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Directories
I promise
that when I get DSL, I will post more and make this place a bit more interesting, which should hopefully be in May. This dial-up crap is p… a… i… n… f… u… l… l… y… s… l… o… w…
It’s a bit discouraging when you sometimes need to wait 5 minutes for the “create post” screen to come up, then when you hit “Publish Post”, there is about a 50% chance that it will actually publish, and if you forgot to save your post to word, then you’re out of luck. This especially sucks when you’ve written a mini-thesis tirade and *poof*, it’s gone.
We are working on getting a new apartment in Potsdam now. It’s a city just outside Berlin where the royal palaces of the Hollenzollern family are. The problem is, the carpets in the place are NASTY. We said we’ll take it if they replace the carpets, but the place isn’t able to contact the owners of the apartment yet. Why can’t apartment hunting in Berlin be easier??? Why must it be so torturous, filled with liars and cheats, and cheapskate landlords? We once saw an apartment that was advertised as being 3 rooms. We went to look and it was a small room and a medium sized room. We asked “What’s up with this?” To which they told us that if they wrote the truth in the ad, no one would come look at the place. They also added that they *could* put a wall up in the middle of one of the rooms. Don’t people see that not only is this a waste of our time, it is also a waste of their time?
I had something witty to add here, but I can’t remember it. Ahhh… painkillers.
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Charlie at 3 weeks
Here’s Charlie and his sibs at three weeks old. Sorry, I can’t tell which one is Charlie.
God bless America… and no one else
While reading an article about the death of Terry Schiavo, I learned of Bush and the Christian Right’s attempts to return America to a “Culture of Life”. So… what exactly do the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have to do with this goal? Even if we ignore the death of non-Americans… wait! what am I talking about? Let me begin again, please: There have been a lot of deaths in these wars of people who matter (i.e., Americans), but then again, they were mostly young, low class, minorities, so, they don’t really matter that much.
And what about Guantanamo Bay? Oh yeah! Those guys may be kept under conditions violating the Geneva Convention, but they’re still ALIVE! Duh! Stupid me.
This reminds me of a line from the movie Head of State (which generally sucked, but I found this point very funny - and true). In all his public appearances, the sitting President of the US proclaims, “God bless America… and no one else”.
Tip of the day
Apples and peanut butter are very yummy together.
Additionally, grilled peanut butter and longhorn cheese sandwiches are also super yummy. Hey, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it! It sounds gross, but I’ve made many converts.
Frayed nerves
The search for an apartment in Berlin continues. We didn’t get our “perfect” apartment. The owner picked one of the other applicants. Well, his loss. This coming weekend is a major 4-day holiday in Germany, so nothing is going on. We’ll make another big search after Easter.
I’ve been researching genealogy recently. I’ve got most of my direct ancestors on my father’s side back to when they first came to the US (1800’s or so). My mother’s side will be very difficult. Once it gets to my Chinese great-grandparents, I have no idea how to continue the research. I know Chinese keep very good records, but there are relatively few Chinese surnames, and I don’t know any Chinese. I’ll put my tree up on my website when I get it a little better fleshed out. Tracking my relatives in Germany should prove easier. Plus, they were all Catholics, so I should be able to search the church registries. On my dad’s side at least, I come from a LONG line of farmers. But supposedly Vitis Geyer (German) worked in a brewery and was killed when he was run over by a beer truck. Interesting. His son, Franciscus Geyer, is the Geyer who came to the US. Rainer says they must have been thrown out for being weird overly religious types, because they were naming their kids after Roman saints.
There is a movie on right now that is truly disturbing. “Sturz ins Leere” (I’m too lazy to get up and find the English title). It’s about these crazy mountain climbers who decided to try to climb a mountain that had never been successfully summitted, without telling anyone what they were up to. Anyways, one guy falls feet first and his tibia went through his knee, then splintered his femur. AAARRGGGHH! Eventually, he has to make his way down the mountain and every time weight is on his hurt leg, he screams. The idea of this makes me want to hurl repeatedly. He calmly describes this feeling in the interview segments as being “very, very painful”. A very, very, British answer.
I watched “The Affair of the Necklace” on cable tonight. I thought it was pretty good. I wouldn’t buy it, but it’s not as terrible as all the reviews made it out to be. I had no complaints about the performance of the actors, although I thought the direction, camera work and editing was a bit dodgy.
I also recently saw “Unconditional Love”, a movie with Kathy Bates, Dan Ackroyd, and Rupert Everett. It was pretty amusing, and Rupert is very yummy. It’s about this housewife (Bates) who is left by her husband (Ackroyd). She gets obsessed about this Liberace/Barry Manilo-style singer and on the night she is to see him sing, he gets killed by a serial killer. So she flies to England and hooks up with the singer’s boyfriend (Everett) and they attempt to track down the killer. I recommend it as a lighthearted rental.
I just got over some weird one-day stomach flu thing that struck yesterday. I’m having no tummy trouble today. Strange, but welcome.
Oh yeah, my big news:
The insurance company approved, so in June I will be spending 3 weeks in a rehabilitation clinic on the seashore!
Introducing Charlie!
This weekend we went to visit our puppy. He just opened his eyes a couple days ago and we can take him home at the end of April.
What a super cutey!
Charlie is the one on the left with the white spot on the back of his neck.
Here Charlie and his siblings are getting fed by their mama.
Naptime for everyone!
Okay, maybe I’m just in a crying mood
I just finished watching the latest episode of Lost - “Lost in Translation”, which gives the background story of Sun and everyone finds out that Jin speaks English. I was crying through all of the flashback scenes and the final encounter between Sun and Jin.
I have to say that I like that Lost has non-English speakers and provides subtitles for them. Although I would think there would be more foreigners on the flight. It’s also mostly Americans. I would expect more of an even split between Americans and Australians.
I think Lost is a very interesting show that can provide a lot of insight into people. I mean, a lot of us just look at how a person is immediately presenting themselves, but we really have no idea of what they’ve been through and what motivates them. We first saw Sawyer and to some extent Sun as bad people, but now through flashbacks, we see that Sawyer is tormented by the fact that his father killed his mother, then shot himself in front of Sawyer. Or that Jin (and us) viewed Sun as a gangster, but really he was trying to do everything he could to keep his father-in-laws goons from killing a man. Or that even the nice guys have done nasty things, like Sayid torturing people as an Iraqi Republican Guardsman.
I think it was heartbreaking when in the flashback, Sun was talking to his father and saying he wanted to start all over again with Jin, then in the present, Jin told Sun she wished they could just start all over again, then he answered that it was too late. But, although I was crying like crazy at this point, I am kind of glad that it ended up this way, because them getting together again at the end of the episode would be too Hollywood. I was also crying at the end when Jin let her towel drop at the beach and walked into the ocean in her bikini (something Sun would not let her do - too much bare skin).
On another note, they played a song by Damien Rice (Delicate) which is also a heartbreaking song. His voice is very emotive. I highly recommend checking his album “O” out. The song “Blower’s Daughter” from the trailers for the movie Closer is also on there.
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