Cheryl on the Web

If you read my post about alarm clocks around 2 weeks ago, you may remember how happy I was to have finally found a great new alarm clock from Grundig, after arduous searching. So, you can imagine my disappointment when, shortly thereafter, I discovered that the very first “1” on the alarm clock displayed more like a “d” than a 1. At the Media Markt, the store where I bought the clock, I returned it for a new one .. so you can probably understand my growing frustration when the replacement had an alarm that incremented one minute every second. Set the alarm for 07:00, wait 60 seconds, and then check it, only to discover the alarm is now set for 08:00! Even cooler: hold down the alarm button to view the alarm time, and watch the alarm magically increment itself.
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I’ve crossed a new frontier in terms of things it is hip to do in the 21st century. What might I have done, you wonder? (and, even more interesting perhaps, what is on my list of things hip to do in the 21st century?) Well, it wasn’t video chatting on a mobile phone (I don’t even have one); it wasn’t the purchase of a new 8-megapixel camera (though that would be nice); and it wasn’t online game play (even though that’s out there and I could in theory if I wanted). No, after having purchased a new Canon printer almost a year ago, I finally managed to print some digital photos this week! But the road was long and full of setbacks…
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All around us, technology is improving: in computers, in cars, in games consoles, in mobile phones, even in our cable boxes. But one device in particular seems to be lagging behind the rest of the crowd. Any ideas what I’m referring to? (more…)

Tonight after dinner, as Tim and I were clearing off the table, Tim turned to me with an empty plastic container and said, “Where shall I put this, O Almighty Ruler of Recycling?” And he was serious. I often manage to catch him breaking one of the all-important recycling decrees in Germany, so he should be serious! :) (more…)

My parents left Sunday for the US after having been in Europe for just over a week. Their trip was a last minute one, planned about 5 weeks in advance (which is last-minute if you ask Mom:). Tim and I were thrilled that it all worked out and that they were able to come; the last time they came to visit us in Europe, they planned the trip months in advance and by the time they got to our house in Holland, everything was in moving boxes and we were about to move to Germany! They spent last Saturday and Sunday with Tim and I, then on Monday they left for Salzburg, Austria - where I joined them on Thursday. Friday the three of us drove west to castles in southern Germany, then north towards Aschaffenburg on a series of roads that together are called the Romantic Road. Tim was on a business trip most of last week which is why he couldn’t join us. My sister Becky was in Florida finishing up the school year as a teacher at Sarasota high school; if she would have been able to join us everything would have been 100% complete.

We had lots of good times. Just watching Dad eat a real German breakfast of crusty breadrolls and deli meats was enough to get the day started off right. Then there was the humour of driving down German country roads, one scenic view after another, while both Mom and Dad struggled persistantly to get their camera to take a picture of it. (If it wasn’t the batteries, it was the forced flash or the lens lid not being open that foiled their efforts. I eventually improved at leaving the highway on command for photo-op scavenger hunts. If you speak with them, tell them they need a new - modern - camera.) Of course, no one expected that I’d beat them all at the game “Hotel” back home in Aschaffenburg. The big topper was during one of the final rounds of pinochle with the four of us, when jet-lagged Tim made a cryptic bid in response to my opening bid and refused to give me, his partner, any explanation other than “that’s for me to know and you to find out”!

Between the four of us we managed to collect a decent amount of photos. I’ve posted the ones that are most meaningful to me on Bubbleshare (click on the scrolling images). Mom and Dad have more pictures they took in Salzburg but I wasn’t there for a couple of those days so I left them out.

Tim and I have put my parents to bed, in our house in Germany. They just arrived in Frankfurt from Ohio, and during the house tour they went into the bedroom .. and just never came out :) You can’t really blame them though - they were scheduled to arrive yesterday morning!

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The very nature of a blog is that it’s public, open to friends, family, and the random Internet surfer. You’d be surprised sometimes how a blog can connect people together; I think it was only a month ago that a random visitor from Texas contacted me asking if I knew how to arrange concert tickets for some band performing in Frankfurt. The thing is, if you follow a person’s blog carefully you can get to know a frightening amount about them. So, for just that reason, I didn’t post in advance to my blog that we were out of town this week on a 5-day vacation .. but now I’m back and ready to tell you all about it.

We went first to Leipzig, then to Dessau, then to Berlin (yes, we stayed in Germany). (more…)