Coffee from a Reusable Ceramic Mug

We’ll be offline for the next few days. It’s Labor Day weekend here, and we are driving down to Milan to catch up with Elena, Denis, Sean and Aparche! (old friends from Irvine for those of you who don’t know them).

Have a nice weekend ya’ll!!

For any frequent travels out there, this is pretty cool. It’s a simulation of airplane traffic out of the U.S. over a few days in March 2005. It was the Astronomy Picture of the Day today.

Mark should be taking ff from Munich in about ten minutes or so. We drove him down this morning to take the long trip home. I don’t envy the trip he has today. I posted and array of photos from his trip here.

We had a nice time the last few days. He and I went down to Munich on Friday. It was kind of a bad weather day, cool and drizzly. We walked around Marienplatz a bit until the giant cooko clock went off in the old city hall. Then we wandered a bit, checking out the cool buildings. As the rain started coming in, we headed to the Hofbrauhaus so Mark could see the tourist vision of a Munich brewery (filled with a lot of really nice non-Germans). Mark got to meet a local and toast some beers, so he had a good time. I finally got to see the Hofbrauhaus too, which was fun; I’ve heard so much about it.

Yesterday, we headed out to Kileheim with Cliff and Sarah. The The Kloster Weltenburg is a monastery on the Danube next to some cliffs along the river. We tok a short boat tride to get to the Kloster. We sat down under and awning in the beer garden just befre it started raining. We cut the day a little short because Matthias wasn’t feeling well, but before we left, I stopped down at the restrooms (as I often do these days), and I was surprised by a little gift from cleaning ladies at the Kloster. Apparetnly, the knit little baby booties in their down time, and they keep a bag to hand them out to pregnant ladies who come there! Cliff poster a photo of me with my little gift here. That was a nice surprise.

Now, we are just cleaning up and getting ready for more apartment searching and our trip to Italy next weekend. It seems like everything is happening at once these days. Time is flying too. I am already half way through the pregnancy! I still can’t believe that, though my growing belly and the wiggly blob inside is slowly convincing me.

Here is the video debut of our little blob. We found out on Monday that she is, in fact, a she. You can’t see that in this ultrasound video, but the doctor saw the ‘girl stuff’ in the ultrasound.

On the subject of girls, what is with the pink? I have noticed that there is an assumption in the maternity clothing industry that once a woman is pregnant, she must suddenly love to be draped in pink! I like the color and all, but I have to be in a particular mood to wear, particularly the pastel pink. If it’s all I can get for clothes, it is a bit annoying. The same trend seems to stand for little girls. I don’t want to drape my little blob in pink all the time, I think I’ll have to buy ‘boy’ clothes for her to get some color variation. Luckily, most of our friends have had boys so if we get hand-me-downs, they might not be pink.

So, Marky made it to Germany on Saturday morning. He managed to sleep on the plane, but I think he spent a lot of energy being terrified until he found me at the airport. He was a champ on the first day. We took him around the old city in Regensburg and showed him some of the main sites. I think he really liked it. Cliff and Sarah joined us for lunch at the Fuerstliches Brauhaus (the local brewery) for a real Bavarian meal and some real Bavarian beer, which he liked a lot. He especially like the real Bavarian waitresses in their costumes.

In preparation for his trip, Mark had a ‘friend’ decorate his face for the occasion. You might notices, in some of the photos I posted on the photo sight, that his face has many beautiful shades of purple, yellow and green - quite lovely.

After our little romp around town, the pregnant woman needed a nap. Mark said he was still feeling fine, but said he’d lay down as well. That was at 3:30. He didn’t get up again until 3:30 the next morning. Jetlag is a wonderful thing.

On Sunday, we took him down to the Alps and up to the Zugspitze, the highest point in Germany. I uploaded some videos here. It’s just on the border of Germany. It was PERFECT day to go. Matthias and I had only ever been there when there were clouds at the top, but Sunday was beautiful. It was about 65 degrees at the base of the mountain and about 20 degrees at the top. The visibility was at least 100 miles! Mark was freezing, but he’s from Phoenix (he’d been freezing most of the trip). He really wanted to go skiing, but we didn’t know there was a rental place at the top of the mountain. He’ll just have to come back. I think April is a great time to go skiing there. The snow itself is not that great, but the crowds are totally manageable, and a day like Sunday would be awesome for skiing.

The Eibensee (a lake) is at the bottom of the gondola we took up, and it was a crystal clear mountain lake. Mark was shocked to look over and see to old naked people taking a dip on another beach! I told him not to yell anything because the southern Germans just do that. I promised him more naked Germans if it’s a nice day when we go to the Englisher Garten in Munich.

The past two days have been a bit more mellow. Pregnant lady was too tired to do a big trip again on Monday even though I took the day off work. I took Mark to town again and he discovered that he loves real croissants, especially ones filled with chocolate from the Opera Konditerei. He complained that he has to eat too much hanging out with me because I seem to need to eat something every few hours. He also learned that German beer is a bit more filling than American beer. He can’t drink as much. Matthias was shocked on Sunday night when Mark said he didn’t want a beer!

Today was so mellow it was practically catatonic. I woke up as I would for a usual work day and actually got a lot of work done today. Mark, on the other hand slept, and slept, and slept. I think the poor boy needed some rest. He thoroughly enjoyed the day of sleep though.

At the moment, he and Matthias are ‘flying’ through Las Vegas on Matthias’s flight simulator. I think he’s glad to have someone to play his favorite computer game with him. I just liked to crash the planes, and he doesn’t like that.

Just a shot post while I procrastinate updating the blog with Mark’s visit

If you live int eh U.S., you may have heard that TV is going digital as of February 17th, 2009. If you can’t buy a newer TV with a digital converter built in, you can get a coupon to purchase one. The government is giving out coupons at this website. One of my coworkers, whose title is an “Electro-magnetic spectrum manager” (coolest title ever) just gave a talk in the subject.

A few friends and family have asked about how they can send gifts for us and the blob later. I think I found a solution. Thanks to Christina’s great post on buying baby stuff in Germany, I may be able to create a kind of baby registry through the blog. I might look into setting up a Paypal account as well because my cousin asked about gift certificates. This could be a fun project.

I have some websites bookmarked for products that we are interested in purchasing, and Christina’s site has a pile of sites that ship to Germany (and have English versions). At some point, so I can create a website of these products and figure out how to make it usable to people.

If any of you techy people out there have any ideas, pass them along. I sure there is an intelligent way to do it right.

I still find the whole notion of showers and big gift giving to be a bit odd, but I also know that I appreciated my friend’s registries when they got married, so I should do the same for them. I always seem to go for unusual products, so I should make it easy for people to find them.

I just sat in on a meeting (virtually), and the presenter put up a slide similar to the image below showing the World Gini Coefficient. It basically illustrates income equality according to country (or lack there of). Yellow means more equitable, and pink/purple is less. In the plot used in the talk, Greenland was one of the most equitable and some other southern African countries had data, which indicated less equanimity. It’s interesting to see how inequitable access to income is strongly correlated with economic and social stability. It also illustrates why more people cross the US border to the south rather than from the north.

 

Not only is China now seen as the biggest threat to Global security, it is also the top carbon polluter. Those two titles have been held by the U.S. for a very long time now. What is the world coming to?

That handsome man in the middle of the photo in the Beckum city paper is Matthias’s dad, Bruno - I strongly suspect Matthias will look a lot like that in abut 30 years. Anyway, Bruno celebrated 50 years at Blumenbecker Industrie-Service GmbH last week!! You don’t see that much these days. They had a little celebration at the office, and he was in the paper with an article about him and everything!

Herzlichen Gluckwunsch Bruno!