Incoherent Scribblings

Ha Ha! This just cracks me up!!

Really, have I watched Star Wars that many times? So… How Jedi are you?

You can call me a humbug if you want, I don’t care: The truth is, I don’t do Christmas. I haven’t really enjoyed Christmas since I was 16 and the one present I asked for I didn’t get. That in and of it self wouldn’t have been the problem, except my little sister did get the present she asked for!

Sure, you can go on and on about how the true meaning of Christmas doesn’t lie in the presents, but let’s be honest: Up to 40% of a store’s annual sales come from the six week period between the Friday after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Christmas is about presents! If you still don’t agree, try and celebrate Christmas this year without giving or receiving any presents…

One of the things I like best about moving far, far away from my family and friends is that I no longer have to do anything more than a couple of phone calls at Christmas. A. doesn’t do Christmas either, so I don’t even have to do any shopping or anything anymore!

However, there are two things that I have found about Adventzeit here in Germany that I do like:

First is the Adventkalender. A. bought me one last year and I just loved opening a little door on my cheap cardboard calendar everyday from December first to the twenty fourth and getting a little piece of chocolate. A piece of chocolate everyday! What could be better? Too bad they don’t have year-round Adventkalenders…

Second is the Madelstollen, a sort of almond cake (or bread) that is choke full of almonds and rum and covered in powdered sugar! Normally, I am not too fond of German cakes because I find them way too heavy. (I think the heaviness of cakes here has a lot to do with the fact that baking soda is considered a dangerous substance that must be bought at the pharmacy.)

However, though the Madelstollen is heavier than what I normally like in a cake, (it is more like bread in its consistency) it is just so damn tasty! But, it is only available at the bakery across the street during Adventzeit. I bought my first small offering yesterday and quickly devoured it. Luckily, they will still be available for a few more weeks…

Few things are more important to a person than their name. Whether you like your name or not, it is the label given to you at birth and therefore can affect your personality as you grow up and become an individual.

As I have mentioned before, I have always had an affinity towards my first name. In addition to the hours I have spent researching what my name literally means and how to correctly spell it, I have also enjoyed those booths at the State Fair or the amusement park that decipher how your first name has influenced your personality for $1.00.

Thanks to Jennie, I recently discovered the PAK Dictionary of Names that does that very thing. And so, without further ado, here is how my name has affected my sense of self… (which, if I do say so myself, is pretty damned accurate!)

The first name of Renée leads you to assume considerable responsibility and to prefer to work independently, without direction or interference from others because you have very definite ideas of your own. Your mind is quick to comprehend and you can be depended upon to do any job well. Because you tend to be somewhat of a perfectionist, you might insist on doing too many things yourself instead of delegating jobs to others who might do less satisfactory work. This name does make you quite direct and straight-to-the-point. Your verbal expression usually does not reflect your inner thoughts and feelings, and you often wonder why people react to what you say the way they do. The influence of this name does not promote the friendship that you desire or the relaxation and naturalness you should enjoy with people. It is a name that makes you far too practical and serious-minded, and makes it difficult for you to act with spontaneity. You could suffer physically through head tension, with eye, teeth, or sinus problems, headaches, or mentally through worry.

I think it is time that I face the cold, hard facts: I am no photographer. Sure, I can take pictures and have four or five photo albums filled with my snapshots, plus a directory on my hard drive with tons of my digital photos, but a photographer I will never be.

I am a pretty creative person and in addition to cross-stitch and other crafts, I am a decent artist. I can sketch just about anything and I love to experiment with pastels and watercolors. I seldom dabble in artistic endeavors these days because I don’t have much room and that cats aren’t really as big of a help as they think they are, but I have been known to create things that I would proudly display in my home.

Which brings me to photography. I have always wanted to be an amateur photographer, taking my camera with me where ever I go and snapping fun, artistic shots as I go along. But it very seldom happens. In truth, I am not very comfortable taking my camera everywhere and often feel out of place when I stop and take a photo. And once I see the photographs that I have snapped, rarely do I feel that they have captured the moment.

I used to think it wasn’t my fault, but that of the camera. For the longest time I was too cheap to invest in anything more than a $35 35mm Kodak camera. I always dreamed of someday owning that fancy Canon with all sorts of accessories that Andre Agassi used to advertise, but when I looked at them, I could never afford one.

Eventually, my Kodak broke and since I wasn’t quite ready for the digital age, (at the time they were still too expensive) I bought a 35mm Vivitar with a nice zoom lens and everything. I actually have taken some pretty good pictures with that camera, but nothing that I consider the “artistic photography” that I desire. When I met A., I discovered he had one of those fancy Canons. He let me play around with it and explained what all the accessories did, but none of those photos ever really came out like I hoped either.

Finally, I moved into the digital age and thought I had finally found the perfect photographic medium. I had visions of finally taking my camera with me everywhere (after all it was pretty light!) and taking pictures as the mood hit me. And I did… for about a month and a half. The problem was, even though I was getting instant feedback and I could take lots and lots of pictures and delete the ones that I didn’t like, in my opinion, my photography didn’t improve.

Yesterday, at the Pinakothek der Moderne I had a goldmine of photographic subjects. I saw many things that I wanted to photograph and I tried, I really did. But when I got home, the pictures didn’t do any justice to the things I had seen, nor did they capture the feelings that I had had. And while I can’t see myself ever giving up on taking pictures, it was then that I came to the sad conclusion that I just don’t have the photographer’s eye that I wish for.

It looks like we will finally be breaking down and getting a cell phone. Why? It isn’t because they are nifty fashion accessories or because I have so many friends that I feel I need to have a cell phone so that I can call them up and discuss the new purse that I just bought on sale.

We will be getting a cell phone for the oldest reason in the book: in case of emergency. Unfortunately, we didn’t decide this until yesterday when we really could have used one… for an emergency!

We were driving along on the autobahn when A. said to me, “Look behind us. Boy, the road sure is dusty!” We were on the part of the freeway that is undergoing extensive reconstruction, so this could have been possible except… our car was the only one that had “dust” blowing out behind it.

Being the mechanic’s daughter that I am, I thought to myself, “It looks like we are burning oil.” So I asked A. if any of the car’s “dummy” lights were on. (So called because by the time they turn on any dummy can figure out that there is a problem!) At the time they weren’t, but a couple of seconds later the motor started sputtering and the oil light came on. Luckily we weren’t far from an exit, so we pulled off and when I peeked under the front of the car… lo and behold! … I discovered an oil leak! (Not just minor dripping either, but a steady stream.)

It was at this point that a cell phone would have come in “handy.” A. doesn’t know much about cars, but he knows enough to know that even though we were less than 5 kilometers from home it probably wasn’t a good idea to drive the car any further.

Luckily we had pulled into a parking area off the ramp, so we were able to flag down someone who did have a cell phone. He called the police for us, who in turn called a tow truck. When the police came and learned we didn’t have a cell phone, we got more than one disapproving look and a not-so-subtle mention that we were lucky someone with a cell phone was nice enough to stop and help us out.

The car was towed and tomorrow it will be going into the shop to figure out what exactly caused the oil leak and then once it is fixed, I guess we will be going cell phone shopping.

Oh yeah, did I mention that our car, the one that developed the oil leak, is a three year old BMW?! (mutters… “Overpriced, overrated, German piece of junk!”)