What do you think?

November 9 - November 15, 2008

Flowers at Sully Plantation

Reston

Fall leaves in Reston

Close up of Christmas decorations in Reston

Uncle Christian and Oliver in motion

For more Weekly Winners visit SarcasticMom.com.

Yesterday, I set the alarm, woke up extra early, moved Oliver into his grandma’s bed, and was off to meet Adam from That Queer Expatriate for an early morning breakfast.  I know you’re thinking, “Wait, you’re both expats in Germany and you’re meeting for the first time… in DC?”  Yup.  Exactly.  Thanks to the site Dopplr, I found out that Adam was going to be in DC while I was here, and I was so bummed I missed out on meeting him at the Whiney Expat Blogger Meetup this year, that I jumped at the chance to meet him here.

After picking him up at the Metro station, we headed over to what’s supposed to be one of the best breakfast places in Northern Virginia, Eggspectation.  Eggspectation offers an eggstravagant array of eggciting, uneggspected, eggstreme meals and has franchises in the US, Canada, and India.  Yeah, that’s right, if you find yourself craving eggs in New Delhi, there are two, count’em two, locations.  The food was good and the location has cool features like a fireplace, extra-large whisk door handles and a huge iron tree wine-rack.  I want one of those.  Seriously, it was awesome.  I gotta go back and take a picture.

Afterwards, we headed over to the Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center, whose admission is free, but parking costs $12.  Since we only had about 45 minutes till Adam had to go, we decided against the museum and spent the time walking the grounds of Sully Plantation, which has apparently been renamed to Sully Historic Site now (is plantation too un-PC?). Anyways, the morning was, I have to say, quite moist.  Hopefully Adam will make a trip down to Regensburg in the near future.

:: Your pic in the Messages for Obama pool

Hello

As you know Guardian News & Media (GNM) recently set up a
group on Flickr called “A Message for Obama” to capture the
many and diverse personal reactions to the election of
President Obama. Thank you for taking part! We have been
inspired and excited by both the quantity and quality of
contributions so far – it’s an amazing collaborative
 effort.

To further commemorate this historic occasion, Guardian
Books is publishing a book called “A message for
Obama”, featuring some of the images uploaded to this
Flickr group. The book will be 140 pages long, with a
recommended retail price of up to GBP 9.99, and will be
available in December 08.

This is a not-for-profit venture, as GNM will be donating
all proceeds from this edition to the Guardian Katine
project, details of which can be found at:
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/katine

We would very much like to include your photograph in this
 project.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/clg20171/3010317449/

In order to include it, we need you to agree to give us the
non-exclusive, worldwide right to include your photograph in
this book and in any GNM publication digital or print
 publication.

Due to the large number of photographs included in the
book, we are unfortunately unable to offer a fee for this
reproduction. However, if your photograph is used, we will
fully credit your photograph and can also send you one copy
of the book on publication.

As our print deadline is tight, we need to hear from you by
Monday 17 November 2008 if you want to be involved. If we do
not hear from you by this time then your photograph will NOT
be included.

After several days now, I’m kinda not perfectly happy with the message I picked.  It coulda been better.  But it’s what I was feeling right then. So should I or shouldn’t I?

1. Have you ever pooped in the woods?

Nope, well, not out of doors, only in a campsite bathroom in the woods.  I did once pee in the woods next to my mom’s house when I was a kid because I’d forgotten my house key and had to wait till my parents got home from work until I could get in.  Luckily it was a nice day and I didn’t mind so much, except for having to pee in the woods.

2. You are starving. You have not had anything to eat for days. In front of you is poison ivy, a live hissing cockroach, and a rotten stinky piece of some sort of mystery meat to eat. Which would you pick and why?

I guess I’d have to eat the cockroach, but I’d kill it first.  I’m pretty sure the poison ivy and mystery meat would make me sick, while the cockroach would be actual protein-rich sustenance.

3. Bottled or Tap water?

Normally Brita-filtered tap water, but my heavy mineral laden tap water in Laaber clogs up the Brita filter after a week, and I can’t afford to replace the filter that often, so we go with bottled.

4. Your dream job, what would it be and why?

Hmmm, maybe professional blogger.  I like to blog and actually making a living from doing something I like would be pretty darn awesome. (You can help support me by clicking on an ad!)

5. Do you have any snow globes?

One, Rainer gave it to me.  It’s a picture of us freezing our butts off in Yellowstone National Park, stuck inside a snow globe.

6. Do you like your bed? If not, what kind of bed do you want?

I do like my bed, but wish it were bigger, a king size bed would be great.  It wouldn’t fit in our bedroom though, so we’ll have to stick with our American queen size bed.

Normally, when someone is a little (or a lot) rude to me, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe the unhelpful sales clerk is having a particularly horrible day, or the guy who cut me off in traffic just lost his job, or maybe the slow waitress just got dumped by her boyfriend on a post-it note.

Anyways, while coat shopping at the mall, I encountered a very special jerk.  Oliver was sitting in his stroller, playing with his new stuffed Horton and looking through Horton Hears a Hoo, happily babbling to himself, not screaming, not yelling, not even babbling loudly. Folks who’ve met Oliver know that when he’s in a good mood, he’s pretty pleasant.  This woman, who arrived maybe five to ten minutes after me, proceeded to park herself in front of the mirror and kept turning towards Oliver and giving him dirty, nasty looks whenever he opened his mouth.  I came up behind her after she’d taken off the coat she was trying on and tried to use the mirror, but she purposely moved into my line of sight every time I tried to get a view of myself around her.  I moved to the side and waited patiently for her to be done and move, so she decided to dig into her purse, pull out her phone, and start texting people, all while standing in front of the mirror, all while giving Oliver very dirty looks.  I moved on to another department and came back later.  She was still there browsing, and she proceeded to give Oliver, and now me, the stink-eye.  I was totally at a loss about what was her problem.  Okay, clearly she was irritated by Oliver’s little noises, but I couldn’t fathom why.  I’ve never encountered ANYONE who behaved like this before.  I couldn’t come up with any excuses for why she had to behave so badly.  I really wanted to say something to her, but figured it’s best not to say anything.  I didn’t know what I should say anyway.  Part of me wanted to be obnoxious back, part of me wanted to diffuse her irritation.  I guess nothing I could say would do either of those things.

What would you have done?  How do you deal with jerks?

THE WORLD FROM BERLIN: ‘Obama Created His Own Movement’

Barack Obama’s honeymoon has proven remarkably short. Just a day after celebrating his election as America’s 44th president, the real world began to dampen the euphoria. German commentators look at some of the hurdles facing him.

For much of the last eight years, the European view of the United States has been relatively one-dimensional, particularly after the hated George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004. America was aggressive, arrogant and disrespectful of the international community and international law, according to the accepted view. Once it was clear that Barack Obama would be chosen by the Democratic Party to challenge John McCain for the presidency, a further element was added to the damning picture: America, many Europeans were certain, was far too racist a country to elect a black man to occupy the White House. (keep reading…)