Random Things

I just got done watching "Becoming Jane" Good movie, tearjerker.

My mother and I worked on our balcony garden today. The weather here in Germany is finally warm enough to put out the window boxes of geraniums hanging from the balcony railing. That's almost the end last of the plants we are gettnig. I will take pictures in the next couple of days.

A friend and I drove up to Holland yesterday to see the Keukenhof Gardens. Oh my God the traffic was bad. It was their annual flower parade. 2 hour line of cars to even get into the park. UGH. But fun to see all the license plates from France and Great Britain, of course the Netherlands, Germany.

The gardens were really amazing, here are a couple of pictures of the flowers I toook. Doesn't do them justice, but you can imagine.




Here's a couple of video clips from my camera:

Living in Europe

OK, til all thoughts get sucked out of my brain I may repeat things. Maybe even after.

I love living in Europe. I miss my kids and granddaughter of course. More, I miss helping Nick out when he needs a place to live and all his roommates have gone back to live with their mommies. He says he wouldn't want to live at home, but what kid wouldn't at least like the safety net of being able to move back in for a bit, especially the way things are in the states these days. No jobs, everything costs a fortune. Grrr.... THAT is the one and only thing I hate about living in Europe. I can send money, but nothing beats stopping by the house, eating dinner, grabbing some food from the fridge, leaving laundry, etc. Nick doesn't have that. For that I get really sad. What else can I say.


I have tried to get him to come with his girlfriend for the summer. Work PT with the army, travel around the rest of the time, just CANNOT get him to do this.. *sigh*

His girlfriend's mother has been really amazing through all of this. I really need to send her a letter or something, thanking her for keeping him from hitting the ground too hard.

I just wish the dang kid would stay at a job.. I don't know, is it like that for all 21 year olds? I mean, I know the answer is no, but is it tough out there for kids trying to make it? I mean, you hear about people in their 30s going back to live with their parents because it's just too damn expensive. Ok, off that subject for now....
doing slow, deep breathing to calm down)

I still really think I have the best of both worlds, living in Europe and working for the army. Well, other than the fact that I get paid in $$ and I have to pay rent in euros. it now takes about $1.55 to = 1 euro. it was like $1.29, maybe less when I first came to Europe. Doesn't sound like a lot but rent is costing us something like $250 a month more because of the euro.

But we can shop off post and find many things MUCH cheap than the commissary, then shop the commissary for things we can't get on the economy.

Ok, I am still way too sick, going to bed right in the middle of this wonderfully boring conversation.. Next time I will talk about something much more exciting, my trip to Spain I took a couple of weekends ago. :-) Later...

Let's try this again, shall we?

OK, for a while there I really had nothing to say, but I've been feeling wordy again, so here goes. :-)

Where to begin? Well I think rambling from subject to subject suits me the best. Germany... what do I think of Germany after living here now for....thinking...wow, 2 years 4 months. I like it. i am not crazy in love with it like i was with Italy, but it is a comfortable place to stay. The weather.. everything is very stable. There is enough of a change in the seasons to not go crazy, yet we really only had maybe one day the entire winter where something even resembling snow came down. NICE.

I like the apartment I am in, my job is cool, though I am looking for another, this one just doesn't keep me busy enough..

OK, rambling about jobs.

Let's do a time line type thing here.

July 4, 2005 - Jess and I fly to Italy from the US. We stay in Perugia with no visas, until we have to leave 3 months later.

Sept 30, we rent a car and drive to Germany, where someone has told us we can live/get residence permits without having to go back to the states. If we had wanted top stay in Italy we would have had to fly back to the US to beg for visas. No way that was going to happen.
We rent a car, jam 4 cats and everything we own (which is certainly a bit more than the two suitcases we arrived with) and drive to Wiesbaden, Germany. I don't remember why we chose there? hmmm.. Anyway, if memory serves me right, we had like enough money to last 2-3 days. WOW.... how the hell did we pull this off? Any way, I remember looking online for anywhere cheap to live, and kept coming upon this pension (kind of like a hotel in your own house type thing, I supposed bed and breakfast you could also call it) was for sale. But something about the wording, I think it said something like you could rent it and run it instead of just buying it outright. I kept thinking maybe that was how we could make money, doing it that way. Also, if I remember it was owned by an Englishman. I called up and asked if he could use some help running it, in exchange for room and board, explained our circumstances and he said yes! So we drive to northern Germany, I drive the rental car from Italy back DOWN to Italy, which took like 14 hours straight, flew back up. hmm... must have had some money left at that point, and then we stayed there for a couple of months.

Late November 2005. - things go to hell at the pension, new owners taking over, we have to leave. Somehow we have heard about getting jobs with the American military near Frankfurt. This is where my lovely mother adds my name to her credit card and we rack up about $5,000 in charges.

We rent a car, find a WONDERFUL hotel where we stayed for almost 4 weeks, at a special $29 a night. We start applying for jobs with several military bases in the area.

Mid December - 2005 I have a PT job at the Taco Bell on post in Hanau, jess has a job with Subway. WE pull out a couple thousand in cash from the credit card, rent an apartment in Hanau, and are able to stay in Germany legally because of our status with the Department of Defense. The rest is history.

July, 2006 - I land a PT job at the Library on post. PT meaning they let me work 39 hours a week and I actually receive health benefits. YES!!! LUXURY...

July 2007 - since I know that the post in Hanau is closing the next year, I am lucky enough to fins a library Tech job at the European Regional Library Support Center in Heidelberg. Heidelberg is amazing, I love it, have stayed there before when I flew up from Italy to check out jobs before we actually moved up. It's snuggled up against a line of low mountains, probably too low to be mountains, but definitely too high to be hills, all covered with trees.

August 2007 - My son (we have the infamous trip to Italy, more on that later) and my mom fly over, my son for 10 days, my mom for ever!

March 1 2008 - I start up my blog again. :-)

In between all of that there have been trips and weddings and babies and Jess and her family moving to Texas, having to put one of my cats to sleep, me even flying back to the states for a few days!

All that and more on our next episode. That may even come today, I've been home sick for a few days now fighting off pneumonia.

For now, here is the latest picture of the future ruler of the universe; my granddaughter Ada.