Coffee from a Reusable Ceramic Mug

But I’ll get to that in a minute.

So, now I can catch all of my fans up on the past week. Aside from a lot of activity at work (which is not of much interest), Matthias has been thoroughly enjoying ‘our vacation’ as he calls it. I scheduled a massage for him on Wednesday, and he proclaimed it as the best massage he has ever had. He pretty much vegged out the rest of the day. I came home to find him in a lavender oil & sea salts bath.

The next day, he made himself more useful (to me anyway) and picked up a new digital camera at Costco! We had been arguing since the weekend about which one to get, and for some reason he finally agreed to go with my choice, a Panasonic FX55 rather than the Canon he wanted. In th end he was happy we went with the Panasonic, but he was very skeptical about the research I did to convince me to get it in the first place! He took about a thousand test shots to convince himself. I only uploaded a few to the Flickr site. We are pretty happy with it. Most importantly, I don’t have to smack my camera each time I want to take a photo, like I did with my poor old Canon.

Today, we rented a car and got out of the city a bit. Of course, we did a bit of shopping first. I wanted to pick up one more pair of comfy maternity pants from Motherhood - I love the pillow they leave in the dressing rooms so you get a ‘preview’ of the beautiful body yet to come. We also dropped by the Apple store because Matthias cannot resist. While there, we used their internet to get the address and directions to Christina’s mom’s Tai Restaurant in Manassas.

Then, we escaped the congestion and went out to Shenandoah park. I, apparently, need to gestate so I slept for a good 30 minutes while Matthias enjoyed Skyline drive on his own. Eventually, the fog of fatigue lifted and we went for a short hike on the Appalachian trail. On the way back, we hunted down Siam Classic (Christina’s mom’s place) for dinner. I have been telling Matthias how good Thai food is lately, but he was very skeptical since the Thai places where were are staying in Arlington are less than fantastic. However, now, he is totally convinced! It was the best Thai food ever! Christina’s mom came out and said hi - she also said that Christina should make us some Thai food in Regensburg (hint, hint..). We have some leftovers for dinner tomorrow night.

It was a really nice, long day. We are trying to sort out plans for tomorrow. We have two main priorities, cherry blossoms and Reagan airport runway. My allergies may destroy me tomorrow since I seemed to have developed an allergy to them in the past year. Matthias wants to watch the planes land at Regan airport too. I need to call Brian and Jessica tonight to see if we can drag them to the blossoms festival chaos.

So, Obviously, Matthias got into town last week. He has already been to the National Air and Space Museum - I’m sure he’ll be going a few more times before the week is over.

We went to my parent’s place over the weekend. We did some shopping for a couple more maternity clothes, and Matthias was SO patient while I shopped. I was impressed. Then he got home and played Crises with my dad for a few hours.

Mom and Matthias made Easter dinner on Sunday, and we ate like beasts. Matthias got to make his grandma’s chicken broth soup. I mostly slept, which is starting to become a trend on the weekends. At least I have an excuse now.

My mom and dad gave us our first baby stuff this weekend. Mom passed on the little clothes she made before my brother was born. She also used them for me at the beginning. She also made us a small quilt, and it was the first hand quilting she has done. It feels strange to get baby stuff, but I guess it’s about time. I am amazed that my mom has kept our baby stuff and it is in such great shape!

We also got to share the news with the family in Pennsylvania. I was so impressed that dad didn’t spill the beans before we got there! He had a really hard time keeping it in. Thanks Dad - I know it was hard!

After what felt like a long trip home, we are unwinding here for what promises to be another busy week. We are slowly accumulating more and more stuff to take back, and most of it was just the stuff I had when I lived here. We’ll get a few new things this week, and then we should be set for shopping for some time.

Our goal for the weekend is to visit Christina’s mom’s Tai restaurant!

There is hope that one day I can call myself ‘Frau Doktor’ and not break the German law. The department of education in Germany is looking to grant people with PhDs from the US the title. Of course, if you are from Canada, Australia, Japan, etc… you are s*&#t out of luck. The national government has approved the plan, but I still need to wait to see if Bavaria will let it slide.

There have been a few tragic cases in the news in the past few months that remind me of the biggest risk to my life that I face being pregnant. I was amaze to learn, a few years ago, that the number one cause of death to pregnant women (in the US) is murder, usually committed by the father of the child - what a sad statistic. So, if Matthias manages not to kill me, I should come through pretty well.

Perhaps that is a bit morbid to put on the blog, but it really blows my mind. I wonder if the same is true in Germany.

Who knew I could land myself in jail for calling myself Doctor in Germany!!!??? (I am writing this from the U.S. - just to be certain). I had no idea there was jail time involved. Sometimes, Germany sucks - I earned that stupid title!

Happy 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825342117067
9821480865132823066470938446095505822317253594081284811174502841027019385211055596446229489549303819
6442881097566593344612847564823378678316527120190914564856692346034861045432664821339360726024914127
3724587006606315588174881520920962829254091715364367892590360011330530548820466521384146951941511609
4330572703657595919530921861173819326117931051185480744623799627495673518857527248912279381830119491……. Day!!

The blog was out for a while there due to some issue in Phoenix (where all of the blog info is kept on a server). Glad it’s back now

I am back in DC. The flight over was long but expected. I think I felt the blob move during a bout of turbulence over the Atlantic! It doesn’t like turbulence either.

Mom arrived on Saturday, and we did a full afternoon of shopping soon after she arrived. Her timing was impeccable because I couldn’t have gone another day in the pants that I packed for the trip. My belly popped out seemingly over night on Friday. In the photo, I easily look like I’ve just eaten a big dinner, but I hadn’t, and it stayed like that all day. I got some pants with a big stretchy waste to last me for the next months. They should last until the end because I tried stuffing a big pillow in them, and they still fit - no pictures of that one.

I had forgotten how crowded DC is. There are people everywhere! We went to Seven Corners mall, and it was packed! The acoustics were so bad that it was loud and annoying to walk the mall. Mom and I had to take an ‘outside’ break just to stop a headache from coming on.

It is early Monday morning (yeah jetlag), and I am about to head in to run the first day of a two day meeting at work. I had stress dreams about it last night - the building was flooded, I couldn’t find the room, etc, but Brian was with my panelists and running the meeting when I showed up. I guess it had a good ending, so I am not so worried. I just need to get the rental car dropped off before I go. Mom is heading out on a train later this morning. It was nice to have her here to take care of me a bit - nothing like soup and sandwiches made by mom!

Or so it seemed this weekend in Regensburg. All of Germany was hit with a huge low pressure system named Emma. In Regensburg, and most of Germany, that meant crazy winds! There were tress down all over town, and when you walked downtown, there were pieces of roof tiles scattered about. It wasn’t too bad at our apartment, but the winds knocked down several really big trees in the parks on the west side of town.

here is a nice video of a plane trying to land in the wind yesterday. I remember coming in to Dulles once when there were really strong cross winds, and you just know it’s a bad sign when the plane has to turn its nose to the side just to land! Luckily, the pilot averted disaster. I’m glad I wasn’t on that plane.

So, finally I get to post about what I have been working not to post about for the past couple of months. We are expecting a baby! Actually, we have been calling it the ‘blob’ up until now, but slowly I’m starting to accept that there really is a baby in there. I’ve told a bunch of people, but there are still a few that haven’t gotten the news, so surprise! I’m guessing that most of my extended family doesn’t read this blog, so I will break the news to them once I am back in the US.

I don’t plan on sharing the dirty details of the experience on this blog, but if I had such a blog I’d call it “a pregnant pause.” I have been dumping the details on Ravyn, Dorota and Christele who have all either recently had a baby or are about to burst, so to speak. Sarah has also gotten to hear far more details than she may have wanted, but that is the joy of coffee at Kaminski with a pregnant Tammy. She has been great about not laugh too much at me when I say things like, “I don’t have enough discipline to get a dog, but I’m sure we’ll do fine with a baby.”

Christina has also been a great resource on ‘how to’s of pregnancy in Germany. She has recently added to her posts on how to buy maternity clothes and baby stuff in Germany - I booked marked them both! Trying to navigate stuff like that is even harder in a different country. My friend Sabina, who is probably just about to have daughter number 2 up north, also promised to send me some maternity clothes and baby stuff. With that and the baby stuff my friend Andrea is exchanging for yoga lessons, I may not have to buy much at all!

Matthias went from being pretty nervous about the whole thing to finding calm and joy in it all - with periodic bouts of freaking out. This has finally motivated him to do some serious apartment searching though! We took a walk through Inneren West today, which is the area just to the west of downtown Regensburg. That is where we’d like to live. It’s walking distance to town and there are parks and the river really close. We’ve looked about about four or five places so far, and they were all in bad locations. So, we decided to stop wasting our time and only look at places that are in the Inneren West area.

I head out to the U.S. on Thursday for a month. Matthias will be joining me two weeks after I leave. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I am looking forward to getting back to the office. I am starting to work on the shopping list already! I need a new camera, and a few other things. Maternity clothes are supposed to be cheaper there as well, so I may stock up. I am not even showing a little yet though, so it might be tough to get too much. I wish I would be spending euros over there, but I get paid in dollars, so no such luck.

OK, time to stop puttering on the computer and finish planning for the trips.