Back to It

Apologies again for the long blog silence. We moved into our new apartment about three weeks ago. Our move-in weekend was an absolute whirlwind of activity (at least by my standards): we moved on Friday, we made a day-trip to Cologne on Saturday, and we spent Sunday at a fantastic old organic farm that supplies the grains used by the bakery at the Ökomarkt. And then three days later I left for New Jersey; my grandma is making her US tour (she lives in Australia with my aunt and uncle), and I couldn't miss the opportunity to spend time with her. I got back from New Jersey about a week ago. We got our phone and internet hookup late last week, since which time I've been on the hook for a blog post or two about these positive, exciting goings-on.

But it should go without saying that I've been feeling like crap for much of the last three weeks. I picked up a cold while traveling, which lingered all through my time in New Jersey, and got worse upon flying back. Colds themselves are not a big deal, but on top of the pain and exhaustion from travel itself (the walking, the carrying heavy bags) and the usual difficult day-to-day problems, a cold really sucks. New, mysterious, disconcerting problems (which I won't enumerate here) emerge every couple of days, seems like, whether connected to my cold or not, I don't know. It's all kind of depressing, and this subject matter, more immediate by far than, say, recollections of going to Cologne, doesn't exactly send me running to the computer to blog.

On the bright side, the apartment is gorgeous and makes me happy. (This is a really good thing, because I spend very little time away from the apartment.) We still are pretty thin on furniture, but a trip to IKEA is on the docket. Here's a photo of a particularly glorious sunset, taken from our streetside balcony a few evenings ago.