Why would I get up at 6:30 on my first day of vacation?

Here’s why:

First I brought my husband to the station. With that I don’t mean that I took him their in the car, because we still don’t have one, but I walked with him there. Because I am a loving wife and will get up so early and get out in the cold, although I could just stay in bed.
Then, of course the first train wouldn’t come at all, and the second train came 17 minutes late and – naturally – was crowded. I made sure that he got in, meaning I waited on the platform until I saw him getting on the train, and walked back home.

On my way home I met my old French teacher from high school who got off the same train and made some small talk. This of course meant that I didn’t stop at the one ATM that was on my way because I considered it impolite but, once we said goodbye, rather walk to the other ATM which wasn’t exactly on my way – although not too far off – and get money there, just to walk back to get me some breakfast roll and some newspapers to read in bed. Which I will do now.

I bet I’ll fall asleep soon, but right now I am awake and can enjoy the fact that I’m in here with the heating on and not out in the cold.

Plus, some handyman guy showed me how to unlock our front door. So, I already learned something today.

Whenever something important happens I go alarm-clock-crazy. Tomorrow my husband has to catch an early train for a teaching job in Bonn, so I already set my alarm clock plus my cell phone. I may later choose to set his alarm clock also.
When we left for Chicago and had to get up at 4 am of all times I set both our alarm clocks plus the cell phone and I told Andreas to send me text message. He gets up at 4 am anyway, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked. The fact that he really sent me a text message just shows how good a friend he is.

I’m paranoid. Then again, I’m hardly ever late.

You need questions
Forget about the answers
Do you really wanna die this way

Nobody Number One – Over the Rhine

Now it’s over I’m dead and I haven’t done anything that I want
Or, I’m still alive and there’s nothing I want to do

Dead – They Might Be Giants

There are a few, very few, movies that I found I enjoy more every time I watch them. Actually, there might only be two, and one of them I have only seen twice up to now, but the experience struck me as strange, so here it will be mentioned nevertheless.

The first one and probably my favorite movie of all is „Wag the Dog“. The story goes: I saw it when it came out here in a small cinema in Cologne that specializes in children’s movies and showing movies in the original language (with or without subtitles). I would like to mention that original language does indeed mean original language, so if for example you go to see „Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon“ you should realize that this movie is Chinese. Hence, dialogue will be in Chinese. I’m still kind of sorry for the English guy that had his friend have the movie translate for him.
Anyway, back then I thought „Wag the Dog“ was a nice movie, but years later when I got the DVD – for whatever reason – I couldn’t even remember what it was about. Then the fascination thing began. With every time I watched the movie I laughed more, giggled more, adored the actors more and love it more and more. I can’t seem to get enough of this movie. So, if you kinda liked the first time around, try it again. If you still only kinda like it, you’re obviously not me.

The other movie is „Abyss“. The story goes: We got the DVD because the husband bought it. I hadn’t seen it before. The first time I thought that it was too long (it was the uncut-deluxe-whatever version) and the end was kind of cheesy. Then on a very boring day at work I dared to watch the whole movie on my laptop (hey, it’s not that I was too lazy to work, we freaking had nothing to work). And loved it. No more talking about the movie being too long. I thought the pacing was excellent, I enjoyed the long scenes tremendously, felt that they contributed to the whole weird setting of being caught underwater and waiting for something to happen. I think this is incredibly amazing, because the movie is so long and I was prepared to be bored watching it the second time. Instead I enjoyed it even more.

There’s a third movie that may fall in the category, although I’m not sure if I actually liked it better the second time around or if I just get never tired of watching it. It’s „The Usual Suspects“. I think part of me loving to see that movie over and over again is that I can’t wait to get to the end. I enjoy the end so so much, it’s insane. I’m trying not to give away spoilers, so my description might be a little vague or cryptic, but I simply adore the end when everything falls into place and there are all these little shots and you can see his face working and it’s „Oh, oooooh…“ and everything is clear and it’s just perfect and I love it. I can’t get enough of it even though I have known the identity of Keyser Soze for some years now. Plus, I love how ‚Keyser Soze‘ was used as verb in and episode of Buffy.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

Everybody’s trying to tell me we need a dishwasher. Here’s a shocking fact: I don’t need a dishwasher. I don’t want one.

It’s not like I am against dishwashers in general or that I completely rule out ever owning one, but our kitchen is fitted and filled perfectly, so I wouldn’t even know where to put a dishwasher if anyone would be so daring and give me one. There’s no room for one. We have a sink, which is perfect for washing dishes. A dishwasher would only be in our way and make the kitchen look strange.

Yesterday my mom figured that one of those smaller dishwashers would fit into that one corner we still have and is currently used as a home for our vacuum cleaner. Yeah, well, maybe it would fit there, but here I go again.

1. I don’t need a dishwasher. I know that there are a lot of people out there who hate doing the dishes, but I don’t. It takes up what… 15 to 30 minutes of my day depending on how much there is too wash and/or how many days I was too lazy and let things pile up. So I put on a nice CD in the kitchen and it’s okay. I don’t mind doing the dishes. Actually, of all the chores that there are around the household it might be one of our favorites.

2. Even if we had a place to fit it in, I would rather think of getting another cupboard instead. If we really need anything in the kitchen it is more storage space. Things keep piling up in the cupboards and on the cupboards and lately we had to move some of the kitchen stuff to my husbands working room, because we don’t have enough space. Besides… if we really used that corner which is still empty, where would be put our vacuum cleaner, huh?

3. We are a two person household, for pete’s sake. How many dishes do you think we use per day? If we had five children, then okay… maybe a dishwasher would be a good idea. Of course, if we had five children we could just make them do the dishes and be done with it. Also, we don’t have too many plates as it is. If we didn’t do the dishes regularly but rather waited until the dishwasher was full, we would be out of plates before you can say „dishwasher“. We could have more plates, yes, but again with the storage place. I have no idea where I would put those.

There’s no need to convince someone who doesn’t want a dishwasher that she needs one. I don’t. I really, really don’t. I guess once we have one, which I don’t doubt will happen some day, I will love it, but there’s absolutely no need for one here now.

Last week 35 people downloaded this song from my other webpage.

I’m feeling famous already.

Wow, it’s already noon and I just got up about half an hour ago. That’s probably because „The Movies“ kept me at my computer until after 1 am, and then I had strange dreams including making movies and Harry Potter and strangers reading my emails. Paranoid, me?

Now I have to think of what to make for dinner tonight, because my parents are coming, so it’s gonna be three course at the least. Overachiever, me?

Plus, I have to get my old computer ready for complete new installation, so we can bring it over to the friends we forced it upon to.
Desperate to get rid of it, me?

Now, what do I do first? Read „The Princess Bride“? Play some more „The Movies“? Listen to my favorite weekly podcast in bed? Have some breakfast? Write a blog entry? Watch the latest episode of „How I Met Your Mother“?

Procrastinating, me? You bet.

Well, well, I’ve waited for a whole week until I couldn’t stand it any longer and got myself „The Movies“. After three hours I already know how complicated stars – or in this case starlets – can be. Duh. They’re not even professionals. They’re like Tobias from Arrested Development, only they actually have a learning curve.
I also finished my first script. It was a romance movie set in the wild west and I have no idea what it is about, but it takes place in the desert and in a saloon and it’s very sad. It also has a dog, because there was one in the props box. Oh, people get drunk and sit down on piano stools.
Sounds like a hit, doesn’t it?

I think this would be a perfect game for srah, so take my advice and don’t buy it. It will most probably absorb all your free time like it just has absorbed my whole evening.

I also got Joni Mitchell’s „Blue“ because it’s so big with Caitlin’s family and because I thought I can’t be a serious music lover and not have a Joni CD. Plus, it was only five Euro.

No more purchases for me now. We might actually get a car and I will never have money to spend again.

Because I’m a) too lazy and b) have no idea how to give you an idea about how to pronounce the letter „w“ in German, I will send you to this site.
If you scroll down there will be a little red speaker sign, click on it and you’ll here a nice man reciting the German abc for you and you alone. This requires you have Real Player installed.

There are countless other sites, but again with the too lazy, so you should just google them yourselves (I love that google is a verb now).

The pronounciation tips are a little bit off, I think, which shows you that apparently there’s no real way of describing to a native English speaker how to pronounce it. It’s more like „start saying it like ‚vay‘ but cut it off shortly before you actually pronounce the real ‚ay‘ sound, there’s actually no ‚y‘ sound there whatsoever, but it’s not ‚va‘ either…“.

See, how hard one letter can be? Try a whole new language.