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.