Category: Diary

This past weekend we went to Munich and then on to Kaufbeuren [cough-boyrin] to attend the opening of the Gradwanderung exhibit at the Kunsthaus museum. Elizabeth was showing there with the Hot Spots project in collaboration with Ann Rosenthal and Karin Bergdolt.
It was great. The rest of this entry is devoted to the photographs from the trip of which there are a lot. I’ll go back in and add some more explanatory text in the near future, but a short summary is – day in Munich, Kunsthaus, Neuschwanstein, the opening, another day in Munich, Kaufbeuren, and back home.
We rented our car at Thrifty and the cheapest we could get was a Mercedes station wagon, which was awesome.
Basically we fell in love with Germany. It was my first time there. We’re going back very soon.

What? how’d that get there?

Uh oh. Watch out.

Innocent, unsuspecting park-goers.

It was a lovely evening. Families were playing games, men were smoking shisha. Picnics of freshly grilled feasts were being set on blankets and the sound of laughter was everywhere in the air.

We decided to check out the Creek Park on Saturday. It was beautiful. But after a couple of hours we decided that it was too hot to be in the sun. When we got back to the car we realized that it was actually 90 degrees.
Everyone was out this weekend though. This is definitely the time of year. There were families barbecuing and people brought tents out and pitched them in the fields. We’re pretty sure that you can’t camp out overnight so we figure that they were just to pass the day away in.

The light quality was very intense that day. None of these photos were manipulated.

These dudes were really into us taking their photograph. They were shouting “capture! capture! Whasup bro?”

The desert garden is spectacular.

Beth waiting for her husband to get done climbing on the rocks.

This bird was beautiful. It stuck its beak into the bell shaped flowers like a hummingbird.

I’m not sure what kind of tree this is but it is really amazing how it drops these root balls back to the earth from its higher branches where, once they hit the ground, I imagine they take hold and start a new tree.

click on image for link to the article

Council changes city’s name to Sixburgh

We wish that we could be there for the parade today. Here is an early morning shot of the crowds starting to gather. Maybe it’s unorthodox to change the name of a city for a one-time sporting event, but these are the kind of awesome and forward thinking visionaries that call Pittsburgh home. We miss it there today especially.

We finally decided to bring some live music into our house again. I don’t know why we waited so long. We are really enjoying it. It’s been a long time since I’ve sat down and played songs on a guitar. We miss the grand piano, but this has a really great sound to it and it is filling in quite well.

Here is the little area in our Living Room that we have dedicated to images of our loved ones. We need to add more of course, but it’s a start.

We woke up to this fog a couple of mornings this week. It turns out that this signaled the end of “Winter”. Since then it has been getting progressively hotter. Today it was 90F (32C).

On Monday, we took the morning (and afternoon) off to take care of the business of getting our mandatory national ID cards. We got there before 7am, thinking that we were going to be ahead of the game, only to find a line of about 100 people. The parking lot was empty though because the only way to get a car into it would have been with a crane. So everyone had to park in a big ditch next to the beautifully landscaped and empty lot.
They opened the doors at 7:30 and we finally got inside and got our number. Then we waited. And waited. For about 6 hours before we finally were called. Once inside it was smooth for me, but not so smooth for Beth. We had to be separated for the photo and fingerprinting process – men/women. The guy handling my fingerprints was an expert but the woman handling Beth’s was a bit incompetent and it took her 40 minutes longer than it took me. They fingerprinted us in every imaginable way – fingertips, palms, side of the hand, all at once, one at a time.
I felt a little violated and like I had done something wrong to deserve a day wasted to this. But now it’s done and they know absolutely everything about us. They said that they will deliver our cards to us but I don’t think they ever asked us our address.

One of the ironies about living in this particular Muslim country is that you can buy Absinthe. So we did this past weekend. It’s a pretty good authentic Verte with all the herbal flavorings of the greening process. It contains thujone which is says does not exceed 35mg per kg. We were afraid to drink too much, but now that I know the effect I will see if I can reach the next level. As it was I only had flashing and subtle exaltations of genius-awakening which may well have been brought on by the cooler temperatures we’ve been having.

We forgot to pack our absinthe spoon when we moved out here. This worked just as well though and added the right amount of Parmesan flavor.

We had a fabulous weekend two weekends ago. It’s OK that we’re behind on posting things because I made a new years resolution to be more relaxed and less punctual. Anyway, we went to the Garden Center and after a couple of hours and some great brewed-on-site organic coffees there we finally fell in love with the oddest looking plant that we’ve ever seen and decided that we had to take it home with us. Elizabeth named her Gretel which is an onomatopoeic adaptation of her rugged beauty and has nothing to do with abused children left in the woods and seduced with candy by a witch.

That same weekend we decided to finally try Dunkin Donuts coffee as a little taste of home and a break from all of those fancy cappuccinos and lattes. Elizabeth has had a problem ever since we got here in that they do not sell “half and half” at any of the stores. We have tried stuff labeled “full cream milk” and many other things that are just not quite right. So when we were at Dunkin Donuts she asked them if they had American style half and half. They agreed that it can’t be purchased but said that they make their own right there behind the counter with milk and cream. This was a revelation that has allowed us to share our morning coffee in the house together with equal satisfaction by performing our own bit of dairy chemistry in the kitchen. And the coffee that morning at Dunkin Donuts was delicious!