Merry Christmas!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

on to the next one...

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

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

Random Crap

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Run. Ride. Repeat.

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

We'll see.

Man, are you supposed to eat that?

You can eat acorns.

Really.

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

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

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

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

ahhh, the simple minds of children...

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

No. She didn't see any monsters.

i just can't get enough of this place

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

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





Absolutely anything goes here, apparently.

Languages

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

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.

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.

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.