Saturday, July 07, 2007

Over the Hump

It seems like whenever I don’t blog for a week or so (well, with real content), it is that much harder to come up with something to post, without it sounding like a letter to my grandmother. Suffer, Pope!

Hannah's class went to camp for 2 days last week. I was a little worried about their travel plans because there was a transportation strike called for this week, but it turns out that it was a one-day event, so it was a non-problem. Unfortunately, it was cold and wet the whole time they were gone, so they didn’t get to swim or do as much as they wanted to outdoors, but they did hike 2 hours up a mountain to tour a castle. Hannah was put out that one of the teachers got to drive there while they had to walk, but that teacher is also 7 months pregnant... Anyhoo, Hannah had not really been looking forward to the trip because of the roommate she ended up with and had cried herself almost sick over it the night before. But on the way to meet up with her class at the bus stop, she was little miss sunshine and roses, and she had a good time. We went to a birthday party on Thursday night, where there was a surprising number of parents of 4th graders, and one of the other parents asked if we had called the camp yet to check on Hannah. She hadn’t either, but she was tempted. I think it was a good experience for both the kids and the parents.

Not that I got a lot done while Hannah was gone. You would think that would be the perfect time, but I just didn’t feel like doing much. The yahoo photo service finally got around to letting me automate the change-over to Flickr, so that has sucked up a lot of time with fiddling with the results. I also added a Flickr badge over on the right, so you can get to my photos by clicking on it. I’ll probably have to go back into my blog archives and fix a bunch of broken links thanks to yahoo photos going south, but I’ll get around to it when I have something pressing to avoid. *g*

It is often not the big differences between the US and Germany that bother me, but the little ones. For instance, I have not been able to find a cloth dishrag anywhere. I don’t care for using only a sponge for all our dishwashing and counter-wiping needs, and our dishrags are wearing thin. See? How sad.


It seems dumb to ask our family to send a care package with dishrags in it, so I have been trying out other alternatives. First, I cut up a large dish towel, but John complained that I made them too small, and I don’t care for the texture of the fabric (the pink one below). Then I crocheted one (the yellow one).


It seems kind of dumb to have to make dishrags, but it keeps me from going mad in my spare time. I am also crocheting a baby sweater for Hannah’s teacher. The closer it gets to the end of the semester, the less I feel like working. So I guess I have actually felt like working for a total of about 2 weeks this semester. It’s a record!

I just wrote my grandma a postcard complaining about the cold, wet weather, and 5 minutes later the clouds blew off and the sun came out. I guess that is as good a method for influencing the weather as Hannah’s—she wears summery clothes, even if it is raining when we leave the house, and by the time we get where we’re going, it has stopped and holds off the entire time we’re outdoors. At least, that is what happened at the midsummer party.

All the rain has been good for the plants in general, but the flowers have been looking awfully soggy. Maybe they will perk up if it stays sunny for more than one afternoon. It has even been too wet to get out and take photos of the flowers, which you know I love to do. You’ll just have to imagine them: roses in every color, beautiful pink and purple hortensia, lilac, and daisies.

We’re going to Shrek 3 this afternoon, not necessarily the perfect activity on a sunny day, but it was planned in advance.

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

*insert sound of hysterical laughter*

I was scrolling through my favorite blogs just now, and came across the latest entry by Naomi Kritzer. She in turn has linked to some *bizarre* artwork featuring Jesus, but her labels are what had me laughing hard enough to pee my pants. Enjoy!

Monday, July 02, 2007

Pimping my other blog

New post up at the travel blog.

Nothing new here: just rain, sun, rain, sun, ad nauseum. Sorry.