Blogging Badasses: One Up, One Down

I haven't really made much ado about the blogroll feature on the right hand side of this page. It's basically blogs of things I find interesting, are cracking good reads, or simply worth checking out-- trust me. Some of them (like the immensely popular Paris Daily Photo) really need no introduction, but seeing as I'm adding a new one today, may as well give a shout out to the newbies.

La Voie Rapide (The Fast Track) which has been linked on the sidebar for a little while, details the life of my ol' college pal KS, a Hoosier currently living in the South of France with her French (sorry-Alsatian) husband and two lovely daughters and living the dream. K was one of the few people who thumbed through my record cabinet (yes kids, we used to use to have music on this stuff called "vinyl") back at school and didn't laugh or make a face-- remember, I was listening to stuff like Nitzer Ebb, Siouxsie & The Banshees and Echo And The Bunnymen when my roommates were listening to "Best of Skynyrd" (true story). These days between swim classes for the girls, she's plotting on a way to make it to Prague, Czech Republic to catch the upcoming Radiohead concert (also a true story).

Sunday Gravy is a fairly new blog recommended to me by my friend (and regular reader) W in Seattle. This blog's byline is "Life, Love And The Pursuit Of A Good Meal." Great sentiments all, I'd say. Author-creator DB is just getting started, but it's boffo stuff so far-- and because I miss my old stomping grounds, I quite like that it definitely has a distinct Pacific Northwest slant to it. Makes me hungry just reading it too!

As the title suggests, a blog has also been dropped. Nürnberg Daily Photo hasn't been updated since mid-March, and there seemed to be no plans to kick start it again so it has been regrettably removed from the blogroll-- shame, as this is a beautiful and historical city where B and I currently hang our hats. Did you know the first practical small clocks and wristwatches came from Nuremberg? Nope, me neither.

How to Beat Downtime: Reframe The Word "Excellent"

My old pal George L. from Vancouver Canada was, in his prime, one of the best and most respected ice climbers and mountaineers in all of the Great White North. He may have slowed down in the intervening years (he's now happily married, a proud papa, and a respected authority on the subject of safety rigging at heights), but back when he was regularly mountain climbing I had a chance to ask him how he got through being snowed-in for days at a time in an impossibly small tent on the side of a glaciated peak-- a situation that would make most people both claustrophobic and a tad batty. His reply was surprisingly matter-of-fact: You just have to adjust your thinking-- instead of letting the situation get the better of you, change it to "Today, I'm going to re-read the one book I brought for the fourth time and in 3 hours I'm going to leave this tent for a bathroom break, and it's going to be great." I can't say I fully appreciated this old mountain dog's wisdom until I moved here. Being underemployed as I am (yes, some scattered projects and pick-up work are always in the mix), means that to keep busy and active I make my daily routine incredibly inefficient, now even more so that my gym closed abruptly and unannounced (and right after I gave him a 3-month payment, natch). So when I go grocery shopping, even though I know for a fact we're going to run out of something in a couple days, I purposefully won't buy its replacement until the time comes. For instance: we ran out of paper towels last night, bingo bango, there was a building block of today's activities. Now, I gotta admit, I took the tram to the far side of the Altstadt first to check to see if a place will air a certain sporting broadcast, tried to buy some bedsheets at the department store (our current flannel sheets just aren't cutting it in the summertime) but then I set off across the city and homeward to find the final goal-- paper towels. And this was indeed most excellent. My other task of sitting around while the comically incompetent workmen continue to finish off the apartment (yes folks, 8 months after moving in we're still waiting on some minor interior and all exterior work to wrap up) isn't so excellent, but it needs to be done-- take the bad with the good, right?

File under "unrelated and meaningless milestones," but this post marks the 100th (!!) entry of this blog. As it was envisioned, I expected to hit this mark some time ago. As always, I will endeavor to be better in the future. Thanks to my regular readers, and all you lurkers too-- we're just warming up here, so keep reading!

Don't Look At Me Like That-- I've Been Busy!

Well, it took longer than planned but the descriptions to the Dublin photos have finally been added. Please do check it out-- all sorts of stuff in there. Follow the link at the side of the page, and click on each individual photo to get a full-size shot and informationally entertaining blurb.

Been away from town for the last week, helping out my old employer at a trade show in southwestern Germany. I was a little out of practice with the 14-hour day life of a show exhibitor but it's like riding a bike-- I've been doing this sort of thing for close to 15 years and it all came back to me. Made some good contacts for my sideline writing business, and caught up with old friends. The next great push is to get the place ship-shape for my folk's visit in a couple weeks. Hey, after the trade show, anything is a piece of cake!

Anyhoo, check out the Dublin photos and descriptions now!

Dublin Photos are Up!

Sorry for the delay, but the Dublin and southern Ireland photos are now up. To access them, either click the "Our Photo Album" link on the right side of this webpage or click HERE. For those keeping score, the descriptions are missing, but will be added later-- this was taking too long to post, and with me heading out of town for the remainder of the week for a trade show, it was better to post something than nothing, right?

We had a very good time there with our friend K, her sister and mother. My impressions of Dublin are are all positive, and for a couple of folks not used to the local population understanding or speaking English, this was actually a bit of a culture shock-- we were hesitant to talk!! Dublin is also a low-slung city-- and by that I mean that it was pretty rare to see buildings taller than 4 stories high. This made things more down to earth and "human scale" for such a large metropolitan area. Everybody warned us about the pricing there, and we were prepared for it-- but yes, it's costly even for folks used to dealing with Euros. The people are as friendly and good natured as you can imagine, and the shopping was top notch. A good length of visit is 3 days-- the downtown area is compact enough that you can pack the sites in without running yourself ragged. Will we go back? Well, there's plenty of European cities and countries we haven't seen that are still on the to-do list, but I certainly wouldn't say no to checking out Dublin a second time.

Enjoy the pics, and more commentary will be added later!

Getting Groceries Here Takes A While

Well, the hurlyburly from the last week is finally settling down-- our flood-damaged apartment is being taken care of 100%, and all the remaining minor work on the place (yes, it still isn't complete 7 months after move-in) will be completed as well. The Ireland and some other local day trip photos are in the process of getting edited and put up on the photo site, and overall, all is well. But while that's getting done and dusted, one of this here blog's longtime readers asked for more "slice of life" stuff-- what daily life entails here in Deutschland. So here we go.

Today was my bride's birthday, and she was going to treat herself this evening with some Mexican food that our friends brought over from the USA to Ireland (you simply can not get decent Mexican food here in central Bavaria, and the stuff they claim is "Mexican food" brings me back to Taco Day at my elementary school in the 1970's-- it's just crap), and we in turn brought back here. Anyhoo, to complete the dish I had to get one small white onion, some Jack or Gouda cheese, and cilantro. Easy job, just go to the grocery store, right? Oh, you silly readers-- this is Germany, remember? This meant I had to go to 6 different stores to get these 3 ingredients.

1. The grocery store right around the corner does sell white onions... in a 2-pound bag. I only needed one, so I left.

2. Then I went to my regular fruit & vegetable shop. No white onions, but they did have a regular yellow onion. Sheesh, I bought it, hoping I could find a white one later. They also had a small cheese case, and when I asked him for either Gouda or Jack, all I got was a blank stare. How do you describe what Jack cheese tastes like to somebody who's never had it, and with my limited vocabulary? After a time (and with impatient customers starting to line up behind me), he suggested that I just go to a grocery store.

3. You can get cilantro at exactly one store in this city of 500,000. It's a crazy Asian market that sells everything from food to those ceramic waving cat things to bras. And they were out of cilantro (known here as "corriander"). The girl behind the counter speaks excellent English, and advised that I come back in 2 hours-- maybe their weekly delivery would be in at that time. Luckily, the delivery truck was pulling up just as I was about to leave. Cilantro purchased; yay, score one for the good guys.

4. The specialty cheese shop down the street from the Asian market (mind you I was walking this entire time) where I knew for certain I could find Gouda was... closed. It's Monday after all. Wha?

5. Went to the OTHER grocery store in the area which has a decent cheese section. They stock Gouda, but they were... out. No white onions there either.

6. Hopped on a tram for the Hail-Mary, the overpriced all-natural store (think Zuppan's or Whole Foods), and yes, they had the cheese, plus some other odds and ends too (this store also happens to be the only place in the city that sells ground turkey-- and if I told you just how much they charge for it, you'd then ask me why I haven't gone vegetarian). Still no white onions, but I considered this mission accomplished-- B gets the meal she's been looking forward to for a long, long time.

Wow, that only took 90+ minutes to do. American supermarkets never fail to impress foreign visitors, who are used to things like stand-alone pharmacies, bakeries and fruit stands in their neighborhoods-- all of it under one roof is incredibly exotic-- not unheard of, but still a rather odd concept for many. But this afternoon is also pretty typical for me-- it really isn't all that unusual to have to go to 2 or 3 stores just to get basic grocery shopping accomplished, or get the foods you prefer-- and special or ethnic meals require a lot of time and planning, and maybe a trip or two out of town for those hard-to-find ingredients. It's all part of the rich experience of living here... but being a spoiled Yank, I don't thnk I'll ever get used to it.