downright homey

don't know if we've mentioned it yet, but somehow our apartment seems to have kinda fallen into place. now, don't get me wrong, things are still on the spare side -- and since, barring a miracle, we'll only be here another 6 months, i doubt we'll get any more major furniture -- but the furniture we'd already bought did a good job off-gassing while we were gone for christmas, so we now find ourselves with a perfectly usable couch and bed frame -- such novelty! and we even got some posters for christmas to gussy up our walls! things are looking sharp.

midwinter pick-me-up

a lovely arugula, blood orange, red onion, and olive salad p made last weekend.sure helps to brighten up the gray winter days!

spring has sprung?!

i snapped these right outside our apartment this afternoon. this has been by far the warmest winter i've ever experienced. and while bonn is supposed to have mild winters compared to the northern u.s., it's been exceptionally warm here even by usual standards -- temps have been regularly getting into the 50's this month. must be the warming....

Tosci's!!!!

Toscanini's, our beloved Cambridge ice cream and coffee shop, is in the news! ...For being closed down by the state for owing almost $170,000 in back taxes. Whoops! Punks. But oh man, their ice cream is just one of those marvels of the food world. The texture is thick, almost elastic, and the flavors* rock.

B remembers well goading me on about their coffee ice cream sandwich flavor - milky coffee ice cream studded with chunks of ice cream sandwich - about how delicious it is, and how much I wish I had some right now, and isn't it sooooo good?, until I snapped and socked him in the arm. Pretty sure I'd do it again.

Anyway, Tosci's is so well-loved that their customers donated $30,000, I kid you not, over the course of a week, enabling them to pay off some of their debt and reopen. Madness!!


*lemon basil... nocciola... coffee ice cream sandwich... grapenuts... pink grapefruit sorbet... burnt caramel (which earned a paean in The Atlantic)... chocolate sluggo (remember that, Paula?)... etc. etc., plus other "special" backroom flavors involving hazelnut and assorted herbs, alas not for sale.

Nice Color

Lots of yellow buildings around. I particularly like this one, which is just around the corner from here. Cheerful even against a grey sky.

Twin Peaks

Is this not one of the best tv intros ever? So stark and beautiful. (And any intro that opens with a thrush is going to win points with me.)

"Twin Peaks," the wonderful David Lynch early 90s tv show, has swallowed up our evenings for the last week and a half. B got the complete series on DVD (a sweet set that came out last year) for Christmas, and we've been working our way through a few episodes per night.

Anyone else remember Twin Peaks? It was all the rage at the time, and Sandya and I were big fans. David Lynch, the surrealist director whose interests include dreams, fragmented perspectives, dwarves and giants, dancing, and the color red, created this dark, soapy murder drama (he along with some dude named Mark Frost). "Who killed Laura Palmer?" Remember that?

Anyway, the atmosphere of Twin Peaks has penetrated our lives, to the extent that on Monday Brian threw caution (re his incompetent sphincter) to the wind and drank a cup of potentially irritating coffee, and today we bought donuts (Berliners, to be precise) to enjoy with our nightly viewing. Priya, donuts?!

In the past several years, I've come to really love David Lynch's films. Mulholland Dr is one of my favorite movies, even though my initial reaction to the film was one of confused disgust at the pompous windbag who would make such an unintelligible film. (Thanks for decoding, Carl!) I find Lynch compelling in a way I can't really articulate - even his mistakes are interesting.

And speaking of his mistakes, we're a bit over halfway through the series now. At this point in 1990-91, the ratings had dropped and the studio was putting pressure on Lynch and Frost, and the show keeps threatening to lose the plot. But it's still great - and I've gotta say, it makes a lot more sense than it did when I was 11.

Friday Catblogging: Dental Tutorial Edition

Believe it or not, this video of B brushing Oscar's teeth was by request.

NB: Novices should start with the cat in the sink.



p.s. I should explain a bit about this. Oscar has a history of dental problems. In his youth he had to have his teeth cleaned under sedation, and the vet even removed a few of his little front teeth!

Last spring our vet said that he'd have to have another cleaning under sedation. We decided to really try to brush his teeth - previous attempts ended in an ugly battle of wills - with the hint from our vet to put him in the kitchen sink! Something about the sink... Maybe it's that when he backs up, he has nowhere to go, making him struggle less. That hint made all the difference. (Now of course he's so comfortable with the toothbrushing that he wanders all over the counter.)

We hoped that conscientious brushing would fix his dental problems - but the vet said no way, brushing maintains clean teeth but can't repair damage. Well, several months of near-nightly brushing later (and no professional cleaning), Oscar has "clean teeth," according to our new vet here! And Oscar has actually come to like having his teeth brushed!

Hmph

I found out today that I'm still not on the right dosage of thyroid hormone! Too little, so I'm getting on the next highest dosage, which I'm guessing will be too much - but it'll be six weeks or so before the levels of hormone even out and I can have another blood test to find out either way. So damn slow! I started on medication in September of 2006 (that's 16 months ago, kids) and it's been like this since. Ppppp stupid thyroid.

grrrr

here's a little news bulletin that did not make our day.... back when i started at max planck, though they originally gave me just a year here, i heard from a few sources that it's pretty easy to get another year tacked on. and the possibility of that second year has come to seem more and more appealing: moving last summer was pretty hellish, so it's not exactly something we want to do again right away; p is still in the early stages of building up relationships with doctors here, and she actually likes some of them, and it would obviously suck to just throw that away in half a year's time; it takes some of the pressure off me job-wise, since who knows if the post-doc hunt is going to go any better this time around; and, despite the evident challenges, living in germany is pretty cool and getting cooler all the time! but but but... well, i naturally started asking around max planck about how this extra year thing would work, and i finally ended up talking to someone in the know yesterday, and the story is that they essentially never give people a second year. quite the disappointment.

Assholes!

This article has driven me to blog.

It's about fibromyalgia, which is a poorly understood condition marked by widespread pain, fatigue, and other fun symptoms. It's kind of similar to what's going on with me, though I don't think I have it per se; my symptoms run a bit closer to chronic fatigue syndrome. There are no blood tests or other diagnostics that can identify either condition, and the underlying causes of the symptoms are still unknown.

Until recently, chronic fatigue syndrome patients were treated like complainers whose problems were all in their heads. This has been changing over the last few years, as researchers are starting to identify a biological basis for the condition. I'm so glad that I've never had the shock of being told by a doctor that I'm perfectly fine and just need to get over my worries - I've read of so many sick people being treated this way.

Well, it looks like fibromyalgia is still in the dark ages, even though last year the FDA approved a prescription drug to treat it. According to one doctor quoted in the article, fibromyalgia is "clearly not" a disease and people suffering with fibromyalgia symptoms shouldn't be told they have fibromyalgia, because it'll just encourage these people "to think of themselves as sick and catalog their pain." You know, because it wasn't the debilitating pain that made them think they're sick. Right. Jerks.

It'd be nice to see a bit of humility in the face of medical uncertainty.

dear god

why didn't waan and sudi take us here last summer?

(ok, warning, the link is probably not a good idea on a squeamish stomach.)

friday catblogging: raw chicken neck edition

this was taken back at p's parents'. guten appetit!

p's back

yay! p and oscar made it back to bonn today -- not a very fun trip for her, unsurprisingly, but she's intact, and oscar is as beastly as ever. now it just remains to see how much sleep she gets today/tonight (i put in 16 hours when i came back). might even have some catblogging tomorrow!

o ipa!

this times article is worth it just for the incredibly aggressive pictures at the start (and the focus on one of my favorite beer styles doesn't hurt either).

obama

i don't know if it's really sporting to blog about politics here, and i've been trying to hold off for as long as i can, but i just have to say that the second emailer cited in this andrew sullivan post almost perfectly captures how i feel about obama right now.

our cat

i arrived at max planck this morning to find this gem from p in my inbox.

Subject: our cat

when i was at melissa's party (which was really nice, btw) for seven hours, our cat: 1. stole a sizeable bread roll in a bag from the kitchen countertop, carried it up the stairs and into sudi's room, tore a hole in the bag, seemingly pulverized the bread, and ate half; and 2. pissed in a plant pot! what a fucking monster!!

where oh where have we been?

i for one really didn't mean to have another of our little blogging lapses during the holidays, but circumstances have sure intervened to the contrary! here's what's been shaking.

our holiday plans had originally been to spend about a week and a half at p's folks, and then to head up to my parents' on christmas eve for a week there. but a couple days before we were supposed to hit the road, p developed some debilitating lower back pains, clear out of the blue! it's like, are you kidding me? after all the other health problems she has, now this?

so, round about the time we'd been planning to leave christmas eve, p was instead seeing a chiropractor, and we decided shortly thereafter that the best thing for her would be to stay in new jersey while i ventured solo up to my folks' (only i wasn't really solo, since i picked up my sister just outside nyc on the way, but that's neither here nor there).

i had a lovely time at home -- always wonderful to see the fam! -- but p kept the laptop and the camera, which sure did cramp my blogging style (and of course, p was in way too much pain and discomfort to type away much herself). i headed back down to the jers a week ago today, then hopped on a plane the next day to come back to germany (for those keeping score, yup, that means i celebrated new year's over the atlantic -- but they charged for drinks on the flight, the bastards!), and i've been attending a math conference here in bonn ever since -- which has really cramped my blogging style, since p still has the computer.

and as for p, it turns out the poor kid has a bulging disc! the good news is that this seems like something one can largely deal with, but the bad news is that p is quite young to have it, and it never really goes away. so she has to be careful about making certain sudden movements or overburdening her back (and she's also not allowed to fall on her butt), and hopefully that will stave off future flare-ups. she's still at her parents', and i'm happy to report that she's continued to see the same chiropractor a few times a week and has made loads of progress! just sitting in a chair is terribly uncomfortable and tiring for people with this kind of pain, so you can imagine our worry about her having to endure a transatlantic flight later this week, but hopefully it won't be quite so bad now. (and remember, travel like this usually creams p anyway because of her other health problems, so "won't be quite so bad" should be understood as "won't utterly destroy her".)

p arrives here on thursday, so blogging will be light at best till at least then. can't wait to see you, hon!