in your face suckers*

2009 can suck it. What a year this has been. I am tempted to say it was an asshole. Do I have kind words for it? Not really. So let's take a look at what's been ticking me off on a grander scale.

2009 saw the introduction of a witholding tax and mass surveillance - a directive allowing the EU member states to retain internet and telecommunications data. Dun dun dun.

Barack Obama was inaugurated as the first African American and the 44th president of the US. The world has high expectations.

The swine flu swaps across Mexico and out into the world. In its neverending panic to grab the fattest headline, the media neglects unfortunately forgets to inform the public that more people die due to the "common"influenza A virus infection than the swine flu each year.

Shit goes down in Iran and several politicans make a fool of themselves. That wouldn't be anything new but the foolery reaches new levels of ridiculousness. Yes, I am looking to you Italy.

General elections take place in Germany and the Federal Republic of Germany celebrates it's 60th birthday. The festivities continue. It's been 20 years since the Fall of the Wall.

The world economy is down and the Treaty of Lisbon, signed by the Eurpean Union member states, finally came into force after the Irish were "subtly reminded to please vote 'yes' (or else) the second time around. Long live Democracy.

The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen brought together the big'uns. AND? NOTHING came of it. We're all gonna die. Well we were all gonna die anyway but now we're taking the planet down with us.

And since we're talking about death. What was up with that this year? I haven't been collecting statistics. Is it just me or has death been especially unkind this year?

John Updike, Natasha Richardson, David Carradine, Walter Cronkite, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Frank McCourt, Les Paul, Ted Kennedy, Patrick Swayze, Stephen Gately, Roy E. Disney, Al Martino, Brittany Murphy and Yves Rocher among others. So sad.

A good year? Certainly not. Even though I can't complain personally but that will be enough fodder for another blogpost.

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. Good bye 2009, you old sucker. Bring on 2010.

posted by Kat | 2 people left their two cents  

Haven't decided yet whether to love or hate formspring.me . It's like social network-stalking made super easy. Also publishes your more or less stupid answers, depending on how serious you take this, on facebook and twitter and whatnot....just what the world's been waiting for.

posted by Kat | 5 people left their two cents  

Bookwise that is. I wondered about the hype around the book last year. Then Patty recommended it and got me hooked on it. I couldn't put it down and had to read the entire saga. Even though vampire stories aren't my thing really, the books were enjoyable. Don't worry, I am not going to write another post about how lovely the characters are captured etc. but I always had one question in the back of my mind and today, while getting my daily dose of lamebook, I couldn't believe my eyes.

Someone voiced my thoughts. I laughed out loud and at the same time I was happy to learn that I am not alone in thinking stupid thoughts. At least I didn't voice my opinion on this topic on Facebook or anywhere else for that matter, though it did cross my mind.

What was I laughing about? Only this:
Anybody else thought the same?

posted by Kat | 6 people left their two cents  

for what seems like the tenth time this year. I'm getting depressed visiting all the other blogs of my fave bloggers who, as it seems blog as if there's no tomorrow. And I am always lef to wonder, where they get all their ideas from and why don't I have anything of value to add?

Life has been busy. Work is busy. We bought a house and we will start our major home makeover on the 15th of next month. That's all I can think about right now. Between the hefty renovation and an even heftier workload at work as well as the Christmas holidays and the pressure of moving all our staff and paint the old place, there's not much of a breathing space. So I am enjoying every day without packing boxes or ripping out old floorboards because the day will come, where this will be all we're going to be doing. At least for a while and then some. We're expecting the whole thing to last well until fall of next year. An outlook I could do without but what the heck. If we're lucky this will be the last time we'll ever have to move house but surely not the last time for a renovation.

On top of that I haven't seen the hubby much this month. In total maybe four days. He's been in London, Lisbon, Berlin, Prague. The only place he's not is here. When he's gone, it's like he's taking my mojo with him. Bummer.

So there, that's all that was on my mind now. The plan is to feature the renovation on this or another blog but then again, knowing me, I'm probably too lazy to keep track, though it would be great for later to look at it and see what we have accomplished.

posted by Kat | 4 people left their two cents  

I am sorry for not blogging yesterday but I am mourning. What am I mourning you might ask? I am mourning the death of NaBloPoMo 2009. That’s what. As of today (actually yesterday) NaBloPoMo is dead to me.

I had a feeling that NaBloPoMo and I wouldn’t be friends this year and I will not make excuses. Although I would have quite a few at hand. Some of them valid but I’d rather keep them for another occasion. So I will follow into my friend Tara R’s footsteps and I will say it loud and I will say it proud: I post when I want as often as I want and when I damn well feel like it.

Ha….in your face NaBloPoMo. See you next year. Or not. We will see.

posted by Kat | 2 people left their two cents  

So what happens when you're forced to work from home because there was a swine-flu outbreak in the office? You're starting to lose it. My marbles? Nowhere even close to me. Working from home because you want to? Awesome. Working home because you're forced to? Not so great.

I don't know why this annoys me so much but I remember I have always felt this way.

When I grew up in the GDR German Democratic Republic, we had an awesome schoolsystem. All the kids were cared for and if you didn't have parents that were able to stay home with you (which was true for everyone because in Socialism? Everyone had jobs (we will cleverly leave out that not all were very productive))or grandparents, you had the chance to go to summer camp.

There were different kinds of summer camps. Betriebsferienlager were summer camps for the kids of larger company's employees and Pionierlager were camps for pioneers but I won't get into that now.

Towards the end of the school year all the teachers would come around asking who would want to go into summer camp and who was looking forward to it 19 hands shot up only mine was down. When asked about it I firmly stated that I had no intentions of going to camp because my older cousin went and wrote home on a postcard "I have to go now because we have to go hiking now and yesterday we went swimming." Yeah that wasn't gonna fly with me. I had the luck of being able to stay at my grandparent's who just so happened to live next door to my best friend. We got up in the mornings, packed our backs and headed to the lake only returning home when the sun had sunk so low that we got too cold or we were about to starve. And if we didn't go swimming we went roaming through the woods. We would take care of the animals my friend's parents kept and we would have regular sleepovers. We even opened a little "restaurant" where my grandma or my friend's mom cooked. We would come in and pretend to be a guest or a waiter (not at the same time of course). After the successful lunch we even helped with the dishes.

Why would I want to trade that kind of freedom and fun for sleeping in a bunk bed in a room full of other kids? I resented the thought of having to do whatever it was that was planned for during summer camp. I hated plans. Period.

No amount of persuasion by my parents, teachers, classmates or cousins could convince me otherwise. Come to think of it, never having to go to summer camp may have been the reason that I have the greatest memories of my summers. Sigh. How I miss those times.

posted by Kat | 4 people left their two cents  

Labels: NaBloPoMo2009

It was just a matter of time but it has happened. Swineflu. It got to us. Today is the day that we were advised that all of us had to go and work home for the next couple of days. Effective immediately because someone in the team came down with the swineflu.

Every case of the swineflu has to be reported. If you came in touch with someone affected, you have to report it.

So this is what it feels like for the team at the moment:

posted by Kat | 4 people left their two cents  

It was twenty years ago today, when I witnessed the wall come down. I was thirteen years old then. A normal teenager, born and raised within the confined space that was the German Democratic Republic. A so called democratic state that as it turned out was anything but.

Not that I would have noticed or cared a whole lot back then. After all I was only a kid. My family lived really close to the border. So close in fact that looking out of the attic window in my grandma’s house the next town you could actually see was a small town in Western Germany.

I remember playing in the attic with my best friend and we would look out the window and stare into the “West” and we would take wild guesses at how it must be “over there”. That’s what we called it. “Over there”. Where people drove real cars like Volkswagens and Audis and BMWs and not some cardboard version of a car like the Trabant

We would picture ourselves drinking a can of coke and eating a bar of yummy chocolate. The kind that the GDR exported into the West. The kind that we never got to taste unless some far aunt or cousin would send in a package once a year, along with oranges and Nutella.

As kids we never really missed anything. I could live with or without the Coca Cola, the fancy cars or Milka chocolate. What we did start to crave and could only fathom the older we got was freedom – or lack thereof. I am convinced the GDR would still exist in one form or another, had it’s creepy founding fathers allowed people to travel across the world. But they feared if they would see beyond the walls they would find the grass was greener on the other side and they saw that the only method of keeping them from just wandering off was to wall them in.

It’s like living in Arizona and having family in New Mexico only you can’t visit them. Ever. And you hear all the great stories about New Mexico and Colorado and California but the chances of travelling there, even for just one day, were so slim that all you could do was dream about it.

But as a thirteen year old, living in the rebellious times that was 1989, my biggest fear was that my parents were going to leave everything they had worked for to make it to the west. Thankfully they never did and for that I am eternally grateful. Just as I am for the courage of hundreds of thousands of people who peacefully demonstrated for freedom Monday after Monday and whose courage enabled me to travel the world and live abroad for the most part of my adult live.

To those who cleared the path and lead us to the events on November 09th, 1989 I salute you.For the rest of my life I will get goose bumps thinking back to the night that my parents woke me up and allowed me to stay up late so I could witness that historic moment. If not live then at least glued in front of the television…

posted by Kat | 3 people left their two cents  

Sundays are usually slow days and I was trying to think of something to post. See I have to schedule this post because last Friday wasn't only my American twin sis Melisa's but also my mother in-law's birthday. She turns sixty. My mother in law, not Melisa but I guess you already figured that because she doesn't look a day over 29. I mean Melisa, not my mother in-law. Though my mother-in law doesn't look a day over 35 if you get my drift.

Anywho. What I am trying to say is that while I am a lame, lame friend, who has not yet managed to bring a birthday gift on the way across the big pond, I drove across Germany, picking up various family members along the way. Munich? Choochoo. Next stop Heidelberg, where my lovely sister in-law jumps in. Next stop? Frankfurt, where we make room for Nana, who no doubt appreciates the sports seats in the car and whom we will eventually hoist out of them once we have reached our final destination Cologne.

Weekend trip.

So while I am gone I will throw this bad pun joke your way in the hope that it will last till I come back and post something decent tomorrow. That's what Nablopomo does to you :)

The big chess tournament was taking place at the Plaza in New York. After the first day's competition, many of the winners were sitting around in the foyer of the hotel talking about their matches and bragging about their wonderful play. After a few drinks they started getting louder and louder until finally, the desk clerk couldn't take any more and kicked them out.

The next morning the Manager called the clerk into his office and told him there had been many complaints about his being so rude to the hotel guests....instead of kicking them out, he should have just asked them to be less noisy. The clerk responded, "I'm sorry, but if there's one thing I can't stand, it's chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."

posted by Kat | 2 people left their two cents  

Labels: NaBloPoMo2009

I had a little fun with this cute meme. Create your own album cover. Before doing that however, you should find a name for your band and think of an awesome album title.

But don’t fret, the meme is nothing more than a quick fix to your problem. Simply follow the rules below and no cheating!

1. Go to Wikipedia and hit Random Article
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

NEUTRAL MUTATION

2. Go to “Random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

HOW TO ACQUIRE WITHOUT MEANNESS

3. Go to Flickr and click on explore the last seven days
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Picture via Flickr. Photo credit to Pica

4. Use Photoshop/Paint or whatever to put it all together

5. Post a link to your album in the comments!

I wonder how many bands came up with their band name and album title by using this or something similar.

posted by Kat | 4 people left their two cents