Saturday

Well, it was Saturday and guess what we did? Yeah...we went downtown to the market. This time we really did it right, driving down and parking at the City Hall (Rathaus) parking lot. It was great, we bough a bunch of veggies and then went and put them in the car; then we bought some plants, and then went and put them in the car; then we went to the flea market - Brad bought a chisel and I bought another scarf. We had lunch and headed home.

Here's a normal lunch in Stuttgart, GE:

Brad: potato leek soup with little hot rolls followed by a mixed meat platter (lamb, pork, & some kind of ground meat patty) with french fries. It was all really good but the lamb was awesome. It came with a butter herb sour cream. He also had a Dark beer (Dunkel in German).

Me: potato leek soup with little hot rolls followed by a riccola salad with fresh Parmesan, pine nuts, tomatoes, and a vinaigrette dressing. It was really fresh and delicious. I had a cappuccino and mineral water.

We had to take a picture of this Dragon art for Kaylee

Stuttgart and Wiesbaden

Last weekend we went downtown for our usual Sunday routine, but my workmate John, his wife and kids all joined us. It was pretty nice out, but got colder as the afternoon wore on. We went to the hat shop, where John bought a ivy cap for his father's birthday, then the flea market, and ended up at the toy store - where John was admiring all the train model diorama stuff. John is in to trains, though I imagine he didn't expect to see the moving diorama models that go in the house of ill repute!

On Monday we drove 2+ hours up (and 2+ hours back) to Wiesbaden where my other workmate, Adrian, is in the hospital. He ended up having surgery on a slipped disc in his spine on Tuesday. His disc, up at the top of his spine, affected his back and arms. The doctor came in an explained the whole procedure to him while we were there. It really is true that one of the last things someone learns in a different language is TACT! A minor communication misunderstandings seem a lot bigger -- Adrian asked if he should have the surgery, and the doctor answered the question "do I have to have the surgery", which answer was No, because he isn't going to immediately die if he doesn't have the surgery so it's considered optional. Of course if he doesn't have it, he'll continue in excruciating pain... He came through everything okay and gets out of the hospital next Wednesday.

New Year's Resolution

I can honestly say I've already met one of my New Year's resolutions - and here's the evidence! One pair of socks knitted :-)

Cruiser had to get in on the second picture - what a clown, he just had to rub in on my legs since they were out there.

My next knitting project is a pair of socks for Brad - they may take me a bit longer since I'm using smaller yarn, smaller needles, for bigger feet! He teases me if I look at any of my other ongoing projects because I'm neglecting his socks. One time he said, "Don't you want me to have warm feet?" or "I only have one pair of medium weight socks and I've already worn them this week".

Saturday Flea Markets in the Winter

Brad and I went out for our normal Saturday morning routine - the flea market in downtown Stuttgart. We started out taking the train to one end of downtown, where the yarn shop I go to is - I bought some yarn for to make socks with - this being one of my new year's resolutions. You can see a picture of my ongoing yarn work in the right bar, I found this handy link to Ravelry, a cool website where knitters and crocheters can post their work, find other projects, and it has cool tools like the link I added here for tracking progress of projects. It's a great way over time to keep track of all the projects attempted, completed, or - as they call it - hibernating.

After the yarn shop we hopped the train again to the flea market - it's still going on but at a significantly smaller scale than when the weather is nicer. This picture shows the square the market happens in - the rest of the year the whole square behind Brad would be filled with stands, but as you can see there a just a couple at this time of year. The horse statue is in the middle of the square (Charlottesplatz) and the stalls that are there are equally spread around the whole area.

After we shopped for a while, finishing just as we reached the point where we were freezing! (It was in the low 20's yesterday) we went and had lunch at this nice little restaurant just by the square. We've been there a couple times now and the food is really good - and very reasonably priced.

One interesting thing that happened to us on the train is one of the train inspectors came along. The German train system is strange, instead of having to use your ticket to go through a turnstile (like every other train system in the world I've ever used), the German train systems is more on the honor system - you're supposed to buy your tickets, or stamp your multi-ride tickets, and have them when you get on the train. Randomly, train inspectors will come along and you'll have to show your tickets or face a 40 Euro fine (about $55 dollars), payable on the spot. Yesterday we had one of the inspectors come by, I have to admit I had almost forgotten to punch our tickets - thank goodness I remembered at the last minute!

Winter Fishing

I had to post a couple more pictures from our Christmas vacation in Minnesota - the girls both went ice fishing with Brad and Mark on different days and each had a blast. I liked it 'cause it meant I got to spend a day with each of them alone myself. Here's some of the pictures...




























Note - you don't see Kaylee touching the fish -- I guess catching them is much more fun than taking them off the hook -- who knew she'd get squeemish!

When the boss is away... A RANT

Normally I would say my boss being out of town is a good thing - we seem to always get more done when he's gone, but unfortunately this time he decided to go on a trip to Virginia while one of my co-workers is in the hospital, another co-worker's job is gapped, and there is a lot going on. Add the fact that this trip he's on is to give a 2 hour brief to people who aren't even going to be doing the jobs working with us then the whole thing is bu!!$hit!!! Me and John are stuck working until 8 at night every night so he could attend a 2 hour lecture and then spend 4 days with his sister! He should have canceled his trip when the other guy in the office went into the hospital!!! I'm sick of working 2+ hours more every day than 95% of the rest of the people at the command. Add to that fact that the pace hasn't gotten any better since I started in July - and there is a whole bunch of Europe I could be out seeing - and I'm kinda gripy about it. Brad is livid!! Anyways, enough whining for now...

Dogs and Snow

There were two things on my mind today - the dogs and the snow. Maybe it's because we were just outside, where I let Cruiser off the leash. He was running around having a blast in the 3"-4" of snow outside. He loves running so much and being cooped up in an apartment all day gives him an excess of energy he wants to run off. Tonight we let Bow off his leash also and he was running around. Cruiser bounds around in leaps and sprints, and Bow runs with little steps, all four legs moving at different times, it's kind of funny to watch. Since there was no snow on the ground this morning, and all this snow came down since this afternoon, I received a call saying we have a two hour delay for going to work tomorrow - sleeping in! Woohoo!!

...Dogs...
When we went to Minnesota we put both dogs in a kennel recommended by one of our neighbors. When we picked them up, Cruiser had all this stuff gooped up on a huge scrape by his eye, they told us that the dogs got in a fight with each other and Cruiser was scratched, but he saw a vet and the vet prescribed an iodine based antibiotic. When we got home and gave them baths (they were a little stinky from being in a kennel for 10 days), I discovered a few other long scratches on Cruiser. He was clearly in a dog fight. Since 1) Cruiser and Bow have never fought each other in the 5 years they've been together, and 2) they didn't charge us for the vet bill -- I'm convinced they put a third dog into the kennel with them and the dogs fought. Since other dogs were multiples in the kennels (our neighbor's dog was there with 2 other dogs) this is clearly a normal practice. Looking closer at Bow we saw he had scrapes on his nose and lip (like his lip was caught when he was biting something) so we suspect the other dog went after Cruiser and then Bow weighed into the frey...

Five days later, I noticed Bow was scratching his nose and it was swollen. Later that day Brad noticed his ears were all swollen. If you felt his ear flaps they were 3 x thicker than normal. Since it was late Friday on a holiday weekend, and everything we read on the internet indicated this was due to an alergic reaction, we rushed out and got him some benadryl. The swelling started coming down and is much better, though we need to keep putting neosporin on his nose - he's scraped it raw - to keep the itching down. Poor dog!

As to that kennel - we're never going back!

Projects

Today Brad and I finally hung up all my plaques and diplomas on the hallway walls. I've been meaning to do it for months and just haven't gotten to it. After we hung them up Brad commented that "now we've moved it". He said it doesn't seem like we've finished unpacking until all our stuff is up on the walls.

Another thing we hung up on the wall was a needlework of bi-planes and tri-planes I did when I was a kid. I guess I did it just cause I liked it - who would have known that I would end up marrying a man years and years later that loves bi-planes and tri-planes. Here's a picture of it on the wall next to some paitings we had done by our friend Buddy last spring. Buddy's art is at : http://rcwindward.googlepages.com/gallery

Family Photos

Before we departed Minnesota, I got everyone to pose for a couple family photos - I realized we ad never taken one! Here's everyone - from left to right: Macie (our 14 year old daughter), Mark (my brother-in-law), Andrew (my nephew), JoAnn (my mom), Jessica (my niece), Kaylee (our 11 year old daughter), Shelly (my sister), me, and Brad (my most wonderful husband :-) )

Then there's our much less serious photo:

Crazy kid...

I was telling Macie and Kaylee that when my brother Justin was young he had problems with his "TR" sound -- it always came out as "F". Every time he'd be talking about his "truck" it would come out as the four letter word "*uck".

Kaylee thought about this for a minute and then said "I have problems with my "F's", they all come out sounding like "TR".... truck!" After we finished laughing we told her to watch her language - but what a clever thing to come up with :-)

New Year's

Happy New Year everyone!!!

We didn't go out last night since there were ice warnings and the roads got extremely slick. But we still had a good time hanging out together, watching movies, and drinking wine together. We then watched the fireworks - and boy do German's do fireworks. At midnight, and for about 30 minutes afterwards there were fireworks going off everywhere - and we're not talking about those little fireworks they sell to consumers in the states - these were the big ones, and everyone was shooting them off - it was really neat!

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I decided that I wanted to have a few New Year's resolutions this year. While I normally don't believe in that kind of thing, this year there are five things I really want to accomplish, so let's call them resolutions:

1) Learn basic German
2) Post to the blog once a week
3) Read 10 military reading list books
4) Knit a pair of socks
5) Lose 20 pounds

Christmas in Minnesota

We have a couple traditional things we do for Christmas in Minnesota. There's the present wrapping.

Then the events - first, we go to my Mom's house on Christmas Eve where we have fondue and open presents. Then we go to my Uncle Jim's for socializing and the kids get some presents.
Then on Christmas morning, we all open our stockings, which everyone has snuck some stuff into.This year we then went to Mom's house and ate Christmas dinner
... and played some Continental Rummy.

Travel to Minnesota

We went to Minnesota and spent Christmas with my family. The girls flew up and joined us there. Brad and I flew in, via Amsterdam on Thursday - the Stuttgart airport was backed up due to the weather - our flight was at 6:20 a.m. so we headed to the airport at 4 in the morning (yuck!). After we boarded, we had to wait over an hour to get the plane de-iced and were delayed some more waiting to take off. Then, when we arrived in Amsterdam to switch planes, we had to wait 30 minutes for them to bring stairs over to our plane so we could debark! The good thing was we had a 2-1/2 hour layover originally, so we rushed from one plane to the next, going through customs again and being some of the last people to board the plane - we both needed to go to the bathroom, but there wasn't any time for that even. We then flew straight to Minneapolis, flying over Scottland, Iceland, Greenland, and Canada - specifically the Hudson Bay. The flight was shorter than flying from Stuttgart to Atlanta, the joy of a great circle route to the north. And then we arrivedi n Minnesota around lunch - it's strange to be there at noon, but we've already been awake for 15 hours.

The girls flew to Minnesota on Saturday and they were affected by Mother Nature. In their case, a snowstorm hit Minnesota the morning they arrived and they ended up flying in circles overhead for over an hour while they waited to land. Brad and I had checked in since the girls were flying unaccompanied and were waiting at the gate. The grumpiest ticket agent ever came up to the gate for American Airlines. She was yelling at people one after another - I guess Northwest airlines had cancelled their flight to Dallas so they were rerouting their people to the American Airlines gate - but there were no seats available. I listened to here telling one person after another that they were out of luck, and those people arguing with her that the Northwest agent had told them it was all taken care of - most likely just to get rid of them. I was somewhat scared that the flight wouldn't be able to land since the time kept moving back and back and the ticket agent was telling people she didn't know where the plane was going to land since no planes were coming in at all. If we couldn't see the planes landing out the window at the same time, I would have been much more worried that the girls would get diverted to another airport due to MSP being closed - but as long as we could see them coming in, I knew they'd eventually get in. We were both greatly relieved when they landed :-)