oh dear me

tonight i got the this is what happened today report over dinner. it was a good report. better than the one i gave to my boss this morning. which is also part of the reason i stayed late and, therefore, was getting briefed over dinner.

sarah was reading a story to the kids on the sofa. briana was sitting off to the side leaning over and straining to see the book. this is pretty odd, because she is normally all but sitting on the book during story time.

so sarah says, "b, don't you want to sit on my lap?"

b responds with, "even if i'm wet?"

sarah's quick wit gives us, "why didn't you go to the bathroom?"

to which b honestly responds, "i was busy."

on to the next one...

sarah started teaching the kids how to write today. we want to make sure that they can read and write english. of course, based on kindergarten here, they might not learn to read and german until they are dead or so. anyway, sarah has a book, and one of the alphabet activities is to look at the pictures on a page and color the ones that start with whatever letter is on the page. believe it or not, page one has an A on it. the pictures: astronaut, ant, alligator, and a bed. aiden came up with this yesterday when they were talking about starting lessons today: ant, bed, crocodile, and alien (i hooted and hollered and told him he deserved money for that one, since it was really close, and without being able to see through the faceplate and/or perform some experiments, how do you know once they come back?). we went into a little discussion about how the alligator looked like a crocodile but it was an alligator. i'm not sure he bought into it. so, today they started with the coloring (i think back to kyvery's kindergarten torture when i hear this). aiden would apparently rather cut off his leg as color. i hate to hear that, because he has a lot more coming at him. so he gets going on the astronaut. he got through that and surveyed what was left. he turned to sarah and asked if he could just call the alligator a crocodile and be done with it.

she compromised and let him just X it off. i would have given him a cookie.

Random Crap

So, I had a lot to say this morning. I need some mechanism that will allow me to dictate into thin air and convert it to a post.

Work has been OK. I have been working a lot, but it isn't insane yet. I think I am starting to figure out what is going on, and it has been fun so far. That is a good sign.

The kids are doing a lot better. B has a bit of a cold. We are staying home today so she can rest up. That, and it is cold, gloomy and rainy outside. They are starting to speak a little more German. It still isn't happening around us, but we hear rumors of it.

We fired up the wood stove this weekend. We have electric radiators, and they are very expensive to run. We are hoping we can economically supplement the radiators with wood heat. That dude gets insanely hot, so it might work. It takes a few logs to get it heated up, but once it gets going, it cooks. I had initially thought we would have to keep the doors to the living room closed to make it stay warm. Yeah, all the rooms in German houses have doors. Anyway, I've got the door to the kitchen open, the door from the kitchen into the laundry room open, the door to the foyer/upstairs open, and a fan in that door trying to get the excess heat upstairs. It is awesome.

For those in the know, Friday night before I knew what I was doing, I had the living room Grampa Halbrook hot. I was in boxers and a t-shirt sweating my balls off it was so hot. I was quite proud of myself. Now I am fine tuning my wood usage. We have access to some free wood, but it is a) wet, b) too long, c) not split, and d) not at my house. So until my landlord hooks me up with his saw and his wood splitter, we are buying wood at the store, so it is becoming more important that we figure out how to manage the fire so that it doesn't go out but doesn't use up all of the wood either.

Oh, I created a Facebook account. I don't know what I think of it yet. I am trying to convince Sarah to join. Not for any real reason, and it isn't like she'd do anything with it, but what the hell.

Hurm... If I think of whatever else I was going to say, I'll updated this post.

Run. Ride. Repeat.

This is what we bought B. We have had quite an ordeal with Aiden trying to learn how to ride his bike without training wheels. These are what all the little German kids ride from about 2 until they get big enough to ride a real bike. They can absolutely scream along on these things. It took B about 2 days to figure it out. At first, she would sort of walk over the bike, trying to hover near the seat, but not actually sit on it. It was like she knew what she needed to do, but had no idea how to pull it off. Now, she can kill it. She flies along like a rocket, and she can ride forever with her feet up on the little platform. It is impressive. Aiden dinks around with it some, so we are hoping that he figures out what he needs to do to get going on his bike.

We'll see.

Man, are you supposed to eat that?

You can eat acorns.

Really.

BUT... They are full of tannin. That would pretty much be the same thing that makes leather leather and makes a good, dry, red wine a good, dry, red wine.

It is also what makes an acorn taste like it is pulling your teeth out. So you have to fix that. You do that by shelling that dude and boiling it until it doesn't hurt to eat it. Then, if you toast it a little bit, it tastes a lot like a walnut. A walnut with a little too much of that brown crap that doesn't always get cleaned out when you shell them yourself.

Then, they say you just grind it up and use it kinda like flour. Like maybe blended in with your normal flour for banana bread or pancakes. It is supposed to give it a nutty flavor.

We'll see. I have about 2 tablespoons of acorn meal on the kitchen counter. Tastes pretty good. OK, it doesn't taste bad, and it doesn't feel like it is pulling my mouth inside out. I've got a good 5 pounds or so of unprocessed acorns on the front steps waiting for me to sort through to make sure I don't have any wormy surprises. Based on how much I had to boil the dozen it took to make the paltry amount on my counter top, I've got a long row to hoe.

ahhh, the simple minds of children...

Tonight I was going over B's day with her at bed time. She mentioned that she was outside playing at school, and her teacher couldn't find her. I asked if her teacher was scared. Her answer?

No. She didn't see any monsters.

i just can't get enough of this place

It was CUH-RAAAAZY foggy monday. Here's a picture out the window of our kitchenette 7 floors up at work:
Right after I took the picture, one of the guys on my team came in and said something along the lines of, 'Ahhh, so sind die nächste fünf Monaten.' Which translates to 'We are screwed for the next five months'. It stayed that way until around 11 o'clock. While it has been much clearer for the last couple of days, but I know it is coming.

Today, I wandered in for my first cup of coffe, and I found this on the edge of the sink:





Absolutely anything goes here, apparently.