Carl's working again

Carl is officially a working man again. As of Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. That should be great news! Well, it is, for the most part. It is nice for him because he was bored with being a househusband and he now gets to work on Blackhawks again. He has missed it since getting out of the Army.

So far, he likes it, too. He has met some nice people, and really likes the team he is working with more than any of the others he met before he got his team assignment. He will be making very good money, as well as get all the German and American holidays off. He got a German bank account for us last week too; since he's being paid in Euros, we won't lose any money on the exchange rate to have it just deposited straight as Euros.

The only bad thing is that we don't have another car yet. We have been looking around but really haven't seen anything cheap enough to buy. So, that means he drops me off at work on his way in, and picks me up on his way back. I just have to either walk, hitch a ride with someone, or take the shuttle during the day if I have to go cover a story. Sounds simple enough, right?

Only bad thing is, he goes in at 7 a.m., and doesn't get off 5:30 p.m. And he works about 30 minutes away from where I work.

So, this week, I've been getting to the office around 6:15 in the morning. He picks me up about 6:15 p.m. I hate it.

So far I have learned how to sort of fall asleep in my chair in the mornings. There are Soldiers outside doing their PT, but if I leave the lights off and keep the door closed, it's still dark enough and very quiet for a couple hours. I brought a blanket from home and just sort of twist my way into a semi-comfortable position in my desk chair, sometimes with another one pulled up in front of me to stretch my legs out on. NOT FUN! Next week Kelli will be back to the office though, and she comes in at 7 or 7:30, so I won't be alone for too long in the mornings. (but that means less napping at my desk).

Don't ask about co-workers taking me home either, because I can't write about it on here. I have had a few offers, but not from anyone who lives close to us. And taking the bus is an option, but it is about an hour-long trip with all the stops and I don't know which stop is closest to us!

It's okay though, soon enough we will just buy some sort of hooptie for him to drive and it will all be okay.

On another note, Tuesday was costume night at bowling. We had big plans for our costumes but never got around to making them, of course. Then, with Carl starting work Tuesday we actually wouldn't have even had time to go home and put them on.

Some of our teammates did dress up though!

This is Lira, my boss! She was dressed as "a Tennessee Co-Ed"
And this is Regina from my office with her husband Dan.

Carl dressed as a Mexican and wore my Chevy's Sombrero from Washington that I got at my birthday lunch! I dressed as a tourist with my Grand Canyon sweatshirt and camera. Okay that wasn't actually a real costume but it almost worked.

And here's another funny photo I just have to share. I took this today at work. I was covering the Book Character Parade at one of our elementary schools here. The students dressed up as a character from their favorite book. The Grand Marshall was our commander (my boss's boss!) dressed as Mr. Incredible.

And here he is with his command sergeant major, who dressed as a Transformer.

I thought they were so funny!

Tomorrow is Friday and I get to stay home all day. Our dryer broke two weekends ago, and they are finally coming to fix it tomorrow. Did I ever write about that? How we had to start hang-drying our clothes? Thankfully there is a room in our basement that is already rigged full of clotheslines and clothespins. But, since our house is heated by oil, the clothes kind of started to smell like oil. Normally in the winter we can leave the door open and fresh air will blow into that room, but it's too cold here now. Also tomorrow our temporary furniture is also finally getting picked up. It will be nice to get rid of it but we are still sort of using it in our extra living room, so that just means some furniture purchases are in our near future too!

Saturday we are having a big get-together for my whole office at Regina & Dan's house. It is kind of our pre-Thanksgiving dinner together as everyone is bringing some sort of American Thanksgiving dish. Any guesses on what I am bringing? Green bean casserole and, of course, watergate salad! My favorite! Lira is bringing my other favorite, the cranberry mush. MMM!!!

Well it is about a quarter to six here now and Carl should be here in about 30 minutes. We had daylight savings time last weekend. It gets dark very, very early here now. It is pretty much already pitch black out there. Kind of depressing! Oh well! I'm still smiling! I will be smiling more when I get home and plop down on the couch for the evening!

Wrap-up of our week

It's around 10 p.m. on Saturday night here in Deutschland, and here I sit eating my dinner -- a yummy bowl of Honey Nut Scooters (yes, we buy the cereal in bags, and yes, it's good! Same taste for less money!) Today was a very nice day overall. I haven't posted anything throughout the week because we haven't had a lot of things going on besides the ordinary day-to-day activities. We have finally sort of fallen into a routine!

Let's start with today. The weather was beautiful. Sunny skies, light breeze, but a little cool, so I was in a sweater and coat. We started out by heading to the high school football game for a little while. I wasn't actually covering it for the paper, but since I'll have to write a small blurb for it, I wanted to go see a little of it. From there, I called Jen to see what she was up to and see if she wanted to hang out with us. She happened to be a block away, and very Jen-like, was of course up for an excursion with us. We picked her up and headed back to Speyer, the cute town I wrote about in the last entry. We just wanted to be outside and wander through some of the shops. Jen hadn't been there yet. We had a great time just strolling and doing some shopping. There was also, of course, a festival going on! So we walked through all the carnival rides and games and smelled the brats cooking. As for shopping, all three of us got a new pair of shoes and we got a really nice camera backpack bag for toting the new camera. We also enjoyed some yummy goodies and sweets, of course. Far be it from any of the three of us to pass a sweet shop or bakery! It was a fun day, capped off by a brief commissary visit and then back to the house to relax for the evening.

Last night we went to the community theater's opening night of their play season. The first story I wrote here was about the fact that the theater is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. We enjoyed going to the auditions and talking with the directors for that story so much that we decided to go ahead and buy season tickets. Last night was "Sweeney Todd." It was a good show, and an enjoyable way to spend the evening. A nice change of pace. It was really neat to see members of our little military community up there and how talented some of them are! One of the actors forgot some of his lines, and just about one whole song, but it was still okay. It was his first play so I was just impressed he was up there! The theater is doing the Sound of Music in the spring... I'm thinking of trying out! Ahem.... (imagine my singing voice....) "The Hilllls are Aliiiiive, with the Sound of Muuuusic!" Okay, so no, there's now way I am trying out, don't worry. Still working on convincing Carl to try out though...

The rest of this past week, as I said earlier, was pretty routine. I've been doing some new and innovative stuff at work and have been working with some of my collegues in Korea, so that's been pretty cool! (I am not going to write about it just yet since it is still in development).

I did have one pretty bad mishap this week though, on Thursday, when I ever so gracefully fell down our stairs in the backyard. Yep. On my way out the door to head to work. It was not fun, I cried and thought I was dying, but I am doing fine now. I bruised my tailbone (OUCH!!!) and my left elbow got pretty swolen as well. Let's just say, I stood a lot at work and have been learning to shift my weight to the right elbow if I am typing or leaning. (sitting at the play for three hours last night wasn't all that comfy either). Here's the kicker, that only I could pull off -- not only was I headed to work when it happened, but I was headed to help out with none other than... Safety Day. HaHa!!

In other big news, we finally booked our airline tickets home for Christmas!! We had planned a family trip to Disney World way back in March, booked at Disney's military resort, which is always full for the holidays. We are so excited. I am kind of ready for a trip back, believe it or not. The flights will not be fun and, ummm, not cheap, but it will definitely be worth it.

Tonight, we finally resolved an issue that's been a thorn in our side for a while. Before we left the States, we sold some things on eBay to help us build up some funds. Well, to try and make a long story short, one of our buyers recently opened a transaction dispute against us and was asking for a reversal on funds. So, I had to send PayPal the tracking information for the item, and I also pointed out that this guy had left positive feedback stating he received the item. Well, PayPal still took the money back from us! As it turns out, this guy is one of those fraudulent people who was apparently using someone else's bank account to purchase items. Carl called PayPal and gave them the information again, and finally they agreed that we were not responsible and will get our money back. What a mess. Bottom line: If you are going to sell on eBay and use PayPal, you must keep your tracking information or else you risk losing your money if something like this happens to you. I was reading through the eBay forums and apparently this bank reversal thing is a huge mess with PayPal. Anyway, we got it worked out and will get our money.

I just finished a wonderful 70-minute phone conversation with my mom! Isn't technology amazing? We are able to talk and it sounds just as clear as if I was right there with her. Amazing.

Tomorrow it's off to church and maybe a nice dog walk or something like that. I am almost finished with my most recent books, these two by Karen Kingsbury. They are wonderful. She's a Christian fiction author. I also recently finished the most recent Nicholas Sparks book. I recommend both authors. Definitely lots of reading going on here, with our limited TV channels and lack of DVD player hooked up yet. Oh yeah! Our Wii got here this week too!! We ordered it off the internet way back in September and it finally arrived. We've had fun figuring that out, although I must say I quickly hurt myself by doing too much boxing and baseball. I am, however, pretty good at Wii bowling and tennis. Carl is really good at the tanks game and some of the games of skill.

That's enough for tonight. I'll try to post more often so I don't have to post too many of these super-long posts.

Speyer day trip

Today, we went to this cute town that is only about 15 minutes from where we live. It was so awesome! We had fun and the weather was simply beautiful yet again.

We began at the Technik Museum Speyer, which includes a ton of aircraft, classic cars, old fire trucks, old organs and carousels, basically 'technical' things that you can tour and explore. It was fun. A lot like some of the Smithsonian Museums in DC, except that of course most of the displays were in German. They are good about putting up English versions on some things, but mostly we just wandered around and took lots of pictures.

After that, we went to the "Imperial Cathedral of Speyer." This place was truly unbelievable. For starters, it was built during the years between 1030-1124! Seriously! It was amazing how huge and beautiful it was and just the thought of it being soooo old was incredible. We looked through the cathedral and altar portions, and then went downstairs to the crypt and tomb areas -- yeah, that part got a little bit creepy. But it was still awesome nonetheless.

After we left the Cathedral we wandered up and down their main pedestrian area. We actually enjoyed this city a little bit more than that downtown Heidelberg area to be honest. It was wider and less crowded, and felt a little more affordable and down-to-earth. More locals than tourists, perhaps? Who knows. We were total tourists today though and didn't care one bit that we were toting around the camera and taking pictures of everything in sight! (see www.flickr.com/photos/kristenandcarl to see them all!)

We had pretzels and Cola lights and then wandered down along the banks of the Rhine River. It was mostly just a relaxing day. We have many things still there that we know we will go back to see. It's great to think that it was so close and yet still felt like a mini-getaway.

New photo page

One last blog for today (this has been a busy blog day! Wow! You can tell I've missed updating it too!)
I made a Flickr photo page for us tonight so that you can look at it and see all the extra photos that I don't post on here. It would be pretty much impossible to post everything on the blog, so I'll post some on here and let you go to this new photo site for the rest!

It is www.flickr.com/photos/kristenandcarl

Right now, it has more of our castle photos. I spent forever uploading them tonight so please check them out! I'll be able to update that regularly now too!

Pictures from the Castle

Monday was a holiday, so we were able to visit the Heidelberg Castle. Wow! It was awesome. We truly enjoyed being able to just be tourists.

The hike up to the castle was quite an experience in itself (note: if you are going to hike up to the castle, don't try to eat an ice cream cone at the same time. It doesn't work very well). We took the audio tour and the english-language guided tour so we could learn all about it. I won't post it all here because soon enough you'll all be here in your own time and will go there with us. :)

The past couple weeks have been very eventful and busy, of course. Work has been going great for me. We had our garrison Hail and Farewell last Thursday night which was fun to get together with the leadership and all the other newbies and learn about each other. Carl got a bigger cheer than I did though when they announced he was on Army Wives! It was fun. I also attended my first German "press conference" last week. All I can say is thank goodness I had one of our local nationals with us to translate! It was odd - we were at a very fancy restaraunt on the Hauptstrasse, and I was the only one who spoke English! I made it though and that story is in this week's paper.

We also tried out our bikes and found a beautiful bike trail off into the woods right around the corner from our house. It reminded me a lot of the Virginia Creeper trail we rode with my parents, only not quite as steep! I love the fact that people here bike so much. It will be fun to bike to the grocery store up the street or just go for a ride through the fields.

We made our way to the Ramstein and Landstuhl areas over the weekend too. Driving there Sunday was gorgeous, as we could look out and see all the fall colors as they have changed. It really reminds me a lot of home, except when you pass a castle amidst the trees! It's too cool!

Other than those little tidbits, we've just been doing our usual stuff! I'm going to set up a photo account for the rest of our photos so I can post more! I will post that address later.

News Flash!

We interrupt this blog to bring you this special news bulletin.... Carl got a job!! Yea!!!!!

He will be working on Blackhawks again. He will probably start in about a week or so, after the tax paperwork goes through. (In fact, the guy asked him if he was ready to start today, but then remembered there was a little more paperwork to go through). He's going to be hired as a German, so he'll be paid in Euros and will get the German benefits (such as health care and 24 paid days of vacation per year -- but all that comes at a cost of 19% tax on the salary). There are lots of little intricacies that we don't quite understand yet that are involved with him being hired as a German, but we'll figure it out as we go. We're not worried. The only thing we care about now is that pretty soon he'll be working again. Praise the Lord!

side note: I'll update later today again with pics from our trip to the castle.

Finally, internet and phone again!

Whew, what a long couple weeks it has felt like with no internet and phone at the house! haha. I'm sorry I haven't updated this but Thank You to everyone for being understanding that it has been so completely crazy here, and I haven't been able to update regularly. Just today we finally were able to get internet hooked up here at the house, and that means our American phone number works now too! For those of you who had our old Oklahoma cell numbers, yeah, those obviously haven't worked since the plane took off to fly us here in the first place. However, we do have an American phone number through Vonage. Of course I am not going to post that out here for the world to see, but if you are a family member or friend who doesn't have the number yet, drop a comment on here and I'll be able to email you the number. Or send one of us an email. Or ask one of our parents, because they have it and so far I think immediate family are the only ones who have the number.

Things are still going well. Tonight was bowling night and Carl's game is getting better each week. Yesterday was an American holiday so we finally got to be tourists! I have had to work many weekends so far, so we unfortunately haven't had much time to sightsee. We checked out Heidelberg Castle yesterday and it was awesome! Tomorrow I will have more time to write and post pictures.

We love this house and are sort-of settled. The entire downstairs is livable and will be where we spend all our time. The basement and upstairs are definitely still full of those semi-unpacked boxes, but those rooms won't have to be ready until we have our first confirmed guests. As a reminder -- we have three extra bedrooms in this house! And a basement with another guest room. No excuses! Come on, visitors!!! :)

Well, that's all I'm going to post tonight as it's getting late and I need to wrestle the phone away from Carl to call some of my family. Guten Tag everyone and thanks again for reading! :)

All our stuff is here!

Our stuff has arrived!! Yea! Yesterday, all of our unaccompanied and household goods were delivered at the same time to the new house. It was all kind of a surprise as normally the unaccompanied goods are supposed to arrive about a month before the household goods, but somehow ours all arrived together!

Yesterday was a long day of dealing with the German movers, who were not really too enthusiastic about opening boxes or listening to which room they were supposed to go to. However, everything is here, and it all seems to be in good shape on first glance. We have a house full of boxes now. This weekend (and probably for the next few months!) we will be unpacking and sorting and trying to get settled.

The only bad thing is that we have not yet been able to get internet access in the new house. That should hopefully happen next week sometime. Then, we'll also have our American phone number, finally!! :) I will keep you all posted, but for now just realize we are fine, just really busy opening boxes and re-discovering all our goodies!