What A Lovely Weekend

People, I’m telling y’alls, spring is here! The trees are getting buds and some are blossoming and I’ve seen plenty of daffodils. Yay, I love it!

Had a really nice weekend that started off with fantastic food at David’s place. He made the perfect baked potatoe with yummy steak and an awesome salad oh and shrimps. Geee I got spoiled! We spent a nice evening in and I got to meet his cat, which was quite cute. Made me miss our farm cat Miet-Zieh (ok fine so you could also spell it Miezi ;-)). More spoiling the next morning when I was presented with bacon, eggs, and toast and the best normal coffee I’ve had since I left Good Ole Germany.

For Saturday I had promised Chadi to keep his brother from Canada company so we went to Ru Sans for sushi buffet (that was smart, stuffing myself even more after having stuffed myself with awesome breakfast). Afterwards we hung around Freedom Park and enjoyed the sun and then had coffee when Chadi got off from work. I went home then and we later met up for dinner at Big Daddy’s Burger Bar, a new burger joing in my neck of the woods. I had a small salad and that was about all I could handle but it was pretty good and how fun to choose from all their ingredient options!
Since Charlotte’s uptown was full of scetchy rappers (think Lil Kim, Bow Wow etc), we decided to stay clear of the area and instead went to the local Irish pub. Lots of fun and I ran into my neighbor, too, which was great as I didn’t have to walk home alone. Not far of a walk anyway but I feel much saver when I walk with a 2m tall giant.
I slept in on Sunday – finally – and then after talking to Ines and Dave in Germany via skype I actually went out and jogged for 1.8km (and so what if I walked about half of it…). We hung out at Dean & Deluca in the afternoon and let the sun shine on us, then went home and got ready for the opening party of the Mezzanotte restaurant here in town. Loads of amazing free food like pizza and tons of desert. This has got to be my new favorite Italian restaurant in town.
And since that wasn’t enough excitement for the weekend already, later that night we went to the movies and watched SemiPro. I think I slept through a quarter of the movie and my eyes were burning pretty badly from my allergic reaction to either David’s cat or Rossmann’s make-up remover pads. They are still all puffy and red today but a bit better so hopefully the multi-sympton allergy relieve medicine is doing its job….
Alas, today is Monday, 5 more days until the weekend and I have tons of work to do. Chop chop, back to work. Cheers! Hope y’all have a great week!

Continue Reading

Just a quick entry before I’m leaving for Las Vegas tomorrow. I’m actually sitting on the patio of Starbucks here because my connection at home is non-existent and I figured my family would go crazy again if they don’t hear any updates. So I emailed. I’m so bad with keeping in touch without internet and phone at home. It really sucks! I feel bad! Und hallo Jenny, sorry Dir muss ich auch unbedingt schreiben und zwar in Deutsch!

So this weekend was really nice again. Actually this whole week. Let me make a list to manage to do that…..

oh funny, there’s a guy speaking German on his cell at the table next to mine. will have to talk with him….

A while ago some other guy stopped at my table and asked for my number and he was half German, too. small world…

– Monday Chadi and I killed more than a bottle of wine and ate chocolate a la Bridget Jones cause he was sad. Too much wine. Enough said.

– Wednesday I had dinner with a new German in Charlotte who doesn’t know any people yet. I know how that feels (hallo Ireland) and so we had a good time eating pizza and chatting. Afterwards I spent at least 2 hours at Target… hmmmm.. fun shopping!

– Thursday I had a business dinner with someone from a trade magazine. Good times and I got a lot of marketing advice so that was awesome!

– Friday night I hosted a little cheese and wine soiree and I went to ALDI and Trader Joe’s. I LOOOVE that store! Totally cool food for such little money. I was so happy. The party was great. I think we were about 15-20 people and the men weren’t even there. Good to finally see most of them again in one place.

– Saturday I watched Fun with Dick and Jane and that movie was sooo funny. Loved it! Watch it! Also did laundry and read a lot and then at night my neighbor Ash took me along to some Led Zeppelin cover band concert. totally not my type of music but it was so so so funny to see these guys dressed up like a 80s band. Scary really with the woman pants and the curly long hair not to mention all the fans. Teeheeeeeee!

So yeah tomorrow I’m flying to Las Vegas for that trade show and I’ll be back Satuday night so be good!

Sorry for not checking many blogs out lately, it just doesn’t quite work with the shitty internet connection and the busy life here. Miss you guys!

Continue Reading

Elections

Interesting test even though of course I don’t get to vote…
85% Hillary Clinton
85% Barack Obama
84% John Edwards
81% Chris Dodd
75% Joe Biden
72% Bill Richardson
63% Mike Gravel
62% Dennis Kucinich
52% Rudy Giuliani
52% John McCain
44% Mitt Romney
38% Mike Huckabee
37% Tom Tancredo
29% Fred Thompson
8% Ron Paul

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

Continue Reading

Snow!

Yes that’s right, we got some snow this week! It only lasted 15 hours but it was fun while it lasted. I hope that was all of winter for me this year but I think the forecast said snow for tomorrow and temperatures on Sunday from -10 – 2C. Fun – NOT! I can’t quite believe that it’ll be that cold but we’ll see.

So anyway, Rich and I had a great weekend here in the Queen City. After a yummy dinner with Stefan at Fiamma’s (service took forever but the food was good) I picked Rich up at the airport and we spend the night chatting and catching up. Good times! To make his trip worth wile, we did a touristy thing on Saturday and checked out Historic Latta Plantation. It was actually really nice with a civil war winter camp enactment and we enjoyed the sunshine out at their lake (yes it was still nice and warm then). A huge pasta lunch warmed us up at home again and then we relaxed some before it was time to head out again. We took the light rail (so cool) to uptown and watched the Bobcats lose against the Detroit Pistons. The game was well worth the 15$ tickets we got but unfortunately the cats lost in the very last minute. :(. But we had fun and continued to Fuel Pizza for dinner and then met up with Giorgio and some other people at Feast and then went to HOM where we danced the night away. Max was in town and he was super nice and dropped us off at home after closing time.
Sunday we strolled through my neighborhood for a long time with quick stops to grocery shop and grad a coffee. It felt so European to haul around groceries and walk around on side walks. Haha. At home we watched The Man of Aran, which our tour guide on the Aran Islands had talked about in Ireland. Interesting movie… Sushi at Ru Sans was a nice grand finale for a great weekend and it was sad to drop of Richie at the airport on Monday.

This week has been good so far. Cooked and watched National Treasure with Giorgio and then went to P.F. Chang’s with Vanessa and there should be more fun coming my way this weekend.

Work is going well. I love the combination of all that creative marketing stuff with the technical machine stuff and I’m learning so much. And good news, my boss wants me to stick around after my internship (yay)so it’s back to working on visa crap. Yugh! So seeing that I might be here for a few more years (let’s hope) I did some credit history building today and opened a savings account as well as applied for a credit card. Not too sure that they’ll give it to me but the lady insisted that we try that first before getting a secured credit card. OK then. What with my student ID good until March that might actually work. We’ll see.

Continue Reading