For Thanksgiving, J and I visited and celebrated with her co-worker AH, her husband SH, and their two cute kids A and C. I was particularly excited about this because they share an extraordinary number of coincidences with J and I. First and foremost, SH is a civilian husband who left his job to follow his wife's career in the military.
In short, we enjoyed it. Their children were absolutely adorable. Their two beagles were very snuggly and nose-driven. The food was good. We went for a jog right before Thanksgiving dinner to "pay it forward" as I like to call it. We also had some pretty good cheese (more on that later). They had a really neat yard, fully landscaped with two ponds with koi in them. Sadly, I did not get a picture of any of this even though I did bring my camera. Everything was very active with the little ones running around, J and I sleeping in both mornings we were there, and all the socializing we did.
One little trip SH and I went on was simply getting a cheese and bread appetizer before Thanksgiving dinner. It was also an excuse to have a teeny bit of guy time. SH is a really interesting guy and it was great conversing with someone who has experienced so much of what I have in the past year. About the cheese though... We got a good handful of cheeses and picked one neither of us had tried before: Gouda Chevre! First, I never knew this existed. I picked it because I'm a Gouda fan and J is a Chevre fan. Second, it was good! SH also shared a favorite of his: Rochefort. It's like a salty blue cheese. Over dinner, SH made a recipe suggestion using Rochefort cheese. We didn't try it while we were over there, but J and I think we will give it a shot if we find Rochefort cheese in town.
Random tangent: I acquired my first purely German recipe two weeks ago! I got it from one of our choir members. We were having a rehearsal with the small choir at one of the members' house. They had served a very good tasting dip, everyone loved it, and I decided to ask for a copy of the recipe. We have yet to try it, but we are very much looking forward to giving it a whirl. We know we won't be disappointed.
Another tangent: We have 5 or 6 concerts to sing this December with the choir. They are all crammed in the first two and a half weeks of the month. This will put a damper on J and my ability to visit the Christmas Markets around Germany, but this is also the "high" time for the choir, so we are excited. I haven't had this many concerts in such a short time frame since high school, and then it was with an instrument.
Yet, another tangent: Our list of Christmas Markets or "Weinachtsmaerkt" are the following: Heidelberg, Rothenburg ob den Tauber, Strasbourg, and Bruges. We don't know if we can make the last two happen. Ulm, Stuttgart, Dresden, Salzburg, and Munich are also on the list if we get our act together and contact our friends in those cities.
J and I have gotten almost all of our Christmas shopping done now which is kind of a funny feeling. We did it so that we could be sure that all of our family will get their gifts by Christmas. It had the strange side-effect of leaving J and I with no December holiday stress of worrying about gifts for anyone except ourselves for Christmas this year. J has already beat me to the punch and gotten my gifts. She'll be out of town this coming week for another CLE, so I will do shopping for her while she is away. We're also thinking of having a Christmas date night for which I will start fleshing out plans.
The dog walking front has developed in an odd way. I am about to meet up with another possible client. With travel times involved, this will put me almost at 8 hour per day capacity. This is good in that I'll be busy earning money. This is bad in that instead of being able to take on more clients, I will have to start making the judgement call of trading out clients. I suppose I could simply stop advertising, but something tells me that might not be a good idea. I should also be focusing on a more permanent and typical job. I guess that's a thought: stop advertising as a dog walker and start advertising as a more regular employee. I'll have to stew on that.
Good news for all of you! J and I capitalized on a Black Friday deal and, in combination with saving money in advance for it, we have purchased a new camera. While it is not the ideal camera we were hoping for, it does replace J's camera, which I accidentally damaged, and is a step closer to the DSLR that J ultimately dreams of possessing. It is also HD video capable, so hopefully you will have better videos and pictures coming your way by 2013!
One loose end that J and I have been working on the past several weeks is getting our Cornish Rexes over. I requested at least half a dozen online quotes from professional pet movers, and have not even received an acknowledgement of one request! These requests were make two weeks ago and it was absolutely not the response I was expecting. It is possible that our location in Germany is problematic as the only local airport is a military one. I now have to take the next two steps: consider calling each of them for a quote and firm up a game plan for simply doing it myself. I would rather have a professional do it as it would be old hat for them and might possibly be cheaper than doing it myself, but doing it myself would assure that it gets done correctly and has the added advantage of using the local airport. I might be able do it via Space Available military flying for at least crossing the Atlantic. We'll see. I have plenty of options to investigate. Our hope is to get them over by February, but we'll see if we can save up enough money in that time frame.
One final thing: J and I decorated the house for Christmas today. We kept it pretty simple, but here is a picture of the tree...
1 comment:
You are ahead of us. We still don't have a tree yet.
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