Vacation is time-consuming.

Wow. I haven't written anything in a while.

But vacation has this nasty way of ruining good habits. Even the Boy, who is a very conscientous and responsible person, forgot to pay a bill before we left for vacation.

So where was I? In the US of A!! I visited my parents and friends for a few weeks before going on an epic vacation to the American desert southwest with my parents and boyfriend. We hit up eight states ranging from Montana to Arizona, and I think it was seven national parks: Yellowstone, Arches, Canyonlands, Mesa Verde, Grand Canyon, Bryce and Zion. We also overnighted in Kodachrome Basin (a state park). The trip ended with a blast in Las Vegas, which was pretty awesome.

I was a little disappointed by the weather out west, though. Only Las Vegas really got as warm and sunny as I had been hoping. The first morning in Yellowstone was 28°F!! I will admit that Yellowstone, Arches, and Zion all got nice and toasty during the day, even if the mornings were kind of chilly. There were several days I had to change from long pants and long sleeves to tank tops and shorts around noon.

My absolute favorite part of the trip was visiting my aunt and uncle near Arches. Everything we did was so much fun, and I finally got to know some members of my family that I hadn't had the chance to meet yet. (I still haven't met three of my cousins on that side of the family!!)

One thing I learned about myself on this trip is that I apparently love to hike. I never knew that about myself. It also helped keep me thin while in the states, which is something I have a lot of troubles with on account of the inexpensive oreos and the large selection of sweets combining chocolate with peanut butter...

So, I'm back. And hopefully I'll have some interesting things to post soon! :)

And he's off!

The Boy is taking his first state exam as I write this. Five years of law school, including a year and a quarter of studying and no classes simply can't prepare you for the most important exam of your life. He will be taking six over the course of nine days, each one 5 hours long.

He was pretty calm this morning, but I could tell how often he was awake last night. When I escorted him to the exam this morning, I saw a number of tear-stained faces and was glad I hadn't chosen to study law.

So next Tuesday, it will all be over (at least until his oral exam in December). I can't wait to see what my boyfriend is like when he doesn't have anything to study for!

Cupcakes!

Today is my roommate's birthday, so last night I made cupcakes for her. I've been practicing icing for a while so I'd be able to decorate the cupcakes with frosting roses. Unfortunately, the recipe for the frosting is based on shortening and butter, so the 80° weather didn't do much to firm up the frosting at all... I'd say they didn't come out half bad, though:

I used a recipe for chocolate cupcakes and substituted white chocolate for dark chocolate to make them white (leaving out the chocolate had disastrous results the last time I tried!). The roses came out looking more like carnations, but flowers are flowers, right?

And by the way, it took me three hours to bake and decorate 30 cupcakes. I was done shortly before midnight--just in time to light the candles!

So, the recipe for the cupcakes is from my free Betty Crocker Cookbook app:

2 C Flour
2 C Sugar
3/4 C Sour Cream
1/4 C Shortening
1 C Water
1 1/4 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Vanilla
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
2 eggs
4 oz. melted Baking Chocolate (dark chocolate works best, but white works ok, too).

Mix everything on low 30 seconds, then on high 3 minutes. Fill paper-lined muffin form 2/3 full. Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes (my first batch needed 20 minutes, and my second and third batches needed 30 minutes each). Remove from pan to cool on a rack.

The icing recipe is from the Wilton website:

1/2 C solid vegetable shortening
1/2 C softened butter or margerine
1 tsp Vanilla
4 C confectioner's sugar
2 Tsp milk (I accidentally used only 2 tsp, and it was fine...)

Cream everything and gradually add sugar, scraping the sides often.

Enjoy!

Doctor, Doctor!!

Soooooo... there are no doctors anywhere near my apartment. At least none that are useful. There are urologists and dermatologists and homeopaths (is that even the right word?), but no normal, everyday doctors. Which really sucks when you have a medical emergency that's not so bad that you have to go to the emergency room.

This morning I woke up around 8:30, prepared breakfast, and then sat down at my computer to read my e-mails like I do every morning. I began to feel a little confused and had difficulty comprehending what I was reading, but didn't really think much of it. It's morning, what else do I expect?

Then I started to get a pins-and-needles sensation in the tips of my fingers on my right hand. The feeling spread slowly but surely through my hand, and by the time it reached the middle of my forearm, I was freaking out. My roommate was a doll and started researching doctors online for me. By the time she was finished, the pins-and-needles had spread to my lips and (get this!) gums on the right side of my face. I tried calling these doctors (one number was no longer connected and the other doctor turned out to be a urologist) and then the pins-and-needles subsided, and I felt fine again.

Still shaken by what I had just experienced, I started developing a blind spot in my right eye. The same blind spot I had several years ago the first time I had a migraine with aura. So, with one eye covered (it's surprisingly hard to read when one eye is pretending it can see, but actually can't), I went to wikipedia and found this:

"The somatosensory aura of migraine may consist of digitolingual or cheiro-oral paresthesias, a feeling of pins-and-needles experienced in the hand and arm as well as in the nose-mouth area on the same side. The paresthesia may migrate up the arm and then extend to involve the face, lips and tongue."

I was at first overjoyed to know I wasn't dying. Unfortunately, it also meant that within an hour, I was going to be bedridden.

Thank goodness for Sumatriptans.

Lunar Eclipse.

All through high school, I was repeatedly told, "don't go out after dark alone!" But tonight was supposed to be a full lunar eclipse, and since I live in a big, bright city, I thought I'd head to the park at the end of my street. It's on a hill, and I thought I might be able to see the eclipse from the top. (I even told my roommate where I was going).

When I arrived at the park, a 20-something man was walking down the steps I was going up. I stopped to see if the stairs would suffice by using my Pocket Universe app on my ipod. There was unfortunately a building in the way, so I continued into the park. While I was checking the sky, the man had gone back up the stairs and was standing at the top minding his own business and just chilling, as it appeared. I was already suspicious because I'm paranoid and to be honest, I was already suspicious of him (as I am of everyone) the moment I first saw him.

I reached the top of the stairs and walked past him, and that's when I realized how very dark the park was. And how very empty. Before turning onto the path, I took a look behind me: and caught him looking over his shoulder at me. At that point I decided it was time to get out of the park. I turned right instead of my usual left because I knew another exit from the park through a construction site that wouldn't leave me too far from my bike. Halfway down the path, I looked behind me and saw the guy walking a short distance behind me, but just far enough away that he was slightly hidden by the curves in the path.

At this point I became aware of how loud my flip flops were, and decided I had no shame, and just high-tailed it out of there. He probably heard me running, but alone in that dark park in the middle of Berlin was just not the place to be this evening.

I'm very certain he was up to no good. What exactly "no good" was, I'm not sure. He might just have wanted to take my iPod from me. Maybe worse. I'm very glad I listened to my instincts and didn't have to find out.

So instead, I headed to a very bright, very busy bridge near my apartment and watched the sky from there. Unfortunately, the adventure in the park made me miss the beginning of the eclipse, so I don't know if the clouds were there right from the beginning or not. In any case, I waited an hour and a half on that bridge hoping the clouds would go away. They eventually did, but not until the total eclipse was over. The full moon was still half-covered in shadow in the brief moments I was able to glimpse it through a break in the clouds, but I didn't even get a clear view of that. Here's the best picture I was able to take:

At least it's better than the picture I took of a satellite dish on top of a nearby building that I mistook for the moon...

Black Thumb.

I'd like to share another success with you.

For as long as I can remember, I've been the grim reaper of plants. Well, flowers really. Not even I can kill a philodendron. The thing is, up until recently, I chose not to own indoor plants, because they would invariably die within a month of purchase. One "african star" survived a little longer. Once it stopped blooming, the stalk of the flower shrivelled up and hung there for a while. I made the mistake of trimming the dead stalk to make the plant look better. It died within a week.

But, some time early this year, I fell in love with orchids and I decided to give it one more shot. I waited until Ikea had a special and purchased a small one (about 18" in height) for €4. That was in March. Not only is it still alive at the end of May, but it has been blooming the entire time. It's growing like crazy and it's regularly replacing its old flowers with new ones.

It'll probably die this summer while I'm on vacation, but until then, I'm going to enjoy my newly-discovered inner gardener.

I feel a new project coming on...

Yes, my last post was a serious post, and now I'm reverting back to my crazy, project-oriented self to tell you something awesome.

The Boy gave me a pair of earrings for my birthday this year, made of silver and fresh water pearls:


I've been thinking it would be awesome to make a matching necklace for special occasions, but wondered where I would be able to find inexpensive fresh water pearls. And then, while searching for a missing earring that I suspect may be in my "craft box" to be repaired, guess what I found?


Yes. That is a 16" string of freshwater pearls that I plundered from my mom's bead collection (with her permission, mind you) the last time I was home. I took a number of beads I liked so I would have something to work with the next time I felt like creating.

I don't actually know if the pearls are real, though I suspect they are due to their weight and the way they feel cold to the touch. They're a tiny bit bigger than the pearls on the earrings, and also tend a little bit more to ivory, but I don't think that's all that noticable. And I doubt I'd do any better finding matching pearls if I searched for a year.

So, until I have time to make my new necklace, I'll simply revel in the fact that I have everything I need to make it.

Ticking Time-Bombs: Post-WWII Berlin

At some point, I plan to write a longer and better article on this topic, but because it belongs to current events, I'd like to touch on it now, already.

At 6:30 this evening, a 550lb WWII-bomb found during construction on the Spree River in Berlin was disarmed. It is the second one this month, and the fourth one in Berlin since I moved here six months ago. Five thousand people were evacuated to safety before the disarming.

The existence of dangerous remnants of World War II is something I believe not enough people know about. Every year, around 5,500 aerial bomb duds are disarmed in Germany. In Berlin alone, it's estimated that there are still 3,000 duds buried throughout the busy metropolis that need to be rendered innocuous. Some of these duds are found by special teams looking for them--anyone preparing to build can ask the government to search the construction site for bombs ahead of time. The rest are found during construction itself--sometimes even after the site has been thoroughly searched.

The biggest problem with these bombs is that they are becoming more dangerous with time. The fuses--exposed to the elements for over 65 years--deteriorate over time. Right now, if a bomb detonates, it's likely because someone hit it with a backhoe by accident, or otherwise touched it in some way. In the future, these bombs are going to become unpredictable, ticking time-bombs. The fuses will eventually deteriorate to the point that they will explode without warning, and without the chance to evacuate those living and working in the area. Homes, businesses, and schools (!) alike are affected by this hidden danger.

Even with these precautions, people still die. In Göttingen last summer, three professional bomb-diffusers were killed when a 1100lb bomb exploded as they were preparing it for disarming. I heard the explosion from nearly 2 miles away, though at the time, I didn't know that that was what I had heard.

It's not just the aerial bombs that cause problems. There are still millions of smaller unexploded ordinances stemming from World War II littering the country. Russian grenades pose a significant problem because they don't look like the grenades in movies, and therefore go unrecognized. They can show up in just about anybody's garden after a good rainstorm, and they're small and lightweight enough to be found and played with by children.

Although one could argue that landmines in Afghanistan are a bigger problem, I think it's important to communicate to people that, no matter where it is in the world--whether it be a third-world country, or the home of Europe's largest economy--war leaves a permanent mark. It is an outrage that people die as a result of a war they weren't even alive yet to witness.

Until the day that the very last explosive device is disarmed, I will have to deal with evacuations, traffic jams caused by restricted areas during disarmings, and maybe someday even delays in building my own house in order to have the building site searched for explosives. I hope I will never become a victim of World War II, killed by a bomb put there by my very own country.

Bad idea.

If someone posts a relationship status change on Facebook, do not be one of the first to comment on it. I am getting E-mail updates non-stop from the other people commenting on this wonderful new engagement. I don't know a single one of these well-wishers, and my LiveMail's chime for every new E-mail is no longer Pawlow's bell in my world, but is rather inducing a playback of "O Fortuna" in my head every time I hear it.

UPDATE:
Facebook now offers a button called "unfollow" so this won't happen.

It's that time of year again!

I have the impression that "that time" is more than annual, though.

Every once and a while things get out of hand at school. This time around, it's due to the fact that all of my graded presentations and multiple super-important exams are within two weeks of each other. Oh, and one of my friends is visiting from the states, which will also eat up a bit of prep-time.

So I'm riding an emotional rollercoaster of soaring optimism and crippling panic attacks. Right this moment, I'm feeling pretty good, but I'm sure in about an hour I'll be practicing breathing techniques while sobbing in a dark corner with a teddybear.

I suppose instead of blogging (and/or sobbing), I should go study.

[Insert funny comic relating to studying here]

Bruises.

A few years ago, I was playing ultimate frisbee with a bunch of friends and The Boy. He and I were on opposing teams, and when I play against him, I get pretty competitive. Long story short, while pursuing the Frisbee, we collided at high speed:


The Boy’s knee made impact with the middle of my thigh. I was in so much pain, I was certain I had broken my femur. However, after a horrendously long minute thinking I was going to die, the pain slowly subsided, and there remained nothing more than a dull throb. I limped from the field and decided to watch the game from the sidelines for a while instead.

A few days later, I had the biggest, bluest bruise I’ve ever had. No wait, no I didn’t. No, actually, there was absolutely no mark on my body at all from the full-body, high-speed impact with my 6’4” boyfriend. Weird.

On Sunday, I took the train from The Boy’s home to my home. The Boy gave me one of his old bicycles to use in Berlin, so I was travelling with said bicycle. While running to catch the train, one of the pedals on the bike bumped the back of my leg. I will admit that it did hurt a little bit, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. Stuff like that happens to me on a regular basis. I guess I need to learn how to walk next to bicycles, or just spend more time riding them.
And from that minor bump, I got this:


That is a bruise the size of a small peach. Or a large plum. And it hurts like a b*tch.

I have to say, though, that I’m probably lucky I even know where the bruise came from. I can’t even remember all the times I’ve discovered bruises (especially on my legs) and have no idea what put them there. I used to get mysterious bruises on my knees, until I realized they were all the same height—and the same height as my coffee table.

I know it’s kind of sick, but I actually get all excited about bruises. They make me feel a little like some tough warrior princess. Rawr.

Sleepy days and sleepless nights...

I'm a pro at driving myself crazy.

Around 9:00pm every evening, I hit rock-bottom. I get really exhausted, and all I'd like to do is go to bed.

But then I think, "No way! If I go to bed now, I'll be awake by 5:00am, and really, who would want that?" So I look for something to occupy myself until bedtime. The occupation has a tendency to be internet-related (catching up on my favorite blogs, facebooking, researching any current symptoms I have to figure out what deadly disease I've contracted, etc.)

And then, BAM!! It's midnight, and I'm still in the middle of an article on Cracked, but I ought to be in bed at this exact moment in time if I want to function in the morning, but I still have to go through my nighttime rituals like personal hygiene and reading in my bedtime book and updating my facebook status one more time!! And I know that by the time I'm actually in bed and turn out the light, it will be well past 1:00am!

And this happens every single night. And every morning, I get up at 7:00am like a freaking soldier, because damn, I'm not going to lose gym-time in the morning because I was an idiot the night before. And every morning, I tell myself that I'm going to go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight, so I'm not tired the next day. And every night, my plans fail miserably.

So, now that it is 12:36 in the morning, I wish you a good night.

Small pleasures.

Everyone needs a small pleasure once in a while, but when you live in a foreign country, those small pleasures shift and take on new meaning.

Take, for instance, Oreos. Chocolate-stuffed Oreos have always been one of my guilty little pleasures. I used to eat them to celebrate good times and to cheer myself up during bad times. I have never taken those little chocolate frisbees for granted. Now that I live in Germany, Oreos have earned a new place on the list of small pleasures. Since they're imported, they are really, really expensive. A box of 24 cookies costs €3.79. That's more than $5! For 24 cookies! And that's just the ones with white filling. Beyond the high price, the rarity of oreos adds to the personal value of these chocolate sins. The ones with white filling are relatively easy to find. Once you know which stores carry them, you know where to look if you're in desperate need. The chocolate filled ones, however, only recently became available in Germany. Even then, it's hard to find them. Thus, they have taken a particularly high place on my list of small pleasures.

Now take Hershey's syrup, or rather, chocolate syrup in general. I used to enjoy the occasional chocolate milk, chocolate chip pancakes with chocolate syrup or an ice cream sundae with chocolate syrup on top. These things have never been really that important to me, so chocolate syrup would never have made my guilty pleasures list while I lived in the states. Now? Oh yeah. I went four years without a decent chocolate syrup (at least according to my American standards) until I found one at my local Edeka. Instead of being Hershey's, it's Nestlé. And it tastes just like home. It's inexpensive (€2.50 or $3.50) for 400mL, and I think I will have some on hand from now on.

So, things that used to be small pleasures become more valuable, and things that were never small pleasures before become small pleasures.

Eggs.

I'm so lame. Not even 24 hours after starting up my blog again, I have something I want to write about.

I want to write about eggs.

German grocery stores are different from American ones. You don't realize how alike American grocery stores are until you've been to a foreign one. Let's take eggs, for example. In an American grocery store, where do you look for the eggs? Probably in the refrigerators where you'll also find milk and orange juice. In Germany, the eggs are not refrigerated and are found either in the produce section or somewhere in the general vicinity of the baking goods.

So today, I walked into the grocery store looking for eggs, and even though I have lived in this country for four and a half years, I started walking towards the back of the store, towards the refrigerators with milk. I'm almost there when it occurs to me that, oh yeah, the eggs are in the produce section in Germany. So I turn around and go back. I searched the produce section high and low and did not find any eggs. So I decided to check by the milk anyways. And there they were. In my defense, the eggs were not with the refrigerated milk, but about four paces away and nearer to the H-milk, which is milk that doesn't need to be refrigerated, and comes in packaging more similar to a box than a carton.

Speaking of eggs, something I have learned in Germany is that eggs do not equal eggs. For moral reasons, The Boy (my German boyfriend of six and a half years) requested that I only purchase eggs from at least "Bodenhaltung" if he's going to be eating them too. Bodenhaltung means that the chickens who lay the eggs are not kept in cages, but are permitted to move freely on the ground. Even better is "Freilandhaltung", which means the chickens are allowed to move freely on the ground outdoors. I don't know if there is any sort of equivalent for this terminology in the US, because frankly, I wasn't old enough to buy eggs when I left the states. (I was 18. Everything I needed magically appeared in the refrigerator.)

However, I have discovered that the more freedom the mommy chickens have, the better their eggs taste. I know a lot of people think this is nonsense, but really, it's true. Eggs from happy chickens have a more delicious consistency when cooked and make for better baked goods. It took me a while to believe it, too. Then I accidentally bought the wrong eggs after years of eating eggs from happy chickens, and I was shocked by how unappetizing the unhappy-chicken-eggs were.

My chocolate-chip pancakes came out really good, by the way.

New pants... sort of.

I'm so proud.

Both my mother and my grandmother are avid seamstresses, so I grew up making things all the time, too. I'm not very good with a sewing machine, then again, I compare myself to my mother, so I'm probably not nearly as bad as I think I am. In any case, I usually come across all sorts of issues while sewing and more often than not it irritates me to the point of throwing in the towel.

Not this time.

I successfully took in a pair of jeans. And it doesn't look half bad.

The jeans were cheap ones I purchased during a good sale at an inexpensive store (Takko). They didn't fit then, either, but I loved how super skinny the legs were, and decided for €15 I could live with wearing a belt. It turns out I couldn't. It drove me so crazy, I stopped wearing them. Or rather, I wore them last because inevitably I didn't get around to doing laundry until I was forced to wear my least-favorite jeans.

I have never sewn jeans before, unless you count making shorts out of them, so I scanned through a bunch of tutorials online on taking jeans in, and then promptly decided to do it my own way. See, most of the tutorials recommended taking in the back seam. Just playing around with it, I could tell that that was not the right route for me:

See all those nasty folds? I would have had to take apart all of the butt seams to smooth that out. Furthermore, I would have had to do all the fitting on my own butt. I can't even tell you how many tries it took me to take a picture of my own butt, and I doubt doing a fitting would have been easier. Plus, all of those seams are so visible. There's not much room for mistakes.

So I decided to take in the side seams instead. It meant I would have to add a seam to the waistband in order to take it in, but I wasn't too concerned about that.

See that little pucker on the side seam? I had to take in the pocket more than the rest of the leg. I'm not quite sure what the point is to having more matieral in the pocket than everywhere else, but I suppose I should just be glad I don't need the extra space...

One other thing you can see in the picture above is a rivet. I had to take out two of them to take the jeans in. Since I'm just a college student, I don't really have all that much in the way of tools, so I had to use a screwdriver to pry them off. I think I spent about 45 minutes on each rivet. It was a good workout.

Even though I was all gung-ho about my new project, I was able to control my enthusiasm and I only took apart one side at first, so I'd have the other side to look at while I was making my changes. It was a good move.

So, without futher ado, I present you my altered, and perfectly fitting jeans!

Here's the butt, without any messed up seams:

And here's a closeup of my handiwork on one side:

The thread I used for the topstitching is actually too thin, and it's also not quite the right color, but I figured there's only one other person in the world who's likely to look that closely, and that's my mother. And she'll probably shower me with compliments anyways because she's awesome.

Although you can't really tell the difference, here's a before and after comparison:

I know it kind of looks like the waistband is too tight, but it's not. What looks like a fold of fat is actually my hip bone.

I didn't take any pictures of the inside because it doesn't look very good, but I also zig-zag stitched the seam I took in to make it resemble the surged edge the manufacturer had. You can't see it in the closeup, but I also staggered the waistband seams to cut down on the amount of fabric in one place. It lies very flat, so I'm happy with that choice.

Considering what difficulties I have finding jeans that fit, this experience will probably change my way of jeans shopping. I would never alter expensive jeans (if I pay $75 for a pair of express jeans, they damn well better fit), but if I start running low on jeans, I might go ahead and buy a cheap pair that fit in the legs and just take them in. One thing I have to keep in mind, though, is that I can only do an easy alteration like this on hip-huggers. As my mother and I found out with a pair of waist-high dress pants, if you take in the waist to make it fit mine, you have to put in a longer fly because I can't get them over my hips otherwise.

Yay for fitting jeans!!

I forgot my password.

How embarassing. I started a blog nearly a year ago, and have written three entries. I wanted to write a new entry recently when it occurred to me: "oh, I don't know my password." In fact, I only ever knew my password the very first time I logged in, because I let internet explorer save my password for me. Well, that's all grand and good until your computer dies and you need to buy a new one. Unfortunately, your passwords aren't already saved on your new computer when you get it. Funny thing about that.

And so, I've had to move my blog to a new account. And while I was at it, I went ahead and changed the name, look, and basic premise of the blog. This new blog will contain everything the old one did ("projects") but also blurbs about life as an American in Germany, and whatever else floats my boat.

So if you're interested in seeing my old blog, here it is.

The name of my blog comes from this song, which is currently played on the radio here over and over and over again. But I like it. :)