nichtszusagen

• For a change, this week I don't have any pictures at all to share. The camera has been sitting securely in its docking station all week.

• As planned, we went to Carl's brother's house on Sunday. It was cold and foggy (ever see freezing fog? It covers everything with a really thick frost, and is pretty, but it's a treacherous PIA to drive in.), but interestingly, the middle third of the 75-minute drive was blue skies, sunshine, and 10 degrees warmer.

  Despite the cold, we brought along burgers to grill, and buns--American ones are different, and according to the in-laws, tastier, than German burgers and buns. I'm not sure what the difference in the ground beef is, but the German hamburger buns tend to be very dry and crumbly, much like their "toast bread." We also brought mayo & ketchup--German mayo and ketchup are, inexplicably, rather sweet.

  Carl and the boys took the BIL with them and went to a model train exchange in a nearby town, while I hung out with my SIL, drank coffee, ate rhubarb cream cake and chatted. The nieces were off to see Alvin and the Chipmunks with their other aunt, so it was just the two of us. The nieces are 10 and 13, so I could commiserate, having lived through those years with Dagny. I had to laugh--apparently IM/text-speak has migrated into German kids' slang: Andrea was mystified by her daughters and their friends going around saying "lol." I explained "Laugh Out Loud," and felt marginally proud of myself for being a cooler mom.

  The drive home was pretty tense--dark and foggy--and took us nearly twice as long as usual.

• Monday, Carl found out that "oh, by the way, your promotion was effective as of 1 January." Huh? He'd been expecting March, and had been expecting at the very least to get some notification. Instead, he only found out after innumerable phone calls and emails. So everything's now a big rush-job. The ceremony is on next Friday at the club on post, with no time to get Carl's dad here from Florida, which is a real shame. But at least he'll be able to use those special parking spots now!

• On the moving front, we found out that the position in Heidelberg has been downgraded to an O-5 position, so that decreases the chances we'll be moving there. Still keeping my fingers crossed for San Antonio. There's an O-6 job, a 2-year position, opening up here in Landstuhl in 2011, which would be absolutely perfect. But that's getting ahead of things. Much as I want to get back to my house in San Antonio, I hate the idea of never living here again. We keep toying with temporary assignments with contractors or DoDDS once Carl retires just so we can move back periodically.

• Last night, we went to dinner with a friend of Carl's and his family. He's a German preventive medicine doc, used to work in the Bundeswehr, and he's very smart and talkative. Like most of the Germans I know, he skipped the small talk and went right to talking about issues and important stuff.

  We went to Chili's on post, and there was a 90-minute wait (it's the only restaurant of its kind in the area), so we took them to the BX while we waited so they could look around. It was interesting the things they found interesting or unusual. While there, I discovered that David Baldacci is having a signing at the Ramstein BX tomorrow, so I'm going to try to make it. I've only read one of his books, but authors almost never show up here, so I want to do my part to make it a success.

  It was a very pleasant evening, despite the decibel level at the restaurant and the fact that concentrating on in-depth, rapid-fire conversation in German with so much background noise meant my brain was complete mush by the time we got home.

• By the way, if you're in the area next Friday, stop by the club at 3 p.m. for Carl's promotion. There'll be hors d'oeuvres and punch.
  

Labels: about me, weekend update

// posted by Darla @ 1/19/2008 02:52:00 PM