Well, you've probably been wondering where I've been all weekend. To a certain extent, I've been doing worthwhile things, like eating gyros and buying instructional weight training manuals, but basically it boils down to one thing: yesterday I bought the Sims. I'd been holding back on buying it, because it's a dangerous thing to have when you work from home, but I finally decided that I waste enough time on the Internet doing things I don't really enjoy, like obsessively checking news sites, and so I might as well waste time on something I do.

So I bought the Sims, and I moved the Strangewicks into a lovely house, but they needed some neighbors. As it turned out, I'd spent part of Friday evening working on my last Santa Barbara photo album, so I was feeling nostalgic, and so I recreated a little Santa Barbara neighborhood featuring the Goats, the Buebbeseses, the Mad Moneys, and the Cohoes (complete with lederhosen and dirndl, and separate bathroom and WC). And if I may say so, I think I did an excellent job with personality traits. For example, whenever a new family moves in, Mrs. Buebbeseses marches over and makes friends, Mr. Buebbeseses in tow, but Mr. Buebbeseses generally sits on the neighbors' sofa and stares moodily into the middle distance, except when he's visiting Mr. Goat, in which case the two of them dance together. And the Mad Moneys fell immediately in love, despite the fact that they moved into the nicest, most expensive house available, and so for a while they couldn't afford any furniture and Mrs. Mad Money was sleeping on the lawn. (I should point out here that things are now going much better for them and they've already made some substantial kitchen upgrades.)

So this has all been very amusing. I think next I'm going to add the St. Rockstars, who will wear the fun clothes that the rest of us eschew, and maybe then the Bunnies. We'll all be there eventually.

I'll admit, today lacked the excitement of, say, yesterday. How often can you go to bed knowing that the whole character of a city has just changed irrevocably? Especially in a good way? Even if you hate the Red Sox and their fans, for example because you are Tizzed, you have to admit that not having won the World Series in 86 years was a huge part of Boston's civic psyche, and now, poof, it's gone. We can only hope that into this void will fall a desire to market New England-style hot dog buns the world over.

So, for those of you playing along in the home edition, here's the new, revised schedule for this weekend:

Tizzed: Not coming (he never was coming, as it turns out, we just have different ideas about what "next weekend" means when used on Tuesday).
Brett: Not going to North Carolina. Dressing up with Adam in Tomax and Xamot costumes and whipping DNC volunteers into shape instead. (Well, more or less.)
Us: Hanging out the "vacancy" sign yet again.

This is good, though. I have my last deadline for a while tomorrow (I still have work, but it's more do-whenever work than deadline work) and it'll be nice to wrap that up without needing to get ready for people. Unless someone was planning to show up, in which case, it will be very lovely to have you.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

My only regret is that I'm not at the Ganny right now.

Well, our neighbor was throwing up again this morning. I'll keep you all posted.

And in other babyesque news, our old neighbor Eileen, who talks to Ethel on the phone every so often, just called to congratulate my mother on becoming a grandmother soon, which apparently Ethel had told Eileen all about a month or so ago. My mother was surprised to hear this, to say the least, so she called me to make sure she wasn't missing some important piece of news. Which, I hasten to point out, she wasn't. Well, she was, but the news is only that Ethel is spreading misinformation (and although I suppose I can't prove this, I strongly, strongly suspect that she knows it's misinformation) all over the place for no reason. I hope at least she told George the lawn man, since that would buy me a good five or six months of him not asking me, every single time he sees me, if I'm pregnant yet, bless his heart. Probably longer if I wear baggy clothes.

Other than that, today was, as always, uneventful. I went into Oakland and did a little research, came back and talked to Adam online for three hours when I probably should have been working, blew off going to the gym (but I did walk to Oakland, so that counts for something, if not really a full workout), ate a pasta dinner that incorporated one of our last tomatoes of the year, and now I'm watching the World Series. I'm trying not to get my hopes up tonight. I'm not sure why, because I've had my hopes up for the last six games and that doesn't seem to have hurt anything, but I still feel that it might be unlucky tonight.

And finally, I would rather be kept in a dark room and flogged all day long (wow, that should generate a whole new crop of depraved Yahoo! Searchers, shouldn't it? I'll tell you, the one thing that adding a site meter has taught me is that while all sorts of people use Google, only people you would avoid on the bus use Yahoo! Search) than watch that AOL commercial with the mom. I loathe everything about her. And if I ever want a report card on my kids' online activity, I give you all permission to loathe me too. (Unless they're using Yahoo! Search, obviously.)

So what are the odds that the Red Sox could blow a 3-0 series lead at this point? It's unprecedented. Uh, practically.

I promised to do something interesting today, but really I just worked and worked out, and then watched the game. So let's see. Oh, I heard my downstairs neighbor throwing up this morning. This is the thing about apartment living--I hear all sorts of things that, in terms of my actual relationship with our neighbors, I probably should just never hear, so that the next time I see this neighbor, I'm going to have to fight the natural impulse to say "Hey, Pukey!" Shemor could say "Hey, Pukey!", sure, but I think we all know that I'm no Shemor. So naturally, I'm assuming now that our neighbor is pregnant. I mean, she's probably not, but I know she keeps kosher, so I've ruled out bad shellfish and trichinosis, and really, what else could there be?

And that's really all I got. Oh, when we were doing weights at the gym tonight, the old guy working out on the tricep machine was drinking coffee in between sets. I can't decide if I think that's completely ridiculous or Jack Palance-style incredibly hardcore. There was also another guy on some sort of cable-y arm machine who was using all the weights and also all the supplementary ring-type weights that he could find, and we all stopped to watch him and make appreciative noises, which I think kind of embarrassed him. He seemed like a nice enough guy, although clearly he could snap us all like twigs without breaking a sweat.

Oh, and Tizzed may be coming this weekend, to fill the eating-our-food, occupying-our-sofa gap that opened up when Brett and Amy and Colin bowed out. We have to give him his birthday present, after all, and it's been a while since he's been here. Tizzed would also like you all to know that he may soon be dating a Princeton-educated belly dancer. And by "Tizzed," obviously, I mean "I."

Oh, and one more thing--thanks to Robbie's mom, we now have a new vacuum cleaner. I mean, it's still in Princeton, but still, it's ours, it's apparently even better than the one I originally planned to get, and we'll be getting it soon. I'm way, way more excited than I really should be about this, but I think you'd understand if you saw our vacuum in action. It's horrid. I anticipate that our carpets will radically change color shortly after the new vacuum's arrival.

Well, our great big week of guests looks like it's not going to happen after all--Brett is going to North Carolina instead, and Colin and Amy are staying home. So now we have a clean apartment and no houseguests. Actually, it's beyond clean--it looks like someone's recently scolded it and it's completely cowed. I'm enjoying it, but Robbie feels it may be a bit of a waste.

Let's see. Yesterday we went out to lunch with my parents at the Cheesecake Factory, which opened across the river a month or so ago. It did have good cheesecake, but the service was poor, the wait was long, and the rest of the food was only okay. I'm not really sure why it's such a sensation around here, but at least we can cross it off our list of life experiences. Then we watched the World Series, and today I worked and went to the gym, and watched an interesting documentary on the stock market crash of 1929 (I suspect Matt Lippert will not be reading the rest of this entry because he's now crouched under his desk, just like we taught him in all the stagflation drills).

I tell you what, we need something lively around here, and soon, or this blog is going straight downhill. But now I need to go to sleep. Tomorrow I'll do something lively, I promise.

Well, that worked out nicely. After yesterday's sofa envy, we went over to my parents' house, and my mother gave us an end table and the extremely comfortable leather recliner and footstool from their computer room, so we rearranged the furniture and now I'm more pleased. The spare room is completely rearranged and now has the loveseat in the window, and the living room has the recliner and the sofa. I was hesitant to take the loveseat out of the living room, because I have an acquaintance who, though charming in every other regard, has vocally criticized the layout of our living room every time I've welcomed her into our home, and so I've been leaving it the way it was for spite, but this new arrangement, which I think she would approve of, really does make more sense. So I think the easiest solution is to just stop having her over altogether now.

And today promises to be a slow day. Brett and Amy and Robbie's cousin Colin are all coming this week (Colin on Wednesday, Brett and Amy on Thursday) and staying through the election to volunteer, so we're trying to clean up the place a bit. We borrowed my parents' air mattress, so at least everyone will have a place to sleep, but I have a writing project due Friday and a bunch of hourly work that also needs to get done this week, so I'm worried about having everything ready and comfortable for them. (And as much as I know this impulse is sexist and unfair, 90% of my worry comes from the fact that Amy is one of the guests. Fortunately, back when we thought only Brett and Colin might be coming, Robbie tried to assuage my cleaning impulses by saying "They're only guys, we don't need to clean if guys are coming," so now he's stuck firmly on board the cleaning train.)

Well, I think my friends are all grown-ups now. Yesterday morning, through the miracle of transatlantic cabling, I had a lovely chat with Dr. J, and we talked about the color of her new sofa, a topic about which I was surprised to find I had a lot of opinions. I even emailed her a palette idea that I found lying around the house. So that was one clearly adult friend, but I could handle that, because I'd seen the concept sketches for her living room and realized that she was no longer a furniture novice.

But then last night I was talking to Heather about her new apartment, and she told me they'd gone to Ikea earlier in the day, which made perfect sense, but then she told me that they'd only bought a coffee table and a TV stand, and I began to sense that something might be amiss, because if she didn't already have a sofa, and she didn't get one at Ikea, where was the sofa going to come from? Then she told me that they'd bought a sofa somewhere else, and I asked her the following questions:

Me: Is it secondhand?
H: No.
Me: Is it a futon?
H: No.
Me, getting desperate: Do you have to finish it? Paint it? Assemble it?
H: No, no, and no.

So now I'm suffering from envy, which is not only wrong of me but is also the least fun of the seven deadly sins, and I want new furniture. Also, I want to stop renting. Also, we need a new car. The thing that bugs me is that financially we are reasonably secure and responsible, so all of these things, or at least any decent subset of them, are technically possible now. But we don't want to get or buy or do anything until we figure out where we're going next (and maybe even next after that), and I feel like we're in a holding pattern, fully trained and prepared to land in actual adulthood but just somehow not able to do it. Argh. Do other people feel this way?

(A postscript that I swear I am not making up: after I wrote this, I called my friend from high school, because she'd emailed me maybe wanting to get together today and I wanted to let her know that we're going to my parents' instead, and she said it was no problem, she actually wanted to go look at new sofas.)

Well, that was exciting, wasn't it? The game itself wasn't so exciting, I guess, but as the ancient Red Sox curse goes, "May you watch an interesting game." So that was fine. I actually realized last night at the very end of the ninth inning that I've become a bona fide Red Sox fan, rather than merely someone who cheers for the Red Sox, when I thought to myself, "You know, it's going to be pretty impressive when they blow a seven-run lead with one out left."

And then today I went to my mother's and putzed around running errands. (I originally typed "ruining errands," but I only ruined one errand, the hemming of Dottie's dresses. I don't like hemming dresses, especially ones made of the thin, run-prone, non-natural fabrics that my great-aunts like because they're shiny and thus fancy, but I've failed to convince my mother that I can still be a worthwhile, functioning member of the family if I refuse to do any hems, so I did one today to try to be a good sport. It was horrid and I whined the whole time.) I also got some new workout clothes, although they were not made of space-age petroleum byproducts like Dr. J recommended and instead were cheap Target-brand. I got two tank tops and three pairs of shorts for $50, though, and the tank tops are in festive colors, so I'm pleased. I wore one of my new outfits to the gym tonight--yes, I didn't wash it beforehand, and I am sufficiently appalled at my own behavior in this regard that you don't need to be--and I admired myself so much in the mirror that I nearly fell off the elliptical.

And tomorrow I work and call Dr. J, not in that order. I'm extremely excited, and also intrigued by phone-card technology, but I need to get up early in order to brew myself a nice pot of coffee and work out a few bon mots, so I'm going to go to bed soon. Not to mention that I also need to be resting up for the World Series.

Well, I'm a bundle of nerves. I'm honestly not sure I can watch the game, and if I can, I think I need to do some needlework or something while I do. My hands are too nervous otherwise--last night in the ninth inning I nearly broke Robbie's hand from squeezing it. Maybe I'll start my new rag rug.

Today I did my research at Hillman and ate Indian buffet with Robbie, and that went well, and then we came home and worked out, and that was also excellent. The next time you all see me (well, not my mom, since I'm seeing her tomorrow), I fully predict that I'll be such a beefcake that I won't even be able to fit through the door.

Okay, I think I might start eating to numb my emotions. There's a snack-size banana muffin in the freezer with my name on it. Then maybe I'll call Heather and tear up the rag rug fabric and try not to hyperventilate.

And David Ortiz just scored. He is so fantastic. I think when my cousin was hopped up on asthma steroids in first grade and wrote an autobiographical essay in which he said he was a twenty-seven-year-old black man who loved to eat sausages, he was unknowingly dreaming about being Ortizzle.

Here I yam! And I'm yamming quite early today, because I'm waiting for Robbie to get back home so we can go to the gym before the baseball game and I can do a complete Dr. J International-Style Strength Fitness Workout, Patent Pending, and I'm hoping that blogging will keep me from getting too impatient while I'm waiting. I suppose I could change into my workout clothes, but it's freezing in our apartment--I'm currently wearing two sweaters--and I don't want to sit around here in short shorts for what could be the next hour.

So, I didn't start my new project today, as promised. Plans changed, and I stayed home. I'm going to the library tomorrow instead. But my mother came over and told me about another new project she wants me to work on, so I did a little bit of work on that and have several more billable hours of background reading to do, and that's good. It sounds as if this project could last about a year, actually, which would be great, although it'd be far from full-time work.

And other than that, I just went ten rounds with the space heater in the living room. I hate that thing. It heats very well when it actually works, but the thermocouple, which online sources have led us to believe should only need to be changed every ten years, blows out twice a winter. Today I changed it, which is annoying enough, but to get it heated enough to not shut off the gas I had to hold down the manual override button, which is oddly shaped and painful, for ten minutes, and then when I finally, finally got it to stay lit I shut the little access door at the side of the machine, and evidently that breeze was enough to shut it off again. Sheesh. Our landlords are not bad landlords by any means, but I'm so done with being a renter and the flimsy, cheap, secondhand accoutrements that go along with our home being someone else's source of profit, I can't even tell you. Which is annoying considering we most likely have at least two or three years of renting left to go, but there you are.

And I've realized that I've forgotten what to do with my triceps. Really, I don't think I was ready to spread my wings and fly out of the soothing workout environment of the ProVital. Hopefully the Internet will have some insight on this.

Well, I thought since tonight's game started at five, I wouldn't be stuck staying up late, but it looks like that was dead wrong. I got on the phone with Heather at the end of the ninth inning and got off the phone an hour and a half later to find that the game was still going on, and that's just not right.

Today I did laundry and cooked variety meats, and it all went pretty well, although the whole house is filled with an incredibly meaty smell, which I think will seem awfully unappealing first thing tomorrow morning. And that's pretty much it. I had casual plans to get something substantial or at least interesting done this evening, but then there was this six-hour ballgame, and that put a serious cramp in that.

Oh, but it's looking like we'll be in DC for New Year's. I'm extremely excited. We still have to figure out the rest of our holiday plans, but it should work out fine, I think. There are plans for two Thanksgivings in the works, and that can't be bad. And here I interject that the Red Sox just won. Awesome. Now I'm going to bed.

First off, you'll notice that the link to the Germany photos is now in the sidebar. Enjoy.

Today was a very nice day. I'm feeling all better from my cold--it was very mild, as it turned out--so despite the cold weather Robbie and I went to do the Steptrek, which you may remember we did last year, and it was pretty fun. The courses weren't all that different from last year, so it sort of lacked the thrill of discovery, but we took some nice pictures and got a good workout, and in our goodie bags were coupons for a free burrito and soda each at Qdoba, so we got a free lunch out of it too.

And then we came home and cooked. It went pretty well, although I can't imagine how someone could get a month's worth of cooking done in one day, as theoretically one is supposed to do. This morning before the Steptrek I made some quick chicken dishes, and then tonight we made lentil soup, pasta sauce with sausage and peppers, and uberloaf (which we also had for dinner). That's not bad, but it still leaves a lot to be done, presumably tomorrow. We're doing well on space, though, at least.

Sheesh, I'm really tired. I was making great strides with the jetlag, but I think the Steptrek wore me out. That or the overwhelming uberloafy goodness.

The project is done! I actually got it done a few hours ahead of schedule, amazingly, so I got to un-sty the apartment a little bit too. Then at night we had the apartment-house mixer, which was less rocking than last year's, but nice enough. We actually had more apartments show up than last year, which was fun, but the only people not to come were the only people I didn't already know anyhow, so the mixer aspect was pretty lost on me. We got sent home with leftover baked ziti, though, and that's always good.

Then today I woke up with that dangerous gleam in my eye that indicates I'm looking for a domestic project, and oh, did I find one. See, there's this concept that's lurking out there, right next to scrapbooking, called once-a-month cooking. It actually bears a remarkable resemblance to scrapbooking, in that scrapbooking is mainly sticking things in albums, but has gained a whole weird SAHM mystique, and once-a-month cooking is basically cooking and freezing, but it too has the inexplicable code-word allure. But we've eaten pasta, hot dogs, and caprese all summer, and (except for the caprese, which was always totally sweet), we got a little tired of our lackluster meal preparation, so I figured we needed some sort of boot camp-type event to shock us into eating normally. Hence, the once-a-month cooking.

Here's how once-a-month cooking works: you go to the grocery store and buy foods in bulk, annoying everyone else in line behind you; you cook said foods; you freeze; at some point you thaw; you eat. So far we have accomplished step one, and according to my calculations, we'll have 48 meals (for two) at the end of it. I'm slightly concerned because the volume of foods in our cart was approximately six times the volume of our freezer, but I'm trying to put that out of my head. And either tomorrow or Monday, or both, we cook (well, if it's Monday, I cook). Mostly we're making things we already know we like and can easily thaw--soup, uberloaf, chili, cassoulet--but we're trying a couple of new things too. In theory this saves money because of the buying in bulk, but I'm unconvinced on that point, because this was certainly more than I've ever spent in my life at the grocery store. Still, not having to worry about dinner for two months or so will make both of us very happy.

And now I'm just half-watching the Red Sox self-destruct and thinking about making a cooking plan. A guy at the apartment mixer last night said what I think was the quintessential Red Sox fan quote: "I'm not giving up hope until the end of the fourth game." Cracked me right up, that did. And I noticed that as soon as the pregame show started, traffic on my blog from a certain reader in Kentucky picked up significantly. Heh. I hear that, sister.

And in my last bit of news, we captioned the Germany photos. I promise there will be a link to them on the sidebar shortly--hopefully tonight, but if not, definitely tomorrow.

And here I go, again, on my own. This morning I slept in fifteen minutes later than yesterday, so at this rate, I should be back on non-jetlagged time in about a week and a half. I do have to get this project wrapped up today, though, so it's just as well that I'm up early. The project is in decent shape, but I still think it's going to take most of the day to finish.

Yesterday I went to Hillman Library to do research, and I was all set to make another report to you about the chatty employees, but then I went into the bathroom and I noted something far more alarming: the stalls in the bathrooms of the library, the library of what purports to be a top-flight research university, now have signs saying "If you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be neat and wipe the seat," all professional-looking and typed out. Granted, this is marginally more dignified than "...be a sweetie and wipe the seatie," which was on the sign in my in-laws' beach house powder room for a while, but then, my in-laws' beach house powder room has never pretended to be a bastion of intellectualism, so it was easier to let that slide. Robbie pointed out that what the library really needs (what everyone really needs, actually) is a sign saying "No friggin' in the riggin'," and I had to agree.

And other than that, I worked and worked and neglected everything else. The apartment is filthy, we have no groceries, our meals have been substandard for days, and the laundry is reaching the ceiling (okay, so the laundry hamper is in an eave, but still, it's a good two or three feet above the top). But today I will finish my work and then all that will change. I do have a new project for next week, but it's less massive, so hopefully it won't eat up my every waking minute.

Sorry I didn't write last night--I've reached a sort of stasis with my jetlag where I'm turning into either an American farmer or an extremely indolent German. I go to bed at nine our time (three German time) and wake up at six (noon German time), like clockwork. I think I have a mild cold, so I'm humoring it, but once it's gone, I'll try harder to shift to more reasonable hours.

Anyhow, Heather and Matt left yesterday. We had a lovely visit, with lots of walking and watching "Coupling" (they are now through the third season). It was very nice to not feel at all sad when they left, because instead of the several-month gap between visits that I'd grown accustomed to, I'd seen them just two weeks ago and I'll probably go down to see them again in a couple of weeks when Matt starts work. Sort of the opposite of leaving Germany, where I'd had the realization that our hosts and their city were much cooler than even I had previously suspected, but I knew I wouldn't be back for a year at least. (Also, I noticed that when Heather and Matt said they were leaving, they didn't show up again at our house an hour later, so that's another difference right there.)

And since then I've been working really hard. I have a huge assignment due Friday, and it's right on the line between feasibility and panic. I know I'll get it done, but only if I spend all my waking hours (such as those are) on it between now and then. Oh, but my mother called yesterday with some good news--we worked on this grant proposal for a new high school program in the Pittsburgh schools a few months ago (I did the demographics section, which established the need for the program), and it was a great program idea, so we both worked hard on it. They got the grant, which is great, but even better, the program officer called my mom's office to say that ours was the best of the several dozen proposals they got. So that's very motivating. And now I'm going to go start work. It's almost seven, after all, and time's a-wasting.

It's hard for me to pick just one favorite picture from our vacation, but this comes close. Note the shocking forwardness of the wolf on the far right.

As it turns out, Heather and Matt will be staying until Wednesday, because their apartment had some sort of water line break and won't be ready to move into until the 18th, so I'm not sure I'll be blogging before then. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully by then we'll have all the photos up on Robbie's home page, though.

Well, I'm back. Yesterday was a horrible, horrible day of traveling--we got up in time to make the same flight we were scheduled on the day before, but it was delayed. This wasn't really a problem, since we just hung out for a while at the airport with Big T and Dr. J, and we made our connection in Munich with plenty of time, but it set the tone for the whole day. It cracked me up, though--the day before, Lufthansa cancelled the same flight outright, with no explanations or apologies (and for those of you keeping score at home, they didn't leave a message on our answering machine, so I'm pretty sure they didn't try to contact us at all), and yesterday the flight had a one-hour delay that they apologized for during pretty much the entire flight. The stewardesses, the pilot--everyone was extremely sorry, in both English and German.

So we got to Munich fine, and the flight boarded fine (after extremely, extremely tight security--only the U.S.-bound gates had to go through security again, and we got the feeling that Munich was basically saying "You want homeland security? Oh, we'll give you homeland security all right"), but then we sat on the tarmac for an hour, making our connection in Philadelphia to Pittsburgh extremely tight. And in contrast to our earlier Lufthansa flight, we got no explanation from US Airways until maybe half an hour before we landed in Philadelphia, nine or so hours into the flight, and the explanation was, more or less, "Blame the Munich airport, it's not our fault." Which, true or not (and given Big T's opinion of Bavarians, I'd have to guess it was), failed to have a satisfying ring to it. So we landed in Philadelphia, made record time through immigration and customs, and were on track to squeak onto our flight, but as it turns out, the connecting gate was a twenty-minute walk away, with no shuttle bus and mostly broken moving walkways. We ran most of the way, something I was in shape for from the ProVital, but in the end, we missed our flight by about thirty seconds. US Airways has a neat policy where immediately after they call last boarding call, everyone manning the gate runs and hides so no one will yell at them if they miss a flight, so we got shunted around from desk to desk and eventually rescheduled on a flight two hours later. I'd been planning a great diatribe to hurl at the gate agent that featured "No wonder your airline is bankrupt," but in the end I was too tired to argue and this let us get something to eat.

And the next flight went fine, and we checked and our luggage had made it on the earlier flight (here, again, I was too tired to say "So, how's that whole bag-matching thing working out for you guys?"), which was felicitous because the luggage from the flight we were actually on was delayed for half an hour. And then we came home, and went to bed as fast as our little feet could carry us. Now we're up and I've had breakfast, and after a shower I think my long multinational nightmare may finally be over. Heather and Matt should be coming today, I think, so I should deal with that, and plus I need to work. And I see a nap in my future. I'm at that strange point now where I'm very sleepy but my body is convinced that it has to force itself to stay up. It's probably afraid we're going to the ProVital soon, actually--I am already feeling my abs clench in terror.

Ah, and I never filled you in on our last day in Muenster. We went to the Ratio, my new favorite grocery store, where Dr. J and Big T stocked up on food for the week, and then we walked into town to go to the Stadtmuseum, which was free and very, very cool. It's just a not-super-huge (although too big to see all of in the hour and a half we were there) museum about the history of Muenster, but the exhibits are very well done. They have a series of scale models of the town at various points since about 800 AD, and those were really neat to look at. Then we came home, made dinner, Dr. J showed me her concept sketches for the living room, and we went to bed, thus bringing us full circle to the beginning of this post.

And now I'm off to download our photos.

Well, here we are. And where is here, you may ask? Why, Münster, of course, the place where you will be when you are already in Münster and they cancel your flight out and rebook you instead on an earlier flight and don´t tell you, and you miss both that flight and any hope at all of making your connection in Munich (or, as you say when you are stranded in Münster, München), and all the careful effort you have spent trying not to be the sort of person who compulsively checks and rechecks flight information seems a bit useless.

But where was I, update-wise? Ah, yes, the leprosy. After the leprosy, we finished making bread and had a lovely dinner, and then Big T taught us the most complicated card game ever. I forget the exact name of it now (you see, I´m running on four hours of sleep and the agony of defeat at the moment), but Robbie calls it doppelgänger, and it´s something sort of like that. Also, we discussed possible Halloween costumes for Big T and Dr. J, which led to us printing out wolf masks for each of us and taking what, if I may be grammatically inaccurate, is the most unique set of photographs I´ve ever seen. Then yesterday Dr. J and I went to the gym, and then we all went to a Münsterland historical farm, which was very interesting, and then we walked around the local lake, the Aasee, and then we went to the supermarket to buy candy to wager in that night´s card game (and ended up picking up a belated birthday gift for Tizzed), and then we went to the Italian restaurant a few blocks away and went German bowling (which, it turns out, is kind of my sport) in their basement and then had dinner upstairs, which featured both very good food and a wine of which Dr. J became quite enamored.

And then we played cards into the wee hours, and wore our wolf masks, and had a delightful, delightful time. It was the perfect last day of a vacation, which makes it somewhat awkward that we are still here. I´ve firmly believed since my early youth that a lady always knows when to leave, which is good advice even though I did get it from Fried Green Tomatoes, and Dr. J and Big T would like to sleep and do the grocery shopping and do laundry, and here we are. But hopefully it will be okay. Everyone but me is napping right now--I am nominally working on my freelance pieces, which I was planning to spend tomorrow on--and I think this afternoon we may go to the market and just hang around, so it´ll be all right, I think. And, I mean, I certainly liked her before and all, but I believe that Dr. J and I have really bonded over the past week (sure, we could have done this during the five years that we lived a mile apart, but that sort of convenience is for wusses who don´t spend two hours every day working out at the ProVital), and every close friendship needs the glue of an awkward and inconvenient incident. At least I´m hoping.

And now I should get back to work. God willing, the next time you hear from me I´ll be in Pittsburgh.

And now I´m back with another update. Let´s see... Monday afternoon we bought Julie some socks, and then Monday night we went to Münster´s local brewery and then to a restaurant for an authentic Münsterland dinner, which I´m pleased to say consisted of wienerschnitzel topped with scrambled egg and bacon, served in a skillet. What, I ask, could be a better sign that we´re in a quality region than that?

Tuesday we went to the gym again, where Dr. J shepherded me through an ambitious arm workout that I´m still feeling today, and then we went to the grocery store, which, as is always the case in a new country, was a fascinating cultural experience. Especially the all-chocolate aisle. Then we went to visit Dr. J´s office, which is huge, and met her officemates, who were normal-sized but numerous. They are friendly people, but they are certainly no Gwinn group. Then we went out in driving rain to get a tourbook for our trip to the Netherlands, and then we had a little dinner and met the aforementioned officemates for a rousing game of bowling, American-style. This place was really authentic. Frighteningly authentic. Disneylandishly authentic. (Oh, and EV, the all-authentic-American music was, at one point, "Wonderwall.") We had a great time, although I must admit that I also played to my authentic low level of bowling ability, and I taught a nice young German woman some bowling theory. She ended up being much better than me, and I think I feel about that much as Darth Vader did.

And yesterday we went Dutch. It was a rollicking good time. First we went to a town that began with an apostrophe, 's something. It had a market and a lovely church and we also went to a frites place, where I had fries with mayonnaise that were really, really, really good. Then we went to the town of Arnhem, which also had a church, but that church closed at 5 and we got there in driving rain and bitter wind at 5:15, so that was a little disappointing. Arnhem has a nice pedestrian area, though, so we walked around there for a while after the rain let up and then had dinner next to some people from Palm Springs. And I know you all will reach your peak of enviousness when I tell you that on the way home, we stopped by the navel of the universe for all of us Big T fans--Coesfeld. I have now seen the outside of Big T´s ancestral home (not the inside, since it was late) and learned what there is to do as a youth in Coesfeld (go to the disco, drink beer, possibly drive around the traffic circle). We also got lost on a farm and took a picture with tremendous flash, probably terrifying a farmer.

And that brings us to today. We had another workout, and then we came back here and made bread and ate döners (gyros, more or less), and then we went to Germany´s only leprosy museum. Robbie´s sort-of-advisor had lent us a tourbook from 1976 that said Münster´s leprosy museum was not to be missed, so Big T had called on Monday and discovered that while the museum was only formally open these days on Sundays from 3 to 5, they also would open by request. He pointed out that his very important American visitors were leaving on Saturday and were desperate to see the leprosy museum, and the nice woman agreed to give us a personal tour in English, although she said she hadn´t spoken it in 30 years. So you can imagine the humorous misunderstandings that we were expecting today, but instead she gave a lovely, perfectly comprehensible tour of the museum and grounds (the museum is on what used to be a leper colony) and it was fascinating. We learned quite a bit and also got to taste leprosy medicine from the Middle Ages (well, a Middle Ages recipe, the medicine itself was fairly new), which was not that bad. I highly, highly recommend this tour, and the guide was great. She had all the German-English leprosy vocabulary written out on a card, which must have taken her quite a while and which she referred to frequently. But if you do come, they'd probably prefer that you do it on a Sunday.

And I´m not sure what´s in store for us tomorrow. I can´t believe that tomorrow´s our last day already, though--I´m going to be sorry to leave. I´ve been trying to sell Dr. J and Big T on a visit to the ´Burgh, though, and that´s something. I promised to take Big T to the country roads of West Virginia, and hopefully that will be incentive enough.

Surprise! Here I am. Dr. J is showering and Big T is at group meeting, so I thought I'd write a short update.

We're having a great time here. The first day we walked around Münster and tried to fight off jet lag, and then had burritos for dinner, which Robbie and I both nearly fell into out of sheer exhaustion, and then we slept from 8:30 PM until 10 AM, except that I got up in the middle and read tour books in the office for two hours. Then yesterday we toured the Münsterland, saw several castles and fortresses, and had dinner at an Italian restaurant that's about half a block from Dr. J and Big T's apartment. We slept much more reasonable hours last night, except that I got up for an hour in the middle of the night again and read the German immigrant manual that was issued to Dr. J. Then this morning I went to the gym with Dr. J. It's the nicest gym I've ever been to, so much so that I did a two-hour workout (led by Dr. J, who would make a fine personal trainer) without complaining. I have a two-week guest pass, so I think we're going back every day, or at least most days, this week.

And I've learned at least two new German words (sometimes I also know the word for mustard, but that one comes and goes). First, we have Lachs. (I'm not sure of the gender of Lachs.) Lachs is a food, and if you say it out loud and think for a second, you'll realize what it is. This is my favorite German discovery thus far. (I should specify that Lachs describes all preparations of the food, not just the one it sounds like.) Then we have the Ente (die Ente, I think), which is the duck. This is easy to remember because, like the Ents, ducks do not really care about your problems. Oh, and then there's the one I just learned in the shower, Pflegebalsam, which is conditioner. I couldn't figure out why every conditioner had Pflegebalsam in it, which I thought was an ingredient, and why the conditioners were never otherwise labeled, but then I put it together. My other linguistic endeavors included speaking German to the Italian waiter last night (as nonnative speakers, we understood each other pretty well) and harassing, or perhaps haraßing, Big T about proper use of the ß.

And that's that. Later this week we are going to the Netherlands for the day, and we're working out many times, and we're going to have an authentic Münsterland dinner, and go bowling, and that's all I can think of right now. Tschüß!

Well, I think I'm ready. I've hemmed my pants (and not too shoddily, if I do say so, although it remains to be seen how the hems hold up), I'm all packed, we tried to get not enough sleep last night so that we'll be willing to fall asleep on the plane at five this afternoon, and now I just have to get some work done before we go. (Well, I suppose I don't have to, in that the work is not due until the 15th, but I will have one extremely miserable week after we get back if I don't get at least something done today.) Then we are off, off, off.

And, despite my early pessimism about the German language and me, the signs are auspicious. Just the other day, someone in Switzerland found this site by Googling "kartoffeluhr." Thanks to a link off of Blog and the City, I have learned how to say "Lush massage bar" in German ("Lush massage bar"), and there is a Lush in Frankfurt, so if via some calamity we are stranded there, at least we'll be able to do some quality shopping. And finally, this morning in the shower, "Der Kommissar" was playing on the radio. Indeed, signs are pointing to yes.

Keep it real. I'll be back on the 9th. Maybe, for you, the 10th.