Despite a not so promising weather forecast, we had a great weekend. It only rained during the night from Saturday to Sunday – and rain at night doesn’t bother anybody. Saturday, we – that’s Phillip and Eric each on a bike, and me on the back of Eric’s – drove the circle. Highway 1604 is the outer loop around San Antonio. There’s an inner loop, too – that’s Highway 410. It took us about 2 hours to ride the roughly 100 miles. Most of the time, there was little traffic, which is good. I don’t like traffic anyway, and even less when I’m in it on a bike- and still less when Phil is out on his. It was a fun little outing and we were back home in time for me to get my hair cut, get groceries, and best of all, go to the pool for a while.

I think I’m a nerd – I seem to be the only one excited about my new domain, but that’s ok – I bought it for myself, and I’m thrilled. I decided I like the way this looks, still have to do some work on the layout and stuff, but that’s all in good fun and what keeps me entertained.

On another note, the weekend was a total wash-out. We had planned a nice long ride on the bike on Saturday, and it was the first weekend for the pool to be open. And according to the weather report, it was supposed to be a bit cloudy on Saturday, and there was a slight chance of some late showers on Sunday.

They were wrong, wrong, wrong.

I am so excited – I’m going HOME!!!!

In April 1992, Eric got out of the Army and he and Melanie, who was 8 back then, came to the States. Phil and I stayed behind for a little bit so I could finish a course I was taking to become a German Government Certified Translater, and the final test wasn’t until June that year. In the end, the testing got post-poned and I left before I could finish, and turns out I never missed not having that credential – German Government Certified Translators are not in very high demand in these here US of A.

I’m running behind schedule with posting and a lot of other things at the moment – Life……

I was off last Friday and Monday and used the long weekend to fly to Indiana to see everybody. Flying was a major pain. The first flight was delayed by almost one hour, but I arrived in Memphis with about 10 minutes to get to the next flight – and made it. But then, that flight could not take off, we were too heavy. And I’ve actually lost a couple pounds…. Indianapolis had bad weather, so in case they could not land and would have to fly on to Cincinnati, they had to load more fuel and with the flight booked out, that brought the plane over the weight limit. Nobody volunteered and after about half an hour, nwa called 4 names and those people had to get off to catch the next flight the next day. I’m glad it wasn’t me, I had so little time anyway. I arrived in Indianapolis about 25 minutes later than scheduled. The return flight out of Indy was delayed as well, but we still arrived with enough time, but then the skybridge broke and fixing it cost more time. I again had about 10 minutes, which is no problem in Memphis, and I arrived back home on schedule. I guess I could have driven – but it’s 20+ hour drive one way, so I think I’ll live with the inconveniences of flying instead.

Back in June, my niche at work planned a team-building activity. This event finally happened yesterday – too cool!!! There are 9 people in the department, which is called ‘niche’ at the ‘firm’, all women but the boss. We rented a van, John, the boss, was driving, and left the office yesterday at noon to head to Lake Travis in Austin, where we had signed up for 4 hours of team-sailing lessons. The trip was originally planned for early September, but then we had to post-pone it. Initially, I was a bit worried about the weather – sailing late October kind of sounded cold. Apparently, I still don’t quite get it. Then a cold front moved in Wednesday to Thursday night, which brought us yesterday temperatures in the high 70s (~25 C), perfectly blue skies, and wind that blew our sails just right – mostly we puttered around going between 4 and 6 knots. It was an incredibly beautiful and relaxing afternoon and the only regret I had was that I didn’t bring my suit – the water is still around 80 and it would have been great to dip in the lake.