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.