My goodness I bought the MOST fabulous hat today! I call it my Pink Stewardess Hat. You know the hat’s stewardess use to wear in the 70’s? Sort of like French Police caps only taller? Well this one is light pink and fuzzy! So jaunty! It’ll be up next week. This week’s outfit is as a result of that overwhelming desire one has in the dead of winter to wear summer clothes. I didn’t actually go outside in it. I just baked cookies in it. Which didn’t go so hot, but more of that below. I got the tube top, which is also fuzzy, from Zara, the very Express like store here in Germany. It was a bit too big, so I washed it in HOT water and then subjected it to some serious dryer time. It shrank nicely. (I learned this trick the hard way in High School with a light purple wool Esprit turtleneck sweater, remember that Mom?) And at 7 Euro it seems like a good deal. The only problem with this outfit is that it did not save me from touching my stomach with the hot cookie sheet and getting YET another burn mark. People are going to start think Patrick abuses me (when all my faithful readers know it is the other way around.) Anyhow, I enjoy the cute and punk rock nature of this outfit.

So for those of you not on my project and getting my regular updates, I had a crisis last week. My chocolate chip cookies were ugly! They flattened out completely when I baked them! 3 dozen down the drain! And I was behind on my ‘post project cookie thank-you’ mails! I mean, come on, lose my touch with chocolate chip cookies?! What else can I do? Nothing! No one would ever come to another one of my meetings! As you can see, I took this seriously. Patrick and I calmly considered the problem and hypothesized that the margarine was too warm when I mixed it in the batter. So if the margarine is too warm, the batter is too airy and the cookies bake flat. They taste ok but not perfect as they should. We decided this was a likely cause as Patrick had cleaned the refrigerator the previous weekend and turned it off only to then realize he couldn’t remember what temp it was suppose to be set to. He set it for 2. Not cold enough. I jacked it to 6 and the soup frozen. So did the egg yokes, but damn was my batter solid. And after adjusting the time and temp of the oven a bit, near perfect cookies. Of course now I am totally paranoid and asked Patrick like a million times if the newly baked cookies looked right. ‘Yes, honey, perfect’. Whew. So 11 (I burned the last one) dozen and 70 Euro later, 9 boxes of ‘Cookie Thanks’ are on their way to destinations around Europe!

Well as you will all remember from last week, I met Diez, Jan and Ryan at Kent’s ‘show’. You will also remember (or read in the archive) that I didn’t know Ryan’s full name or email or anything though I thought he would make pretty good boyfriend material if this ‘not warm to relationship’ issue that I had a feeling existed could be eliminated or proven false. Well thanks to Diez (Yeah Diez!) I have James Ryan Anderson’s web address. It’s simple really… http://www.jamesryananderson.com There are Steer on it cause he is from Texas originally. So far it doesn’t seem like Diez has a website or I would lend that. He’s cool too. Anyhow, I did get Ryan’s permission to quote his site so don’t be afraid to check him out.

Here is something fascinating…I cut all my fingernails off. They are all evenly short now. It feels weird. I did it because they were so many different lengths. But since I am use to having reasonably long nails, to have them all short, feels funny. I am not use to feeling my fingertips on the keyboard like I do now. The plan is to polish then something dark, since that always looks good on short nails (too vampy on long nails) but I haven’t gotten around to it. It is totally bizarre being home so early and having time to sit around and do nothing. Seems like all I did for Sept and Oct was work, work, work, so now I don’t know what to do with myself. Stimulating, I know.

OK so I observed two interesting things in Germany this past week. First, one day on the train there was a man with a tie clip that was in the shape of a pair of handcuffs. He was wearing a nice enough suit, had glasses on, short hair, thinning on top. He carried an extra large brief case and underarm portfolio. Seemed like he was ex-cop or military or intelligence who was now doing strategic planning or security consulting. Just not something one sees on the train everyday. The other thing I saw was on the way to Subway in Esslingen on Saturday afternoon (part of our Saturday shopping ritual). Standing in front of the Red Ox Cafe/Bistro was a man, cleaning his ears, with his keys. Lovely. Amazing how people seem to think that when they are ‘alone’, that is not ‘with’ anyone else, they are invisible and no one notices them cleaning their ears with their keys. But they aren’t alone and we do see it.

Lastly you should all go to the fashion page to see my new intro picture. It’s the ceiling of our bedroom. Covered in fashion. Beautiful as far as I can see. Cheers.