Catching Up

I was trying to think of what the important things were that happened in the last month, so I could catch everyone up on what's been going on in our lives. The highlights seem to be a good place to start:

- I had my birthday. Brad bought me a beautiful antique (1920's) aqua marine bracelet and necklace. After we got them, Brad was looking online and found that aqua marines used to be worn by ancient mariners because they believe the stones would bring them safely home (how apropos, isn't it?!)













- I had another Navy weigh in & physical readiness test (had to diet hard again, need to lose weight!)















- We had my birthday dinner at "Leonardo Da Vinci" - an excellent Italian restaurant.









- We went to the flea market every Saturday.







- We went back to the Castle Hollenzollern with Ty Kopke, who was in town from Camp Lemonier, Djibouti














































- We went to Castle Michelfeld, which has been turned into a hotel & restaurant, for lunch and then went to Heidelberg shopping
















- We walked around Calw












































- Found my lost bracelet

















- Finished knitting my first sweater























- Found a cool basket, about ottoman sized that fits all my yarn, bought fabric and recovered it

Amazing Findings

Wow, I've let almost a month go by without blogging! I have some catching up to do!

I had something pretty amazing happen to me last week. Here's the story...

Brad bought me a diamond bracelet about 5 or 6 years ago for Christmas. I loved it, so I would wear it all the time. The Friday after Thanksgiving I had to work - because it wasn't a normal work day and because I didn't go anywhere else I remember the date clearly. Anyways, when I took a shower that morning I had my bracelet on. That day I walked the dogs, worked and nothing else. When I took a shower the next morning...yes, I know you can guess where this is going...my bracelet was GONE!!! We looked all over. I asked around at work - I'd only been two places. I kept looking for a while and asking but after a week I figured someone else had just found a nice gift for their sweetheart :-( So after a bit, I pretty much wrote it off and figured I'd never see it again, much to my vast disappointment - a $600 bracelet lost because I didn't stop wearing it when one of the two clasps stopped working - completely my fault.

Wednesday, Brad joined me for lunch. After having Subway sandwiches we walked over to the shopette (it's a small convenience store on base like a 7-11). The guy behind the counter was having problems with his computers and told me the credit card thing wasn't working. I said it was okay because I had cash so he rang me up. Brad commented that the cash register thing that shows you the total wasn't working - and being Brad he looked at the wires behind the computer on the counter to see if there was a loose wire. While looking, he found, hanging off a knob on the computer - MY BRACELET!!! Brad says "isn't this your bracelet?", I said "my god - it is", the cashier said "when'd you lose it?". After I told them I'd lost it months earlier, they let me have it. Someone had turned it in months ago - a while after I'd stopped asking around. I guess my bracelet was meant to be mine!

Easily the best day of my week!

SIQ

So I could blog about how we spent Saturday (flea market with our friends Jeff and Jenn), or Sunday (flea market in Calw - beautiful little town on a river with SSgt Veronica Soto), or the dinner we had last week at a restaurant near work with a little pond while we sat on the patio eating salad and schnitzel, or I could blog about taking some time and going vegetable shopping with Brad at the Vaihingen market, but instead I'll blog about sickness...

Not swine flu, or the H1N1 variant as it's correctly called, thus not impacting pork sales - guess the pig farmers were protesting the title. But being sick. I have been so sick that I had to go to the clinic twice! The first time I went was last Wednesday - I had been coughing for four days and I had been told there were three people at work with whooping cough, a highly contagious disease, so I went to get checked out. The doctor, after making a big deal out of how it couldn't be "whooping cough" told me I had a respiratory virus and sent me home with some over the counter Muscinex and Motrin (why do they think everything can be solved with Motrin!!!????) After five days taking medicine and getting a sorer and sorer throat that couldn't be eased with all the Motrin, Tylenol, cough drops & cough syrup in the house, I went back. This time they gave me antibiotics, cough syrup with codeine, and a SIQ chit. SIQ = Sick In Quarters = and ordered me to not go into work Tuesday. So I spent one of the best Tuesday's ever, laying around the house doing NOTHING at all! With my wonderful husband! It was a great day :-) (and only the second time I've ever gotten a day off of work for being sick in 16 years).

Anyhow, I'm better now :-) I'll write about the spring festival we went to last weekend later...

My first sweater

I completed knitting my first sweater today! It came out pretty well also - I'll have to take a picture soon and post it here. The other cool thing that happened is Brad bought me for my birthday a spinning wheel so I can make my own yarn. He got it for a good deal at the thrift store here.

The other thing we've been doing is watching the Battlestar Galactica. Everyone has always said it's a good show, so when our upstairs neighbor loaned us season 1, we figured, what the heck, and started watching it. We're halfway through season one already!

Chili Champion

Brad's chili stood up to the competition again in it's second chili contest. His "Hot Ass Texas Soup" as we named it, won both the contest and the prize for best name! Brad made two different batches of his chili - one regular with a little spice and the other super hot. The super hot one won - it was funny watching people taste it. They'd go "that's good" and then a second later when the heat hit "oh, my!!". It was all gone way before any other chili. Both of Brad's chili pots were empty, I think only one of the other eight competitors were eaten until empty. It was great!

Easter Weekend

Brad and I went down to the flea market again on Saturday (do you sense a tradition here?). Even though both Friday and Monday were German holidays with everything closed, the same didn't apply to Saturday. Not only were all the shops open, but the flea market was going strong.


























Easter Sunday we took easy, having a good breakfast together in the morning, and then going for a nice long walk around a nearby lake. There were a lot of ducks out, though we didn't see the beautiful wood ducks that we had seen before - when we didn't have the camera, of course! We brought some bread and fed the ducks as we walked. Some of them were far too clever and started following us around the lake. It was kind of funny except ducks are pretty tempermental and would spend as much time chasing off other ducks as they would looking at us for food. A couple ducks were brave enough to come up and eat out of our hands. This intrepid fellow, pictured at the bottom here, even followed us walking down the path to get more.

Beautiful Crazy Day

I had a crazy day at work today - heck just telling Brad all the madness that happened took me an hour! The good thing is the day was BEAUTIFUL, so after I got off work at 6:30, and we ate a quick supper (eggs in a burrito - Brad's with cheese and salsa, mine with cheese and a chopped up habanero (my guts are still burning) - yum).

I then I drug Brad out to walk around a lake we live near, the ducks are all paired up, the fish are biting, and it was a gorgeous night. I think it was in the 70's today. The only thing we did wrong is we forgot the camera! I'll get some shots next time.

The daffodils and tulips are in bloom - it smells so good here, with all the buds coming out on the trees and the grass going green. The sun set before we left the lake so as we were walking back we could see bats flying around. Brad commented that bats are a sign of a healthy ecosystem, they're pretty fragile so they are one of the first species to die in a bad environment.

Today was the way I was hoping Oklahoma would have been when we were there in spring break - but everything was so dry, the lakes were so low, and though it was warm everything was still dead. I guess there are a bunch of fires in Oklahoma now, I'm not surprised after how bad it was when we were there. It's worse than it's ever been in anyone's memory.