April 2006

Kraut Eye for the Ami Guy

30 April 2006

I don’t have any eye for fashion, so it came as a surprise to read in expat blogs that a distinguishing characteristic of Americans in Europe are white tennis shoes. However, until last year, all the tennis shoes I’ve bought since moving to Germany have been white. And all were bought while on trips to [...]

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Google Blurry Maps

27 April 2006

Lots of people are pointing out that Google Maps has new maps and pictures for Germany, but at least where we live things are still pretty blurry. But we have some roads and towns now, anyway.

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American Round Table

27 April 2006

Our favorite local restaurant California 101 (Neue Strasse 12 in Buchholz) has a American “Stammtisch” the last Thursday of every month for expats, folks who have visited the States, and anyone else who wants to come and speak a little English. The past few months we’ve had always been busy on Round Table nights, but [...]

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Jutta Allmendinger

25 April 2006

Since I’m collecting examples of prominent working mothers, I’ll mention Prof. Jutta Allmendinger, Director of the Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (Institute for Labor Market and Employment Research). I heard her on the radio a month or so ago. She explained how during her studies in the States it was natural for female students and [...]

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Postcard

25 April 2006

We parents are supposed to send a postcard to our kids at their Freetime camp. I found this happy pig. I hope Christopher enjoys it.

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Don’t Worry, Spend Money

24 April 2006

We just got a funny letter from our county’s Katasteramt, a word that at first glance looks like catheter but actually mean land-registry office. They just noticed that we built a carport that doesn’t appear in their official plans, and could we please hire a surveyor to measure it (at our cost, of course), otherwise [...]

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CEO Compensation

24 April 2006

James A Skinner, CEO Of McDonald’s, earned $4.2 mil in total compensation in 2005, ranking 295 among the CEOs of America’s 500 biggest companies.

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Freetime 2.0

23 April 2006

Christopher is all set for a week of freetime, like he did last year with his Kindergarten group, ages 4 to 6. They’ll again be at St. Peter Ording on the North Sea for 4 nights away from their parents. Since he’s done this before, he’s not apprehensive about it at all, and is almost [...]

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How She Does It

23 April 2006

Another working mother story, this time on Sophie Vandebroek, CTO of Xerox, whose husband died 10 years ago leaving her with three children. How does she do it? By sticking to strict rules for travel, refusing relocations, and living simply. She hires someone to do laundry and grocery shopping, and doesn’t sweat it if things [...]

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I Bake Cookies, Too

23 April 2006

The New York Times has a profile of Ursula von der Leyen, German Family Minister and the most colorful and controversial member of Angela Merkel’s mostly colorless cabinet. I didn’t realize she had worked in the US, which explains how she picked up her decidedly un-German ideas on working mothers. The article doesn’t mention her [...]

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Google’s China Problem

22 April 2006

An interesting and long article in the New York Times on Google’s China Problem (and China’s Google Problem), which asks whether some forms of censorship and collaboration and less evil than others, and ends with the proposition that the biggest influence for democracy in China may be “American Idol”. By the way, Google did notice [...]

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New Phone

21 April 2006

Don’t mind me, I’m just trying out the new cameraphone.

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Nothing Healthy on the Dollar Menu

20 April 2006

Kottke says: “Because of their Dollar Menu (which doesn’t feature any of their recently added healthy menu items), sales at McDonald’s have risen sharply over the last three years. In Germany you can get a side salad on the “1×1 Menu”. Do the American Dollar Menu ads really target young low-income ethnics?

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Math Teacher Arrested

20 April 2006

Another victory in the war on terror: US Detains Al-Gebra Operative (as seen at Spreeblick). At New York’s Kennedy airport today, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator. At [...]

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Job Description

20 April 2006

I hadn’t realized that Nico had entered my job description in Basecamp.

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Hello, Langley!

20 April 2006

Just when you thought that noone was reading your weblog, it turns that no, you’re wrong. Thanks to Wonkette, we now know that someone is: President Bush and U.S. policy-makers are receiving more intelligence from open sources such as Internet blogs and foreign newspapers than they previously did, senior intelligence officials said. The new Open [...]

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Is there still a God?

19 April 2006

“Is there still a God?” “Why is he in heaven?” “Who are his customers?” “Are the angels his customers?” “What services does God perform?” Where does Christopher come up with questions like this? Is he being a philosopher or a business analyst? (He really used the words “Kunden” and “Leistungen”.) At least his final statement [...]

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Too Many Adjectives

19 April 2006

If you’ve been in Germany too long, sometimes you forget to notice the problems that the mainstream German press has reporting about race. raskal trippin noted the reporting on a racist beating in Potsdam. from the 4 sentence description on the news in Brandenburg (Berliner Zeitung): “schwarze Deutscher”/ black German “fremdenfeinlichen Hintergrund” /xenophobic background “gebürtige [...]

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Steal Your Own Paper

18 April 2006

Back in college I had the perfect part-time job: union scale for no work. I worked the weekend graveyard shift in the radio room of the StarTribune newspaper, monitoring police and fire radio. My job was to keep a log and to wake a photographer in case something particularly gruesome occurred (like 6 kids dying [...]

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First Slide: I Think We Need To Talk

18 April 2006

My Hypertextual Life » The Many Uses of Power Point: bullet points for your break-up (via Accordion Guy)

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Easter Monday

17 April 2006

Easter Monday is one of those holidays we’ve never gotten into. We usually end up doing some sort of home improvement project like painting or wallpapering. Today we sorted out outdated toys, a big chore since Christopher seems to have inherited my sense of organizations (stack and pile). Our Tagesmutter will be happy for the [...]

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Do Mention The War

14 April 2006

World cup seen as chance to recognise Nazi past, which I guess means it’s now OK for John Cleese to mention the war, and for English fans to sing “Ten German Bombers”. (via anglofritz)

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Open Mabber

12 April 2006

Since the Number 1 question I get lately is whether I have any Mabber invitations, it’s good news that as of now registration for Mabber is open. Come crash the instant messaging party, no invitation is needed. In the spirit of dogfood I’ve been using Mabber daily since we starting testing. Not only does it [...]

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I’m trying to think…

11 April 2006

My current attitude about blogging is best summed up by UserLand Shortcut No. 22: (for those of you who remember or maybe even still use Frontier): entitled “curly”. Click to listen.

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Congratulations

4 April 2006

My boss will be preoccupied for a while… Henri Carl Mattis was born early this morning. Congratulations to Nico, Sibylle und Rike!

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Weekend in Stralsund

2 April 2006

We spent the weekend in Stralsund, at the Hansedom, a spa and wellness park with adjoining hotel. The weekend was a my birthday present from my family, including a fitness test defining in numbers exactly how unfit I am. Christopher enjoyed the water park with 3 slides so much that we went twice. We were [...]

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School 2.0

1 April 2006

Last week Christopher attended a local school for 3 days to evaluate his fitness to start first grade in the fall in light of his stuttering problem. Officially we had applied for the “determinination of special educational need”, but actually we wanted a detailed evaulation with an official rejection. Yesterday we a conference with the [...]

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