Stranded!

16 January 2011

Last Tuesday we accepted delivery for the Volkswagen Sharan that we ordered 6 months ago (with a lot of extras but without the automatic doors like in the cute commercial). It will be my company car for the next three years. Our family isn’t really big enough for a mini-van, but there are times we [...]

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Back in Black

12 January 2011

One of the several good effects of our son’s new school is that he has developed an enthusiasm for music. We didn’t take him to any special music classes earlier (it’s something we didn’t think of, since neither of us did it as kids, maybe that was a missed opportunity), but with his very first [...]

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Extremism in Defense of Liberty

10 January 2011

Yesterday we attended the New Year’s Reception given by the mayor of Buchholz. It was a typical political meet-and-greet event, with all the usual suspects in attendance: the county commissioner (Landrat), 2 members of the Bundestag, 1 member of the Landestag (Lower Saxony Parliament). There was shake-hands with the mayor, a glass Sekt, live music [...]

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Brussels Sprouts with BACON

6 January 2011

OK, it’s not really bacon, just low-fat diced ham, but this recipe from our My Line fitness program has become our favorite way to eat Brussels sprouts, even as a main dish! The original recipe is metric, the American equivalents are approximate. 500 g (1 lb) Brussels sprouts 1 onion, chopped 1 Tsp olive oil [...]

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Grocery Shopping

5 January 2011

With my wife and I both having busy and hectic schedules (well, hers is more hectic, mine is mostly pushing paper), coordinating grocery shopping is a constant challenge. We have a completely low-tech method of compiling a grocery list: a piece of paper tacked to the side of the refrigerator where we note the staples [...]

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Christmas Card

24 December 2010

As usual, I prepared our Christmas greetings for our friends and relatives in the US at CardStore, which lets us upload pictures and prepare a text and saves us the trouble of filling out envelopes and paying international postage. Also as usual, PapaScott readers get the inside scoop first… 2010 is ending for us the [...]

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Starting Over

8 December 2010

Five years ago I wrote this: It was 25 years ago Wednesday Thursday that John Lennon was killed. Has it really been that long? It’s an event (like the Challenger explosion) that I remember vividly and that changed how I felt about myself and the world. I had just started college, I was working at [...]

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Got Your Back

15 November 2010

It was this time about 4 years ago (November 2006) that I started feeling strange pains in my back. Actually, they were in my legs and butt, and I was too dumb to realize they were really coming from my back. And I was too dumber to go to a proper orthopedist until 2 months [...]

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I Live Overseas… And I Vote

1 November 2010

Tomorrow are the mid-term elections in the US, in case you haven’t heard. My vote is already in and counted. If you don’t know how to vote from overseas, the Overseas Vote Foundation can help you get started. You might still have a chance to get in your vote for tomorrow, or at the very [...]

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We didn’t know anything then

25 October 2010

The reports this past the weekend of the WikiLeaks documents showing how the US ignored torture in Iraq made me sad. Not so much that that it came as a surprise, but rather that it came as no surprise. And it made me think of what I wrote about the Iraq war before it began… [...]

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Blue skies, Minneapolis skyline, Jim Thome

22 September 2010

Aaron Gleeman pointed to the current cover of Sports Illustrated featuring Target Field. Click for full size. Here’s hoping it looks this good in October. Be a shame if it snowed!

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Thus Spake The Poodle

19 September 2010

I promised to explain the poodle. Last weekend the 5th annual Whiney Expat Blogger Meet-Up was held in Hamburg. Tradition holds that once a date and location are decided (by democratic vote in a process somewhat similar in length and complexity to choosing a US presidential candidate), the local bloggers, in this case Ian, No [...]

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The Poodle Is Watching

15 September 2010

Sculpture atop the Laeiszhof in Hamburg. Explanation will follow. (Source: StadtWiki Hamburg © H. Bergmann)

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It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

1 September 2010

On this day in 1990 we arrived in Germany, with all the suitcases we could carry plus 3 cats, the rest of our belongings in a half-container on a slow boat, for what we thought would be a 3 to 5 year stint. Saddam had just invaded Kuwait, Germany had just won the World Cup, [...]

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Twenty-Five Plus

15 August 2010

Next weekend we are finally celebrating our silver wedding anniversary. As you may recall, the actual anniversary was in September 2008. So in the spirit of procrastination, the event is entitled “Twenty-Five Plus”. We both have memories of stiff and boring anniversaries that we were forced to endure as children, so we are trying to [...]

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There and Back Again

12 July 2010

For those of you who don’t follow us on the Twitters, we spent the last two weeks on our annual US trip, which this time included stops in Phoenix and San Francisco before visiting my family in Minnesota. I suspected when booking that flying outbound through both Paris and Atlanta would be a mistake. Air [...]

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The Backyard

2 June 2010

Looking out our back window, we see nothing but fields, trees and a couple of horses. It’s like our back yard goes on forever. This morning everything was so fresh and green in a misty rain. Green pastures. Looking down the Buttermarsh. Our house is at the right, at the end of the path. The [...]

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Big Seal

22 May 2010

Last week the organizers of the FaMi-Siegel held a press conference to present the familiy-friendly employers they honored. We’ve been making extensive use of the seal in printed and email correspondence, and had stickers printed for the restaurant in Dibbersen and all our company cars. The stickers are only 15 cm in diameter, and Frauke [...]

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Back to the Roots

14 May 2010

Christopher and I are spending the Ascension holiday weekend alone. Frauke and her brothers have taken their mother on a short trip to her mother’s birthplace, organized for her 80th birthday. I wrote a bit about her for 75th birthday. She was born in a village in what at the time as Mark Brandenburg, and [...]

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Deceleration

19 April 2010

Like many others, we to have a story of being disrupted by the closure of European airspace due to volcanic ash. Our story is however pretty boring. “We were going to fly to Orlando for a week on business, but we couldn’t fly so we stayed home instead.” So instead of attending the McDonald’s Worldwide [...]

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Old School

15 April 2010

Last year I mentioned the upcoming choice of a secondary school for our son after the fourth grade… well, now the fourth grade is nearly over, and the decision has been made. It was a choice that 3 months ago we hadn’t even considered. Our state of Lower Saxony still splits into the 3 traditional [...]

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Certified Family-Friendly Employer

11 April 2010

We’re very happy and proud that our restaurant in Dibbersen is a charter recipient of the FaMi Seal, recognition of a family-friendly employer. We’ve already placed the seal prominently on our restaurant website. The FaMi Seal is a new initiative in northeastern Lower Saxony by the DGB (German Federation of Trade Unions), the regional Handelskammer [...]

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Anything But Sports

10 April 2010

At first it wasn’t easy following baseball from Europe. I followed the 1991 World Series (the one where the Twins beat the Braves and Kirby Puckett drove the bus) by reading box scores on CompuServe and catching glances a day later at the international edition USA Today on the newsstand at the Wandsbek Markt U-Bahn [...]

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V is for Veggieburger

4 March 2010

I’m a bit late on the uptake here, since it’s been on the menu for over 2 weeks now, but the best Marketing Non-Secret we heard about last October was the Veggieburger which has now debuted in Germany. There are a lot of vegetarians in Germany, and several years ago McDonald’s offered a larger vegetarian [...]

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Headlines

15 February 2010

If even my mother says that my blog hasn’t been updated for a while, it must be time to write something. Here are the headlines from the past couple of weeks. My birthday (48) came and went. Another year older and deeper in debt. We’ve had snow and ice in the Hamburg area for 7 [...]

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Male Striptease…

3 February 2010

(That title should attract attention!) Or, A Different Kind of Dollar Menu. We’ve been giggling about this story all day, but this was a nearby restaurant. If it were one of ours we wouldn’t think it was so funny. I won’t quote the brand or location to protect the innocent.Quick translation: “Male strip tease starts [...]

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Value Added Tax on Nothing

26 January 2010

I asked this question on Twitter and got a lot of guesses, so I’ll try it here for the blog crowd. In February we’re about to start another coffee cup giveaway with our McMenüs (Value Meals). Even though the cup is free, we have to adjust our Value Added Tax (similar to sales tax) programming [...]

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New Sensation

11 January 2010

Time to bring PapaScott into the new decade (if you believe decades begin in ’0 years and not ’1 years, that is). I was going to write about how this is the first new year in business that we weren’t rushing around with new things, but I guess it’s a bit late for that now. [...]

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Double Digits!

27 December 2009

Christopher turns 10 today! He celebrated with a breakfast of pancake cake with whipped cream and strawberry jam á la Pettson and Findus and continued with the construction of the LEGO Emerald Night, which took just 2 hours. Next step is to motorize!

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He’s making a list, checking it twice…

23 December 2009

Merry Christmas from Frauke, Scott and Christopher! As usual I arranged for our Christmas cards for the US to be printed and mailed by cardstore, saving time and postage. The typewriter picture from last February is our favorite this year. Here’s the printed message from inside… nothing new for our regular readers. We’ve now been [...]

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