I’ll start most recent first…today I was very domestic and a good friend. My friend Jenn moved and we helped. Germans don’t help their friends move, but Americans do and, of course, we were going to help! Of course she didn’t mention that she lived on the top floor, was moving to the top floor and the new building had a spiral staircase. She failed to mention that before we arrived. I literally had sweat pouring down my face. No need to go to the gym today. Anyhow, I really didn’t mind helping, just wanted a shower after.

Since I was out most of last week and had a suitcase of dirty clothing when I returned, I spent a lot of today cleaning up shoes on the floor and folding laundry. I think this is a girl thing, but ever now and again I just like doing domestic things. Maybe it is a corporate thing. Since I rarely see things completed, I like to clean up because then I am able to finish all by myself. Anyhow, hand washed my thongs for the first time in my life. Thought I would see whether it would make them last longer, though really, who has time to hand wash underwear? Anyhow…

Last night we went to a Death Rock club in town. It was SO wonderful. I have decided we are more a Death Rock couple than a Bondage couple. The Bondage scene people are friendly but it just isn’t our thing. The Death Rock scene is sort of cliquey and mostly really young, but I just feel more at home. Others with weird hair and black clothing. Girls in bustiers and corsets. Fishnets everywhere. And the music! OK, a lot of it was really old and I was sort of hoping for some new Goth music but it was still nice to hear Pictures from Speak and Spell by Depeche Mode. They played two Joy Division songs and some Front 242. I am sure if we had stayed longer we would have heard Bauhaus. Turns out they have it more than once a month in Stuttgart, though always on a Friday. Patrick and I agreed that we need to take Friday afternoons off to nap or sleep in that morning. Anything to assist in staying awake later. We stayed until about 1, after arriving at 11. The smoke wasn’t even that bad. I wore my 16th century skirt and Manier Bustier. Looked smashing really. It was great and I can’t wait to go again!

I worked very hard this week. We have a kickoff meeting next week that I have to co-lead. Should be interesting.

London was fabulous. Spent too much money but not nearly as much as I was tempted to, so I feel a victory. There was this Vivienne Westwood coat…oh I don’t even want to talk about it. I think the most fun we had was that two plus hours we spent in the Milliner (hat dept) at Selfridges. We were looking for a new ‘sideline’ hat for Christine. The hat she currently wears from the sidelines of her kids football games, is beat up and doesn’t cover enough. We tried on all the hats they had from the Summer line (fall was out and very cool but hardly appropriate). Anyhow, we were judging the hats on four measures…1) Teen Disturbance: how much it would disturb her teenage daughter to see her mom sitting on the sideline in this hat, 2) Cost, 3) Total sun coverage and 4) Overall coolness. Originally she bought the big pink one (in the picture above). It was high on 1 and 3 but low on 2 and medium on 4. What she really wanted was the ‘Earth Mother’ one (she’ll have to send me a picture cause the one I took was blurry). After she paid for it, she called her mom (in the States, using my mobile) and asked her advice. Her mom said that she had always regretted not buying the perfect hat when she had seen it and would be willing to pay the difference. So we exchanged.

We had massages and pedicures. I realized that my husband gives the best massages though we need to buy a massage table. Katherine, in Chico, gives the best pedicures. But it was all nice. Christine loved her massage and I got some cool nail files and more soothing sock salve for my feet healing booties (trust me, I need them). I bought three pairs of shoes, two of which were on sale. Love them all! Got a cool vintage dress, black and a used riding coat, black with red satin lining. The Green Day show kicked ass. I pogo’d all over the place. St-Martins-in-the-Field sounded wonderful though jet lag was catching up with Christine and she was nodding off. We mostly hung out and had a good time just being. A once in a life time opportunity with my best friend. Next year it will be Amsterdam with she and Brent and Patrick. That trip will be different.

I really do want to move to London. I have decided I cannot stay in Germany after Sept 2003. The controlled nature of the society is just getting to be too much for me. I want to live my life my way, at my speed, on my time, and I cannot do that here. If I want to work until 11 p.m. and then go to the grocery store, I want to. I want, as a nonsmoker, to have some rights. We don’t really want to move back to the US, but it will have to depend on what the World’s economy is like then. I just know, I don’t want to stay here.

To whiten your fingernail tips, soak them in lemon juice.

Car is fine. Even got the windshield wipers fixed

Turned down the promotion though I am acting as IT Program manager until phase 1 is complete. I am not really thrilled by this, as it means there are not possibly enough hours in a day, but I made a commitment and I will not fail these people. Basically, me taking the job was good for HP but not for Heather. It isn’t what I am interested in and it isn’t where I want my career to go. My project manager and IT manager said they are both going to try to convince me to take the job permanently but I doubt it will happen. I want to be part of the business not the infrastructure. I think the infrastructure needs work, and it may help to have someone that sympathizes with the business there, but it just isn’t for me. Most of that job will be the resource fight and I hate that. I want to do, not fight.

I am off to Geneva tonight. We have a meeting tomorrow and Tuesday. I hate getting up at 4:30 in the morning to make a 7 am flight so I am flying the night before. I am very nervous about this meeting because I don’t feel prepared. Work has been very overwhelming lately and I don’t feel on top of anything. But Thursday I go to London and Friday I have a massage and pedicure planned at the Bliss Spa in Chelsea so I am just living for that. Christine and I are going to have a wild and crazy girl’s weekend in London and I can’t wait!

So, some people have been having problems with the new KAOS page. When they load it, they don’t get any pictures. They just get the first descriptor paragraph. Problem is this only happens on some people’s computers. All the Macs we have tried are fine. My PC at work and my boss’s are fine, but Nana, Patrick and Nick’s PC’s don’t work. This suggests some sort of configuration difference but that isn’t any better. We have used a number of code checking programs but they all say everything is fine. We have changed some tables around so hopefully this will help. Please check again and let me know what you see. Specifically. The last thing on the page is a table with Walk/Don’t Walk signals from around Europe. If you don’t see that, I need to know what you do see. Thanks.

This week’s picture is me asleep at the South Side festival. See, I can do nature (grass was scratchy). Cheers.

No, I am not talking about Dubya, though he is. Actually I am referring to myself and the breathtakingly stupid thing I did last night. I put petrol in my diesel Mercedes and then drove about 10 minutes before realizing it. I was driving my friend Ben home to Tuebingen and though I had enough fuel to get him home, thought I would fill up. We got to the gas station and he, being the polite boy that he is, offered to pump. He asked what kind. I said ‘the cheapest’. Duh. I guess I made the mistake because a) I don’t put fuel in the car often as we don’t drive it much thus rarely need refills and b) when I do put fuel in, I do it on autopilot and just know to pick up the diesel nosal. I am not blaming Ben in the least, I said the cheapest and meant regular petrol. Duh. Anyhow, we weren’t sure what to do with the car and it was 3 am by now. The gas station I pulled into didn’t want me to leave it but now it wouldn’t start. I promised to be back at 8. Ben and I took a taxi back home and he slept in the spare room (then took a train home this morning). Luckily, I had brought my PC from work home and had an email for the Fleet service web page. It listed an emergency number and everything went pretty well after that. OK, we towed it to the wrong dealer, but it will get to the right one on Monday and taken care of. No big. We don’t expect any major damage, but if there is, I will pay for it personally. No reason for HP to pay for my stupidity. Boggles the mind doesn’t it? Maybe HP should reconsider the management thing…

Two new links this week. There is now a link to Patrick’s page OopsClunkThud.com. I am doing this because he is my husband and I should have a link to him. But actually I am doing it because OopsClunkThud is hard to remember how to spell correctly and people want to check his recipe page. I’m doing it for YOU. The other link is my KAOS link. Remember KAOS and CONTROL from Get Smart? I have all sorts of weird pictures that don’t really fit in any of my other pages but I think you would all be amused, maybe. OK truth is I have just always wanted to get KAOS on my page some how. Blah, blah, blah.

South Side was great. Patrick and I were the only two non-sunburned people there. People were walking up and asking us for some sun block as we stood and slathered it on for the 5th or 6th time. The Chili Peppers were awesome. Garbage was awesome. No Doubt didn’t seem to be able to get the crowd going. We saw ‘Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’ and they were really great. Patrick really loved them. We didn’t stay for New Order and now I am glad we didn’t. They have started playing all the Joy Division catalogue. Isn’t that sad? New Order was created because the Joy Division died with Ian. They must need cash. Oh, and the part of the story you are all waiting for? No, I did not end up car camping. Turns out the site was only an hour by car (at German speeds) from Stuttgart so it seemed silly to sleep in the car. I do have a picture of myself sleeping on the grass next to the car in between bands. It was scratchy.

We were in Hamburg the next weekend (last weekend) for Willie Nelson. He was awesome. He is 69 years old and still sounds awesome. He doesn’t seem to go for the high notes and did some strange cording with the songs as a result, but it sounded great. I was really bummed they didn’t have concert t-shirts. It was pouring down rain and he seemed to sort of giggle at us all standing there drenched in rain hats and ponchos. He didn’t sing ‘My Heroes have always been Cowboys’ but he did sing ‘Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be Cowboys’. It was really awesome. I am so glad we went. Patrick really loved it too. The picture is me standing before the downpour, happy at the show. Lots of people there that looked like they just walked out of some greasy diner in the middle of nowhere Texas, only they were speaking German. It was weird. We were definitely some of the youngest people there. If you get the chance, I recommend that you all see Willie play. His music is really good and it is a happy occasion. He does a lot for the farmers of the US too, so we should all support that at least.

Hamburg is awesome. The shopping kicks butt! I got a cool wrap-around tiered skirt by a German designer I had never heard of, ON SALE. Love that. I got two shirts at the Gabriele Strehle Strenesse store. One was on sale and one was new for the session. Great cleavage on both. I was blessed with that for sure. We went to a coffee shop that had Mochas and sold to-go cups like you buy in the US. I bought one with coffee drinking Angels. Can’t have enough of those since I drop them and you can’t buy them in Stuttgart. And finally the coolest thing about Hamburg? We understood the German! They speak, according to Friederun, Flat German, which basically means clear without an accent. It was awesome. The customer service was the best I have ever experienced in Germany. Also the architecture was beautiful. It was very flattened in the war but they rebuilt well. I recommend the city to anyone visiting Germany.

What else? I’m still having a Mom/Boyfriend (his name is Ken) crisis, but I think it is too personal, for them, for me to right about. It hurts a lot. I mean a lot a lot. But I can’t really say more. Suffice to say I have cried so much I am sick of crying. It’ll work out, of course, but with how much more pain? Oh well. That’s life.

The new job isn’t currently going anywhere. My new boss would actually be someone in the US (which I don’t like, not that I don’t like her, but that I don’t like having a remote manager like that). They still don’t have the head count and my current boss is not happy about having to deal with a transition. I see LOTS of overtime in my future. I don’t know. I have figured out what I want to be when I grow up and I talked to Andreas Fassbender this week who is currently doing what I think I want to do. I need to work on my ability to turn negative comments into positive information and something we can take action on. He recommended a book and a class. I bought the book, I have been trying to take the class for two years but they keep canceling it when I sign up. My worry is that I have been beaten down by the system and my enthusiasm is waning. I don’t feel effective anymore, and I don’t care. That is bad. I’ll find a way. Just a bit lost. People keep saying…’when the merger is over’…but before that it was something else and something else before that. After the merger, it will be something else. I just can’t seem to find a way to work within the ‘until it’s over’ which never ends. Any tips?

Enjoy the KAOS. Try the recipes. Think healthy thoughts and adopt a lonely old cat from the pound this week. Cheers.