Better late than never?

Sorry, internet access here is dial up and not unlimited, and Mark is getting weird about us being onine long, even though I said I would pay our share when the bill comes. IThe following post isfrom a few days agao, and no pictures yet, sorry. I am back planning to go to tthe UK. We still have the out of our December 1st tickets back to the states, fromItaly, but we do NOT want to do this, although I am worried about money, etc... anyway..

Time just seems to be flying here, despite the fact that we are living the slow life.

We’ve been in Germany almost a month now, and I think here at Siebertal for about 3 weeks.

A typical day for me lately is sleeping in until noon, getting up, having some tea, throwing in some laundry, checking email…. If there are guests I’ll do the breakfast dishes and if anyone has left, clean the room, etc. Pretty boring stuff. In the even, Mark, the man who owns this place will open the bar up and Jess and I will just hang out, put a puzzle together, surf. I hate to see what the dial up internet bill is going to be. I think I should be going online every couple of days and checking to see is DSL is available here yet.

It looks like the end of November Nick is going to move in with some friends who will be renting a townhouse, so he will only be paying $150 a month, and should be able to afford the car payment and insurance on his own then. YES!

My mom wanted to see some pictures of US, not just scenery, so we took some pictures today, I may put one or two of me online. I’ve given up trying to look good in pictures, PLUS I want to show everyone the picture of me pulling my baggy jeans away from my legs so that you can see some of the 30 pounds I’ve lost!

I’ve decided that I am going to follow through with the Highly Skilled Migrant Program visa for the UK, just because if I get it, I can make a lot of money there, live cheaply and then save some up. Maybe even commute! Hey that would work. Fly back to Germany on the weekends, at least for a bit. Hmmm… Ideas seem to flow like crazy here. Making them happen is a LOT harder!

Mark is driving Jess into Osterode, a nearby town. A friend of ours, Nassir, owns a restaurant there named Ghandi and wanted Jess to come in this evening and earn some money doing some cleaning. The bar here is open when Mark should be going to get here, and he said something about me being able to take his car to drive and pick her up! That would be a big step for him, to lend us the car. That opens it up to the possibility we might be able to use it in the future, which would give us so much more mobility! Right now we are pretty much holed up here with no money and no place to go.

My friend Jodi, who is also my realtor……. by the way, my house has still not been sold! I feel so badly for her, we are hoping it goes soon! It’s been a real nightmare for her. She in effect bought me out of my equity so that we could leave for Europe before the house sold, so we owe her big time!

Anyway, we stand to get a bit more money when the house sells, but Nick is having a problem coming up with the last month of rent at the apt, so I rang her up and she was kind enough to advance me some money. She had mentioned possibly paying me the balance over the next two months. That would mean that maybe next month I will be able to buy a car! I have decided that even with the wonderful transportation system that the EU has, our being able to make it, as well as our sanity depends on getting a car. The transportation system is wonderful for getting to work and back, occasional long trips, but is way too expensive to use solely instead of a car. If I could get a car next month I could drive to the UK for job interviews, we could get to the bigger towns which would mean that we could get part time jobs, and get ourselves to and from them.

I am crossing my fingers that Jodi will make another payment to me next month. That would solve so many problems!!

Other than that, the Harz mountains are fantastic shades of orange and gold, but it seems to be raining non-stop the last week.

I don’t know if I have mentioned it before, but Jess and I have moved into the room next to the one we were staying in. The new one is sooooooo much nicer. It has a couch in it that the cats love, and two extra windows with sills that look out over the street so that the cats can sit there and see what is going on. They are much happoer there, though we still let them out to run the halls when possible, they need to stretch their legs.

I have a couple of pictures when we put them in the cat harnesses to let them run on the balcony outside the room, the pictures are pretty hysterical, the look shell shocked. If I had a video camera I would be able to show you what happens when they try to walk in them..It shows just how much they depend on their sense of balance, with the harnesses on the basically stand up, then fall over on their sides. Very funny but sad at the same time. Kitty and Bammy were starting to get used to them, but were still quite off balance. Kitty had taking to walking with one side up against the fence to keep her standing upright. Again, VERY funny, but we try not to laugh out loud and offend them!