Our Move to Germany

As I mentioned in the previous post we are in a two team building session.  I call it a session because it’s not really training and I don’t know another good term to use.    So on day two we are sitting there and the instructor makes a reference to history and off my mind went.  It traveled down the road of the year the U.S. celebrated its bicentennial.  Immediately after that thought was “hhhmm, what year is the tricential?”, so I proceeded to tune out the instructor while I did the math computation of when the U.S. will celebrate its tricentenial birthday.

I came up with the year 2076.  Now for some of you, you’re probably having a hard time following this but hang in there because I am coming to the point.  When I saw that, I did the math of when I was born, and unfortunately, I won’t see the tricentenial.  I then did the math of my daughter who was born after the bicentenial, she’ll be pretty old but she could make it and I hope she does.  What was really cool for me to realize…….I have three grandkids that should be sufficiently young enough to appreciate the fact that they live in a country that is officially 300 years old.  God willing and a good life they should be able to celebrate a significant event in our history (which is relatively short compared to our European brethren).

I am lucky enough to remember the bicentenial and all the things we did to celebrate the fact we were 200 years old.  Most notable was a train known as the American Freedom Train that went from coast to coast stopping along the way for people to take a ride on.  It didn’t come to our town, but it did come to Wichita Falls, Texas.  My family & I went down and we got tickets to ride the train.  I still have my ticket 34 years later.  I wonder how many others still have theirs.

It makes me wonder what is being planned for the tricentenial.  Will it be another train?  If so, what kind of train will it be?  What kind of trains will we have in 66 years?  Even though I won’t be here to enjoy the festivities, it does give me a sense of pride to know I have grandchildren who will be here and I hope they know the 300 years of history behind them resulted in some amazing things and I equally hope the 300 years in front will result in just as much progress and growth for future generations.

My office is doing a team building exercise today and tomorrow.  It’s similar to something I did a decade ago where you take a test and it tells you the type of personality you are.  Back then it was Myers-Briggs and don’t ask me to tell you what my results were because like I said it was over a decade ago.

So this latest is called DiSC (we can’t figure out why the “i” is lower case and we haven’t asked the instructor) and it stands for Drive/Influence/Steadiness/Compliance.  The goal is to identify each of our traits so we can learn to maintain communication and be a productive entity.  Our instructor was very surprised to see we were equally split between Drive and Compliance.  The “D” people are very dominant and driven whereas the “C” people are very detail oriented and are commonly identified as perfectionist.  So the “D’s” are trying to get things moved along whereas the “C’s” don’t want to release information until it’s “perfect.”  What this normally causes is conflict, but for some reason we don’t have conflict, at least not on the surface….

So, does anyone want to take a guess as to which I’m letter I am?  I’ll give you a hint…..I’m not a perfectionist and I don’t have a lot of patience.  So are you rolling on the floor laughing at this point?  My scores were D=6, i=4, S=3, & C=2.  My pattern based on those scores is “Result Oriented” which I already knew so some of this didn’t come as much of a surprise.

I could go on and on with this but I what I found interesting is that I have two extremes, my D & C but my i & S fall within the middle of the scale.  When I asked how to bring the two extremes more toward the center the instructor said that is not something I want to do as it would make me conflicted and confused.  The goal of this team building is to teach us how to communicate with someone like me who or someone in my office that is a “C.”  It should be interesting to see how effective it is and if we can manage to keep it at the forefront on a day to day basis.

I think the best part is when the instructor describes the reactions of the different types each time he hits on a point.  The “i’s” are the most entertaining and the social butterflies.  We have one, and he’s quite the entertainer too.  Makes me wonder if the boss will realize he needs to add to the dynamics of the office and bring in some “i” and “S” type personalities.

I was chatting (literally that is via iChat) today with my younger sibling sister and maternal parent (read that as younger sister and mother).  What is special about it?  Nothing really, especially in today’s world of fast moving computer electrons.  So why put it here on the blog?  Well, mostly cause they’re bored and want something to read.  Seriously though, I haven’t put an entry up in a couple of weeks mostly because I’ve been heads down working on my CFCE which leaves very little time for play.  Today, I decided to play, but it was really vegging out and working on Ancestry.com stuff.

When I told my mother and sister I didn’t have anything to put on the blog because I’ve done nothing but work on my problems for this certification my mother suggested I put an entry about how I’m doing.  I told them the entry would be something like “Tammy spent 12 hours working on her problems and all she has to show for it is bald patches where she’s pulled her hair out trying to understand the minds of the bizarre people who dreamed up this certification.”  So now you know why I’m not getting out much because if I was I would have tons of interesting stuff to put up here so that my sister and mother would have really cool stuff to read instead of hearing about me losing my hair.

Just for the record, I’m almost half way through the certification process and I can now see a dim light where I think the tunnel ends.

ciao for now to our followers!

My organization planned another wine trip for this past weekend to Trier (which is on the Mosel River). The reason for the trip was to say goodbye to one of the “regulars” who will be returning to the U.S.
The location was selected based on the last trip in June to the Rhine so they wanted to be fair to the other key river that runs through Germany (and in case you missed it in the above paragraph it’s the Mosel).
Trier is an awesome city and dates back to Roman times, with the key structure being the Porta Nigra.

The above photo is from the Wiki but it’ll be replaced soon with one of mine as we got a great shot with minimal people around.

This trip didn’t go as smoothly as others mostly due to one of the key planners being out of pocket.  Some hiccups included the first wine tasting lasting two hours longer than was planned.  It was in an amazing town called Trittenheim and I’ll be posting the pictures in the gallery at some point this week.  This meant we missed lunch, not a good thing when you’re surrounded by cafe’s but don’t dare go and try to grab something due to fear you’ll get left behind.

We made it to the hotel and got checked in with about 30 min to catch a power nap (oh, did I mention we were up at 0500 to catch the bus).  They took us into Trier proper and gave us the times for the 2nd wine tasting and the dinner with an open ended amount of alcohol flowing.  We opted to grab a bite at an Italian place since it was 5pm and we hadn’t had lunch and breakfast was a memory of the past.  We wandered around the town we had been to previously and got some great pictures.  At least this time the weather cooperated.  We chose not to meet the group for dinner at 7:00 pm as we had just eaten two hours prior so we wandered back to our hotel.  That was another snag that came up late in the day, the bus driver went off duty at 7 pm leaving everyone stranded to find their own way back to the hotel.  I was good with it, we had a chance to walk along the river and enjoy a nice summer evening.

Sunday brought us more confusion in regards to checkout time and the events planned for the day.  We had heard at breakfast there wouldn’t be any food on the boat ride they had planned.  I was thinking it would be like our boat trip along the Rhine where we had the entire boat to ourselves but that was not to be the case.  So off we went to the Shell station down from the hotel to get munchies to hold us over for the day (expecting another day of no food).  As we are walking back we take a different path and I have to admit, this made the whole trip for me.  We walked by wild blackberry bushes that had nice ripe blackberries for the picking and in case you are wondering, Yup! I picked a handful.  I should have picked more but I didn’t have anything to put them in but I enjoyed the handful I had as we walked back to the hotel.  They were the sweetest blackberries I think I’ve ever had.  Awesome comes to mind.

So we’re back on the bus, the weather has turned cloudy and cold and we are waiting for the cruise boat to show and pick us up.  It ends up being a boat that cruises up and down parts of the Mosel all day and we didn’t have the boat to ourselves.  I’m sure at one point the local population must have thought the Americans invaded again.    The best part, they have FOOD!  They had cakes, salad, sausages, soup, and other munchies.  We hung out with a couple that was new to the wine club trips and passed the two hour boat ride drinking coffee and eating cake.

The ride back was uneventful and as trips go this one ended at a reasonable hour.  We were home by 6:30 pm.  Time to give some quality time to our two girls who felt like we didn’t love them anymore.  Oh, and for those of you who don’t know……our two “girls” are Siamese Cats.

We did get some great pictures so give me some time and then check out the gallery.

Tschuess!

This was a full weekend for us. Saturday included a baby shower for a co-worker amongst the usual errands.

Then Sunday we went to yet another German castle.  This one was one for my mom.  You see her mom, my grandmother’s, second husband was a nice guy named Wildenstein. It wasn’t a long marriage but he was around when I was a kid and I have fond memories of him.

When we came to Germany my mom asked if I would look up the Wildenstein castle.  So, I did.  

Here is the cool part, there are actually two.  One is a little over an hour south of where we live.  And since it was a beautiful day out…Off we went!

The picture here is a promo shot of the castle which is now a youth hostel. That is a very inexpensive dorm style hotel for young people traveling around Europe. We managed to find the village and the castle with no problems. Some of the roads up to the village were awesome and full of twists and hairpin turns.  The Jetta took it all with no problems. Of course the female formula one driver was enjoying herself. (She won’t admit it, but I caught her digging it out of the corner of my eye.)

I would love to tell you that the castle is a grand and ellaborate place, but alas it isn’t. It is amazing how it is constructed right out of the rock in the mountain. But the furnishings are spartan and functional in keeping with the low cost type of establishment it has become.

We had a cold drink and an ice creme, took some pictures for mom, and headed back home.

All in all a pretty good weekend.

Tomorrow I’m going to have another birthday, for those of you that don’t know the year I was born you get to guess how old I’m going to be. For those of you who do know, please keep it to yourself!

This is going to be one of those rambling blog entries so bear with me because I am getting older and the mind is not what it used to be.

As birthdays go I can’t really complain, I live in Europe, I can travel easily, I have a great hubby, two insane siamese cats, and a housekeeper that keeps our home neat and clean. The implied “but” is the nagging voice in my head that says, “hey, you are getting real close to the half century mark.”
It’s hard to believe I have almost a half of a lifetime behind me and hopefully at least another 40 years in front of me.
I think we all look back and think if we had it to do all over we would do things better and I’m no exception. I’ve got those times in my life when I chose the path strewn with huge boulders, snarling wild animals, and trees so large that I needed a roadmap to get around them. That being said, I’ve had some highlights, starting with a family that seemed to recognize the wild child they were blessed (or would that be cursed) with but managed provide a solid foundation that has carried me all though out my life. Next comes the year my daughter entered the world and the challenges I faced being her mom. Stumbling (and I do mean stumbling) my way into a military career that opened doors I don’t think most people get in an entire lifetime. Lastly, finally finding the mate who can look past the bad to embrace the good (and let me tell you that is no easy task).

So what do I do with the time still ahead of me? I think I’ll spend my birthday contemplating that question. I do know this though, I want to stay young at heart and mind if for no other reason than to devil my grandchildren……

As you know we like to take pictures, and sometimes I will use a photo as one of the rotating banners.
Given that I don’t do it regularly I sometimes forget some of the quirks of a unix based system. What quirk you ask? Well, the fact that the file name can’t have spaces because for some reason it can’t “find” it.
So when my hunka, hunka, burnin love sent me an email today that one of the banner images was still broke I decided I needed to find a solution.

Needless to say I had a Eureka moment and realized that the problem was spaces in the file name. So now all is well and I even added a few more taking care not to put a space in the file name! Hitting the refresh button on my browser loaded a new image in each time so I could see how they would look.
For the most part I’m fairly pleased so I hope you enjoy the additional banner images on our blog.

As a kid I loved science fiction.  I can admit that I was one of the early Start Trek fans and I still think the original was the best. To this day I hope we actually build transporters some day. The instantaneous moving from one place to another isn’t just a great concept but a fun way to use less gas and diesel.

Why am I bringing this up you may ask?

I now have one of the coolest techno-toys.  Yep….I got an iPad.

I am sitting in my hotel room in Mainz Germany and typing this blog entry on a computer that is the same size and thickness of a pad of paper. When I step back and look at what I am able to do right now, I can thank the dreamers who visualized and wrote about what the future might bring, because they painted mental pictures that the techno-geeks like me were able to make a reality.

Those of you who know me are thinking, “Yeah but you said the same thing about the Newton, Handspring, Palm and iPhone…”  and they are right. Technology keeps jumping ahead and the toys are just getting better and better.

What I am anxiously waiting for is the day I can get up, get dressed and step into my transporter and in the blink of an eye go from Germany to Kansas and spend the day with my Grandchildren. We will play the newest holographic Wii games using the built in controllers in the wrist computers we wear like a watch.

Wow, living in the future is sooooo cool!

….but then again I figure I’m due since I’m getting dangerously close to the half century mark.  Me & the hunka, hunka burnin love have been looking at getting a new vehicle.  We love our TDI Jetta but it is now four years old and we don’t really have a need for a 4 door sedan any more.

So after looking at various options we landed on the VW EOS.  It’s 2 door that can become a convertible or you can leave the hard top in place and open just the sun roof.  I test drove one while I am here in Florida and let me tell you……WOW comes to mind.  It has a normal drive mode and a “sport” mode and the “sport” mode gear is just freekin awesome!  You step on the gas pedal and it doesn’t hesitate a second, you are on your way.  Oh, and did I mention I scared the crap out of the Sales guy?  I got on I-275 and although it wasn’t the autobahn, I managed to get the speed up to about 80 in a matter of seconds.

I’m thinking this car will hold its own against its German brethren on the autobahn, I might even get lucky and show up a BMW or Mercedes….okay, I can dream can’t I? 

The other good thing about this car compared to our Jetta?  The EOS is built in Europe, not Mexico which means that there shouldn’t be any quality problems due to a night of too many Corona’s.

Stayed tuned to hear more on my midlife crisis.

Now you see it….



Now you don’t…..



And in case you can’t figure it out, the top folds up and fits down inside the trunk!

….are definitely something to be experienced.  We went to Lausanne Switzerland one weekend with our house guests and spent a Saturday night there.  Saturday afternoon we wandered around the town checking out the shops and churches.  On Sunday, we did some more sightseeing before we headed home.

Now you would think that with all the money in Switzerland they could afford toilets, but I guess not.  The Swiss public toilets are interesting and that is an understated adjective.  We made our way to one of the main cathedrals in Lausanne and of course Mother Nature called so we made our way to the “Public” toilet only to discover there is “no toilet” but a stall with a hole in the ground.  Yup, you read correctly, a stall with a hole and in some cases you had a lever that you pushed to “rinse” the area.  Needless to say my house guest were not impressed.  Me?  I’ve pee’d in some really interesting places so I didn’t mind so much.  It actually brought back a memory from years ago but that’s another story for another time.

So my house guest “pass” on using the “public” toilets so into the church we go and I’m pretty sure both of them prayed for us to find a “normal” toilet but alas the almighty was taking the day off so there were no normal toilets in our immediate future.

As we come out of the church I see another “public” toilet so I point it out and we investigate.  We have found yet another “hole” in a stall so out we come.  We are approached by a local who engages my french speaking house guest and tells her the public toilet on the opposite side of the church is cleaner and we should use that one.  The humorous part of this?  It’s the one we had already stopped at before entering the church.  So back we go and two us used the facilities while the 3rd did not feel so adventurous.

What I found unique was the syringe boxes.  I guess even though the Swiss aren’t big on “commodes” they want to be sure a drug addict is neat and clean.

The good part of the whole experience is that this part of Switzerland is close to France so the toilet “holes” must be part of the French culture and the areas close to Germany so far have only yielded commode style public toilets.  I haven’t made to the Italian section of Switzerland yet, but when I do you know I’ll be coming back to rank their public toilets!