Bunch O' Stuff

Well, I have barely even started on my recap of my trip to the former DDR with my mom & step dad, and I have been lagging behind on the tagging and commenting and tweaking of the photos. Which is a big bummer, because there are some really good ones. And of course, I keep taking more. Which makes it hard, because some of those are really cool and I want to share them.

But life has been busy. Take a look at Jeannette's blog, and you will find out about one of the exciting things I have been up to. Plus I am getting ready for a 2-week business trip to Singapore and the Phillipines, which will most surely mean even more photos to get behind on.

It is getting cold here, and the leaves are changing and the swans are migrating. We have seen a lot of foreign swans lately - the stretch of river outside our window seems to be a popluar runway for them.

And we went to a Halloween party, thrown by an American friend, but most of the guests were German (or at least Eastern European and still not hip on the whole Halloween thing). Well, I made a couple important observations:
0) This one is number zero because I actually noticed it last year or the year before. Anyway, why can Germans spell Halloween correctly, but insist on calling it Helloween?
1) Germans think that the only appropriate Halloween costume is a witch (female) or a vampire (male). Or something involving spiders (unisex, but leaning towards feminine). Our costumes weren't. We got funny looks. I guess I will have to wear more black next year.
2) I tend to be detail-oriented in my Halloween costumes. To me, the little things really matter, and they are synergistic and really make the costume work. Very few other people even notice the little things, so my costumes tend to be a big waste of time (except that they make Jeannette and me happy).
3) Not having a car, and therefore having to walk to the train station and take a train to get to a Halloween party in a country that doesn't celebrate the holiday can get you a lot of strange looks.
4) Consider your audience with the costume. I could explain this better, but I think I can sum it up as: If you are going to a party where hardly anybody knows you, don't dress up as a big nerd in a costume that could make the characters in "Revenge of the Nerds" look downright studly. You see, what happens is that these people that don't know you think that the costume is really you.
And with my costume, that meant nobody wanted to talk to me.

At least I got to go home with the cheerleader.