Monthly Archives: April 2002

Tuesday, 30 April 2002

Internet!

I'm back from my hermitage. Actually I didn't miss internet or email once. Well that's not totally true. When we played "Stephensons Rocket" I would have loved to have internet to be able to find some errata or FAQ on this game. I didn't like the game all that much. But I think this was mainly due to the fact that it had absolutely crappy rules. We fought about some situation that probably doesn't happen very often and was not explained in the rules. In the end we wished we would have filmed us playing that game. I'm sure watching it again would have been very funny.

Puerto Rico was THE game during the weekend. Some people literally played it non-stop. This hasn't happened with a new game since Settlers of Catan. The game is great. There's almost no luck involved (actually the only thing that has to do with luck is determining who gets to go first). The really good thing about the game is that there's tons of different strategies you can try. And there's not one perfect strategy. It all depends on what your opponents do. It was a good thing that we brought our copy of the game. One copy wouldn't have been enough...

We played a couple of other games we hadn't played before but as always not nearly enough. Trans America sounds like a railroad game to you? Well it is. If you think 18xx now you're wrong though. The game is rather astonishing. Explaining the rules takes about 60 seconds (if you're slow) and playing the game takes about 15 minutes with 5 players. First time you read the rules you think: "Gawd, sounds boring". But playing it is actually quite fun. There's lots of luck involved though but we've already tried ways to reduce that a little. It's a fun and fast little game you can play to relax in between bigger games. Or you can play it for three hours straight until 7am (tweaking it to reduce luck) like we did.

First night there we did not sleep much because we had a heavy snorer in our room. The next two nights we stuffed tissues in our ears and it was perfect :) We didn't sleep more than 5 hours per night anyhow but at least the snoring didn't bother us anymore... On the first day we had great weather so we played Pétanque and Kubb. It was a great weekend. I only wish it would last longer. I also wish I would get to see my old friends more often. I only see them on those gaming weekend and maybe once or twice inbetween. I'm always sad when I have to leave them again...

On our way there we stopped at a French McDonalds. This is where I got my first French Euro coins. Yay! The French 2 Euro coin is quite nice. I was shocked by how bad my French had gotten. I mean, I learned French in school for 7 years. 7 freaking years! And I had problems ordering a Big Mac. Well it was only because the the girl couldn't remember the burger I had ordered and asked me if that was the right burger and I thought she wanted to give me a choice between several types of Big Mac or something. Well in the end I managed. But I was truly devastated by how little I could talk. Understanding still works quite well if they speak slowly but if I have to talk French I often slide into English. Maybe I should think about staying in France for a couple of months. I don't want to lose all my French.

Gotta go back to work now. I'll do the Friday (..err Tuesday) Five tonight...

  Posted by Edda at 13:57 CET  |    0 comments

Monday, 29 April 2002

Gamer's Paradise

  Posted by Edda at 00:01 CET  |    0 comments

Wednesday, 24 April 2002

Gone with the Foo

I'm leaving for my gaming weekend in France now. I might be able to go online tonight but after that it's no internet until Sunday evening. Not even cell phones work where I'll be going. I hope everybody behaves while I'm gone.

  Posted by Edda at 17:01 CET  |    1 comments

Tuesday, 23 April 2002

Snore

*blink* *blink* Need caffeine. Badly.

  Posted by Edda at 17:35 CET  |    2 comments

Insomnia

I suffered from insomnia last night. I just couldn't fall asleep. One reason might have been the headache I was having. Now I have been susceptible to headaches all my life. So if a headache keeps me from falling asleep it is a rather bad one. Might also have been the book I'm currently reading. After only a couple of pages it doesn't let you go and you just have to keep on reading. And when you've stopped reading you have to think about it.

Might have been a bit of both. It is very rare that I have insomnia. Usually I fall asleep no more than 10 to 15 minutes after I switched the lights off. Now I'm sitting here at work after roughly 4 hours of sleep and curse myself for not liking coffee. I sure could use some caffeine. The peppermint tea I'm drinking doesn't really help...

  Posted by Edda at 13:31 CET  |    0 comments

Monday, 22 April 2002

Flowers

A little girl I passed on my way to uni today gave me two dandelion flowers she had picked somewhere. Ain't that sweet? I mean, I didn't know her. She just looked at me and gave me those flowers. You made my day, little girl!

The weather has gotten better and better over the last few days. Today we had 20°C. Woo hoo! Well I did have to spend all day inside at university but still it was cool to look out of the window and see the sunshine. I hope the weather stays this nice for the rest of the week. 20°C is all I'm asking really. We're leaving Wednesday evening for our biannual gaming weekend in France. I'm so looking forward to this. We'll play boardgames all day long. And if the weather is good some Pétanque also.

  Posted by Edda at 19:26 CET  |    0 comments

New pictures

I have uploaded a couple of pictures I took today (err, yesterday now). There's two new bird pics and two new mirror pics. Whenever the weather is as nice as it was today I just have to go outside, enjoy the sun and take pictures. Today was the first time we passed those birds at daytime. Usually it's late in the night on our way home from our friend Stefan's place. So today I took the opportunity to catch them on film (I mean memory stick). I've also always wanted to take a picture of our car lizards and their shadows so I did that too today while I was at it.

  Posted by Edda at 01:17 CET  |    0 comments

Sunday, 21 April 2002

Petanque

Today we played Pétanque close to one of the rivers here. That place was especially made for playing that game. It was packed with people. We were lucky to get a spot to play on. It was very neat there. Close by the water, surrounded by trees, sunshine. There were people playing Go. I've never seen people play Go in a park except us. Very nice atmosphere. I have a feeling I will spend a lot of time there in the future.

Some of the people playing there were really good. Their boules often landed exactly on the spot they wanted them too. Ours were usually quite unpredictable compared to that :) But now that I know about this cool spot I'll go play there more often and in a couple of years or so I'll be better too.

  Posted by Edda at 23:45 CET  |    0 comments

Mirror Project

I have submitted my first, three, pictures to the Mirror Project yesterday. You can find all of them here too. But still it's cool to be part of the project now :)

  Posted by Edda at 21:58 CET  |    0 comments

Saturday, 20 April 2002

Formations

This picture shows a ticket machine for Berlin's public transportation system. It usually reads "Fahrscheine - Informationen" (meaning: tickets - information). Somebody rearranged the letters so it now reads "arsch formationen" (ass formations). Discovered this on my way to work a couple of days ago and it totally made my day.

We picked up Foo from the garage yesterday. The repairs cost 924 Euro. *Arrgh* We needed new tires, new shocks, a new suspension strut on the left side and some other stuff. Well at least this seems to have done the trick and all the strange noises are gone. I'm so glad to have it back. And isn't it a strange coincidence that Foo has problems with its left leg at the same time I have problems with mine?

Michi is currently trying to persuade me to go watch Panic Room with him. I have heard very good things about this movie and apparently it is worth seeing for the cool opening credits alone. The only problem is that I don't take scary movies well. Whenever I see one I can't go to the basement (which is pretty scary to begin with) to get my laundry done alone for weeks afterwards. Sometimes even getting up at night to go to the bathroom creeps me out. And this comment somebody wrote on imdb about this movie doesn't exactly help:

"I will however say that this is a very VERY creepy film. If you get the heeby-jeebies already when you stay home alone, this movie will make you catatonic."

I guess I'll try to be brave and watch it with him. But he has to be prepared to be extra special nice to me for days afterwards.

  Posted by Edda at 23:56 CET  |    1 comments

Friday, 19 April 2002

Friday Five

1. What's your favorite TV show and why? Okay. Let's see. That would be any Star Trek show I'd say. I also like ER and Chicago Hope. Sex and the City is just great. Haven't watched the Simpsons in a while but they used to be great. X-Files. Lately I've been watching Dark Angel which is actually quite nice. Wow, now it appears I'm a total TV junkie. I probably would be if all those shows were actually on at the moment. But apart from the Simpsons, which I don't watch anymore, and reruns of some other shows only Dark Angel is actually running on German TV.

2. Who is your favorite television star? I loved Helen Hunt in "Mad About You". Now she's not really a TV star anymore so...uhm there's a lot of Star Trek actors that I love: Patrick Stewart (he's the greatest), Brent Spiner, I do have a bit of a crush on Cirroc Lofton because of his awesome looks.

3. What was your favorite TV show as a child? I did not watch all that much TV when I was a child. One reason might have been that we only got three TV stations (yes kids, there was a time when that was all TV had to offer). The other was that my parents didn't want me watching TV all day. I didn't really miss it until I was older. There were some shows I watched though.

When I was very little I used to watch "Das Sandmännchen" (little sandman) a TV show for kindergarten age children in Germany telling bedtime stories. The good thing about that show is that it airs in the early evening and children have to go to bed afterwards. So the little sandman tells them to go to bed and that works much better than if their parents tell them to go of course :)

When I was a little older I watched "Die Sendung mit der Maus", a fabulous TV show where kids actually learn something (e.g. how pencils are made, how a toilet works in space, how the holes get into the cheese, how soap is made,... the list is endless). The little features where you learn stuff are followed by Maus and Elephant (I love the little blue elephant!) cartoons. I still watch the show from time to time when I accidentally stumble across it while zapping.

Another show I liked a lot was "Löwenzahn" (dandelion) another very good show that is funny and educational. The theme song is a classic. I've even thought about making it my cell phone ring tune :)

And then there was "Augsburger Puppenkiste". A show that told cool stories with very well-made wooden puppets on strings.

4. What show do you think should have been cancelled by now? There's this show called "Lindenstrasse". It is *the* German soap. The first episode aired 1985. Apparently their contract still runs until 2005. Gaaah.

5. What new show do you hope escapes the axe this season? Uhm. All the American shows that come to German TV are the ones that already have escaped. And I don't watch any German shows at the moment. So I can't really say anything about that.

Well it seems this transformed into a little "history of German TV for kids" lesson :)

  Posted by Edda at 11:22 CET  |    4 comments

Thursday, 18 April 2002

Nerves

It seems I have somehow managed to jam my sciatic nerve (my dictionary says that's what it is called in English). At least that's my doctor's current guess. They'll do some X-rays of my spine on Monday because it is apparently twisted quite a bit and may cause the problem. I have had this strange pain in my left thigh (and a bit in the right one also) since Friday last week and already thought I might have problems with my blood circulation (fortunately that doesn't seem to be the case). Seems like I'll spend a lot of time with an orthopedist for the next couple of months. *sigh*

  Posted by Edda at 20:51 CET  |    2 comments

Wednesday, 17 April 2002

New Improvements

I improved the site quite a bit during the last week. Read about it here and here.

  Posted by Edda at 23:42 CET  |    0 comments

Lots of new Stuff

I have spent my evening working on new stuff to upload to this site. I have uploaded five new pictures today: electricity, finally two new birds and two fist graffiti. You can also comment on pictures now. And then I have added two new galleries: Graffiti and Mirror & Shadow and moved some of the pics from Miscellaneous gallery to the appropriate new one. Misc gallery was getting too crowded.

I also decided it was time to finally recommend a new CD. This time it is the last Get Up Kids album. I have owned this CD for quite some time now but I feel not enough people know about this great band.

Lastly I have finally added a little copyright notice at the bottom of the page.

Now I have had enough and will end my evening with some TNG.

  Posted by Edda at 23:39 CET

Sun is Back

The sun is back. Doesn't look like it'll stay for long though. April weather is really strange. You can have the nicest weather and 5 minutes later you'll have a thunderstorm, or snow, or just lots of rain. And then after 5 minutes the sun will be back. I think I'll stop updating everybody on the weather now as it obviously has a few problem deciding on what it wants....

  Posted by Edda at 15:20 CET  |    0 comments

All gone

The sun is gone again. *sigh* Well at least I had sun for half a day. Maybe I should have RANTED some more!!!

  Posted by Edda at 14:53 CET  |    0 comments

Quite Cool

It's quite astonishing. Yesterday I ranted about the bad weather and today I wake up to the nicest sunshine. And it's even quite warm. Yay :)

The car is getting fixed currently (hopefully). So we used public transportation to get to work. Of course I tried to get a good picture of the birds and the other graffiti along the tracks again. I'll see tonight if anything good came out of it.

  Posted by Edda at 12:08 CET  |    0 comments

Tuesday, 16 April 2002

Spam

I got the first spam mail through my dognamedfish account today. I have never gotten that much spam mail because I was always very careful where I entered my email address and my mail provider has pretty good anti-spam protection it seems. A couple of days ago I found out that Movabletype 2.0 has a new spam-protect feature. It encodes email addresses on my site (even the ones my visitors specify in their comments) in unicode. Spambots will not realize it's a mail address and won't harvest it. Unfortunately it seems as if this one bot was faster than me...

Btw: What the f*** is wrong with the weather god? Around Easter the weather was so great. After that it got a lot cooler again but at least there weren't that much clouds. The last couple days we had rain, rain, oh and rain. HELLOOO?? I already did my spring-cleaning! It's time for nice weather now!

Foo, our car, is sick again. We think it's the exhaust pipe. Again. Also whenever we make a left turn there's this grinding noise. We'll bring it to the garage tomorrow. I hope they can fix it.

  Posted by Edda at 23:20 CET  |    0 comments

Monday, 15 April 2002

Spring Cleaning and girl with bag

After watching Formula 1 on Sunday we spent the whole day spring-cleaning. It was quite a lot of work. I even tidied my desk (which is a very rare thing). Now everything is shiny and nice. I hope it stays that way for a while.

Today we went to uni to our (hopefully) last class. I think we made a lucky catch with this class. We will get lots of credits for it for not too much work (at least it sounds like it'll be a lot more relaxing than it should be).

A couple of days ago we passed a girl on a bike on our way home and she had that very cool Freitag-style messenger bag. Two days later we passed her and the bag again at almost the same spot. The next day we saw her standing at "our" bus stop. In big cities you recognize people by what they wear it seems.

  Posted by Edda at 22:59 CET  |    0 comments

Sunday, 14 April 2002

Done

I have spent the evening doing a major update to my gallery. I found it was not very comfortable to browse and the index page was a little confusing. I'm still not entirely satisfied but it's a lot better than before IMO.

I have rearranged the galleries on the index page. It is now two columns. Next to the description of each gallery there's now a little thumbnail of the latest picture posted to that gallery.

The sidebar now contains the last five pictures I have uploaded (independant of the gallery they're in), sorted newest to oldest.

I have added a couple more links for easier navigation.

Hope you like.

  Posted by Edda at 02:35 CET

Saturday, 13 April 2002

Escalators

I've uploaded a new picture I shot in a shopping mall here in Berlin today. This site needs to be worked on some more. So that's what I'm going to do now...

  Posted by Edda at 21:05 CET  |    0 comments

Friday, 12 April 2002

Friday Five

1. What is your favorite restaurant and why? Hmm. I guess that would be Sake House in Salem, VA. Very, very good sushi. Only problem is that it's in Salem, VA. *sigh*

2. What fast food restaurant are you partial to? Taco Bell I'd say. But I think that's mainly because we don't have that in Germany. From the ones we have it's a tie between McDonald's and Burger King. Before I lived in Berlin I would've said Burger King because the nearest BK was a 40 minute drive away from where we lived. Now that I have almost equal access to McDonald's and Burger King (the Mc is still more common here) it depends on my mood. We have a seafood fast food chain called Nordsee (North Sea) that I like. So whenever I'm in a mood for fish and don't have money for sushi I go there.

3. What are your standards and rules for tipping? In Germany the tip is already included in the price for the meals. Which means you tip to show your approval of their service. I usually round the price up to one of the next integers. In America I tip between 15 and 20%.

4. Do you usually order an appetizer and/or dessert? Depends on my appetite and how much I'm willing to pay. Or if they have an appetizer or dessert I just got to have.

5. What do you usually order to drink at a restaurant? Depends on the restaurant. With sushi I like Kirin, but only if I don't have to drive home afterwards. If I'm eating out with my parents and they pay I sometimes go for wine but again only if I don't drive afterwards (wine makes Edda drunk very quickly) and if it fits to the food I'm having. Other than that it's sometimes coke, sometimes fruit juices, sometimes water (the sparkling one). In the US I like to order iced tea.

  Posted by Edda at 13:01 CET  |    0 comments

Thursday, 11 April 2002

Nervousness

My little brother has a job interview tomorrow. I'm so nervous. I hope he gets the job. He would definitely deserve it.

  Posted by Edda at 17:40 CET  |    0 comments

Huh?

I found out this morning that the embassy of Uzbekistan is located just 500m down the road from where I live. I've been living here for over 2 years now and I never knew. I've even walked by this spot countless of times and never noticed...

  Posted by Edda at 11:44 CET  |    0 comments

Wednesday, 10 April 2002

Caffeine Shock

I just let a co-worker talk me into having an iced espresso. I'm sure I'll freak out now and won't be able to fall asleep tonight. I'm *so* not used to drinking coffee.

*twitch*

  Posted by Edda at 13:29 CET  |    0 comments

Grab the cursor

This is very cute. It's about a bunny who thinks your cursor is a carrot.

  Posted by Edda at 00:31 CET  |    0 comments

Tuesday, 9 April 2002

More graffiti

Just uploaded another graffiti pic. I was very lucky to get a good shot of it.

  Posted by Edda at 23:41 CET  |    0 comments

Geomag

Yesterday I couldn't resist of course and bought the big box of Geomags (184 pieces). We played all evening. There's always something new you want to try. And of course it wasn't long before we wanted to build something we didn't have enough pieces for. Well I guess there's nothing you can do about that. There'll always be something you cannot build with the pieces you have, no matter how many you have.

I'm just glad I don't need a heart pacemaker. I'm sure the magnetic field would kill it...

  Posted by Edda at 22:46 CET  |    0 comments

Monday, 8 April 2002

Me, me, me

You can finally read a little something about me. The page is far from finished but I didn't want to let everybody wait even longer. I think of it as an ongoing project. If you want, you can ask me a question and I will put your question and my answer on that page.

  Posted by Edda at 23:48 CET  |    1 comments

Conditioning

The office I work in has totally conditioned me to not touch any metal objects without discharging me first. You get charged just from walking on the carpet. For a computer company they have paid astonishingly little attention to that kind of thing. Well anyhow. I am pretty good now with discharging myself before I touch anything. But sometimes I forget. Like I did just a couple of minutes ago when I came back from the bathroom and wanted to pick up my headphones. *Wham* It HURT! I bet you could even see the sparks flying if you looked closely. I also shock my co-workers whenever I touch them. Maybe I should try wearing different shoes to work...

  Posted by Edda at 15:51 CET  |    0 comments

Friday Five

Totally forgot about the Friday Five. Well better late than never...

1. What are the first things that you do in the morning to start your day? Wake up to the cruel sound of an alarm clock around 8am currently, turn around to cuddle one last time with Michi, carefully climb down the ladder (can be quite dangerous if you're still half asleep. The latest incidents involving my attempts to climb down the bed unhurt prove me right), find some new clothes to wear (this can be tricky as I hate doing the laundry), stumble to the bathroom, take a nice hot shower, brush teeth, try to get my hair to look good (almost never succeed there), grab backpack (containing wallet, keys and most importantly: my camera), leave house, drive to work. At work the first thing I do is check my email. That is if it is a work day. If it's not a work day I usually don't set the alarm clock and sleep until at least noon. Also I usually don't take a shower immediately but turn the computer on first, check my mail and the sites I visit regularly.

2. What are the last things that you do at night before going to bed? Brush teeth, turn off the computer. Sometimes if I have enough time I will also read for a bit (usually I don't have time for that). Lately we try to watch one episode of TNG before we go to bed.

3. What daily routine have you recently added to your day? Uhm. Does trying to watch one TNG episode per day count?

4. What routine do you wish you get rid of? Going to work?

5. What's the one thing that makes you feel like something is missing if you don't do it some point within your day? Checking email. Oh and playing ButtonMen. I can do without internet (i.e. surfing the net) for a couple of days but I really feel like something's missing if I don't check my emails at least once a day. Even when I'm on vacation.

  Posted by Edda at 13:46 CET  |    0 comments

glowing in the dark

I just uploaded a picture of a Geomag shape glowing in the dark. Just so you know what I'm talking about...

  Posted by Edda at 00:46 CET  |    0 comments

Sunday, 7 April 2002

Busy Weekend

I was not online at all yesterday except for about 1 minute when I wrote the birthday greeting for my dad. On Friday night after work all I did after dinner (homemade lasagna, yummy) was play Heroes of Might and Magic IV. I had only intended to test it for a couple of minutes but it's just too addicitive. I played until 4am. By then Michi was already fast asleep on the couch in front of the TV.

Around 7 in the morning I woke up because I had to pee badly. I was still half dreaming and my legs were wobbly but still I tried to climb down (our bed is 2 meters above ground) as fast as I could. Somehow I didn't see the last step of the ladder and crashed down. I did land on my feet but I hurt my arm and one of the fingers I had used to steady my descent. Nothing's broken though. Just a nice bruise on my arm and my finger feels a little funny when I type.

I got up around noon, showered, had the leftover lasagna from Friday night for breakfast, and then Michi and me went to town to go shopping. It was our friend Stefan's birthday. He had invited us for a game day and we still needed a present. We got him a box of glow-in-the-dark Geomags, the perfect gift for a geek. I also found a very cool T-shirt for myself. We briefly wondered why stores didn't make any attempt at throwing us out around 4pm (the usual time stores close on a Saturday). But then we found out that they had some kind of special event going and stores would be open until midnight. Very cool. I only wish they'd do this more often.

We spent the whole day hanging around Stefan's place, playing games (boardgames and a Heroes of Might and Magic IV hotseat multiplayer game). We also played with the Geomags all day. Those things are FUN. I just have to buy me a pack on Monday too. I think I'll buy the biggest box they have (if I can afford it. It's got 120 bars, 64 balls and the price is 140 Euro. Urgs). The one we got for Stefan contained 24 bars and 18 balls. All the things I wanted to build would have required more bars. But it's totally addicting. You can't stop playing with these things. They also look very cool in the dark. Playing with Geomag reminded me of Bridgebuilder a lot, only that this is real life now and there's no train.

We just got back from playing a round of Pétanque. We found a good spot to play in the nearby park. I won. But it was very close.

  Posted by Edda at 18:12 CET  |    0 comments

Saturday, 6 April 2002

B-Day

Happy Birthday, Dad! Love you!

  Posted by Edda at 13:30 CET  |    0 comments

Thursday, 4 April 2002

Mirror, Mirror

I took a nice mirror picture this morning.

  Posted by Edda at 21:50 CET  |    2 comments

Bot came for a visit

It has finally happened:

Googlebot has indexed my site. It is the first available result if you search for "a dog named fish" or "adognamedfish". Woohoo! Somebody has even found the site searching for "play kubb" :)

  Posted by Edda at 13:40 CET  |    0 comments

Wednesday, 3 April 2002

I love sunsets

I don't think I've mentioned this yet but I love sunsets. I love to take photos of sunsets. My family likes to tease me about that. But the colors of the sky and everything else are just so great during sunsets I can't resist if I have a camera at hand. I have just added a picture of yet another sunset (TM) I took on our way back to Berlin last weekend. This one is special though. I didn't take the sunset directly but as a reflection in Foo's rear window.

  Posted by Edda at 23:55 CET  |    0 comments

What would Solid Snake do?

I found this article in GameSpy's daily victim feature today. It's called "When I forgot my access card this morning, I was forced to go Metal Gear Solid freestyle at the office". It's about a guy trying to get into his office building the Metal Gear Solid way. Hilarious. Not sure if it's as funny for people who don't know the game but you should try it anyway.

We're currently thinking about buying a Dolby Surround sound system so we can watch our DVDs and play our PS2 games with surround sound. Does anybody have any experience with these things?

I tried to take pictures of the birds on the railtracks again today. This is really hard. But of course I won't give up.

  Posted by Edda at 22:29 CET  |    0 comments

What I want

I'd love to have the Penny Arcade Year One hardcover book. But $16 shipping to Europe is just too much. That almost doubles the price...

I'm so dumb. Yesterday we forgot to bring the laptop to work. Didn't matter much though because this way I had enough time to read a really good book on computer security. Today I remembered to bring the laptop. But I forgot to bring my mouse. The laptop only came with a crappy mouse without wheel and additional buttons. So I usually use my old Intellimouse Explorer. I can do without back button on my mouse for a day (even though it's hard) but surfing without the wheel is just a pain in the ass.

I also forgot to bring the car keys. They are still in a pocket of the pants I wore yesterday. We left Foo at work yesterday because we joined our friend Stefan in his quest to buy himself a new computer. When that had failed we went to see a movie and were afterwards too lazy to drive all the way across Berlin to get Foo. Now it seems we have to rely on public transportation for yet another day. What's worse is that Foo has to sleep here all alone again.

  Posted by Edda at 12:53 CET  |    0 comments

Power Knob continued

I have bought a PowerMate today. After about an hour of fighting with the driver Michi and I have now managed to install it (after all this is primarily a Mac product and it seems they wanted to show us Windoze users...) But it's really cool! Its base glows blue, getting brighter if you turn it right and dimmer if you turn left. *geek*

I also bought a set of 8 boules so we can play Pétanque now. Not quite cheap. But the price is understandable if you try to lift them all at once. Pure steel... I hope we'll have time to play some tomorrow after work.

I got a package from cheapass games containing a copy of "Kill Doctor Lucky". W00t! I didn't order it myself though and it doesn't say who it's from. So whoever sent this to me:

THANK YOU!!!

I've always wanted to have this game.

  Posted by Edda at 00:16 CET  |    1 comments

Tuesday, 2 April 2002

Spring

I just had lunch outside in the sun for the first time this year. Great!

  Posted by Edda at 13:26 CET  |    0 comments

Back!

I'm back!

Had a great weekend. Actually it was kind of relaxing to be away from the internet for a while. Only problem is that I have to catch up on a lot of stuff now. 4 days is a lot of time on the net.

Yesterday before we drove back to Berlin we played a couple rounds of poker with our friends. And I lost some more money. There was always somebody who had lots of luck. And when I had something cool somebody else had something even cooler. But that's how the game goes and I still had lotsa fun. Plus through playing poker I now have three more coins from other European countries: 5 cent from Italy (very cool, features the Colloseum), 10 cent from the Netherlands and 20 cent from Austria. I'm still waiting for coins from Portugal, Finland or Ireland. They look pretty cool.

Before we started Michi wanted to bet on what part of Foo would break during the journey. I told him that nothing would break as the recent exhaust pipe story was enough for the next couple of months. Sure enough when we wanted to continue our journey after a short pit stop at a Burger King we noticed that the right headlight was broken. Fortunately there was a gas station nearby where we bought a replacement bulb. Obviously Foo didn't like to get surgery and made it as hard as possible for us to replace the bulb. But in the end we succeeded and continued towards Berlin. We made it here without further incidents. Yet again we were very lucky: no traffic jams for us, but lots of jams for the people going south.

When we got home we watched the second episode of TNG and then went to bed. That epsiode "The Naked Now" is not that interesting storywise but towards the end (when the captain is "drunk" too and responds to Beverly's advances) it is very funny. Patrick Stewart is such a great actor.

It was so nice to be able to sleep in my own bed again. *sigh* This thing is the most comfortable bed in the world I believe.

  Posted by Edda at 10:45 CET  |    0 comments

Monday, 1 April 2002

Easter

At Tim's birthday party I dropped my new digital camera while playing Pétanque. Arrgh! It still seems to be working fine but it's got a lot of small dents from the gravel I dropped it on. My poor camera. *sniffle*

Yesterday we vacuumed the car and then drove to a 3D museum in a nearby town. We had to walk from one side of the town to the other because we had parked the car on the wrong side. But it was pretty cool as it still has most of its old town center which is like 500-600 years old and surrounded by a city wall. The museum itself is pretty neat. But too expensive for what you get.

When we got back we watched this weekend's Formula 1 race. After that we played Puerto Rico twice and then watched an episode of Enterprise. Puerto Rico is a new boardgame I bought. I like it a lot. You have to play it a couple of times before you can decide on a good strategy. But there's many good strategies you can try in this game. It all depends on what your opponents do. Another good thing about it is that you got something to do no matter who's turn it is. There's almost no waiting time. Which is really cool if you play with people who like to think long and hard about their turns...

Today we'll drive back to Berlin. Cross your fingers for low traffic!

  Posted by Edda at 11:25 CET  |    0 comments