Coffee from a Reusable Ceramic Mug

So, after an exhausting weekend, I am moved in! I don’t have a phone or DSL, but I have a lot of quiet time. A BIG thanks to mom and dad. Dad moved many heavy things and is quite sore from not letting me help nearly as much as I wanted to. Mom stocked me up! She brought tons of things I never would have thought of getting for myself ahead of time (like hand towels in the kitchen, toilet paper, etc.) Plus she passed down a few family treasures like the pillow that she had made in her first apartment in Phoenix - in my heart, that’s a treasure.

It was wonderful to wake up late and walk the five minutes to work rather than have an hour and a half commute! I even checked out the local gym to see how I can start to integrate a workout into the days. A couple of the women who are at NSF with me are into getting some workout plans going. I might try to teach a yoga class in order to supplement the gym fees.

The apartment is nice, but it’s missing a goofy German physicist that I am used to having around :-). Matthias has been working like crazy in Spain at the test track. They had a day off on Sunday, and he and some of his coworkers went to see Barcelona on a rainy day. He took the little tourist bus that circles the city. I took the same bus in 2000 when I visited the city for my infamous night in Barcelona. He got to have some quietest time on the beach afterwards too. I wish I could have been there with him.

While he was touring Barcelona (trust me, it all sounds a lot less romantic than it sounds), I was visited by Carrie! She is a recovering PhD in physics as well - she has a shirt that says “Trust me, I’m a Doctor”. She is working at the Getty Museum studying something about the chemistry of art restoration. She was in D.C. on work at the National Gallery of Art, and she had Sunday free. After meeting my mom and dad as they headed back home, we did a little yoga practice. It was like a little blessing for the apartment to have teaching a yoga practice be the first thing I did in the apartment! Afterwards, we went into D.C. picked up a few things at ‘Bed, Bath and Beyond’ and then headed up to Adams Morgan for dinner at a nice little Ethiopian place. I love that I have cool people like her in my life. She whisks into town, and it’s as if I just saw her yesterday; we talked for hours. I needed a long girl friend talk yesterday… Thanks Carrie!

So, now I am back at work and I have my laptop hooked up. I’ll post from here for now. My stinking DSL at home won’t be up for weeks!! At least the job is cool. There’s not a lot going on for me at the moment as everyone else is really busy with a big project, but I get to spend a lot of time figuring out what is going on. I get to build up at least one potentially high impact program in the next year, so I am excited.

After 2 years of eating frozen spinach (because fresh is impossible to find in Germany), I can’t eat fresh spinach here either!! Stupid E-Coli!!!

Matthias is safe in Spain starting up the test drives. He has a lot of work to do, but hopefully, he’ll get a bit of time at the beach. I just spoke with him briefly today. He’s sort of out of reach with the phone while he’s there because of the schedule and the time change. It would be really nice is he posted on here sometimes… He could also just send some nice e-mails to me and I can post the updates.

I was at mom and dad’s this weekend. I have a pile of stuff sitting there waiting to be transported down here next weekend by my wonderful parents who love me so much that they will haul my junk around the country. The only thing missing from my pile are some copies of documents that I mailed over here… instead of getting my documents, I got some documents from someone named ‘Tommy Yang’ whose stuff somehow got mixed in with my stuff. I did get some of the books that were packed with teh missing documents. I am hot on the trail of Mr. Yang (who recently moved back to Taiwan)! He had some info that is helping me track him down with the help of some people who know him. I hope that the post office was clever enough to send my stuff to him. In the mean time, I am keeping tabs on credit cards and bank accounts for suspicious activities. Once I am living in Arlington, I’ll be getting new account numbers for the credit cards…. I stressed out about that one Saturday night until I woke up Sunday morning and got an e-mail from LG (amazing woman) who helped get things in perspective. In the end, it’s all just stuff. I am lucky to have such things to worry about. It means there is nothing serious going on in my life.

Sorry for the Distraction…. back to the systematic summary of the 8 day orientation, from which I am still recovering! I repeated some Day 5 stuff, but it makes the story fit together better…

Day 4:
So aside from the weirdness of September 11th in D.C. five years after the twin towers attack, the day I did have some more talks to listen to. We listened to the talking heads in the white house. The people working in the office of the president were the most careful I have seen. One speaker often used the royal ‘we’ when speaking on issues. They are an extension of the presidential agenda. That was interesting to see.

Then we had an hour on conflicts of interest for government employees. The only thing I can see this affecting is my public astronomy talk that I put together last summer. I can’t earn money doing it if it is related to my work. Plus, I cannot, in any way, speak as a representative of the National Science Foundation, unless I am acting in an official capacity.

We ended that day with a talk from the only person I know with more degrees than Dr. Dr. Dorota (MD, PhD). Dr. Dr. Mr. Raynard Kington (Md, PhD, MBA) is the deputy director of the NIH, and he spoke about his experiences with conflicts of interest. He had a nice visual of science, medicine, policy and management all sitting under a cloud of politics. He encouraged us to think about where our ethical lines are… I love talks like that. He talked a bit about clarity of the mind in stressful situations, and that’s when I can see the wisdom of the yoga sutras speaking loudly.

Day 5:
Budget!!! Actually, it was one of the most challenging days. We went over a summary of the FY2007 presidentially proposed budget. It’s not good, people. As my dad so eloquently put it, “The difference between the democrats and republicans is that the democrats tax and spend, and the republicans borrow and spend.” That is an excellent summary of the morning talks. Just some numbers for those of you who like them (Sarah, look away). The proposed budget is $2.8 Trillion. The income made from taxes, etc. is $2.4 Trillion…. Wait a minute! So, that’s $400,000,000 we will borrow to make the proposed budegt. Fortunately, we have a lot of banks around the world who are happy to lend us money. Half of the U.S. debt is in the hands of foreign banks. And if you think that’s bad, remember this - the proposed budget doesn’t include ANY costs from Iraq and Afganastan. One of our speakers was on CLinton’s staff and involved in the work neccessary to bring up a budget surplus from 1998 to 2002… She was not so happy that we now have the biggest defict in history! Actually, we learned that the deficit is actually larger than the numbers we usually hear because we actually still have a surplus in social security at the moment…. We talked like that for hours and it made my head hurt.

To keep us from fading totally from the budget talk, they let us get together in committees and try to allocate a budget. That’s what congress is supposed to be doing at the moment but are instead not doing and campaigning. Our committee was highly effective (under budget and on time). However, much of our decision making was based on personal interests and sometimes just deciding on random numbers. From what we heard, Congress is not so different; scary huh?

We had one last speaker that day, but I didn’t take any notes on him, and I don’t remember what he said anymore. He was talking about international economics. I just remember that I asked a question about diversity in the workforce, and he thought I was asking a political correctness question when I was really just asking about a diverse workforce. I was talking about people of different backgrounds coming together to make a project happen, and I suspect, from his repones, that he though I was talking about race, gender, etc. words that seem to make him uncomfortable…. I love when I make people like him nervous with my naive questions

Day 6: Congress
We went to the Congressional Library on this day, and it is a fabulous building! I highly recommend a tour if you are in D.C. We had some very dynamic speakers. This was the summary - Congress is run by the 3 P’s - Policy, Politics, Partisanship… By the time you even hear about a bill, the policy discussion is over - everything else deciding the fate of a bill has to do with politics and partisanship. “Congress’s job is NOT creating laws; it’s preventing bad laws from being passed!!” Said the screaming lady from congress. She was a very loud speaker, and she was the first to yell at us. I loved her! Of the many nuggets of info that morning, she said 10,000 bills are proposed each year and only about 400 are passed. Of those 400, only about 12 are the kind that get debated and go through the process. The rest are passed by condenses and entail things like all congressmen sending congratulations letters to their local sports teams, etc. What a great waste of time and money. She also gave us the history of the ‘celebrity hearings’ in congress. There is really no point in bringing experts in to testify because the congressmen already have all the info ahead of time. However, once CSPAN came to being, constituents noticed that their reps were not attending these hearings. As a response, congress found a way to make attending more interesting, invite celebrates!! The classic case was when Michael Criton testified on Climate change last year… again, money well spent.

Later, we listened to some lobbyists talk about what they do. They aren’t as evil as one might think. The one thing I noticed though was that they had the most constricted breath of any of our other speakers. Being a yoga teacher, I suspect that they have very stressful jobs or are doing something that creates stress in their heart….

Day 7: The longest day
This day killed me! I was tired, and we had four panels of speakers to listen too. I spent some time chatting with some other exhausted fellows during the end of one session because I just couldn’t take it! Why can’t people just get to the point and say what they want to say concisely??!! I almost ditched the last session, but I stayed, and it was one of the best panels of the week. It was on memo writing, and these people were great. You see, the point of a ‘memo’ (Actually a formal process on D.C.) is to saying things as concisely and exactly as possible in one page!! The speakers gave talks just like that!! They taught me a lot about giving a good talk that doesn’t suck the life out of the audience. We were rewarded for our patients at the end of the day with pizza and beer; actually, that’s why I stayed for the last talk - I really wanted a beer.

Day 8: Damn I am tired!!
We talked about ‘think tanks.’ Not all think tanks are created equal, so when you see them noted as references for ‘news’ articles, be weary. Brookings, American Enterprise Institute and a few others are the old think tanks that were created to do research on policy. However, recently there are think tanks with agendas to a particular ideology, and their advice is a lot less impartial. Heritage Foundation is one that gets a lot of press on the conservative news shows, but it is designed (by its mission statement) to ‘formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.’ Anyway, it’s a think tank to support the agenda of the far right.

I planned on joining the other fellows for a happy hour after a short champagne toast after the last talk, but I was just too darn tired (or as Matthias would say ‘dang-darn tired’) to do anything! I went home, called Matthias before his trip to Spain, and then crashed out watching a DVD. An anticlimactic end to an exciting 8 days.

Matthias was out in the city today (Regensburg, that is). He promised to take some photos of the Chaos from the Pope visit. He came across him by the bridge not far from our apartment. The pope road his little pope-mobile right past him, but the digital camera did it’s delay thing right at that moment, so he doesn’t have as close of a photo as he’d like. This one gives you a good idea of the scene though. I need to get the full details from Matthias tomorrow. My phone ran out of minutes when I tried to call him today.

As for Day 5 of my orientation in D.C., we went over the budget and economy. It was a physically inactive day, but my brain feels like mush! It’s funny how most of us have almost no idea how the budget process works, but it is the heart and soul of the political process. We were put into groups of ten people to come up with a budget bill based on the 2006 budget and the presidential request for 2007. We had an hour to do it, and it was tough. I learned that the surplus in the budget from 1998 - 2002 was not just a function of the 1990’s economy growth. One of the people who worked on the budget form Clinton spoke to us about the extremes in spending reductions they did for a years to get the deficit down after Reagan. What I don’t get it why Republicans as known as fiscally conservative when they seem to be exactly the opposite. Needless to say, the deficit is now at a record low, and the number usually quoted is actually about $120 Billon less than it really is; there is a surplus in soscial security that makes the deficit appear less than it is….. it was a lot of talk like that that made the day mentally challenging.

What was amazing is that Bush didn’t include ANY money for Iraq and Afghanistan for the proposed 2007 budget. Just to clarify what that means, the budget without the war expenses will cost $2.8 trillion. The money the government will get from taxes, etc. adds up to $2.4 Trillion. This means we will need to borrow $400,000,000 just to make the proposed budget. I guess we will also borrow the money for the war - a war on credit, who knew? Just to make the picture even more hopeful - 50% of our debt is in the hands of foreign governments’ banks. This means that some countries, particularly some east Asian countries, have a bit more monitary power with the U.S. than I ever realized!

I can imagine how difficult the budget process must be given the extreme, divisive partisanship in congress; actually, many of our speakers have expressed unhappiness with the extreme partisanship. They claim it has never been as bad as it is these days. There is a theory that is the democrats get control of one house after the November elections, then things might settle down again. Several speakers (from both parties) have mentioned the theory that the government functions better when it is not unified (meaning one party doesn’t control the presidency and the legislature). Apparently, the same happened the first two years of the Clinton administration as well.

This song by Randy Travis ran through my head over and over as the memory of the World Trade Center Attacks laid heavily upon my heart today.

Last night I watched and amazing documentary on CBS called “A Portrait of Heroism” about the experiences of one fire brigade in New York that day. It’s sad that some stations were afraid to air it because it was filled with obscenities from the fire fighters at the towers; fortunately, the FCC censorship only scared a few. The network plans to air it on the internet for those who couldn’t view it. Two French film makers, brothers, happened to be with them at the time because they wanted to document the journey of one rooky who would become a fireman that year. One of the brothers followed the brigade into the first tower; their chief was the first on the scene. The other brother was at the station where the rooky was left to try to direct more fire fighters to the scene; he eventually went to the scene as well. The footage was incredible as the brother in the tower was in the lobby with the fire fighters as it collapsed on top of them. He had the camera on the entire time and continued filming as he had a flood light that helped the survivors escape. I learned that the first, official, casualty at the world trade center was the priest who travelled with the firemen. He was in the lobby with the firemen as the building collapsed and didn’t make it to a safe point. They took his body out with them through the rubble and laid him on the alter of the church across the street before returning to the site……

The film left a hole in my heart last night, and I had to do a very strong practice to find some stillness before sleeping. Today, I planned to go down to the White House early and have a few moments of reflection on the day.

The first meeting of the day was in the Eisenhower Executive Office, which is directly south of the White House. My reflective spot was denied by the security detail who blocked off the White House area due to a memorial service for the members of the White House staff at a nearby church. I gathered at 8:30 with the rest of the fellows, and after mentioning the thoughts of having a few moments to reflect on the day I heard my first story of someone’s memories. His wife was pregnant and due on September 12th; they were worried that the hospitals would flooded and they might have problems. She was evacuated from her building across from the White House by big men with big guns.

I kind of expected there to be something before the talked began at 9:00, but at 8:40, one of the organizers made a logistical announcement about the day’s events. I raised my hand and just mentioned it is September 11th, and the first plane hit at 8:46 - I didn’t really know what else to say except that it might be worth reflecting on considering where we were. The room was silent for about 10 seconds, and then the conversations began again. I headed out to the hall and had a silent moment for myself at 8:46. I stood at the top of the stairs in the picture, just below the dome. I found it strange that there was almost no mention of the day by our first speakers who were involved with the presidential offices.

Later, one of the organizers approached me and thanked me for saying what I did, and told me that they had talked about doing something for the moment of first impact, but it got lost in the details of the planning. He sort of expressed regret for possible insensitivities in case I had lost someone in the attacks. He decided that they need to have something arranged for future years because of the relevance of 9/11 on the world of policy and because it is an odd thing not to acknowledge.

Day 3: State Department

I want to be a diplomat when I grow up! We went to the state department on the third day, and it was cool to finally see the inside of the building after walking past it almost everyday when I worked at the national Academies. The building is huge and elegant.

I learned a few very important things about the State Department. First, it is mixed in too much with the defense department and the executive branch in the media. From what I gathered, the State department is VERY different from the other two. The State department is basically filled with people with a deep understanding of places, people and situations around the world. I thought of a good analogy. The state department is kind of like the mind of the government. You see, my mind knows that chocolate cake is not good for me in many ways. When I have a piece of chocolate cake sitting in front of me, my mind knows that I shouldn’t eat it. It even offers a compromise that if I eat just one of two bits, my stomach can handle it and I won’t suffer. However. despite the great wisdom of my mind, I eat and entire piece of cake and ask for seconds!! Then my stomach hurts and I feel terrible…. no big surprise. As far as I can tell, this is how the U.S. government function.

We were all blown away by one speaker in particular. Her name is Ambassador Aurelia Brazeal, and she has an amazing presence. The was former ambassador to Ethiopia, Kenya and Micronesia - a tiny, tiny group of islands north of Indonesia; I had to look it up. She quoted an antique book (not the new version, I have to get the author’s name) called “The Art of Diplomacy.” The book describes the qualities of a good diplomate. To my chagrin, the qualities are quite similar to those of a yogi. She spoke of the importance of listening, being able to focus and realizing that the rest of the world does not function on the timescale of Americans who believe the ‘long term’ plans are anything over a year. She just exuded confidence and stillness.

After leaving State, we headed to the national press club to listen to Norm Ornstein. For those of you who know of him, you could guess that it was a pretty interesting talk; it began with some Bush jokes. He told the story of changes in congress in the past 37 years that he’s been involved. He said today’s congress is dominated by “Partisanship, polarization and parity.” In the earlier days, they all played political games but most were in the middle and the divisions were along ideological rather than strictly party lines. He also emphasized the importance of voting in the upcoming elections.

Just to reemphasis how cool the state department is, we ended the day with Anne Harrington who is over at the National Academies these days, but was in State for a while. She pointed out that it was the defense department who was convinced that Iraq would be a purely military issue. There was an office for the future of Iraq in the State department at the time, and they had laid out several scenario on Iraq, one of them being an invasion like the one that happened. Anne claims that this office has, so far, predicted every major complication that has arisen since the invasion. Fortunately, the defense department has picked up on this (it takes them a while) and has begun to consult them on what to do in Iraq. Hence, the chocolate cake analogy

Weekend:
The weekend has been much less busy. There was a picnic with the fellows on Saturday, and afterwards I picked up a rental car. It was SO weird to drive an automatic after struggling with Bartholomew!

A couple of the girls and I headed over to Pentagon City (which is a mall, not a prison). I picked up some gadgets to get Skype working, and I got to see Matthias this morning! We must have talked for over two hours in the course of the day. I really like having the camera. I talked to Matthias’s parents too (Hallo Gerda und Bruno), and it was tough to understand and speak German already. (Mein Duetsch war fruechtbar Huete, oder!?) It’s only been a week. I was going to get a bottle of red wine today with the groceries I picked up at trader Joes and Whole foods (lot’s of wheat free alternative!!), bit I was shocked to find that you can’t buy alcohol in Mayrland on Sundays — Noooooo!

Anyway, I get to watch a new episode of the Simpsons in English tonight! More later!

So, at the end of the third day, I am finally ready to sit down and try to share the details of the days. I called the program AAAS Camp to avoid the full fellowship name in a vain attempt not to attract Google. I tired to sum up the past 3 days in one post, but it became so long that not even the few of you that read this would be patient enough to site through it. Instead, I’ll just give you Days 1 and 2 today. Plus, I got sleepy around the end of writing about Day 2..

Day 1:
After picking up a load of reading material nicely packed into a AAAS tote bag, we got a break down of the basic statistics of the group. There are 155 fellows this year; the largest group yet. The ages range from the late twenties to 70 years old with an average age of 37 years old. 106 of us are being sponsored by AAAS itself, and the rest are funded by various scientific organizations.

The first speaker was awesome! His name is Mark Talisman, and he is, now, and independent consultant on Government affairs, which means he has more experience than most people around here so they go to him to gain a better perspective. He laid out the American “Experiment in government” starting with the revolutionary war. He was such a dynamic speaker that he could silence the room with an appropriately placed pause. I hope, someday, I can stun a room like that. He made me look a little bit differently at the ‘failures’ in Iraq in that a hell of a lot more chaos ensued at the birth of our own nation. In fact, the nation almost didn’t happen. He gave us an extensive list of suggested reading that I actually want to start tackling. The big message from him - VOTE!! It is critical in the November elections because everything could shift significantly if just a few legislative seats are shifted. The best quote from him - “The American form of democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.”

We did a bunch of ’speed bonding’ exercises in the afternoon followed by another speaker talking about the expectations of the coming year. Most notably, scientists and policy makers live in different worlds. We need to learn to speak the language of policy and work within the framework to get anything accomplished.

Day 2:,
We had more good speakers this day. Mark rom (a professor at Georgetown University) spoke all morning about Bureaucracies, which is a LOT more exciting than it sounds. He was very engaging, and offered us the chance to think about the purpose of bureaucracy and what makes one work. He also demonstrated how they come in many different forms based on who they sure and what they do. Again, it was a lot more interesting
than is sounds. Most importantly, by the end of his talk, I figured out how to spell ‘bureaucracy’!

Berl Radin, the author of a book called ‘Beyond Machiavelli,’ gave us a break down of basic policy analysis. I have a copy of her book that I need to check out to follow up on her talk. She went through some really interesting case studies of policy analysis from the past.

The third speaker, Francis Slakey from the APS, gave us a practical lesson in policy analysis. He gave us four important numbers in policy making -

• 10,000
• 110,000
• 7
• 8

Why, you may ask, are these numbers important?

$10,000 per week needs to be raised for for the two year term of a representative in the House to run a successful campaign (The number goes up to $5,000/day for Senate and $750/minute for president).

110,000 is the average number of votes needed to get elected to the House in a two party race. As a member can’t actually speak with so many people, the power of special interest groups becomes evident.

7 minutes is the average amount of time a congressional staffer can spend with each constituent that contacts the office of the congressman. So, if you write to your congressman, keep it short and simple!

8 months is the time that an average staffer stays on the job on capitol hill. In other words, get what you need to get done now because the person helping you get it done won’t be there long. I suspect it means they are ambitious little bastards trying to move up the ladder; actually, they are mostly aspiring lawyers…. (no offense, Seth)

He also said that one way of getting people to pay attention to your issues is to attach it to one of five things that people care about. Since polling began in the U.S. a few decades ago these same top five have changed positions for the lead of things on Americans’ minds, but it’s always the top five.

• Economy
• Security
• Education
• Environment
• Freedom

As an example of practical policy making, he broke us into groups and asked us to come up with a method to implement a policy of exchanging mercury thermometers with alcohol thermometers in high school classrooms (on of his former students actually did this). They arranged us alphabetically by first name so I was in a group of 2 stephens, 3 Sarahs, and five Susans. I was the only Tammy. After was had a full 15 minutes to come up with something, we all gathered again and people presented. The first woman presented, and he pointed out some of the issues that could make things difficult with the group’s ideas, but that was about it.

Foolishly, I volunteered to go next. I was asked to speak for our group, and I figured I’d get it out of the way so I could pay more attention to the following speakers. He took a different approach to me. I started to summarize our plan, and he latched on to one of our ideas of engaging the private manufacturers of the thermometers to get involved with the project. He set up a little scenario with me. He was the crazy nut job Bill O’Reilly, and I was a candidate for congress. He asked me, in a great imitation of Bill, something like “So, why should we spend tax payer money for a handout to your favorite combines?!!” I took a moment to gather my brain and responded. The response was fine, but he pointed out that for a half second, I looked clueless (I really did). He pointed out that an expression like that is all the opponents add campaigns will run in those horrible 30 second campaign adds. That was funny. Then, he hit me again with another question about why taxpayer dollars should be wasted on these schools. That time, I pulled it together and a fabulous, very politician-sounding response came out about the responsibility of government to ensure the well being of our children. The whole place applauded! What fun! every since then, people keep coming up to me and saying I did a good job. At least all the fellows recognize me now.

We followed the excitement with a top 10 list of hot issues in science today and some not-so-hot issues that should be. I would write them all here, but, like I said at the beginning, I am sleepy……

So, I am back in the U.S. The flight was a typical long trans-Atlantic flight. Nothing out of the ordinary happened; though it was strange that I watched a movie, “V for Vendetta,” about a terrorist (who was the ‘good guy’) who killed ‘bad guys’ and blew up buildings in a post-Apocalyptic London that had turned into a police state as a result of the anti-terror laws that are currently developing in the UK and US……. I though that was an odd choice of movies to offer on a plane; I liked it though.

As usual, my luggage in D.C. took over 30 minutes to get to me. For some reason, it takes the D.C. crew a really long time to get my luggage off the plane in D.C. Sue picked me up at the airport and was wonderfully patient with the bags. She was easy to find in the arrival area because she loots almost EXACTLY like here sister Sarah (A.K.A. Sammy) who is the wife of Dieter whom I mentioned in a previous blog.

Dwight and Sue have a fabulous house in the outskirts of Bethesda. It is surrounded by trees and filled with beautiful treasures. It feels very comfortable here, like staying with an aunt and uncle. I am so lucky that they offered to let me stay. I thought I could make it here 3 weeks without a car, but I changed the plan and will rent a car on Sunday so I have some mobility once Sue and Dwight leave for their trip to France (They are doing a hiking adventure there.) I have been spoiled to not need a car in Regensburg, but I am back in the U.S.

Not being in Regensburg is, well, weird. At the same time, it feels normal to be here. Where ever you go, there you are. Funny how that works.

There’s a lot of stuff processing in my head at the moment, but I’ll keep that off the blog. Friends and family can always e-mail/call to get the personal details. I’ll be able to post from here, so if anything interesting happens, I’ll let you all know.

Just a quick word to say goodbye, for a while. I have been running lists through my mind in the past few days about the things I will miss or the things that are different here than they are in the U.S. Perhaps that will become a great blog post some day, but today’s not the day for long posts. I am leaving for Washington D.C. tomorrow morning, Monday. So, today is my day for reflection instead of writing.

The next time I post, I’ll be on the other side of the Atlantic. Here’s to a safe trip!

So, Matthias and I have been together for over five years, but today marks the first anniversary of the day we got it in writing! It’s been a great five years, with each year getting better. Upon reflection lately, we must admit that we are lucky to have found one another. Our oddities fit together so well some how!

We celebrated tonight by checking out a fabulous restaurant in the city. It is a place called “Restaurant David”, and it is on a street named after Goliath (as in ‘David and ..’). I read that it was supposed to be one of the best restaurants in the city from some online tour site, so I figured it be a great place to celebrate. It is on the 5th floor of a medieval tower with a view of the Cathedral in one direction and another tower in the other direction. We sat on the terrace so we could enjoy the wonderful weather. The food and service were both awesome. Matthias even had a great steak - a rarety in Germany. It’s the priciest place we’ve been to in Regensburg so far, but it is also one of the best and classiest.

We topped off the evening back home with a coffee and some of the wedding cake we have kept frozen in our freezer for the past year. As our freezer is the size of a shoe box, having the cake in there for a year was quite a sacrifice! I have to admit that the cake was not so great after being frozen for a year, but we ate it with joy!

There’s nothing like a time of big transitions to help remind us how lucky we are to have each other. We just booked Matthias’s airline tickets for his first visit to D.C. in October, so we only need to push through the first six weeks alone before we get to hang out again. I suspect we both have enough to do in those 6 weeks to keep us busy.