Friday Filler

I can't believe how quickly the days fly these day. I had so much I wanted to get done this week and it seems like I've done about half of it. I guess the week's not quite over yet.

If you build it, they will come
When we moved into our apartment a couple of years ago there was a big, empty field nearby that our neighbors told us would one day be a shopping center. For more than two years, nothing happened. Then two months or so ago the land was cleared. And several weeks ago, construction finally started. I'm skeptical about it being a shopping center. The building site is at a subway station and there is a mall only three stops away. But still, I'm kind of hoping it's a mall. How great would it be to have a mall within a five to ten minute walk from the apartment.

Brian suggested maybe it's going to be an apartment building, but I'm not buying that either. The area on the other side of the subway station has also been cleared and a building or two has been torn down, so I'm pretty sure the construction will continue on the other side. I don't see an apartment building straddling the subway tracks.


What do you think? A shopping center? Parking garage? Apartment building?
Play things
As a soon-to-be mother, I'm trying desperately not to buy every cute little outfit and toy that I run across. It's hard. There's one toy in particular that I'm very eager to buy: a Laufrad. I don't think there's an English word for this, but it's basically a bicycle without pedals. I've been asking around and several parents have started their kid on a Laufrad at the age of 2. Hopefully I'll be able to snap one up from a second hand shop in the spring.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwboeckmann/507750631/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwboeckmann/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

http://www.flickr.com/photos/axels_bilder/2293885069/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/axels_bilder/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

And I'm off...
This blog will fall even more silent that usual for the next couple of weeks. I'm leaving on Sunday for a retreat in Filzmoos, Austria and when I return I'll pretty much turn around and leave for Africa. So there probably won't be any Friday Fillers for at least two weeks. I may post some photos of Filzmoos and will definitely post when I return from Africa.

Saturday Filler

It doesn't have quite the same ring to it as "Friday Filler", but oh well.

Lesson learned
Last weekend some friends from Hungary stopped by for a quick visit. They arrived late Saturday night and left Monday morning to visit some other people in town before heading home that evening. The husband had visited Vienna once for a few hours over 10 years ago and the wife was making her first trip to Vienna. I learned an important message: One day is not enough time to see Vienna for the first (or second) time. We had a good time hitting the highlights, but I was beat by the time we got home!

It's official! Well, not really.
Fall is here! I'm excited to pull out my long sleeve shirts and don a light jacket. I know fall doesn't start until the 22nd, but I'm calling it now. It's fall. To celebrate, I made some sweet potato bread. I would have preferred pumpkin bread, but since you can't buy pumpkin puree here, I would have to make. Which takes a lot of baking and scraping and pureeing. And that's before you can even start making the pumpkin bread. So I make sweet potato bread instead. Which still requires peeling and boiling and pureeing, but somehow I've convinced myself it's simpler. And even though it's not pumpkin, it's still fallish and it satisfies my need for fall foods. I also broke out the creamy white chili with cornbread this week and plan to make beans and cornbread next week. I love fall.

My own private Vienna
Today, in an odd twist of circumstances, I found myself wandering through the city center around 7:30 this morning. It was so nice and quiet. I learned some interesting things wandering around so early. For example, I was surprised to see that the ice cream salon Zanoni & Zanoni was open and there were probably at least a dozen customers there. But then I noticed that they were serving breakfast, not ice cream. (Hey, you never know! Several months ago I was at the mall at 9:30 in the morning when I spotted 4 retired men enjoying their morning beer at one of the cafes.) I also learned that the area near Stephansplatz where all of the horses and carriages line up still smells like horse poop even when the horses aren't around.


This is the horse and carriage area when there are actually horses around -- not at 7:30 on a Saturday morning. Stanley photobombed me!

The last word

Earlier today Brian was reading something in German and commented that he always had to look up the word regelmäßig. I asked him what it meant and he read out the list of English words.

Regelmäßig: constant; continuous; measured; periodic.

I complained that I didn't like words that could have two opposite meanings. How could a word mean both "constant" and "periodic". So I looked up "periodic" to make sure I wasn't using it incorrectly.

Periodic: recurring at intervals of time; occurring at regular intervals; repeated at irregular intervals.

I didn't like it that periodic could sometimes mean occurring at regular intervals and sometimes mean occurring at irregular intervals? That's when Brian brought up semi-annual and bi-annual and how both mean occurring twice a year. Which is confusing enough, but add to it that bi-annual can also mean occurring every two years and then things get really confusing.

As I continued to complain about words that had two opposite meanings, Brian said that you can tell the meaning based on context. A bi-annual sale would most likely occur twice a year while a bi-annual sports event would occur every two years. What about a bi-annual family reunion, I asked. Every two years, Brian answered. What if it wasn't really a family reunion but really just a get together but someone called it a reunion because words often have more than one meaning, I asked. Every two years, Brian answered. And then someone got mad -- but I don't really remember who.

It may have been me.

I took the computer so I could look up words. And Brian asked me what I was going to try to prove. And I said maybe I wasn't going to prove anything. I was just going to write a blog post.

Friday Filler

Around this time yesterday Brian commented on how I hadn't posted the Friday Filler yet. I told him I had completely forgotten it was Friday. Then I realized it was Thursday. It's been a bit of a crazy week.

The Draft Party
Last year I decided to join Brian in playing fantasy football. I didn't win, but I had a good time, so I'm playing again this year. I don't really know anything about football, but I think I have a pretty good method for choosing my players. I pick the players with fun names. Brian said that despite my unorthodox drafting method, I ended up with a pretty good team.

The last two years Jake has hosted a draft party, but he's in the U.S. right now (and completely forgot about the draft), so Brian and I had our own little draft party.



Our Latest Visitor
We have a visitor staying with us and he is really quite a dear. His name is Stanley and I don't think we've ever had such a quiet, easy-going visitor. Earlier this week we took him out of the town to see the sites. We also visited our favorite burrito place. Perhaps we should have taken him out for schnitzel or something a little more traditional. He'll spend a few more days with us before continuing his trip to Japan.

It's not what you think

I've been taking notice of the strollers lately as I'm trying to figure out which kind I want to buy. I especially pay attention when I see people get on the tram or subway with a stroller to see how well it maneuvers. But this is the first time I've ever taken a photo of a stroller.


I didn't take a photo of it because I was interested in getting this type of stroller. It looks pretty basic and not at all what I'm looking for. The woman pushing the stroller got off the tram at the same stop as me, so I snapped another photo as she was walking through the station.


Notice anything strange? Apparently, this isn't a Kinderwagen, it's a Hundewagen -- a stroller for dogs. Even though Vienna is an extremely dog-friendly city, I've never seen anything like this.

I continued on my way, happy to have my covert photos and expecting that I'd never see something like this again. I got on the subway to head home, and what do you know, when I got off the subway this lady and her dogs were there! We ended up waiting for the elevator together, so I asked her about the stroller and if I could take a photo.


The dogs seemed to be enjoying the ride. I bet one of these things would have come in very handy for Brian a couple of weeks ago when he had to carry Sharkdog home from the vet. But I'm not so sure Brian would be willing to push his dog around in a stroller.

The good kind

Well, Sharkdog is a free man. This morning we took him to the vet to have his stitches removed and boy, he did not like it. I don't know how many stitches he had, but there's a mighty long scar. I would post a photo, but it's right by his private bits and I don't need to be showing that online. Let's let the dog retain a least a little bit of his dignity.

I tried to capture Sharkdog's joy at his new found freedom, but this was the most joyous photo I captured.

He may looked perplexed, but his tail is wagging.

And in the name of full disclosure, I admit that bribes were used during this photo session.

Ah ha! I have his attention now!

This is how I found him when I entered the room, but I didn't think this photo truly expressed Sharkdog's happiness to get rid of the cone.

While this photo doesn't do a good job of displaying Sharkdog's happiness, it does show his excellent Eeyore impersonation.

But he perked right up when he saw I had crackers with me. He sat, lied down, and even attempted to roll over. I was just trying to get him to sit, but when there are treats involved, sometimes he automatically starts going through his whole repertoire. Even though he was happy to get the treats, I think he was still a little emotionally scarred from having the stitches removed.

You would not believe what they did to me! It makes a dog nervous to have someone snipping around with cold scissors down there!

We know, Sharkdog, we know. After removing the stitches the doctor gave us the good news. The mole didn't show any signs of cancer. It was the good kind, he told us.

Friday Filler - Sharkdog edition

Tomorrow's the big day Sharkdog goes back to the vet to have the stitches removed. And he'll finally get to take off the Elizabethan collar. The Elizabethan collar we had in the U.S. simply snapped on and off, so we could remove it occasionally without any problems. But this one is much more complicated, so we haven't been able to remove it at all during the past week.



Sharkdog is pretty used to the collar by now, but it does cause a few problems.

He occasionally runs into something (or someone) because he forgets his head needs extra clearance. He also isn't able to get under the covers because his head gets stuck.

He can't eat out of dog bowl, but he is able to eat his food from a towel on the ground. However, he doesn't like to eat alone, so sometimes he'll whine and prance around until someone will join him in the hallway. Other times he'll take a few pieces in his mouth and carry it into the room where Brian and I are sitting. But this doesn't really have anything to do with the collar -- he's always like that.

However, he hasn't let us leave the house without him all week. When it looks like we're both going to leave, he makes sure he is constantly following one of us. It's a good thing Vienna is so dog friendly.

Probably the worst part for Sharky is that he can't scratch behind his ears. He tries and he tries, but he just hits the cone.

I scratch and scratch, but just can't reach the itch!

Fortunately for him, someone is always around to lend him a hand.

Tell you what Brian, you scratch behind my ear and I'll lick your arm and we'll call it even.

Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with the news from the vet. And perhaps some photos of Sharkdog sans collar.