Things to say

1) I love my family. They are wonderful folks.

2) Sorry to hear that the fat cyclist's wife Susan passed away last week. To read more about her/their battle with cancer, visit his website.

3) The weather is great at the moment. And I don't have time to spend as much time outside as I would like to. That leads to frustration...

4) I have bought myself a new mobile phone today. An iPhone.

5) I like it when things finally work out in the way I want them to. Especially if it took very long to plan them.

6) Dinner tonight will probably be pasta with lemon sauce.

7) This is my father's aunt. She celebrated her 100th birthday in March this year. I want to be as happy and healthy as she is when I am old.

Happy and sad

I can't decide if I am happy or sad right now.

Happy because the whole remodeling thing of my appartment is nearly done. There are some things that still need to be finished, but when I compare it to some weeks ago it is awesome. Now it looks like an appartment, not like some old dirty place...

Sad because I'll have to find something else to spend my evenings with. Wait, no, that's not what I wanted to say.

Let's try it again:

Sad because one of the senior physicians at the hospital where I work is leaving on Friday. She moved to another city and found a new job there. Sure, for her it is much better as she won't have to spend so much time in the car each day. She's my favorite "teacher", you can ask her everything every time. Though I've spend only four months working with her, she's become a good friend and I'm really going to miss her.

Jonathan

This is Jonathan, the bird. He has been in my life since, hm, since when? I don't know. I can't recall the day he stepped - or flew - into my life. He's always been there, as long as I can remember. It's fun to pull on the string that is connected to his body. Then his wings move up and down and he really seems to fly.

Memories

With the weather being so awful during the last few days (rainy and unusual cold for the beginning of June) I didn't feel like spending much time outside. Therefore, I haven't been on my bike for at least a week now, which is really uncommon for me.

I used the time for scanning and editing some old photos.

Like this one:


It shows my grandmother, one of my cousins and me in my grandma's appartment in February 1983. When I was a kid and teenager, my parents and I used to visit my grandma nearly every weekend for lunch. Very often my relatives were there, too. My cousin is some years older than I am, but nevertheless we had a lot of fun on those days. Sometimes we would just play some kind of parlor game, sometimes we would play house together with my younger cousin and on other days we'd just watch some stupid show on TV.
Our grandma died some years ago and so did our weekly meetings. It's too bad we don't see each other more often.

Where to go?

I'm not very good at making decisions. I normally spend too much time thinking about nearly everything. Sure, sometimes that's okay, some things need a lot of thinking. But sometimes I wish I were more spontaneous.

To make a long story short: I still have nearly three weeks of vacation left this year and I have absolutely no idea when and where I want to go. There's only one thing I know for sure: I do not intend to stay at home for the whole time.

Any suggestions?

Spring weather

There were a lot of thunderstorms accompanied by heavy rain today and the way home was quite difficult - so much water on the streets! Glad I arrived home safe.

Now the weather has calmed down and the air is fresh and clear again. I like the smell right after a spring or early summer rain. Don't know how to describe it, but the ones of you who live in the country (I still doubt that someone is actually reading this stuff) probably know what I mean.

Every time I think things have settled down and every time I've made up my mind, something happens that makes me reconsider my decisions. I don't like that. Maybe it's just a sign that I don't know what I really want ;)

Being on call

One of the disadvantages of my job (which I generally like very much) is being on call at least 4-5 days – let’s better call it nights - a month. You never know what’s going to happen. You might have a really quiet night where you can sleep 7 or 8 hours. You might have a night where you are awakened by radio every time you’ve just fallen asleep (like the terrible night I had last week). Or you might have a night where there’s no chance to go to bed and try to sleep at all. I don’t mind being alone, being the only one responsible, you get used to that. But what I mind is not being able to get a good night’s rest.

Where would I like to live?

That’s a question I keep asking myself. I don’t know the answer to it (yet), maybe I never will. But I know of some places where I definetively do NOT want to live. Take big cities, for example. Or flat landscapes. Or a place with no river or lake nearby.
I could never imagine living in a huge city with millions of people. I like to see the sky when I look out of the window. Another thing that I find important is to have at least some hills around me. Mountains would be better, of course, but you can’t have everything.
I grew up in a town with not more than 100,000 people. The suburb where I lived as a child (and where I am living again now) has only a few thousand people, is some km away from the „city“, is more like a village and is vey close to fields, forests and a lake. Some might call it boring, but I really like it here. But I am not sure if I want to stay here for the rest of my life.

Being busy

Well, some time has passed since my last entry. I didn’t have much time during the last weeks as I am moving back to my old hometown after having spent the last 15 months working in another part of Germany. So the last weeks were filled with packing things and at the moment I’m still busy remodeling the apartment where I’m living now.
Not much has changed here since I moved away last year. It will be great to ride my bike on “old” roads and see some friends from school and university days again.
Looking forward to ride my bike again – maybe tomorrow if the weather stays as warm and sunny as it was today!