This and that....

Another week has come and gone.  Seems like summer is coming to an end here in Germany.  I can't say that I'm sorry to see the hot weather give way to cooler days.  I am most comfortable on crisp fall or winter days.  I'm sure it stems from growing up in Alaska.  I feel most at home in cool weather.  It just gives me this snuggly feeling of wanting to be home with family. Cooler weather makes me think of the holidays too and I love that time of  year.  Anyhow, I'm sure we still have some warm days ahead, but it's been chilly at night and we actually turned the floor heat on in the living room the other day.  With tile throughout the house it was getting really cold at times. 

Sam's parents are coming for a visit around the middle of September. It's going to be nice having them here.  There is still so much that I need to do in this house, but it's a slow work in progress.  One thing that's really been baffling to me here in Germany is where to get curtains.  I know that must seem very odd, but a lot of our windows have no room for a curtain rod above, so I'll need to use a track system that they have here.  My problem was I couldn't seem to find curtains that were made to be used with the track.  Yesterday we were at Obi and Sam talked to one of the workers and, bless her heart, she explained the whole thing to us.  So now, I know how to do that, but Sam has to install all the tracks in the windows and I just need to pick out curtains. 

I'm not crazy about the color I painted the main floor (living room and dining room), so I'm looking at paint again.  I'm sure it won't get done before Mom and Higgins get here, but will as soon as I have time. 

Speaking of having time...I'm happy to say that as of Friday I accepted another position back in the NAF office (the job I left in June) although this time I'm going to be working part time as an HR Specialist.  I've very happy about this move.  While I'm glad to have the experience of working in the CPAC it's just too stressful for me right now.  Our office is responsible for bringing on the new employees for AFRICOM (the brand new Africa Command here in Stuttgart) and we're  on a timeline to get them to full operation by a certain date.  It's been requiring a lot of overtime and we don't really have much support from management.  Prior to this I never thought I would take a part time position, but at this point quality of life wins over the monetary advantage of working full time. I'll  be transferring to the new job on 29 September.

I should be working around 5 hours a day which is perfectly fine with me.  I love the idea of having 4 extra hours in the day.  Time to keep up with the house during the week and get some much needed projects done.  I probably won't be taking much time off while Sam's parents are here though because I will have just switched jobs once again, but I may get a couple of days off. 

Sam and I got a kick out of this.  Last week in church one of the ladies said that her daughter had a picture for us.  She said it reminded her of us (Sam and me).  Here it is....

Isn't that the funniest thing?  Of all the pictures out there, this one made her think of us.  People have told us that we resemble each other.  I don't know if that's what made her think of us or that we're short and stubby.  Either way, we thought it was cute and we have the picture hanging on our fridge.

Well, that about it for now. Until next time...

Our Lazy Day

I'm going to try posting from Windows Live Writer again and hope it does alright.  It's a lot simpler than Blogger, so I want to see if it works better on the second time around.

We've had a really nice and slow Saturday.  The Olympics started yesterday, but with the time delay, the opening ceremony came on here at 8:00 this morning.  We watched that for several hours this morning, then Sam took off to go to some stores.  He's returning my cell phone for I believe it's the 3rd time now.  I got the phone in January, but it's just never worked right.  It doesn't hold a charge.  It's completely unreliable.  Sometimes it holds a charge for a day, other times just a few hours.  It's never available when I need it, so really what's the point in having it?  The first time we took it back to Media Markt we were told that legally they had the right to fix it 3 times before we could request a replacement phone, so we're now on the 3rd return for the same problem and we'll see if I can get a different phone.

Several months ago Sam put in for another position within CYS and just two weeks ago he was selected for and accepted it.  He'll be the new Child & Youth Services Administrator, which is a brand new job so he doesn't know entirely what it will consist of.  Regardless, we think it's a good move for him.  He loves his job as SAS director and loves being in a position where he can interact with the kids, but this is a step up and overall a good thing.  I'm so proud of him.  His center is known to be a good place to work at because he's a great boss and his personality makes for a fun place to work.  I had a pretty good feeling he would be selected, but I'm happy that it worked out and I just hope he enjoys it too. 

Last weekend we  had Carmen, my friend from Hawaii, and her family over.  They arrived in Germany in December and are stationed in Heidelberg.  I thought we would have gotten together long before now, but it's not easy when we're both working and we only have the weekends.  Anyhow, it was nice to see them again.  We cooked out here at the house then took the train to downtown Stuttgart later in the afternoon.  Wouldn't you know I didn't get the camera out all day?  So... I have no pictures to show for that day.

Since June we've had a lot of construction taking place behind our house.  We were less than thrilled to know a house was going up behind us, but knew it was a possibility since we didn't own the land.  It's going to be a single family house then in front of it, closer to the road, there's going to be a double house built.  They really build the houses close together here.  It's been interesting watching the process.  I took a few pictures just when the basement was being dug and started, then forgot to take any more until just recently.  It's going to be quiet out back for several weeks now because the construction workers are on "holiday".  We've found that most people take their vacations during August.  A lot of family run restaurants close for several weeks during this  time too.

 

The back of our house as they started to dig the basement

                       More of the basement dug out

                               Starting on the basement

                               This is how it looks today

           What we see on the other side of our yard

As you can see the house is right out our back door, but at least we have a fence up and their yard will be dug down to the level of ours.  The stones and fence will provide a good barrier between us.  Sam's thinking about replacing the fence we have with a taller solid fence that would totally block the view.

Well, that's about it from here.  Until next time...

Blogger issues

If you have Google Reader, you saw that last post about 3 different times. Sorry about that. I used Windows Live Writer for that post and it cut one of the pictures off. When I went into Blogger to edit it some of the HTML script wasn't recognized. I have other things I need to be doing instead of spending an hour trying to figure this out, but I'm done for the night.

Playing catch up

I should apologize for how neglectful I've been of my blog lately. Both Mom and Tom commented on it being well over a month since my last post. Hopefully I haven't lost my few faithful readers :) I've just been so busy and overloaded that I haven't had it in me to stop and take the time to put a post together.

This month has flown by. It's hard to believe Mom and Dad have been gone for 7 weeks already. I loved having them here and I'm already looking forward to our visit at Christmas.

After they left I returned to work at NAF for only one week then switched to my new position in CPAC. It's just down the hall and I already knew the people I'd be working with so I wasn't too nervous about starting. It's ended up being far more stressful than I thought it would be though. I've been doing some serious contemplating about staying there or moving on. I don't want to work overtime because my life outside of work is more important to me, but I feel like I'm almost expected to there. It's been necessary to work some extra hours just to stay on top of the workload, but I'm really fighting falling into that trap.

There may be another job opportunity on the horizon. If things turn out the way I'm secretly hoping - I may even be working less hours which would be wonderful, but until it's set in stone I'll not go into too much detail. I wouldn't want to jinx it.

I'm the only American in my area of the CPAC and it's proven to be a little interesting. I like cool weather and the two other ladies like it HOT. They get cold at the slightest breeze, so on days like today (90 degrees out) they refuse to turn on the AC. If someone does turn it on the reprieve only lasts for a few minutes before one of them says their throat is hurting. I have bitten my tongue on a number of occasions.

In all my years I've never had my name scrutinized like I have here in Germany. Obviously, Mom and Dad didn't consult the world before naming me. German's don't like the name and several people at work can't seem to say "Misty". I didn't think it was that hard, but obviously I was mistaken. My name comes out as Mitzy, Missy, Melissa, Mindy,...anything but MISTY. I've given up on correcting them and just answer to anything that sounds similar to my name.

Something that really surprised me is that (from what I gather) a lot of German women have house cleaners. One girl I work with who is younger than me and has a young child, was gong to be interviewing a new cleaner. I was surprised that she would have a cleaner for her house and she said "Well, I don't want to clean my house." Well then....I never knew it was an option. I always thought if I wanted a clean house then I had to clean it. We American's are so unenlightened , aren't we? Sure it might make life easier, since I'm working full time, but I still take pride in cleaning my own home.

Summer's always a busy time for Sam because the SAS kids are out of school and need full time care. This summer's even busier with having lost several of his long time employees over the last couple of months. Several college age kids are back with Camp Adventure. Sam had pity on them and asked me to make a dinner for them. So, I sent in a pan of lasagna, rolls and cookies. They seemed to enjoy it so much that I'll probably try to make dinner for them again before they leave.

Unfortunately, the cats are still not getting along. I really thought after two months they would be getting along a little better, but Gabby just can't stand the sight of Papa. She actually searches for him, then picks at and chases him around the house. Poor little guy. I feel bad for him, but he is completely capable of fighting back, but is docile enough that he won't until he's had enough. While Gabby picks at Papa mercilessly, he doesn't seem to "get it" either. He'll follow her around until she sees him, then hisses and swats to chase him away. You would think he'd steer clear of her, but he just seems too interested in her to stay away.

His absolute favorite place in the house is the couch. He will lay there for hours. He's so cute. Sam says he reminds him of a cartoon character. He's so big and it's cute when he tries to run. He's probably the sweetest cat I've ever known.

His newest favorite spot though is Sam's recliner. Sometimes he's there when I leave for work and in the exact same spot when I get home 9 hours later. He must move at some point through the day, but you wouldn't know it.

We saw a rat out back on the patio tonight. Sam promptly closed all windows. There's a lot of construction going on behind our house and I think it's chasing the little critters out. We have to be careful because we have the cats that go out back , but if I know my husband he'll be setting traps all over the back yard.

In the past I've mentioned our ongoing saga of the phone lines. Here's the most recent update. Back a few months ago we moved the router down to the living room behind the entertainment center so all the wires could be hidden. The downside of that was the desktop no longer received a signal. We wanted to try the router in a different jack closer to the computer, but Deutch Telecom told us we could only have one phone jack working at a time, so we were stuck. Deutch Telecom has a monopoly on the phone business and it's absolutely ridiculous. Every time they come out to turn on a different jack it cost about $100. It's just a way to cheat people out of money if you ask me. Anyhow, Sam knows someone who said they could get all of our jacks working, so we had him come out. He's an electrician by trade and had never seen such a poor wiring job as what he found here. The phone jacks had never even been connected. The wires were just in a roll down in the utility room. Early on we asked what the wires were for because they were coming out of the wall and looked like they should be hooked to something, but of course we never got a straight answer. A job that should have been relatively simple turned into a couple day job. We were very happy when he got all of our phone jacks working. Unfortunately, it hasn't helped the Internet connection on the desk top, but at least now if we decide to move the router again we can just do it and not have to pay yet again.

Well, I think that about covers what's been going on in our lives. I'll try to do better about updating this blog. We need to get the desktop working again, so I can post some more recent pictures. Until then, this will have to do.