friday catblogging: new couch edition

here's oscar sharpening his rear talons, surely in anticipation of sinking them into our new couch.and that's right, we actually have the cushions inside now! p had the bright idea to put the cushions inside their covers to see if that controlled the stink at all, and believe it or not, so far so good!

david wins big-time

back during our ikea furniture delivery saga, a hot topic of conversation around here was, "david or goliath -- who will win?" goliath, of course, was played by corporate hegemon ikea. and, in a surprise turn, in the role of david was... the sweet innocent little university of chicago hospitals medical records office!

see, long ago, p requested a copy of her complete medical record so she could give it to whatever new doctors she started seeing here in germany. she even went to the office in person before we left chicago, and they were like "yep, it should be in the mail this afternoon". and about a month later they did sorta mail it, only it went to the wrong address and they left half of it out, so p has had to continue to battle with them to get the whole thing.

and from here there have been enough twists and turns and blinding levels of incompetence that there's no hope of accurately documenting all the atrocities, but let's just say that p has called the office at least 10 times since we've been over here, and when she spoke to them a couple weeks ago the story was that the records had finally been shipped express the previous day via the usps.

(so, right, the point is that at some point we had a nice little race to the bottom between ikea and the records office to see which would be the bigger fuckup, hence the david vs. goliath thing.)

only -- surprise! -- the records never showed up. p called them yesterday to ask what was going on, and they told her -- directly contradicting what they'd said before -- that they shipped the records fedex the day after she'd last spoken to them! bastards! but at least they gave her a tracking number.

so then p wrote to fedex, and... they wrote back saying that while a tracking number had been assigned, the sender never transfered the package to them! i mean, are you kidding me? seriously? and she just got off the phone with them again, and the guy she spoke to (the supervisor, no less) said he personally was the one to fedex the records. but like we believe that for a second.

so that's where things stand now, i guess. i'm not sure if it really comes across how unbelievable this all is. this isn't just some customer service quibble -- these are p's medical records, and she's sick. (i just had p read over this post, and she said it's not nearly fiery enough.) anyone want to set the over/under line on when the damn things arrive?

winnie cooper, mathematician

while working on job applications today (yes, please gag me), i happened across this little chestnut: danica mckellar, aka winnie cooper from tv's the wonder years, delivering the ucla department of mathematics' 2007 commencement address. wtf? why, danica is a proud 1998 ucla math major herself! and she's even written a book*. i have to say, in principle i actually think this is all really cool, but her address made me cringe so much my face got tired.

i feel like a doogie howser reference needs to be worked in here now, but i got nothing. fire away in the comments....

*which sandya kinda pointed out to p and me a couple months ago.

BEST VET EVER

wow, p and i took oscar to a vet today to check up on his kidney stone and to get things in order to bring him back to the states next month, and good god what a completely wonderful woman we have found! oscar normally HATES going to the vet like, well, like all the stereotypes say he should, but she practically had him eating out of her hand! (ok, bad cliche, since he'll probably eat out of most anything, but still.) she had such a calm, peaceful air about her, and her catly manner was the tops! she knew just how to pet him to help him relax, and she had the presence of mind to let him sniff her instruments before she examined him with them, and she was even all sweet-talking him in german! it reminded both of us so much of our wonderful dr. curtis from chicago (except for the german bit).

the musical fruits

incredible! eat your heart (and carrots, and eggplant, and celeriac...) out, brian wilson.

(hat tip to teru.)

(this also reminds me of one of my dirty old grandpa's favorite rhymes from my childhood:
beans, beans, the musical fruit
the more you eat, the more you toot
the more you toot, the better you feel
so eat beans at every meal)

cooing like doves

peas in deutschland, meeting all your crazy cat sound needs.

(hat tip to rae)

weihnachtsmarkt

weihnachtsmarkt = christmas market = FUN!
(yes, that's a ferris wheel, viewed from the library at the max planck institute.)
the christmas market started here yesterday, and it is incredible! p and i took a little tour of it today amidst our regular saturday shopping. it mostly consists of lots of little wooden booths peddling all manner of wares and foods. and there are rides too! it's a lot like a carnival, or the county fair (but without the dairy barn or tractor pull). and i guess it lasts from now until christmas. holy crap!
(greeting from the bonn christmas market)

it's been hanging round for days

the good news: the rest of our ikea stuff actually arrived all the way back on tuesday, way earlier than we'd dared to expect. and at long last i was able to put together our bed frame, but... the bad news: the frame came replete with nasty warehouse/chemical-ly smells that totally leveled poor p. and that sucker's still off-gassing! so we've moved our mattress into the living room and quarantined the frame in the bedroom with the door to the balcony wide open -- thank god the door between the bedroom and the rest of the apartment is really heavy.

in other news of stink, our couch cushions (which arrived in shipment #1) are still not detoxified either.
and we've both been sick with some downright unpleasant colds this week, hence the lack of blogging. happy belated thanksgiving!

friday catblogging: the dulcet tones

he's been at it again:

Friday Catblogging: The One We've Been Waiting For

We fed the animal its meat, set iMovie recording, and vacated the scene. Reap what sow! Oh what a bounteous harvest! Thanksgiving on way!

Viewing tip: you won't regret turning up the sound.


For discussion, compare and contrast.

IKEA Saga Continues

GRRRRRRRRRRR

So you remember the IKEA saga that I posted about a few days ago? The story left off with us in possession of a bed frame but no wooden slats to put the mattress on, and a shelving unit without shelves - and a promise from IKEA that the remaining items would arrive this week.

Well it's Friday, kids, and no IKEA order!

So I called them up today (at 0.14 euros per minute, the fuckers), and guess what? They have no record of the order that was supposed to come in this week. Nothing. No idea what I'm talking about.

And, to top it all off, the shelves for the shelving unit? They don't make 'em anymore.

They're going to look into my case and call me back. They promise!

I'm about to lose my shit. I just want my furniture.


UPDATE: IKEA called back. It turns out that the customer service person and I had a bit of miscommunication - he thought I wanted 17 shelving units! Which I guess they no longer make. The shelves themselves still are available. Why he thought this, I don't know - he knew the shelves were to go with the shelving posts that already arrived.

(I'd never thought about it before, but I guess in English shelf can mean either a shelving unit or a shelf itself, right? Shelf. Shelf. Shelf. This word has lost all meaning to me now. lf? What other words have lf in them? Other than elf. And stupid stuff like hellfire.)

Anyway, they still had no record of our order, of course, so I placed a new one, which should arrive 1-2 weeks from now.

Maybe our clothes will be off the floor by December, but I'm not betting on it.

Don't Eat The Film Either

In more belated news about Farmer John, check out this postcard that we picked up way back in early September. It's a promo for the Bonn premiere of the documentary The Real Dirt on Farmer John, with Farmer John to appear in person! These postcards were all over our organic grocery stores and at the Ökomarkt. So surreal to come so far and to see our old farmer staring back at us from a German postcard!

By the way, the film is pretty great. It won the Audience Award at Sundance, and I bet not a one of the audience members was biased by having eaten Farmer John's sprouts. You all should see it!

Oh, also, the German title is "Mit Mistgabel und Federboa" (Mist = muck, Gabel = fork, so Mistgabel = pitchfork). I guess "The Real Dirt" doesn't translate.

but don't eat the paper

p was hunting around the times' website last night and happened across this article that we somehow missed when it ran this summer. it's about a burgeoning movement of farmer-writers, and the first one profiled and pictured is our very own farmer john, whose csa supplied us with some exceptionally tasty vegetables during four of our years in chicago. this is the man who taught me to love brussels sprouts -- mmm....

(sorry, i've already spent like 10 minutes trying to think of a better title, and that's as good as it's going to get.)

That looks like a tasty burger

A not so great picture of a great (black bean) burger. Incredibly delicious!! Where have you been all my life, burger?

IKEA: Something for Everyone, Eventually

Last Friday marked an important chapter of the saga of P, B, and IKEA. A bunch of our furniture arrived - finally we have a sofa and a bed frame! (Well, mostly - see below.)

Our saga started out about 4 weeks ago with a simple online order (complicated by our poor German). The situation started to devolve with the order confirmation, which seemed to state that our order would be delivered in 12 weeks. 12 weeks! Given that I'd just gotten my visa extended, that'd put the furniture arrival date right around my own departure date. Lovely.

After many unsuccessful attempts, I finally managed to contact IKEA customer service. (They don't make it easy!) It turns out that the sofabed we ordered was backordered, delaying the whole shipment. And it turns out that our order wasn't set to arrive in 12 weeks - nope, it was slated to arrive in week 12 of 2008!

That's right, our furniture was supposed to arrive in late March, about 4 months before we're leaving Germany.

Needless to say we nixed the sofabed. A friendly customer service agent replaced the sofabed with a regular sofa (sorry, visiting friends and family). All seemed well, the order was to arrive in 3 weeks, which was longer than we would have liked given that we'd already been waiting for 2 weeks, but what to do.

And then the day before the delivery I looked over the order confirmation we got in the mail after we changed our order. And I noticed that some of the other items we originally ordered were now missing! I guess said friendly customer service agent deleted them along with switching the sofa for the sofabed.

So, long story short, we now have a couch, part of a bed frame, and part of some shelves we're going to set up in the bedroom (gosh, won't it be novel not to have our clothes piled on the floor any more?). Except the couch cushions are still off-gassing lots of nasties, so even that's not fully functional yet. The rest of our order is supposed to arrive sometime this week. Who knows, we might even have it all set up by the time we leave for Christmas. In the meanwhile, at least Oscar has a box.

This can't wait until Friday

Great Spotted Woodpecker

Today I saw a flash of bright red on a birch outside our window. My first thought was rose-breasted grosbeak?!, but next moment I saw it was a woodpecker! The binoculars, and then the camera, and then my bird book, and I saw it was a Great Spotted Woodpecker! A pretty common species here, so says my book.

I really enjoy casually watching birds from my window here. I've gotten pretty acquainted with the birds of the eastern US, to the extent that if I get a good look at a bird, I can usually tell at least which family it belongs to and roughly how it behaves. It's been great fun carrying those skills to another continent with altogether different birds and finding that they serve me well. A great tit is instantly recognizable as a relative of our chickadee, and a chaffinch is certainly a finch! And of course, wherever you are, a woodpecker is a woodpecker.

And aren't woodpeckers great? I love them: how crazy hard they peck as they mine tree limbs for insects, so hard they have to brace themselves with their special tails; their graceful, dipping flight; and, of course, the lovely black-and-white pattern of many a woodpecker (not that I'm partial to black-and-white or anything).

The bright red butt of this woodpecker is also a plus. They don't make 'em like that in the states!

Bonus Catblogging

When I heard all the aforementioned St Martin's festivities outside, I sprung out of bed, turned off all the lights, grabbed the camera, and booked it to the balcony. Basically this scared the crap out of Oscar. Here he is cowering behind a towel in the bathroom.

Friday Catblogging

His tongue's out!

st. martin's day

today is sort-of st. martin's day, an incredible german quasi-halloween where children go door-to-door just after sundown for candy and treats, only instead of wearing costumes they all carry lanterns around (with honest to goodness fire in them -- no pussyfooting around here), and instead of saying "trick or treat" for their candy they have to sing a song! and sure enough, p received a few serenades over our intercom tonight! i say "sort-of" because the official date for st. martin's day is november 11, but for unknown reasons tonight was apparently the big night. take a look.

p shot this from our balcony. the whole thing is crazy! tons of kids and parents come out en masse in a big procession and some of the adults even form a marching band (or actually, several -- you can kind of hear towards the end of the video where a second band starts getting near and interfering with the first)! they even closed down the street for a bit. halloween's great and all, but can it compete with this?

linky links

• here's a cute bit of animation on the morning catly ritual. freakishly oscar-like -- the only thing missing is a sudden pause in the middle to get a few cleaning licks in. (hat tip to sandya rae.)
• and here's a really good michael pollan op-ed in yesterday's ny times about the farm bill currently making its way through congress. this sort of stuff makes our blood boil.
  

jc penney, 1977

so easy, but so good.

Ger-Mex

I so miss Mexican-ish food! Tex-Mex, Cal-Mex, Mexican, Guatemalan - I miss them all. So, for my birthday dinner, I requested we go to a restaurant rather ominously named: das Tacos.

That's cheez whiz on the nachos.

(At least the menu said precisely which carcinogens our dishes contained:
Farbstoff=artificial colors, Konserviergunsstoff=preservatives, etc.)

petersberg

guess we're a bit behind on blogging from the past week, but one of our recent highlights was a little afternoon trip last sunday with our pal corinna up to the hotel petersberg, perched atop one of the many prominent hills near bonn. the picture doesn't really do it justice, but hopefully you get a bit of the idea.

here's a view of the rhine from the top.

the hotel was built over a hundred years ago and has an incredible history: most notably (in my opinion), after wwii it became the seat of the allied high commission, which ruled over west germany until 1955.

only slightly less notably: corinna tells us that mikhail gorbachev once stayed here as an official guest of the german federal government. to honor his visit, the government presented him with a shiny new mercedes... which he promptly totaled on the way down the hill! just imagine what yeltsin would have done.

Cake Cake Cake!

B scored big birthday cake points last weekend.
It's really good, by the way.

friday catblogging: dentrifice edition

oscar's nightly oral regimen:
(yes, i'm brushing his teeth. poor guy has trouble with gingivitis.)