nichtszusagen

• I forgot to report on the David Baldacci signing at Ramstein back on January 20. We did go, and, true to form, I clammed up--couldn't think of a single thing to say until we got back to the car with my bag full of signed books. I do much better if it's an author I've corresponded with online or at the very least if I've read a lot of their books. Anyway, I did my homework, and bought the two new hardcovers: Stone Cold and Simple Genius, as well as the preceding two paperbacks in the Camel Club series: The Camel Club and The Collectors. The BX had plenty of his books available, and he was signing stock when I got there--coincidentally, the one book of his I'd read before (yeah, I could have mentioned that, but I always hate to tell authors of multiple books that I've only read one), but while there wasn't a line, there did seem to be a fairly steady stream of people coming up to get books signed. I forgot to bring my camera, as usual. Sorry about that.

• We got some sort-of news about the move this summer, with an email from TPTB. San Antonio looks very unlikely at the moment, and the job Carl wanted there, if the docs would give it up--his ex-boss is considering coming back to active duty to take it. So that's pretty much out of the question. The Heidelberg position is for an O-5, but TPTB would like to have an O-6 there because it's a new position. He'd have to make an argument for it. The only other two positions he mentioned were dead-end jobs: one at the Pentagon and one in Georgia. As Carl said, it's like going out to dinner hoping for a nice juicy steak, and being offered schnitzel, dog food, and spit. We were both pretty thrown by the news. I think we were really counting on something turning up in San Antonio. So we decided to sleep on it and discuss things the next day.

• Carl spent his sleepless night doing some research. The biggest thing he found was that the Heidelberg American schools do have a band after all--it's just that their websites suck. That was a huge load off my shoulders. So we gave the boys the tentative news at dinner so they could think about it and so Curran would have time to make his decisions.

  Surprisingly to me, Curran's biggest worry was about driving, and not so much about the actual mechanics of driving, but of knowing his way around. Surprisingly to Carl, Curran seems to prefer the idea of staying with Dagny in San Antonio and starting school rather than staying with us and taking classes with the University of Maryland.

  We've been discussing the possible move and associated plans nonstop all week. We should know something--at the very least whether they'll consider him for the position--in a couple of weeks.

• The new school semester started for the boys. The only differences for them are that Curran now has psychology instead of government and Camden has Conversational German instead of P.E. We're still annoyed that the schools stopped offering German 1A (1st half of high school German 1) in 7th grade--both Dagny and Curran had taken it then. Camden likes his German class so far and has been trying it out every chance he gets. Curran is unimpressed with his psychology class, finding his classmates too dull. Camden's report card came, and while he had a couple of B+s, his semester grades were straight As.

• Carl's mom's 70th birthday was on Sunday. We all (Carl's brother's family and us) celebrated with them at a local restaurant last night. We got her a new digital camera (she'd been using our old one), and a couple small things, and she seemed pretty happy with them. We haven't told her about the possibility of us staying in Germany, not wanting to get her hopes up in case we don't. It was a nice evening, but we were all pretty exhausted so we left around 10. After putting in a full day, then driving over two hours in Friday afternoon traffic and pouring rain, it got to be a bit much. Unfortunately, nobody remembered to bring a camera, not even Carl's mom's new one.

• So, no pictures this week. I'll try to make up for it next week.

• Oh! I almost forgot to mention. Thanks to everyone who entered the contest. I've got lots of ebooks now. I've picked a winner, but I'll make a separate post for that.
  

Labels: about me, weekend update

// posted by Darla @ 2/02/2008 03:15:00 PM