Or does everyone constantly get little cuts and scratches all over their hands, and body really. Sure, I realize that Patrick and I are clumsy but really most of the time I have NO idea how I even got the scratches. Lately I have had strange little round dry spots on my upper arm (Patrick too). I remember reading about these in one of my fashiom/beauty/health magazines, but I didn’t pay attention because I didn’t have the problem at the time. I am sure it has to do with working out. Speaking of such, I lost a kilo this week. I will probably add it back though. Today Patrick and I determined that I have tendonitis in my right foot just below my big toe. I have always had a problem with some shoes causing ‘feeling’ in this spot. It didn’t hurt before now but my right foot, in this spot, felt not like my left foot. I will have to severely restrict my shoe types for a while. The Coach stacked loafers are out of the question. It will probably be flats for me for weeks. Nothing tight across the top of the foot. Oh God what will I wear! Perhaps I will simply wear overalls for a month. That way I can wear my converse tied lightly. Patrick says I should be able to use the recline cycle so as not to give up my cardio completely, but this worries me. Like I mentioned last week, I have finally gotten to a point where I can run on the treadmill. And look where it got me! Damn! Wish me luck.

I found out this week my Friseur (haridresser) moved to Muenchen. Can you believe that? I am like the greatest customer on earth and he just moved! it is like when Mia got preggers and couldn’t do colour anymore. I am mortally wounded! It is a bit too rich for me to go all the way to Muenchen for a hair cut. I am going to try Toby, the guy that was recommended after Juergen, this week and go from there. Perhaps I will end up cutting it all off and just going to see Fiegen for colour until our contracts run out in Sept.

Also this week I found, and joined, a weight loss resource web site out of the UK. Mostly I joined to track what I eat and how many calories I burn exercising. It is amazing what you realize about yourself and your eating habits when you really start tracking them. Lattes are a big problem. I had taken up peanuts as a snack instead of Kit Kat bars, well actually, 60g of peanuts have 361 calories! 60 g is the size of the small bags they sell upstairs in the cafe. I’m surrounded! Anyhow, this website has really helped and I feel much better about my plan to get fit again. If I can get over the foot thing. Say a prayer to the Shoe deity for me.

I will be calling my senators and the White House this Wednesday at 4:01 pm EST. This is a virtual march on Washington done by MoveOn. Though it seems more inevitable than ever that we will go to war and thus be alienated from the rest of the world for MANY years to come, I still want to at least have a say. I really loathe Dubya and his war minded ways.

Patrick had to work this weekend. It stresses him out. Being that we have a definitive division of labor, his stress means I don’t eat, unless I feed myself, and we all know what that means. Anyhow, what is worse is that we he gets stressed he overestimates his coping abilities and then over commits and then I get pissed. If he were to say to me ‘Heather, I am in over my head this weekend, can we just eat out, or can you just fend for yourself’, then I am cool. But when he says he has it all handled, and I trust him because that is what you are suppose to do when you are married, and then when I arrive at the scheduled time and he is really stressed, well that pisses me off. Trust me, Patrick is no fun when severely stressed. Anyhow, we agreed that I, to start, would signal him when he is biting off more than he can chew, at least in my experience. Then he has to stop what he is doing, count to 10, take a few deep breaths and then think it all through again. This meant, this weekend, that I was on my own. It was surprisingly entertaining. He made dinner Friday night (Mom’s-style Lamb chops) but we went to Oblomow on Saturday and had Veggie Chili (which kicks ass by the way). I did the ‘shopping’ on Saturday so that we would have smoothies through Monday and while I was at it, I picked up a Kaese Imbiss (cheese snack). I went with a nice round number, ‘halb kilo’ (1 pound). For whatever reason I woke up early on Saturday and was out of the house by 10. I went strolling along Koenigstr and took in the stores. I was very good and just looked briefly at The Forbidden Store. There was a fabulous simple dress by a new designer whose tag I couldn’t make out. It was a mere 565 Euro. I headed to H&M. You are all familiar with H&M I hope. They opened in NYC this year with much fanfare. It is a mix between Wet Seal and Gap. The latest fashion, cheaply made and cheap in price. I slowly went through all the racks with black clothing. In the end, for a mere 70 Euro, I got a cool Chinese-like jacket shirt, 2 black t-shirts, one long sleeve, one sleeveless, a head scarf that is wide knot so I can pull pieces of hair through with a crochet needle (you’ll understand when I post it) and some hair clips. I was so happy and so proud! The whole day as I walked around I felt powerful and sexy. A great way to feel. I think a lot of it had to do with losing a kilo this week and the music playing in my ears. Me and the iPod go everywhere. I really think we’re I to have certain music in my ear at all times, I could do/be anything. Not that I want this. I think I want to work in a coffee shop. At least for a while. At the end of the day I made the mistake of going to Peek & Cloppenberg to see what Gabrielle Strehle had for Spring. I found 2 fabulous dresses from her causal line Strenesse Blue. One is super Goth with great cleavage and the other is an incredibly flattering little black dress. The wings look great. But I didn’t buy them. (Aren’t you proud!). I wanted Patrick to see and I wanted to sleep on it a few days. I am thinking now I shouldn’t buy them (they may be the casual line but they aren’t cheap!) but I still want Patrick to see them. At H&M I tried on a pair of punk/bondage pants that I want him to see too. They only cost $50. I am such a fashion whore. Of and if you see a t-shirt that says that, please buy it for me. I’ll pay you back.

Patrick’s Grandma, Nana/Pink, sent us this poem. Though normally I don’t like poetry (it is an immature rejection based on my inability to understand most of it, I admit) I like this one. It’s simple. Seems like anyone could write it, but didn’t. Instead Mr. Ferlinghette wrote it. Think Peace everyone.

SPEAK OUT

– Lawrence Ferlinghetti

And a vast paranoia sweeps across the land
And America turns the attack on its Twin Towers
Into the beginning of the Third World War
The war with the Third World

And the terrorists in Washington
Are drafting all the young men

And no one speaks

And they are rousting out
All the ones with turbans
And they are flushing out
All the strange immigrants

And they are shipping all the young men
To the killing fields again
And no one speaks

And when they come to round up
All the great writers and poets and painters
The National Endowment of the Arts of Complacency
Will not speak

While all the young men
Will be killing all the young men
In the killing fields again

So now is the time for you to speak
All you lovers of liberty
All you lovers of the pursuit of happiness
All you lovers and sleepers
Deep in your private dreams

Now is the time for you to speak
O silent majority
Before they come for you

=================================

Copyright © 2003 City Lights Books
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is San Francisco’s first poet laureate (1998)
and the owner and co-founder of City Lights Bookstore.

This weeks outfit is a skirt I had been watching and watching in Stuttgart. It is DKNY and was $500 full price. Things don’t really go on sale in Germany though. Not even during the Winter and Summer Schlussverkauf (Sale basically). So when I stumbled upon this skirt at the DKNY store in the Beverly Center with significant mark down, I figured I must have it. Even Chelsea said it was totally me. Though like my Jill Sander skirt, I have a touch time finding something to wear on top. I think it will be easier in Summer. Cheers.

I went to my first protest this weekend. It was here in Stuttgart. An anti-war/peace rally. I was going to go to the one in Berlin, but since there was one in Stuttgart, and I am still paying off Christmas, I figured I should save myself the fare. Honestly, I was a little disappointed in the event. It probably would have been more meaningful had I spoke the language, but I just didn’t get a strong feeling from the crowd. There were a lot of people though. And that certainly says something. It says a lot. People in Europe and really everywhere else in the world do not want a war. We get a different story than they seem to get in the States. We hear about how North Korea has turned back on their nuclear reactor and the Int’l Atomic Agency has escalated the issue. We hear that Japan, a declared passive defense country, has warned North Korea that if they build missiles that can hit Japan, they will take the offensive to disarm them. The far east politics are melting down and yet Dubya bitches about Iraq where Hans Blix says there have been found NO weapons of mass destruction. Where it has been recognized that MORE weapons of mass destruction were destroyed by inspections and inspectors after the Gulf War than destroyed with the bombing. We hear about how the sources that Colin Powell cited as to how Saddam got weapons into Iraq, were actually academic papers of how he COULD get weapons into the country. Why does our government treat us like we are dumb? Why don’t they respect us and our opinions being they are our ‘representative’ government. Oh well. I’ll just keep calling my congress people.

Don’t forget to go to MoveOn.org and sign up to help or download a poster or get info about calling your senator. I’ve added their icon and link to my KAOS page if you want to use that in the future. (often it is easier for me to go somewhere that has stuck in my head to get to a further location than to go to that further location directly, so I offer this logic, however bizarre.)

This week was mellow. Lots to do at work. Lots of reports to upgrade and fix. Much sweating at the gym. I have achieved a level of fitness where I can run on the laufband (treadmill) for an extended period of time. That is the kind improvement I need to keep up the spirit. It is the tangible improvement I cannot deny (’tis easy to deny that my thighs are getting smaller, I mean just look in the mirror.)

My friend John Zapf has his new website up. So far it is simply a single coffee talk like page but he is tremendously articulate and thoughtful so it is worth reading. He is also an aspiring Mac geek. An excellent combination, I think. He is an architecture student from UT Austin who has an internship with a prestigious firm here in Stuttgart. I swear God is trying to tell me something about me and the field of architecture, though I don’t know what. I have met, recently, a lot of architects. Funny I always thought it was a solid and conservative industry. By that I mean, you studied architecture, graduated, got a job as an architect and then did architecture. Apparently that isn’t how it works. Apparently it is very much like the accounting industry. You graduate, get a slave job with a firm, accumulate hours doing certain things, sit for the exam, pass, get another job and then worry about where the next job is coming from. There are lots of architects and not a lot of jobs. If you stay with a big firm, you do shit boring work, like bathroom layouts for malls, until you make partner but by then you don’t know how to be artistic anymore. I sort of sounds like the artisan field that bumps up against the machine the hardest. I mean sure if your painting disintegrates in an earthquake no one is killed but still. Architects seem like artists that are held down by the man in the ultimate sense.

Life seems to be about achieving a position where you are free to be the rebel you want to be while maintaining enough respect and authority to pull down the paycheck. If I could make 50K a year by working at a coffee shop or as a bank teller or something that allowed me to be myself, enjoy my customers but walk away when the work day was over, I would have achieved Nirvana. Then my brain could spend time creating things. I could slowly but surely build the home I want to live in. I could take the time to sift though the bins at Salv A again. I could try and learn to sew. But alas, I can’t seem to release myself from that paycheck. There are the student loans too. I don’t regret them, though they are holding me back for sure. But really isn’t that what we all want? We want a job we can walk away from every day and still be happy. That or a job that is exactly what makes us happy, though I think that is near impossible. Like Rock Stars, sure they get to make their music and live ‘the life’ but is it exactly what they want? Isn’t it more trouble than that? Fans stalking you, having to make appearances, ratings and record sales. I bet that a lot of Rock stars want to make their music and then go hang out downtown or something. Not worry about the ‘business’ part at least. I want to teach university level but I don’t really want to deal with the whole publishing thing. Sure I want to continue my education so that I remain worthwhile for my students, but I don’t like the idea of publishing because it is the thing to do. I want to teach. So maybe the next best thing is working at a coffee shop and using my brain for things that have no expectations. If money were no object, I’d like to think this would be my plan but most uber rich kids are just spoiled party animals. I wonder why.I went to my first protest this weekend. It was here in Stuttgart. An anti-war/peace rally. I was going to go to the one in Berlin, but since there was one in Stuttgart, and I am still paying off Christmas, I figured I should save myself the fare. Honestly, I was a little disappointed in the event. It probably would have been more meaningful had I spoke the language, but I just didn’t get a strong feeling from the crowd. There were a lot of people though. And that certainly says something. It says a lot. People in Europe and really everywhere else in the world do not want a war. We get a different story than they seem to get in the States. We hear about how North Korea has turned back on their nuclear reactor and the Int’l Atomic Agency has escalated the issue. We hear that Japan, a declared passive defense country, has warned North Korea that if they build missiles that can hit Japan, they will take the offensive to disarm them. The far east politics are melting down and yet Dubya bitches about Iraq where Hans Blix says there have been found NO weapons of mass destruction. Where it has been recognized that MORE weapons of mass destruction were destroyed by inspections and inspectors after the Gulf War than destroyed with the bombing. We hear about how the sources that Colin Powell cited as to how Saddam got weapons into Iraq, were actually academic papers of how he COULD get weapons into the country. Why does our government treat us like we are dumb? Why don’t they respect us and our opinions being they are our ‘representative’ government. Oh well. I’ll just keep calling my congress people.

Don’t forget to go to MoveOn.org and sign up to help or download a poster or get info about calling your senator. I’ve added their icon and link to my KAOS page if you want to use that in the future. (often it is easier for me to go somewhere that has stuck in my head to get to a further location than to go to that further location directly, so I offer this logic, however bizarre.)

This week was mellow. Lots to do at work. Lots of reports to upgrade and fix. Much sweating at the gym. I have achieved a level of fitness where I can run on the laufband (treadmill) for an extended period of time. That is the kind improvement I need to keep up the spirit. It is the tangible improvement I cannot deny (’tis easy to deny that my thighs are getting smaller, I mean just look in the mirror.)

My friend John Zapf has his new website up. So far it is simply a single coffee talk like page but he is tremendously articulate and thoughtful so it is worth reading. He is also an aspiring Mac geek. An excellent combination, I think. He is an architecture student from UT Austin who has an internship with a prestigious firm here in Stuttgart. I swear God is trying to tell me something about me and the field of architecture, though I don’t know what. I have met, recently, a lot of architects. Funny I always thought it was a solid and conservative industry. By that I mean, you studied architecture, graduated, got a job as an architect and then did architecture. Apparently that isn’t how it works. Apparently it is very much like the accounting industry. You graduate, get a slave job with a firm, accumulate hours doing certain things, sit for the exam, pass, get another job and then worry about where the next job is coming from. There are lots of architects and not a lot of jobs. If you stay with a big firm, you do shit boring work, like bathroom layouts for malls, until you make partner but by then you don’t know how to be artistic anymore. I sort of sounds like the artisan field that bumps up against the machine the hardest. I mean sure if your painting disintegrates in an earthquake no one is killed but still. Architects seem like artists that are held down by the man in the ultimate sense.

Life seems to be about achieving a position where you are free to be the rebel you want to be while maintaining enough respect and authority to pull down the paycheck. If I could make 50K a year by working at a coffee shop or as a bank teller or something that allowed me to be myself, enjoy my customers but walk away when the work day was over, I would have achieved Nirvana. Then my brain could spend time creating things. I could slowly but surely build the home I want to live in. I could take the time to sift though the bins at Salv A again. I could try and learn to sew. But alas, I can’t seem to release myself from that paycheck. There are the student loans too. I don’t regret them, though they are holding me back for sure. But really isn’t that what we all want? We want a job we can walk away from every day and still be happy. That or a job that is exactly what makes us happy, though I think that is near impossible. Like Rock Stars, sure they get to make their music and live ‘the life’ but is it exactly what they want? Isn’t it more trouble than that? Fans stalking you, having to make appearances, ratings and record sales. I bet that a lot of Rock stars want to make their music and then go hang out downtown or something. Not worry about the ‘business’ part at least. I want to teach university level but I don’t really want to deal with the whole publishing thing. Sure I want to continue my education so that I remain worthwhile for my students, but I don’t like the idea of publishing because it is the thing to do. I want to teach. So maybe the next best thing is working at a coffee shop and using my brain for things that have no expectations. If money were no object, I’d like to think this would be my plan but most uber rich kids are just spoiled party animals. I wonder why.

I think I might be getting closer to understanding what I want in life. I think it may be very different than what I am doing now. I think to some people it might look like dropping out. But really, what of significance am I doing now? I sell inkjet cartridges. Don’t worry people, this is actually a good feeling I have. All of you that know me, know I have been looking for this balance in life, the connection with what is real, what I can look back on and say made my life worthwhile. I more ever closer.

As long as I am giving people being credit for being far more clever than me, I should mention my new God-Geek coffee talker..glenn mcdonald. He does a beautiful job of tying topics together in a breathtakingly amusing and effective way. Check out his talk on losing weight, sort of.

The star of this week’s outfit was something I got in NYC while we were there in November. It is a Comme de Garcon (w/accents!) skirt overlay. It is picnic table tablecloth material and covers 3/4’s around. It was just fun and silly and on sale, so I bought it.

Cheers.

Obviously this week’s outfit is an example of my outfit at this year’s Beach Party! It was a lovely evening with temps well over 30. My thermometer was vibrating at 29, but it certainly felt like 35! (Celsius!) This year we had a number of people go in the pool. Of course they either fell or were pushed in. I am still missing a picture of Jan and Connie but I’ll get it. Since we have 150 pictures, it will take me a few days to get all the pages up. Usually I get things up on Sunday, after the party, but it took us EXTRA long to clean up this year. 12 hours. Last year we had 4 buckets to carry the sand out. This year we only had two. Patrick made at least 20 trips to the Kindergarten sandbox down the street. I offered to switch jobs (I was vacuuming and vacuuming and revacuuming!) but he was good with it. The guys at Punto Fizzo thought it was funny. We went there for dinner because we didn’t want to dirty more dishes after washing as many as we did.

After we completed our cleaning we took 3 cloth grocery bags of bottles to the recycling area. In Germany there are big ‘trash cans’ for non-pfand (deposit) bottles. They are split up by white, brown and green glass, though we have seen them dump all three of them into the same truck. Anyhow, our recycling trash cans are next to the gas station around the corner. This is where all the hard-core alcoholics hang out. On the bins it says ‘8 – 20 Werktags’. Which means you are only suppose to recycle on a work day between 8 am and 8 pm. I am not sure whether Saturday is a ‘werktag’ or not. So there we are dumping bottles and this woman walks up and says, in Germany, ‘Can’t you read? It is Sunday. You can only do that on work days. It is Sunday’. We smiled and said thank-you (in German). She walked away. As we were walking home we saw her telling a man who had stopped his car in the street to let someone off, that you can’t stop your car in the street. Funny.

Last week as I was waiting for the s-bahn I say a train, going the opposite direction, that had a car that had been vandalized. It was spray painted all light blue, even the window, with a red squiggly line that changed to yellow along the doors. It was cool looking. More interesting that how the cars are normally painted. Though, I admit, vandalism is wrong. Anyhow, no one got in that car. If it had been my train I definitely would have taken that one and danced throughout the car all by myself the entire way to work! I love the odd and different.

I was a bad girl today. I had Burger King for lunch. A burger even. Tomorrow I shall Cardio my little heart out to try and do penance. I miss my old thighs.

Check back every day to see whether I have added another beach party page. There will be six and I have only finished one so far. Of course, it is a busy week. Cheers.

Patrick and I dyed my hair tonight. It is bright fuchsia pink now. It needed a boost terribly. I really need to get something new. I have been doing this pink since at least September. But I like it. My hair is a little long. It hangs too much. People have said they really like the length but I feel like I am losing options at this length. On the day Carly came to town, I had parted it on the side and put the shorter side in a ponytail while leaving the rest. Apparently this was noticed.

So I did ask Carly, our CEO, a question when she was here on Monday. It was about all the requests I am getting. Without going into too much detail she said to refer the subsequent people to the first person that I got a request from. I liked the answer a lot, as long as my management backs it up.

I didn’t make it to the gym almost this entire week. Too much to do at work. I killed a project though. Call me ‘Heather, Project Killer’. Anyhow, I did finally make it to the gym Friday afternoon. I was super proud because I did my weights and then cardio’d a whole hour. I figured I could use it since I’d missed 4 days. I have already lost weight (like a kilo) and feel stronger. My arm muscles are starting to take over again. I still couldn’t carry the 25 kg bags of sand, for the beach party, up the stairs today. Left that to Patrick. I carried everything else though. Good girl. A weird thing though, was that the lady who owns the gym gave me a piece of candy as I was leaving Friday afternoon. There is a big bowl at the front desk almost constantly. Also, there was a plate of Berliners (Jelly Donuts) when I arrived, now that I think about it. Weird. She told me the candy was ok because it had no fat. I decided it would be ok to take since the gym lady gave it to me.

I picked up my new ring today. It says VERITAS. Latin for Truth. Something I believe in quite strongly. Of course, one can argue, that different people have different truths. But I think some truths are self-evident. Like, that killing is wrong. Though I imagine lots of people, like Dubya, would argue with that even. Anyhow, I do think a lot of people know when they are misleading or stretching things but justify it in the ‘greater interest’, yeah, like the President. I would really like pure truth, no matter how hard it is to hear. Then you go from there.

There is a great new quote on my quote page. It is from the book I am reading, ‘Life of Pi’ by Yann Martel. It is about how people behave in regards to their God. It really is brilliant and I think lots of people, and the world in general, would do better to take it in.

While I was in Chico, I picked up some pictures at my Mom’s house. She had them out on the table in my old room because she said she had wanted to make me a collage but didn’t get to it. I started sifting through them and brought home a bunch. It is funny those I chose. 2 are of me as a very little girl in various outfits. One in the backyard, the other at Disneyland. I am adorably dressed. One is standing on the deck next to my Uncle’s dog. I only have on a t-shirt, underpants and yellow fuzzy slippers that are too big. There is a picture of my 6th grade class on the front of the boat going out to Catalina Island. 3 of the guys are making the ‘Hang Loose’ hand signal, one is making a goofy face, Nicole has bunny ears on Shauna. It’s cool. The last picture is my first ‘art shot.’ It is a Polaroid of my Brother, all yellow blond hair, sitting behind the Monk (my childhood stuffed animal, I still have next to my bed to this day) in the kitchen of 607 Cowles Rd (the house we lived in, in Santa Barbara). I took this picture because I think it suggests that I was an artist that never got cultivated. The adults in my family are all scientists and business people. No artists. Not really. So I always sort of saw the world from that perspective. That side of my brain. All my life I have never understood art. What poetry meant. I have never been able to understand why people pay so much for art, other than the investment aspect. More business. But looking at this picture and reflecting on my hair and clothing creativity, I have decided I should have been an artist, of some sort, bad eye sight and all. I think it is too late now. I follow it as I can in my life. But I have obligations and paths already followed. It isn’t that I am not happy with my chosen path, just that I think I could have gone another direction. If I were going to have children I would encourage them to explore all disciplines, at least as much as that is possible. The main character in ‘Life of Pi’, Pi, adopts Hinduism, Islam and Christianity because he wants to love God and he feels God in all these faiths. I think we should do that wilthour whole life. Try to feel life through all things different.

This week’s outfit is pretty tame. My long Levi skirt with the slit and sweaters, for warmth. This So Cal kid is not fairing so well in this extreme cold. Notice the White Trash GM seat belt belt and the Pigtail that comes out of the hat. Made the hat myself (with a little help from our friend Nick’s mother-in-law). Cheers.