la piñata: un cuento de la frustración

A journal of my piñata experience....

Wednesday
8:00 pm- Assemble materials and get on with papier mache-ing while Trey and Ellis watch Walk the Line. Cook together flour and water to make paste. Create lumpy paste the same way one might create lumpy gravy. Use it anyway. Run out of paste halfway through. Make more and admire the batch's silky smooth texture. Complete first layer and calculate that piñata should be ready to fill and decorate by Friday night leaving plenty of time before the party on Sunday. Congratulate self on efficiency.

Thursday
9:00 am- Notice that last night's layer is not yet dry. Experience mild displeasure. Email mother to determine best course of action.
12:00- Decide that since first layer is tacky, it will be okay to go ahead and apply second layer. Do so with remarkably little fuss.
1:30- Receive answer from mother indicating NOT to apply second layer until the first one is dry at the risk of creating an impossible to break piñata. Curse own impatience.
10:00 pm- Note that papier mache still isn't dry. Ask husband if balloon should be placed in low oven over night following mother's suggestion. Be told that putting paper in the oven overnight would be a fire hazard. Curse husband.

Friday
9:00 am- Put balloon in oven. Turn on convection fan and prop door open with a dish rag. Consider the implications of rising temperature on the balloon and vow to keep a close eye on it.
9:45 - Check oven for the first time. Discover bits of paper have fallen/been burned off by oven light, but it's much drier. Remove from oven for one hour during German lesson.
10:15 - Return to balloon. Note real world implications of the Ideal Gas Law: air in the balloon expanded in the oven and now has returned to previous volume, leaving holes and wrinkles in the paper layers.
10:20- Consider options. Realize it is now clearly me vs. the piñata. Push thoughts of everything else I should be doing today out of my head; do likewise with the idea of abandoning this project and just buying the little girl a regular birthday present.
12:00-Put baby to sleep. Start piñata over. Apply one layer of papier mache to balloon. Note how much faster it's going this time.
12:15- Locate hair dryer in attic. As I turn it on, recall reading on the internet that many babies the white noise created by household appliances.
12:17- Curse internet baby experts. Feed baby and try to get him back to sleep.
2:00 pm-With aid of hair dryer manage to get three layers of papier mache done before evening. Despite this, curse the entire project.

Saturday
8:00 am- Find papier mache layers still slightly damp. Whine to husband about this. Listen skeptically to arguments about the humidity being too high.
10:00- Return from grocery store unusually sweaty and sticky feeling, then notice the wet spots surrounding the bit of salt on the pretzel bread. Reconsider "high humidity" hypothesis.
10:30- Find Exacto knife and prepare to pop balloon/ cut a hatch in the piñata. Pray. Complete operation and be pleasantly surprised when the papier mache actually holds its shape (mostly). Fill it with candy and crappy plastic toys. String a hanger through the top in a manner that ensure the piñata will hang lopsided.
3:00- Whine to husband until he agrees to help complete the piñata. Discuss possible decorative schemes. Notice that they become simpler on each iteration.
7:00- Finish applying paper fringe to piñata. Curse its amateurish appearance. Notice Ellis's complete fascination with the piñata. Wonder if this is because of its color or the crazy behavior it elicits from his parents. Listen in annoyed fashion to husband's explanation that this object is specifically designed for children to destroy. Agree, but still feel embarrassed by jankiness of this effort. Decide fault lies with being conditioned by years of exposure to my mother's PERFECT art projects. Vow to never attempt one this far away from her again.

Brainstorming stupidity

One of the blogs we read has offered a prize to the best self disclosed story of rampant stupidity. Rachel thinks I have a shot. I can enter more than once of course, but don't know that I should take the time away from other things, so I will ask you, readers, to consider some of the options and help me decide what to submit.

Option 1:
The time I blew off Rachel's warnings to be careful fueling the truck at the farm becasue it was easy to grab the wrong pump and put in diesel. I got distracted, filled up, jumped in the truck and made it all the way back to the house before the diesel hit the engine and choked it. Opened the gas tank and took a sniff, yup, $@%&, diesel. Bonus stupidity: Had a sip of the diesel while starting the syphon to get it back out.

Option 2:
The time I went up north for some late season trout fishing and got in a little too deep in a stretch of river I hadn't fished before. My fishing partner had gone way up stream, so I knew he would be a long while. I had seen a second fisherman on his way down as I came up and found his car right behind ours. Being soaked through, I had to change my underwear or they would simply soak the new jeans from the inside. So I rounded up all of the necessaries and changed. In warm dry clothes, I found a soft patch and set down for a nap. I was awakened by my fishing partner and the other guy coming back up the hill together discussing whether or not it was an old wives tale that the salmon come into the rivers early at the last August full moon. As I stood up, the door to the other car opened and the other fisherman's wife jumped out to greet him. She had sat in that car 4 feet from me and not said a word the whole time I stripped and somehow I had failed to notice she was in there.

Option 3:
Does childhood stuff count? If so, the time when I was 5 or 6 I returned from a family gathering where those nasty candy apple rings had been served, but I had not been allowed to have as many as I wanted. That night after going to bed, I snuck down to the kitchen and decided to kill the craving with a generous serving of marachino cherries. But there were only two left! So I had those and a couple of big gulps of the juice from the jar. Back up in my bed, my tummy got way upset and without even a single dry heave of warning the entire, now slightly pink, holiday dinner came up all over me and the bed. Rather than fessing up, I went into my parents and told them that I had had a bad dream and needed to sleep with them. I managed to get into the bed and ruin their sheets before my dad detected, by odor, that I was coated in sugar vomit. How did I think I was going to get away with that?

Option 4:
I was the sixth grade boy who let his mom talk him into getting a perm.

Option 5:
I was the seventh grade boy who let his mom talk him into getting another perm as a solution to the problem that what was left of the first perm was making him look really weird.

Option 6:
One more from childhood. At the age of 5, I got into a fight with my sister while using the toilet and, on an impulse, decided to pull hard right and pee on her. It is pretty hard to convince your folks othewise when your sister shows up from the general direction of the bathroom with a wet stripe on her clothes screaming that she has been peed on. Time for a whippin'. (I thank my sister for not realizing she could reproduce the stripe on her own with water and get me in trouble over and over again. I did not at that time realize the demeaning horrible act it was to pee on someone. My parents were so horrified that they certainly would have believed her.)

Option 7:
While on a two week business trip to Mexico I got a little bored with the food that was "gringo safe" and as my first foray into the local food I had the a broiled ball of fish and cheese in a restaurant where I was the only gringo. This thing was easily the size of a softball and was served all by its lonsome with only a lime garnish. Either it was damn good or I was hungry. By the time I had "digested" this thing, I thought I might never eat anything again. It was like it reassembled itself into a softball sized lump in my belly and refused to be digested while somehow controlling several of my bodily functions that even on a good day aren't under my own conscious control. I ask you, who goes into a restaurant in a part of Mexico where they aren't supposed to drink the water and eats a ball of cleverly diguised, probably rotten fish?

Option 8:
Gasoline in my eye, more than once, same day.

Option 9:
John Smoltz, you are not alone. Burned myself ironing a shirt while I had it on.

Option 10:
Anyone in the audience care to chime in?

DNA Mechanic

I haven't put up a work post in a quite a while. I know the fan base is small for such drivel, but they are dedicated so I will supply.

First, I will say that the protein woes of the past are over for now and I can see single motor proteins doing their thing pretty much at will. One person has even offered to make me a bet as to whether I will publish a paper here in my lab before the last paper from my grad work comes out. I have to say I am not sure which side of that bet I would even want to take. I guess that means the odds are one to one. Anyway, the projects are moving forward now and that means that my work is entering a new phase that includes nuts and bolts molecular biology which is a new thing for me.

My current task is to take a protein I want to study and add a green fluorescent protein (GFP) to it. This is done at the DNA level. I have bacterial DNA (called a plasmid) for both of the proteins and I am pursuing a strategy known as "cut and paste". As compared to working with proteins where each protein requires carefully adjusted buffers and individually optimized handling, working with DNA is remarkably well worked out and very uniform. Nearly every step along the way can be performed using a kit. It is something like wanting to put a Chevy engine in a Ford truck and going out and getting an adapter kit. In the case of the DNA though, you start with a kit that lets you remove the engine from the Chevy, then another kit throws the Chevy's carcass away retaining the engine. You apply the same kit to the Ford truck to remove its engine, but modify how you use the kit a little bit, so you retain the truck and discard the engine. Because the bits are submicroscopic, you then use another kit to make sure you have all of the right parts, you know, to make sure you didn't drop that custom screw into the floor drain in the garage. Then you finally use another kit to drop in the new engine. The DNA itself takes care of making sure all the lines and wiring gets hooked back up correctly. So far, I have removed the engines. Tomorrow I check to make sure I have all the right bits and then drop in the new one over the weekend.

With these techniques, and a few others, one can create just about any DNA sequence. What I am making is called a chimera or a chimeric protein. Actually, it is a mutant and a chimera. A mutant because the DNA sequence has been changed in a critical spot to prevent the addition of a phosphate group to the protein. This phosphate is thought to be a critical point of regulation and now I will be able to prevent it from ever coming into the picture at all. It is a chimera because the final product will be partially a motor protein from a frog and partly a fluorescent protein from a jellyfish. Actually, the GFP is also a mutant because it has been reengineered to enhance its performance in microscopy applications. So my protein is a chimeric double mutant. Once I have the DNA, I will trick insect cells into producing big piles of my protein from the sequence.

With all this talk of chimeras, you might wonder if my alter ego, Pie Hole, has considered jumping into this game to create even tastier more delectable animals. The answer is that, no, he hasn't. Lisa Simpson pointed out long ago, when she was still 7 years old, that ham, bacon, sausage, Canadian bacon, pork chops (and I might add pork tenderloin, prosciutto, serrano, and several varieties of excellent barbecue) all come from one magical animal making it easy to be humble before Mother Nature and not screw around with something that she (and years of selective breeding) have made nearly perfect for us.

Pie Hole wants it noted, that he would kill for a lunch time roast pork panini with carmelized onions.

You know you are almost 5 months old when...

Tonight we went to Aldi's for our monthly stock-up. I was slated to go alone, but Ellis just really wanted to come, so we all went together. He hadn't been in his car seat for a week or two and it was notably a snugger fit.

At Aldi's, for the first time, he rode in the kid seat in the cart (with close supervision). I wish I had had the camera along with me. Between the stabilization offered by the bar between his legs and the fact that he obsessively clutched the cool metal bars, he managed to keep himself mostly upright.

He was quite the little ham, smiling at all the nice people. He really responds to attention now, usually with a big smile, which seems to surprise some people and of course that encourages them to engage in further antics to keep him smiling. While I waited with Ellis while Rachel returned the Apfel Schorle bottles a retired woman got a big smile out of him so then she showed him the pretty flower she was buying. Then she talked baby talk in German to him for a minute or two. When he stopped smiling and looked a little bored I leaned over and said to her, "Es tut mir leid, er kann nur English." (I am sorry, he only knows English.) She found this humorous as did I.

last post till I wash off all the flour and water paste

My Halloween box from mom finally arrived yesterday. Yeah! And it was worth the wait. Bridget has already detailed the approximate contents and how awesome a mom we have for taking the time to put together these care packages and paying the exorbinant international shipping rates.

Unlike my charming sister, I did not dive directly into the Oreos, but am instead focusing on the chocolate covered peanut butter filled pretzels. They are more delicious than I can possibly describe here- think Chubby Hubby ice cream minus the ice cream. Now, I wouldn't usually advocate for the removal of ice cream from any dessert, but in this case it just allows you to focus on the best bits and so must be agreeable. My mother actually covered peanut butter filled preztels with chocolate herself, though I believe these delicacies used to be sold at Target. I certainly hope they have not been discontinued. Since peanut butter filled pretzels are not available here, I have been thinking of making some modifications to that standby of mini-4-H foods project, the haystack. I was thinking that substituting pretzel sticks for the noodles and chocolate for the butterscotch chips could not fail to leave me with something scrumptious. Will report back on this later.

In other news, Ellis discovered his feet last week and now loves to play with his toes during diaper changes. He has also begun his first experimentation with his pincer grasp. He hasn't actually considered grasping anything with it yet, but he does love to push his thumb and forefinger together very hard, stare at it intently, try to bring it to his mouth, and then draw it back out again when he realizes he can't see it anymore. Oh the tragedy of not being able to look at something and taste it at the same time! It's hard being a baby.

Finally, some Americans we know here are having a birthday party for their 6 year old daughter this Sunday. Somehow, I have agreed to make a piñata for this. I have finally managed to procure newspaper and an appropriately sized balloon, though I fear tissue paper may continue to elude me. Now, my mother is telling me I should cook the flour and water to make a stronger paste. I fear this will not end well.

Google Earth: A Dangerous Place to Seek Comfort From Home Sickness

Tonight, I sat down to write a blog post with nearly nothing to write about. Life over here has been a little boring the last bit. No trips, nothing new for pie hole, and as yet we have not been cornered by men with dogs who will make a commission by forcing us to pay a tax on every ball point pen in the house. Although, I expect them any day now and you will hear about it when they show up!

A week or so back, Rachel had asked me to load Google Earth on the computer so we could go see the farm on the satelite images. Tonight, when nothing came to mind to write about, I started roaming around to some favorite places using GE. You could probably put together a pretty good personality test based on where someone goes in their first 15 minutes using this program.

My first stop was back at the farm where I noticed some favorite landmarks and hunting spots. The images aren't great in this sector of GE, but even at low resolution, I could make out the grain dump, shop and the different fields. I couldn't see individual cattle, but you will be glad to know that the junk pile is visible to the whole world from space. Guess it is time to push it in.

Then I went to Ann Arbor which is captured at very high resolution. You can make out the block M on the seats in The Big House. You can even see that the stadium appears to be set up for graduation or was under construction. Then I went to look at all of the places I had called home. For kicks, I cruised over to my best friend Aaron's condo from childhood. I noticed the first bit of a drainage creek which, when we were 13, in May of the dwindling days of our 6th grade year, Aaron and I followed that small creek to see where it went. We ended up being gone for four hours. Where it went was a drainage pond near the local mall. At the end of our journey we found ourselves at the opening of a large pipe staring out at the pond. Not exactly the top of Everest but we had had one hell of a good time. I probably new I was getting into trouble. Unbelievably, we ran into some friends from school back there whose parents had released them out onto this land with a bag of chicken livers and a net/trap contraption to catch crayfish. I remember thinking, "your parents bought you the livers?" It seemed to good to be true.

Upon returning to Aaron's, it took one look and no words to know we were in deep shit. Perhaps me more than Aaron. His mom was still in a state of mind that allowed her to engage in other tasks such as washing the car, which she was doing when we returned. As near as I could tell, my mom had spent the time from when Aaron's mom had reported to her that we were missing up until our return alternating between making plans for my funeral and deciding which tree would provide a good switch. Aaron and I weren't allowed to see each other until school was over, more than a month. This was an awful punishment since we spent every weekend together and at least for me this let me block out some of the stresses of home and school. Not to mention that we were just two kids cooped up in town who probably could have used a few camping trips to remedy the restlessness, rather than a whippin' and grounding. Incidentally, you can only see the beginning of the creek now. The rest of it is underground as that land is a big industrial development.

You can all probably guess that after that, I headed up north. The resolution is low in rural northern Michigan, but good enough. I found a cottage we stayed in only 2 years ago, nearly to the day, on Shelter Bay. A few months later, things would be changing for us and those friends who spent the weekend with us. They joined each other in Boston and were married the following summer. I defended, we packed in our apartment and then spent nearly a year commuting and living apart as I tried to seperate myself from Ann Arbor and my graduate work. Finally, we moved to Europe and had Ellis. Now I live farther away than ever. Ellis hasn't even set foot in America yet, let alone been up north. But we will get there before he is a big enough boy to really need it.

I stopped by the beach on Lake Superior where I proposed to Rachel a few years before. You can't make out the pictured rocks, but the beach is clear. Then I stepped a little further back and looked up the small lake and cabin where I spent the best days of my childhood. The cabin is gone now and my dad is thinking about selling the land. The shoreline of the little lake is clear and I could spot the places where we had a salmon double header when I was in the fifth grade and the spot, where as an adult, I landed a 18 inch rainbow on a perch rig with my dad's help. It would be surprising if I ever fish there again. Maybe I don't want to. There is a big casino now, just 500 yards from the lake, plainly visible on the satelite images. Not too enticing. Maybe it is better that the images weren't good enough to make out all the details like the individual cottages that stand where ours is missing now or the cars in the casino parking lot. A little faded and pixelated is probably better. Happiness is a memory.

Life in my striped pajamas

"Whew, did that come out of one of you? A smell that bad could stunt my growth."

"Whoa, that wizard training must be working. I think I turned Papa into a dog. Mama, mama."

"Listen mama, the new IUBB (International Unified Brotherhood of Babies) union contract says I don't have to sleep more than 30 minutes in any 6 hour period of daylight. I won't bother with filing a grievance either. I will just bring in Fat Tony and his boys."

"Look, you like to lick things and I like to lick things. But, when it comes to each other, we have to take turns or nobody's gonna be happy."

8 days without baby pics? stop the insanity

First, one for all you Minnesota fans (both of you).Then, to show how glad Ellis is to have his Papa back.

Have you tried a haggis taco?

Well, Dr. Trey went to Edinburgh for some academic business which means Pie Hole went along too. The academic business was an interview for a fellowship. Since my current position is called a "post-doctoral fellowship" you might wonder if we would be planning to move. But, that isn't quite how it works. As a "post-doc" you are indeed called a "fellow" but a number of institutions offer funding to pay your salary while you are in these positions and while you are funded you often are called a fellow of that institution. I was a Whitaker Fellow while still a graduate student, even before I was a post-doctoral fellow at EMBL and if I recieve this award I will become an EMBO Fellow, simultaneously with being a post-doctoral EMBL fellow. Is that clear? Good.

The interview was actually with a pretty famous guy who is the author of one of the three standard cell biology text books used around the world. He asked me to give a talk covering both the old and new work which went quite well. After, he told me that he didn't really feel the need to pester me over things since the talk was very good and he planned to recommend me for the fellowship. This means I have a good chance, but not a lock because of the previously mentioned trouble with my final graduate school publication.

I got to Edinburgh on Monday, slid into town on the bus and immediately headed for a fish and chips place that I had found on a previous visit with Rachel a few years ago. I like this place because despite the fact that the fish is already cooked and under a heat lamp, they somehow manage to keep it from getting soggy. They also don't give you any shit if you want vinegar AND ketchup and if you ask they can manage to keep the ketchup off of the fish and only on the chips despite the fact that they roll the whole mess up in one piece of newspaper. Bravo.

Then I headed down the stairs from High street to the "Halfway Pub" which was also a favorite from our previous visit. The place seats 15 or so and the same guy was sitting at the bar drinking Tenet's as was there on my last visit 3 years ago arguing with another guy who had also been their three years ago. He was quite boisterous but I couldn't understand a goddamned thing he said. I like this place because they have hand pulled, regional beer that you won't ever get in the states and are generous with samples. When they noticed I was American they insisted that I have a Cascade Red on the house because it was made with American hops (Cascade hops in fact) . Then I had a Belhaven which is a very local Edinburgh favorite.

After the beers, I was off to my B and B which was a little small but cozy. It was in an odd part of town near the location of the upcoming interview, so I only had one pub to choose from for dinner, but this worked out fine. I went out on a limb and had Mexican and it was surprisingly passable. No, it wasn't haggis tacos (but hey, what an interesting idea for a fusion restaurant, Scottish-Mexican: Haggis Tacos, Steak and Kidney Chimichanga, Black Bean Pastie, Hominy Skink.) Generally, the Mexican food in Germany belongs in a pile with German red wines and German TV taxes, so maybe that is why chicken fajitas seemed so damn good. I had a couple of more, less interesting beers with dinner and, having had 4 for the day, felt like I had over done it a bit. That is 2 quarts after all. But hey, it was Scottish Ale and after all of this damn lager over here in Germany it was like reliving the day that Coca-cola said, "Okay, we hear you, screw new coke, here is the classic shit back."

The next morning I had a classic Scottish breakfast of a fried egg, mushrooms, tomato, bacon, sausage, haggis and beans. It was a lot of food. The haggis was rather flavorless as I remembered it, the sausage was as awful as any meat I have ever eaten. Then it was off to the interview. The interviewer happened to be American and brought up how much his kids miss some American products, so we bonded over those things we miss over here. He must be more content here than me because his list was one item: cheerios.

After the talk, a crazy thing happened: I ran into Rachel's cousin Lindy who is studying abroad this year in Scotland. This was totally unplanned since I thought I wouldn't have time. I talked her into skipping her class and going back to the Halfway Pub with me. You can read her account of the miraculous meeting here. And, for her mother's sake, you should note that the lecture she missed was reoffered later and she went back to make up for it. I had a beer called "Moo Coo" from the Hebrides. The beer's logo was a close up of a Scottish Highland Steer. (Well, I guess it could have been a cow or a bull, since the close up wasn't of its naughty bits, just its terribly hairy face.)

After Lindy headed back to class, I jumped on the chinese buffet that Lindy had poo-pooed, and I have to tell you Lindy, it was good.

wie, bitte?

It seems that my darling husband's brain may be at capacity. For, while his German is improving, his grasp of English is slipping. Or at least gettin' weird.

Exhibit A:
(for some reason [because I am a bad housekeeper], there is no Kleenex in our house right now, so when Trey got a runny nose, he had to use a roll of TP)
Trey: "I need to blow my nose, can you hand me a sprig of toilet paper please?"

Exhibit B:
(an item that I had placed on the windowsill by our bed was gone and I was trying to locate it)
Rachel: "Trey, do you know where that thing is?"
Trey: "It's over here on my bench."
Rachel: "No honey, you have a bench at the lab at work; that's a night stand."
Trey: "Shut-up, it's my sleep bench."

any ideas not involving gasoline and a match?

Now that the guest room is finally de-Miami Viced, I feel I must turn my attention to the living room. Unfortunately, the room is currently dominated by this, which was left by our landlord. He didn't want to pay to dispose of it and we had no furniture, so we agreed to keep it. It does have a lot of storage space, but this is really it's only virtue. So, any suggestions for how to mitigate the horror?

beyond 34B

The clasp on favorite nursing bra broke yesterday. Needless to say, I am devastated. I've really been meaning to shop for some new ones for a while now. A month ago I even asked the other women in my post-partum exercise class where would be a good place to buy one. First they recommended H&M. I had a hard time figuring out what the heck they were talking about because although they were speaking (quite good) English, they pronounced the letters in German. So it sounded like Ha-end-em. Huh? Anyway, there are some of these stores in America, but not in many places. It is like a European version of The Gap. The other suggestion they had was to order them from baby-walz, a huge catalog/internet business for maternity and baby clothes.

Since the H&M in Heidelberg is located on the crowded mainstreet downtown, I decided to opt for the internet shopping route since I could do it while sitting on my very own couch. Also, Ellis needs some long-sleeved onsies, so I will use that to justify the shipping cost. And so I made an amazing discovery- it's super easy to buy all sizes of bras in Germany. This place doesn't really even specialize in "foundation garments" and the range of sizes was very large. Now there are 4 things I like about Germany (1. chocolate 2. midwife based obstetrical care 3. bread). Just kidding, of course. Please don't comment telling me that I need to be more open-minded and appreciative of getting to live abroad. I'll already know how lame I am.

A Note from Pie Hole

We were talking about what we like about living over here and one of the things I mentioned was the seasonality. It seems like every two weeks there is a new seasonal food or festival. It seems like we are slowly losing this at home, and it is indeed quite pleasant.

As has been noted here previously, the Germans love their apples. Right now is apple season so there is a lot to enjoy. Our downstairs neighbors two weeks ago had approximately 250 apples delivered to their home from a farm/orchard in their family and as always, generously passed on a few of each variety, a couple of which were new to me and excellent. Along with this came about 20 gallons of fresh apple juice in a plastic container with a spigot. They told me to have all I wanted and that it would be especially good in a couple of weeks after it had "cooked". Those first couple of days, this was some of the best cider I have ever had. It obviously hadn't been pasteurized and just lightly tingled the tongue. By day 4, though, it was over-cooked as far as I was concerned. The flavor was sour and moldy and musty. If you brew, you know this flavor as the one you get when things aren't sanitized properly. Of course, this was to be expected since the grodies doing the fermenting were just what happened to be on the apples when they were pressed, which probably included any number of wild yeast strains and lactic bacteria, hence the sourness.

My boss who is from this area says that the "cooked" stuff, called "most" in German, is one of the oldest traditions here. A good old Schwaben (Schwabia is the area near Stuttgart) would get a great big barrel of this and let it get as crappy as possible, drinking it all winter as fortification against the cold. I can't even imagine what this might taste like in March. My only thought is that if the barrel harbored its own flora that could out compete the stuff on the apples, the product might be cleaner tasting. This happens in beer varieties, such as lambics, that are fermented in particular types of wooden vessels.

We also taste tested the Neuer Wein and Zwiebel Kuchen today. The new wine was rather hazy which surprised me and the bottle was full of sediment. This product also changes over the course of the fall. In the early fall it is very sweet and only a few percent alcohol. By the end it is downright tart and as much as 12%. The stuff we had was pleasant enough. Mrs. Pie Hole was skeptical, asking before tasting,"is this going to taste like juice that had something terrible happen to it?" (Probably remembering the most.) After her taste, Mrs. Pie Hole commented,"I have never tasted anything like that." The best way I can describe it is to say that it tasted rather not so much like wine, but like grape juice that had been accidentally processed along with a batch of hard cider. It was very bubbly and very fruity and a little beery and bore little or no resemblance to the nicer Riesling I had opened to have with trout earlier this week. It was cleanly fermented, obviously by yeast, in a controlled fashion, but it was a very fresh product, probably as close to the vine as you will ever get.

The onion cake was simply delicious. The crust was this standard bready thing that is popular here for many things both sweet and savory. The filling though was what made this special. It consisted (we think, recipe to be had this week) of onions cooked to the point of mushy sweetness, caraway seeds, diced bacon and an eggy binder, just firm enough to prevent the filling from oozing off of the crust or "boden" as they call it here, literally "floor". We will definitely be trying to make this one at home.

Otherwise, we have been enjoying the return of the fish monger now that the cool of fall is here. She is friendly and patient with my poor German. I went with Mrs. Pie Hole this week to try to sort out what was what since the piles of fish aren't labeled. We had an excellent trout for supper and also got a chunk of smoked mackeral with pepper and mustard seeds on it. This was an excellent snack, dare I say reminiscent of the smoked fish one finds up north.

I have been in a period of beer boredom. The variety available in the drink stores here is exhausted and I think I am going to have to start heading to the small breweries. Maybe it is time for our first foray to Belgium. On the other taste bud, the Rieslings are really growing on me. There is a lot more variety in this wine than one would expect from what is available at home. Between the different qualities and dryness, and the extreme effect of soil on the grape, there is a lot to learn and enjoy. My boss is quite an expert, so I have a good source of advice which helps. I am starting to discern what he calls "the mineralic character of the soil" coming through in the slightly better ones. We still have yet to spend more than 6 Euros on a bottle and have had some very good wine.

If you are tired of Pie Hole's musings, I suggest you visit here for another blogger who discusses food in a different way in his section called "Steve, Don't Eat It". I especially like his marketing slogan for the Ralph's Potted Meat. His experimentation with the prison wine makes the rotten apple juice of Schwabia sound downright refreshing.

kites+onions=autumn?

Many residences and shops in our village are decked out in their autumnal decor now. Here's a picture of the window display in one of the bakeries in our town, to give you an idea. In addition to the pumpkins and Indian corn that are typical decorations for this time of year in America, kites with faces on them seem to be very popular. Apparently, it's also the time of year to buy actual kites, if I can judge by the displays at the toy store. They have some pretty sweet looking kites, too (pirate ships, crazy looking bugs, etc.). The other item being heavily marketed this time of year is hot water bottles. Most houses, including ours, have radiators instead of central heat. Also, energy prices are higher so homes are just colder. Some of the hot water bottles have soft covers that look like animals, so I think they are intended for kids, but I'll be suprised if Trey and I aren't bringing a couple to bed with us everynight by the time it's actually winter.

The other big seasonal thing right now is onion cake. Accordingly, many shop windows feature onions, with, you guessed it, faces drawn on them. Most, like the ones in this picture and smiling with tears squirting out of their eyes. This is the time of year for the "new wine" (in the bottom of the picture, you can make out the signs for the new wine as well as a decorative wine press) and it's traditional accompaniment is onion cake. We bought some to try this weekend, so I predict an upcoming Pie Hole post will report further on it.

You are beautiful and angular and if you were a gas, you'd be inert

Today I was working with a German coworker trying to fix an important and quite out of date piece of equipment in our lab. One thing lead to another and I found myself in a slightly uncomfortable situation, trying to stretch myself to bridge a cultural gap.

This particular piece of equipment has a small thermal printer that jams up occasionally and then one has to take it apart. My labmate, peering inside says to me,"I can see all the way in. It is worse than usually. There is a lot of paper in the 'zahnraeder'. Sorry, I don't know the English word." So he draws me a little picture and I realize that the word means "gears" and he is refering to those that drive the feed mechanism. Literally, "zahnrad", the singular form, means "tooth-wheel". Another fine example of a German noun collision where an English speaker might expect to find a completely unique and dedicated word assigned to this form. One of my other favorite compound nouns also involves "zahn". It is "zahnfleish" which means "gums" or literally "tooth-meat".

So anyway, when we get done fixing it, he wants to know the English word and I tell him that "gear" is the most common, but "sprocket" or "cog" are also appropriate depending on size, shape and application. At this point, someone pipes up and says,"I thought 'sprockets' was a skit from SNL that made fun of Germans."

And, now we are in dicey territory, with an American, trying to explain to several Germans with varying exposure to American culture why Mike Myers in tights with a monkey is funny and what it has to do with being German. First we tried "YouTube" for an example, but failed and resorted to Wikipedia, which had an astoundingly complete entry with some of the most notorious lines from the show. So I explain about the monkey and dancing etc...

One labmate, who has lived in the U.S. and is quite culturally educated found it to be rather hilarious. This guy goes to performance art all the time and though he rarely seems to enjoy the grown man in a diaper and motorcycle helmet climbing in and out of the piano, seems to think it is important to support the arts. As near as I can tell, he had a reference point and that made it funny for him.

With my other labmate, I had the following exchange (his name has been changed):

Me: So he has a monkey and he dances and his mannerisms and speech are very affected...
Ernst: Hmmmm. Why is this funny?
Me (sarcastically): Well, ya know, every German has a monkey living in their home.
Ernst: The only person I can think of who has a monkey in their house is an American. His name is Michael Jackson, and he is a freak.

And, well, what can I say. Touché.

ever deepening nerdiness

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been doing some writing for test prep manuals. I've been writing a lot of biological stuff lately and today am doing a piece on"gene transfer in monerans (sic)". I would give anything to have my good old Neil A. Campbell Biology text book so I could stop relying on Wikipedia for information. Alas, it's buried with so many of our other belongings in my parents' house. I still remember this little gem from the 3rd edition we used in AP Bio: "The Kingdom Monera is no rogue's gallery." Ah, the man is a poet. Imagine my surprise that this classic is now in it's 7th edition. Where has the time gone?

Piggies and Baby Bellies

"Do I look like a pig? Cuz, I'm trying really hard to look like a pig."

"I'm too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt."

The Scum of the Earth Is Watching You

Well, this whole TV tax is making me nuts. I just can't stand the idea of paying for something that I am not going to use. So today, I canvased my labmates on the topic, hoping for a way out and got nothing but bad news.

The first guy I asked doesn't pay the tax, but the only reason is that he is almost never home. When he moved into his flat, he was living alone. He ignored the letters they sent, but the others in the building told him that the guy from this government agency knocked on his door everyday for a week and spent two afternoons sitting in their backyard. Additionally, he asked all of this guy's neighbors if they heard a TV or saw a glow from the window and also attempted to get onto the my coworkers balcony to look in!

I asked a second labmate about it. All he had to say is these guys who they send to "check on you" are "The Scum of the Earth" and are willing to do anything to get their commission by catching you with an unregistered TV. He even went so far to say,"these guys make the Heidelberg bus cops look like nice guys."

So I asked another coworker, from the east originally, and she said,"Well you just have to pay it, if you get caught it will get very expensive. You might even have to get a lawyer in that case and that will get really expensive and it isn't much money to just pay the tax."

I asked two more, and got similar stories. I suggested to each my plan to fess-up to a radio, but not the TV and they unanimously agreed that to do so would just be to invite scrutiny and a certain visit from the TV bounty hunters.

I am torn. On the one hand I believe that if you live in a foreign country, you should try to follow the rules and be a good visitor. On the other hand, this is damn stupid and this whole TV bounty hunter (and the lengths they can go to) really offends my sensibilities about privacy rights. I mean looking in the windows of your home? Stake-outs? And there is the fact that we do not watch German television at all. But, in the end, my feeling that I should be a good visitor and also that I want to avoid having these guys pestering us will get me to pay it, which I am sure is what they are hoping for anyway.

This is another instance where, after talking to many Germans, I can say that they all agreed that this is a really stupid law. They don't like the tax because it isn't progressive: it doesn't scale with income or the number of TVs you have. As cable becomes more popular here, there are more and more people who don't even have access to the stations that this money supports. But, not one person I talked to said anything about it being changed. When I asked, if everyone hates this so much why there isn't a movement to change it they gave me this look like,"well the government decided this is best, just like the winter tires and car inspections." It is almost like the government here is so seperate from the people, that they don't even question.

Incidentally, every single person I asked about this told me that the TV supported by this money is "very high quality programming" about culture, world affairs and arts. Yet, every German I know at work is clamboring to get their hands on our DVDs of American commercially supported TV shows to make pirated copies. And, one person told me that what people don't realize is that the arts programming on these channels is suffering because they carry soccer and pay huge broadcast fees to FIFA to show the games. And, these stations are showing more and more commericials during programming which is additionally annoying people, as it should.

I guess I can look at in a more positive light: I must live in a really safe place if the bounty hunters are seeking out televisions....

A couple of stories

Well, living abroad is full of surprises and anecdotes a plenty. So I thought I would pass on a couple.

Today I got a letter from the German government demanding that I tell them if I have TVs or radios in the apartment and also that I tell them what bank account they can go to to collect the taxes for these items. The letter also warns of a 1000 Euro fine if I fail to return the forms. I was warned that this might happen. Apparently, there are several radio and six TV stations that are government funded and whether you watch or not, if you have a TV or radio you gotta pay. A TV, just to have it, is 17 Euros/month. If I watched them, that would be one thing, but I don't! There are several interesting side stories as well in this. Usually, they send some guy to your door to quiz you about whether you have a TV or not. This guy is not allowed to come into your home, but because he works on commission, he has every incentive to get in somehow. So, if you say, "no sir I do not have a TV and do not wish to discuss it." He might come back with, "well if you do not allow me to check, I will call the police." He has no legal right to do this, but some people don't know that. Furthermore, these public stations are now available via internet, so they want to start taxing PCs as well. Even stranger, this originates with the provision in the German constitution that provides for independent reporting on the government which will educate the public and serve to prevent the rise of nationalism. Anyway, since they can't come in the house, we will fess up to having a radio (5 Euro/month) and lie (as many Germans do) about the TV. It seems a little too much to claim we have neither. But man, what a load of crap: 200 Euro/year for TV stations I don't watch?

I also recently learned of another strange German law that prohibits the selling of books for less than the publisher printed price on the book. (Yes, there are exception for used books.) The idea with this is to discourage Border's and Barnes and Noble super book stores by preventing them from having the discount option to drive out small competitors, and it indeed works. There are numerous small book shops all over the place here, but none of them big enough that you could expect to go in and find something you were really looking for.

In another area, many of you might already know that the French are famous for protests. They just love 'em. And they don't so much go in for the symbolic alone. They enjoy the symbolism, but like a good bit of mayhem and property damage to go along with it. (Remember a few years ago, the guy who wasn't happy just to drive his tractor around town and attract attention so he drove it through the window of McDonalds?) And, they actually are good enough at protesting to get their government to pay attention occasionally as has happened in recent months with some of the changes to labor laws in France. So, I live on one side of a hill (as do many coworkers) and work on the other side. There is a crappy little mountain road owned by Heidelberg that I take down to work. Heidelberg has decided to close this road to everyone but the city busses. A few of us (including me) got permits to use the road but others who only live a mile further away and used the road everyday did not, doubling the length of their commute as they now go all the way around the hill. My French labmate is in the latter category. We were discussing this situation and ways they might convince Heidelberg that they had been too stingy with the permits and the first thing he said was,"We should have a protest, we could get everyone who didn't get a permit to go down the road and stop in the middle of it so the bus can't pass. If we line up 50-60 cars on the road and then just walk down to work, no one will be able to use it." And I said,"yeah, and if that doesn't work, we could burn something in the road" and he said,"good idea, but we will have to be careful not to catch the forest on fire." The second part was kind of joking (about burning stuff), but he was serious about the protest.

official 4 month post

As promised...

Weight: 17.5 lbs
Height: 26 inches
Health: Still good, but had his first cold last week while traveling to visit Aunt Bridget, Uncle Orrin, and Silas, his new best friend and fellow co-founder of Babies Against Mothers (BAM) baby solidarity group.
Mobility: Scooting around some, but without much direction. He can usually turn himself 180º while hanging out on the floor. And rolled over for the first time today! Also is in pretty good control of rolling from his back to side and does this repeatedly while lying next to Mom for a snack (as in: roll on back and look around, roll on side to have a sip of milk, and repeat to stretch a 10 minute feeding to 30). He's tummy muscles are getting strong and I expect he'll be sitting up alone this month (maybe).
Motor skills: Getting good at reaching out to grab things, able to separate fingers to suck on a chosen one.
Favorite hobby: Like Dad, Ellis seems to enjoy a lot of hobbies. Favorite activities at present seem to be squealing (see below), riding on Dad while checking out the outdoors, and figuring out how to control his tongue.
Favorite song: Love of Greg Brown is holding strong, but to the likely joy of Grandma Lisé he also responded well to Judy Collins and various show tunes while riding in the car last week.
Vocabulary: Seems to be beginning a love affair with the sound of his own voice (now, who does that remind me of?). Has added ear piercing squeals to his usual babbling.
Disposition: Still very sweet, fairly easy baby. Has started nursing to sleep regularly, which is most welcome (I don't care that nursing will eventually have to replaced with something else; I'm just happy that it's easy right now). He's usually very happy to have his diaper removed for as long as is "safe", but with winter coming, it's probably going to be too cold to continue that for long.

acting like a 4 month old

Ellis is 4 months old today and decided to demonstrate his prowess by rolling over for the first time! He rolled from his back to his tummy- grunting and kicking to get over but equally angry when he finally found himself on his stomach. Also today he is busting out of his small size diaper covers. Perhaps they don't allow him enough mobility now that he is officially on the go.

The real 4 month post, with pictures, will follow soon.

A Little Anniversary Mushiness

Today, I have been married to Rachel for 4 years. In those 4 years we have both finished our doctorates, moved to a foreign land and had the most beautiful baby boy. We also spent nearly our entire third year of marriage living apart and only seeing each other on weekends, a scenario I have vowed never to repeat and one that left me feeling like I was never really at home. This past weekend, Rachel remained in Ireland after I came "home" to Germany. This little seperation showed me, again, that home isn't some place in America; "home" is with Rachel, and now Ellis, wherever they are.

Looking at our first 4 years, we have much to be gratful for. We survived grad school (barely in my case) and had the opportunity to live abroad. Most importantly, we had a perfectly healthy little boy. We also had many good times with family and friends highlighted by holidays at the farm and our wedding, which ranks with Ellis's birth as the two happiest days of my life. We have also had setbacks, particularly in the area of career. There was trouble finding jobs and with me escaping from my graduate school lab and this is what lead to the year apart and has made our first months in Germany, at times, trying. There have been too many perfectly good days that have been ruined by worry or saddness or anger, and the lion's share have originated with me.

Each day I see Rachel as she has transformed into a mother: her resourcfulness in the ways she has found to make extra money for our household while she stays home to focus on Ellis; her thoughtfulness in the way she considers each choice for him; her strength in the labor to have him; her resilience in the recovery after the birth; and her kindness in her smile and how much she wants to help her sisters; And, not known for her patience, she has shown me everyday that she is truly patient with those she loves. With a partner like this, what do I really have to worry about?

As year 5 or our marriage starts, I can see that the most important thing for us to do is to remember: remember that the whole is better than either part; remember not to compare ourselves to others; remember that life isn't the amount in your bank account when you die; remember that having a career is not the same as having a life; remember that nothing is so bad as long as we are together; remember to stop living a temporary life; and remember that despite any setbacks, we have a fine foundation for our future.

A wise man told me that the key to a good life was to get yourself educated, stay off drugs and marry well. I have done better than average in the first and never cared for the second. In the third, I have been so lucky that I only hope that I can show her my gratitude by being as good a father and husband as she is wife and mother. That can't be said and become suddenly true. It has to be lived over days and years. But what I can say is this: after 4 years with some of the good and some of that bad that life can offer, I would choose no other, not for my wife and not for my son's mother.

Rachel, Happy Anniversary, I love you.

Meine Brieftasche ist in Der Toilette

"Operation: Recover Wallet" now complete. I went in this morning and executed last night's plan and did indeed have the security guard follow me to the bathroom stall and make sure I was who I said I was. He was quite understanding and asked if I was going back home to sleep, figuring I hadn't slept much last night because of worry.

The drive into work gave me a chance to see more of what the storm wrought. Higher up on this side of the hill they were spared any flooding by elevation, but there were still piles of hail on the windward sides of hills and roadside ditches. I still don't think we had much hail down lower, but much of our street is full of silt, gravel and tree pieces. Our neighbors on the low side of our street closer to the river have a pretty big mess to clean up as well since the water came up pretty high in their gardens and on their first level terrace.

Now, a nap to make up for last night, clean the house and wash the sheets for Rachel's return and then back into work to run some experiments.