Vacations of the stars

"Lydia ... never heard nor saw anything of which she chose to be insensible." --Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice


In summers past, Hannah and I left vacation planning completely to John. Those were the cold, drizzly vacations we spent in Sweden.



And Scotland.



After those, Hannah and I insisted on somewhere warm. We can get cold and drizzly at home. John took pity on us and planned a trip to Italy. That is definitely the place to go if you want heat.



This year, he has really been pushing for Greece. His original plan was to land in Athens, look around a couple of days, and catch a ferry to Crete.

Hmm, I said, are you sure about that? What about the financial crisis?

Ah, it won't affect us.

What about the protests?

That's just the Greek way of letting off steam.

What about the deaths?

Um, maybe we'll just skip Athens and fly straight to Crete.

In the meanwhile, I have made a few more pertinent points regarding our finances and upcoming expenses (which do include travel for John), and I think Greece will have to wait for us.

But in other news, Greece has been overrun with frogs.

Things that make you go WHAT?!

The washing machine repairman came today. He left the machine running with some special detergent for removing gunk, and I spent the next hour randomly feeling up the machine to make sure the water was really getting hot. It was! And we were only out 2/3 of the original cost for this 6-year-old machine. *sigh*

Hormones are kicking my ass. They haven't been making me crazy (that I can tell), but it would be a kindness if my face would just explode already and stop being colonized by monster zits. *sigh*

Hannah brought up the mail this afternoon: an L.L. Bean catalog. Ok, not an unusual experience. I pulled off the plastic wrap to find a quarter of the back cover neatly ripped off and completely missing. How did that happen?!

I will be spending my next couple of evenings researching computer printers. Ours has finally gotten to the point that it is unusable--actually, we might be able to print in color, but I got too frustrated with it on Sunday to verify that. I need to go into town tomorrow, so I will look at what is available there, then on Friday we are going to the mall and will look at what is available there, and maybe by this weekend we can have a new one up and running. *sigh*

We bought Hannah Sims 3 for xmas, and she was happily playing along when John's hard drive pooped, and now it won't load on the new hard drive. Who knows what is going on there, but neither of us have time at the moment to really look into it. *sigh*

The leak in the car mysteriously stopped as suddenly as it started, but now the AC compressor doesn't work, nor the windshield wipers. Coincidence? I wish! We could probably get by ok without the AC, but not the wipers (which, by the way, I managed to change all by myself, after carrying them around in the hatch space for *cough* at least a year *cough*). *sigh*

Otherwise, things are going just swimmingly! :)

-Nee in Germany just realized she sounds like a downer today

Surprise!

That's how we felt when we discovered that the computer John had bought in January was having problems recently and would have to get a new hard drive. WHAT?! John called customer support and was walked through some test in order to find that out. Oddly enough, I had run a diagnostic test myself just the week before, but the code that came up wasn't on the list I had access to, and I misunderstood the text that mentioned something about not being able to access a disk, something something. Turns out, that *did not* refer to the CD disk drive. *sigh* None of that would have been that big of a deal, but when John went to save the C drive to the backup disk, Windows didn't bother to include any of his data in that, only the programs and their data. Then the technician came and took away the old drive and mailed it off for reconditioning before we noticed the problem. John has pointed out that he was lucky to only have had the computer for a few months and not to have put that many new documents on it, to have some data in email and online, but it was still a very sucky frustration.

In less frustrating news, I got a rush translation job this week and made a wad of cash. Ka-ching! Unfortunately, I underestimated the amount of time I would need and had to put in some extra hours I would normally reserve as non-work time late in the evening and early in the morning. But the doctor who hired me didn't seem to mind that it was a little late.

Hannah is harassing us to make an elaborate birthday party supply order from amazon us, just so she can have a ton of Star Wars swag on her birthday. Most of her friends are going to be out of town; we could make the Star Wars stuff ourselves with our color printer and some glue. Today I was teasing her about her nerd cred--she misremembered the subtitle on a Fantastic Four (*heh* I just typed "Fabulous Four") movie--and she said it was hard growing up in a nerd-free country. I asked if she felt like she didn't fit in, but that wasn't the case--there just aren't enough nerd role-models here to emulate.

I lost some of my balcony plants, including the mystery tree, the smaller walnut tree, and the lavender. I didn't really like the lavender very much, and I didn't even know what the mystery tree was, so I guess it was not too much of a loss, and now I can reuse their pots. All my flower boxes have sprouted so far, and I finally have seedlings coming up in my herb pot as well. Yay, cilantro! I need to cut back my poinsettia and just generally do some gardening this weekend.

John and I take turns planning meals and grocery shopping, but Hannah was not pleased with John's choices this last week, many of which were meat-less. "I neeeed meeeeat!" she moaned at every meal. Scurvy, I am telling you. Anyhow, today I got sick of her whining about the lack of meat and the lack of instant food for lunches and told her that if she didn't like it, she could do it herself. And she did! She sat down with our kitchen notepad and started planning meals. When she ran out of ideas, she fetched a stack of cookbooks and started looking for more ideas. One of us still has to drive her to the store (and probably cook some of the meals), but my baby sacked up and offered to take on some responsibility! *sniff*

And now I will try to post this with the poor internet connect from up in our sunroom.

-Nee in Germany looks forward to meat

Forgetful Jones

God, I always leave something out of my posts, so this will be the general catch-up post.

Poor Hannah, with her Star Wars fetish, missed out on the Star Wars characters at the mall last winter. After one of our near-death attempts to deliver Hannah to a birthday party in a different town--a successful attempt, although we almost killed each other over it--John and I went grocery shopping at said mall, and it was overrun with adults dressed up as Star Wars characters. One of the shops had a big Star Wars sale, with costumes and Lego sets on display in the main mall. I couldn't find a light saber like Hannah wanted, and I couldn't be tempted to buy one of the Lego sets, but I was tempted to pinch the butt of one of the Storm Troopers to see if I could get a reaction. I decided against it in the end.

Hannah has also been haunting an American costume shop online and has discovered a Princess Leia costume that she wants. It comes with a Darth Vader head for collecting candy in, but she thought something a little more R2D2 would be more appropriate. She is bemoaning our lack of a dog--we aren't really dog people, though--because they even make Star Wars costumes for dogs. I can't remember the second choice, but the first was Han Solo.

And in technology forgetfulness: After I got John's Palm up-to-date, I plugged in a card reader to get some photos loaded onto my computer from our digital camera. John commented on the many little gadgets I have invested in recently, and I had to point out that if our many electronic devices still work fine except for one little detail--Palm cable won't connect to computer, camera cable won't connect to computer--isn't it better to buy a little gadget for 10 or 20 bucks and get several more years out of the device rather than toss it and shell out hundreds of bucks for a replacement? I had him there.

John and I aren't averse to buying things, just wasting things. Which is why the washing machine repair man is coming next week to look at our washer. It should heat its own water, but I don't think it has done that in a while. That hasn't concerned me too much, because even Al Gore recommends washing in cold to save energy. But when slimy gray bits started showing up on our clothes, bits that would not have formed if we had been able to occasionally use hot water (as proved by my pouring hot water into the machine and getting rid of the gray bits behind the drum), then it is time for a repair.

And now if I have forgotten anything, it will be lost to the mists of time.

-Nee in Germany uses Forgetful Jones for her Facebook icon, sometimes

I fought the technology, and I won

John has been so sweet; he's been posting my technological successes on his Facebook page, even.

It started with hooking up my laptop to our LCD tv. John has been on a youtube kick, watching various stand-up comedians like Billy Connelly, and Eddie Izzard. And he also found some Far Side specials. So of course he wanted to share these with us, but he couldn't quite figure out how to force us in front of the little screen on my laptop, or crammed in front of the desktop computer in the study. That's where I came in.

All of these little successes started with some online research, naturally, so I could avoid buying things that I would then have to send back. Five packages in the mail later, I have set up a converter (requiring three separate cables) for connecting my laptop to our tv, and installed an infrared device on my laptop so we can finally (after 2 years) upload John's data from his Palm for safekeeping and also download electronic texts for him to read.

And of course, buying the proper equipment didn't mean that it just up and worked as required on the first (or second, or third) try. There was all sorts of adjusting and more looking up tips before I hit on the right combinations. One thing that still irks me about the tv set-up is that I can't just use it as a projector, i.e., what's on my monitor shows up on the screen. I had to set up the tv as a second monitor, which means that my monitor is now functionally twice as wide, with the left half still visible on my laptop and the right half visible on the television. It is strange mousing off the right side of the laptop monitor and trying to keep track of where I am on the tv screen. But once you get it set up, you can't really tell that it's not tv-ready programming.

I also bought some more ink for our printer to see if the name brand really does a better job than the store brand, or if our printer is just that sucky by itself, and some new surge protectors for John's newish computer. It has been doing this weird shut-down thing that could be due to our landlord's shitty wiring, and I'm hoping the new strip will help.

Unfortunately, I have allowed all this setting up to cut into my work time, so I need to see if I can't get caught up soon. That may be easier said than done, though. Hannah and I have dentist's appointments tomorrow after school, and I am helping her get ready for a math test on Friday. Luckily, she has afternoon class at least one day this week, so I have a few more child-free hours in which to work.

I never know how to end these entries. Maybe I should take a page out of mimi smartypants' book:
—mimi smartypants wrestled a pangolin once.
—mimi smartypants does what her brain tells her.
—mimi smartypants tells James Joyce, in no uncertain terms, to put it back in his pants.


-Nee in Germany is good with plugs

Isn't it funny...

how being effective leads to more effectiveness, but being a lazy loaf just leads to nothing? And you get a brand new chance every. single. day. to manage either of them? Just thinking aloud.

Yucky Easter

The weather has been quite bad today, wave after wave of dark clouds and rain. Luckily, Hannah is too big for egg hunting, which we wouldn't really be able to do outside anyway since we don't have a yard or a playground nearby. But after chomping down an 8-inch-high chocolate bunny, she complained about the dearth of candy around here. She seems to think that the American version of every holiday is an orgy of candy (although in this case, she wouldn't be far off the mark), and it is unfair that we have separated her from her sugar-laden heritage.

I have been in various stages of soreness all day today. Yesterday I defrosted and cleaned the freezer (which is on the bottom), and scrubbed all the gunk out from underneath. All that kneeling and squatting made my thighs hurt, only I don't notice it until I want to get up from sitting.

I also started planting the seeds for my herbs and flowers on the balcony. I got most of the planter boxes cleaned out and topped off with new soil, but I had to stop when, surprise!, the weather turned cold and wet yesterday afternoon. I am pretty sure that defrosting your freezer or starting your gardening works like washing your car for attracting rain clouds. At least I had the sense to put the planter boxes I had already seeded onto the balcony floor instead of back out on the railing to get washed away in the rain. In a couple of weeks, I might have some seedlings.

Not paying attention

On a recent shopping trip, I wanted to treat myself to one of my favorite German candies, gummi-colas.



Only, when I got home, Hannah pointed out that I had managed to buy FRUIT-flavored gummi-colas.



Okay, I suppose. I mean, I am familiar with cherry coke,



and lemon pepsi



and pomegranate 7-up.



(Heh, that last one is actually 1. not a cola, and 2. a recent find of Hannah's from the import shop.)

But if you will notice on the bag, the third fruit is (not pomegranate) orange. I don't recall there being an orange-flavored cola in the States, but they drink it over here.



There is another one called Schwip Schwap.



I wouldn't drink either of them, for I hate orange, but I like the commercials for Schwip Schwap better. They show a lab where people are trying various methods for getting the cola in the orange, with humorous results.

Anyhow, Hannah was able to reassure me that the gummis didn't actually taste like anything but cola, so I was able to chow down on them without worrying about them including any extra flavors or vitamins. *whew!*

I've got to start reading the packaging more closely, though. Who knows what it will be next time...

Follow along

I took a break from translating earlier to eat lunch and clean the stairwell. Normally, our house is as quiet as the grave, minus our cats meowing their heads off, but someone went into or out of each of the other 3 apartments during the 45 minutes or so I was sweeping and mopping.

The last person came out of the apartment directly below us. I thought it might be the son, who was a teenager when we first moved in here and is now in his early twenties. I don’t know what he does exactly, but I remembered that I’ve seen him with the ambulance service, so I thought he might be an ambulance driver, and thought that was pretty cool. But then I remembered that in Germany, young men have mandatory military service; if they object, they are allowed to do social service instead. So maybe he was doing the ambulance thing as part of his social service. Still cool.

This thought led to the memory of the members of Tokio Hotel getting their orders, but trying to get out of it because they were on tour in America. And then I realized that there was no situation I could imagine the German army being in where they would say, “Damn, if only we had Bill Kaulitz here!”

A little of this...

I am in a really good mood because I have a translating gig that is going really well so far. Except for the fact that the spacebar on my laptop is acting up. It was worse earlier, even after I used canned air to blow under it. Now it is just occasional, but not quite often enough to make me want to throw my laptop across the room.


Since I was working on the translation, John took Hannah to the orthodontist yesterday. And of course neither of them could tell me exactly what was said, just that she has another appointment in May and will indeed be getting regular braces. So I called today to ask if I should arrange to have her teeth sealed at her upcoming check-up/cleaning. And also, what is the deal with the braces? Long story short, the orthodontist will be doing the sealing on the fronts of the teeth when she puts the brackets on, sometime over the summer. I think Hannah will be in them for a whole year.


John wants to get through more of the songs on Rock Band at the "difficult" level, and when making his choice just now, he said, "This guitarist only has four fingers. It can't be that hard." He was talking about a Black Sabbath song. Looks hard to me.


I'm really supposed to be cleaning the stairwell since this is our week and it is my turn (we're so egalitarian). But John is my enabler, and he got me on my weak side: "It's already 7!" I like going to bed early, and my sense of duty couldn't overcome my love of lots of sleep. So tomorrow I will use a bit of the time when I'm taking a break from translating to do the cleaning.


The weather is super nice, and I really wish I could be spending my daylight hours out on the balcony, playing in the dirt, but alas, my work ethic has kicked in and I am trying to stick with it, damn the luck! But, I give myself little coffee or fruit breaks to get some fresh air and stretch, so I used the hand that wasn't holding my apple today to pull dead plants out of one of the planter boxes. Unfortunately, my bucket for collecting stuff for the organic waste can is full, so that put a crimp in my "gardening." I guess I'll drag it downstairs tomorrow when I'm cleaning the stairwell.

And with that, I will start rounding everyone up for bed. Night!

Hannah has gone to the Dark Side

Hannah has decided that she is a huge Star Wars fan and that she therefore needs more Star Wars stuff. We have all the movies on video, so that is a start. She has also given one of the characters on Animal Crossing the catchphrase "StarWarsRox".

Two Halloweens ago, we went through the epic struggle to find a Storm Trooper costume, successfully, as it turned out. But now Hannah has outgrown her costumes and they are in the hands of her male cousins. What would they know about Star Wars?



Oh, that.

I bought myself an Empire Strikes Back t-shirt at Old Navy when we were in Louisiana; when she saw a Star Wars t-shirt at H&M here in town, she begged me to buy it for her. I hate to say it, but mine is much better quality. At least it is not almost sheer.

She discovered that the animated Clone Wars series is on tv on Sundays and about had a nergasm. Like most programs she likes, we are not allowed to breath a word while it is on, at the risk of being shushed and getting the glare of death. I have to say, the animated series is better than the movies I-III, and this from a dyed-in-the-wool Star Wars fan.

All of this was kicked off by us buying a copy of Fanboys while in Texas after having it recommended by a new-ish relative who, it turns out, is as big a nerd as we are.



We watched it again last night, and Hannah said she wants to have a Star Wars funeral, maybe have her ashes scattered at the Lucas Ranch. I pointed out that she will probably feel differently about it when she is 90, but that if she gets run over by a bus next week, I will try for the Star Wars funeral angle, and that seemed to satisfy her.

Despite my nerd creds, Hannah has a hard time talking me into buying her Star Wars stuff. Unfortunately for her, my tightwad side overrides my nerd side in department stores. Also, I am constitutionally unable to spend a big chunk of cash on what is basically a hunk of plastic with a brand name on it (i.e., a light saber). In the third place, she doesn't have anyone to fight with here at home (unlike in the photo above), so that means John and I would be the recipients of the inevitable light-saber-whacking.

Oddly enough, I remember what it was like to want Star Wars stuff and not get it, but in my case, my mother wouldn't let me buy action figures or vehicles, only stuffed animals (Ewoks) and t-shirts and the occasional coloring book. Those fell into the "acceptable for girls" category. When I wasn't trying to trace the movie poster for Return of the Jedi out of the newspaper, I was longing desperately for a little plastic Luke Skywalker and his jiffy speeder. I was definitely a tom-boy growing up, playing softball (badly) and spending the time I wasn't reading on my bike, and I guess this was where my mother felt she had to put her foot down. Most of the time, she told me I could be anything I wanted to be. I also internalized the message--from where, I am not sure--that anything boys could do, I could do better, so having my mom be so anti-action figures was a real blow. BUT, when I was in my 20's and already married, she bought me a Millenium Falcon 3D puzzle. I guess she figured that the odds of me turning out as a lesbian as a result were pretty low at that point, so it was a safe purchase.

[Edited to add:] I forgot about Hannah's ipod. The first video clip she put on her new ipod was this youtube video--the Lego Star Wars Orchestra playing the Darth Vader theme. Excellent!

Hannah, Re-Activated

As you may remember from last spring, Hannah has been wearing an activator to correct her jaw misalignment. She has been very diligent about wearing it, and the orthodontist has declared herself pleased with the results. We were kind of expecting that she would be going into braces soon, but the ortho thinks she can fix everything without them. The jaw is now in the right position, and all that is left to do is pull one or two teeth that had been growing from too high in her gum down into position. So Hannah got a new activator, pictured above, that is designed to do just that. It is grape kool-aid colored and fused into one piece, meaning that instead of two parts that attach separately to her upper and lower teeth, her teeth slide in and out of the wires attached to the single piece that just sits in her mouth. The first two nights she had it in, she managed to spit it out during the night and found it on the floor. Mmm... if there is anything I want to put in my mouth in the middle of the night, it is a chunk of plastic and metal wires that has been lying on the floor in a 12-year-old's room. Glad it was her and not me.

Now I guess I had better get her in to the regular dentist for a cleaning. I was waiting until we found out if she would need to have all her teeth sealed in preparation for braces, but that doesn't seem to be in the plans anymore.

Say Hello to Nee, M.A.

Back in July, I told you all about my adventures in thesis writing. I have been waiting more-or-less patiently since then for my results, and as you may have noticed from the photo above, they finally came! I am now officially a Magistra Artium.

At first, I was just glad to be done and didn't want to worry about it. Then we went to Texas on vacation, and I didn't have to worry about it. Then we came back in September, and I figured it was too early to worry about it. But when classes started back in October, I started to worry. Finally at the beginning of November, I sacked up and called the appropriate university office. It turns out that faculty have no deadline for grading theses. ::boggle:: So then I went to talk to my first reader, and she told me that she had sent in her assessment/grade already, and it was a pretty good one. Basically, I had to wait for the second reader to get his grade in, then for the diploma to be printed. Only then would I find out how I had done. And that took about 10 weeks. *sigh*

But now I am officially done. No more worries, no more waiting. Yay!

Water, water everywhere

Back in November, I found out that my thesis was accepted and that I will indeed be getting my M.A. (more on that soon). To celebrate, and because he had been jonesing for it, John took us to a little restaurant up the hill from us for dinner. On the way home in the car, I noticed that the floorboard was wet.

"What do you mean 'wet'?" demanded John.

I splashed my feet in the puddle under my seat. "Wet!"

At that point, it was late and dark and cold, so we scooped out as much water as we could manage with a dust pan we keep in the trunk and called it a night. The next day, and on many subsequent days, I went out with a stack of towels and sopped water out of the front and back floorboards on the passenger side. Judging by the many sprouts I pulled out of the carpets and floor mats and the moldy items I scraped out of the door pocket, I'd say we'd had the problem for a while.

I can't tell that there is a leak around the seals on the doors, and a little googling brings me to the conclusion that the water could be getting in through a couple of different places in the ventilation system (blocked pollen filter or blocked a/c drain), which are located behind the dashboard on the passenger side.

When we first discovered the problem, it was a busy time of year, approaching the holidays and all, so we put off taking the car into the shop. I tried to buy a tarp to put over it, but let's just say that it wasn't a successfull maneuver. After the holidays, it finally turned cold and snowed. Frozen floorboards are preferable to soggy. But yesterday it rained all.day.long. Buckets and buckets of rain. At some point, I am going to have to go outside and bail out the car. If we don't get it into the shop soon, I am going to buy us all galoshes to wear in the car.

Crawling out from under my rock

So, you may be asking yourself, what is up with Nee?

Why, absolutely nothing, which would explain the lack of new posts.

Twice a week I drag myself into town to listen to student presentations and give feedback, and the rest of the time... I don't even know. I must be doing something, but I'll be damned if I can say exactly what. But we are all fed, clothed, and not dead, so I am obviously doing something adequately.

My thrilling part-time job will be over the first week of February, so my thoughts have moved ahead to life afterwards. I found an ad for a job I want to apply for, so now I am in the middle of whipping my cv into shape, a somewhat different experience here in Germany from in the U.S. For one thing, a photo is required. That seems very odd to me, but I guess it saves the human resources people some time by getting a first impression of you from afar (also, less germy). So I dutifully made my way to a department store in town that advertises its while-you-wait photo service. I was afraid it might be a photomat booth, but it turns out that they have an actual person taking the photos, and I put myself completely in her hands. I had read on a job-search advice site that a big smile makes a good impression, so when she told me to smile bigger, I did it, even though I felt very strange doing it. At the time, I was pretty sure those pictures would come out looking like I was getting ready to suck the viewer's blood, or go for his liver, but once I saw them, I realized I look like a deranged muppet:



So sad. Luckily, one photo came out okay, or at least not like a sketch of an escaped mental patient, so I have something to put on my cv.



Wish me luck!

‘This the Season to Blow Up Like a Dirigible

I may have gone a little overboard with the xmas baking. In the last week, I have made, from scratch, 3 loaves of bread, lemon shortbread, fudge, 2 batches of rice crispie treats, banana bread, butter caramels, and popcorn balls. I am sad to report that the majority of the items didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped. Even though I managed (or rather, I sent John to a particular store and he managed) to find marshmallows for my never-before-failed fudge, it failed. Well, maybe not failed, but it was definitely not up to my normal fudge standards.

Then I made rice crispie treats for Hannah’s class on their last day of school, and the German kids turned up their noses at them. Hannah brought about half of them back home. She claims that a lot of her classmates were dieting in the run-up to the holidays, but I suspect marshmallows are not a big part of holiday items here like they are in Texas. More for us!

The recipe I had for butter caramels wasn’t very precise, so I don’t think I boiled everything long enough. It turned out grainy. I didn’t want to waste *5 cups of sugar*, so I tried to use the caramels as the basis for some caramel balls, but they wouldn’t stick together, so I got Hannah to pour in some peanuts, and now we have fiddle faddle.

And since I didn’t have any whole lemons, I used lemon extract in the shortbread. Bad idea.

Next year, I am just going to buy all my goodies from the bakery and find something else to do with the time I’ll save.

Speaking of cards...

We got our first xmas card right around Thanksgiving. Complete with Chick Tract.

::chirping::

Riiiight.

You get 2 points and some virtual divinity if you can guess who it was from. :)

'Tis the Season to Miss Hallmark

Germans don't seem to require greeting cards that have pre-printed sentiments inside, so I have to buy blank xmas cards and come up with my own text. I miss the old days, when I could buy cards that said something seasonally appropriate and I only had to jot off a quick personal remark a line long or so and sign. With this new system, I have to think up the whole thing on my own. Except when I run it past John, he always criticizes it. So now I have come up with 2 possibilities, neither of which I will actually use:

This holiday season, I was *going* to wish you
snowballs,
gift wrap,
warm cookies,
good friends,
and family,
but John thinks it's crap.

OR

Merry Xmas, Bitches!

Maybe I will just draw a picture.

Wah wah wah

To the guy with the rainbow fish on his car who almost crashed into my bus yesterday morning:
I'm glad you are proud to be a gay Christian, but you still drive like an asshole!


I know, I go AWOL for ages, and when I show up again, it is just to bitch and complain. Such is life.

quote of the day

Man can be the most affectionate and altruistic of creatures, yet he's potentially more vicious than any other. He is the only one who can be persuaded to hate millions of his own kind whom he has never seen and to kill as many as he can lay his hands on in the name of his tribe or his God.
-Benjamin Spock, pediatrician and author (1903-1998)

from the A.Word.A.Day newsletter dated Dec. 1, 2009

quote of the day

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.
-Abraham Flexner, educator (1866-1959)

from the A.Word.A.Day newsletter dated Nov. 25, 2009

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Is it wrong that this video cheered me up a little when I was in an existential funk? If so, I don't want to be right.


Victim In Fatal Car Accident Tragically Not Glenn Beck

Barbies, Barbies everywhere

Hannah got out of school early on the last day before the fall break started, but I had to teach until 2, so she hung out at home with her dad. When I got there, she had taken every single Barbie item out of her room and set up a Barbie world in the living room. Our apartment is “compact”, as a friend so tactfully put it recently, so the colonization of our living space by all the sexy chunks of plastic is a real imposition.

Starting from where I am sitting in the recliner in one corner and moving clockwise around the room, I can see:

• A Loving Family House filled with Barbie squatters, who have also set up extra, Barbie-brand dining room and bathroom sets out front


• A camper, opened up so the living space and bed are extended


• A Kelly treehouse


• A classroom


• A pink, plastic rolling tub, about 20 inches on a side, chock full of Barbies

That has brought us to the television in the other corner. Taking a bend and following the wall:

• A Barbie boutique, complete with mannequins and customers, which can be a little hard to tell apart


• A grocery store, including plastic fruits, a register and cashier, and a Kelly pushing a kid cart shaped like a race car


• A bakery full of plastic cakes


• A purple carriage pulled by a white-pink-purple horse


• A pink throne holding a king, queen, and tiny princess

From there, the sectional couch acts as a barrier to further Barbie encroachments.

Hannah basically emptied out the 3-drawer storage tower in order to ensure that every detail was perfect, like the tiny stuffed animals on the bed or the globe on the teacher’s desk. She spent hours beyond that Friday, as well, dressing the Barbies in scene-appropriate clothing—one has the perfect “grocery shopping” outfit—and combing out their ratty hair, which then had to be trimmed, colored, gelled, etc. No stylist could have done a more thorough job.

Unfortunately, she freaks out every time we bump something (see “compact”, above) and some tiny object is moved. We are currently fighting about her Barbie house blocking the door to the balcony, where the dryer lives. Since I can’t get through that way, I have to go through her room, but she pulls down the industrial-strength blinds to block out the light from the nearby street lamp at night, so I have to pull them back up to get out. And then she has a little conniption about the blinds being up. Anyone need a 12-year-old?

When I first saw the incursion by the Mattel corporation into my living room, I felt a little nostalgia, thinking that this was maybe a last gasp of Hannah’s childhood. But the more I think about it, I think it was just an extension of her still-active love of the Sims and all Sims-like games (like Animal Crossing). If there is ever a need for a social architect, I think Hannah has had more than enough training in order to get the job.

Crazy

I just read in a German source online (Handelsblatt via yahoo) that McDonald's is closing in Iceland. Apparently, the chain's headquarters required the 3 restaurants in Iceland to import basically all of their supplies and ingredients from Germany, but with their economy tanking last year, costs of the imports have doubled. So now the company that has the franchise is pulling the plug on the 3 restaurants.

I like to eat at McDonald's as much as the next fat-and-sugar-addicted person, but I think it is kind of cool that Iceland is going to be a McDonald's-free country after this. Not many places can say that. In addition, the company that has run the franchise in Iceland says that they will probably reopen the restaurants, but as local affairs using local supplies. And it all comes down to money--the company will do whatever it takes to make money, and if that will hurt/help the local economy doesn't even make it into their equation. In this case, though, I hope it will help.

Of “Frying Pans and Bunsen Burners”

That is the title of the course Hannah is taking during the fall school vacation. She just got home and said there was “too much chemicals” and not enough cooking. But they are supposed to spend all afternoon on Thursday cooking, so that should make her happy. Right now she is rotting her brain with some tv, which I told her she was allowed to do after such a long day.

Well, that was a short month

So I obviously did not manage the full month of blogging as planned, but to tell you the truth, I am not too upset about it. It takes a while to form a new habit, and half a month is not a bad start. Besides, a lot of my posts were drivel. Which is better, post every day but every post is crap, or post less frequently and hope the posts are more substantive.

The first day I missed, I had been watching a movie about Gandhi when I realized it was the end of the day and no post. But really, compared to the life of Gandhi, what does it matter if I blog or not. I am trying to be philosophical about it. Maybe I'll do the NaBloPoMo again next month, give it another try.

In the meanwhile, I have been all Betty Crocker. I made turtles from scratch, and they turned out perfect. I took a photo of the halfway point, where the pecans were covered in caramel, so I could post it. Ha ha ha. I forgot that John's Palm doesn't play well with my laptop because my laptop doesn't have an infrared port and the USB connection for his Palm doesn't work properly, so I can't get the photos off his Palm. *sigh* We've got to send in the camera for repair soon.

I also finally denuded my basil plants for the winter. The leaves filled our stand mixer, and after chopping them up with a little water, salt, and olive oil, it was enough to completely fill an ice tray. I hope we remember to use the cubes of basil in the freezer before they get freezer burn.

I am also trying to force my poinsettia to bloom. I know the odds aren't in my favor, but it doesn't take too much effort, as long as I remember to cover it at night. (Only forgot once! Better than my blog this month.)

My pink Thanksgiving cactus is in full bloom and the white one is covered in buds. Yay for color on a rainy day!

Hannah starts a week of Fall Break tomorrow. We signed her up for a cooking class, so she will be occupied from 9 to 4 every day. At the end, the parents are invited to come taste the fruits of the kids' labor. I can't wait to see what Hannah comes up with.

Thoughtful Article

I don't think it is a secret that I lean left-ward, but that doesn't mean that I am close-minded (I hope). I just read an article in the Associated Baptist Press--not a source I regularly read, but I followed a link from Jay Lake's livejournal page--that I found to be a thoughtful look at the psychology of chain emails:
Fear Not: What does virtual rumor-mongering say about Christians? by Robert Marus & Ken Camp.

This Just In

I was reading to John from my email:

"Happy anniversary, Bill O'Reilly! Five years ago yesterday, the Fox News Channel host was named in a sexual harassment lawsuit brimming with lurid details about vibrators, phone sex, threesomes, masturbation, Caribbean shower fantasies, a Thai sex show, falafel, stewardess trysts, vehicular coupling, and Al Franken."

His response? "O'Reilly eats falafel?!"

hahahahaha!

(from the Daily Media News Feed email from mediabistro.com)

New Favorite Web Site

Regretsy: "Handmade? It looks like you made it with your feet"

A takedown of some of the "products" for sale on Etsy. Many are not safe for work or children in the room. At least not if you want them to grow up with a healthy sense of sensuality.

My favorite so far is Kitten Head on Amputee. I don't know which is better, the title--I Can Haz Stump--or the last line--"Depends on the frame." I have been laughing so hard I feel sick to my stomach. Yes, it is *that* good.

So tired

Had my first class today in a too-small room with too many extra people. Too many things to complain about, so will stop before I say something libelous.

Had lunch with John and his American colleagues today. Fun was had by all.

Ate popcorn with Hannah, who swears that the sweet microwave popcorn we get here can't hold a candle to kettle corn. Aunt Kee made her kettle corn, and she knows from kettle corn.

Cooked dinner late after the popcorn, but John was later still. At least he got home before we were done eating.

And now I am off to bed, where I am reading a book about widows in Early Modern England remarrying. Fascinating!

Got the blahs

Today's weather: cold, wet, occasional sunshine interspersed with hail. Not the fine fall weather we were enjoying just a couple of days ago.

This afternoon, Hannah and I got flu shots and got new vaccination "passports" for keeping track of our shots. Since she is due for at least one more round of boosters and is out of space on the little card from her Austin pediatrician, this will be very helpful to us, to have space for everything on one record.

Now my shoulder is sore and I don't feel like doing anything. Not a good run-up to my first class tomorrow.

Good night.

Texas, Our Texas: 2009, Part 1.5

Ok, I forgot a few things from our visit to WF, like waking up in the middle of the first night because I didn’t know if the truck got locked after we unloaded it and remembering that Hannah’s portable DVD-player was probably laying out on the back seat and trying to decide how I could get outside to the truck in the dark without killing myself on the stairs or being eaten by the guard dog. And then I remembered that my mother’s truck (loaned to us for the 3 weeks we toured the southern US) had one of those key-fob-thingies, and lo and behold, it worked from the second-floor bedroom, so I avoided death by dog or stairs. It took me so long to figure out because our car here in Germany, the one we are used to, can only be locked or unlocked by putting the key in the door. I know, positively Paleolithic!

I also forgot sending the kids to the pool with John and Mr. Jooge in the air-conditioned car—too bad, no room for Nee and Jooge, so sad (or not)—and taking over the tv remote to watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and having a lovely tear-fest while Jooge went crazy in the kitchen and whipped up an apple pie. *Whipped up a pie*, I say! The woman is a master of fruit-filled desserts.

We also drank pot after pot of percolator coffee. These are *my* people.

And we got the grand tour of the chicken ranch. The layers are lovely birds, healthy-looking and active. The fryers were sad hulls of flightless birds. They basically sat there, listless and semi-featherless. There will be no more fryers in future, I have been assured. *shudder* They looked sad.

And we saw the fledgling garden. You know I can’t resist a garden. Sadly, their large tomatoes had fallen victim to the tomato blight, may they rest in peace.

Finally, we tried to avoid injury by pre-schooler, but weren’t always successful, damn those little push-cars.

Late

Once again, I have managed to only get around to blogging when it is basically time to go to bed. In my defense, in reality I only got around to blogging when it was time to make dinner, and then Hannah wanted to use my computer, and now it is bedtime, without any noticeable blogging having taken place. I did manage to do some research for my courses I am teaching, and some laundry, and some sewing, so today wasn't a total wash, but it really wasn't blog-worthy, either. Oh, well. Tomorrow is another day.

Texas, Our Texas: 2009, part 1

Our trip to Texas this August started out well enough. We left in plenty of time, and we remembered which exit we needed to take for the long-term parking … where we found that the lot was closed. Apparently, it had been closed for a while, because grass was growing up through the asphalt. And there were no signs there telling us where it had moved to, or if holiday parking even still existed (which it does, I just checked, but in a very different place). So we parked at the airport in the garage, knowing it would probably double our parking costs. Unfortunately, neither the airport signs on the road nor the itinerary from the travel agent indicated which terminal we would be flying out of, so we ended up parking at the very far end of the parking garage and hiking the length of Concourse A before discovering that we had to fly out of Concourse C. At least we were in the right terminal, but we still had to get up to the top floor to take the skytrain with all our luggage—no trolleys allowed—to get from A to C.

Once we were at Concourse C, though, everything went smoothly. One thing I like about Frankfurt is that when they rennovated their international flight terminal, they added extra security lines. The first time we flew back home, about 5 years ago, there were 2 scanners for the whole area. 2. The lines were at least an hour long, I kid you not. Now, there is at least 1 scanner for every 3 or 4 gates. Easy peasy.

We flew through New Jersey, and as usual, our second leg to Dallas was delayed, but it wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I called my mom with a credit card from a pay phone—DO NOT DO THIS! 11 bucks for a 30-second message on my mom’s voice mail—and let her know we’d be coming in a little late. Got in late in the evening, went home with her, had a good night’s sleep, up at 6ish, and straggled out the door to drive to Wichita Falls later than originally planned, which is par for the course for us. We would have warned the sibs we were on our way, if they hadn’t changed their phone numbers recently and only notified us by email ONCE WE WERE ALREADY IN THE AIR. But no hard feelings, Mr. Jooge. *g*

Driving up I-35, we noticed a lot of faux-German buildings and signs for various German heritage events. Hannah was all, "Aaaugh! We can’t get away from German stuff!" To top it off, we drove through Muenster, Texas, which is nothing like Muenster, Germany. Sorry Muenster, Texas.

When we got to Wichita Falls, we were able to enjoy all the finer things, like taking everyone out for Mexican food lunch to celebrate the brothers' birthdays. Mr. Jooge totally confused the waitress by asking for the filet mignon tacos. (When John was a teenager, his mom was dating this guy who took the two of them out to dinner, so John ordered the filet mignon, on his mom’s date’s dime.)



Notice how Hannah is bookended by her cousins. Now that she is older, she is a highly coveted playmate by the younger kids in the family. She has always been popular, but being a pre-teen now gives her a certain panache among the elementary-school set.



She wasn’t the only popular one, though.



The wee one really enjoyed capturing the attention of the grown-ups; he’s a funny little monkey.



There were also kittens, which always adds to the attractiveness of visiting relatives.



Unfortunately, this cute little kitten gave Hannah and at least one of her cousins ring worm. A little anti-fungal cream later and all is well, though.

Tomorrow, San Angelo.

I can die now

...that I have found the Muppet Wiki. Yay!

Word of the Day

catsturbation: when a cat rubs itself on any available inanimate object--the edge of the coffee table, on a stack of DVD cases--in lieu of a pet from its cat-parents


This is actually my coinage, after watching Eliza satisfy herself this morning. John was impressed and entertained (by my new word, not by the cat).

I love opening email from the Wordsmith

Plenty of kind, decent, caring people have no religious beliefs, and they act out of the goodness of their hearts. Conversely, plenty of people who profess to be religious, even those who worship regularly, show no particular interest in the world beyond themselves.

-John Danforth, priest, ambassador, senator (b. 1936)

And the lameness lives on

Hannah had an earache and sore throat this morning, so we let her stay home from school and sleep in. I feel like I have an incipient cold, but have felt that way for a while now, so I got a little extra sleep, too, and took it fairly easy today. I did have a proofreading job come in, and I got through half of it before I had to start dinner and make Hannah get online to study her Latin vocabulary. After dinner, we played Scrabble, and John won, but Hannah was a close second, with my assistance. Tomorrow is Friday, and Hannah is going to school no matter what, and maybe I will manage to finish the proofreading and the syllabi for my 2 courses that start next week. Too tired now to think of anything else...

Free from the tyrrany of class-parent-hood

I went to the meet-the-teachers evening at Hannah's school and stepped down as classroom parent. I don't know that I was all that helpful as the number 2 person, but the replacements (#1 also stepped down, but she is a full-time teacher of disabled first- and second-graders and has 3 children, so it wasn't unexpected) only have one year ahead of them because the kids will get sorted into new classes next year. So I don't feel like anyone is getting taken advantage of because I stepped down.

On the way home, I was reading The Joy Luck Club and almost missed my stop. Oops. The meeting had run over, as usual, so it was 10:30 when I got off the bus.

This morning, I got up and got Hannah off to school, then I lay down on the couch and went to sleep for 4 hours. This afternoon, John lay down for an hour or two. We are two lazy--or perhaps slightly ill--people. At least Hannah still seems healthy.

Busy bee

I got up and screwed around for a little while on the Internet this morning before helping John get out the door. Then I washed a whole pile of dishes, which is no fun because we still have that leak in the kitchen sink and therefore have to do dishes in a large plastic bowl that came with pancake(?) mix from Costco or Sam's back in the day. But, our landlord came by (only a week later than expected--huzzah!) and measured the sink and promised to get a chrome replacement for it. Right now it is out of some mystery substance that is an unpleasant brown--very 70s--so chrome is a definite improvement. If only he would replace the dishwasher, too, but since we have never brought it up, the odds are not good. Oh well, it is probably eco-friendlier this way. Maybe.

Then I threw some towels in the wash--oops, gotta go take those out--and headed out to the grocery store. One place we shop is a discount store: they have a certain amount of stock (food) that is always there, but every week they have specials on non-food items or specialty (often foreign) foods. I found some stuff for Hannah's bed I had been looking for a few weeks ago when I blew our budget on some kitchen appliances, so between those things and the shopping, I had a hell of a lot to carry up to our top-floor apartment on my very own (Hannah was at school and John at his office). Oof! Hannah got home just as I was carrying the last 4 bags up the last 2 flights of stairs--she's got that uncanny sense of timing from her dad's side of the family--so she helped me put away the groceries and complained while I ate some tuna salad. While she ate lunch and studied Latin, I put together the new support system for her bed. The American-style box-spring is unknown here. Instead, people use a Lattenrost, a slatted frame that fits into a bed frame and on top of which the mattress is laid. Hannah's looks about like this:



Her old play bed just had a simple arrangement of slats that are nailed directly to the edges of the frame but have no spring to them. Since she is bigger than me now--i.e., grown-up sized--it was past time for her to have grown-up back support.

I also got a mattress pad for her bed, but it is rather thick and cushy, so it is almost like a pillow-top for her mattress. She seems pretty happy with the new set-up so far, although she hasn't slept in it yet. If she falls out tonight, I'll have to go back and pull out the old slats that are still nailed in place under the new system. I really don't want to do that, though, so I hope gravity gives her a break near the edge of the bed.

Now I am a bit stiff and sore from the lugging, sitting on the floor putting the Lattenrost together, and yesterday's turn at cleaning the communal stairwell. Since I have to go to a parent meeting later this evening--which I can't skip because I am one of the classroom reps, oi--I will now go lie down somewhere and veg out.

Last Minute

I was sitting there eating dinner--homemade pumpkin soup, which Hannah refused to eat--and realized I hadn't posted yet today. It would be rather lame of me to lose steam of day 5 of my month of blogging, so here I am while Hannah plays Animal Crossing.

We spent the last 3 days making our way through The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. I can't help myself thinking of The Very Secret Diaries whenever we watch it, though. Highlights: Aragorn--"Still not king." Legolas--"Still prettiest." Everyone: "Sam will kill him if he tries anything."

And that is the lame end to a rather lame day 5.

A Little Bit of This and That

John got all Mr. Fix-It recently and fixed:

1. the toilet seat in the downstairs bathroom, which had been sliding off the rim to the left every time we sat on it, for ages.

2. the light switch in the upstairs bathroom, which had a bit of it snapped off.

3. the light bulb in the car's right headlight.

I was Suzy Homemaker and sewed:

1. a cozy for the new kitchen radio after spraying it with powdered sugar. John mocked me for making a kitchen cozy, since in his experience only grandmothers sew cozies, but when our radio is still clean, functioning, and dust-free in 5 years, he will thank me for it.

2. hems on 2 new pairs of pants I bought in the States.

3. 2 still-secret xmas presents.

4. the second bench cushion, once I figured out the proper sewing machine needle to use on the upholstery.

5. and generally fixed a few things in need of repair, sewing-wise.

Hannah has joined the drama club but skipped the first meeting. She has promised to attend the next one this week on pain of death or loss of Animal Crossing, whichever would pain her more.

She tried to go to the movies today to see a German teenie film called Gangs with her classmates--girls only because the boys acted like "idiots" the last time--but it turned out to be a big event because the cast was there to give autographs, and half the group, including Hannah, couldn't get tickets. Hannah swears some girl shoved the person in front of her in line out of the way and swiped her ticket, which I doubt, but it does sound like it was crowded and crazy. She and her friend came back to our house and are watching Clueless now.

I am finding my laptop super annoying right now. The space bar doesn't always work, and now that I am managing to get in more typing, that means more times for the space bar to annoy me. grrr...

Our camera has crapped out on us, and I don't know when we'll have it fixed. The pictures look smeared, and a little research online shows that it is probably a part that Canon will fix for free, if we send it off to a Canon shop to be repaired. Now we just have to figure out where we can send it. That means I will not be able to inflict new photos on you. Luckily, I have a hard drive full of old photos. bwahahaha! Maybe later.

The Littlest Rock Band

Last night, John wanted to play Rock Band, but Hannah was already playing Sims on my laptop and I was sewing, so he had to play with himself.* He didn't have a preference for a particular instrument, so Hannah picked for him--singing, which he hardly ever does. He made his way through some Nirvana, Wheezer, Fu Fighters, and Blue Oyster Cult, and then for some unfathomable reason, he chose a French song. Since we have the German version of Rock Band, we have some additional tracks in German, and apparently this one in French. It's a catchy song, except since none of us actually speak French, we have no idea what is being said. You can have a peek at it here, Manu Chao by Les Wampas.



It's a rather fast song, so even if John could read the French, the words were flying by so quickly on the screen he would barely have been able to sing along (which also happened on the Fu Fighters track). He ended up basically making up words and singing in a horrible nasal tone that was supposed to approximate French; Hannah and I laughed so hard I thought she might wet herself. And to top it off, when his score came up and he had a chance to add his name to the high-score list, he was perturbed to find that he was only number six, since none of us had ever done that song before.

I think Hannah is the only one of us before last night that has played Rock Band alone as a singer, but I never payed attention to the avatars while she was singing (which is basically the only time you get a clear look at them without the guitar/drum line in the way). The only reason I payed attention last night was that I had recently read that Courtney Love was pissed about the way the avatar for Kurt Cobain had turned out for Guitar Hero.



Hannah has always commented on the appearance of the avatars--"Get a haircut, hippies!" (I think she's channeling Richard Nixon)--but I just noticed that one in particular bears a strong resemblance to a character from The Dark Crystal:



"Hi, I'm a Gelfling!"



Uncanny, no?

Post number 2 for October

As promised, I blogged our trip to wine country over on my travel blog. I can't imagine that I will be able to keep up this level for the whole month, but who knows--there are still lots of trips we made last year that never got blogged. That should take up several days of work/writing.

Enjoy!

National Blog Posting Month

I decided to bite the bullet and join NaBloPoMo, which you can find out more about here. If you were to judge by my recent posting, I am sure you would say, "Ha!" And you might still be right, but I am going to give it the old college try.

I was looking for something in my archives the other day and noticed that the number of posts I had up had decreased from one year to the next from when I started, and that disturbed me a bit. Recently, I have felt extra boring and reserved, which I don't find very conducive to writing chatty blog posts. I don't really want to be boring and reserved, and yet, that may be all I have to write about this month. Suffer, Popes!

Yesterday, I granted myself the leisure of surfing the Internet because I had gotten up and worked and taken a walk and just generally been righteous. I waswearing the Empire Strikes Back t-shirt* I acquired while in Louisiana, and spotting the NaBloPoMo badge above seemed like a good sign that joining was the right thing for me to do now. Also, Obi-Wan makes everything better.

Anyhow, this is my official first post, since I plan to blog throughout the month of October as my penance *ahem* project, but I thought I would give my victims a chance to run for the hills for the next month, if the mood strikes you that way.

I am much more likely to do something if I plan it out in advance, so I am cheating by writing this on the last day of September to post on the first day of October, but on the second day of October, I plan to put up a link to a to-be-written (not cheating!) post on my travel blog about our recent outing to the wine festival in Freinsheim.

*I wore this shirt the day before yesterday, too, but yesterday I layered it over a long-sleeved shirt. It is currently one of my woobie items and is in frequent rotation. It caused the pharmacist to have difficulties making change for me because she was mesmerized by Darth Vader.



Mesmerizing, no?

Then she told me about a Lego youtube video where Darth Vader orders a pizza, maybe like this one here:



I mean, what do you expect if you argue with Darth Vader about the pizza toppings? Sheesh.

Vampires R Us

A facebook friend posted this picture:



I love "the section formerly known as young adult", by the way.

Anyhow, I was telling John about it, and he declared that people's fascination with vampires and their perception of them as sensual is kind of dumb, because "no one goes up to a woman and wants to *withdraw* fluids from her."

(He thought this might be too tacky to post, but tacky R Us.)

Fall into Fall

Now that my balcony garden is gasping its last breath and my once-noble walnut trees look like sticks in a bucket,



I thought I would look back on the weeks of pleasure I got out of tinkering with seeds and dirt this year.

When I started out, I didn't have any grand ambitions, such as feeding my family solely from the fruits of my labors or opening a stand at the farmers' market; rather, I just wanted to see if the seeds Hannah and I had been collecting in the kitchen would sprout and/or thrive. I totally love cantaloupe, so I was thrilled to see that it took off



at first, but it was not to be. I started the seeds in the sunroom upstairs, but after a certain point, they just pooped out, even after I moved them outside.

Fortunately, my pepper plants didn't follow the lead of the cantaloupe.



I just threw a bunch of seeds in a couple of pots and ended up with a ton of plants putting on bell peppers and hot peppers. Luckily, most of them survived our absence in August, so I came back to lovely fruit:



and



I've since stringed up the peppers to dry, which may or may not be successful since it has been cool and a bit damp recently, but I would like it if my gardening efforts lasted longer than the warm weather here.

I also had cilantro sporadically (sorry, Jooge), which we loved for making guacamole when we could get decent avacados, and some basil that just wouldn't die but surprisingly didn't bolt, even though we heard August was hot while we were gone.



I also made compost, despite John's protests that it would stink and attract flies.



I found some lovely grubs in the soil we bought, so I tipped them into the compost and they cheerfully slithered their way down into it. *shudder* Lovely! I had been trying to turn the compost regularly, but while we were in Texas stuff started to sprout in it. So I came back to a pot full of mystery plants.



I swear a lot of them look like tomato plants, but I don't recall putting tomatoes in there. Oh, well, they'll be dead soon enough when it finally turns cold.

Next year I would like to get more food plants to grow, although I don't have any specific ideas of what I want to plant, just not more bell peppers, although they are pretty easy.

My other gardening love is our row of window boxes. The house we live in has some typical southern German gingerbread trim, complete with window boxes, but it pained me to pay hundreds of dollars to fill them with equally typical hanging geraniums, so I have been buying packets with mixes of seeds to pack in there. What I like about them is that the mix invariably includes early and late sprouters, flowers that like the heat and flowers that like the cold, tall and short, and a variety of colors. In the spring and summer, there is nothing I like better than to get up and get a cup of coffee to take onto the balcony and survey my little seedlings in the early morning sunlight that is special to that time of the year. Sometimes I have an interesting guest



or two.



Mostly I enjoy trying to figure out what is going to bloom next. It is always a pleasant surprise.



Yesterday I trimmed all the dead plants in the flower boxes and moved them to the floor of the balcony and then swept up all the dead leaves for the compost. After Xmas I will start sorting through my already purchased flower seeds and planning how I want to arrange them so I can see them through the kitchen window after the spring equinox. I'm looking forward to it.

Feel the Burn

I seem to have developed an aversion to the blank page. A strong aversion. The kind I normally reserve for flan



or Carrot Top.



It's that bad. I find myself opening MS Word and then closing it or even getting up and leaving the room. Same thing with my notebook. I carry it around the house with me but don't actually open it.

I guess I should just suck it up and post what I have, but I can't promise anyone will enjoy it. Here goes:

Title: "The French Braid of Life"

Most of the time, I am pretty dextrous when it comes to keeping all the hairs under control while I weave them into the 'do of life, but lately more and more strands are slipping out of my hands and making a snarly mess of things.


...and that's all I had. After I wrote it, I realized it sounded horribly melodramtic. Mostly I was thinking about how the act of cleaning Hannah's room led to a bunch of other tasks. For instance, I went through Hannah's closet and got rid of the clothes she had outgrown. She refuses to part with almost anything--"the memorieeeeeees!" (shades of her grandfather)--so I just went in while she was otherwise occupied and sifted through her closet. A lot of clothes went to charity, but she had ripped the knees out of all her jeans, so they weren't donate-able. I couldn't see throwing away 5 pairs of jeans, so I cut them into strips



(the whiskey cannister became the spool for the finished "thread" later) and crocheted them into a rag rug for my kitchen.



That was a whole day of work.

I managed to talk Hannah into giving away her dress-up clothes (heads up to Lil Sis and Jooge: she wants them to go to your little ones), but that meant sorting them and packaging them to go in the mail, whenever that happens. That also meant that I had now freed up two shelves in her closet.

She wanted me to convert her tall play bed into a regular low bed, but first we had to figure out where to put all the stuff (so.much.stuff) that had been under the play bed. Four days of cleaning and sorting resulted in a low bed and a half-empty room, plus a yard-trimming-sized bag of garbage plus 5 other shopping bags worth of garbage. Plus a bunch of mini-electronics (I hate you, McDonald's) that had to go to the special recycling center instead of the garbage can. Plus the rest of the play bed parts that had to be wrapped up and put in the cellar.

Once we had her room under control, it was time to go shopping for a desk to go in it. We headed down south to the opposite end of town from where we live, where we:
1. bought 2 months worth of cat litter,
2. bought a desk and chair and sought in vain for something else for Hannah's bed,
3. bought a mixer, a blender, a kitchen radio, and an MP3 player (I lost mine in Texas, probably on the plane on the way there), and
4. bought corn chips.
As you can see, we have to take advantage of the long trek to do several errands at once.

I put the chair together that night and the desk the next day. Of course, I put it together wrong on the first try (damned unlabeled parts) and had to redo part of it. grrr... Then I had a big pile of cardboard to get rid of, also at the special recycling place. The whole project felt like dealing with the Hydra. And now that I've written it all out, I am almost as tired as when I actually did it. Actually, I just finished the last thing (trip to the recycling place) this morning, so I guess I have a right to feel that tired.

And on that note, I'm off to bed.

Dipping a Toe In

(Yesterday, upon discovering a Tupperware of pistachios in the fridge):
Me: What are your dad's nuts doing in the fridge?
Hannah: Um, that didn't sound good.
Me: Ye-es, I could have put that better.

Ewww!

Ok, lady I passed yesterday on the street--I know I am not exactly a fashion plate myself, but we have to talk. About your tights. I know you probably think they are kicky or something, but I have to tell you that you look like you were holding a breast-fed baby that then had an ass-plosion all down your legs. Please, for the love of all that is holy, save the tights for at home. Thank you.

Pinkie

The weather held out yesterday, and Hannah got cut loose from school early, so we went to the pool. I am not a pool person, but I had promised John I would take her if the weather was good, so I found myself waist-deep in cold water--well-water cold--at 4 yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, I only remembered to put sunscreen on my body (50 SPF, baby!), so I had to get out quickly (I wasn't complaining!) and slather up my face. Hannah said I looked like Jasper the Ghost. When I explained it was Casper, she complained that she couldn't be expected to know American culture when we dragged her over here, etc. etc. But then I pointed out that various Casper movies had been on German tv, and that to my certain knowledge she had watched them, and that the name had not been changed. Well, ::bluster::. Sometimes my child is a bit of a blowhard. I hope I am not modeling that kind of behavior, but maybe.

Anyhow, ten minutes of sunscreen-free pool-standing, and now my face is a bit pink. Not even really uncomfortable, but when you are as pale as me, ten minutes is all it takes.

Holding down the fort

John is off learning Gaelic in Scotland, so I am holding down the fort with Hannah during her last full week of school. Today she is supposed to do the dialogue for two characters from the Nibelungen; I have no idea what the project is, but she's been practicing her lines and figuring out a way to indicate she has changed characters--jacket, no jacket. I wonder if Siegfried would have worn a tank top?

After weeks and weeks without a tv, and almost as many weeks of Hannah hounding us to please please please buy a new tv, we spent John's last afternoon at home tv shopping. I must say, the mall-like shopping center is much easier to survive on a Friday afternoon than anytime on a Saturday. I wasn't even actively craving death when we left! Of course, we dropped a large chunk of my recent paycheck for teaching 2 courses last semester, but we walked out with a 37-inch flat-screen tv (plus 5-year warranty), a week's worth of groceries for me and Hannah, a water-proof jacket for John, and two new non-stick pans. (Oh, yeah, also about 100 pounds of cat food and cat litter.) So if it was squeaking close to 4 figures, you can imagine why. Anyhow, we came home and set the tv up, and it is great. There are enough connectors in the back that we can have the DVD player, VCR, and Wii hooked directly to it and still have space for one more device and a computer (if we had the right cable for that). Hannah has figured out how to work all the most important functions, such as changing the screen size and switching between Nick and the Wii, so I think we are all set up now, and with a minimum of pain.

John and I used to have a daily routine like this: get up, fix Hannah a snack for school, dodge the minefield of Hannah's emotions at 6:45 am, make coffee, and settle in for some CNN and coffee. Without the tv, we had to resort to talking with each other. The horror! Now that we have a tv again, I tried out the CNN morning routine, but it just wasn't the same without John here. So I flipped around and watched some German news instead, but that was too depressing, so I decided to get to work on my stack of editing that is waiting on me.

Not that I am, but soon, Grasshopper.

I promised John that I would take Hannah swimming if the weather was good, but so far, no luck. On Sunday, it would pour rain for an hour, be miserably dark and wet for a while, then we'd get ten minutes of full sun, just enough for you to wonder if it would be possible to go swimming, at which point it would start to rain again. Yesterday it didn't actually rain, but dark clouds chased each other across the sun all day. Plus, Hannah didn't even get home from school until after 4, and she won't today, either, so that is not so conducive to eating dinner and going to bed at a normal time if we were to try to stuff in swimming, too. And yesterday I was totally wiped out. I almost fell asleep on the bus and didn't even care, I was that tired. I came home and found a spot under the window that got whatever sunshine there was available and took a nap for 2 hours. I feel like I have the tiniest smidge of a cold, which I wish would either do its thing and go away, or just go away, because it is getting really annoying.

Hannah and I have a date with Harry Potter on Thursday (cheap ticket day at the theater). I've heard good things about the film, with the caveat that it is not the film Potter-fanatics would wish for. Fair enough. I didn't even go see the last Potter film; I let Hannah go with some friends, but I wasn't really in the mood to see the latest mangling of the story.

I don't know when I can expect to hear back about my thesis. The whole process was a long string of deadlines, but they don't tell you what the deadline is for the professors who are evaluating your thesis, probably to keep people from harrassing them once the deadline is up. Not me. I am kind of afraid of what I'll get back, so I am actively avoiding them. Oh well, one of them lives in Northern Germany most of the time, so I doubt I'll just run into her at the grocery store, but the other one lives just up the hill from me (we use the same bus stop), so the simple act of taking the bus can be nerve-wracking, wondering if he'll say anything. (Please, no.)

After re-fixing a known crack in the kitchen sink, I discovered that there was a new crack, one that I didn't manage to fix and that was still leaking water. The sink was out of commission for 2 days while I let the silicon dry, and the dishes piled up, and then I had to go and do it all over again for the second crack. Needless to say, when the crack leaked after all that effort, I wanted to cry. But I have finished the piled-up dishes and will take another stab at it while there are only 2 of us generating dirty dishes (and 1 of us is away from home all day).

Another post-thesis project was cleaning my filthy, filthy house. I haven't quite finished in the kitchen (still need to mop), but I think I have managed to get the level of filth to "everyday wear and tear", down from "health hazard." I even scrubbed the tile in the shower, which is not for the weak of heart. All in all, I am enjoying being done with my thesis and having time for a normal life again, even if it is rather boring in a conventional sense.

The Dead Have Arisen!

I announced on Facebook that I had finished my thesis, but I couldn’t bring myself to reveal the full extent of my dumbassery to my quasi-friends on Facebook. I mean, most of those people barely know me, so why should I disabuse them of their notions of me? But here, in the bosom of my true compadres, I can tell my tale. It is a tale of dumbassery and academia, so it is not a new tale, but it is mine.

My deeply ingrained habits of procrastination were almost my undoing, once again. The research part of my thesis was very labor-intensive, and I started so late on it that it ate into my time for writing. During the two weeks leading up to the due date, I had been working steadily but slowly, blowing off family outings and such to have more time to work, but going to bed at the normal time. John was very supportive throughout, but I am perverse enough that supportive doesn’t actually motivate me. Once he started to express doubts that I could manage to get it done and in on time, though, *that* is when I started working with the single-minded determination of Paris Hilton looking for a Greek-shipping-magnate boyfriend.

I started getting up an hour early and working until a couple of hours past my bedtime. And in the run-up to my deadline, I pulled an honest-to-god all-nighter, basically writing non-stop for 29 hourse before hopping into the car—dumb, I know!—to get my thesis printed and bound here in our village and dashing into town to deliver it. I was all Run Lola Run, minus the cool red hair and life-saving mission, as I dashed from the car to the administration building. I got it in on the stroke of 12 and went home.

Then, I had to write up a summary of my thesis in German to go with it, due the next day. That led to another fucked-up day, with me running from place to place to get that done and turned in, to proctor an exam, and to grade two presentations in a special class-session.

Then, I had to put together a presentation on my thesis for a workshop in the English department on Saturday. I made a PowerPoint presentation on Friday, tweaked it a bit first thing Saturday morning, and gave it a few hours later to general approval. My thesis may have been wobbly, but I can always nail a presentation. That gave me back some of my confidence.

It has taken me a few days to get my sleep and eats back on schedule. During the last week or so of writing, I subsisted on the contents of our fruit dish, boiled eggs, coffee, and teddy-bear vitamins, so eating real food during regular meals has been quite a treat.

John was preparing a conference presentation and finishing up a book translation during the same period, so poor Hannah was basically neglected for a while there. And our house—John suggested that when the semester was over, we should embark on a round of cleaning, prefereably via firebomb. I like a clean start, and maybe the neighbor across the street will loan us the flamethrower he uses to kill weeds growing up from the cracks in the sidewalk.

While John used his post-semester weekend to chillax, I had the workshop Saturday morning and grocery shopping Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, I woke up at the unheard-of-for-me-on-the-weekend hour of eight and started to clean. I was really intending to sort through the stack of library books I have out, but I did enjoy the freedom to jump around from one thing to another. As it turned it, I managed to balance our checkbook (the first time since early June), wash dishes, clean under the kitchen sink (which is leaking again), water all my plants, wash 3 loads of laundry, and scrub out the silverware drawer, all before leaving in the late afternoon to watch Night at the Museum 2 and eat out. All in all, I woke up this morning generally satisfied with life. I will write more about my thesis later, probably on my writing blog.

Dental Update

Hannah's activator was hurting her over the weekend, so I sent her to the orthodontist with John today to have it checked out. The doc was able to adjust the activator, and she was very pleased with Hannah's progress. Her bite on her left side is already almost in place! Hannah also lost her last baby tooth last week, and the doc was pleased with that, too. So maybe Hannah won't be wearing this thing for a whole year. Yay!

Stress

I've been rather stressed lately. (I wonder why?!) I noticed that I've more or less permanently developed creases beteen my eyebrows. Even if I don't think I'm feeling stress at that exact moment, the creases are still there. As a matter of fact, I got a little sunburn over the weekend, and I noticed today that I have white lines inside the creases. So I have to keep frowning until my sunburn clears up, or I'll have 2 white lines on my forehead.