sawdust, starter jackets, & spiced wines

Sorry for neglecting the old blog for the past week or so. I know some of you rely on this for night school distractions (focus lady!). Life has been a bit boring, yet busy for the past week and a half. My "last" day of German class for a while was today. I really was disliking class for the past two weeks, I was really struggling with the content & basically was just frustrated with German. Yet today I felt oddly sad to be finishing it. The only real steady factor in my life for the past two months, ending....yet, I fear the process of learning German will never actually ever end. It will cycle around & through my life, frustrate & sometimes (when i actually communicate effectively) delight.

So, do you all recall the excessively large table top that joe carried through all modes of Zurich transportation? Well, after the past month of just sitting in our kitchen lamely staring at us, we (joe) decided to tackle the project this past weekend. (our first out of town visitor certainly helped provide some motivation --- arriving tomorrow, yeah Karla!) So, despite some challenges we rented a tool (that was not really meant for cutting a 6 foot board, but it was all we could get..) from a local hardware store & got it home. We had really no choice regarding where to cut the board, Joe voted for cutting it on some random businesses property that is located behind our house, but I (having already been yelled at my by fair share of Swiss was reluctant to use someone else's property for this adventure) so, we went with cutting in The Kitchen. Who doesn't use power saws in the kitchen afterall? I am afraid I will be battling the saw dust remains for a good part of December.....oh well. It's done! And joe realizes how much he misses Home Depot.

Total sidenote, I saw a guy wearing a mighty ducks starter jacket the other day. I almost lost it. Dave, you are still rocking yours, right?
So, it’s definitely holiday time here in Zurich. It's even starting to feel a bit Christmasy in our own house.

 

Last night Joe & I went downtown to admire/oogle/discuss the various holiday decorations that Zurich displays. Three years after their arrival, these holiday lights http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPg43Z7-5d8 are still majorly controversial (and, in my opinion, hideous) in Zurich. Despite the main road being decorated with these modern tubes, most all the side streets are still filled with millions of tiny white twinklers, decorative globes, huge real trees & all the other traditional trimmings. We also "enjoyed?" our first glass of Gluhwein, a warm spiced wine that packs a serious punch. It kept me ridiculously warm despite the bitter brrr in the air though, so I guess at least for that it was worth it, although my legs were feeling a bit on the jiggly side after only one glass of it.

So, we are looking forward with much anticipation to our first visitor. Karla & I will be traveling to Prague for a few nights (anyone need some Becherovka, grandpa?, kate? --- talk about warming you up!)

Warm wishes to you all....