January 2nd & 3rd, 2012

I'm going to do my best to write a post per day. As you can see that's going smashingly for me, as we're three days into the year and I'm already double stacking posts. The good news is, there are no pictures of cats in this particular post.

This year is starting out very gray for me. So, it only seemed fitting that January 2nd's picture was gray.

I wish I could take credit for having a black and white digital camera - do those even exist? - but I can't, I just used a fruity web program to make my picture extra emo.

Beside the fact that this picture is cloying and depressing, it also shows that I'm still wearing my flip-flops in effing January. For the past two days it has been in the upper 40's here in Germany and the Chicagoan in me is about to break out the short-shorts. Or at least I would if I had any short-shorts. Or any shorts at all.

This picture pretty much defines my mood of late. Perhaps I'm being affected by the almost constant rain here - remind me to never move to Seattle. But, mostly I'm just having one of those "what the hell am I doing with my life" moments. I'm sure it'll pass, I mean, Keeping Up With the Kardashians will have new episodes at some point, and that's always a welcome distraction.

Moving on, today we said goodbye to a fickle friend.

The car I affectionately named "The Megabeast." If you don't get the Drop Dead Fred reference, I feel sorry for you.

The car started rocking like a bitch one day, not in the "if the car's rocking, don't come knocking" way, but in a sad coughing and wheezing way. If the car were a person I'm sure it would be on a ventilator right now. It also wouldn't go over 40 km/hour - maybe 25 mph. We didn't bother to try to fix it. The car is 20 years old and falling apart. I mean, it did sound super fancy to tell people we had a Mercedes, but the shine wore off when the glove compartment unhinged itself and had to be closed with duct tape.

Today a tow truck came to haul it off to the junk yard, where it will surely be an organ donor for other dying cars. We are now a one car home, which helps with gas bills and insurance costs, but is kind of annoying when it comes to coordinating two work schedules. But, we'll work it out, as many people did before us. I mean, people used to get to work via covered wagons, right?

Wait. That was The Oregon Trail.