20 September 2006

Briefly...

because I am so going to bed early tonight (21:30 is my goal time to be in bed, lights out)! I have been staying up way too late and I'm just plan tired!! Plus I really want to walk to work while the weather's still nice, so I want to try to get up extra early tomorrow. [Ask me tomorrow if I actually pull this off!?!?!?!?]

Speaking of weather, we had the MOST beautiful sunset tonight:















Today, I actually talked to my neighbors! It was like this: I got this paper in my mailbox with the hot and cold water and heating readings for the whole building, broken down by apartment. Hot and cold water looked good for my apartment, but heat was like 100 times as high as my neighbors....huh??? I didn't really understand. I was walking up the outside stairs really slowly as I read it and the lady came out of the apartment that has it's own entrance (and not a shared one like the rest of it). I thought, "what the heck?" So I asked her, in the very polite formal address, if she could perhaps explain it to me. She was so nice and told me what it all meant. Then her husband came out (he's the one who signed for my router) and added a few pieces of information. I thanked them a lot and then (gasp!), the conversation actually continued because he asked me if I was American. Then he asked me if I was with the Army. :o) Then they told me their son is in NY for six months at a customer, we talked about how difficult it is to communicate with people in the US because of time difference, we talked about my German language ability. And at the end, he reminded me to check my thermostat to see if it was set wrong and told me if I have any questions, I should let him know and he'll come up and check things out. How nice is that???? I think it's even nicer than signing for my modem!!

Just for fun, a couple of sleepy, lazy cats:



















And in case you were wondering what the infamous splitter looks like:
By the way, T-Com took last month's (over)charges out of my bank account twice! That should be fun to rectify with them. But I got my next bill today and I have a negative balance with them, because they gave me a credit for the monthly hardware charges they had charged for on the last bill, which I couldn't even use, and an 86 Euro credit, apparently for my troubles. Just so I would know, though, it says right on the bill that it's [loose translation] a goodwill credit, to which I had no actual legal right (can you imagine a utility provider in the States writing something like that? They'd probably get sued for just being aggravating.....)

And then I had to photograph this:




















What's she looking for under there? Then Cheese joined her in "looking" and I thought "uh-oh, what if there's a mouse under there?" But why would I have mice on the third floor and with three cats? And you can't be a 'fraidy cat when you've got no one else to look under there, so I got my flashlight, laid down on the floor (kinda like Jemma) and looked under there. And I found....................the cats' toy foam ball. WHEW!

In other Jemma news, she's still favoring the baby sock over the butterfly and still eating the plants. Oh well.

Today I heard my German colleague use the word "braingestormt." I laughed really, really, really hard. If you know any German, you recognize that she was conjugating the verb brainstorm into the past tense, German style. It's like this: I live and I have lived are "ich lebe" and "ich habe gelebt" from the verb leben. Following that same logic: I brainstorm, I have brainstormed are ich brainstorme, ich habe braingestormt. Makes perfect Germlish (German-English) sense!!

Okay, it's 22:01, because Blogger is soooooo slow about loading photos, so Good Night!!

2 comments:

turbobrown said...

So this son of your neighbors, how old is he? :)

Thanks for the german lesson, it brought back old highschool memories!

The widget you have that tells you where all your visitors have come from is pretty cool. It makes me wonder how people found you. I bet there's something that lets you track that.

Shannon went to the doctor today and was told it was unlikely Mason would be here before Tuesday, his "official" due date. So just more waiting. This is probably the worst part, there's nothing more to do, we're all ready for him to show up and we just have to wait. Of course all I have to do is act normal and wait, Shannon has to be very uncomfortable and not sleep while waiting, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

Hope you got all caught up on your sleep!

Sarah said...

Thanks for asking, as usual....but we didn't discuss his age and he lives in Frankfurt and he could have 12 kids for all I know.

I like the widget, too. If you know of one that will let me track how people found me, let me know.....

I'm sure the waiting is hard. Poor Shannon!! Keep me posted!!!!!!! And a 10 second long distance call to say "He's here, has 10 fingers and toes and is cute as a button!" would be super and I don't think it'll break your bank!!