And 4th, but that’s not til tomorrow.

Yes, I do have to work today, but I don’t have to work tomorrow, on the REAL day. Don’t feel too sorry for me, though, I’ve had plenty of days off for unknown reasons.

Travis’ niece Sammi comes out in one week, and she’s the last visitor we have planned (until more of Travis’ family books their tickets, that is :).) It’s been a busy six months with all of our oddles of visitors, and I loved every second of it! One piece of advice: Try to have your passport in hand BEFORE you buy the ticket, as now we’re down to 6 days (two of which are postal holidays) before she needs to be on the flight and biting our nails as the little blue book still has not shown up. Keep your fingers crossed!

It’s been such a cool, cloudy, windy, crummy summer and I’ve been longing for the warm, sunny days of summer ever since we got back from the U.S. My poor mom only got to experience about two good days of weather.

Well, summer decided to appear earlier this week and now we’re faced with temperature in the 30s (that’s mid-90s to you non-Metric systemers) and high humidity. I usually spend my day sweating to the desk or through whatever meeting I’m in. Today I rode my bike in and my jeans completely sweated to my thighs. And that’s only at 9 a.m!

But although it may SOUND like I’m complaining, I’m really not. I am going to enjoy every possible minute of it, because I know January will be here again before I know it and I’ll be wishing for these days again.

Nothing much else going on around here but I still feel obliged to post so I will On Friday we saw a German Johnny Cash cover band in the park, and it was nice to sit out there and picnic in the lawn while the band played. Saturday we had a trip to the market before our Pie Episode (which I described yesterday. And on Sunday we took a small bike ride, threw a Frisbee around a bit, had a picnic, and cleaned. Very quiet and uneventful.

We were invited to a colleague’s house on Saturday and asked to bring one of these famous pies that they’ve been hearing about at work. Ever since mom was here and made a couple of pies (and gave Jenni samples), Jenni’s been raving at work about how wonderful pies are. So I buckled down and said “Sure, I can do this.”

We went to the market on Saturday for fresh strawberries and I had all of the other ingredients at the ready. The crust turned out pretty good, in spite of not having a rolling pin. But that’s where the good ended…

The first problem was that I thought we were leaving the house at 4. The reality was we needed to BE there at 4, but I didn’t realize that until, oh, 2:45. The instructions for the pie were very explicit that the pie needed one hour - at least - in the fridge. The timing here was NOT in our favor.

We hastily dumped the pie and all of the goop in my pie shell and threw it in the freezer for 15 minutes, then moved it to the fridge for about 5. This was as good as it could get.

We all piled in the car, me carefully holding the pie on a cookie sheet. It looked a little sloppy but not bad, considering.

Then we took the first corner.

Pie guts slopped all over all sides of the crust and seeped out everywhere. I felt like crying. When we arrived at their house, 45 minutes later, the pie was a colossal mess.

It didn’t help anything that our colleague’s wife, Karin, had made a strawberry dessert as well, a German version of a pie, with a thick, cake-like crust and shaved almonds on top. And it was picture perfect. Mine was not picture perfect. To say the least.

Even though I was a little embarrassed by the pie, everyone humored me and said it tasted good. And, as Travis pointed out, who cares what it looks like when it’s in your stomach?

After consulting the weather forecast all week and determining that today was the ONLY day with no chance of rain in the forecast, I decided I’d ride my bike in.

This was something I tried to do at least once a week last year, but some weeks it was pretty difficult to find days with no rain forecast. I’m a little ashamed to admit that this was my first ride in this year. But in my defense, the weather so far this summer has been COLD and rainy and not very bike-friendly. (Good excuses?)

So today I rode in and it’s actually HOT out and I arrived sweating and flushed. I hoped to sneak by everyone and clean up a bit in the bathroom before being noticed, but of course I was caught by two people.

Now I get to look forward to the going home part, which is mostly uphill. Why do I choose to do this again, when I have a perfectly good car sitting at home?

Last night we went on a bike ride with a mission: to buy cat food. The place we buy our cat food just happens to be at a hardware store. There is no PetSmart here, nor Wal-Mart, and we don’t even know the German word for “vet.” So Milli’s diet cat food comes from the hardware store, since we haven’t found anything like it at the grocery store or elsewhere.

Now, it’s only about two miles to the hardware store, but unfortunately about 1.5 miles of that is a hill. And it just so happens that at the top of that hill, called Sachsenhausen Mountain by Frankfurters, is where our house is. So we had no choice but to pedal up. (Or take the bus, which I’ve done before.)

(But only once!)

(But that’s because we’ve only ever attempted the hill once before. And I said “Hey, look, a bus stop.”)

So this was my first attempt at the FULL hill. I’d gone to the grocery store before, about 3/4 of the way down the hill, and it was hard coming home, especially with the added weight of groceries. But this time I had it easy - Travis carried the 10 pounds of cat food. But the ride was still hard! I was all the way down to 1st gear and wishing I could drop it lower. I’m proud to say we made it to the top, alive and in one piece.

Next time, I’m taking the bus.

Last night we decided to go for a walk and find a dinner place on the way. We had an Italian restaurant in mind, and started off in that direction. As we were walking, we came upon Korean food. I have never had Korean, but I have recently had Vietnamese a few times and loved it, so I was interested in trying it. Travis wasn’t in the mood for it though, so we walked on.

The next place we came to was a Portuguese restaurant and even though we were close to our original Italian destination, we decided to try this. I’ve never had Portuguese food either. I’m happy to report that the food was AMAZING. Travis had lamb and I had a delicious pork filet. Mine was so tender it was like a good steak. We’ll definitely be back!

We filed our U.S. taxes in early April, along with the rest of the country. It was our first time ever being required to pay taxes, and it was quite the hefty amount. And now, I’ve been working on the German taxes with a tax adviser.

This process has been going on for months, and the adviser finally wrote me and gave me the scoop. Apparently, we owe ANOTHER $5000 for German taxes this year.

It’s all so frustrating because we don’t know what all is going on and what we need to do differently. $5000 was after only 7 months in the country - what will next year look like after a full year? And why do we have to pay taxes in two countries anyway? And why does the tax adviser charge so much to tell us we owe this amount, is it because she knows we don’t speak the language and can’t fight it?

We had a nice, relaxing, and - most importantly - calm weekend. I had to go back in the archives of this site to see the last weekend we had at home. Would you believe May 10?

Seven weeks later, we kicked off our shoes and did exciting German things like going to the grocery store and cleaning seven weeks worth of dust bunnies from behind doors.

The good news is that we have more calm weekends in store for a few weeks until Travis’ niece comes on the 9th of July.  I hope we get some summer weather and can enjoy our last June weekend in Germany!