I suck so much that it’s been so long since I’ve been a good little blogger that I actually forgot my wordpress password!

*headdesk*

Jacob and Linsday, feel free to delete me from your…um….brain.

In the meantime…posts about English, dog training, and Britney Spears are forthcoming.  WATCH YOUR BACKS.

I smelled pot for the first time since leaving Hampshire the other evening. I am very used to cigarette smoke at this point, but when I walked into the stairwell of my apartment I paused and wondered why I was suddenly reminded of school… and then I realized it is because of the cloud of pot smoke! I am on the sixth floor, so walking up the stairs smelling poit was very nostalgic. It was exactly like I was doing rounds in Merrill A again.

Oh Merrill A.

Today was sunny for the first time since I arrived in Berlin! I had a whole two hours of sun with the hint that it might remain sunny for at least part of the day. The walk to school was definitely more enjoyable in the sun. It is funny what you forget to miss when you are used to not having it!

Guten abend from Berlin! I have been quite busy for the past few months, but now I am here in Germany and somewhat acquainted with the city and ready to start spilling my adventure stories! To start with, here are the top ten things that have surprised me (thus far) about Berlin.

1. I always push the door when I should pull and pull when I should push. It must be backwards from what it usually is in America, because I ALWAYS do the wrong thing. And it is always awkward.

2. The keyboards here have the y and z switched, among other things. Typing is slightly off… when I am not paying attention it would go like this: Hez! I hope zou are having a great daz! But I am learning to switch it fairly rapidly, so hopefully I will be back up to my normal typing speed soon. I wonder what that will mean when I switch back to an American keyboard?

3. Crossing the street is weird. I never wait for lights to cross the street, you just cross when there are no cars, right? WRONG. And also, when the walk light is green, cars can still run you over.. and frequently try.

4. “Subway” (S Bahn, U Bahn here…) tickets are on a on-your-honor system with a little bit of fear. You buy a ticket, but you do not have to show it anywhere or validate it when you ride the train or anything… however, randomly they “control” you which means undercover agents are on the individual cars and once the train is moving pull out their official badges and make everyone show them their tickets. If you do not have a valid ticket, it is 40 Euros. Yikes! I have been controlled once already. It is actually pretty exciting as long as you have a valid ticket.

5. Food is really cheap in supermarkets. (And supermarkets are really small.) I went in and bought things for the whole week (meat, cheese, bread, etc. plus some random fun things like chocolate pudding) and it was under 9 Euro.

6. Most of the people I have met thus far do not speak German as their first language. This is due to the fact that I am attending a German language school, where everyone is learning German. Oddly enough, almost no one there is also a native English speaker. So communicating on any level is a mosh of German, English, Portuguese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Arabic, Spanish… etc. Right now I am going to be learning Turkish in addition to German because I live in the Turkish center of Berlin, Kreutzburg.

7. The city, as far as I can tell, is made up of parks, canals and waterways, graffiti, cobblestone, bicycles and very large sidewalks. The buildings are a weird conglomeration of super old, super new, super falling a part and most have graffiti and murals covering the sides. Also, the whole city is gray in the winter.

8. EVERYONE smokes. I thought Hampshire was bad but here… yikes. My clothes are beginning to smell like smoke, and I hate it.

9. Beer is cheaper than water and they do not give you tap water unless you ask, and even then they think you are crazy.

10. Berlin is the city for bikes, dogs and street cleaners. I have walked with four street cleaners already in my first week of being here! They cruise along at about walking speed, so if you are headed in the same direction it is like you are walking with them. They are very friendly, but a little loud.

I opened up the Gnu Image Manipulation Program (a free open-source image editing studio similar to photoshop) just to play around with some filters. I used HSV Scatter to make a starfield and then I found myself desiring to put things in said star field, so I made a nebula cloud and then it just spiralled out of control. So, here it is, the new e-Christmas card for some friends of mine. So best future holiday wishes from Scott and Kt!

On the new Celestial Seasonings Chamomile Tea box:

“”Inkwells and teacups are never so full as when one upsets them.” – Edith Wharton

What say you?

So, I’ve been writing a lot, finally.

In the week and a half before Christmas, I wrote a story currently titled “The Master Clock,” about 6500 words. It’s in editing stages. I sent it to a couple people to read and I hope they like it. (I already know where some of the problems are. Eeek. I wish I’d proofread it before I gave it to them, but I needed it out the door to feel good about myself.)

Since Christmas eve, I’ve laid down 7500 words of a story “The Crystal Face of God,” and it’s almost drafted. I think I have a fair amount more editing to do on this one though, and at least another 1000 words to add or more, because I just filled in some details so I could get to the end and have it all down.

Both are entering the editing stages. I have a few more stories in the brain pipeline that I might start working on while editing, but that will require me to pay special attention to time management, making sure I can finish everything.

Woo, productivity! Sadly, I have real work tomorrow morning, and I am up past my bedtime.

Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band needs stationery.

Okay, that’s enough procrastination. I actually have a story to write. Happy Holidays!

As the snow blows sideways in this wonderful storm, I want to relate to you a really meaningful interaction I had with a three-year old this morning.

There’s this little boy who we’ll call ‘Jack’ for the purposes of this story. Jack is three years old, intelligent, articulate, and imaginative. He was in our parent-child program for a few sessions, but now he’s old enough to take classes by himself, with a group of other children his age. This is his first real class.

He is also L-O-S-T lost in his own world. Lost like wandering off during activities, collecting bean bags and rubber stars and stashing them under various mats in his own little game, that sort of lost. Lost like swishing his saliva around in his mouth to the point where it bubbles out and you have to say, “Jack, why don’t you go get a tissue from your mother,” because there’s really no polite way to breach the subject in the middle of class. (Don’t say, ‘eew,’ because I know you all did that when you were three or four, or twelve or twenty, in the shower by yourself.)

Now, I have no problem with this in general, because I think kids should have as much free play in their lives as they want — especially three-year olds. No sense in sticking them in structure if they don’t want it, except when their parents are paying two hundred mumble dollars for you to teach their wee one to roll over and stand on one foot.

But it really actually is a problem when you have seven three and four-year olds in a gymnasium and one of them wanders off, because then the other six get it in their heads that they can just go play too, and suddenly you’re herding… well, cats would be too easy. And safety wise, you don’t want oblivious kids wandering unsupervised around the equipment because “they could get hurt.” And it’s my liable ass that has to make sure they only get the good type of excitement.

Anyway, at the end of class, my co-teacher ‘Lisa’ and I take the kids over to a carpeted wooden pirate ship that was built specially for the gym. It’s probably the most rocking-awesomest thing in the world, with a steering wheel, slide, rope ladder, plastic rock wall and an honest to gosh plank that kids can jump off into the pit. Now, usually kids like to haul on the steering wheel a bit and then go down the slide, or they like to climb up to the plank and jump off, over and over. There are a special few who find the crawl space under the rope ladder and rock wall, and my little friend Jack is one of them.

Generally, I let them stay under there for a few minutes. At least I know where they are and that they can’t get hurt and won’t hurt anyone else. But eventually (being less than five minutes), it’s time to go. Now I have to get this kid to let go of his imagination for long enough to get him back to mom.

“Jack,” I say a few times to get his attention. He crawls out from behind the rock wall and looks at me through the rope ladder. While I address him, he starts fiddling with the ropes. “Time to come out,” I say.

“But I need to fix my windows,” he says. He picks at the ropes a bit more, but keeps an eye on me too.

“You need to come out now and either take your last jump into the pit or go line up with Lisa.”

He turns and looks at me straight on, with this intense gaze that only a smart, preoccupied kid can have. Then he scrunches his eyebrows together and in his adorable three-year old voice says, “Jacob, you don’t understand me.”

I love kids. He totally won my heart today.

I made a yummy trail mix. All ingredients bought at Trader Joe’s.

roasted, salted almonds
roasted unsalted sunflower seeds
roasted salted, shelled pistachios
raisins
dried cherries
chopped dried pineapple (unsweetened)
chopped dried mango
chopped chunks of fruit leather ends (they sell packages of these. It’s like buying turkey or cheese ends from the deli…)

I put enough of each in to make it a pleasing color. This is, I suppose, a good way to go about any sort of ‘cooking’ project. The sunflower seeds are a bit small so they keep sliding to the bottom, and the last handful is always overwhelmingly sunflower seeds. Oh well. It is not too sweet or too salty though.

It’s an experiment to see if I can get enough extra protein and sugar to keep going through the really active days at work. I don’t like regular trail mix because it always comes with peanuts or other things I am picky about. This way I get to make it how I want. Next time I am thinking of putting chopped dates and figs in.

Yum yum.