Archives for February 2005

Hi everybody… how was your weekend? Mine was pretty good… I love hanging out at home doing nothing but sleep, watch movies and read :)

Friday night I went to the Bookclub – Robin was so nice as to host again, but except Silke and I nobody showed up … and I couldn’t help but tell them that I feel that the bookclub is falling apart. Robin’s going to move to the Bay area in two weeks, Silke will return to Germany next month, Rachel doesn’t seem to be very interested anymore and Antonia didn’t show up the last two weeks and didn’t even let anybody know.
That’s not a good sign, is it?

Saturday I slept in… what a surprise! It feels like I don’t even wake up before 11:00 a.m. anymore! ;) But maybe it was just because I really had the urge to write a letter when I came home Friday night and didn’t go to bed before 2 a.m. :) In the afternoon, I spontaneously decided to go to the hairdresser and get a haircut. I hadn’t had a haircut in months and I thought it was high time to do something about my hair… now it goes just below my shoulder and I got some layers for more volume! I like it and J likes it, too :)

Then I went to the “Used Books”-Store in Sacramento that I found on the web and bought the book (see below) that Robin recommended. I’ve already read the first two chapters and it’s really interesting!! :)
Afterward I went shopping and then cooked a great dinner with J! It’s so much fun to cook together :) In the evening we watched “The Terminal” with Tom Hanks. We were really lucky, because the Netflix movies were already in the mail on Saturday (so they were shipped within one day, which is a great turnover!! :-)) The movie was ok – honestly, I expected a little bit more, but… oh well!

Sunday was pretty lazy… except for our our workout! There is no better feeling than after you’ve worked out for an hour :) we felt great!!
After that we had some coffee, read, watched TV and after dinner we watched another DVD, a German movie called “Echte Kerle” (Regular Guys). I was really surprised to see that it was available at Netflix and since one of the main actors (Tim Bergmann) went to my school, J had to see it!! He really liked it, although I have to say that the subtitles were pretty bad at times… they didn’t capture the German humor at all! Fortunately J understands a lot of German, so he didn’t have to rely on the subtitles alone!! He really thought it was a fun movie and that it is funny that Tim Bergmann went to my school… he couldn’t help but mention that Kevin Costner went to his Elementary School (the only difference being that he wasn’t born back then :) ).

Yesterday we stayed at home and just enjoyed being with each other. We went out for dinner to “Fresh Choice” and I had a huge salad and their really delicious bread with garlic spread! *yummy* Then we went home and watched the last three episodes of Sex and the City‘s first season :-D Fortunately I’ve already ordered the second season at Netflix for next weekend!!
Then we watched “The Battles of Algiers”, a movie that Jon picked out about Algeria’s struggle of independence from France in the 1950’s. It was a good movie, but reading the subtitles the whole time was kind of exhausting and I fell asleep after half of the movie was over. I just couldn’t help it… it was getting too late ;)

So, how were your weekends, guys???

Hey there… good news! I FINALLY got my California Driver’s License *wohoo* :) I almost thought I would never get it…
Wednesday night we went to Davis to see Claudia for her belated birthday party. We got her a gift certificate at Borders and we also got a bookmark for her sister Britta, which we hadn’t met, but she’s her twin, so it was her birthday, too.
Claudia said that you can tell that I am a twin myself as nobody else would have thought of getting her sister a gift :) oh well, yes, I know how that is!

They also had invited another couple, Ben and Stacey. Ben is German, too and he comes from the same town as Claudia and Britta. He got married to Stacey last year and lives in Davis as well. The world is a small place! We had a really good time with drinks and snacks and a lot of talking and J and I went home much too late. So that I was really tired yesterday… but hey, it’s almost weekend and we get Monday off (it’s President’s Day!) :)

We set up an account with NETFLIX yesterday :) It’s really cool, because you can chose from thousands of movies and you can set up your own movie list and also change priorities online, so you’ll always get the movie that you want next!! We already ordered the first three movies and they got shipped earlier today, and since one of the distribution centers is here in Sac, I am hopeful that we’ll have the movies for the weekend!!

Didn’t do much last night… we did the laundry, watched two episodes of SATC and I went to bed kind of early, because I was so tired!

Plans for the weekends are… sleeping… reading… sleeping… watching movies… sleeping… snuggling with J… sleeping….*lol*  and maybe go someplace (in case it stops pouring! The weather is really nasty right now!)

So, I hope you’ll have a great weekend, too! :)

I like this quote :-)

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

H. L. Mencken
US editor (1880 – 1956)

Hi everyone.
I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine’s Day!! :-D Since J and I made the whole last week a “Valentine’s week”, we just had a cozy evening at home on Monday. I think I totally got J into “Sex and the City“, because he volunteered to watch two episodes with me!! That was awesome :-)
First we wanted to watch 7th heaven but they turned the Valentine’s episode into some kind of musical – everybody had a singing part and it was just ridiculous, so we decided NOT to watch it :-D

Friday night I usually go to the bookclub -as you know – and we wanted to watch “The Notebook”. I was dying to see that movie (because I have heard so much about it), but then I didn’t feel like driving to Davis Friday night and decided to stay home with J! But now he has to watch “The Notebook” with me sometime ;) I made him promise *hehe*

Well, and then we have a cat since Saturday… this is “Lenard” (or “Lenny” as I call him :))

Saturday morning when Jon wanted to take the trash out, he opened the door and the cat sprinted up the stairs into our apartment. It walked around everywhere and then took a nap on our couch… J gave him (as we found out it’s a male!) the name “Lenard” :)

It was a beautiful day and we went shopping later and when we came back, Lenard was still sleeping on our couch! He just didn’t want to leave… we finally had to kick him out before we went to bed. Since he was wearing a collar, I assumed he had an owner and would go home.

But he didn’t… the next morning, when J opened the door, he was sitting on our doormat. And J let him in again… he spent the whole day at our apartment.

We went to Fairfield (which is about 45 min. from Sac) around lunchtime and finally followed through with our plan to go miniature golfing :) We had thought about doing that for quite a while and even though the weather wasn’t as nice -it was cloudy and windy- we had a lot of fun!!! Hey, and I won… which is really a rarity!! ;)

On the way back we stopped at the store to pick up some cat food – we gave Lenard some tuna on Saturyday, but we thought it would be a good idea to get some “real” food for him!

So, he stayed with us til yesterday morning and I was wondering how much longer he would stay with us… we really don’t know where he came from or to whom he belongs.
Maybe he’s one of these outdoor cats how finds himself a new home every couple of days ;)
Anyways, I came home from work yesterday and Lenny was gone. J told me he kicked him out, because he was getting headaches and he was pretty sure it was because of the cat. I was sad somehow because I kind of got attached to Lenny already :( oh well… it wasn’t our cat in the first place.

J and I went to BestBuy later to buy a vacuum cleaner (the very old one that we had broke a few weeks ago) and then we spent quite a while at “Barnes & Nobles”…. I love bookstores!!

Happy Valentine’s Day !!!!!!!! :) :)

Yay… good news – I got a phone call from the DMV the other day and they will FINALLY send me my driver’s license… it’s “only” been three months. Don’t know what took them so long again, but apparently everything has to be “checked with the Department of Homeland Security” – whoohoo. Obviously they couldn’t find any reason why to refuse issuing my driver’s license.
So hopefully I’ll have the little plastic card in the mail soon

Oh yeah, and then I totally forgot to tell you that they were chasing a robber outside of our apartment the other night. It was between midnight and 1:00 a.m. (Sunday night?!) when we were woken up by a helicopter whose search light shone right into our bedroom window (well, that’s what it felt like!) Then we heard police dogs and Jon peeked out of the window to see what’s going on.
The gate to our apartment complex was open and he said that police men with dogs and flashlights were walking around.

Boy, I was kind of scared. Well, as mentioned earlier, it was “only” a guy who robbed a convenient store near by that they were looking for – but I didn’t know that back then and J’s comment -that they’d had better look for a murderer or something, otherwise he would be seriously offended for disturbing people’s sleep in the middle of the night- didn’t really comfort me!
J stayed up until 4 a.m., but I was pretty tired and had to get up early, so I tried to go back to sleep after an hour.
I am just happy that it was nothing “too serious”, because we’re getting used to seeing the helicopter all the time!!

Anyways, work has kept me busy the last few days and now I am out of here!

Oh my goodness… I am getting behind! Things are just crazy around here right now. I’ll try and see how far I can update you today ;-)

Our weekend was great. Friday night I went to the book club – as usual- and we were meeting at Scott’s place. He just recently moved into this really nice house with two of his colleagues and it’s a great place for the meeting. I also realized that it is a lot more common here for -let’s say- “middle-aged” people to live with roommates than it would be in Germany! There it’s only a College thing, here it’s just the way it is :) One of Scott’s roommates has this really cute little dog which always gets so excited when people come over and it jumps on your lab and tries to give you a ‘French kiss’ it’s really hilarious!! Here’s a picture of our bunch:

(me, Antonia, Scott (and Naima), Claudia and Robin)

Isn’t the dog just adorable?? :)
I brought Claudia along this time (since she’s been back from Germany for two weeks already) and I thought she would like something to do (as she’s not legally married to Stoyan yet and hasn’t gotten her Green Card and work permit).
We had a fun night talking about “the virtues of idleness” – a really interesting article by Mark Slouka. Have you ever thought of taking a break to think and contemplate about what is important in life and what isn’t?
For most people it’s “all about their work” and they don’t realize that they are missing out on the best part of life… “being idle” for at least a little while :) It was funny how the author found a way to incorporate the current administration into this topic and how “keeping people busy” prevents them from thinking and realizing how many things are going wrong in this country! Make sense to me!

Anyways, we had a fantastic time and Scott made some really good “bread pudding” *yummy*

Saturday we went to the Sacramento Zoo with Claudia and Stoyan. It was a beautiful day and since it was Free Admission Day, I thought it would be a great idea to use this opportunity and go out! :-) Well, a lot of other people had the same idea. When we got to the Zoo, the place was packed (and so was the surrounding park and Fairytale Town). We even had to stand in line to get in! Fortunately it didn’t take too long.

The Zoo itself was pretty small – compared to San Francisco Zoo – and we were done after about 1.5 hours. I had hoped that they have Koalas there, but they didn’t… but all these cute other animals.

Later we went to Coffeeworks for an Iced Coffee and a nice chat. We had a great time and therefore we invited both of them for dinner at our place. J thought it was high time to start the ‘BBQ-season’ for 2005, so we had bbq-ed T-Bone-Steaks *yummy*, my famous potatoes and salad.

Sunday was the Superbowl – a very important event in every American’s life *lol* oh well, then I guess? J is not a ‘real’ American, because even I was more interested in the game than he was Usually people get together for a Superbowl Party, but J and I decided to watch it at home on TV… nice and cozy on the couch :)
The New England Patriots played the Philadelphia Eagles and J wanted the Eagles to win (mainly because the Patriots won the Superbowl last year). I – of course- as a New England fan had to cheer for the Patriots (secretly ;))… and they won!! It was a really exciting game and I actually did understand some of the?game (after J helped me out a little, as I had forgotten most of the rules again ;)).
One thing was annoying though… commercials every 10 minutes it bothered me, so you can imagine how much more it bothered J!!

Alright… that’s it for now. Talk to you later.

Yesterday J and Chris went to Napa Valley… Oh how, I wished I could have gone with them. Which makes me think: Why didn’t I take the day off? I had originally planned to take today off and go to SF with my friend Ilka, but since she canceled her plans and didn’t come to visit me from Wednesday to Friday I ended up working both days. BUMMER!

We had a fun time though with J’s brother. The two are so funny around each other… there are not two brothers on this face of the earth that could be more different than these two ;)
Tuesday night we went for a walk at Oldtown which is a really beautiful part of Sacto, although it was kind of boring this time as everything was closed already (shops, coffee-shops…etc.) and not many people were out. Only a few restaurants were open and we decided to have some Mexican food at a place we had been to before.

Yesterday they picked me up from work and I gave them a little tour of my office… Chris was really impressed (as most people that I show around here!! ) and he liked all the great posters that we have on our walls.
We had some appetizers when we got home, because they bought a hell lot of stuff in St. Helena at one of these tiny Delicatessen-shops… ham and cheese and fresh baguette. It was delicious! We started watching the “State of the Union”- speech by Bush at 6 pm, but switched over to the Simpson’s after a while. I think I don’t need to explain which of the two was more entertaining… (although I find Bush quite funny). Later that night I made some Spaghetti Alfredo with Spinach and Shrimp and a big salad which were really good, too, and we all felt kind of stuffed afterwards.
J had to lie down (he felt kind of sick) and Chris and I watched an episode of “Law and Order” and then one episode of “Sex and the City” (because I missed the first show Tuesday night).
This morning J took his brother to the airport again… that’s how fast three days go by! Oh well. It was great to see him anyways!