Friends, Germany, USA

I Knew It Was A Bad Day When…

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…the construction workers started some annoying noise at 8am on that Sunday. But you know, I didn’t mind much because I had gone to bed quite early the day before. So after enjoying the comfort of my warm sheets for a bit longer I actually got up, drank a glass of grapefruit juice (Rich got me hooked on that after our trip to Hilton Head Island), ate a cereal bar and put my running shoes on. Yeah, crazy me went running! Hello?! America is definitely doing strange things to me. Now, you have to know, I despise jogging. It’s not something I do. At the gym I use the elliptical. I avoid the treadmill. Anyway, after an hour on the elliptical on Friday and a 5km walk with Birgit on Saturday I suddenly felt like running to Starbucks, which is 2km away. Of course I didn’t actually jog all the way to Starbucks but I did run for a total of 1.3km!! Wow Sanna! The iced latte in my hand on the way back kind of prevented me from exerting any more such stupidity on the way back and of course today I am paying the price for 3 days of torture (aka exercise): my legs are sore!
So the day went on, I was now sitting on my front steps eating Greek yoghurt with fresh blueberries and a nectarine and was using my skype phone to talk to my littlest sister and my Mom. At some point I decide it is too hot to stay outside for more than 20 minutes and want to walk back indoors. Well. The door was locked! Bloody hell! Armed with nothing but a teaspoon, a bowl, a skype phone and a half dead tomato plant I try to lockpick it. No such luck. My stupid hot neighbor’s comment that I lived in Fort Knox comes to mind and I give up and try to locate a neighbor. Of course the only one who’s home is the guy that lives at the other end of the building. Wouldn’t normally matter but I was barefoot and the sidewalk was hot.
John was super sweet though. He had to leave but gave me a key to his place, put the soccer game on his nice TV for me, let me check my mails so that I could find some phone numbers (I have very few numbers in my skype phone) and told me to make myself at home. How nice?! Well, of course that day my boss/landlord had his cell phone in his car so he never picked up in the 4 hours that I tried calling him (he apologized about 5 times this morning).
At some point I got Ash’s number from facebook and he came an hour after I called him (walking back and forth to my place to get the skype phone in range). Apparently every cool American guy has a fancy lock picking set. Unfortunately Ash isn’t professionally lockpick trained though and my lock not quite so simple. He gave his scary looking friend a call and went to pick him up and the guy tried really hard, too. But, it didn’t work. I feel really secure now! I do live in Fort Knox! So the nice guys left me alone again because they had to work. Ash was so nice and let me keep his cell phone so that the locksmith could call me back after I called him.
That guy finally came and 2 minutes and 2 air bags and some fancy lockpicking device later he had my door open and I was 155$ poorer. It takes a pro to get into Fort Knox….

So, where I was going with that story is, as soon as I noticed I had locked myself out I knew Germany was going to lose. It just felt it. *sighs* Oh well. 72 – 80 – 96 – 2010?

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Boys, Family, Friends, Me, Myself & I, USA

Happy Birthday!

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Oh what a happy birthday I had! Thanks to y’alls for sending emails, cards, voicemails, packages and for calling! You’re the bestest ever! :-*

I was going to celebrate into my birthday a bit but I felt like I had a fever on Friday so I figured it’d be better to skip that. Saturday morning I had to get up quite early to attend a wedding with my neighbor Ash but I did manage to talk to my Dad and my Mom and Step-Dad who all called. Also got to open the first gifts. Yay! 🙂

Ash’s friend’s wedding was very nice. Really small in the backyard of the groom’s parents. Soooo nice! I totally need to get married in my Mom’s garden or find a guy with a nice yard ;-). Food was great, people were sweet as only southerners can be and the ceremony was short and sweet. People got casual right afterwards leaving Ash and I a bit overdressed (compared to shorts and flip flops for the groom e.g. ;-)). Around 2pm we cruised back home and since it was my birthday Ash circled around uptown a bit just because I love Charlotte so much. Hehe!

At night I went to the Cheesecake Factory with Tasha, Birgit, Vanessa and Ash. Poor Ash had to sit through tons of girl talk but I think he took it quite well if not even enjoyed himself…. Food was alright. I mean we normally go to places where they cook better than there, kind of a strange decision to go there for my birthday but I wanted to get a slice of cheesecake from there. The cocktails were good, though!! 😉 I got the sweetest gifts from the crew and they all sang happy birthday with the waitress (for some reason no other waiters were there to sing that late…). We got out of there around 11 and seeing that we’re all old now we just decided to call it a night and party some other time.

Sunday I didn’t really do much to be honest. Ate my birthday cheesecake, did laundry, read, chatted with my stupid, hot neighbor, tidied the house a bit and then got an invitation to dinner from David to make up for his forgetting my birthday. Perfect since I was too lazy to cook and didn’t feel like eating out either. So I drove to Ballentyne and D cooked mussles and then some fantastic grilled salmon on spinach salad with cranberries, pine nuts, goat cheese and a balsamic vinaigrette. YUMMY!!! He said he didn’t have desert except for some M&Ms but then he actually whipped out an ice-cream cake with candles and the whole spiel! Wow! Too bad we don’t have chemistry going on between us! What a man! Watched a bit of golf and then I drove back up to my place seeing that I was getting tired (again, I’m getting old…). (Next day he wrote me “sorry I tried making out with you” I was like “huh? you tried to make out with me?!” “Big time!” I am sooo oblivious… Won’t recognize anything until it hits me square in the head.. duh…. Need to be more attentive to detail…)

Yesterday Giorgio and Massimo took me out for my birthday lunch and I came home to even more cards and packages (thanks you guys!!!).

Friday is going to be my birthday party so if you’re in the area, stop by!! 🙂

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Family, Friends, USA

Sunny Charlotte

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You guys, I still cannot believe how lucky I got to go back here (at least for the time being). I love this city! Still makes me smile all the time when I think about how much I wanted to come back and now I really am here. Scary enough though if I don’t get this visa (hello lottery) I’ll go back home in 6 months! I can’t believe half of the year is almost gone! I should know within a month or two what the deal is.
So one of the things I love about Charlotte is how green it is. I had kind of forgotten all about that because it was winter when I got here and last summer had this big drought so nature was more yellow/brownish. But the grass and the trees are green now and I even saw some goslings the other day. Yay!
Last night I went out with my neighbor Ash and my friends Luca and Tasha and we ran into Joeran who is visiting from China. There is a free outdoor concert every Thursday at the Wachovia Plaza during spring and summer (Alive After 5). And nice enough we can take the lightrail there and back since it’s over at 9pm (5-9). The weather was gorgeous with 24C most of the day. Surprisingly I did get quite tipsy last night from just one beer and one glass of wine. Hmmm! we finished the night off with some pizza at Fuel and then I was home at 10 but kind of drunk and soooo tired the next day! Uarg!
Oh and wow, there have been 15000 visits to this site in the 15 months that I’ve had this blog! Wow! Congrats to the person from Frankfurt surfing with Firefox and IESY Hessen provider. Yay! Thanks for stopping by here so often guys and giving me so much advice on my life and sharing in my joy and sorrow! You mean so much to me! 🙂
In other news, I booked a flight to Savannah for Memorial Day weekend with my frequent flyer miles (not sure how I got so many but cool) and will hang out on Hilton Head Island with Richard then. Yay! I can’t wait to travel and hang out at the beach! I really am missing travelling sooo much!
My parents will also be travelling pretty soon, as they will visit me here with my sister for a week in August. Yay! I’m really kind of bummed that it’s only a week and they had to schedule it in the week before the biggest trade show of the year for me but hopefully I can take almost all days off and spend LOADS of time with them. 🙂

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Friends, USA

Bullet Posts

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I figure it’s about time I do a regular update about what I’ve been up to in addition to those secret posts so here goes:

– Two weeks ago I was really bored on Sunday and so my buddy Markus dragged me along to some women’s wrestling movie set where we were spectators for Diva Mania’s World Championship. Yeehaw. We had a blast screaming and yelling and it sure did feel very rednecky. Watch the press conference here.
– The USCIS has selected all the visa petitions that get to apply for the H1B work visa and we should hear back from them by June 2nd.
– I went to the gym a couple of times. I suck badly at running so I wanted to go back on the cross trainer. Accidentally though I got on something like crossramp, which was very strange and made me feel like a complete idiot. Stayed on that thing though because I am so intimidated by other gym goers and the machines that I try to create as little attention as possible. *blush*
– Saturday I got up at the crak of dawn to go the monthly Intro to Yoga class at the gym at 8:30. That was interesting. Not sure if I can get into that but it felt like a good stretching for my body. Thankfully normal classes are at normal hours. 😉
– This weekend when I got out of the shower and looked into the mirror I actually saw me resembling my grandma who passed away last summer. That was an intense feeling. I’ve seen likenesses to my maternal grandparents and to my dad in photos of me or when I look in the mirror but I never really thought, oh yeah that looks like Oma Auguste. So that was nice. And then I realized I don’t think I know what my paternal grandpa looks like as I’ve never really seen many photos. So who knows what of him I have in me. Hmpf! 🙁
– The weather has been getting nicer so I got to sit outside on my steps or at the cafe or on my friend’s balcony and enjoy the outdoors. Of course the weekends were usually somewhat icky though. 🙁
– I got to drive up to High Point near Winston-Salem last week to visit my company’s sister company. It was a gorgeous day and the highways were really pretty with loads of green and loads of blossoming trees. Got to eat lunch outside at Micky D’s and I noticed how nice southerners are once you leave Charlotte. Now, they are nice in Charlotte, too, but there are so many transplants from the north and it’s a city that it’s really not that typical American friendly anymore. Nice to get out for a few hours and drive a nice car (as they deemed the golf not safe enough to go 1.5 hours on the highway (oops, surprised that we made it to Charleston and back ;-)).
– Did all the usual social activities like Massimo’s birthday party at Press, a nice new winebar uptown and then dancing at HOM and then sharing a taxi home with Chadi’s brother who tried to make a move on me (ewwww gross) but failed of course. A few dinners out, like Ru Sans with Birgit yesterday, a nice band, U Phonics, and good food this Friday at Ally Cat and the usual hanging out and coffe events, like Caribou with Daniele yesterday.

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