Yet another journal entry swallowed by the black hole that is my computer. I was at the dentist yesterday, finally got up the courage to make an appointment. Ever since I had my first cavity and the Austrian dentist filling it without anesthetic (costs extra and you have to know to ask for it pretty damn quick before that drill is already in your tooth), I've been petrified of going. Say what you will about health care in America, but our standards of dental care are incredibly high. At my American dentist in O'fallon, I would come in twice a year. They'd do x-rays, carefully clean, scrape, floss, polish and fluoridize my teeth, check for cavities and send me home with a new toothbrush. Here, you get x-rays and a quick visual check by the dentist. No cleaning (costs around €80 extra, isn't paid for by insurance). No toothbrush.  No fluoridization (have never even seen this offered anywhere). No nothing. It's very disappointing, to be honest.

Our dentist here in Linz is refreshingly aware though of how far Austrian dentistry lags behind the world standard. The first time I went, he was falling all over himself to tell me not to worry, that he knows Austrian dentists are mostly stuck in the dark ages, but that they do things more progressively at his office (like offer you the anesthetic before they start drilling). I must have particularly sexy teeth, too. Every time I'm there he piles on the compliments about how refreshing it is to see someone who has such nice teeth and who takes such good care of them. I mean, when you consider the alternative, I think there's a pretty good incentive to brush and floss, but apparently I'm in the minority.

Remember how I talked about dumplings being a staple here? Here's a recipe for sweet dumplings. You can make them with plums or even cherries or strawberries, but the most popular fruit to use is apricots.

For two people, you'll need:

• 6-7 apricots, washed and dried
• 1 package of cream cheese
• 1 egg
• pinch of salt
• 1 - 2 cups of flour

• bread or graham cracker crumbs
• 2-3 tablespoons of sugar
• cinnamon
• 2-3 tablespoons of butter

Blend cream cheese, egg and salt in a mixer until smooth. Using a rubber spatula, blend in a little flour at a time until managable enough to turn out onto the counter and work by hand. Keep adding flour a little bit at a time until the dough is still very soft, but not unmanagably sticky (hint: it will always be somewhat sticky). Roll into a cylinder and cut into equal pieces according to however many apricots you have. One at a time, use your fingers to squash each piece flat on the counter (use plenty of flour to keep it from sticking). Then lay the dough on one hand, place an apricot in the center, and wrap the dough around until it's completely covered (use flour and work fast, the warmth of your hands will make the dough stickier). Make sure the dough doesn't have any cracks anywhere and that the edges are completely sealed.

When you've finished all the dumplings, carefully drop them one by one into boiling salted water. Stir very gently at first and carefully pry up any that stick to the bottom of the pot, which they will until the dough forms a skin. Simmer for about 15 minutes or until the dumplings are floating. You can leave them in the hot water to keep warm when they are done, just remove them from the heat.

In the meantime, heat the butter in a pan and add the crumbs and sugar, browning until, well, brown! If you have a quality pan, the crumbs will continue to brown for a bit after you remove them from the heat, so keep an eye on them until the pan cools a little. Add cinnamon if you like cinnamon.

When the dumplings are ready, lift them out of the water one by one and roll in the crumbs. Serve immediately.

I am fed up with my eyeliner pencil. The flipping thing needs to be sharpened fairly regularly, otherwise I look like I'm headed to some kind of heavy metal concert and not to work. But the "lead" is kinda sticky, and it coats the inside of the pencil sharpener. Result: the next time you go to sharpen the dang thing, the tip sticks to the inside of the sharpener and breaks off. Then you have to dig it out with a real pencil and try again, only to have it break again. This of course with minutes to go until the bus comes by. I'm gonna have to either start keeping the pencil in the fridge to keep it from being so sticky (we don't have A/C), or go with one of those plastic pencils where you turn it to advance the eyeliner.

We were in Graz this weekend for my aunt's 50th birthday. It was a fun, if exhausting afternoon with family. 

Meanwhile, the A/C in our car broke. Stefan noticed that it wasn't blowing cold air anymore on Friday afternoon. Well, tough luck. All mechanics close on Fridays just after lunch and do not reopen until Monday morning. The last guy there was simply able to inform us that there was no coolant in the system, obviously indicating a leak. And that it might have blown out the compressor if it had been running dry for too long. And that a new compressor would run something like €1500. We drove to Graz and back (2.5 hours each way) sweating, but fortunately it wasn't too hot out. I put a few ice packs on the cat's box to keep him cool.

That was pretty much the last straw with this car. It is 5 years old and we have had it for just over 2 years. So far: one window freed itself and dropped down into the door; the driver's inside door handle pulley system broke, meaning we couldn't open the door from the inside and the interior door panel had to be dismantled twice (€€€) to fix it; a ball joint broke; the tail lights keep burning out; a headlight came out of its socket; the LCD display went haywire; the brakes were warped; the doors keep squeaking and groaning. Just off the top of my head. Now, this is the kind of list I'd expect from a 10 year old car, not one with less than 50,000 miles on it!

So we're in the market for a new used car, a slightly bigger one in view of any future additions to the family. I'd love a Toyota, but they are much more expensive than the competition. At the moment, we're looking at a Ford C-max or Renault Scenic or maybe Opel Vectra. These are all a peculiar kind of European style: taller than a station wagon but not as long. Like a large hatchback. The Toyota Corolla Verso, would be good too, but it would be €2000 more expensive. Then again, if we went with a gasoline motor rather than diesel, that would knock about €2000 off the price.

Stefan spent most of yesterday evening looking up cars and prices while I was sewing. There's a Mazda 6 somewhere not too far from here that we want to visit. I get the impression it's going to be a hectic coupla weeks.

I'm thinking of moving my blog over to Wordpress. I would like to set this thing up like kind of a website of my own, but Livejournal doesn't really have that many features in its free version, at least not as far as I can tell.

My ten-year high school reunion would be the weekend after next (I think). Presumably, anyway, I haven't gotten any invitation or anything, but I did graduate in 1999, so it seems likely. Reunions are always held on the weekend of the Firemen's Picnic, which is a two-day party back in my home town. There's a parade in the late afternoon, featuring virtually anyone who wants to be in it, but certainly the High School and Jr. High marching bands, some classic cars, some tractors pulling wagons of employees sitting on hay bales and throwing candy to advertise local businesses, and of course, all the shiny fire trucks with lights flashing and sirens howling. And who could forget the shriners, who dress up in gorilla suits and are towed along in a wagon that looks like a cage, but with the bars plenty wide for them to get in and out. As a child, I was terrified of them getting out and eating the spectators! This being our reunion year, I would be sitting on a scratchy hay bale with people I never got along with in school, people I did get along with but haven't kept in touch with, and pretty much no one else. We would politely trading pleasantries and the abridged version of "my life since high school", and wave to people we know (in this town, everyone who isn't in the parade, is sitting on the curb or in lawn chairs, watching the parade).

After the parade, everyone wanders up town. The main street is closed to traffic and they have rickety carnival rides, cotton candy stands, etc. set up. Every year since I was a kid, I have been sure that the rides have reached the most rickety condition possible without failing inspection, but every following year disproves that theory. The fire department sells beer and hot dogs (I first mistyped that as "hot gods", which would be very interesting indeed!), which, considering the volumes of both commodities sold, should provide a pretty comfortable budget for the rest of the year. There's a live band playing cover versions of oldies. The main attraction is accumulating as tall a stack of empty plastic beer cups as possible while maintaining a vertical position.

Anyway, I'm going to be missing it, since I'm out of the country. I'm not too broken up about it, seeing as I'm only mildly curious about what people have been up to. The Picnic is a good time though, in general, so I look forward to the next time we're home in the summer.

OK, now for my third attempt to write this post without Word crashing. The two programs we have to have open in order to translate (Word and Translator's Workbench) do not always jive, so crashes are pretty common. They tend to come in waves, strangely enough. No crashes for weeks and then a crash every half an hour for before another hiatus. Who knows...

The couch is coming along nicely. The pillows, which is what I started with, are more work than I'd anticipated. They are two colors, front and back, orange like the couch and yellow as a contrast. I'm doing appliqued squares of the opposite color and different sizes on each side, which looks great but takes a lot of time. Mostly for pinning. The sewing is not really that difficult or time consuming, which kind of surprises me. I'm also putting in zippers in case anything gets spilled on them. Yank out the stuffing and wash the case. I've already had to rip apart the "guinea pig" pillow, since I didn't like the way the appliques looked. They were originally aligned with the outside corners, but ended up looking kind of lost and random. Now they're aligned with the center and look much nicer.

Stefan bought a big ol' bag of snowpeas at the farmer's market on Saturday, and we've been basing our meals around them ever since. Yesterday, we just had one handful left, so I gathered some inspiration on the interwebs and whipped up an Asian-style stir fry.

To feed two people you need:

• "Asian" noodles, could be ramen-type, wheat, rice or glass, probably doesn't matter too much as long as they aren't too fine. We used wheat-based ones. I'm sure regular fettucine would work great too.
• a handful of snowpeas (obviously), tipped and tailed
• 1 carrot, peeled, halved and sliced diagonally into thin slices
• half a red bell pepper leftover from yesterday's salad, sliced into strips
• 1 spring onion, sliced
• 2 cloves of garlic, sliced
• a few slices of ginger
• 1 chili, sliced
• peanut oil
• soy sauce
• lemon juice
• cilantro
• sesame seeds

Boil the noodles in salted water until nearly done (still chewy). Drain into a colander but do not rinse. Splash with sesame or peanut oil instead to keep them from sticking.

Optional: fill that pot back up with water and bring to a boil, tossing in the peas and carrots and blanching them for 2 minutes. This is if you don't want them to be quite so crunchy in the final dish.

Heat peanut oil in a wok. Add garlic, chili and ginger. After a few seconds, add peas and carrots. Don't forget to stir all the time to keep things from sticking or getting too brown. After about 30 seconds, add bell pepper and onion. Splash in some lemon juice and soy sauce to taste. You could also add some chili paste or a dollop of peanut butter or teriyaki sauce, etc. Finally, add the noodles, sesame seeds and cilantro, tossing with the veggies until hot. Remove from the heat.

You want to noodles to be a little chewy going into the wok, because they will cook some more in that heat. Also, by not rinsing them off, they are coated in a thin layer of starchy goo which holds onto all the other flavors and juices better. If you want some protein in there, add sliced chicken or pork to the wok first.

 This was such a nice, fresh, light meal, perfect for summer and chilled white wine.

The blogroll subject of the week is "How far have you traveled for food". Unfortunately, I don't have any spectacular story of intercontinental journeys for tacos. I guess the farthest I've traveled would be clear across Vienna, on foot, for a hot dog (I'm using the term hotdog for all the myriad kinds of sausages sold at Austrian hotdog stands).

I was at a Halloween party hosted by some other Americans with two friends, Rebecca and Karen. Now, Halloween is great in Austria, because Nov. 1st is a federal holiday (All Saint's Day), which means you can sleep in and don't have to worry about being hungover or anything. Austrians don't quite get the Halloween costume, though. As in, they do not quite grasp the idea that you are supposed to dress like something or someone else (pirate, vampire, samurai warrior, crayon, etc). They consider putting on a funny hat sufficient, which I refuse to accept. Anyway, the party was fun, but around 3AM, the hosts clearly wanted to get to bed, so we left. Now, the party was on the outskirts of the first district, near Museumsquartier. I lived in the 12th district at that time, which is way too far to walk, Rebecca lived I think in the 10th, and Karen lived just on the other side of the 1st district, in the 4th, but was too drunk to walk it (see map).

Trouble is, the subways don't run at night. And we were hungry. But 24h establishments are practically non-existent in this country. So we started walking towards the city center. Or more accurately, Rebecca and I were walking and half-carrying Karen. I knew there was a hotdog stand on Hoher Markt (a square right in the middle of town) that was open 24h. They also have the world's greatest Käsekrainer, which are these sausages with chunks of cheese in them which melt and ooze when you cut them up and leak out and crisp up when frying. Mmmmm...

Finally, we made it. There was a line at that silly hotdog stand from here into the middle of next week, but it was moving pretty quickly and we soon got our hotdogs and beers. Well, Rebecca and I got beers, we wouldn't let Karen have anything but water.  We sat on the curb, eating our hotdogs, admiring the strange monument on the square. If you've ever seen The Third Man with Orson Welles (and if you haven't, you really should), one of the final scenes (where the final chase begins) takes place on Hoher Markt. The movie was filmed in the 50s, when most of the buildings around the square were piles of rubble, but that very distinctive monument survived.

By the time we'd finished our hotdogs, it was around 4:30. We trekked to the nearest subway station and sat on the platform, waiting for the first train of the morning. Mine arrived around 5, and I was back in bed with a stomach full of greasy goodness by 5:30.

Since I'm already writing about food, here's another favorite recipe.  I am a huge fan of soup.  In the winter, Stefan and I will often make a big ol' pot of vegetable soup and work on it for a few days for supper.

We had the most delicious soup last weekend: cream of zucchini. It's super easy to make and really really good. What you need for about 6 servings:

2 medium zucchinis
½ cup of whipping cream (depending on how rich you want it to be, you could add more)
1 medium onion
bouillon cubes
garlic to taste (I used 3 cloves)
oil
pepper
nutmeg

 Dice the onion and zucchini, slice the garlic cloves into thin slices. Add some oil to a pot and fry the onion until translucent. Add the diced zucchini and garlic and stir in until warm. Add enough water to cover the zucchini and onion. Add boullion cubes according to how much water you added. Add cream. Simmer until the zucchini is soft. Season with pepper and nutmeg, if you have some. Ladle the soup into a blender and puree. I find it really makes a difference if you then pass the whole mess through a sieve after blending. In other words, pour it through a sieve and force any chunks through with a rubber spatula. I used to think this was silly (after all, it's just been blended!) but I tried it once and it really makes the soup just that much smoother. I've been doing it ever since to all creamed soups. Return to the pot, check the seasoning and serve immediately. If it tastes a little bland, add salt or another splash of cream. Optional: reserve some of the whipping cream and whip it, adding on top of the soup just before serving.

 This would be really good with some croutons in it or some crunchy bread twists. From this recipe, I ended up with two generous servings for dinner plus 3 for the freezer.

 Not too much going on at work today. We're slipping into the slow summer months. There are just a few weeks of school left before the end of the year, and then half the country boards up their windows until the end of August. Because everyone gets at least 5 weeks of paid vacation per year, people tend to take longish vacations away from home (most often in Italy on the beach). For this reason, a good third of any company's employees tend to be missing on any given day of July and August. In other words, nothing gets done because it's always laying on the desk of someone who's off getting sunburnt.

 Stefan and I are going to take a mini-vacation of just a week in August some time. Mostly, we're spreading our vacation days out to make several 3 and 4-day weekends because my mom is visiting from the states. Plus we want to save some up for Christmas. The plan at the moment is to fly overseas for Christmas and New Year's. We really should get on looking for flights...

 Yesterday, we finally bought fabric for my latest and most ambitious project to date: reupholstering our dingy couch. I think I've mentioned before (or maybe not) that we got this couch I guess about 4 years ago in Vienna, and it was the cheapest couch with a pull-out bed on sale in the entire city. It cost €300. I reckon you can count on about a year of couch service life per €100 spent (nice ones cost around €2000 and I'd expect them to last at least 20 years), so ours is clearly already a wonder of science. The cushioning is actually still fine: the main problem is the fabric. That's obviously where they skimped to make it so cheap, the fabric is this thin microfiber stuff that doesn't stand up very well to a cat running across it. It's full of claw holes despite the fact that Kürbis never scratches at it. It's only a matter of time before two of those holes join with a tear, and that's the beginning of the end. Or maybe the end of the end, come to think of it. It also statically attracts dust and cat hair like it's going out of style.

 So, two options: 1) buy a new couch to the tune of €700 for something halfway decent or 2) spend €200 and a lot of time reupholstering the old one. We opted for 2).

 The fabric store we went to in the city is pretty ritzy, they sell lace that costs hundreds per meter, wool for suits, but also cheap stuff of every weight, color and quality. Their upholstery/bedding fabric comes in widths of 280 - 300 cm, which is extra extra wide. I had my eye on this plain, dark gray cotton fabric, a bit like denim but without that crisscrossy grain. Turns out that was out of stock and they didn't know when they might get more. The lady there suggested this rust orange fabric in a cotton/synthetic blend, with a subtle woven-in diamond pattern. Our couch is currently almost the same color, a little pinker though. We ended up with the orange fabric because it was there, mostly, and Stefan likes it. It's a little shinier than I would have liked, but I think it'll look nice. We also got some goldenrod yellow in that first kind of fabric as a contrast for the pillows for the back.

 I already measured out all the fabric-covered parts of the couch (and there's a lot!) and made patterns out of newspaper. That was very time-consuming, let me tell you. Cutting out the pieces ought to be a piece of cake in comparison. We'll see how it goes...

My favorite ever ad was one I think for Polaroid. I thought of it when I read about Polaroid discontinuing their instant picture cameras.

 The camera pans down a gate to a park reading "San Francisco Park". You see these two old fogeys playing Scrabble in the park. The board is about half full as one puts down "QUIXOTIC" across a triple word score and gloats. The other looks on, helplessly, and glances at his letters, which the camera cuts to, showing nothing but I's. Suddenly, you hear a rumbling and the board starts to shake, shaking the tiles out of order. But the guy who's winning whips out a camera, takes a quick Polaroid of the board, all while laughing his head off as the other guy sighs, dejectedly.

 I'm not sure why, but that one has always made me laugh, probably because I've been that guy who has nothing but I's or C's. And my grandma is the one who puts down words like quixotic, or even more questionable ones we need a dictionary for, to determine whether or not it is a real word. When we play in Austria, my grandma has a trusty, (ancient) dictionary which is the final arbiter of these disputes. If it's not in that dictionary, it isn't a word and can't be played. I say trusty, but I don't trust it all. I once played "QUASAR", my best ever use of the letter Q. She challenged it and sure enough, it wasn't in the dictionary. Well, that's because the dictionary was printed round about 1962. I just checked on Wikipedia, and quasars were not even really discovered until around then. I may as well have tried to play "PODCAST" or "EURO", but neither have as high a word score as QUASAR.

  We did it!

 Stefan and I finished the half marathon a hair under our target time of 2:30. 

 It was quite an experience, that's for sure. The day started early: we got up around 6am to get ready and get down to the city. The race was set to start at 8:30 and we had to stop by the Brucknerhaus concert hall, which is where everything was organized from, to drop off our stuff. So we got ready, ate breakfast, and went out to the bus stop. Now, because of the race, the bus was scheduled to stop short of the city. The plan was to take a shuttlebus from there to the other end of town and then walk to the starting line. But as we were standing at the bus stop, a van from the fire department stopped, the door opened, and some guy from my work (whose name I can't remember for the life of me) asked if we wanted a ride! He and this other guy in the van, who was some kind of volunteer firefighter, were being dropped off as close to the start as traffic was allowed to go, so we jumped in. Great, eh?

 As we walked toward the Brucknerhaus, we joined a vast stream of runners in their running outfits and shoes, all going in the same direction along the river (the start was on the Autobahn bridge). It was already pretty warm, warmer than they'd forecast, so on the spur of the moment, we stuffed our jackets into our bags and left them at the Brucknerhaus. Boy am I glad we did! After standing in line for what felt like hours for the bathroom, we headed out to the starting line.

 There's something just so awesome about standing in the middle of the highway, isn't there? I love it! The full marathon runners and relay runners were on the right side of the highway, facing the river, and we half and quarter marathoners were on the left side of the guard rail, facing the same way. It was packed. On our side at least, obviously there's more people running the shorter distances than the whole thing. So packed, in fact, that we didn't even start moving until a good three minutes after the starting signal. And then we were off!

 The marathoners split off to the right just after the bridge, while we kept left. The half marathon distance is mostly the second half of the whole thing, which allows everyone to start and finshed at the same place. And we ran. People passed us like nobody's business, but after a few kilometers, we were keeping to our target speed of 7 minutes per kilometer, which was good. I mean, it's good that we were keeping to our speed, not that 7 min/km is particularly fast. We saw Stefan's officemate with a camera within the first mile or so, waiting for his sister to come into view (though she must've actually already passed us).

 So we ran, back over the other bridge into Linz proper, down one of the main streets towards the industrial part of town. Every few kilometers, they had refreshment stations set up with drinks and pieces of banana. We gulped water and ate bananas, it's amazing how much energy you need, and breakfast was used up pretty fast. Also how much you sweat. I didn't notice it until the finish line, but I was soaked! It was warm, but not too hot, at least not in the morning when we were running.

 The marathon takes kind of a long loop southwards through the city, and at one point you are running right next to people coming up the other way already. I was really surprised at how many people had completed the loop already, and how fast they were!

 Part of the way, we were running behind a guy in chain mail, wearing a helmet and carrying a sword. He was raising awareness for something or other, but I'm sure Stefan and I are now in the background of a whole lot of people's pictures.

 We passed the knight when he stopped for a breather (I read later that the whole get-up weighed around 45 lbs.). Pretty soon we ourselves were passed by the fastest marathoner, who sprinted past us like there was no tomorrow.

 Downtown, you zig up almost to the river, then zag back a few blocks, then run up the homestretch to the finish line at the main square. There were bands playing music and people clapping, cheering on god knows how many strangers.  Not just here in the inner city though, people had tables and chairs set up all along the way, cheering the runners, which was really great!

 By this point, I was really starting to feel the burn. We'd kept up our pace pretty well, but were two minutes off our goal with just over a mile to go. So the last two km, through the city, we picked it up a little. The home stretch is the city's main street, Landstrasse. Which is paved with cobblestones and has trolley tracks running down the middle. Last year, they'd put down this kind of foam rubber carpet to make it easier to run, this year they didn't. There were thousands of people behind the barriers cheering for everyone who ran by. Stefan grabbed my hand and pulled me along, in kind of a sprint to the finish, as I tried my best not to twist my ankle within sight of the finish line. By that point, my energy reserves were completely tapped out and this last fast section made me really lightheaded. The world was kind of tilting and sliding a bit to the left, but then we were crossing the finish line and done! 

 We were immediately given a cheaptastic (but metal) medal for finishing and encouraged to limp through the corral that led to the recuperation and refreshment area for runners. We downed water, a free beer (yay!), a whole wheat roll, more water, and then headed to the Brucknerhaus to get our stuff. At first I laughed at the runners carrying whole armloads of free water and gatorade and bread out of the endzone, but about halfway to the Brucknerhaus (which is only about two blocks away), I was thirsty again.

 We changed, drank some more water, and headed back to the main square. Originally, I had thought we might meet up with some friends who were planning on being there and sit down for a beer together, but we were both completely exhausted. After watching a few more runners cross the finishing line, we started the long walk back to the train station to catch the bus back home. I got myself a piece of pizza as we walked, but every step was feeling harder than the one before. Not only that, but we had just missed the direct bus home and had to take one where we had to walk one stop. Normally, not a big deal. But I was dying! We walked slowly along the road home, which has just a tiny tiny rise to it, but I was totally out of breath.

 At home we stretched, drank some more water and juice, took a bath (after the cat had meticulously licked the salt off of half an arm and both my knees) and flopped down in front of the TV. We ate and ate: chips, fruit and veggies, bread, etc. For supper we got Chinese, which looked like waaay to much at first, but it was gone pretty soon. Especially the rice. I was surprised at home much we managed to eat, but then I looked online to see how many calories you burn running at that speed, our weight, and that length of time: around 1300 for me and around 1800 for Stefan. That's a whole lot. That's how much you'd probably burn in an entire day of sitting in the office in front of the computer, we used it up in just two and a half hours. That all needs to be replaced.

 We were so tired though. So tired we didn't even finish the beers we had so been looking forward to and not even something as easy on the brain as The Davinci Code could keep me in front of the TV too long that evening. Went to bed, woke up yesterday with the world's sorest muscles. But it was worth it.

 I'll compile some pictures and put them up. Today, the local paper (and sponsor of the run) had a marathon insert listing all the finishing times, and they have a picture of me and Stefan crossing the finishing line! I was so surprised! Cute caption too: A simple equation - if two people each run a half marathon, that makes one whole one!

Strangest thing yesterday: I was taking the bus to an English lesson after work yesterday. I agreed to take on this group at some company on the other side of the city because a) I could use a little bit of extra cash, b) it's only 5 lessons and c) the company right across the road from the final bus stop of the same line that runs past my real job. It's very convenient (except that the bus only runs until about 6:30 and the class is over with at 7...). Anyway, I was sitting on the bus yesterday, staring out the window as we cut through the middle of town. I saw this guy walking down the sidewalk towards us up ahead, as we were stopped at a bus stop. He was pretty heavy for Austrian standards, i.e. just above average for American standards. And he was wearing this shirt. I blinked, because from a distance, it looked just like a Boston Bruins jersey, you know, with the black B in a circle and yellow trim. And then I convinced myself that was just crazy, why on earth would anyone in Linz be wearing a Boston Bruins jersey? As the bus pulled back out into traffic, I watched him so I could see what logo it was that I had mistaken for the Bruins logo. As we passed the guy, I saw that, not only was it really a Bruins jersey, but he was also wearing an American flag do-rag, ala Bruce Springsteen. And flip-flops. An American just off the boat, that much was clear as soon as I saw him up close.

 It was just a funny situation. Thought processes: 1. Is that...? 2. No, silly, it couldn't be, this isn't back home. 3. Wait a minute, it just might be... 4. Disbelief 5. Belief and surprise.

 You know, my mind has tricked me too many times, especially when I first moved here, into thinking that girl I saw out of the corner of my eye was someone I went to grade school with. I've developed such an automatic smackdown on reflexive thoughts like that that the situation when it really was the first thing I thought, it's hard to accept it! If that makes sense.

 The last job I had in the States was at a jewlery/clothes store in Annapolis. $6 an hour, cash. The store was very strange. It was run by this woman who seemed to just sell things she liked. It was much too small to really have both jewelry and clothes, but that's what she wanted to sell, so it was packed up to the ceiling with stuff.

 I got 5% commission, but it was the slowest summer ever. Some days, not a single customer would even come in, much less buy anything.

 The most exciting part of the day was opening the store in the morning. I had a key, but the door would stick. For some reason, everytime I burst into the store, it would set off the alarm system, even though it was programmed to have a 10 second delay when the door opened so you could deactivate it. It always worked fine when the owner was there, when I was on my own, the siren would kick in instantly and I'd have to run over to the panel and punch in the code to make it stop. What a way to start the day!

 There was a lot of stuff there I really liked, but I couldn't afford it. There was a cute white sundress with these red cherries and black branches, kind of an Asian motif, that I just loved. But it was $50, which I couldn't afford at the time. Shame.

 Anyway, enough of that. Let me tell you about the strangest phone call I've ever had. It was just a few months ago, here at work. Now, I do translations. People call up and email, and I translate their stuff. That's my job, pretty simple. Some people, though, seem to think they are asking me to do them a huge favor when they send me something to be translated. I try to explain that's it's really no problem.

 So a few months ago, one of the two rather dim secretaries of our late boss (please don't ask me why these ladies still have jobs) called me and asked, no practically begged me to translate the email she'd just sent .

Me: "No problem," I said. "That's what we're here for!"
Her: There was silence for a moment and then, "What's that supposed to mean?" in an aggressive tone of voice.
Me: Confusion on my end. "Uh, what's what supposed to mean?"
Her: She says, "I don't understand what you're saying!"
Me: Confusion reigns supreme. I mean, how do you explain a phrase that's pretty well self explanatory? "Well it's my job to do translations, so it's really fine that you sent me something to be translated. It's no problem. Really."
Her: She said, in a very suspicious tone, "Ah," and hung up.

 ????

I was so confused. I spent quite some time trying to figure out what on earth she thought I meant, or how she could have possibly misunderstood that? Strange, isn't it?

There's no work to do today, so I have eight hours to kill somehow without surfing the Interwebs.  Unfortunately for you, this is how.

Let's see... the next jobs I had must've been my workstudy jobs.   Working the front desk at our dorms (checking IDs and checking people in).  That was the world's easiest job, looking back.  The hours and pay were correspondingly lousy though, as you'd expect.  Minimum wage had been raised to $5.15 an hour, I think, or was it $5.25? The worst shift was 4am-8am on Saturday morning, if only because I would've rarely slept at all before the shift started and would be dead tired by around 5am.  I hated watching the sun come up because it meant I had missed an entire night's sleep.  It was amusing though to watch the drunken students fumble for their IDs.  I got so bored, especially when they moved the maintenance request computer from behind the desk to across the foyer.  On good shifts, you could convince dorm mates to hang out at the front desk, order Chinese, turn up the radio, etc.  On bad shifts, all the fun would be in the lounge, where you could just hear what a good time everyone but you was having playing spades or watching Dawson's Creek.  Now it seems odd that that bothered me, but it did. I was desperate to be one of the group and envious of any time people were having fun without me.  Rereading that last sentence, it sounds really terrible, doesn't it?  Talk about insecure!

Alcohol was not allowed in in an obvious way.  If you were old enough to drink, you had to conceal your booze for some bizzare reason, until you got to your room.  A resident came in once wearing a sweatshirt and carrying a case of Budweiser. Being the good deskworker that I was, I told him he couldn't bring it in.  He was completely unfazed, stepped back out onto the stoop, where I couldn't see him, and came back in about 10 seconds later, shirtless, carrying a cube-shaped sweatshirt.  I waved him through.

I was an office assistant for one of the grad students who was some kind of event coordinator.  That was a completely unmemorable job, except for the can of Mt. Dew I accidently left in the freezer compartment of her little office fridge overnight.  I spent most of the rest of my shift the next day cleaning up that mess.

I also tutored students.  IIRC, I got a whopping $6.00 an hour for it, which seemed like a lot at the time.  But it was quite frustrating.  I had to tutor math, which wasn't my major, but it was the most requested subject.  One woman, an older evening class student, was taking basic math and just couldn't comprehend negative numbers.  Just couldn't wrap her mind around the concept.  I mean, there's only so many ways you can explain that, aren't there?  I wonder if she passed that class.

I'm feeling nostalgic today.  It's not unusal in Austria to spend your entire career with a single employer.  It's becoming slightly less common, but not anything like in the US.  My mother-in-law started as an apprentice at her company at the age of 15 and retired from it at 58 or so.  Lots of people at this company got their jobs straight out of school.  Even the ones my age are being recognized by the company for 10 or 15 years of service, which just boggles my mind.  I don't even feel like I've had that many jobs, either, but in comparison...

My first job was between sophomore and junior year of high school (or was it after junior year?).  At the Dairy Queen across from the school and next to the old grain elevator.  I earned $4.75 an hour there, which was minimum wage at the time.  I worked all summer, around 30 hours a week. 

I had applied as a waitress at the new St. Louis Street Cafe, but they didn't hire me.  IIRC, the DQ used to be closed over the winter.  They had just gotten new owners who were hoping to keep it open year round, despite it being a walk-up place with just a few picnic tables outside next to the highway and a drive-thru.  We got a few hours of training, mostly consisting of practice eyeballing the correct portions for the various sizes of sundae and were tossed in the deep end.  Operating the silly cash register was the most difficult part of it.  We ate as much soft serve as we wanted, and any wrong orders we put in the freezer, ostensibly to resell if another customer ordered that same thing, but in reality, we took them home at night after closing.  I didn't eat ice cream for years after that job, and I can't eat ice cream to this day.  It gives me a stomachache now, I don't know if that's a psychological thing or actually physiological.

The only warm food we had was hot dogs, which spent all day and often the next day rotating slowly, uncovered, on those heated rollers, in what must have been some kind of health code violation.  By the second day, the hot dogs would have kinda shriveled, so we only sold those ones as chilidogs, because then the chili would hide the hideous hotdog.  If the hotdog was still left over at the end of the second day, we'd throw it out one of the order windows for the stray cats.  Until a cat got run over in our drive-thru.  Then we stopped doing that.

Oh and nachos.  We served nachos too, and I would often dip a chip in the cheez (I'm sure it wasn't actual "cheese") sauce in passing to snack on, which is almost certainly another health code violation.  But we were never actually trained in the health code, the owners apparently left it up to our good judgement, which a bunch of teenagers aren't likely to have a lot of.

Rainy days were the best.  Because it was a walk-up deal, there wouldn't be any customers except for the odd drive-thru.  Sometimes all day.  We'd clean everything and then sit up on the freezer chests, inventing new blizzard combinations in the dixie cups we used to make those little buster bars in (chocolate sauce, spoonful of peanuts, ice cream, repeat, top with chocolate sauce and peanuts, stick in a tongue depressor, freeze).

I still clearly remember some of the customers, even though it's been going on 15 years. Creme de Menthe Lady, who brought her mint chocolate blizzard back to the window three times, insisting we hadn't put any mint in her blizzard.  I'd made the blizzard myself, so I knew I had put in the requisite number of squirts, and I was surprised, because that green gel that passes for mint is really powerful.  So I took the blizzard and put that amount in yet again, mixed it in the mixer, gave it back to her.  She stood at the window and tasted it.  Nope, still wasn't minty enough.  So I brought the jug of Creme de Menthe forward from the prep area (which was behind an island counter) and let her pump in as much as she wanted.  Which was alot.  I'm surprised she didn't have some kind of dangerous medical reaction.

Then there was the Peanut Craver: a pregnant woman shortly before closing.  She wanted peanuts.  Not a blizzard with peanuts in it, just an entire blizzard cup full of peanuts.  I sold them to her.  She was so happy!

Chocolate Malt Guy was an old old man who would walk to the DQ (most people drove).  We had a view up the hill from our glassed-in shop, and we could see him moseying down the sidewalk along the highway, which has been crumbling and buckling ever since I can remember.  It's possible it was built that way, for all I know.  I always thought he was gonna trip and fall, but he never did.  Instead, he shuffled up to the window and ordered the same chocolate malt every time.  Once, when we saw him coming, we prepared one in advance and handed it to him as he opened his mouth to place his order.  We thought he'd be tickled, but he was pissed off!  I think just to spite us, he orders something different for the first and only time.

What I remember most is that it was hot and dusty outside (it rarely rains in the summer, apart from thunderstorms after it gets too hot), but cold and sticky inside (everything got ice cream on it and no amount of cleaning would get rid of that residual stickiness).  I actually looked forward to garbage duty (emptying the outside garbage cans into the dumpster) because it would give me a chance to warm up.  Even though I always got garbage juice on my shoes.

I quit when school started back up, not much richer in terms of money, but having gained that quintessentially American experience of working in fast food.  I'm glad I did it, even though I didn't particularly like it at the time.

I was gonna make Kaiserschmarrn yesterday, which is an über-traditional kind of fluffy pancake.  It's usually eaten as dessert though, since it's pretty sweet, so we usually make some vegetable soup to eat beforehand.  The weather here has been cold and dreary for the past week, so it was perfect soup weather.  I started off chopping veggies for the soup and soon realized that it was gonna be a huge pot of soup, much bigger than I'd intended.  So we nixed the Kaiserschmarrn and just had bread and cold cuts to go with the soup. 

Stefan had a hankering for pudding yesterday afternoon, so I went to go make some.  Come to find out we don't have any pudding mix!  Then Stefan wandered into the kitchen and happened to see the cornstarch in the same "baking" drawer where the pudding mix would've been if we'd had any.  "You can make pudding without mix", he said.

Like a complete bumpkin, I said, "Really?" *

Of course you can make pudding without pudding mix.  You just need milk, cornstarch, egg, sugar and flavoring, basically.  I adapted a recipe from allrecipes.com, and it works well, but it turned out a little too sweet for my taste, so I'll probably leave out half the sugar next time.  We added cocoa powder and a few broken off pieces of chocolate.  I whisked the mixture over the heat because we don't have a hand mixer, but I'm sure you could use one.  I was a little worried at first, because it didn't see to be coming together, but as soon as it came to the boiling point, it got thick and puddingy.  I wasn't sure how long to let it boil, so I gave it just a minute before pouring into some coffee cups to set.  This amount filled 4 tea cups (not mugs) pretty exactly.  After setting in the fridge for a few hours, the pudding came out of the cups surprisingly easily.  And tasted just like "normal" pudding.

* I don't know, but it would've never even crossed my mind to make pudding from scratch, just as I would've never thought of building my own car, either.  The things you learn...

I'm in the middle of a translation from English into German. Some guy in the company refused to write his paper in German and have it translated, claiming it would never be needed in German. So, you guessed it: now someone needs it in German, and I have to translate it going the wrong way. It's much much harder to translate something from English rather than into English.

Anyway, I have to take a break from those 11 pages of equations and calculations. I made some great corn muffins last weekend. It was your regular corn muffin recipe with corn meal, flour, baking soda, salt, milk and egg, but you also mix in two handfuls of grated cheese and chilies. I happen to be obsessed with chilies, and this was in fact a delicious version. I only added 2 chilies for the 12 muffins, but they were pretty spicy. Not too spicy though because my office mates (who are all wusses when it comes to spicy) each made it through a whole muffin and loved it.

Yesterday we had kind of a quiche. I've never made one before, but it turned out pretty well considering I wasn't following a recipe. First I buttered and breadcrumbed the pie pan, because I was worried the quiche would stick (it's an aluminum pan). Then I got out the crisper drawer from the fridge and started chopping up just all the veggies we had (which was a lot). I chopped them just kinda fork-sized, except the really hard ones, which I sliced into pretty thin slices. I divided them into two piles: the ones that can go in raw and cook in the pie (spring onion, garlic sliced into very thin slices, bell pepper) and the ones that I blanched before adding to the veggie mix so they wouldn't be so hard (carrots, kohlrabi, cauliflower, the last of the asparagus). Those ones I blanched in boiling salt water for just a minute before rinsing in cold water. I mixed all the veggies in a bowl, added some breadcrumbs to absorb any excess water or juice and tossed in some parsley (because we had some frozen) and some shredded cheese (finally using up those two pieces). Then I carefully poured the veggies into the piepan and kind of pressed them down.

 I beat three eggs with a fork and added about a cup of cream (we had some left over). I seasoned it was plenty of salt, pepper and nutmeg, and poured it over the veggies. A puddle of egg promptly flow across the surface before ending up on the counter, but most of it sunk in and completely disappeared, to my surprise. The veggies looked pretty compact in there, but there would've been room for at least one more egg, easy. I sprinkled more breadcrumbs on top, put the quiche in the oven at about 325°F and let it set for half an hour.

 It turned out pretty good. Could've done with some carbohydrates in there, like potatoes, but we didn't have any leftover ones and I thought raw ones wouldn't cook all the way in the pie. Next time I think I'll beat the egg whites and fold them under the mixture before transfering to the pan, to make it a little lighter. But it wasn't bad. Good way to use up veggies that are getting old. And that piepan full was enough for two dinners and a small lunch.

Stefan was out with friends last night, and I was in an unusually contemplative, maybe even melancholy mood. I think I've been spending too much time on Facebook, because I started turning the whole concept of "Friends" over and over in my brain. When I first got on Facebook, I friended virtually everyone I've ever met. Now I've gone back on that, though and am trying to friend just people who I would have, at some point in my life, actually referred to as "My friend, X".

 I guess there are different kinds of friends, but what makes someone a friend and not an acquaintance? Which of the people who have passed through my life are friends? Is still being in touch a prerequisite? Is a person friend for life, barring any drama?

 What about the person I grew up with and have known for longer than my own brother? We've kind of drifted apart since high school, even more so when I moved overseas, but I've always referred to her as "my friend", sometimes even "my best friend", even though I would probably turn elsewhere first with most problems friends are supposed to help you with. Is that a life-long position, like a supreme court seat?

 What about my brother, who I never got along with growing up, but suddenly find myself closer to now that I'm far away? Can a sibling be a friend, or is that a whole nother category?  What about cousins?

 What about people from college with whom I have occasional, cursory but always friendly internet contact?

 One person I never expected to be a close friend was actually the friend of an ex of mine first, but strangely enough, we stay in touch better than I do with a lot of people I've known much longer.

 Is it a person from college who I lost touch with, but who I exchange emails with once a year or even less often as if we had just seen each other last week?

 What about my husband's friends? I really like them, and I'm sure they like me too, but we never talk on the phone (I was on the phone constantly in high school, but now I don't like talking on the phone) or email, we just see each other when he arranges it.  Do they automatically become my friends by virtue of us getting married?

 Is it the colleague I sit next to and chat with eight hours a day and see socially on rare but very fun occasions? Friend or colleague? And what about his woman, who is here on the days he isn't and who I get along with really well considering it's a woman (for some reason I tend to feel more comfortable with guys, they're so much easier to understand).

 I guess someone can be a friend retroactively too. I know a few people who have left my life and who I never would've called friends at the time, but looking back, they seem to personify the term. Of course, the same is true in the other direction too. There are quite a lot of people, actually, that I've called friends, but who weren't really anything of the sort. I guess it was for lack of a better term. Now I would describe some of them as fellows or companions, in the sense that we happened to be going the same way, but not for each other's sake, only because it was the only road to our destinations. Others I spent time with because I didn't have any other option, we were thrown together by default and put up with each other out of lack of alternatives.

 Hmm. It's a tricky word.

I learned a lesson on babies this weekend. Some friends were visiting from Vienna and brought their 10 month old along. Now, I don't know the first thing about babies, other than that I'd like to have a few of my own eventually. But as it turns out, they're pretty simple things (superficially). They just need to be fed and changed, basically. The devil is in the details though, as they say. The lesson I learned the hard way (is there any other way?) is not to have placemats on the table within arm's reach of the baby when it's on your lap. I was holding the baby while Stefan was trying to maneuver some baby food into its mouth and its parents were trying not to laugh at our pathetic efforts. I had a glass of juice on my placemat. I think you can see where this is going. 

 The grabby baby grabbed the placemat and jerked it forward, knocking over the glass of juice, which spilled across the table in a kind of tsunami before splatting onto the ground and my feet. Fortunately, I had taken off my shoes because they were hurting, so my shoes didn't get juicy and I was able to hand off the baby and go wash off my feet.

 Anyhow, it was a nice weekend. Great weather. The weather has been so unseasonably warm and sunny all month, it's getting a little disconcerting. I'd gotten so used to the crappy cloudy winter that it's strange to have sundshine every day.

We planted some chilies and some tomatoes this year again, in containers on our balcony/porch deal. The tomatoes are growing at an almost visible pace, the chilies are not now that I repotted them. I'm hoping they're just growing a lot of roots at the moment (hope springs eternal, right?). For next year, we're hoping the landlady will let us have little area of the yard (for free) for a little garden of our own. That's always been my dream: growing my own food. I'd put it tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, carrots, lettuce, spinach, garlic (there is nothing like fresh garlic, where that papery skin is still juicy) and potatoes if there's room: freshly dug potatoes, pressure cooked and served with just salt, butter and chives are really the best food on the planet. I'd also plant chilies and herbs (parsley, cilantro, chives, basil, tarragon, maybe oregano). Basically everything we eat a lot of. 

I know it's a lot of work. I won't pretend like it's going to save a whole lot of money, either (though we did spend € 3.50 on a kilo of asparagus two weeks in a row now...). But although we don't get too many tomatoes from our balcony plants, they are unbelievably good. I thought the red, red cherry tomatoes from the super market were good, but these make those ones seem like imitation tomatoes. I don't know what it is, maybe it's just because they really are vine-ripened? They just seem more... real... somehow. It's hard to describe if you've never tasted them. I guess it's like eating at an Italian restaurant in Austria versus in Italy. You might think the restaurant in Austria is the best one anywhere, but when you actually go to Italy and taste the food there, you're blown away.