Winter sky in Munich

As with all of the photos on this blog it is not retouched in any way. The sky was so deep blue that it was like diving.

A bright winters day

After having had a most spectacularly awful Saturday I went out for walk yesterday to try and clear the head. Munich had had 5 days of pretty steady heavy snow and then we had one of those stunning clear days. Not a cloud in the sky, pleasantly warm in the sun and a feeling of the earth starting to wake up and prepare for Spring. Despite feeling pretty worn out I just wanted to stay outside and absorb the incredible freshness and stunning beauty of the day. I am a Spring person, but from time to time I find myself in these Winter days which make me feel so good to be alive.

Miserable Saturday/Better Sunday

It's still January so it must be time for Dom to be ill. Again. Woke up Saturday morning feeling really unwell. Then proceeded to be sick every 30 minutes for the next 6 hours. And it was the most violent being sick/trying to be sick I've ever experienced. So bad that it feels like I've done a couple of rounds with Mike Tyson. I've put my back out and it feels like I've broken a couple of ribs. I've never know anything like it! I've no idea what it was, but apparently there's some virus going round Germany at the moment. Similar to the virus that was going round the UK at the start of the month. And I caught them both! And all I could manage by the evening was a bit of apple and a glass of tea.

After an average night's sleep I woke up to a stunning day on Sunday. So mustered all of the energy I didn't have and went out for a walk. And it was one of those days that you feel good to be alive and it re-energises you. I took a couple of photos, but they cannot describe the feeling of walking around in beautiful countryside, under an incredible sky with wonderfully fresh, crisp air.

When I was travelling someone told me an expression 'hokkahay'. It's an American Indian word which means something like 'it's a beautiful day to die'. But is a positive and nice sense. And Sunday felt very much like that.

Alternative bloggies

After Pep put up a link to the annual Bloggies awards there was a bit of talk about doing our own. By me. But a couple of people thought it might be fun as well so I've tried to set up a small poll on my blog, down the left column. It's meant in a light-hearted way before anyone has a go. And please give me some more suggestions, comments, questions, blogs to include and criticisms. Or if you can come up with a better way of doing it then please take over. I'm crap at programming/html and all those other cyber things. Also I can have a maximum of 10 questions and 10 answers per question on the poll. But no restriction on how many votes can be cast or anything like that. Although lets not have another repeat of the 2001 US Florida elections please. :)

Results are constantly updated so please check them yourselves as well. I'll leave it on for a while and see how it goes. Have a great week-end!

1200 web hits

I've not really looked at the hit counter on my blog for a bit, and it's somehow shot up to over 1200 hits which is pretty cool. So thank you to all my new friends for coming by. You've given me a nice warm glow in my little heart!

This blog has not/is not/will never be about pushing my views and photos onto other people, and the numbers visiting are just numbers really. It's not like a race or competition to see how high you can go. But it is quite nice to have people coming by and leaving comments.

Very cold Munich

We've had 50cm of snow at the flat I stay in outside of Munich. And last night it was -20 Celcius. No wonder I've caught a head cold! Even when I was in Lapland last year it didn't feel this cold. Maybe some of that weather from the States is coming here now.

Ipod order status

After ranting about how Apple decided not to ship my ipod for another 3 weeks, I discover that in fact it was shipped TODAY! I guess it shows that Apple do not know their arse from their elbow. I was about to ring them to shout at somebody. But don't think I can now.

My new house

This is a view of my new house from the front. Not much to look at maybe, but it is my nest. :)

View from my office in Germany

Munich train station from the window of my office. Today at 2pm CET. What a view ...

Lolita has crashed

Some fuckwit crashed into the back of Lolita the Smartie on Friday night. Luckily (for him) the damage was only a split bumper and a mildly pissed off driver. And a slightly perturbed driver's girlfriend. He was very apologetic and I think (grudgingly) it was jut one of those 'shit happens sometimes' accidents.

Why is it that the only two car crashes I've ever had on the road have been in the past 6 months when Janet has been in the car? And I've been driving for 15 years. Is she a jinx?

Apple

Am not happy with Apple. After having a character building week-end anyway have also been ruminating about not getting my Ipod for ANOTHER 3 WEEKS. This is despite them (of course) already having taken the money out of my account!

And a colleague came in with his Ipod locked in play mode so he couldn't turn it off. It was so hot you could have fried an egg on it. So that's also reassuring. Have I made a dreadful mistake?

Ipod update

Got an e-mail from Apple today to say that my Ipod which was due to be delivered at the start of next week will now not be shipped until Feb 14th. Or it might be sooner, but they don't know. So that's clear anyway! I knew this was too good to be true ...

A most productive day

I've spent most of the day trying to sort one thing out on my blog. The links to the other blogs. It's started to get messy and long and I needed something a bit neater and more colourful. So many thanks to Cedia for all the help with getting the button thing sorted. So a very productive day with very little publishing work achieved!

Strange German law of the week

Apparently the noise laws in Germany are quite strict. They're big into recycling and have bottle recycling banks all over the place. Unfortunately you are only allowed to throw bottles into these banks between 10am and 6pm on weekdays and not between 1pm and 3pm on Saturdays. And not at all on Sundays. Because the noise will disturb people. It also extends to mowing the lawn. Great (if a bit pinickity) in theory, except if you have a job! Like Janet. Who now has dozens of bottles filling up the kitchen (we like wine) and cannot find a time slot to take them to be recycled. And throwing them in the bin would probably be punishable by death.

Lesson of the day

Don't wash trainers in a washing machine. They shrink. Big time. So if anybody wants some second-hand, but exceptionally clean, trainers let me know. Can't even get my toes through the bastards now!

Ipod music setup

Haven't received the ipod yet, but thought I'd start gearing up for when it arrives. So downloaded itunes (quite cool program to install music on ipods) and began the process of transferring all of the music from my CD's to this library on my laptop. Discovered that it takes a long time and seems to be using up a fair amount of space. Not a problem for the hard drive on the laptop, but I 'only' have 20Gb on the ipod. And I'm starting to wonder if the plan to have all of my CD's on the ipod is going to work. Because I don't think I'm going to have enough space. How crap is that? Or how crap am I?? And does this really matter actually???

Langlaufen

I've learnt to cross-country ski, or langlaufen as it's called in Germany. (Does this make me a langlaufer?). And I was bloody good at it even if I say so myself. I've never done it before. Never even seen a cross country ski to my knowledge. But I found it quite straightforward and good fun. I fell down 3 times on Saturday (twice on the same slope, during the same descent - how pissed of was I. Toys were being thrown in every direction from the pram!!), but did not go down at all on the Sunday. And Janet and I covered something like 35km in the 2 days. And it wasn't on beginner slopes either (it was a red route) and lots of others fell around us. Even really suntanned and professional looking people.

In fact the more I think about the past couple of days the more chuffed I am. I will sit here and bask in my own success for a few minutes I think.


That's better. I should qualify the above boasting by saying that I have only ever skiied once before in my life, 4 years ago. And that was Alpine skiing. Although on that occasion my 'friend' took me down a black slope on my fourth day. I thoroughly enjoyed myself though and I'm a bit gutted that it has taken me so many years to go back and have another crack at skiing.
The whole ski thing has made me think though. I've always taken to sports reasonably well, but never as fast as I have with skiing. And I wonder how good/confident/cocky I would be at it if I'd started when I was much younger (not 26!). I don't know why I have taken to it because I've never skateboarded, surfed, ice skated, water skiied or anything similar. I think I have good coordination (plenty of Playstation) and I guess I must have not bad balance. It's funny how people 'get' some things quickly and yet find other sports/hobbies/work really tough to grasp.

Ipods and mp3 players resolved

I've bitten the bullet and ordered an Ipod. Haven't looked at all of the options I reluctantly concede that it probably is the best mp3 player. And iTunes is kind of cool. And it does look alright in white.

I have been trying to find a way to get one a bit cheaper (just on principle), but short of going to live outside the EU there's no way I can even just claim tax back.

I do feel a bit like I've come over all Darth Vader (gone to the Evil Empire - or is that Microsoft?!) though. I don't feel soiled, but maybe a little grubby. The next thing you'll see is I'll be buying a G5 or something similar. Aaaarrrggggghhh ...

Ipods and mp3 players

I've got it into my head that an mp3 player would be very useful with all of the travelling I do. At the moment I use a Discman and it's fine. But maybe having my whole CD collection in one small box is the way to go. And the players are quite cute. The only thing is that the Ipod is an Apple product and that feels a bit like going over to the Dark Side. But of all the players out there it does seem the best.

Many of my compatriots in the office have Ipods and swear by them. They've been showing me how to do the tunes thing and telling me all about the gadgets you can get with them. even one of my oldest and best friends has one now and "loves it". So maybe there is something in it. But will the battery last long enough (whenever I mention 'battery' people shuffle their feet and look a bit sheepish)? And which one to get? Bigger is better and biggest is best, but does one really need 40Gb? I have a lot of CD's, but I don't think even I could fill that up.

If anyone has any thoughts I'm open to them.

Dom 2005

The new look Dom for 2005.

Good start to the New Year!

I finally checked into my blog today after nearly 2 weeks away. I won't say I missed it becasue that sounds a bit tragic, but it has felt like I've been away from a community for a while.

I was due to be back in the office last week and starting the year bang. Unfortunately started more with a hurl as I was wiped out by some stomach bug for several days. Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come. And I was intending to lose some weight in January (doesn't everyone), but vomitting it up and then not eating for 4 days was not really the game plan. But anyway. It's over now and I've thoroughly road tested my new toilet!!

And then start to upload some pictures and try to write and Blogger has decided to malfunction. I won't slag it off because it's a great pogram but it does test me at times. And confusingly Eleses has managed to look at my new posts, even though I can't see them when I log into the page. Go figure!

I'll try and write more tomorrow when I've cleared some more e-mails and not got the boss looking over my shoulder!

New Year in the snows of South-East Germany

New Year was spent in a remote mountain hut with Janet and her parents. It was a lovely place about 20km from the Czech border. And as you can see from the photo we had a bit of snow.
We were with them for a couple of days and spent most of the time out walking and exploring. The air was so fresh as we were about 1000m up, it really cleared the head. We also built snowmen, had snowball fights and ate plenty of good food. New Year itself was spent in an even more remote hut deep in the forest and was only accesible on foot (about 1 hour walk from where we were staying). It was certainly one of the most remote New Years I have ever spent, but was actually one of the more relaxing as well. There was a big group of people there and everyone pretty much got on. There were a few fireworks, some open fires outside, and it snowed.
The whole meeting the parents thing went pretty well also. I was nervous about it before I arrived because I wasn't sure if my German would be good enough, if they would like me or if I would like them. But it went well. It was very relaxed and they were quite understanding about my limited German. Over the time together we actually got into political conversations, and I talked a bit about the future for Janet and I. It felt a bit like a presentation, but needed to be done to prove that I am serious about this. I've been told that they like me which is also good, and I think sets a good foundation for the future. We'll see...

The steep walk

This is Janet (and I) on the way down from the hut where we spent New Year. About an hour walk from the house we were staying. It was beautiful, but a little hairy at 1am and after much Champagne. It cleared the head quickly though I can tell you!!

New Year in the Bavarian hills

I thought this was quite pretty. It is up in the hills where I spent New Year. And it was as cold as it looks!