Adventures in Germany

Thanksgiving

2009-11-30T11:44:00.003+01:00

Well. We managed to celebrate us some Thanksgiving. It started out small (two families) and ended up being a sort of accidental, last minute four family extravaganza. In the end, I am very happy with how it turned out. We managed to fit and feed 9 adults and 7 kids. In our little house. Quite comfortably as well. Sweet.

In other news, the littlest is growing like a weed. Well more like a pumpkin. Much more out lately and not so much up. She's finally getting some real weight on her. She's a cute little fatty. The middlest has just gone through a growth spurt, and she has lost (for the most part) her cute little pot belly. While it is nice to see her t-shirts staying near her pants, it's sad seeing that she has become a girl and won't continue being a little girl. Sniff. The biggest just keeps on staying stick thin. He continues to look like a concentration camp victim. And yet he eats like crazy. He gets the skinny little boy syndrome from his mom's side of the family.

This next part might come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. Or appreciates growing up in the south where it only rains in the winter with the occasional short freezes and maybe a sleet storm. We have succesfully kicked off our winter sport season. We (here I really mean "I") have vowed to stay as active as possible while it sucks outside. To that end, the kids and I all have new, cheap-o ice skates, and Sarah and I each have a set of used cross country skis. We bought the skis at a winter flea market, and I managed to get skis, boots, bindings, and poles for both of us for a total of €30. Sarah's boots are too small, though, so I will have to get her new boots and bindings once the season closes out and everything is getting clearanced. She won't be able to do much skiing, though, with C in tow. I'm not really sure I will be able to coax her out even then, since it is cold out where the snow is. See, she complains about the thought of going to sit in a ski lodge with a book and a baby, but I know for a fact that she would complain just as much should I be the one to sit there and let her out to ski. ;) She doesn't quite see eye to eye with cold.

So our true season opener was a trip to the ice rink up in Waldbronn (http://www.eistreff-waldbronn.de/eistreff_waldbronn_das_ultimative_eislaufvergnuegen) a couple of weeks ago. We rented skates and suffered through a couple of hours there. At that point I decided that I wasn't going to fight rental skates any more. Up until two years ago, I had only been on the ice two or three times, so owning ice skates never crossed my mind. Since we moved here, I have been skating eight or ten times (and it looks like it will only be getting more common). All of my previous sessions have sucked, though, because I have had crappy rental skates. I have decided that the risk to my body isn't worth it. To that end, I picked up some super cheap skates a the local Lidl (think Aldi, for those who know Aldi). I have dtermined that the cheapest of cheap, discount-market ice skates is roughly a factor of 100 times better than the best of rental skates, from my experience. Wow. My feet were comfortable. My feet were warm. The blades have edges and don't move side to side as well as (or in some cases better than) they move front to back. Incroyable!

We got to use the new skates at the open-air rink here in Karlsruhe on Saturday (http://www1.karlsruhe.de/bilderbogen/weihnachtsstadt_2009/index.html). It is the largest open-air, multi-use ice facility in Germany. It is also subsidized by the local utitliy, so the whole family can skate for a pittance. Unfortunately, last weekend was pretty warm and somewhat sunny, so that pittance included about 3/4" of standing water on the rink. That was an interesting experience. While it sucked for any who didn't happend to have water proof clothing on. There were some wet kids there. Fortunately, they didn't belong to me. We planned well this time around.

So, it turns out that really warm, wet ice is sticky. I have never encountered sticky ice. Sticky ice combined with brand new skates makes for a very controlled skating experience. It was much more like roller blading and much less like ice skating. To the point that even the middlest was able to wander around a little bit without her little helper penguin ice skating support. The biggest looked like he has always owned skate. I flailed around like I always do, but with much less side to side footing flinging. The littlest ended up going shopping with the mommiest, who grumbled about it but decided she might as well fight the crowds since we were in town. We are looking forward to more time there this season.

As a bonus, I got to explain the heat transfer process used to freeze the rink because the heat exchanger piping (this would typically be referred to as the chiller piping, I guess) runs along the ground at one end of the rink, and A asked why one pipe was frozen and the other wasn't. He doesn't really get as excited about that stuff as I do. He didn't want to hear about the Carnot cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_cycle), though. I was kinda disappointed.

I'm a daddy!

2009-09-01T23:05:00.001+02:00

I got a baby.

I like babies. Especially because they don't have to latch onto my boobies. Sweet.

I also gave my father in law some soy milk in a brown jar and told him it was some of Sarah's colostrum. He almost had a stroke. It was awesome.

It's Getting Hectic, It's Getting Crazy, It's Getting Hectic, It's Getting Wild

2009-08-18T11:15:00.000+02:00

Well, the final countdown has started. First we got through A's birthday. Yesterday we made it through Sarah's birthday. Mom flies in on the 25th (this countdown is a branch from the main source, so to speak) . The baby comes on the 27th. It is pretty weird talking about the new baby like we're picking up a rental car. Hopefully we planned this C-Section early enough that we don't have any emergencies. Third time's a charm, right?

I am pretty excited about my mom coming to visit. She hasn't ever left the country before. This should pretty well blow her mind. I am thinking I will take back roads back from Frankfurt (once we're south of Mannheim) so she can see some of the countryside and the cool little villages that you miss on the autobahn. Assuming she can keep her eyes open. It will be a long day for her and an early one for us. I am hoping to get the kids out of the door before 6:00 AM so we can get parked and meet her at customs. The kids have committed, but they don't quite understand what I mean when I say that they have to get up at 05:30. Fun fun! This will (hopefully) give Sarah some time to rest up and sleep in before the big day.

We are slowly coming to terms with what to expect with the whole public social insurance rigamaroll. As peasants (I can't afford private insurance for the whole family), we are relagated to the peon ward with shared rooms. In the hospital we have chosen, that usually only means two people. For a €55/day premium, we can "rent" a whole room, and I can stay there with her. I will then get to partake in the breakfast buffet and hospital meals. From what we saw when A broke his leg, that will pretty much be bread and water. It's all of the fun of prison, but we get to pay for it. Yippee!!!!

This is a test

2009-08-04T09:32:00.001+02:00

I am testing posting.

What a stressful weekend!

2009-03-01T20:21:00.001+01:00

We finally had good weather this weekend. We got up early on Saturday to run into town to get our hairs cut (Sarah and I had appointments). Thanks to now having a car, we are able to accomplish that 35 minute trip in 12 minutes now. It is awesome. B got a complementary bang trim because she was looking shabby and the hairdresser thought she had pretty eyes that needed to on display.

We got back home, Sarah vacuumed out the car, I made plans with a friend for a barbecue, then I packed the kids back in the car and drove to a local, public skate park. I parked a little way away (60 yards or so) because I wasn't sure where I could park. I got the kids set up on the side of the park to watch a little while, and I moved the car right next to the park. I got the kids all safety-d up and sent B out on her little Laufrad and A out on his skateboard. I was about to pull out my cell phone to take some pictures when the boy fell down. I heard a LOUD pop, and he immediately started screaming, "I BROKE MY LEG! I BROKE MY LEG!" Sure enough. I was about 40 feet away when I heard it break. It was freaky. I got the kids into the car, called Sarah to let her know we were headed her way for passports, insurance cards and doctor papers. We picked her up and raced to the hospital. Fortunately, I have been looking at the hospital's web site in preparation for the new baby, so I actually knew where I was going. We got him into the the children's emergency room and spent the next 4 hours fighting him down so he could get x-rayed, sedated and casted. He didn't end up needing surgery, but he is in a cast from mid-thigh to his toes. He had to spend the night in hospital last night. Sarah stayed with him. That was pretty tough on the family. We made it through, though, and we have him back at home. We are all completley worn out now, and we are ready to pack it in and go to bed.

Helau!

2009-02-24T21:11:00.003+01:00

I skipped out on work for a few hours today and met the family in town for the Fasching (Carnival/Mardi Gras) parade. It was cold. Fun, but cold. There was a lot of candy for the kids. And matches. That's right, there was a club throwing out small boxes of matches. A got one. B didn't. She was distraught. We let A help us light a fire in the wood stove tonight, then I took them away. Poor guy...

Oh, and we bought a car last week. After more than year and a half without one, we finally gave in. Well, we also found one that was dirt cheap. It is way smaller than we had planned, but we couldn't beat the price, and it gets us into a vehicle so we can better search for another, larger vehicle should that become critical. We want to see how long we can manage with this one, though, so we can get finances better in hand.

Either way, being able to hop in the car and drive to the store in the rain is amazing.

New Wheels: 2001 Fiat Seicento SX 1.1L

Wow. Perspective can make things in the background look really small.

It's even more effective when you have small things in the background.

But... It has a FULL LENGTH sliding sun roof.

Aaaahhhh... Good coffee

2009-02-01T13:31:00.002+01:00

I have a confession. I find German coffee and beer only OK. Well, let me clarify that. Most Germans own $2000 coffee machines, but they buy $2 coffee which they store open on a bright counter. And, while, Tschibo makes pretty good coffee, the Germans do something strange when they roast it, and it is all flat and bitter. And I feel that I have given it a good go. I have bought tons of brands. I have tried brewing in a coffee maker, I have tried it in my coffee press, and I usually brew into a thermal carafe with a cup top cone filter (where you just pour the hot water in by hand). It is all very mediocre.

Now on to German beer. I like beer. A lot. I have years and years of experience automating breweries. I have done taste tests with brewing departments to determine quality. I am not an expert at it, and I will be the first to admit that I can't sit and pitch the pros and cons of Yakima hops over blah blah hops or the best pitch rate for a nice pils, but I understand beer. I also know what I like. I like ale. Very hoppy IPA's really get me going. Germans don't do that. They have three types of beer: Pilsner, Export, Wheat. And they are good. But they aren't ales. And the differences between brewers really aren't that big. Enough to pick a favorite, but not enough to pass when it isn't available.

I have, however, found a workaround. There is a little brewery here called Vogelbraeu. I love their beer. They brew a few other varieties, and the quality of the ingredients makes it taste great. I don't go there very often (only a handful of times a year, maybe), but it is quite tasty.

Last summer, I stumbled on a coffee roaster. It is nice. He makes coffee like it is supposed to be made. He drastically varies the roast based on the beans he is roasting, and he knows his stuff. His prices are reasonable as well. I mean, it ain't cheap, but since it is a pain for me to get there, it isn't a frequent expense. I picked up a kilo of coffee yesterday. I got an Ethiopian (I believe) and another one. Since I can't read German hand writing, I don't really know what I got. The one that I think is an Ehtiopian is a sorta dark roast, but not too dark. It is nice and mellow, a little grassy (like every Ethiopian I have had) and quite drinkable. I got another one that is super dark roasted. Very oily. It is a little over roasted, but I like that taste, so it suits me.

I brewed up a carafe of each today. I won't be sleeping tonight, but man oh man is it worth it.

You can't polish a turd if'n yer fixin' to head home

2009-01-30T20:38:00.003+01:00

We have been looking at automating our testing at work. Yeah, I know, blah blah blah work. Either way, what it comes down to is that our software doesn't always do what I want when you look at it as an automated testing platform. Today I was able to use the phrase "crap in crap out" and then follow it with "you can't polish a turd". All while speaking German. It was pretty amazing.

Well, you need to sun if you are going to be snow blind...

2008-12-21T17:47:00.003+01:00

I went skiing for the first time on Saturday. I have a friend who skates. His son has traditional cross country skis. I borrowed a classic set from a colleague, tossed the boy in the back seat and headed into the mountains with them. It was about an hour drive. It was also raining. I had some sunglasses with me to help keep my eyes right. I left them in the car. Not a lot of snow blindness to be had in a steady drizzle.

We rented skis for the boy. A whopping €7. Trail fees were€5. Nice.

Vojta and his boy clipped in and took off. A and I had to fumble around with getting him clipped in (he had different bindings than I did). Then we scooted off. We did ok for the first 100 meters or so. Then we had to cross the bottom of a ski slope. I found my self sliding sideways down the slope. I got that fixed. Barely. Aiden lost it on the far side of the slope. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to get my skis around him and stay upright while lifting him onto his feet. We got across the slope next to that one, and we were golden. From there on, it was groomed cross country track. And downhill for a couple of kilometers. At the bottom we turned around. About 200 meters from the turn around, A decided he was done. That carried on for the next kilometers and involved me carrying his poles for a while and him walking and carrying his skis. That part only lasted about 15 feet. He put the skis back on at that point, and starting "jogging" like he should have been doing and did great. 800 meters from the end of the trial, he took his poles back (after being scolded for being surley and not listening to advice) and put it all together. He did great.

The verdict this morning was "...half boring, half ok. I want to try it again, but I want to ride those things instead." That would translate to, it was ok, but I want to try skiing downhill next time and then riding the lifts uphill.

Sarah hit a car today

2008-12-12T21:50:00.003+01:00

Sarah is bad ass. When she sees cars coming, she hits that shit. Well, sometimes she locks up her brakes on an ice patch, and B in the trailer makes her fall, and then she slides under the back of the car. But then she gets up and manages to hold off freaking out until the driver leaves, and I answer the phone. After that, though, she gets B to Kindergarten and then paints a freaking wall at a friend's house before getting A from school at lunch time.

Punk as fuck.

She isn't even whining now that I am home.

Hey, Gramps...

2008-11-09T21:13:00.005+01:00

I am an old man. Sneaky, but old. I went over to a Hungarian colleague's house for dinner with most of my team from work on Saturday. To make sure I wouldn't get destroyed, I made sure to drink a big bottle (750ml) of water on the way there. Sure enough, as soon as I show up, they offer me a couple of samples of some native schnapps. One was a peach and honey schnapps. It was pretty good. Really smooth thanks to the honey (I think). The other was a kräuter liquor (think Jägermeister). It was spicy. I then talked a little smack and made fun of some people and got myself into a little more trouble with a couple of more shots. What they hadn't seen, though, was me gunning another liter and a half of water in between to help thin everything out. We then sat down to eat some really good gulasch on boiled potatoes. It was awesome. I ate two huge helpings because a) it was damn tastey and b) because it was a good road block to me being drunk. I don't like that situation as much as I used to. Even more so now that I have two kids that like me to get up early. So I managed to do a pretty good job of looking like a jaded, experienced drinker while actually having not had nearly as much to drink over the last year as was previously the case.

I also fixed their kitchen faucet while dinner was cooking, and we were all standing in the kitchen drinking beers and BS-ing. Really. I get fidgety. It seemed to be a good way to use up some energy.

Then we went dancing. That is funny business. I really am not much of a dancer. I am way too emo. I tap my hand on my chest or my leg and nod my head when I go see a show. But by golly I danced Saturday. It's easy when you are in a club full of fools. As a rule, the average joe can't dance. At all.

I managed to get home without having done too much damage to myself. Outside of getting to bed really late, I was in good shape today. I also managed to survive that weird situation of hanging out and having fun with a bunch of people who work for me. I haven't tried that yet. And I am by no means that guy who makes sure people know who is the boss. I try to stay out of the way of their work until I have to get involved and approve a vacation or intervene with a personality problem or something. It worked, though. A good dose of humility and a willingness to try new things seemed to be the answer.

Who are you?

2008-11-03T21:36:00.003+01:00

This is going to be short. Live with it.

After three months, I have decided to give this a go again. I don't know how it will turn out. I figure that the crappy weather outside and a desire to not be riding my bike on a trainer in the living room will help.

I have started playing my guitars again. I took a week off last week while the boy was on fall break. I picked a couple of songs that he likes to learn and went from there. He is really keen on For The Widows In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti by Sufjan Stevens.

He also came across a game online with Rock You Like a Hurricane by the Scorpions as the theme song. So I had to learn that as well. I am afraid I didn't go with the solo. I felt it was enough to crush out that rhythm and watch the kids run around singing along with me. That right there is why you have kids.

Freetime

2008-07-10T20:03:00.003+02:00

We've been swimming at the local lake lately. Not the one with naked people this year. We found a better one with more beach, fewer naked old ladies, and lots of kid-friendly shallow water. Here are some pics.

The caravan coming back to shore.

Here's a shot of Aiden at the park near one of our favorite restaurants. He's in his usual water feature attire. Notice the sweet new haircut.

Friseur

2008-06-29T21:35:00.003+02:00

I gave Aiden his first hohawk [sic] today. I caught crazy Hell for it, but if you saw how happy it made him, you would have done it, too. I will post pictures soon. The batteries in the camera died today, and I had to recharge our backups. We've apparently misplaced the two other sets that I made sure to buy as well.

We went for a swim today. There's a lake a few miles from here that has a nice little beach and is shallow for about 75 or 100 feet out or so. The kids cleaned their room up today, and I thought that that would be a nice reward. So I hooked the trailer up to the bike and towed them there. Sarah got home from shopping just in time to go with us as well. Aiden learned to float and kick today. He is floundering a little less each time we go. And a week of sun has made a world of difference in the temperature of the water. Fo' real. After my ride next weekend, we should have a lot more time to lounge at the lake in the evenings. I am quite excited about the prospect.

Josh is dead. Long live Josh!

2008-06-28T19:35:00.003+02:00

Well, I have pretty much laid the old Josh to rest. He simply isn't here anymore.

I rode my first century today. Yep. 100 miles. And I did it alone and unsupported. Somewhat unplanned actually. Not in the sense the I was lost and had to do it, but in the sense that I haven't been training for it, but realized that I could probably pull it off anyway. So I got up at 5:30 this morning, ate a bowl of oatmeal with a banana and 3 huge scoops of sugar in it, loaded up a bunch of energy bars and gels, filled up some bottles with sports drinks, grabbed a 100 oz. Camel Back and headed out around 6:45. I rode down tons of gravel roads. I don't really like that on my road bike, but you gotta do what you gotta do. It went well, though. Of course, 40 of the last 50 miles was all crazy headwind. I also had to tool around Neureut some because I was about 5 miles short of the goal as I rolled back into town. That was annoying. And insanely boring. I toughed it out, though. I am unbelievably proud of myself.

A shot down Grabener Allee. This dude runs for dozens of miles from the castle north to Graben. And it is mostly gravel after the first few miles. That equals friction.

There are about a bazillion storks around here. There's actually a family of them right around the corner from our house as well. The "storklings" are now old enough to fly, and we see them flying around in a group overhead at the park a lot.

There's my big boy and my, uhhh... Navy SEAL? It's hard to figure out what that little freak show is going to bring whenever she comes through that door.

OK. I feel unbelievably good for 7 hours in the saddle and a hundred miles under my wheels, but my ass is packing up to an early evening in bed.

Holy crap is it hard to sleep here

2008-06-18T10:33:00.001+02:00

It is mid-June. We've been lucky, and it has been mild, so the lack of A/C hasn't been too much of a liability for sleep. The sun, however, is killing me. Briana got up this morning to go to the bathroom around 5:45. It was full daylight outside. Turns out, the sun had been up for about 20 minutes or so. That is pretty typical, though. It is only about 15 minutes earlier than in St. Louis this time of year. The end of the day, however, is much later. The sun is setting around 9:34 right now. St. Louis says the sun is sinking around 8:28. That's right. That comes to almost an hour and a half more daylight. It doesn't really sound like much, but it is a pain in the ass to get wound down and fall asleep when it is still light enough to read by sunlight at 10:00 PM. In a month or so it will be light late enough that Sarah and I will be able to each separately do our training after I get off of work. We'll have enough light that I can ride my bike until 10:15 or 10:30 without lights and not have to worry about getting hit or pulled over by the police. I can't imagine how people survive any further north.

Wow. One whole year.

2008-06-17T17:51:00.001+02:00

Well, as of today, we've been in Germany for a year now. It sure doesn't feel like it. Not like the last time, at least. I think we owe a lot of that to the kids. They make time here a lot easier. We also have a lot more to do. We are always going to play somewhere or going to someone's house to visit. We have also picked up some personal goals for ourselves that make the time go by. We are working our way back towards financial freedom, so each huge payment comes way too quickly. Sarah has been busting ass learning a new language. She has spent a lot of time towards that goal. I have been training so I can keep up with a friend who is competing in the Iron Man this year. That makes weeks whiz by for sure.

So what else has this year seen? Aiden can pretty much speak German without any issues. I would say his German is about 70 to 80% as good as his English. He is managing complex sentences and expressions now, but his verb conjugation still suffers. Of course, it's the same with his English. He has gotten good enough that I have started picking up how to say things from him. He has also gotten to the point where he A) doesn't get upset when people come over that he might have to speak German to and B) he readily switches to German with bilingual kids who don't want to speak English. Briana has finally begun to speak German to a point. That was quite a hurdle. She is using German about 10 to 15% of the time at home, I would say, and almost all of the time in Kindergarten. Around us, she is still just inserting German words into her English for the most part, but she has begun to throw simple German sentences in as well. Her comprehension is just about 100%. She has finally quit getting angry with me when I speak German to her. And she will respond (albeit in English) or act accordingly to boot. There is a rumor floating around that Sarah can speak German, too. I actually witnessed it last week. I was quite impressed. I figure that she is just a couple of months of practice away from being fairly comfortable. Now all she has to do is find someone who will quit switching immediately to English when she speaks (I am just as guilty simply because I forget to keep speaking German when I am at home).

Both kids have been growing like weeds. I am expecting another growth spurt soon. They have begun eating as much as I eat during a day. That is pretty impressive for their little tummies. Aiden has gotten pretty soild on his bike. His stamina and enjoyment skyrocketed once he got stable enough for me to raise the seat up and get his form a little better. It makes me cringe to watch kids learning to ride with their knees all up their noses. We are going to start working on bike handling skills once I get a new seat post for my single speed. We have done some test rides with B on Aiden's bike (before I raised the seat), and she's close. She rode a block or two before finally veering into some bushes as she realized that I was actually lying to her and not really holding on any more. So we are looking to make that happen in the near future. I have also seen some really cool "hang your kid's bike on yours" solution here. I bought a cheap one as a test. The device sucks, but the concept is sound. Aiden and I can really move along and we can go a lot further. More importantly, when we need to maneuver through or around people on the bike paths, I just let him pedal so we don't move too fast. It's sneaky yet surprisingly effective.

Other than that, things are pretty routine. It is amazing how quickly you adapt to a foreign place. Outside of all of the walking and biking and the foreigners ;), it's a hell of a lot like living at home...

The kids are becoming more German

2008-05-31T16:59:00.006+02:00

Well, it is starting to happen. The kids are becoming more German by the day. We went to a restaurant last night to have dinner and some beers with some friends (one of them had a birthday Wednesday). The plan was to sit outside in the Biergarten and let the kids play at the park across the bike path. Unfortunately, we have a weather front tormenting us, and it started storming like crazy right before we left. We got to the restaurant (after arguing with Briana about whether or not the last tram we were on, which was one of the really old ones, was actually a bus. She wouldn't buy in to it being a tram). We were trying to decide what to get the kids to eat. We were talking to Aiden about getting him some fish sticks. He said yes, and then looked at me quizzically and asked me what fish sticks were. So I said "Fischstäbchen". Which brought an obvious look of comprehension and an, "Oh, I love fish sticks." That is really weird.

It quit raining by the time we had finished dinner, but the restaurant didn't want to start service outside, so we paid up and took the rest of our beer out with us to chit chat where it was much cooler (gotta love a country without A/C) and we could keep an eye on the kids. My friend Michael had brought his son (who is about to be 10, but is pretty small for his age) with him. Now that Aiden is speaking German, they get along quite well. We were able to have a pretty relaxing end to the day. We are planning on meeting them there again on Sunday afternoon. It is supposed to be dry tomorrow, so it should make for a nice afternoon/evening.

I went and got a haircut today. My hair is finally long enough that Sarah couldn't really tell it had been cut. I can. The back grows pretty fast. Or at least, the back is the most noticeably in need of cutting first. I had gone to a cheap place the last couple of times, but they just weren't quite cutting it. Pun intended. I paid a little over twice as much today, but she seems to have done exactly what I wanted. Which is pretty impressive considering my pathetic command of hair cutting German. The most important part was keeping everything long while trying to make it look like the back half of my head was part of the rest of my head. I was getting powerful close to looking like I had a mullet while having long hair all over. That is quite a feat, I admit, but not really one I want to be known for. We'll see how it turns out over the next few days. Hopefully it is good enough. I only get my hair cut once every few months, so I am hoping I have found someone who has done a good enough job that I can go even longer.

To continue on the hair cut front, I bought some clippers today. Sarah has been using my beard trimmer to cut Aiden's hair. My beard trimmer sucks. So I got something that is better designed for it. Aiden was pretty insistent that we cut his hair like his friend Patrice's. We can't go quite that short (he apparently has none), but I did go over it enough to get him into the army at the least. He is pretty stoked.

OK, to finish this off, here are some pictures. Enjoy it, Mom.

Here's Aiden jumping on a trampoline at a festival.

This is another one from our visit to the castle park while Sarah's folks were in town. This is the water feature the kids can play with.

This is another one of the visit to the castle park. These ping pong tables are all over Karlsruhe. They are at enough of the parks that we go to that I broke down and bought some paddles and balls. We have actually had quite a lot of fun playing.

This is a shot of the kids with their friends Vojta (behind B) and Michelle, Vojta's little peanut of a sister.

Here's a shot of us sitting around the table after the races. That's Vojta, the guy who makes me ride so much, in the white Iron Man cap.

Didn't need the dead people today...

2008-05-25T17:16:00.003+02:00

We went for our ride. We rode about 50 miles. I got a flat. I haven't flatted in 6 years. Fortunately, I had a new tube and a quickflate cartridge. That is a really good thing, because we were somewhere in France, and I don't speak me a lot of French anymore. I mean, I can conjugate when I need to, but I'm not real good at building sentences, and I recently discovered that whenever I get hung up in French, I tend to inadvertently substitute German. Sometimes that works in Alsace, but you can't count on it. The new tube lasted until I got home. So did the water bottles I took with me. I'll have to hunt for deadpeoplewater next time.

Aiden helps me compose songs. I was wandering around singing a song about going poop yesterday. I got hung up at one point, and he suggested using the words "plop plop." Yes indeed. I mean, you know he's got to be awesome. He's got half of my genetic material. He and B are shaping up nicely. I am very proud of myself and my übergenes.

And lastly, here some pics from my cell phone.

These are of the wild poppies that are in bloom.

Here's a shot of the kids watching some people play bocce by the castle. Notice that B has her elbows propped on her bars like a pro.

Here's a shot of Sarah and the kids walking along a river in Strasbourg, France.

Silly man, you get water from dead people.

2008-05-24T16:53:00.005+02:00

Not too long ago, I was complaining about the one downside to riding in Germany on Sunday. Everything is closed. As in, everything. About 30% of the gas stations are open. Usually a convenience store at a train station. That is about it. That means that it is crazy hard to, say, find a gas station where you can find water while on a bike, since you aren't usually on a main highway. That is important when you only have 1.5 liters of water, and you are on a 6 hour bike ride. I was complaining about this to my landlord and his wife. They are part of a triathlon club (yes, I seem to have surrounded myself with triathletes who also happen to be training for Iron Man races). After lamenting the fact that on a recent ride I got really dehydrated and almost didn't make it home because I couldn't find an open gas station where I could buy more water, my neighbor's wife looks at me and says, "we always stop at graveyards." I just looked at her quizzically. My first thought was, "OK, that's creepy." After a delayed, uncomfortable pause (during which I was reviewing my translation of the sentence), she followed up with, "There are faucets in almost all cemeteries where you can get drinking water." Who would have thought. Turns out, she's right. I was out on a 75 mile ride on Friday (we had a holiday). We had ridden about 25 miles, and we were facing about 10 miles of ugly climbing, and I had two empty bottles. We stopped at a bus stop to eat some energy gel, and I happened to notice a very manicured, vine covered stone wall across the street. Sure enough, it was a cemetery. Now, I don't know if this is an American thing or if it is a me thing, but I feel pretty weird about this kind of situation. But, I feel even worse about passing out 40 miles from home in a foreign country. And, as they say, when in Rome... Now, she also warned me that I needed to make sure it was drinking water. As a rule, when you can't drink running water that you find in Germany it is posted as such. I, personally, am not a fan of the safety concept of mark it unsafe. I think that things that aren't marked should be assumed unsafe. That way, you aren't drinking unsafe water because the sign fell off. And to make it more confusing, sometimes drinking water is explicitly marked. Anyway, I go into the cemetery, and sure enough, off to the left of the gate was a faucet with a row of watering cans. Unmarked of course. I decided that a few weeks of beaver fever would be better than dying by a ski resort in Germany, so I filled 'er up, as it were. I am still not dead. I haven't spent the whole day on the toilet. So I guess she was right.

I felt it so inspiring that I am going to follow Friday's 75 mile ride with 50 or so tomorrow. Hopefully the rule holds true in France. We'll find out.

Picture Dump Mark II

2008-05-18T20:31:00.002+02:00

Howdy Howdy. Not too much going on here. Sarah's folks left at the beginning of the week. We were pretty busy with them. We had a lot of fun. Briana started the visit off in rare form. She was up on the landing playing while Sarah's dad was in the bathroom. He called out if it was her that he heard out there. She answered, "No, Briana's not out here. She's dead."

That's my girl.

Thanks to crazy friends who do crap like train for the Iron Man, we are always aware of local running races. The kids enjoy the kids' races. This is a shot of Briana, Aiden, and their friend Vojta at the starting line.

B took this shot of Sarah downtown in Karlsruhe while waiting for the tram.

Aiden helped me re-cable Sarah's front derailleur.

B playing at the pump at the big park behind the Karlsruhe castle.

Aiden watching the train go by at the big park behind the castle.

Scouts Honor, The Grit, Hot Water Music @ Substage in Karlsruhe

2008-05-09T00:26:00.005+02:00

So I just got home from seeing Hot Water Music. It isn't so often that good music comes here. I braved Sarah's wrath, and told her that come Hell or high water (or a visit from her parents, as it were), I was going to see this show.

It was worth it. I got there just as Scouts Honor was starting. Good midwest hard core. I went and talked to them after their set. They were pretty surprised to hear honest to goodness, American English. Turns out their drummer is from Arkansas as well. He was pretty keen on finding another one here in Germany. They put on a good show. I am working out how I can get Sarah to go with me to see their front man, Jared Grabb, with MADSTATEWORLD at Zwiebel tomorrow night. I think it might be pretty good. The Grit followed that. Imagine a rough mash up of Rancid and Brian Setzer and the Stray Cats. It was interesting. Their bassist played an upright, and he kept standing up on it with one leg waaaaay out behind him (around head high) as he played.

HWM came on to a full house. I was pretty sure that it was going to be a good set because I got kicked in the face and lost my beer about 45 seconds into the second song. I own a lot of HWM discs. I do not, however, own a lot of recent ones. Those would be the ones that comprised most of the set. So it was a lot of new music with some classics thrown in. I got to hear Radio Free Gainesville, and they ended with 220 Years. I was happy enough.

All in all, and very good night.

The Devil's in the...Wait, what did you just say?

2008-04-29T21:40:00.005+02:00

Sarah's folks were just here. They arrived on Thursday and left again on Monday. They will be back in about a week to visit with us some more. We didn't do too much while they were here. I had to work at first, and we stuck around Karlsruhe to see some of the local sites.

Popop immediately got on the zipline at the park down the road.

Momma even got in on the fun.

Here we are at the local tennis club's Italian restaurant. They have awesome pizza and calzones. And really good hefeweizen.

We finally went to the top of the Durlach Turmberg. It's an old watch tower up on a big hill. We've lived here almost two years in total, and this is the first time we managed to do this. It is a couple of stops past a restaurant we like. It only costs a few bucks to ride up. There are steps. You can even ride you bike up there, if you are a masochist. Yep, we suck.

Here we are in front of the "most unimpressive castle ever" as Sarah puts it. The children are in there usual poses. We call it grubbing around.

One last little cultural update. The Germans don't say that the Devil is in the details. They say that the Devil is in the squirrels. Now I know why squirrels freak me out.

A few quick notes

2008-04-15T20:51:00.003+02:00

I don't have much time, but I want to post these little bits before I forget.

I got some new boxer shorts for my birthday. One pair has sock monkeys on it. They look like they are celebrating New Year's or something. One of them has a top hat and cane and is holding a glass of champagne. B pointed to him and asked me why he was a politician. OK, she said "ol-itician", but it was close.

A couple of days later, Sarah was holding her in the kitchen, and I was acting like I was going to scold Sarah for not giving the kids a treat. Briana holds out her hand to me and says, "Daddy, let me handle this." Then she proceeded to scold Sarah, and how.

Aiden went on his first big bike ride without his training wheels. We rode to this really cool park that is viking themed. It has a big, carved viking guarding the entrance and the main piece of playground equipment is a viking ship. He did pretty good. He is a little sketchy, and he believes that anything on the side of the walk (say a lamp post) is dangerous. This on German sidewalks that are 6 to 8 feet wide. But he made it. I had predicted some potential drama, so I brought along his tag along bar. I hooked him up to my bike for the ride home. He loved it. I will upload some pictures soon. Yeah, we forgot to take the camera with us. Which is too bad, because I saw an Audi R8 by the park. It's like a TT that is a little bit longer and meaner looking with a V8 jammed into the back. Sweet.

On a final note. I went on a ride this weekend. I did my first metric century (100 km). Which is a good start for getting me to a normal century (161 km). We did a hell of a lot of climbing, though. I am pretty sure that I could knock out a good 20 or 30 km more if it was flat. I have a picture of the altitude profile from the ride. I had to quit 14 km before the we got back home. My left knee couldn't take the abuse of constantly going uphill. I had to stop at a train station in Ettlingen to catch a tram back. We started out from Neureut and headed across Karlsruhe to Durlach. Then we headed up into Waldbronn. From there I think we went through Karlsbad to Spielberg. We picked up a friend there and headed up to Dobel. That was a massive climb. We dropped down a massive hill into Bad Herrenalb and then climbed up towards Loffenau. But before we got to Loffenau, we took a little left. And climbed straight up for 5 km. It was unreal. After an age of just staring at my front tire and trying to turn my cranks and walking a little bit and then riding some more, I reached Teufelsmühle. It was insane. Then we turned around and headed back to Bad Herrenalb and along the Alb through Ettlingen to Karlsruhe (or in my case to Ettlingen). It was pretty fun.

Holy crap it's been a long time.

2008-03-30T19:09:00.008+02:00

For some reason, the Easter Bunny has the Claws of Death.

For both kids.

Here we are set up for coloring.

Okeedokee.

It's going to be a mad dash through the great things that have happened this week.

The kids and Sarah have been out of school this week. She and the kids came to the office to meet me for lunch at the cafeteria on Wednesday. While Sarah was trying to get the kids ready she told B she wanted a kiss. B told her no. The conversation went a lot like this:

Sarah: Give me a kiss.
B: No. I already gave you one today.
Sarah: Really. Give me a kiss.
B: No. I gave you one when you were in bed this morning.
Sarah: If you don't give me a kiss, I will leave you here when we go eat lunch with Daddy.
B: If you leave me here alone, I'll break all of your glasses.
Sarah: For that, I might just leave you here for real.
B: You can't. It's against the law.

That's my girl.

Then, they went to an English playgroup on Thursday. Briana played by herself the whole time. When they got home, I asked her if she had fun. It went like this:

Daddy: Did you have fun playing today?
B: No. Nobody played with me.
Daddy: Really? Why not?
B: They don't like me.
Daddy: Did mommy try to get you to play with the other kids?
B: Yes.
Daddy: Did you play with them?
B: Nope.
Daddy: Why not?
B: I wanted to play by myself.

Sometimes it really is painful.

Here's a shot of the kids playing after going to the park today.

But here's the big news this week:

AIDEN CAN RIDE A BIKE!

We have been having him ride on B's coaster bike lately. He has been pretty good with it. He can coast forever. So I explained to him that the plan was to get him to do the same thing on his bike without his training wheels. Then, once he was comfortable we would work on pedaling. So today, we went out for a big ride to a new park. Sarah and I rode, and I pulled the kids in the trailer. It was about half an hour to the park. The kids played for a couple of hours. Another family showed up. There was a boy that was 6 or 8 months older than Aiden, a girl that was about 4 months older than B, and a little 18 month old boy. The parents could speak English, so we chatted with them for a while. Once we were done, we headed back home on a new route. I had decided to try to make a loop. It didn't work. So we added about half an hour to the trip home. Into a headwind. It was quite a workout. Once we got home, I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and wash the winter crud off of our bikes while the kids rolled around in the driveway. As I was wrapping things up, Aiden comes up (after riding up and down the driveway on B's bike) and asks me to take the training wheels off of his bike. I told him it was late, that we'd have to do it later. He responds with, "Dad, I'm begging you." There's no way I could refuse that. I pulled the wheels off. He hopped on the bike, and I pushed him up the driveway. After about ten feet, he was pedaling along and seated squarely. I let go, and off he went. He turned around without stopping at the back of the drive, rode up to me, and then stopped without any issues. He then turned the bike around and started off by himself. I didn't have to interact again. I am so proud of him. He fought tooth and nail before this. It just took him setting his mind to it.

Okay. It is late, and I want to go to bed.

Oh, so that's panic...

2008-02-28T21:26:00.004+01:00

Monday morning I learned what panic looks like. Aiden is always cold. Always. He wears flannel footy-pajamas as much as possible. I mean always. He's wearing them in the pictures from B's birthday party. So Monday morning he came into our room and crawled into bed with us around 6AM. He laid there for about 15 minutes dozing, and then he leaped out of bed loosing this creepy, low pitched keen and ran into the bathroom. Once in the bathroom, he began to turn in tight little circles, stamping his feet so fast you could barely see them, while frantically tugging at his zipper. Every revolution made his pitch step up a notch as he yanked at the zipper that ran from his neck to his right ankle. He managed to get out of his jammies mere seconds before he assploded. Poor little man. It was brutal. Almost ruined the toilet.

B got a package from Gramma Jeanne today. She got some long john jammies...

a cute little shirt and some pants. The shirt is a 6T. We have finally found something that is long enough to cover her little alien belly (as she has named it). The pants have little buttons to make them into capri's. With them up, they are short enough for her to wear as pants. She should grow enough by the time it is warm for them to be capri's.

Aiden was so worn out from a week and a half of coughing and being sick that he finally gave up the ghost and fell asleep on the sofa today. He looks pretty rough, eh?

Here's the poor guy getting a breathing treatment to open up his lungs and clean out the bronchitis. If you look closely, you will notice that his ear is all wadded up under the strap. Now, I'm not sure how uncomfortable the face mask is, but he refused to let us move it. Whatever we try, he gets all bowed up and moves it back so that it slides down and wads up his ear.

He is doing better, though. The kids will be going back to school tomorrow. That means that I have to work a full day for the first time in a week. Yeah, that sucks. I have been staying home until lunch while Sarah goes to German lessons while the kids have been sick. It is awesome.

Okeedokee. It is late. I am tired.

Auf Wiedersehen!

picture dump!

2008-02-26T21:42:00.003+01:00

Ok, I can't write much tonight. It is late, and I need to mix up a sponge so I can make some sunflower seed rolls while I am watching the kids during Sarah's class in the morning.

First we have this picture from the Fasching parade we went to on February 5th.

Next we have B hard at work cleaning her toy horse at the little sink, a.k.a. the back washer.

Aiden was being a good helper while we were getting ready for B's birthday party on Monday.

Here is her little setup. We were instructed to make her leave the room and make up a surprise, then bring her back in and yell "Surprise!". So we did. She loved it.

Here is her cake. Sarah and I always eat pineapple upside down cake on our birthdays (cooked in the iron skillets we paid dearly to ship over). B aksed for a "plain ol' upside down cake" like we always eat. We made her a banana upside down cake. Like every other cake, she didn't touch it. Which is why we made something we thought we would like. Our kids always beg for cake. They hate cake. Teacher's used to worry that something was wrong with Aiden. The Smurfs are pretty much involved with everything Sarah arranges. It's a good thing they are so easy to get here.

That's it.

am i dead?

2008-02-24T21:14:00.003+01:00

It has been a really long time. Three weeks, as a matter of fact. What can I say? I've been busy.

Last weekend, I went to my old boss's house (the guy who brought me to Germany) for a little BBQ. He just bought a Weber grill. Which cost about three times what it should have. It is a nice one, though. It cooked well. He and I have been discussing grilling for a few weeks, and I pointed out some pros and cons of the ones he was looking at. Once he got it, he decided he wanted to see how it was really done. So we went out and spent about a billion dollars on groceries on Friday night, and made arrangements for him to come get us Saturday morning.

Dieter has an old lab that wasn't sure what to think of us. He spent about the first five minutes we were there with B's house shoe in his mouth. He was pretty sure it was his, and he had no intention of giving it up. After Dieter made a brilliant recovery, the dog decided to go outside and relax where there weren't so many new people. Of course, right after that, we headed out ourselves, kids in tow.

With the kids distracted by the dog, Dieter and I got down to business. Dieter bought everything at the store the night before. We had chicken quarters, a whole chicken, a handful of what actually would pass as a pork steak (we thought it would be more bacony), some brats, some hotdogs, taters, some Roma tomatoes, onions, and GIGANTIC strip steaks. I found a site that translates cuts of meat into German. I click on a part of a cow, select the cut from the listed pictures, and it tells me what to order. It was awesome. I went back and forth with the lady cutting the meat. They had cleaned all of the fat off of the good end, so the edge wouldn't have the good old char I wanted. So we were debating the thickness of the cut. I asked for around 2 cm (yeah, I was having to do the conversions in my head, for some reason I hadn't thought about how thick I wanted them). 2 cm is about 3/4 inch. The lady realized that Dieter was going for an original American cut. She added about 1/2 an inch to them. They were monstrous. They grilled up great, though.

This was the view for the afternoon. We spent most of our time talking about grilling tips. I felt a lot like I was at home. It was healing. I have heard that there is actually a law in Germany that limits how many times a month one can grill. I think it is once a month. You can do it more if no one complains, but as soon as the neighbors complain, you don't have a leg to stand on.

Here we have some chicken quarters and potato packets. It was so yummy.

So, while we were there, Briana apparently kept everyone entertained. She kept talking about going upstairs to wash one of her toys upstairs in the bathroom. Finally, Sarah asked her why she had to go upstairs. She said she wanted to use the little sink. At this point, Dieter's family blew up. They all started hooting and hollering and laughing. Sarah went up with B, and found that she had the soap and a little workstation for cleaning all set up. On their bidet (or the back washer, as she calls it).

Today I went on a ride. It was sunny, there was no wind, and the temperature hit about 62°. We rode 50 hilly ass miles. The plot up there shows the profile of the ride, courtesy of my riding partners heart rate monitor with altimeter. It was pretty brutal. I felt like hell. The kids have been sick, and I haven't slept in about a week. I was dead about a quarter of the way in. I decided that I couldn't give up though, and I stuck it out. I know I held him back a bit, but my training partner is a good man, and didn't complain. It was pretty rewarding. Painful, but rewarding.

My Bed is my Castle

2008-02-03T20:27:00.000+01:00

It has been a busy weekend. We bought a bed for the kids last week. I went out with my neighbor yesterday to pick it up. We put it together today. It is pretty cool. It is a half-height loft with a slide.

Aiden gets to sleep up top, and Briana's bed fits underneath on the floor. Getting Aiden's mattress up off of the cold floor ought to help him sleep better.

We aren't so worried about B since she is always hot, and the curtains ought to hold a little heat as well.

I managed to get the bed picked up yesterday right before some friends came over. I invited a colleague and his family and another friend over to celebrate my birthday last night. My colleague has an 8 year old boy. He and Aiden are starting to do well together because Aiden can finally handle at least rudimentary communication in German.

They came over around dinner time. Our other friend that came over brought some potato soup. It was tasty. I cooked up a few dozen frozen "hot" wings. The Germans don't really appreciate spicy food, and these wings are definitely not hot. They are tasty, though, and they are easy to prepare. So we had that and some nice red and white wine. Then things got ugly. I hung a beer opener with a catch pan under it yesterday morning. Now the kids constantly beg to open bottles. So they began plying us with drinks. I was in a rough way when it was bed time. So I drank about a half gallon of water (seriously), ate 2 tablespoons full of honey, took two Advil and called it a morning. The kids woke me up about 6 hours later, and I felt pretty good. A little groggy and rough around the edges, but not too bad. I was pretty lucky. So I came stumbling downstairs to fix the kids breakfast and let Sarah sleep in. That's right, I am such an awesome husband that I will get up early with a hangover just so my lovely wife can sleep in.

As I was fixing breakfast under Aiden's supervision, he looked up at me and asked, "Hey, Dad, can I get you a beer?" Man, it doesn't matter how lucky you get, getting offered a beer at 7:45 while you are still trying to determine if the day is actually going to be functional is just about enough to stop it all. So to punish myself good and solid, I made a plate of German breakfast/leftovers:

That would be a sunflower seed roll with butter (that got Butterkäse and Schinkenwurst), a pumpkin seed roll with butter (that got salami and Butterkäse), some "bread and butter" pickles, half a dozen wings, and a chunk of Weichkäse (like a very mild Camembert) that had been in the fridge long enough to go from weich (mild) to foot (yes, foot). It was still pretty good, but it was far from mild. It had aged something fierce.

After eating breakfast, I went upstairs and helped Sarah with the bed. We got it pretty much knocked out (to the point in the first picture) and then took the kids into town to watch a movie. Aiden has been begging for months. I don't really think it is to see the movie so much as it is to get popcorn in a bag with a drink. There is a theater at one of the tram stops we use, and he is always begging to go when we are heading home. Sometimes they have English movies, and I was holding out for a kid's movie, but it wasn't happening. Aiden said he'd be cool with a German one if it was a cartoon. So we went to see Bee Movie. I really enjoyed it. My German is now good enough that I can go to the movies. I was pretty surprised. Of course, it isn't much of an intellectual film, but I am OK with that. And since I hadn't already seen it in English, it wasn't completely ruined for me. I think that might be the big thing. At least for animations. It still pains me to watch actors I know speaking a foreign language with the wrong voice.

The kids really seemed to have a good time. Aiden claims that he didn't understand a thing. We have no idea if that is true. He was sure doing a bang up job of scolding me in German on our way to the movie, so I think he might have gotten some of it. Briana sat through most of the movie without incident. She got up to sit in Sarah's lap for a while towards the end and then moved over to my lap for the last 20 minutes or so.

All in all, it was a pretty nice Sunday. I am taking tomorrow off (for my birthday) and then I am taking Tuesday off to take the kids to a Fasching (Mardi Gras) parade in the next town up the tram line. I carried 3 days over from last year that I have to use before the end of March. That puts me at 33 vacation days this year. Tomorrow I am going to go buy myself some Starbucks coffee (I am craving some really strong American style coffee) and have some Sushi with Sarah for lunch. I am really looking forward to it.

Care Bears are Delicious!

2008-01-23T16:48:00.000+01:00

The Kindergarten here in Neureut never ceases to amaze me. I have complained before about how they operate, but it just seems to be getting worse. I have mentioned kids hitting and kicking. I have mentioned kids whacking the shit out of kids with sticks. I don't know if I have mentioned that most of the time the kids are not disciplined. We had asked about the Kindergaten's policy after Aiden got whacked a couple of times in a single day (while Sarah was trying to round them up at the end of the day). They said the the sticks aren't ever allowed inside. Aiden had been whacked while inside. Sarah then noticed that every time she was there, a kid was swinging a stick. So we told Aiden not to bring them in, and to be sure not to run around swinging them at people. He inevitably brings them in, though, because all of the other kids do. When they see Aiden with a stick inside, though, the make him sit in a corner, because we voiced concern about it. That just annoys the Hell out of me. So one of the big trouble maker's in the class, who we will call Ah-Hoon (because Aiden insists that is how the kid's name is said), is always involved with these incidences. He is constantly kicking, hitting, biting, pinching, punching or hurting some other little kid. When the kids aren't close enough, he makes trouble with the teachers. Sarah said she was talking to a teacher once, and this little hoodlum came up and tried to spit on the teacher RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIS MOM! What did the teacher do? Nothing because the mom was there. I know, I know, you want to know what the mom did? Nothing. Not a damned thing. Nada. This is how you raise heathens.

So yesterday there was quite a ruckus at school. Aiden kept talking about a little boy needing to go to the doctor because his finger came off. So as we were getting the kids ready for bed, Aiden started talking about it again. Now, for those of you without young children, you have to be very careful with info you get from a kid. So we asked him a few times throughout the getting to bed routine, and we had him play it out a couple of times. Here's how he described it.

The goon comes up behind a littler kid and shoves him to the floor. He pulls out a pocket knife, jumps on the kids and CUTS THE TIP OF HIS FINGER OFF! So what do they do? They end up calling the injured kid's mom because his finger is bleeding like he's going to die. She comes and takes him to the doctor. His finger tip will apparently be flat forever. But they took care of the bully. They took his knife away and made him change to a different classroom. Yep. That's it. Now he's in Briana's room.

Briana is going to be out all week due to illness (more on that in a minute). Aiden is going to be out the rest of the week while we decide what we are going to do. I am going to go in in the morning and talk to the director to see what they plan. We have been on the fence with this school for a while, but this is simply too much. If they don't have something lined up to deal with this kid, I really don't know what we will do. This was the only kindergarten near us that had room. We may just have to search further out. It is pretty annoying.

So we have been pretty strung out lately. The kids have been flirting with colds, and they have not been sleeping well. I have switched sides of the bed with Sarah, so I now catch all of the kids's night time visits. Last night, Sarah and I fell asleep on the sofa reading books around 10:30. At 11:00, I wake up to BB calling for Mommy. I run up the stairs to find her kneeling on her bed in front of a pile of vomit. Yippee! So we (by we I mean mainly Sarah) had to get her cleaned up. She had puke on her clothes, on her hands, in her hair, all over the bedclothes. Fortunately, we had a waterproof mattress pad on it. So we got that all switched out and got her back to bed. 30 minutes later, she was at it again. This time, we were quick enough be able to reuse the other waterproof mattress pad we had put on the last time. I ran down and grabbed her a big bowl after that. She used that bowl every thirty minutes until about 4:00 AM. Sarah finally moved Aiden into our room and slept in his bed so she could be quicker to B's aid. So I got up late, got Aiden going and then got him to kindergarten.

B was pretty pukey and sleepy all day. And whiney. Aiden showed some pretty serious signs as well when he got home. He was crazy grumpy. At one point I called the house and he answered the phone like he was ready to kill someone. Apparently he and Sarah were arguing about how many Kinder Eggs he was going to get. He was past the number that Sarah was willing to give. So he started grumbling. Then he started going on about eating Care Bears (he was watching a Care Bear's movie). So I started talking about how good they would taste good with some butter, garlic and onions in white wine and chicken broth. He said, "Yeah! Care Bears are delicious!"

More German than German

2008-01-21T20:50:00.000+01:00

Well, I have decided to try to out German the Germans. As we all know, I have been riding my bike rain or shine, hot or cold, day or night. I live to amaze my German colleagues. As if not owning a car wasn't enough. Or learning their language as well. A couple of months ago, we were at a parent/teacher's conference at the Kindergarten. We got scolded for using plastic bags for the kids' breakfasts. The Germans told us we were being wasteful. Now, our kids have been trained by the best. They eat their food and dutifully stuff their plastic bags back in their lunch sacks so that Mama can wash them out and hang them on my knife block full of eighty dollar knives to dry. Unless of course, the little effing German kids take their food. Then, the little effing German kids throw those plastic bags on the ground for the teachers to pick up and throw away. Then we get in trouble. So Sarah has been prepping breakfast for two kids to take to school since September. We have gone through a single box of bags. We are frugal. But the right thing, apparently, is to take a little paper envelope and use that instead. Then, it is easy to throw away. Now, I can buy into that. If you think of being able to burn it without huge waste or maybe it recycles nice and easy. I personally think that it is wasteful to buy something that seems to be designed for single use. And the Germans seem ok with it in this case. Sarah bought some to try (she had to work over the issue for a few months until she could think of it as her idea so she could buy some). They are ok. They keep bread soft enough until lunch. They suck if there is anything on the bread (hey, it's paper, what can I expect, right?). So I started using them since they are here. Then I got to thinking. I realize that no one ever know it, but I have started reusing them. Yup. It means absolutely nothing, but just like Sarah has to think she came up with the idea of using paper bags for sandwiches, I have to show the Germans how to really apply their theories.

It's odd really. I don't have anything to gain, and there isn't a prize at the end. But by golly I'm gonna run that race like a crazed man.

Oh, and if you look closely at the third picture, you will see that SPAM is actually a delicacy from Denmark. See, we ARE classy in Arkansas.

Done.

2008-01-20T20:23:00.000+01:00

It has been a busy weekend. We are trying to decide what to do with our kiddos, see. As I have alluded to once or twice, we are a wee tight on money right now, what with a move to a new continent being slowly reimbursed (and not quite 100%, either) and not being able to sell a house or two. Due to that, we have been a little slower acquiring furniture than we had originally planned. We had planned on moving here, using our two twin mattresses for the kids and buying ourselves a new bed. Well, beds cost money. Here, they cost a LOT of money. So the kids slept on cheap air mattresses for a couple of months, and we kept the real mattresses. Then, we found a sale on some thick, roll-up foam mattresses and bought a couple for the kids. They were pretty excited. Unfortunately, they are still on the floor. So we went to a local store to look at bunk bed frames on Saturday. This involved a 30 minute tram ride. We then walked for about 10 minutes before we found a spot to cross some Deutsche Bahn train tracks. Turns out, the crossing was at the next tram stop. So we could have simply ridden the tram for another 90 seconds and saved about eight and a half minutes. Oh, well... We then walked another ten minutes or so to the store. Now this isn't really a nice store. It is a lot like a low end IKEA. But they had a better bunk bed selection, and the prices are fair. We wanted to check the quality, though, before we made any decisions. The beds are OK. I think we will end up with one. We are going to wait until next month to buy it, though.

After the furniture store, we walked back to the track crossing and caught the tram (minus the extra ten minute walk). We headed into town and stopped at a clothing store that tends to have good deals on kids' clothes. They were having a sale. We picked up some new shoes for B. They are as blue and boy as can be, but they were only €5, and they have Velcro straps. Now the littler monster can get herself ready. We are hoping to buy her something that won't force her to struggle with her identity later, but we needed a stop gap for the time being since her old shoes are falling apart and are too small. And they have laces. We found a pair of house shoes for Aiden as well. He is always cold, and we haven't been able to find any that we have liked. He has a pair that he wears in Kindergarten (it's a German thing), but they normally run about €30 a pair. We managed to find him a pair that look like mine that were only €5. Hell yes. Then, on a whim we stopped to look at some thin gloves. The kids have some nice thick ones, but they don't have lighter weight ones. We got him a pair of fleece gloves for €3.50. Nice. B got a pair of stretch gloves with the alphabet on them and some super fuzzy pink ones that she was adamant about. They were only a couple of Euros. It was nice.

So, after getting our children clothed, we went to an open house at a school that is aimed at prepping kids for starting school here in Germany. It is more of a 'I am not sure my kid can pull if off' sort of Montessori school. Now, since the Germans don't seem to actually teach anything until about age 20, we aren't worried that Aiden doesn't know enough. The problem, however, is how much German he can speak. We simply don't know how much and/or how well. We know he is speaking it in Kindergarten, but he won't do it around us. So he doesn't necessarily need to learn how to count, per se, but he does need to learn how to count/identify numbers in German. He also doesn't know the German alphabet. It's the little things. So we visited the preschool to check it out. It seems OK. We are going to take him in for a complimentary visit next month, but I think we won't follow through. We are supposed to get a TV next month as well. I think that having some German playing at home will get him where he needs to be quickly. We'll see. From what I can tell, he learned everything he needed (concept wise) for starting German school during his first year of pre-school in St. Louis when he was three. They really do have low entry standards. His only problem is the language.

Today we stayed around the house. Briana has a cold, and she didn't sleep at all last night. I got to bed late (a little after midnight). She was in bed with us, but still up and down until around 4:00. At 2:45, she got up and announced that she was getting up and planned on going downstairs to play. Sarah managed to get her back in bed, and once she finally drifted off, she slept until 8:00 or so. Aiden, however, came in at 7:30 ready to go. So I dragged my sorry, tired ass out of bed and played the cheerful daddy. I found some cartoons for him online and watched with him for a little while. Then I made a huge pot of coffee and baked three loaves of bread. Sarah came down around 9:30 or 10:00. I was feeling all productive and managed to convince Sarah to stack the washer and dryer. We have been threatening to do this for a few months now. We got it done and then brought up part of a shelving system that fit between the wall and the appliances while still staying under the water heater (that is hanging up on the wall near the ceiling). It looks really nice in there now. It allowed us to moved some stuff around and get rid of some clutter due to a lack of horizontal storage space. Then I went down into the cellar and put the rest of the shelf together and tidied up down there a little bit.

Once I was done in the cellar, I brought up my truing stand and settled in for some bike maintenance. The spokes on the front wheel of my commuter bike were a little loose. That makes the rim sing when I brake if the pads are damp. So I tightened them up and then fine tuned the rear wheel. They were in surprisingly good shape considering how much I ride that thing and how many big bumps I hit. I followed up with the wheels on the kids' trailer. I noticed a month or so ago that some of the spokes on it were just short of finger tight. It took some more work, but I got that done. But, while doing that, I noticed that the hubs felt rough. So I cleaned and repacked them. Then I told Sarah I was done with being hunched over a stand, so I was going to put everything away. So she asked me to look at her front brakes. Her wheel was off center. So I had to pull it off and line it back out on the truing stand as well. So I trued up 5 wheels today and rebuilt the hubs of two of them. Oh, and I took the tire off of my front wheel so I could true it up "right". That was a pain. I have these HUGE rims, and, while they make the wheel bomb proof, they also make it almost impossible to remove and install a tire. My hands are absolutely aching now. I did not bother with the rear tire.

Okay, it is almost ten o'clock, and I am beat. I am going to wrap this rambler of a post up and get to bed.

Toodles...

-jd

Wine Country smells like pee...

2008-01-14T21:03:00.000+01:00

It would seem that I haven't written in a while. That means this one's going to be a doozy. I have a list a mile (1.6 km) long to cover. I might even add some pictures later. I have to get them off of the camera. Actually, I have a few lying around. Maybe I will start with those and see what happens.

So… Where to start? Christmas turned out OK here in Germany. We kept it small. It made it quite relaxing, and the kids didn’t get too many toys to play with. That was a first. For Christmas dinner, we had a rabbit. I hadn’t noticed when I was looking at them just how long the packages were. I asked Sarah to pick one up and then didn’t look at it until I pulled it out to cook it. Turns out, when you buy a whole rabbit in Germany, you actually get the whole thing. Except for the digestive tract, feet, ears, and eyes. Yeah, the head was pretty unexpected. And a rabbit head without eyes and ears is pretty creepy looking. I had initially intended to cook the head since it was there, but I hadn’t mixed up enough flour coating, and my skillet wasn’t big enough. It was a big ol’ bunny. Surprise number two came when I started cleaning the body cavity. I found kidneys, a liver, a heart, and lungs. So they are in my freezer awaiting some inspiration that happens to call for the insides of a rabbit. It hasn’t hit yet. The rabbit was amazing when it was cooked, though. I coated it with flour, salt, pepper and nutmeg; browned it in olive oil and butter; and then simmered it in chicken broth with onions for about an hour. I reduced the drippings and made a nice, creamy gravy. It was really tender and mild flavored. We loved it.

Oh, along with regressing my general lifestyle to about 1930, I have started eating parts again. Christmas eve (I think), I cooked up some chicken hearts, livers and gizzards in flour, salt, pepper, nutmeg and cayenne pepper (with a long butter milk marinade prior to coating). It was fabulous. New Year’s eve, I cooked up a kilo (2.2 pounds) of chicken hearts that I had marinated in beer. I like to keep them handy and eat them a lot like shelled nuts. A handful here and a handful there.

We had forgotten how amazing New Year’s eve is in Germany. The custom is to get blazing drunk and then fire of fireworks for half an hour at midnight. And when I say fireworks, I mean bombs and mortars. It is awe inspiring. We bought a few small fireworks that we could shoot off early with the kids. Sparklers, fountains, snap pops and the like. The snap pops here are like Black Cats. They are the size of my thumbnail (about 4 or 5 times the size of the ones in the US). When you throw them at the ground, you get stung by flying debris, and they explode brightly. I would NEVER be brave enough to pinch one of these guys to make it pop. So after the kids did their part, we got them to bed. We then spent an exciting evening sick and sober playing cards while I rebuilt all of the computers we own due to a series of freak accidents and/or failures that had broken them. About twenty to midnight we started hearing the start of the show. We got our shoes on and then decided to see if the kids wanted to see everything. As we started up the stairs, things were getting noisy outside. Briana all but leapt into Sarah’s arms. Aiden, however, would have nothing to do with it. Period. I even went so far as to drag him bodily from his bed and hold him up on his feet in front of the window so he could see the 16 inch fountain in the middle of the road (yeah, with this population density, they just go nuts in the street around what traffic is crazy enough to be driving around out there). He turned and went straight back to bed. So I told him it was about to get really loud, and we would be out in front of the house if he needed us.

So we get outside and assess the situation. There are a bunch of people over at the house next to us. There are a few people in front of the bar on the other side of us. Almost no one is across the street. So I step back inside our gate and start poking through our little sack of fireworks to see if there is anything I want to light. Sarah is standing on the sidewalk and starts frantically calling under her breath for me to come out there because some of the neighbors are coming over to talk to her. I step around the gate to do a little translating. We see an older lady (late 50’s or early 60’s) and a young guy in his mid-twenties or so. The guy steps forward and says, “So, I hear you guys are American.” In an east coast accent. He was from Boston. He was in the military, met a girl here, and stayed once he got out. He now works for the police. His dad was also here visiting, so we talked to them for a while. The guy talked to us for a couple of minutes and then went over to start the fireworks. He had a wagon about 3 feet long, 18 inches wide, with sides about 10 inches tall with fireworks mounded in it. His first choice was what looked like your standard Black Cat firecracker pack with the hundred or so firecrackers in it. Except that this one was made with what looked like M-80’s. He lights it, throws it into the street, and then turns to us and says, “Oh, this is going to be loud.” It was more than loud. It was painful. It lasted for a good 20 to 30 seconds. About ¾ of the way through, I see Sarah’s eyes go wide. She had been holding B’s head against her so that one ear was against Sarah’s chest and Sarah’s hand was covering the exposed ear. She realized that the boy must be reacting to this as well. I grabbed B as Sarah threw her at me on her way back into the house. She apparently ran in the door in time to see a blubbering Aiden disappearing into the living room. She managed to corral him in short order. He immediately, through tears, confirmed that he had every intention of going outside to see what was happening. He told Sarah that he wanted to see the battle outside.

And battle it was. It was about 35 minutes of full on siege. They sell guns here that are like starter pistols. You put a special firework in the barrel (kinda like a black powder gun), point it, and pull the trigger. The fireworks are like the missiles in a Saturn battery. Real screamers. Every six shots, you empty the spent caps, reload, and commence launching fireworks. The kids are convinced that they are each getting one next year. The whole time the sidewalks are full of people darting into the road to light off huge bombs and the like. There is no coordination, and there are people EVERYWHERE. You can barely see what is going on due to all of the smoke rolling through the streets. It is so cool. Next year we are going to try to figure out a way to film it.

I had to go back to work on the 3^rd. It was nice and quiet. I had two people on my team present the first week. It made for some nice, uninterrupted work. The 4^th we decided to take the kids to the public ice rink that had been set up downtown. The local utility company apparently sponsors it. It was interesting. I had only been ice skating twice prior to the trip (a side effect of growing up in Arkansas). The kids have never been. Aiden decided that everyone would be watching him since he didn’t know how to skate, and said he wasn’t going to try. Briana almost had to be tied down to a bench while we got skates on her. She did OK, but mainly only because she is small enough that I can easily hold her up while I skate without her feet interfering too often. She would pretty much stomp her feet, which kept them under her, and we would tool around the rink. Aiden finally decided Briana was having enough fun that he should try it. His efforts were more…interesting. He was much more like an epileptic jellyfish on the ice. I mean his legs were everywhere. And they were never under him. It was like he was completely incapable of controlling anything about where his legs were flailing. It was really weird. I would have liked to have had them piddle around more on their own, but the rink was too crowded, and there were some teenagers tearing around too much for a flailing kid to survive. It was a fun evening overall, but very tiring and challenging. There is a rink not too far from here (maybe 45 minutes by tram) that we may try later. Or I might just write off ice skating this winter.

Sarah and the kids have had some issues lately with chapped lips. She bought some German Blistex stick and another brand to try to help it. Aiden and Briana are bad about chewing on their lower lips, so the skin under their lips looks like they always have a rope burn. Sarah noticed, however, that her lips seemed to be sloughing off when she used Aiden’s chapstick. She realized that she was having a reaction to it. So she mentioned that the next time he offered to share it. She told him it made her lips hurt and the skin fall off. He told her that when he rubbed it on his tongue, it made it feel like his tongue was throwing a party. Definitely disturbing.

The day after we went ice skating, Sarah brought the kids to my office so we could all go eat together in one of the cafeterias here on site. They were having roast chicken (they just plop half a chicken right on your plate) and French fries (I have completely adopted the European taste for fries with mayonnaise and ketchup). That happens to be one of my favorite lunches. I thought the kids would enjoy it as well. They spent the three days before they came talking about coming to the airport to eat lunch with Daddy. For those of you wondering if traveling a lot for work while your children are young has any affect, the answer is a resounding yes. Aiden asked me about three weeks ago if it was still cold at the airport where I worked. This came from a long, nine month project in Nebraska when he was three and Briana was about 18 months old (yes, over two years ago). I would fly home every other weekend, and I always had on heavy clothing when I arrived and when I left. This apparently leaves an impact on a kid living where it was 60 or 70 degrees. I would often leave St. Louis wearing lined pants and a few shirts with a heavy coat when it was easily long sleeve t-shirt/sweatshirt weather because I would land in Omaha and it would be 5 degrees. When we mention that I don’t actually work at the airport, they just look at us like we are crazy and give us a sympathetic little laugh. Briana used to also frequently ask which airport I was going to when I left for work in St. Louis. The big one (Lambert) or the other one (my office).

I went on a bike ride Sunday. It was cold. I would say low- to mid- 30’s. I borrowed some shoe covers from my neighbor to see if I could keep feeling in my feet. It didn’t work. My shoes are too narrow. When I wear warm socks (thin, fleece lined, neoprene) I lose feeling in my toes and the balls of my feet. I think that part of it is nerve pressure and the other is from being all jammed up against cold leather shoes. Maybe I will buy some cheap winter shoes for next winter. I had a nice ride in spite of that. It was really sunny with almost no wind. I went out again with my friend who is training for the Iron Man. I keep telling him that he won’t be getting any training when I go with him, but he doesn’t seem to care. We took off north and east of Neureut and rode into the wine country that is in the hills north of the Black Forest. It is really pretty. I believe we started with Stutensee and then looped down through Gondelsheim and then over through Jöhlingen to Durlach. Or something like that. It was about 45 hilly miles. It felt good, but I was tired as hell when I got home. I rode the last few miles by myself, and it was hard to commit to it. And by commit to it, I don’t mean ride fast or get a little more training in. By commit to it, I mean ride. Then one thing I noticed, however, is that much like the Alsace area of France (one of the most popular wine production areas in the world), when we were riding through the country hills dotted with vineyards, it smelled distinctly like pee…

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-24T16:27:00.000+01:00

Or, as the Germans say, frohe Weihnachten.

I am sure I have tons to write, but I won't. I do, however, have a couple of big things.

Big thing one. B opened a gift from a colleague today. She got paint pens. I could see that as soon as she opened them. Apparently, they are scented. From what I can tell, that translates into lip gloss. I come into the living room after saying that I will be in to translate to find my wife and my son with painted lips. That's right. They looked at these huge paint pen looking things with the word Herlitz on them and decided that needed to test them ON THEIR LIPS! The German word happened to be the name of one of the biggest notebook makers here in Germany. They happen to make my favorite notebooks. It was a sad day in the Dalzell household. Of course, you wouldn't have known that by the way I was laughing.

Thing number two. Germans apparently celebrate Christmas on the 24th. Oh cultural differences. My landlord's mom gave us a bag of presents this morning. So, we had to whip out the presents we had planned for them. See, Sarah is a bit of a stained glass fiend. See said examples. She can make some stuff. She has a dozen or so stars (that I don't have uploaded) laying around for the taking. So we got together a handful of large and small stars together with some Christmas cookies (as we had already planned) and delivered them. Then, late afternoon, the doorbell rings. I am expecting my landlord. Who do I find? No one. I mean the walk is empty, and no one is to be found in the driveway. We look at the tag, and it is from the neighbors that we never talk to. I bought the husband a nice bottle of bourbon the last time I was in the U.S., but that is about all the communication we have had. They bought both of the kids presents, and they bought us a bottle of mulled wine. So we had to crank out another little packet of stained glass and cookies. We are done, however. Now we are going to get the kids to bed and wrap up Christmas.

Oh, we also popped popcorn on the stove today (that is typical in Germany) so we could string some popcorn for the tree. By we, I mean Sarah and B. Aiden and I just looked on. Yeah, we suck. But thanks to B and Mom, we have some nice popcorn strands on the tree.

For what it is worth, stovetop popcorn ROCKS! It takes less time than in the microwave, and it is really tasty. It also entertains the hell out of the kids.

Yum Yum.

Also, frohe Wiehnachten und einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr.

Alone again

2007-12-08T17:38:00.000+01:00

Well, Aunt Aileen just left. She had an 8:40 flight out of Frankfurt this morning. I took her by myself since traveling too early would pretty much kill the kids. In order to get there early enough, we were up around 2:00 AM. We caught the tram to the train station at 3:15. We were on the train at about 4:45. Ouch. She was checked in around 5:45. That was 3 hours early, but the next train didn't get in until 6:40, and we didn't want to risk missing check in if there were problems along the way.

After she got checked in, we went to find some breakfast. We found a little restaurant and paid a billion dollars for two omelets. They took about 30 minutes to show up. I figure the cook was chasing the chickens around trying to scare the eggs out of them. They were good. When we paid, though, I noticed that the bill was a little higher than I had expected. We were served rolls with out breakfast. We hadn't specifically ordered rolls, but they were on our plates. Those damned rolls were 1.50. EACH! Yowza.

At least they were good. So we paid and then went wandering towards her councourse. About that time I looked at my watch and saw that she had about an hour and a half left. She decided to go on to her gate. About five seconds after looking at my watch, I realized that I had missed the train I had planned to take home. So I had to sit around for another hour. That wasn't qutie as cool as it could have been.

Now I am half way home and preparing to spend the morning splitting firewood after 3.5 hours of sleep. Whee!

Oh, I have got my full dork on right now. I have my handheld with me. I have a bluetooth keyboard for it. While I was typing, a lady came over to ask if she could take a picture of it. She was pretty surprised to see such a little computer and that she was going to ask her son about getting one. It is actually pretty usable. The keyboard is a little smaller than a laptop keyboard, and most of the keys have 3 or 4 functions. After using German and a German/American keyboards so much for the last six months, I find it much easier to use this one. It doesn"t like web based mail all that much. Or at least, it used to not. I have POP account that I use with it, though, so I can at least send and receive email when I have to use it.

it has to be strong 'cause it is so far away

2007-11-27T12:55:00.000+01:00

sarah went to the drug store yesterday to see about getting something for aiden's cough. we haven't had to deal with it for a while. he is a lot like me. he gets sick and then it settles in his chest for a couple of weeks. they gave her a suppository. because it is stronger. the way i see it, oral medicine can be weak because it's goes in at the source. of course this stuff is stronger. you can't get any further away.

they are CRAZY here. it's all herbs and buttholes.

snork

2007-11-25T20:54:00.000+01:00

the germans are crazy, socialist, homeopathic hippies.

i am sick. one of the kids' teachers suggested eating garlic for sinus issues. so i ate 4 cloves on two rolls. i'll show them. i won't be able to talk to anyone for a week.

ha! take that. germans.

i apparently had a fever today. i was freezing all morning. i built up a fire that would have made a smithy jealous. and i was still cold. then i went to bed for a couple of hours. i woke up as my fever broke. it felt like i was going to burst into flame for a few minutes, then nothing. i feel better now. i'm still stuffy. i'm going to go irrigate my sinuses here in a little bit to try to clean things out and get it re-moisturized. whee!

my belly hurts

2007-11-24T21:18:00.000+01:00

we had thanksgiving dinner today. sarah's sister aileen flew in yesterday. i took the kids up to frankfurt on the train. they like doing that. we had to make the 5 block walk to the tram stop in the rain. that wasn't too bad. we all have raincoats, and the kids had umbrellas. of course, it is a 25 minute tram ride to the hauptbahnhof, so aiden was pretty much done with train rides by the time we got to the train station. i bought a cup of coffee at the train station, and we sequestered ourselves into a little heated cabin to wait for the train (it was only 15 minutes).

we were able to get into a six seater cabin that only had one old man in it. he was pretty friendly. it had a little table in it. i gave them a couple of pretzels, and we settled down to read. i downloaded some books from the gutenberg collection last week and put them on my handheld. the kids thought that was pretty cool. i read them the tale of peter rabbit. it isn't a new one, but we have to start somewhere. we made a transfer in mannheim and got some more seats in the driver's cabin end of an i.c.e. train. the kids spent the most of that 30 minutes or so looking out the window.

so we got to the airport in good time and headed for concourse c. turns out that aileen's flight went from denver to chicago. i didn't know that, so i couldn't find her flight. after a quick call to sarah, i got the 411. her flight had come in 45 minutes early in another concourse. we had to get to b concourse international arrivals stat. fortunately passport control and customs delayed her enough to get us stationed. of course, that arrival door was only about 60 yards from the c door. the kids acted appropriately as soon as aunt aileen came through the door.

we made it back to the long distance train station at the airport about 6 minutes after the train to karlsruhe left. so we had to wait an hour. it wasn't too bad. i bought some more pretzels and a cup of coffee and watched the kids play. we got on the train without any issues. we had to switch over again in mannheim. aiden managed to find a little girl his age that had been on the train with us that spoke english. they played around until the train got there, and then we sat with her and her dad in the same cabin. that made it pretty easy, with the kids playing with each other and all. the little girl has been alternating one month in KC and two months in germany since february. she speaks amazing english. it gives me hope. we got to karlsruhe and got ourselves right on the tram. with the same little girl and her mom. so the kids and aileen sat with them, and i sat behind them. we got to our tram stop and met sarah. we all wandered home in a pretty steady rain.

we got everyone settled, and then i had to go into the office (on my first ever, german vacation day) to drop some receipts off and turn on my out of office notification. yep, i'm an american through and through. i also made the mistake of stopping to say hi to my boss. that took me about 20 minutes to fix. granted, he did warn me as i came up that he had news i didn't necessarily want to hear, so i should turn around and leave. i didn't. he did. it wasn't horrible. mainly because i have two weeks off, and he has to fix it. yep, i'm becoming more german by the second. after the little trip to the office i rode over to a colleague's house to pick up a printer and some other knick knacks. he is moving, so he is trying to lighten his load. i talked to him for 30 or 45 minutes and then loaded up the bike trailer and headed home. this whole sessions was performed in a steady rain. thanks to my gore-tex coat and pants, i managed to stay completely dry. i love high tech clothing.

today we got up early (like, 6:30) and started getting thanksgiving dinner ready. the kids let aunt aileen sleep until about 7:xx (where xx.gt.00 and xx.lt.59, sorry for the fortran. blogspot won't handle angle brackets that aren't html.). so she got up and moved her sleeping down to the sofa. and, oddly enough, that actually subdued the children for a while. she said she had to read them one book before they would leave her alone. then they sat on her and watched a movie while sarah and i kept up the cooking. we were somehow able to pull off cooking a turkey, a pumpkin pie, some home made rolls, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, giblet gravy, and glazed carrots by 2:30. christian and julie came over at 2:15 with some green beans and red cabbage. with cloves in it. yes. i said cloves. in red cabbage. it was good. weird, but good. we then proceeded to eat the hell out of it. i was stuffed. then i ate a piece of pumpkin pie. after that, i had a piece of apple pie (that sarah cooked while we were eating). that did it. i actually couldn't eat the last two bites. it was shameful. of course, it was better than throwing up on the table.

and one last piece of family news. aileen was talking to aiden after he went poop this morning. she was helping him get everything taken care of and all. our toilets are not real aggressive when it comes to flushing, so it doesn't always work as planned. assuming you aren't planning on turds and paper being there after it is all said and done. so aileen was fretting about it. aiden reassured her with, 'don't worry, aunt aileen. sometimes you have to let the poop sit in there a little while. when it gets waterlogged, it will sink to the bottom. then you can flush it.' yes. he not only used the word waterlogged, but he managed to use it while talking about poop. that's my boy.

Utilities

2007-11-01T19:13:00.001+01:00

We are learning to be very conservative here. It is very unlike us. Sarah kept at least one light on in the basement ALL of the time in Saint Louis. St. Louis City charges a flat rate for water usage based on the number of water fixtures. That meant that the kids took lots of baths and played in water a lot. Not here. In St. Louis, we had a nice, gas, over-sized water heater. Not so here. It is about half the size of a typical water heater. Since electricity is insanely expensive here, we have a plan that splits costs. We have really expensive electricity during the day and from 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM it is cheap. That means that the water heater heats during that time. If you run out of hot water during the day so are screwed. Or you pay premium rates to heat that dude up. It is enough that I actually think about what I am doing when I turn water on in the bathroom to make sure that I'm not drawing water out of the water heater that isn't actually making it to the faucet. I take showers with as little water as possible. We plan our showers and the kids' baths with our house cleaning schedule as well. It is a lot of planning.

The same is true with our heat. We have these radiator type things. But they are electric. They are filled with ceramic bricks and either brine or oil. They are heated based on the same schedule as the water heater. How hot they heat is based on a setting for the size of the room and the actual thermostat setting. The tricky part here is planning how cold it is going to get during the day. The radiator is basically just a heat battery. There is a fan under them that circulates the warm air when the room temperature drops. If you turn up the thermostat during the day (or you simply have it set too high), you are likely to use it up so that they are cold. So there is a lot of planning there. Fortunately, we also have a wood stove that is lined with thick bricks, so if you work it out ok, you can get a fire going in the morning and then just keep it running low so that the bricks stay warm all day to supplement the heaters. If you really get it going, you can set up a fan in the foyer to feed that extra heat up to the bedrooms and Sarah's stained glass workshop.

So we are really learning how to manage ourselves so that we don't use utilities. We have to separate our trash into recyclables, food waste and normal trash. Since we have little trash cans, we really work on that. The nice thing about having a wood stove is being able to thin our the paper waste by using it as kindling. That is good, because we generate a lot of paper/cardboard waste. Definitely not as much as we used to.

This is a good experience for us. It is nice to feel like we are actually impacting the environment less as the family grows.

Numbers

2007-11-01T16:39:00.000+01:00

I went on a ride Sunday with a colleague. It was nice. We took it easy, though. He is training for the Iron Man next year, and he has started a lot of other planned workouts, so I got to tag along on a recovery hill ride. I spent Saturday cutting and splitting wood for our wood stove, so my legs were pretty tired from bending over repeatedly to pick it up and stack it. After the 3rd hill or so, I was feeling it. We were about 45 minutes into the ride before we hit the hills, and then I had to really back it off. The downhills were nice. I finally have a bike that fits, so I can comfortably get into the drops and fly.

Tuesday was the first day in months that it rained (for real) on my commute. I think I've been lucky. While Karlsruhe is pretty sunny compared to the rest of Germany, it is still Germany. So while there has been some rain, I have been lucky enough to be able to time my commute to miss it. It wasn’t too bad, but I did get wet. So I started to look back at was has been happening lately while I was trying to ignore how wet my pants were getting, I started thinking about our time here on this trip, and some of the numbers involved (I am an engineer, after all).

4: the number of months we have been here. It has flown by.
6:The number of weeks the kids have already been in school.
2: The number of times we went swimming at the local quarry thanks to a cool summer.
2: The number of weeks at the beginning of August I spent in St. Louis. Those 2 weeks are the only time I have driven since we left in mid June.
2: The number of times (excluding that trip to STL) that I have not ridden my bike to work since I started in July. That comes out to around 82 days. I missed riding the 1st day because my bike was in a box being unloaded from a shipping container. The Friday of my 1st week, I had to make a trip into town to handle our Kindergeld, so I rode the tram on into work from the city instead of going back out to the house and then riding back to the office. Other than that, rain or shine, I bike it.
1: Number of weekend trips by bike to France with the kids in tow in their trailer. I hope to do more next year. That is 1 of the reasons I moved to Europe. To see it.
3: The number of months it took me to get my first promotion here.
7: Number of years I held the same position in my other office. Granted, my responsibilities grew during that time, but I was pretty much as high as that was going.
6: Number of months we have had our house on the market.
0: Number of offers on said house.
1: Number of times our fence next to our driveway has been destroyed since we left.
12: Minimum number months since I have slept soundly.
15: Number of days of vacation I get for the six months I am working this year.
30: Number of vacation days during a full year.

OK. I am going to go read the kids a book and get them to bed.

oh dear me

2007-10-22T20:29:00.000+02:00

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

2007-10-21T13:54:00.001+02:00

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.

2007-10-13T22:03:00.001+02:00

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?

2007-10-13T19:54:00.000+02:00

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...

2007-10-12T20:12:00.000+02:00

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

2007-10-11T19:05:00.000+02:00

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.

Languages

2007-09-28T19:50:00.001+02:00

I have to speak German in the office. I guess that makes sense, since I live in Germany. I had an interesting conversation today, though. One of my team members is Hungarian. He has been learning German for about 10 months, which is about how long I took lessons. He isn't as comfortable with his German, though, and he prefers English. Today we discussed the pros and cons of speaking German or English with each other. We decided that we could speak English so he could improve that since he and I both speak German with everyone else. Then we continued our conversation in German. It is weird how that works. I have a lot of trouble switching out of German. Pretty much, if I set my mind to it, then off I go. His German is good, too. He asked me the other day how I managed to still be able to speak after 5 years away from Germany. I told him that I fake it. It is amazing what a handful of words and a complete lack of pride will do for you. Last time, I was really worried about sounding dumb. I simply don't give a damn now. I guess I am simply more confident in who I am, what I know, and what is important. And what isn't important is my percentage rate on my German grammar and vocabulary.

In other news, there is a bully at the kids' kindergarten. He is apparently a real handful and causes loads of trouble. Aiden is in a scuffle almost every day. Briana has been in a few. And by scuffle, I mean that the bully hits/kicks/throws sand at them, and they retreat or try to get out of the situation. The teachers are aware of the problem, but there doesn't seem to be much they can do about it. Sarah got a concerned look on Wednesday because she smiled when the teacher said that Aiden finally fought back. I am afraid I might have to start encouraging Aiden to fight back. Which not only do I not support (I have never been in a fight with anyone except my sister), but I can't picture him doing. It also isn't easy telling him to never, ever hit anyone. Unless they are hurting Briana. When B is getting hurt, he is to kill whoever is doing it. What a messed up message to send. But he's good about that. Well, maybe not the killing part, but he sure does take care of his little sister. He's just about the best big brother ever.

Speaking of his little sister... She is sort of notorious around the house for being really crabby when she doesn't get enough sleep. Sarah warned her teachers about that a few days ago. The teacher asked her what she meant, and she said something in German that Sarah didn't understand. So Sarah asked her the next day if she meant bitchy. Which is a very accurate description. The teacher was horrified. She said that that was a very bad thing to say in German. Which is odd. Because I heard the F word no less than three times in English and once in German ON THE RADIO this morning. Within a 20 minute time period. But saying someone is bitchy is bad.

What strange people.

Interesting keys

2007-09-27T18:16:00.001+02:00

So the German keyboard has a few extra keys. Noteably Ö, Ä, Ü, ß, and €. But there are some other unusual ones that make me wonder what early typists/programmers were doing. We have shift access to the degree symbol ° (where the tilde would normally be), CTRL+ALT+2 (or 3) gives ² and ³. Shift 3 doesn't give you the pound sign, it gives you the paragraph sign: §. And this is the one I think is the most interesting. CTRL+ALT+m gives... µ.

When my dad was in school working on his chemistry degree, he had to learn either German or Russian because all of the important scientific research was done in Germany and Russia. I wonder if that led to this odd keyboard requirement. Overall, it's a real pain because a bunch of the other keys are in different locations compared to a US keyboard to accomodate this. I spent most of my day hitting backspace.

What a week.

2007-09-26T21:37:00.001+02:00

I have had a busy week.

My boss' last day was today. Technically it is Friday, but he's taking a couple of days off to move some stuff to his new apartment. So today was a frantic dash through everything I needed to know that we haven't discussed yet while getting interrupted a bazillion times for people to say goodbye. I also got a review of another colleague's test system because he's leaving as well. He's the one I came over to replace. Then I met with another guy who's work I'm assuming. His job was the one I thought they meant when they told me I was getting more responsibility. He worked fairly autonomously. They apparently meant his job, on top of the first guy's job, and my team leader's job to boot. Just to be safe. So starting next week, I'm three people.

So we'll see how things turn out. I get to manage half a dozen people (eight if you count my two alter egos). I am not a native speaker, and haven't had to speak their language consistently in 5 years. I have been brushing up for 3 months, but still battle to understand most conversations, and every week I learn about some new work law that doesn't exist in the US.

It oughta be fun.

You said it, Sister.

2007-09-15T22:21:00.000+02:00

Last weekend we were out and about causing all sorts of trouble with the kids. On the way home, we stopped at the ice cream stand by the tram stop. Aiden got his typical two scoops of lemon. B decided to be adventurous, and got a scoop of vanilla and a scoop of melon (i.e. cantaloupe). it is pretty good. i got a couple scoops of it after trying hers. Sarah got her typical scoop of lemon and scoop of strawberry. On the way out the door, the boy asked if B's ice cream was good. She said it was really good. His response?

You said it, Sister.