Christmas, 1957-ish

I am working on putting together a bunch of old family photos, and I have this one of my mom as a little girl, coloring under the tree with her dad. Cute. What's with using the right hand, mom??

Merry Christmas!

So, I'm a little late with this one. We were very fortunate to have the Springers visiting us for Christmas this year- sorry Justin, I think it's pretty obvious who they love the most- but almost everyone got sick at some point over the holiday. We are fully recuperated, and are now catching up on things like this.
Here are some pictures of the kids, no explanations necessary:
OK, maybe one comment: Mom, of course Aidan loved the light saber, but you HAD to know that this was coming:And I just want to say those are Christmas presents that we just opened all over the floor...mostly...

I did mention I'm going to be a teacher, right?

I think my teaching ambitions are spilling over into my personal life. Here is a craft/art project I have been forcing Aidan to do for the past two seasons.

Here is our Winter tree, with snowy fingerprints:And here, under our alphabet and other seasonal projects, you can see our fall tree, with leaves we picked up on walks, pressed, painted, and taped on, all STRONGLY against Aidan's wishes. It's good for you, kid!
I am already planning my-uh, OUR- spring tree- I see a bird's nest, definitely, possibly involving some weaving, maybe some pom-pom chicks peeking out... this is totally my element.

I made a quilt!

Well, I made it a while ago, but here is the final product. The front is made from Ava's receiving blankets from when she was a baby, and the back is some crib sheets I pieced together. It is really no great example of terrific sewing, or quilting, for that matter, but I was happy to make it for my sweetie pie. Of course, the first thing Aidan said was, "Where's MY quilt?!" so I am already planning a superhero one next.
You can see the back better here:

My "little helper" pulling it off of the crib... thanks a lot!

I'm thankful this year for... cheap air fare!

We went to Stockholm last week, continuing our tradition of being international over Thanksgiving. 2006: Italy; 2007: England; 2008: Sweden. We have almost forgotten the American traditions at this point... what is it you all do, eat a chicken or something?

So, here is a picture of the little apartment we rented. I am standing on the stairs taking the photo, there is a tiny bathroom and kitchen counter to the right... and that is the entire downstairs. Good thing we like each other!
We went to the Junibacken, which is a museum dedicated to Swedish children's authors. It has a Pippi Longstocking house, two adorable playgrounds that look like some other stories, and a ride through a pretty dark story called, "The Brothers Lionheart." It is about some brothers who die and are reunited in the afterlife, where they must fight an evil dragon, who paralyzes one, and then they commit suicide. Talk about goth. On a lighter note, here is a cute mobile of some characters from the playground room:
Ava hiding in a giant mushroom:
Aidan, Nordic skiing:
On to the Vasa Museum. They brought this 300-year old ship up out of the bay about 10 years ago. Apparently, it sank on its maiden voyage, before it even left the bay. So much for being the prize of the Swedish navy at the time...

OK, next day. Cute architecture in Gamla Stan ("Old Town"), followed by the little Christmas market there. Aidan ate three waffles, and Joel bought reindeer meat sausage. Yum!
Changing of the guards at the Royal Palace:

And, finally, trying to ice skate with Aidan. I only fell once, which is a miracle, because I think he was only on his skates for about 8 seconds at a time. It was pretty fun, though. I liked being the one to go do something with him while Joel waited with Ava. By the way, this picture was taken at THREE P.M.!! Sweden is freaking DARK.

Om nom nom

This is an actual window sill that we saw in Verona, Italy while we lived down there. The house lures unsuspecting vagabonds in through the window with the scent of delicious pasta, then eats them.

Hipsters, help me understand...

Let's just get down to it- WHY?????



This is actually my listing. I was searching for a tea set for Ava for Christmas, and somehow I came across a set of six POM tea glasses, with no lids, that were selling for over $60. I have no idea what the final price was, but I can not imagine why someone would pay so much for used drink containers. For those not in the know, these are just the containers that the tea comes in when you buy it at the store- like the old glass milk bottles. Whatever the reason, I'm cashing in.

A few months ago, I had a bunch of these, and thought they were cool, so I saved them. When we moved, Joel freaked out that I had moved "trash" to another country. I saved six and recycled the rest. So, now those six remaining glasses will finance a huge chunk of the kid's Christmas gifts. AWESOME!! To quote Steve Carell on The Office, "How do you tell someone you care about, 'I told you so?'" Indeed.

Oh, and to any hipsters reading this- ahem, Byroms- here is the link for you to get your bid on.

Terrance and Phillip?

After dinner this evening, the kids and I watched a couple of monkey movies on YouTube. Aidan was thrilled with the idea of having a monkey movie on the computer that he decided to make his own with some stuffed monkeys that he had. This was the result:




It's worth noting that Aidan has never seen Terrance and Phillip. I guess that form of humor is just universal.

It sounds better in German

I had the day off today as part of the Veteran's Day holiday. Aidan had pre-school this morning, so Jessica and I were able to go have a coffee and strudel at the mall with only Ava to watch. While we were there, I saw this cafe:



That's right, Wiener Cafe. No, it's not a gay coffee shop; Germans just like to put "wiener" into the titles of many different things. I submit for your approval: the wiener schnitzel.

Doing it wrong?

In a previous post, Jessica had mentioned my current fascination with "hypermiling". I read a story about it in Popular Mechanics, or some other such magazine, and it seemed like an interesting idea. Unfortunately, I was unable to accurately track my MPG due to the way that we had to get fuel in Italy. It's a long uninteresting story, just take my word that it was not feasible.

Germany, on the other hand, is another story entirely. Once we arrived here, I was able to accurately track the amount of gas that I was getting at each fill up. So after being here for a couple of months, and having multiple fill ups, I'm able to present some of my initial results from my hypermiling.

This chart shows the first four fill-ups since I arrived here in Germany in on June 1:



I should preface that chart with some facts about the situation. I have a '94 Fiat Tipo (four-door compact). My driving is almost entirely city driving to and from work; it's about a 7 mile commute through stop and go traffic. My best MPG was 36.07 on 31 Jul, and my worst was 30.28 on 1 Oct. The average of the four months is 32.67 mpg. I'm a little stymied that there was such a drop from July to Sept, but I attribute it to the move up to Germany in June. The mileage that I used in my first July computation included the mileage for the autobahn driving on the move up from Italy. I think I must have been getting much better mileage during that trip, which accounts for the unusually high MPG for the first month.

But overall, not too shabby. Considering that I'm getting almost as good MPG with a 14 year old car as some get with a brand new hybrid is pretty noteworthy. Not only that, but I paid €600 for my car, as opposed to $22,000 for a new Prius.

Palin is Dumb: Even O'Reilly Concedes

So many have heard by now that this year was an election year, and in the U.S. we had a presidential election between an old guy and a black guy.

I'll save you the suspense: the black guy won.

I voted for the black guy, and I hope the best comes from it, but I'm not getting my hopes up. More on that later. One of the biggest reasons that I voted Obama this year was due to the extremely poor decision made by the McCain campaign in selecting their VP nomination. It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of Gov. Palin. McCain's choice of her demonstrates, to me, that he failed at one of his biggest decisions of the campaign, and was not ready for the "big show" of the presidency.

I've gotten some feedback that my assessment of Palin may have not been "balanced". I think I backed up my inquiry of her intellectual capacity pretty well, but I guess those documents could be "doctored". So for those people needing a more "balanced" source revealing Palin's ignorance, I present to you Mr. Bill O'Reilly:



For those that can't/won't watch this clip, let me sum it up for you:

- There was plenty of in-fighting in the McCain camp about Palin. McCain's campaign manager was initially against it and thought it was a "hail Mary" play.

- Palin's knowledge base was "limited" in the following areas: government civics, basic government responsible at the municipal/state/federal level, U.S. and world geography, didn't know the nations involved in NAFTA (U.S., Mexico, Canada), didn't know that Africa was a continent and not a country, and basic tenants of U.S. foreign policy.

- She refused interview preparations for the Katie Couric interview. When the interview turned south, due to her complete and utter failure to answer softball-sized questions ("what magazines do you read?"), she turned on her staff and "suggested that she [Palin] was mishandled."

- Staffers went to meet Palin at her hotel room on the campaign trail and she greeted them "in her bath towel" after just stepping out of the shower. They were taken aback by this "rather uncommon" practice from the vice presidential nominee.

It goes on, but I think I'm going to get nauseous if I have to type any more.

So for all you "fair and balanced" types, there's Bill-O sharing the truth about Palin on your beloved Fox News. But of course, no one will concede that they made a mistake with their candidate, and we continue down the road of political gridlock that's entrenched this country for so long. So it goes.

Earlier in this post I said that I'm not getting my hopes up with the Obama presidency. I know that "hope" and "change" were themes of his campaign, but I guess I'll believe it when I see it. Why my pessimism? Because I know that the government is financially broken. I posted about it earlier. We spend an outrageous percentage (over 50%) of our national budget on defense. We spend more on defense than any other country in the world. Not just that, but we outspend the number two spender (China) nearly 10:1!!! U.S.=$623B, China=$65B. So the argument that Obama is going to "raise taxes" to pay for all his "social programs" a little bit without merit. Even if he started $20B in social programs in his first year, that's only 3% of what we spend on defense.

Unfortunately, I don't think Obama can get away from defense spending enough to make a difference in our overall economic picture. Although he has pledged to get us out of Iraq in 16 months (which at $9B a month will still cost us $144B), Obama has insisted on pursuing the war in Afghanistan. Unless he has a change of heart on this matter, I'm afraid we're going to be facing the same crippling financial situation in the coming years.

Of course, it would have been worse with McCain. How do you propose to continue our level of military operations overseas in both Afghanistan AND Iraq, while cutting taxes for everyone? It doesn't take an economist to realize that high levels of military spending + tax cuts + trillion dollar bank bailouts = poor national economy. I don't see how that made sense to anyone.

Halloween Highlight

During my Halloween Wrap-up, I neglected to post this awesome video of Ava's sweet dance moves:



Now that's what I call a "dancing baby".

Good Job America

You didn't screw it up.

I guess this means that I'll think about coming back stateside.

Halloween Wrap-up 2

On the "big day", we were ready to take our two trick-or-treaters out on the streets. Ava donned her chicky costume, and Aidan was the blue ranger once again.



Everything was going great until the blue ranger shot the chicky:



But he felt bad about it and laid down with her to make her feel better:



Here's Ava at her first house, getting her first treat:



Here she is showing it to me so I can check it for razor blades:



Jessica and I had a couples costume this year, Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. PS-I'm the wolf.

Halloween Wrap-up 1

Well, we survived through another Halloween this year. The kids were both old enough this year to do trick-or-treating, so it was a fun for everybody.

Jessica and the kids went to a Halloween party on Thursday at the library on post; kind of a "pre-game" to the big event. Aidan wanted to be a Power Ranger, despite all pleading to let me make him a cool costume like last year. Here he is, decked out as the Blue Ranger:



Ava had two costumes; one we bought and one we borrowed from our neighbor. This is the borrowed one:



Thursday night was pumpkin carving night, or "pun-kins" as Aidan calls them. We had two pumpkins this year, and Jessica and I each took a hand at carving one. Jessica went more traditional with hers.



Aidan had been given a Marvel comic pumpkin pattern book at his birthday party. So he wanted me to carve a pumpkin from one of the patterns. Naturally, he picked the one with the "Challenging" tag. Here's me toiling over this pumpkin masterpiece:



The final product of our carving efforts:



Next post will be the wrap-up from Halloween day.

At least we're winning Afghanistan

Read an interesting story in Rolling Stone that I recommend you take a look at. It's about a reporter that manages to embed himself deep into the Taliban territory and speak with some of the local Taliban commanders. He almost gets himself Daniel Pearl'd, but squeaks out with some frantic phone calls to the right people.

My favorite line from the article is this fitting analogy:

"More troops are not the answer," a senior United Nations official in Kabul tells me. "You will not make more babies by having many guys screw the same woman."

His logic is indisputable.

They will greet us with candy and flowers

I know that Sarah Palin was on SNL last night, and I'm sure that's taking the lead story on most news outlets today. But did anyone catch the huge protest in Iraq against the "extension" of the US withdraw timeline? Probably not, since no US news outlet would cover such an "insignificant" story. Who do those Iraqis think they are? Telling us when to get out of their country? The nerve!

Thankfully, the BBC had camera crews there to catch the whole thing. I don't know about you, but when I see tens of thousands of angry, young men protesting in the streets, I get nervous. Why? A couple of reasons.

#1. If they are there protesting, that means that they probably aren't working and being productive members of society.

#2. If they're not contributing to society, then what are they doing all day? Most likely trying to figure out how they are going to support themselves and their families.

#3. If you have a large group of angry young men with no jobs, and no means with which to support themselves or their families, what do they do? They either turn to crime, or join the "freedom fighters" and attack our forces, thereby reducing security in the region and prolonging the conflict.

Sorry if this gets anyone down today. Go back to watching that hilarious Sarah Palin - SNL sketch! That'll cheer you up, you betcha!

Political Linebacker

If you don't think this is funny, then you have no soul.



When I was in the "Advance Course" (and those quotes are intentional), our small group really got a kick out of the Terry Tate "Office Linebacker" videos that were on the interwebs. As soon as I saw this gem, I knew that I needed to post it up here.

"Hey Katie!"

Cafferty did it, Cafferty did it

Well, after my rant yesterday about Palin, I found this clip from Jack Cafferty on CNN.



Jack Cafferty, hats off to you sir. Crotchety old dudes are usually going on and on about "these kids today" and "high gas prices", but Cafferty treats that Palin clip with the visible contempt that it so richly deserves. I just wish that I had posted before he made his commentary.

Fun fact: as old and crotchety as Cafferty appears, he's only 65 (born '42). McCain is 6 years his senior (born '36). Damn it. That's old.

I heart Sarah Palin

Ok, not really. I have to admit that the whole election was really set for me when Palin was named as the vice-presidential candidate. It's unconscionable that this dummy would be the #2 elected official in the nation. If that idea doesn't worry you, then you should seriously consider not voting this year. You may not, in fact, be qualified to be a citizen of the US.

Now this isn't anything groundbreaking. There's been plenty of press on how poorly qualified she is. Not to mention that ridiculous Katie Couric interview. PS - when you're running for VP, it would probably help to #1. know some reputable national newspapers, #2. know a little something about your running mate, and #3. maybe have a more than cursory knowledge of the branches federal government, like the Supreme Court for example. I don't think that interview could have had more softball questions, and Palin whiffed most of them.

"Hold on Joel," some of you might say, "everyone knows that these journalist aren't entirely objective in their covering of the news. There's all kinds of spin that they can place on her answers to make her appear less than qualifies." I will concede your point. After all, O'Reilly does his own share of news interpretation in his "No Spin Zone". So how do we measure the qualifications of Palin? Well, I think that standardized testing gives us a good starting point. A document was published that contains many publicly available documents all about Palin.

Here's Palin's SAT scores from 1982:

To sum it up, she scored a 841 (425V/416M). That places her in the 38-39% nationwide for high school students. Wow. That means that about 6 out of 10 kids scored better than she did. For a reference, I scored a 1420. I consider myself a pretty bright guy, but I don't think I'm presidential material. But apparently Palin does.

Hey, maybe the SAT was a little difficult for her. Maybe she was out flying her airplane hunting wolves the night before? What about her IQ? How does she stand up with the rest of the country?



An 83. Sweet Jesus. Let me be absolutely clear: I'm not saying that someone with an 83 IQ can't be a fully productive and happy member of society. Absolutely not. I do firmly believe that "all men are created equal" and everyone should be afforded the same rights and privileges under the Constitution. That being said, I think that the person holding the 2nd highest office in the land should be held to a little bit higher standard. If you look at the bell curve, the two segments of the graph on either side of the 100 mark represent one "standard deviation" from the national mean. This is where the bulk of the population will score. You can see that Palin's score falls outside that section. From the test info, it shows that her "National WIQ percentile (1982)" is 12.8357%. This means that roughly 87% of people scored higher than she did. Think about that. If you're reading this, odds are your IQ is higher than Palin's. Do you want to have her handling complex national issues and dealing with foriegn head's of state? BTW, she's rarely been outside the US except briefly to Canada and Mexico, and a trip to Iraq, Kuwait, Germany, and Ireland as part of a 2007 visit to the Alaskan National Guard troops over there. And the Ireland visit wasn't so much a visit as it was a refuel stop.

"But Joel," you may still ask, "she's just going to be the vice president. McCain brings plenty of experience to the ticket." While I'm not going to discuss the merits of McCain's experience in this post, I would like to point out that McCain's health is less than stellar. He's currently 72, and would be 76 at the end of his presidency if elected. FYI, the average life expectancy in the US is 77.8. That's the average. Now consider that McCain did undergo years of torture and has already had malignant melanoma removed. Would that have an effect on his life expectancy? What about the stress associated with the office of President? Would that contribute to lessening his life expectancy? Here's a study that connect stress to premature aging, and is there a more stressful job than president? McCain's doctor maybe?

So here's Palin, a documented dullard with no foreign policy experience who doesn't know "what exactly it is that the VP does everyday." If elected, this dummy is one 72 year old's heartbeat away from being the president of the US.

Are you worried now?

At these prices, I may reconsider rocking Fila...

I got this strange email message a couple of weeks ago, from harputs.com :

As a valued customer we're offering you the ulimate adidas Micropacer at $200.00 off
discount code :

Hamper

$200 off this week, come and get it

So, of course I'm thinking, what the hell would I buy that is $200 off??? From a shoe website??? Well, this is it:
Product DescriptionThis is the one. The ultimate shoe. Comes complete with: adidas branded miniature shoes in metal shoe box, memory card, action figure, laser trefoil projector, duct tape, pewter tennis racket bottle opener, large round trefoil belt buckle, key chain, lanyard, phone charm, roll of adidas stickers and an adidas originals balloon.
WTF?

Germans, worst dressers

These speak for themselves, although I just want to say that I'm sure I could fill the capacity of the internet with just bad pictures of people in my town, but it's hard to casually snap a picture of a mulleted kid in an acid-washed jean jacket when you're not in a touristy spot. So, these are from Rothenberg au der Taub, or something like that, which had lots of people taking lots of pictures, and I blended right in.
Again, not the worst offenders, but pretty bad... especially the last one.

These guys like hats:Black socks:Yes, those are elbow patches, and yes, that is a bow tie:

Black Forest trip

Last month, we went to the Black Forest. We went again with Justin and Kimber a couple of weeks ago, and we'll probably post those pictures as well, so I thought I'd get these up so they would be somewhat chronological.

This is a big church/marketplace in Freiberg, "Gateway to the Black Forest." It is on the southern end of the forest area.
Veggies and stuff at the market:
We took a tram and then hiked up a little to get these views of the city. You can really see that the city sits right in the middle of the forest:Afterward, we drove to another town where they had an open-air museum, with lots of little traditional huts in the Black Forest tradition. They were all big, wooden, and dark, and had an oppressive atmosphere that gave me some impression of the difficulty of just surviving 100 years ago. On a lighter note, here we are having dinner at the museum:

We went to Luxembourg!

On the spur of the moment! I guess being in the Army does have some perks, but don't be too jealous. Poor Joel was in a combat zone almost a year to make this happen.

Shopping area, with lots of Luxembourg flags:

Joel with the "old town" behind him: Big bridge connecting the two halves of the city:Market day:Aidan loves any city that has ice cream: