Thanksgiving

After having a very impromptu Thanksgiving Dinner I thought I should write some ground rules down for the next time I decided to do this.

1. Allow extra time for the turkey-- a lot of extra time. At least 2 hours...
2. Pre-cook as much food as possible so that it just has to be heated because the Turkey will be hogging all oven space.
3. Select dishes that can be prepared in the steam oven.
4. Better, learn to prepare Turkey in steam oven.
5. Have toaster oven out and ready for warming food that will not go in the oven with Turkey.
6. Make pumpkin pie from fresh pumkin, not frozen.
7. Better, skip pumpkin pie and serve apple pie or spice cake with cream cheese frosting
8. Use only dishes that can go in the dishwasher. Now is not the time to do things by hand.
9. Begin drinking heavily around 4, so that when Turkey is not quite done you do not care or notice.
10. Order pizza because it´s the new American tradition--have a nice selection of toppings--spinach, mushroom, olive/pepper (gotta get those veggies) and some topped with turkey and potatoes (gotta love those krauts for inventing a pizza like that)

Winter Wonderland

The snow that was supposed to make an appearance yesterday didn´t...it came this moring, and about 10 cm. It was great fun driving to work this morning, because at 7.00 the snow ploughs were still in bed, but not on the streets or Autobahn. It was a delightful drive going 70Km/h on the Autobahn, and it took a lot longer than usual to get to work, but I wasn´t the last one! Yeah, always good when your student are even later. I survived, listened to some James Taylor singing winter wonderland, and made it in one piece. Coming home hte streets and Autobahn had been cleared, so I could drive my usual 130 again. When I got home I found that DH had shoveled the walks and steps and gotten us some subway. He really is a good man, and I probably should go and jump him just for it, but I´m feeling lazy. Maybe later.

Snow

It´s supposed to snow to day, but mostly just be icy.....ahhh man. I have to drive on the Autobahn today, and I am less than thrilled at the prospect of an icy autobahn on the first snow of the season. I just hope it waits till I can get home. I really like my car and would like to keep it just the way it is. Will update later.

Thursday morning.

Nothing but a dreary, Thursday morning here. I think I´m fighting getting a cold, but dunno for sure. I certainly hope not, cause I gots lots of plans for next week! I have the day off yet again, and I know you ask how this could be fair or possible, but I go to work on Saturdays (and I leave at 7 in the morning to get there) to teach a bunch of welders with nuddy calendars and pics hanging in the room, so I feel that I am entitled to a day off in the middle of the week. Normally it´s not my day off, but my student cancelled for this morning, so I´ve got the WHOLE day to do fun things. I think I´m off in a bit to get some Christmas shopping done and find those ornaments for the gift exchange. I also want to get some x-mas decorations made that I´ve been wanting to do, so today is perfect. If I don´t blow away, I can come home, sip hot cocoa and watch Gilmore Girls while crafting!!!

Prayer and Penance

Today is one of those crazy German holidays again, and really crazy in that only Saxony gets the day off. I have been very penatent today, all the sweets I have eaten this week are sure to tip the scales. I´m hoping that DH will go out with me for a nice brisk walk after he wakes up from his lunchtime nap. It´s a pretty gray day here, but it´s not raining, which is always a good thing.
Other than relaxing and watching some Gilmore Girls on DVD, I have no serious plans. I´m quite sorry (even penatent) that I took the translation job doing the contract, so some recovery from the tortures of it are in line.

Sperm meets egg

What 15 Euros at Amazon will get you....20 OPK´s and 5

HPT´s

It´s that time of the month again, and I don´t mean a visit from Aunt Flo. No, it´s CD8 and according to the sperm meets egg doctrine it´s time to get busy, do the horizontal tango, baby dance, hump, or whatever it is that you care to call it. A year ago, if you had told me about people who go to such great lengths to get knocked up and that I would be one of them, I would have told you that you were crazy. Here we are, and while I know that it is possible to get knocked up from one brief encounter, I am not taking any chances now. I´ve read up, stocked up, and am ready to roll (in the hay) and will be doing so all this week. Now if you´ll excuse me, I have work to do...

Procrastination

Merriam Webster defines it : to put off intentionally the doing of something that should be done

But I would prefer to call it making use of time in a more pleasurable/suitable way. I should be working on a lovely legal translation from English to German. Besides not being my favorite way to translate--it´s soo much more fun to do it the other way. Or that´s what I tell myself when I´m doing something from Eng->Germ. or conversely when from Germ->Eng. I find legalese rediculous, and sometimes the German is more straightforward, but only sometimes. As my husband said to me this morning, lawyers come up with great stuff like " the worker may use the toilet if the toilet suits the purpose of being a toilet." So instead, you see, I´m procrastinating, or using my time more suitably to blog. When I feel motivated, or the deadline for having the contract done looms, I will start work again. In the mean time, I will think about my x-mas decorations, going shopping for Christmas presents with the money I will get for having translated this said contract, and what color I should paint my toenails. Oh wait, I hear DH arriving with lunch, so I guess I will have to delay those pleasures, further delaying working on said contract.

bulbs and all that good stuff

In preparation for spring I have been planting lots of spring bulbs....I never knew that kneeling or squating close to the ground could be such an athletic activity, but today my thighs and butt are soooo sore. I haven´t quite finished, but my guesstimate is that I planted about 200 bulbs. I had a pack of 65 tulips and various packages of daffodils and hyacinths. I need to get my alliums in, but I think I´ll wait for another day....the thought of digging lots of holes 40 cm deep in our rocky soil is not terribly exciting. I didn´t realize just how rocky our soil was till I tried to dig a hole and heard nothing but crunch, crunch, crunch. DH is home sick this week, so he enjoy "supervising" this endeavor and I couldn´t wait for him to take a nap.

Speaking of DH, I can´t really say that he has been a baby, but he´s certainly needy. It´s been quite an adjustment to have him home while I´m trying to work. I love him, but I´m looking forward to his returning to work. I certainly hope that the anitbiotics kick in soon....

Time for change and other stuff

I´m pretty excited to watch the election results as they come in today. I wish I could be in Berlin for the big Democrat Election Party (now you know who I voted for) but I can´t since I have to work in the morning. I think DH and I will be staying up late and maybe getting up in the night to check on it. I´ll for sure check on it when I get up at dark thirty to go teach, but I want to know, and I want to know now!! I´m glad that my vote has been recieved and will be counted, but I don´t know if it will help....damn southern states that like republicans. I want to know how a state that elected Bill Clinton as governor and later as president could go to the republicans these last couple of elections.....grrrr. The state newspaper is called the Democrat Gazette for pete´s sake. Some things I will just never understand.

On a more domestic note, the landscape architecht is here today planting some trees in our yard (cause the 20 I already have are not enough....) and our yard is slowing taking shape. I can´t wait for them to bring our dirt so I can actually get out and plant all the bulbs I´ve purchased. I think I have about 100 tulips and 100 daffodils and several hundred grape hyacinths as well as regular ones to plant....lots of back-breaking work.

Halloween and other stuff

The lovely guests

The pumpkin carving contest with those crazy Krauts!

Unfortunately I don´t have a picture of DH or the other guests, but one them has promised to give me copies later this week, so I hope to be adding them...I wouldn´t want anyone to miss seeing Frankenstein or all of my handywork creating a graveyard outside. Yes, we had Ichabod Crane buried out next to the drive along with Casper and another. All in all it was loads of fun, and we discovered that NIght of the Living Dead is not really all that scary.