While I was out fetching one package from the post office (because the mailman apparently wouldn’t leave it with one of my neighbors like they used to do the last few times), presumably at the precise moment the clerk gave me the package, another (or the same?) mailman tried to deliver season 4 of Gilmore Girls and I fucking wasn’t there. This is most likely the fastest any overseas and custom fee worthy package has ever made it here and I’m not here.
Couldn’t they just hang around a little and wait for me to come home? Or, like, call me on my cell and tell me to hurry up? Because I would’ve.
But they would not. So when I got home, happily clinging to the package I finally got, I found another orange card telling me to pick up a package, but not before 3 pm next Monday. That’s 52 hours from now. Are they kidding me?

Come back, package delivery guy, come back! I’m here now. I promise. I even got the money for the customs fee, which – getting back to the irony of the whole thing – I wouldn’t have had had I not gone out this morning to fetch my package and buy coconut milk at the Asian shop. So, one way or the other, I wouldn’t have gotten those lovely DVDs until Monday anyway.

I hate the customs.
And irony. Unless I use it myself, then it’s fun.

I suddenly felt old when I realized that I’m only five years younger than someone who’s thirty. I swear that only yesterday thirty was ages away.

Or was that ten years ago?

Because all of you wouldn’t stop and some of you already started ingredient inquiries (and were successful, DAMN!), I feel I cannot let you wait any longer. I tried my best to translate this into English, but you just don’t know how hard it is to translate a recipe into another language.
Well, what can I say? Here it goes. Try at your own risk.

Cheesecake-Muffins
(makes 12 muffins)

75 g „butter cookies“ (Ignore the quotation marks if you like. Apparently butter cookies are known and presumably cherished in other countries, too. Look for Leibniz Butterkeks for an idea of how they look like here.)
80 g butter
400 g Quark (or whatever you find as a substitute)
250 g mascarpone
125 g sugar
2 teaspoons grated lemon peel
3 eggs
2 tablespoons flour
300 g frozen strawberries
4 tablespoons powdered sugar
4 tablespoons lemon juice

1. Crumble cookies into rather fine crumbs. Melt 40 g of butter and mix with cookie crumbs. Spread cookie-butter-dough into twelve muffin molds and press down with the bottom of a glass. Bake in preheated oven with a temperature of 160 degrees celsius (CELSIUS! I’m not doing the math here.) (gas 1-2) for 15 minutes.

2. Melt 40 g of butter. Mix Quark, mascarpone, sugar and lemon peel thouroughly. Add eggs, one after another. Add melted butter and flour. Fill cream into muffin molds and bake for another 35-40 minutes. Take out of the oven and let the muffins cool in the molds.

— Jamie’s special advice: Enjoy the rest of the cream. It’s delicious. —

3. Blend frozen (believe me, it’s better when it’s frozen) strawberries, powdered sugar and lemon juice. Serve with muffins.

Enjoy.

I’m not responsible for kitchen fires or burnt muffins. I may be a bit responsible for gain of weight.

On Wednesday we had a company dinner in Cologne, which is why I left the house around 7 am and came home about five minutes before midnight.
On Thursday I had to live through the repercussions (going through 20 liters of beer with only 14 people is kind of an accomplishment, don’t you think?) of the night before and therefore only managed to watch a bit of TV and read a couple of pages until I fell asleep around 10 pm.

Now it’s Friday, and my husband wouldn’t drive me to the train station because he was running late himself so the not-bringing-your-wife-to-the-station was instantly punished by traffic jam.

I so need a weekend.

See here for a Wikipedia entry for the mysterious German dairy product that is „Quark“.

So what other product that you could actually get somewhere would come closest?

Of course, I can get Quark anytime I want. It’s right next to yoghurt, cream and sour cream which is NOT the same as American sour cream, though I don’t really know where the difference is.

Just because I have nothing specific to write about.

Our New Year’s Ritual: More sushi than two people can possibly eat in one sitting. (There was plenty left on the next day.) See, how he can’t wait to start?

I like that picture. I love our piano. And I certainly love my husband. It’s a good picture with lots of things that I love.

The legendary Cheesecake Muffins. I promised you the recipe, didn’t I? Yeah, do you have Quark in the US? And can you work with getting baking instructions in grams and milliliters? Because you will have to.

Now for the best picture! Looky what I got! Ain’t that great? I can’t stop staring at the little bubbles floating up and down. He also got those remote contolled plugs. Now I can control all the lights in the living room from the couch. Life surely is great.

On Saturday we helped some friends with their new apartment. I can’t decide if that’s a sick joke or a funny coincidence, but they found a great apartment right on the other side of the street where my office building is. With a huge living room and a enourmous balcony.
Anyway, all we did for the three hours of actual helping time (minus the time it took us to eat soup) was soaking wallpaper with water and then tearing it down.

Which is great fun. No, really. If there’s one fun thing to do about a new apartment it’s tearing stuff down. Because whatever comes next just involves too much thinking and half of the times a credit card as well. But tearing stuff down? Easy. Brainless. Fun.

Until you get to the wall where the last layer of wallpaper just sticks to the wall like glue. Then the fun stops. And we are likely to disappear.

After reading „The Time Traveler’s Wife“ about one year ago I recently finished „The Confessions of Max Tivoli“ by Andrew Sean Greer and I came to the conclusion that I can be grateful for a) not aging backwards and b) not jumping around in time uncontrollably (Is that even a word? And if it is, did I spell it right?). Also, I am relieved that my husband’s hair has actually gone grayer in the six years we’ve been together (besides, I think a little bit of grey is sexy, but that’s just me) and there hasn’t been any unexplained absenties with him returning naked on the kitchen floor. So phew.

If I had to compare the two books, which just is kind of unavoidable, I like „The Time Traveler’s Wife“ a lot more. But you have to know that I loved that book. No, LOVED it. With a capital l. It made me cry for more than 100 pages, No, SERIOUSLY cry. As in bawling your eyes out, whimpering, sniffing and losing more bodily fluids than I could possibly have. For 100 pages. I hardly EVER cry about books. I cry about cheesy movies and kind of feel ashamed for it (but not really), but books… they really have to get me.
So, that’s how much I loved that book and when I say that I liked it a lot more than another book, that other book can still be really really good. It just doesn’t compare to the hell Audrey Niffenegger put me through. (And on the train, I tell ya! Try reading the last fifty pages on a train and not have people stare at you, because you fucking have tears running down your face in streams.)

The Confessions of Max Tivoli is a really good book. I found it a little hard to get into, mostly because I got the setting all wrong. For the first few pages I was convinced that it was set in New York City. I don’t know why that was, I think I just figured that if the story takes place in 1871 and is set in a city, it MUST be New York City. I also didn’t like Alice that much as a teenager and found it a little bit hard to keep track of Max’s real age and Max’s apparent age. Apart from that I really enjoyed the book.

Both books do a pretty good job to remind you are damn lucky to age alright and don’t have the tendency to visit your past and/or future self occasionally. Because it seems that never works out fine.

Story #1: About nine years ago there was a song played on the radio that I really liked. I tried very hard to find out its name and the singer, but I failed. I just failed. Although I knew part of the lyrics and I think I even had it on tape somewhere, I just couldn’t find out anything more.
Remember that was in 1996, so no Google back then (which just reminds me how much easier those things are now). In time I forgot about it.

Story #2: Today I listened to Sophie Zelmani’s self-titled album for the first time.

Can you guess where I’m going?

So, the songs I was searching for so desperately nine years ago, the name is „You and Him“ and it is sung by Miss Zelmani.

What struck me as most amazing was that I recognized it rightaway. „Oh my god, oh my god, that’s the song I was looking for. That’s it!“ There was not a moment of doubt that this was it. Okay, maybe one moment, but I think that’s acceptable, considering that I was amazed two times at once. First that I remembered the Song Search Desaster of 1996 (and in such detail) and second that I finally found it.

Plus, that means that I already had great taste back then and whatever radio station played the song gets kudos in retrospect for playing Sophie Zelmani.

Update: If Spacecase can make this De-Lurking Week, so can I. You have until Saturday to leave me sweet comments and tell me you read my blog. Please do.

Last year, January 5th was de-lurking day and I missed. I don’t know if I missed it again or if it just didn’t happen this year, but either way, I decided I’ll have my very own de-lurking day today.

So, whoever and where-ever you are, readers of my blog, show yourselves. Commenting doesn’t hurt. I promise. Actually, I speak from experience.

Leave me a note and make me happy. Please?