What I haven't Blogged about...

It's been a busy few days.

Saturday was the first night of Passover and things were a bit chaotic: my landlord had said that he would be going by Ikea and could pick us up another bookcase and a few things that we needed and then he wound up not doing so. I'd been relying on getting that bookcase and doors put together so that I could get my surfaces cleaned up and do a final chometz clean-up and flat tidy before getting the seder meal together.

I was not mentally prepared to have piles of books floating about on surfaces. I still had three boxes of unpacked books (that I had shipped over from the States), another box that I had "inherited" from some ex-pats in Alt-Tegal (who are planning on moving back to CA in the fall and are deaccessioning books) and the car seats and suitcases that we had needed to unload from our limited storage area (which has our sold and sealed chometz boxes packed away in it). I don't do well with clutter at the best of times: due to my reading addiction I always have trouble dealing with my accumulation of reading material. Leaving aside the books, we read a number of periodicals every week: The Economist, Newsweek, Businessweek, US News & Worldreport, Money, Cooks Illustrated, Forbes, Fortune, Publisher's Weekly, some Treasury/ Accounting/ Controls trade magazines, and Analog. Thank heavens for recycling, although I wish I knew folks here in Berlin that would enjoy reading them: it feels so wasteful to just recycle them after 1 use.

So the German took a run to the closest Ikea and came back with everything (including a corkboard, some extra place settings, the Billy and its doors, and a Malm chest. We put them together (and he says that the doors are unbelievably difficult), I loaded them up (and now I feel extremely tidy and under control) and then he took the Things out to the zoo and I started to scramble to get things together.

First off was the Pesach plate. We cleverly hadn't brought one with us, so I drew one on paper, put it in plastic and put that on a tray. The German had brought me whole walnuts by accident, so the next thing was to put the eggs on to boil, the chicken to roast, the potatoes to boil and then to start cracking walnuts (and picking nut meat- a phrase I have never gotten to use before) for the charoseth.

I got that together (and I quite liked it) then I printed out the haggadot that I had downloaded and formatted the prior evening.

I put together the Seder plate and tidied up and had a glass of wine (that must be why the charoseth recipe calls for a dry red) and had a good half hour sit down before the family came back from theplayground and it all went well. Thing1 did a great job of doing the 4 Questions, we used her Pesach book as well as the haggadah, and the cat did not get to jump on the table and eat the poultry ( a family joke. I did cut up quite a bit and put it on his plate). We didn't have room for the chicken soup and I expect that we will be eating that for the next few days: I'll need to be making matzoh balls next week. We had the seder comfortably early and the kids were in bed by 9 and then we cleaned up, kicked back, and watched last weeks Oprah's the Big Give.

On Sunday it didn't rain. First day in 50 days (since I started counting on an arbitrary date). We had some family time and then a babysitter, so the German and I could have a grown up Seder. It was at a large hotel here in Berlin and, according to the Rabbi, it was the largest seder in Germany. Very nice. Amusingly enough, someone from my german course was seated next to us and the other Parent representative from Thing1's class was at the next table. We had to run like Cinderella at 11 to get back by our 11:30 curfew (the babysitter is a kindergarten teacher and we felt badly enough keeping her up so late before a school day). It was a nice evening, I'll try to add photos later.

Monday we spent having family time. None of the local services had babysitting and our girls are just not able to take 4-6 hours of services without going insane. So we read the Passover story, had some matzoh brei for breakfast, then went to Kreuzberg to check out the Market Halle. It was nice, much better produce and meat than I have around me, but how is it possible that hot pepper here in Germmany can actually be bland? I bought olives in red pepper flakes and they are completely tasteless (except for the olive part).

We had lunch at our favorite Mt. Everest, but I wasn't able to have Momo balls (dumplings not allowable during Pesach). Then we spent an hour at the playground behind the hall. There's what appears to be a new book store there, Other Worlds. It seems to be so new that I can't find any on-line references. I checked it out: it's a SF and F store with a great selection, both in German and in English. But I just can't make myself pay an even exchange between dollars and Euros. That is, pay Euro 12.99 (+tax!) for a book priced at $12.99. That's an 80% mark up and far cheaper for me to have the books shipped over. They have used as well, so next time we are there I may stop in to see how they pay for used: it might be worth getting store credit. I ran in for a few minutes while the family was eating gelato, then the sky clouded over and we hopped the U-bahn back home.

A nice weekend.

Burning the chometz...

Of course I can't do that, as I have no place to actually burn it. But yesterday I packed most of the chometz in the flat up into boxes, finishing up this morning. I sealed the boxes and sold it (on-line. I love the Internet) and tomorrow morning I send the girls out with the German while I do the final thorough clean through and wipe down. I need to remember to save somepieces of bread so that Thing 1 can find them in a ritual search before lunch;-)

I ran out this morning to the Kosher deli and picked up (at price gougingly high cost) kosher-for-Passover wine, matzoh, gefilte fish (yeah- it was labelled Hungarian style so let's see if I actually like it), matzoh meal, cookies and a chicken. I already had the eggs, potatoes and bitter herbs, so now I only need the walnuts for the charoseth and some time and I should be ready to start the preparations by mid-morning. This will be our first solitary Pesach, so luckily the girls are really too young to understand if I do a poor job of it and I am sure that I will get better at it every year.

I also met up for a quick lunch with Snooker : she was going to share a local sushi place with me, but due to my time constraints (darn kids) we wound up having to meet too early and instead did a very nice little Chinese place. My chicken with green curry was nicely spiced and tasty and we enjoyed (at least I did) a pleasant chat and get to know each other session. I'd try for sushi again next week but since it's school break my next week is a yawning span of amuse the children time: perhaps we can do it next month.

It was fun to check out another area of Berlin: I'm starting to feel that I am actually seeing some of it and I'm just enjoying walking around and looking at stores. Amusingly, a store that I had attempted to find last week (and walked in the rain 40 minutes to discover had moved) was a few doors down from where we had lunch. Serendipity. I will be there again next week.

Quick- Calling all parents with children in German Schools-

What do you give the teachers for holidays in pre-school or regular school? I just got an e-mail from the parent representative from Thing 2's class saying that she got presents for those teachers. You know, annoying kitschy stuff liike serving plates. Now, the German was last week made the second parent rep for Thing 1's class, and the other one does nothing. So we knew not that we should do this. I can run out tonight, I guess, and get some cheap kitsch, but can't I just give a nice card with money (?how much) and let them choose what they like?

In a country where the wedding invitations say, give us money because we are already stocked, where I receive a death announcement and am expected to send geld, how can I have to give these poor teachers junk rather than allow them to use money for what they would like?

Also, we just started having soda/drinks delivered: do you tip? If so, how much?

Thanks!

“How I Proposed to My Wife: An Alien Sex Story”

John Scalzi has posted a shareware short story on his blog, Whatever.

It's “How I Proposed to My Wife: An Alien Sex Story” and it's quite funny. Shareware means that one can pay whatever (that word again;-)) one feels it's worth and Scalzi has given Paypal and Amazon links. He's donating half (aftter the cost or funds transfer) to the Lupus Foundation of America, so I felt comfortable overpaying a bit for a short. I thought it was quite amusing and pulpishly charming. Check it out.

It's raining again...

But of course, that's no different from any other day here in Berlin.

Yesterday had masses of dry time between the rain, so I ran over to pick up my tickets for second seder (held at a large hotel near here). I need haggadot (the 'lesson plan' for the Pesach meal) as well because I left mine at the in-laws and some shmera matza, so I'll be running back on Friday morning to pick them up. We had reserved the tickets earlier and I wonder if the reason we needed to pick them up in person was to ensure that we were not psychotics? I always wonder, here in this country where all Jewish organizations and facilities require a permanent police presence.

I am not looking forward to trying to gather all the ingredients that I need to make a seder with my little trolley this evening. particularly because I need to go to first causes, that is, to make the charoseth and horseradish and all the other underpinnings required. I even need to pick up a seder plate and the local Judaica store is wildly overpriced: I may wind updrawing one with crayon and putting it under plastic!

We would have done both seders out, but first night the community seder starts after 21:00 and considering that the children are in bed by 19:30-20:00, that would make it difficult to share it with them! Second night we have a babysitter.

I am, however, looking forward to hearing Thing1 singing the 4 Questions: I already hear her practising and I can't wait.

Today I finally have the introduction session for my gym. I am writing this here so that I will be too embarrassed to blow it off and sit here drinking coffee instead (I assure you I would prefer that). I need to get going: I am more unhealthy than I have been in years and more physically inactive than I have been in decades. Add that to the inability to get fat reduced dairy here and the (forgotten but high) cholesterol levels I had before I left the States means I had best get going on exercise.

(My goodness, I love wikipedia! How did I live without it?)

Upcoming trips...

1. The Keukenhof on the weekend of April 26th. Please let there be a single day without rain!
2. We want to go to Venice mid-May. Diane persuaded me that there are decent air rates out there and she's right. But to get them we will be flying out of Duesseldorf, which is a bit of a pain. I've never been to Venice - anyone have any hotel/hostel/B&B recommendations?
3. Denver in mid-August (without kids, yeah!). I'm going to the World SF convention. I had thought that I would be going alone but the German has decided that for various reasons he would prefer to come along, so this should basically be the honeymoon we didn't have;-).
4. Upstate NY in early October. My niece is Bat Mitzvah and we want to be there.

I need to get a little more European vacationing going here, but it's a start!

Green Point... what is it, exactly?

I keep asking my husband, the German, what Green Point (Grune Punkt) is. He says that I think everything is green point and I guess I do: at least, everything that is metal, plastic, or coated paper. I am borne out in this belief because just about everything that is coated paper (boxes, in particular) has a green point symbol on it.

Last night, we damaged/broke an Ikea light. I think that the cover must be green point, as it is made of paper and metal. I don't know what I should do with the base. The German thinks I am insane and that the whole thing is garbage and that I should stop thinking everything is Green Point. Can anyone give me some guidance here?

Free electronics recycling...how cool!

I was bumming through my Reader and in Scalzi's comments I found the most wondrous site: a free recyling program through Costco for electronics. There is also a trade-in valuation, but really, for me, the most important thing is to find a place which will take items such as old computer monitors and recycle them for free. Thank you Costco, and thank you David for posting this on Whatever. I have paid to recycle these in the past, and also kept them in perma-storage because I could not think what to do with them to keep the toxic heavy metal components out of the waste stream.
This is for the US, but I think it's a wonderful resource to share with everyone, so spread the word!

7 random Things (about me)

Hmm, this is actually a toughie.Thanks, Diane, for making me stop to think about the random bits of my life.

1. I am seriously reading addicted. We are talking, read toothpaste tubes if all else fails,to fall aleep. In the olden days, when I would do a 7 day hike, I would bring at least two books and one had to be re-readable.
2. I used to smoke. I started when I was 19 (I know, no excuse) and said for years that I would quit when I could replace it with another fixation. I quit January 1998, after dating the German (a non-smoker) for two months (we had met in August). He never asked me to, and now I can't believe how tolerant he was: I hate cigarette smoke and stale smell now.
3. The older I grow, the more intolerant I become of intolerance. When I was younger, I might have piped up about egregious bigotry. Now my list of attitudes and (even unconscious) bigotries that I won't let pass has really gotten quite long. Hey, if my opinions are too strong for you, you probably don't want to be my friend anyway. And at least I won't feel complicit.
4. I like science fiction conventions. Not media conventions, science fiction cons. They are a place where like minded readers of science fiction can come together to meet with, talk to, and talk about their favorite genre writers, both living and dead. I generally go to at least one major convention and a minor one every year.
5. I am a cat lover. I have had cats (generally plural) since I was 6. I moved off campus my sophomore year because I felt my parents weren't giving my girls enough love. Right now, I have only 1 boy: his older brothers passed on before we moved here, at 16 and 18. We all still miss them.
6. I am in some things a food snob. I like my coffee and my wine. I drink far more of the former and have had to hurry to drink some of the latter in my cellar as they have over-matured. There really is a difference between types of coffee and Starbucks burns theirs.
7. I love sushi but have eaten it only once since I reached Berlin. With the limited time we have to go out (babysitters are expensive) I haven't wanted to waste time and money on the mediocre sushi that was so expensive when I first tried it. But the Vietnamese, Nepalese and Indian I have tried since getting here has both been good and a welcome relief to my blanded out taste buds.

I'm not certain whom I should tag as memes seem to be running about wildly. I'll try my new blogfriend A at My Wintersong, if she has time. I'd love to hear her 7 random things.

Things I have done today...

• Of course there is an automatic extension for Americans out of the country on tax day (for filing, and we expect a refund, therefore no need to estimate taxes) but how strange that in Germany if one uses a professional preparer (and we will be using the German's firm) the tax filing deadline shifts to the end of December (ie 12 months later than the year one is filing for).
  

• I'm making banana bread.

The German kept on trying to discard my old bananas (the Things and he like only firm bananas) and i kept saying that I would make banana bread, so here I am. It's a James Beard recipe that my mother sent me. I have converted the F to C and then converted again to a convection oven and I had no lemon juice and so squeezed some orange into it so I have to see how it works out. If it's good, I'll make another with the remaining bananas I froze to use and I'll put a picture in. (It was good and I made a second loaf. I'll put the recipe in later, when I figure out how to arrange recipes in this blog.)

• I'm on my second load of wash and have put away an overflowing basket of folded laundry.

On Saturday I ran out to C&A, the only cheap clothing store that I know of around here, and bought the girls masses of inexpensive spring things. Can't beat 2 colorful tops for 3 Euros! in any case, I needed to wash everything thoroughly. Not only because I saw the House episode where the children nearly died after wearing unwashed clothes that had been contaminated with a pesticide, but because I had this experience with Thing1 after letting her wear a new pair of pajamas without washing them, and I never want to go through that again. I also now use Persil for sensitive skin.

• I had asked Jenn if it were too late to see spring bulbs in the Netherlands (something I have been saying I will go to see for years and years) and she said, not yet and recommended the Keukenhof . I need to head west with the family over the 26th for the big Geburtstag bash my sister-in-law is having as she turns 30, so I am now planning to take a day of the long weekend we had planned and head over with the family to the Gardens (only two more open weeks after that, so my timing is j-i-t! thanks, Jenn! I would have been really disappointed if I missed this.