Friday Filler

Have you noticed it's been a little sparse here of late? I just don't have a lot of blog-worthy material these days. So I'm going to borrow an idea from some other blogs and each Friday I'll post a collection of random thoughts/observations/happenings. Hopefully it won't be too dull. Here goes:


Wake Up Call
Wednesday our mailman delivered a package to us -- at 6:45 in the morning! On the one hand, I was glad he actually brought the package to our door. Sometimes he just leaves a slip in our mailbox and we have to retrieve the package from the post office. But on the other hand, it was 6:45 in the morning. Now I know some of you are awake at that hour, but I generally am not. I wonder what time this guy starts his shift. Hopefully we were the first delivery of the morning.

Paging Alisha
Last week I was at the doctor's office and noticed the strangest things. Periodically, someone in the waiting room would just stand up and walk into the exam room. After the second or third person did this, I realized that the receptionist was calling the next patient. But she was using exactly the same tone and volume she used when talking to someone at the receptionist desk. And she was behind a wall and with her back turned to her, so it was almost impossible to hear her! When I knew it was almost my turn, I moved to the closest chair (which was still not in the line of sight of the receptionist's desk). I thought I was listening carefully until I noticed several people looking around. That's when I realized I had heard my name and it just didn't register. Hopefully I didn't look too foolish jumping up and rushing into the exam room.

And the winner is...
Several days ago I entered a giveaway to win a lovely quilt. Before I left a comment, I checked to make sure the contest was still running so I didn't look like an idiot entering a contest that was already over. The contest was still running, so I entered. But a few minutes after leaving a comment I got an email back saying that the contest had already ended -- and quite some time ago. It was from July 2008, not July 2009.

The other night

I took these photos from my kitchen window last Saturday around 9:15. I love this time of evening.

Auntie Alisha has a nephew

Welcome Samuel Scott, Jr!


Probably the worse thing about living so far from family is missing out on days like Tuesday when my sister Amber gave birth to her third child. But fortunately the hospital had WI-FI and my mom had her laptop, so I was able to watch my niece dance around the waiting room and was able to see Sammy soon after he was born. Not quite the same as being there, but it was pretty nice.


Sammy's first experience with Skype.
For more photos, check out Amber's blog.

So what's the deal with milk

Milk is so crazy here in Austria. In the States you have three, maybe four options. But here I can buy fat free, 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, 2%, or 3.9%. Come on, 3.9%? Let's just call it 4%. And recently I discovered something new. EXTRA whole milk, which is 4.5% fat!

I normally buy the light milk (which is 0.5% to 1.5%, depending on the brand), but I'll buy whole milk a couple of times a year. So, of course, I had to try the extra whole milk. And what do you know, it's extra yummy.

This doesn't have anything to do with milk, but I can't hear "So what's the deal with..." without thinking of my favorite Seinfeld opener. Just my luck, I found it on YouTube.

Continuing ed

Last night I participated in a scrapbooking class at a local continuing education center. I picked scrapbooking because I figured it would be easier to understand a subject I was already familiar with -- but it didn't matter much since the teacher spoke to me in English the entire night. Oh well. I didn't get to practice German, but I did get to make a lovely page for a scrapbook.


I still need to add a title. I couldn't decide between "Man's Best Friend" or "Happiness is..." I think I'm going to go with "Happiness is..." because I listed some of the things that we love about Sharkdog.

Now I just have to find something other than Sharkdog to scrapbook about.

A quick fix

I've been meaning to post a link to this tutorial on hemming jeans for months, but I'm just now getting around to it.

My jeans are always too long, so they always get raggedy on the bottom. But I've never hemmed them because it just doesn't look the same as the original hem. But then I found this method of hemming jeans that kept the original hem. And it's so simple! The whole thing took about 10 minutes.

So, without further ado, here's the post: How to Hem Jeans.

Photo used by permission under the Creative Commons license.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darling_clementine/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Rockin' it with The Boss

Before we moved to Vienna I had this crazy idea that Brian and I would get to see some amazing shows while we lived here. And two years after moving here, we finally attended our first concert. And it was pretty amazing.

I think one of my favorite parts was when Bruce did his preacher-man speech about building a house -- mainly because it seemed to really confuse the crowd. Maybe it was the whole language issue. It went something like this:

Bruce: Tonight we have come all this way to the land of musicians to fulfill a solemn vow.
Crowd: Wooo!
Bruce: We've come here to rock the house!
Crowd: Woooooo!
Bruce: And we're gonna ROCK THE HOUSE!
Crowd: WOOOOOO!
Bruce: But we're not just gonna rock the house. We're gonna BUILD a house!
Crowd: Wha?

I couldn't find the speech for the Vienna show, but this is basically the same thing from a show in London.


Other high points of the show included when Bruce collected signs with song requests from the people in the crowd. One of the signs read "Should I Stay or Should I Go," to which Bruce responded, "I've never even heard of that one." Then during the encore, a girl removed her shirt which contained her request of Jersey Girl. Apparently, that was a first for Springsteen. He hung the shirt on the mic stand and then returned it to her after the song.

If you like Bruce Springsteen or just want a little taste of the action, here's a 10-minute video that covers the 3-hour concert.

Turns out, I was right

I've always known that I'm a winner, but it's nice to get some validation from someone else once in a while. A couple of weeks ago I received an email from Sew, Mama, Sew! saying that I had won some needles during their sewing machine month. I didn't even know they were giving away needles.


Nifty gifties.
Now, sewing needles may not seem like a good prize to some of you, but I'm very excited about them. There are a few twin needles that I'm looking forward to trying out. I just hope they work with my machine. And leather needles. Now I can finally make those leather pants I've been wanting. Not really. But I have thought about making some leather-soled baby shoes. Or those leather needles may just sit in the drawer for a long while. We'll just have to see what happens.