What I am reading: August 2009

1. You're so Vein by Christine Warren: Another in her series of Other books. This time Ava finally meets her match. Fluffy airplane read.
2. Storms Can't Hurt the Sky by Gabriel Cohen: I was reading this at the same time as The Lizard Cage and I found that to be a lucky chance. This book is sub-titled A Buddhist Path through Divorce and it has some relatively simplistic but readable descriptions and explanations of Buddhist thought. I ordered it not because I am contemplating divorce, but because the favorable reviews I read said that it was a very helpful guide to overcoming or dealing in a healthy way with, problems in relationships and I thought that would be a useful skill to start practicing. I found the book useful although shallow and it has definitely given me food for thought and the desire to continue reading, in a deeper way, on Buddhism.
   
3. The Trouble with Demons by Lisa Shearin: I really liked the first two, but I am finding what I consider to be anachronisms (using the term Miss) and modern attitudes and sentiments without an understanding of why they would exist in the magical, medieval milieu, too distracting.
   
4. The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff: Anew, fantasy, series. The protagonist is a witch from a family of witches and clan associated with rituals reminiscent of Wicca. Enjoyable and sets Alysha Gale up to star, with a supporting cast, in future books. Set in Calgary and I enjoyed the magic.
5. The Lizard Cage by Karen Connolly: A read for my book club, I just told a friend (and another blogger)that this is the best book that I have read so far this year. The context is mid-90's Burma, the protagonist is a political prisoner and the subject matter is dire, but the lyricism of the words lifted me through the narrative and allowed me to read without needing to stop and go away. The chapters were also very short: it seemed that when I reached a limit where I might otherwise have put the book down for a while, I reached a chapter ending that allowed me to take a deep breath and start again. I was reading it at the same time as the next book, and I think the understanding of Buddhism that I gained was helpful to me in understanding certain contexts within this book. I thought it was a very authentic and moving book.
6. A Fistful of Sky by Nina Kiriki Hoffman (2002): This was more what I had been looking for when I read reviews of Hoffman that compared her to Zenna Henderson, although more modern and less classic in writing. Also interesting in the difference between a people lost here on this Earth from another and a "native race" of magic holdiners. Loved it. It's exactly the type of thing that I enjoy and better than the above noted Huff.
   
7. A Red Heart of Memories by Nina Kiriki Hoffman (1999): I had already read Past the Size of Dreaming (2001) (reviewed last month) and this is the book that led into that, where we meet Matt and Edmund (and they meet each other) for the first time. I like it and am rereading the sequel right now to settle the details that I missed (such as the "magic gold" and why it was gone) and am glad that I brought these all back from the US with me. Although I read the sequel without realizing that I needed to read the first book, I now know how important it was.

Books people have read...

This is a Facebook meme that a high school friend put up: I think I saw this once described as books that people say that they have read versus those they actually have:). I think it's a bit more substantive than the last book list and I have read, I think, a smaller percentage of them. I am really enjoying my book clubs as opportunities to stretch my reading muscles (although Crime and Punishment has literally been sitting in the TBR pile for 9 months now...)

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read and a * after those you loved.

Tag other book nerds.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen -X*
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien -X*
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte- X*
4 Harry Potter series - JK RowlingX*
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee- x
6 The Bible- X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte- X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell- X*
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman-X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens-X*

10/10

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott-X*
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy-X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller-
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare-MISSING A FEW
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du MaurierX
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien-X
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger- X*
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

15/20

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell-X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald-
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens-X*
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy-
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams- X*
26 The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner-
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky-
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck-
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll- X*
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame-X*

20/30

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy-
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens- X*
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis-X*
34 Emma - Jane Austen-X*
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen-X*
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis- (this is part of 33)X*
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini-
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden-X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne- X*

27/40

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell- X*
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown-X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez-
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins-X
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery-X*
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret AtwoodX*
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding- X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan-

33/50

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel- (COULDN'T FINISH-YEGG)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert-X*
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons-
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen-X*
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth-
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens- X*
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley- X*
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon-
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez-

37/60

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck- X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov-X
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt-X
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold-
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas-X*
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac-
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy-
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen FieldingX
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie-
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville- X*

43/70

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens-X*
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker-X*
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett-X*
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson-X*
75 Ulysses - James Joyce-X
76 The Inferno – Dante-
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome-
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray-X
80 Possession - AS Byatt

49/80

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens-X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker-
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro -
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert-
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry -
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White- X*
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom -
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - X
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

52/90

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad- X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery-X
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams- X*
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole -
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas-X*
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare- X*
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- X*
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo-

58/100

Total: 58 of 100

100 most beloved books...

The BBC list of the most beloved books. Here's what I have read (those with an x), with notes:

x1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien (7-8 times, I think.)
x2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (5-6 times)
x3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (Only the first two 0f the trilogy: lost interest when I couldn't reread and remember the earlier books.)
x4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (all of them and the Infocom game as well.)
x5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling (All of them, obviously.)
x6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (Haven't all Americans?)
x7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne (Haven't all Westerners? All of them, and to my kids as well.)
x8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell (Haven't all Anglophones?)
x9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis (All of them, of course, and without concern for the underlying Christian allegory.)
x10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë (Yes.)
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
x12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë (Same year as all of Austen and 10.)
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
x14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier(ditto 12.)
x15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger (ditto 6.)
x16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame (Wonderful book, although Waterbabies was better in this vein, I think.)
x17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens(Love Dickens!)
x18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott (Reread recently while reading March)
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy (I have problems getting into the Russians that I need to overcome...)
x21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
x22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
x23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
x24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
x25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien(goes with 1).
x26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy(And therefore no other Hardy. Should I give him another try?)
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck (really want to read this as we languish in our own small depression.)
x30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll(and through the looking glass.)
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
x33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett (for my book club this month-which I then missed- and realized that I had read it about 10 years ago.)
x34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
x35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl (I think I have read most Dahl in print.)
x36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson(early childhood influence, with The Black Arrow)
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
x38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
x39. Dune, Frank Herbert
x40. Emma, Jane Austen
x41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
x42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
x44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas(perhaps 6-7 times, and various movies.)
x45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
x46. Animal Farm, George Orwell(Some animals are more equal than others...)
x47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
x51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
x52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
x53. The Stand, Stephen King (Sometimes I think the 6 hour mini-series was better. I would have liked it more without the God-Devil thing.)
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
x56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
x58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer (Loaned to me by a friend here, on the shelf TBR.)
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
x62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
x63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
x64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
x65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
x68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
x69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
x70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
x73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
x74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
x75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
x76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
x77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
x78. Ulysses, James Joyce
x79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
x81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
x82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
x83. Holes, Louis Sachar
x84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
x87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
x89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
x92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
x93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
x96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
x99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

Nintendo Wii help- Germany and US regional issues: Help!

So, we have a German Nintendo Wii and we have American games (because that's where we are from!) as well as German games (because that's where we are currently).

Can anyone help with how to resolve this issue that does not require throwing either one region (and the player) or the other region away? Because one day we expect to be back in the US and will have the issue there as well. At the moment, we have only a few games on each side and the Wii is still returnable (surprise gift from husband- much wanted, but leaving us with this quandary) so we need to decide quickly.

Please e-mail me if you have any possible solutions, thanks to anyone who can help us out.

(bigappletobigbear at googlemail.com) take out the spaces, of course.

Update: Thanks to everyone... for the e-mails and after talking to Nintendo US, I sent back the German Wii and accessories and will bring over the US version. There was once a software solution to the problem, but Nintendo rendered it ineffective with their last firmware upgrade and I don't want to roll the firmware backwards and need to prevent automatic upgrades. I think it's terribly annoying and also amazing that Nintendo Germany and Nintendo UK don't respond to e-mail queries, but it is what it is.

What I am reading: July 2009

1. Regenesis by CJ Cheryh: Wow. It was great. I put aside everything that I was supposed to be reading and just made my way through this sequel to 1988's Cyteen. Since my copy of that is, of course, back in the US in storage, I ordered a copy (in 1 volume and without the iconic Whelan covers) to reread before digging into the 585 page (and boringly covered) sequel. But I couldn't wait. I remember the original (I think I must have reread it two or three times) well enough that I just plunged into the sequel and I didn't feel the lack (although Cyteen is now waiting on my night table to be reread RSN). It's just classic Cherryh and I love it. The new Invader novel is somewhere much deeper in my TBR pile: this brought me back to the basics of why I used to love SF so much (and makes me sad- I read so much fantasy now because I just can't find enough SF to be passionate about anymore). My gosh. This is just great stuff. Genetics, cloning, birth labs, "reincarnation" through cloning and mind-tapes, societal engineering: this is what made science fiction so exciting and it still is exciting.
2. Magic Strikes by Ilona Andrews: Sequel to Magic Bites and Magic Burns by a husband and wife team writing urban fantasy as Ilona Andrews. Their writing is improving and their story is as interesting and exciting as it has been. The concept is that waves "post Shft" of magic and technology sweep across the world, and that the protagonist, Kate Daniels, has abilities only partially known to her friends and allies. The plot keeps developing, the back story keeps filling out and I become more interested and invested in the characters each book.
3. Past the Size of Dreaming by Nina Kiriki Hoffman: This author was suggested to me (was it Amazon, was it someone's list?) as being similar in thought and flavour to Zenna Henderson, whose work I love (and which has been "copied" by others such as Alexander Keys). This novel- not so much (another I picked up more so), but I liked it very much. The background is of a world where magic lives, where it can be awakened, and where it operates in a hidden parallel with mundanity while also being "mundane" in itself, or natural. I like her writing and I like her "voice. I am sorry to see that most of her current work is short stories because they are so much harder to track down than novels. I will try to pick up the rest of her work while I am in the US next month. (I just popped over to Amazon, where I see she has a new novel out in a few months and I have ordered it.)
4. The Silent Strength of Stones by Nina Kiriki Hoffman: This is much more in the style of Henderson. YA, as most of Hoffman's work is. The protagonist helps his dad run a general store in a recreational area and gets his kicks watching the summer people and renters, but this time the family he watches is quite extraordinary: they have Magic and they don't enjoy his watching. But Nick is not ordinary either. This book is why I jave ordered the rest of Hoffman's work.
5. M is for Magic by Neil Gaiman: I saw Stardust recently and loved it and some others of Gaiman's works are sitting on my TBR pile, so I thought I would start with this, a collection of short stories primarily in the YA accessible range. In the preface, Gaiman mentions that Ray Bradbury chose his more YA stories to put into collections called R is for Rocket and S is for Space and that he asked permission to call this collection M is for Magic. I don't think the permission was required, but the conceit is lovely and brings back memories.
6. Nation by Terry Pratchett: I love Pratchett. A really good book. The protagonist is on his manhood journey when a tsunami destroys his entire homeland. He is the last. As others float up on his Island, the interactions are wonderful. A parallel world, with a few familiar faces. A good read. (This just won a Globe/Hornbook award and will debut as a play this year.)
   
7. Why we read what we read by John Heath and Lisa Adams: Interesting discussion of what Americans have been reading in the last decades. A bit frightening to see the change, which seems to actually be similar to the degradation of the national psyche as seen through the rise of Fox News and the declination of CNN.
   
8. Zoe's Tale by John Scalzi: A look at Scalz's last book through the parallel story of Perry's daughter Chloe. Well-done, was nominated for the Hugo this year. (edit: lost to Neal Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.)
   
9. Cyteen by CJ Cherryh: After reading Regenesis, I went to Cherryh's blog and have added her to my reader. I enjoyed rereading Cyteen and will probably reread Regenesis in a few months (to have read it after rereading Cyteen): I am glad to see that Cherryh thinks she might write another (without the 20 year wait). Cyteen was as good as I remembered it, but I think Cherry's writing now is even better and smoother.
   
10. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett:
11. tales of a fourth grade nothing by Judy Blume: While wandering around the Interwebs some time ago, I wandered through circuitous paths to Judy Blume's website. I really loved her work when I was young and I am looking forward to starting to share it with Things 1 and 2 soon. I picked this up and felt as if I had fallen into my childhood, Freaky Friday, Disney movie, Bewitched. I loved it and will pick up the rest of the (re-issued) series in the matching covers when I am in the US.
12. The Language of Bees by Laurie R King: Since King's last Martinelli book (her other, contemporary detective/police series) used the Baker Street Irregulars as a primary plot ingredient, it was like a warm-up to this, the next in her Mary Russell/ Sherlock Holmes series. I always enjoy them and this was interesting and brought in what will be interesting new series characters. For this first time ever, King has closed this with, really, a cliffhanger and I hope that I don't have long to wait for the sequel and to really get to meet the new characters.
    

What am I doing today? And miscellaneous catch up.

I just got back from an hour round trip, most on the A100, to Kinder Bauernhof Pinke Panke, where Thing1 left her rucksack yesterday. It looked really cute and the area itself was way out- I saw more bike trailers than I have since getting to Germany. Lots of green. We may check this out as a family in the future, on a weekend. It looks more "animally" than Domain Dahlem, which we frequently go to.

I ran a bit late because the farmyard doesn't open until noon. Today has been another shockingly good day. Warm and no rain yet, with a blue sky and fluffy white clouds.

I have been consolidating and finding photos on my miscellaneous computers, hoping to get them all on the Mac and then backed up before the next hideous crash (it's about due). I think that I'm doing my iPhoto bck up in a painfully slow way, but at least I am backing it up. Right now I am pulling all the non-application material off the Dell that I use as a Slingplayer thrower (and which has had a defective battery for 18 months) and putting it on my Western Digital back-up drive. It will take 31 minutes, it seems. Then I will pull all the photos off that material and put it into iPhoto, after which I will burn a DVD of the library. When I did that last week, it took over 40 minutes. I think there must be some way to make a smart folder to do that, but I haven't figured it out yet.

This week I have been watching the last half of last season's Heroes, and today I am at the second to last episode: it was really good. I'm trying to clean the DVR off a bit before I start travelling and perhaps overrun my available space. I have also been taping a few movies and look forward to watching them.

A friend here in Berlin has been telling me how great Mad Men is: I have also read good reviews of the series but never started watching it. She has the first season on DVD and I said that I would pick the second up while in the US and we would each catch up. I think I will enjoy the series: it's a period that I know from books, particularly Kuttner, Kornbluth (with and without Pohl)and Bester (whose wife was herself an "ad man").

I was saying recently that I think Americans are ingenuous and naively optimistic in their views of human nature: I think this is recent and a result of the warped (although charming) view of humanity shown on TV and the general decency of American society. I think people were more cynical in the 50's and more in touch with reality and I am curious to see how the show bears my view out.

Shatner Does Palin (07/27/09)

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

Come on. Can it be more perfect?

Tuesdays without Dory and what's up.

I'm glad that TwD is optional this summer, because I am 1. exhausted and 2.not making icecream without an icecream maker.

The girls are at day camp this week and last and they have been having a good time. I think they have seen more of Berlin than I have! Although I will be off in the morning to check out one of the more interesting spots, a children's farm yard because thing1 left her rucksack there. When I got to camp to pick the girls up, she was sitting there crying. She did, however, look glorious. I think they had a hair session today, while waiting for the park to open before leaving, because her hair was done in the most wonderful updo, with two small braids, one on each side and the rest of her hair drawn up in the most adorable bun, puffed around rather than twisted. I think she had as many pins in her hair as I did at my marriage ceremony (no- she had only 16, I think I had 35:)). I took pictures in hopes that I can reproduce it for her.

So tomorrow off down the autobahn. This will be good for me because I don't like driving on the autobahn, so what does not kill me will make me stronger. Thank goodness I have the GPS.

When I was cleaning up last week for Thing1's party, I finally finished all the seasonal clothing shifting as well as packing up and away two boxes of clothing thet Thing2 has outgrown (I don't put away T1's clothes because T2 is so close behind her). I used a lot of party favors that I had brought over from the US and I can see that we are actually running through some of the supplies that we brought with us from the US 23 months ago. Without surface air, I don't think that we are going to be able to keep up with our appetite for Annie's Organic Mac'n'Cheese or Crystalight.

We have already resupplied with coffee twice and I just ground the last of my Costco Jamaica Blue beans. I have been out of Dunkin Donuts decaf for almost a month. Luckily, I am so tired that even when I drink caffeinated coffee at night (I love the taste, I like the warmth) it doesn't keep me up. Thing1 can't seem to get over waking me before 6 am and without the German to take occasional duty getting up with her I have an awfully early start to my day.

We are also running out of craft materials and small toys, so I checked Idee out last week and it's really a great craft store. Not as good (or as wide ranging) as Michaels, but the best that I have found here. They have such wonderful supplies and patterns for making a Schultuete that I feel a bit guilty not making one. Howver, Thing1 chose her schoolcone and her schule rucksack from her painfully thumbed and lovingly studied happytoys.de catalog.

The German school bag custom is amazing. The bag is so large that German pediatricians hand you a brochure warning you of the dangers of its size and weight to your tiny 6 year old child, But what can one do? Every single child has the same bag, and generally the same brand (Scout is preferred).
When I went to the school orientation for parents, I was given an unbelievably long and unbelievably detailed list of items that needed to be contained within the requisite rucksack (as well as ancillary items), all the way down to the size of the Pelikan pen and the # of the 3 separate paintbrushes. There are 10 notebooks, all to be specific colors. As I was looking over the list, another parent asked why so many and why so detailed and I burst out laughing. My response: This is how Germans are trained to be German. A few of the non-Germans laughed, but the Germans didn't understand the joke:).

Luckily, the regulation rucksack came with a number of the required items, like the two separately sized pencil cases, the sport bag, the colored pencil set (with space for the specified Pelikan left empty), the required water color set with three differently sized brushes, the bus pass holder. The bag is rigid and there is enough room for the 24 books and notebooks that she will be using next year. If I weren't dropping her off and picking her up, I wouldn't in conscience be able to let her use it. As is, I expect to carry her bag for her every day for at least the next few years.

Here and gone again.

I pulled my last post, so it's interesting to see who can comment on it:). I did so not because anything I said was too strong or because I didn't mean it, but because I was afraid that someone involved might recognize themselves and I didn't want that.

It's at times like this that I really think about moving over to Wordpress.

Summer Plans...

It's been a little harder making summer plans than I thought it would be.

First, the German keeps working Fridays. I thought I signed on to be a single parent Monday through Thursday and having him show up on Friday after the girls are in bed is breaking our bargain. The girls are pretty good, kita is wonderful and we are all trying, but it seems that I am just starting to recover from the flu/bronchitis/pneumonia that started mid-April and felt like it nearly killed me. I am still easily exhausted and I am pretty certain that what I had was originally an undiagnosed and untreated H1N1. After all, I started the entire process of my illness with IV antibiotics and things just went down from there. Clearly should have attacked with the Tamiflu. So by the time the weekend is here I am too tired to do anything and then I feel bad about not doing things. And the German keeps scheduling Friday off, then changing his flights and working.

I hope that next week mellows out, as day camp starts for the girls and it's just walking distance. I will visit a museum next week, I swear!

In bigger news, it took me three days of intense pain (and melting ear drums) to book our trips to the US. We had talked about going for some weeks ever since we decided to up our stay here for at least another two years. I worry about the fact that my children are forgetting Nana and Grandpa, particularly Thing2. Since they just won't get on a schedule to Skype, the kids are obviously going to have troubles remembering them. After all, Thing2 has lived in Germany longer than she lived in the US at this point.

But booking the tickets was a lesson in Catch-22 and circular logic. See, I wanted to book the girls' tickets with (you can't believe how much) money and our tickets with frequent flier miles (half a gift from the parents). But one cannot book children's tickets over the internet without purchasing an adult ticket at the same time. I couldn't book my ticket without knowing the children's tickets because, you know, it might be a bit awkward if 1. I couldn't get them seats on the same flight(s) or 2. if the only way to get them such tickets would be to pay so much for their tickets that I could go ahead and pay for all 4 of us for the sme price.
The second option came up three times with AirFrance and KLM. I spent hours on the phone with agents in the US and Canada (because with our rate plan it was way cheaper than speaking to people here in Germany, which I did just long enough to find them unhelpful at .14 Eurocents/minute). I'm not kidding: three days of spending hours on the phone after the girls were in bed, my brain melting and sweat pouring down my jaw from my melting ear. I got transferred, told to speak to other groups or airlines, repeatedly told to do things that were not doable, apologized to for lack of technical capacity, lied to, put on hold, transferred, dropped, lied to, told how I could do something (on the basis of which I transferred miles and wound up not being able to do that thing and freaking out), was multiply offered tix for the girls that were the same price as the schedule I'd found on momondo or other sites for the girls plus an adult... you just can't believe how horrible the experience was.
Then I spoke to someone at NWA. She was like an angel from heaven. She was able to find me a reasonable flight for the kids (versus the one I had on hold for the price of 3 of us). She was able to book it for me with the note that I had another FF flight with the required adult. She was able to seat the kids with a space next to them that I could fill in. She was able to book it as a KLM flight so that they would stop f***ing with me.
When I went back to KLM and asked them to re-book my FF flight to match the confirm number of the childrens' flights, the call center woman said,"No, it's not possible."

I lost my temper. After I explained how it was possible, the lady was actually to change my reservation to math the childrens' so that we are actually travelling together.

This process should have been easy. It was made extremely difficult and even with my saving angel of NorthWestAir I was required to pay the "over the phone" booking extra fees for the children, which really wasn't fair as it was their own systems which made it impossible to do what I would have preferred: booking on-line.

I haven't booked the husband's ticket yet: that's waiting for the transfer of yet more miles to allow me to do that. Transferring the miles from my AmEx account was problematic because we ditzed out this past month:our AmEx cards had expired and they had a no forward on the replacements. We hadn't noticed because there really isn't a lot of use for credit cards in Germany. But one can't transfer miles without a current AmEx card. So last month we had ordered new cards. They had arrived when the groseltern were taking care of the children and I had them put away where they would be safe.

I can't remember where that place is. Luckily, AmericanExpress' Mileage Rewards has a US based customer service model, and with some discussion theyw ere able to transfer the miles for me. So sometime tonight I should book those flights for him. He will be staying with us for two weeks, with my parents, and then I will be staying on another week.

With us staying here for who knows how long, we thought it was important that they know my parents, my brothers, their cousins. The trip is hideous and I'll be coming back alone with them, which is a horror I wish not to contemplate, but we think it's necessary. I'm not sure we will be able to afford the time or expense next year so I hope we can get some enjoyment this year with everyone.

I'm not looking forward to the 18+ hours travel time, though.