Incoherent Scribblings

I suppose as an American living in Germany it is my duty today to blog about Bush’s visit to Germany.

I don’t live near Mainz (where Bush and Shröder met), so I can’t give you a perspective concerning what the city was like. If you want to know about that, drop by Jingle Lady’s blog. However, according to the news, Mainz was like a ghost town.

Still, I did watch the press conference this afternoon: After all, the lead up to it interrupted my soap opera and there wasn’t anything else on.

Now, since I really hate it when they dub over someone while that someone is speaking a language I understand, I did the following: While Schröder was speaking, I watched the German news station N24. While Bush was speaking, I watched CNN International. Luckily the channels on my TV are 28 (N24) and 27 (CNN) so I didn’t have to do too much flipping. It was a good thing I chose to do so too: CNN had “technical” problems while Schröder was speaking and their audience didn’t get to hear much of what Schröder had to say. Afterwards I found it interesting to compare the commentary between the N24 anchors and the CNN anchors.

Though I could add some scathing comments about how I perceived the president (*cough* a terrible public speaker and an idiot *cough* - Actually, I thought of him as such LONG before he ever became president. I lived in Texas when he was governor!) I prefer for this blog not to become political. Nonetheless, my take on the whole thing is this: They pretty much agreed to disagree… on Iraq, Iran, China, NATO and the Kyoto Protocol. The End.

The posting date for my first round robin is Monday. I have been finished with the stitching for about a month and in the last couple of days I have been getting everything ready so that I can mail it. I had to supply a pattern for one of the ladies in my group and I finally chose a very nice freebie that I hope she will like. So far it has been a fun experience, but I guess now that it is time to start the mailing, waiting, and stitching other people’s things the real fun will begin!

I wrote a little letter of introduction since I only personally know one of the ladies. I wasn’t sure what to write, so I pretended that I was a kid again and had a new pen pal! Of course, the content of my letter was a little more grown up this time and focused on cross-stitch, but using the “pen pal” idea I found the letter much easier to write than I thought it would be. Tomorrow I am going to get a little notebook to send with my robin so that the ladies can leave me notes if they so desire.

Currently, I am planning to send it out on Thursday. Though I visit the German post office often, I have never sent a package that needs to be insured. I hope I don’t have any problems. If truth be told, this is the part of the robin that I am dreading the most. If I was at home, I wouldn’t have any problem sending an insured package, but I always worry when I do things like this for the first time in Germany. My language skills are pretty good, but sometimes people still misunderstand me…

Anyway, all this round robin talk brings me to a multi-part Stitching Blogger’s Question! And it is…

Do you participate in round robins?

If not, have you thought about it?

Apparently, for Germany we have a rather odd bathroom. You see, while many times German toilets, tubs/showers, and sinks are in separate rooms (actually more like closets), our toilet, sink, and tub/shower are all in one room. However, I always suspected from the orientation of our tub that there was something weird about our bathroom.

You see, our tub is partially enclosed by a wall. We had a hell of a time finding a proper shower curtain for it because we needed one that went around a corner. There are also little holes on the wall that have been filled with silicon.

Well, we found out the reason for these oddities is that our bathroom with all of its facilities in one room actually used to be two toilet stalls (hence the wall that encloses the shower) and a sink. Yes, you read right: Two toilets, NO shower and/or tub. All I can say is WTF? It is an apartment, not a department store!

The reason for the two toilets I will never know, because long before we ever moved in the landlord consolidated the two toilet stalls and sink into one room and added a shower and tub… And for that I will be forever grateful. Nevertheless, the remodeling of our bathroom apparently was not without complications because about six months after we moved in we noticed a water stain on the other side of the bathroom wall, which also happens to be our bedroom.

At first the stain was barely noticeable. Then we noticed that the stain had darkened and gotten bigger. The wall was damp and the bedroom smelled musty. We contacted the landlord and he came to investigate the situation. It seemed that the silicon used to seal up the shower/tub area was not doing its job and the water from our showers had seeped into the wall.

As the landlord and his friend fixed our bathroom, he muttered he didn’t know why this had happened. Did we shower often? A. said, “Only everyday.” A. didn’t add that we EACH shower everyday, therefore running the shower twice. From the look on the landlord’s face though, it was obvious he thought even showering once a day everyday fell into the “too often” category. But they fixed it… or so we thought.

However, about a month ago we noticed a new spot in the bedroom and the landlord and his friend came and fixed it again tonight. This time they used something else for the sealant and the fumes smell like nail polish remover. They informed us that the shower had to remain dry for 24 hours. Then they sternly reminded us (with what I thought looked like a twinkle of sadistic pleasure in the landlord’s eye) that this meant that we could have NO SHOWER until tomorrow evening! Oh the horror! How will I ever survive?

I have had a very crafty couple of days! Not only did I finish the baby sampler, I framed “Purr-plexed” and “Precious Family.”

You may remember that while back I ordered a frame from my local craft store for “Precious Family.” While I was not impressed with the fact that I didn’t receive the service I was hoping for and that they told me the frame would be here in two weeks, but in reality didn’t get here until Friday, just about a month later, I am happy with the frame. I picked it up today and framed “Precious Family” this afternoon and I must say, I think I did a damn good job! In my opinion, it looks very professional.

On top of that, yesterday I also framed “Purr-plexed.” You may be wondering about the bright blue frame that I chose for “Purr-plexed.” Well, there is a story (of course!) behind it.

Originally I bought this frame at my infamous craft store. I bought it unfinished and for “Precious Family.” I was going to stain the frame and then frame “Precious Family.” Well, when I went to OBI (sort of like Home Depot - the craft store only had paint… no stain!) all the stain they had for sale came in a liter can. It was WAY more stain than I needed and cost WAY more than I wanted to pay, so I abandoned the idea. Instead, I decided to paint the frame light blue since I thought it would bring out the light blue in “Precious Family.”

Well, once I got it painted the light blue was about 100 times brighter than I wanted and it totally did NOT work with “Precious Family.” So, I put it away and hoped to find something else for it eventually. I have tried at least 10 pieces with that frame in all of its blue glory, but it just didn’t work with anything.

So, the other day when I finished “Purr-plexed” I held it up to the frame and came to the conclusion it worked the best of any piece so far, so voila! I decided to put “Purr-plexed” in my notorious “light” blue frame. It could have turned out gaudy, but amazingly… I think that it turned out A-OK!