym. I picked up heavy things and set them back down. But it's not the same as getting hours of natural light and fresh air when you're playing out in the big blue room.

I'd been out on a couple of bike rides without as many layers of overclothing, but it took one good solid weekend of sunshine to fix me up.

Friday night Scott drove us into Royal Oak. Yellow jeep, top down, temps in the upper 70's. We had tacos at a mexican joint and ate them at the tables on the sidewalk. Watching the traffic go by, feeling the breeze, sun setting. It got cooler, so I pulled on my shawl and we walked the strip. Got some gelato, ate it while strolling.

Saturday morning I drove us up to my parents' cottage. We helped dad cut down a tree, walked around on the beach, soaked up the sun. Sunday was easter. We had candy for breakfast, then Scott, Dad and I went for a dip in the lake (frrrrrreeezing), and ran(/walked) a couple miles. I took Scott up the coast to the Sturgeon Point Lighthouse (he'd never seen a real lighthouse before), we saw wild turkeys at the railroad crossing on our way back. And 5 deer at another RR Xing on our way home.

It was a weekend of bright eyeblue skies, sun, white fluffy clouds and cool breezes.

I've been considering a move to Sweden for work. I think it probably won't work out - what with my cabin fever being so bad at this latitude.

Auburn Hills, MI 42.6N
Copper Harbor, MI 47.5N
Seattle, WA, 47.6N
Bamberg, Germany, 49.9N
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan 52.1N
Sitka, AK 57.07
Gothenburg, Sweden, 57.8N
Juneau, AK, 58.3N

Scarlet Fever

2006-04-12T08:35:00.000-04:00

My first week back from Alaska, I went for a couple of nice bike rides after work. That first weekend back I met Scott's family at a 3year old's birthday party. Wow, kids everywhere, lots of mayhem. I liked his sister and brother in law pretty well. But I think I caught something from one of those little petri dishes with legs.

The party was Sunday, and Tuesday I woke with a sore throat. No biggie, still went on my bike ride. Wednesday, same sore throat, coming home from the office I stripped to change into bike clothes, and noticed a red spotty rash all over my pasty white abdoment. Shit. shitshitshit. No riding. Thursday morning I visited my general practicioner. Scarlet fever, he said. It's a strep infection, where your body has an allergic reaction to a toxin that the bacteria puts out. So your skin gets a fine itchy red rash all over. The in-store strep detector said it wasn't strep, so he sent a culture to the lab.

As one friend said, "wow, scarlet fever? that's so....little house on the praire! don't they have shots for that crap now?"

Yep, Scarlet Fever. Yep, Little House on the Prairie. Nope, no shots. And it's damned itchy.

If you overdo it with strep, it turns into Rheumatoid fever and destroys your heart muscles. Sooooo, no work until Monday. And no workouts. I was effectively on vacation. And it was beautiful out, but I couldn't go outside and play. I soaked in Aveeno baths, and tried not to scratch. Sat on the couch a lot, knit a hooded cape, and watched a bunch of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (courtesy of Scott).

It was relaxing, but with the weather so good I was miserable hangin out inside.

Monday I called in for lab results and found out it wasn't strep at all, so I got to stop the anti-biotics early (woohoo!). This meant it was some sort of wacky viral infection. After about a week the rash went away.

Thanks kiddies. That infection was birth control enough for me for a while. Mmm.

Home and On the Move

2006-04-05T00:17:00.000-04:00

Work has been ..work. But I've translated my resume over to German, and sent it out to anyone I know in .de who might be interested. We'll see what shakes out.

I have an interview Thursday for an R&D/liason position HQ'd out of the Detroit office. I really think I want to be in Germany for a couple of years. The 4-6mos of indoctrination don't seem like enough.

It'll be interesting to talk about, though.

On the not good news side: a bunch of friends and coworkers are clearing out of MI. Miss Pia's being recalled to Germany, and another will be moving to GA.

Silver lining: If I get transferred to .de, I'll be able to hang with Miss Pia! and if the other gal is in GA, I'll have someone cool to visit in the South. So far I haven't really known anyone to voluntarily move below the Mason/Dixon. (ok, there was one guy who fled to FL after a breakup, but I couldn't really go visit him, as I'd done the breakin..)

And, Sheila's probably going to be in Pittsburgh PA this fall, which is not super far away, nor is it as exotic as her last few locales, but it might also be a launching point for further adventures. Assuming she'll be able to take a break from the hectic Grad School Schedule.

So that's it. I'm home, but trying to be on the move. Many of my pals are also on the move. Let's see where we land. :)

AK Continued

2006-03-29T20:55:00.000-05:00

Seward Tsunami Warning

Tuesday
It was warm and a little drizzly. We drove down the Kenai Peninsula to the city of Seward. Had dollar tacos, karaoke, and fun for everyone at DJ's Wheelhouse. It was a _very_ local bar. After tacos, we got bored so we wandered down to the Yukon. As we were leaving, people started trying to buy us drinks and chat us up. It was odd.

At the Yukon we drank good beer, petted dogs, and played Scattergories with unemployed fishermen. It was great. We stumbled back to the hotel happy.

Wednesday
Dallied a bit in the a.m, noonish we caught a wildlife cruise around Resurrection Bay. We saw Dall porpoises, eagles, sea otters, sea lions, harbor seals, and mountain goats. All kindsa stuff, as well as parts of Kenai Fjords National Park. They served Halibut for lunch on the ship, and made fresh baked cookies.

I'm an Otter - I do cute little human things with my hands.

Then we wandered on to the Alaska Sea Life Center, where we got to poke tidepool creatures and learned more about the aquatic wildlife native to the area. Edjumakational.

Yummy seafood for dinner. All fresh. Gotta love a fishing town.

Thursday
We blew town early and turned up in Eagle River to pack for the BOW clinic. We did dinner at a Thai joint in Anchorage and proceeded to drink ourselves silly at Humpy's, enjoying the music of H3, 3 Hawaiian guys who live and play around Anchorage.

Friday
Caught a breakfast burrito at the Burrito Factory and drove out to Chickaloon, North of Palmer in the Matanuska Valley. Victory Bible Camp - heated cottages with bunk beds, and a big central building with mess hall and meeting rooms.

I caught the Avalanche Safety class, we dug the snow to see the different layers and learn which would slide first. At dinner we heard about the girl who got lost in the snow machining (snowmobiling) class. 'Twas the source of many jokes.

Saturday
Some of the broads in my cabin started moving around at 5am. Breakfast wasn't til 7, and we didn't have to be at the first course until 8:30, but they had to blowdry their hair and do their makeup. Good Lord.

Morning was Dog Mushing, learned about dog care, and got to rip around a trail mushing my own 3-dog team. Very cool, but I could never get into caring for that many animals. Afternoon was Skin Sewing - I made a mitten of elk hide and beaver fur. I'll get the other mitten done someday, I'm sure.

In the evening I wandered over to sample the food provided by the Dutch Oven Gourmet class - got to try Black bear, elk, and venison dishes. Verrry tasty.

Sunday
Oh yes, they got up at 5 O'clock again. And most were packed and ready to ship out before breakfast. After food I took the Snow Machining (mobiling) class. We zipped around a frozen lake to get the feel of the machines' handling. Next it was into the trails. It was fun, but not as good as motorcycles. It was more like 4-wheeling or riding a jetski. I got it up to 75mph on an abandoned airstirp, but the trail-riding was in the 15-20mph range. I can do that on a skittery little mountain bike, so it's way less exciting (though not as taxing) to do it on a stable internal combustion sled.

After stopping at a beautiful lookout for mug shots, we headed back down to the lake. I got bored with the handling exercises, so I went off and jumped some snowbanks. I wandered back up the trail and tried to turn at an intersection.

Long story short, I beached the huge unwieldy machine and had to dig it out myself. When I finally got it out (half an hour after the class ended) and drove it back to the shed, the Polaris guy looked at me funny. "I thought you might have noticed that I'd made off with one of your $8,000 sleds. Guess not."

"Oh, we were about to load the truck. We probably would have noticed then."

On the way back to Eagle River we hit the Musk Ox farm in Palmer. Petted the arctic beasts, learned more than you ever wanted to know about them, and went back to ER. We worked pretty hard on the leftover keg that night, and watched Shawn of the Dead.

Monday
We knocked around Anchorage, I bought the last of the prezzies I wanted to take home and learned how to operate an Eskimo Yoyo. Then it was dinner and a pitcher at the Bear's Tooth movie theater. Breakfast on Pluto - Sheila and I both get into Irish cross-dresser movies. Good and buzzy, I piled onto the plane and headed home.

These pix and more are up here

Many thanks to Meredith and Matt for putting me up. Also to Sheila for carting me around and partaking in the mayhem. :) Next year in Israel.

AK first report

2006-03-21T13:28:00.000-05:00

Day 1 Anchorage:

Coffee at Kaladi Brothers, lunch at Snow City Cafe - Reindeer sausage reuben, mmm.

Next, a visit to the Oomingmak musk-ox collective. Bought myself a nifty little neck warmer, knitted by Edith on Nunivak (first place musk-ox were reintroduced), and a skein so I could knit myself a hat. I was _absurdly_ geeked about this. I'd only read about quiviut in knitting mags and thought of it as one of the most exotic fibers, something i'd never get my hands on. But here I am! *eee*

Picked up the kegs, took a nap, and had a St. Pat's Party. Noone got naked, but it was still fun.

Saturday:
Visited the Native Peoples' Heritage museum just outside of Anchorage. Wandered through the exhibits and learned a lot about the varied cultures of AK. It was Yupik/Cupik day, so there was a lot of story-telling, native crafts, and some traditional dance to be taken in.

Then more napping, and a visit to midtown Anchorage. Dinner and live bluegrass at the Organic Oasis, Soul Man playing at the Blues Spot, and finally on to Chilkoot Charlie's - many rooms of varied decor and musical styles. The live rock band (don't know their name) was playing covers, and doing pretty well. The Swing room had some good techno, and the hip hop room was hopping. I got my picture taken in the Bird House room, where the decor is primarily undergarments. I'm such a tourist! And a drunken Filipina was looking to fight later in the evening. I had to decline, and we left without much fanfare.

Sunday: drove to Girdwood.
Lunch at the Chair 5 restaurant, where I had a musk-ox cheeseburger and fries. Couldn't find any lodging cheaper than the Prince Hotel (the only 4 diamond in AK), so we're here at the resort. Free wifi, we got a pizza and a movie with our 2 day stay. Night skiing is ended, so we went snowshoeing, ordered our pizza, had a coupla beers and turned in.

Monday: Riding Alyeska
We broke fast, rented, and headed up the mountain in a gondola packed like sardines. At the top, on new equipment in a new (to me) kind of snow, I fell a bunch and ended up touring a double black diamond slope, instead of the blues I thought I was headed for. Oops! It was at least manageable because the 3' powder didn't hurt to fall into, and gave me something to work with on the hill.

I was about halfway down, and could see the blue runs I wanted to hit. All I could think was, "those trees look very far away!" So it took me a while to get down the mountain, but after that it was smooth sailing. ...in braille. It was snowing so hard all day I couldn't really see much in front of or behind me... Either way, I got to ride a LOT of powder, and I am now in love. :) Next year I'll have to join a ski club, or at least get myself to somewhere they have honest to god mountains. This was fun!

That's what I've got for now. Pix will follow at some point. Probably when I'm back in MI. I haven't found free wifi with enough upstream bandwidth to make posting pix less than an 8hour task.