Someway…somehow…I have to ship all of these presents to the states…
…these are the things you don’t think about when you go hog-wild Christmas gift shopping while living in another country.
I’m considering holding them ransom until their recipients make the voyage across the pond to collect them. But that’s not nice.
We got our first sample of winter yesterday. The local radio stations went crazy with the English Christmas tunes and I heard the song about how the weather outside was so frightful and the fire being so delightful, since there was no place to go, so let it snow schnee, let it snow schnee, let it snow schnee at least three times. Schnee, known as ‘snow’ in the English language, made its first winter 2012 appearance yesterday.
There were a couple of inches of the white powdery stuff on the ground by the end of the day and they closed the base down early. Things didn’t shut down in full panic mode (like they do when it snows in Mississippi) but there is a real issue of black ice around here and no one wants take any chances on the hills and narrow windy roads. I haven’t driven in snow in a few years and these roads aren’t easy to drive on a sunny day, so I opted to ride home with the Viper Pilot. He told me he wasn’t worried about driving in the snow and ice.
Viper Pilot: “I grew up on a snowmobile in the snow.”
Yeah, okay, whatever. It’s funny…because we grew up in the same place and I don’t remember it snowing year round there.
Anyway, I trusted my life with him driving Tory der Volkswagen Touareg home and we left Blue Thunder (our Volvo) on base. When he picked me up at my office, I noticed Blue Thunder with its parking lights on in the lot across the street. Turns out, when I dimmed the headlights coming through the base gate in the dark that morning — just being nice to the gate guard’s eyes — I forgot to turn the auto-lights back on. And so there was Blue Thunder, glowing red tail lights and all, covered in the snow, with a deceased battery.
Oh, the Viper Pilot loved that. You betcha.
Since we swap cars all the time, we haven’t really “claimed” which car is whose yet. He decided that killing the battery of Blue Thunder officially made it my car. Well, that solves that issue.
When we got home, he watched some really dumb movie on Netflix (I was done with it after about 10 minutes into it) and I took some pictures of our Christmas decor after a quick workout. We never get home from work that early so I guess we weren’t really sure what to do with ourselves.
Note the awesome (unintentional) starburst effect from my Scentsy in the left-hand side of the picture. Also note how dark it is for 1700. Boo for short days.
The good news is, Blue Thunder started on its own this morning.
The Viper Pilot is working late tonight so as you’re reading this I’m probably vegged out on the couch, eating a salad with feta and kalamata olives watching Glee, making a list of possible names for the new Royal baby, or trying to figure out what the “fiscal cliff” actually is.
Leno uses Lohan to describe fiscal cliff von CNN_International
PROST!
Question for you: Any photographer enthusiasts out there? What camera do you shoot with and why do you love it (or hate it)? What is your dream camera?