Procession of Animals

Unicorns and Things

I have a few minutes to unwind from various events and work-related stress factors. iTunes is offering me Santana and the visualizer is a little too bright to enjoy. Tidying up the childrens' playthings. Unicorns and things.

Looking forward to tomorrow. It isn't far away. We are having elections tomorrow, here in Bavaria. About to rock the boat. Really rock the boat. You'll see.

Mobile Office

My main tools - apart from the machines in the actual office - are my notebook and my iPod Touch lately. My iPod serves as calendar, address book and - most importantly - keeps me on track with all of my various projects and tasks using the iPhone app "things" that synchs with my Mac.

Wine Harvest in Franconia

We are now in the middle of the wine harvest here in Franconia. It's cold and wet but that makes it all the nicer to sit around in the evenings drinking Federweisser and eating Zwiebelplootz (not that we've gotten around to doing much of that ourselves, yet).

The picture is of an old vine seen growing on a house here in Zeilitzheim.

Gangstas

Looks like the girls are up to no good in this picture...

Television is shooting at the castle today

Bavarian Television is currently shooting a segment for a music show at the castle today. The show is to air on October 17th, 2008.

Tough weekend

We have almost wrapped up a tough but successful weekend with a wedding and a small trade fair for guitars. We are all pretty tired, accordingly.

Only the cats don't seem to care.

Fall

Gotta blog

I just learned today that somebody actually does read this blog occasionally (as opposed to the one I write in German and update to more frequently), so I suppose I should post to this one more often.

Katharina has been going to the kindergarten now for two weeks and is enjoying it. We are caught up in work but find and/or take the time to play, as well (we take one day off each week, religously; it's the most religious thing about us).

And: it's friggin' freezin' here in Germany right now! We stocked up on the fuel supply for the central heating system. We turn the heat up for the kids reminding ourselves that we shouldn't live any worse than our hotel guests who turn the heat up full blast and leave the window open at the same time.

Enough whining. The kids are in bed and it's time for the news (I rarely watch anymore). So if you come across any interesting news, feel free to let me know via e-mail, twitter, facebook, linked-in, etc.

Charly on a Tree

iTunes 8 is out

Technological improvement is all about improvement of quality of life. I'm getting that with the new iTunes. Granted: it's all about apple making more money but if "genius" makes me happy too, I'm cool with it. Found some great stuff in my library I didn't fully know about and actually bought some stuff in the iTunes store that was recommended and sampled and is very good.

I don't find much time to listen to music much but the little time I have for that should be spent listening to good music. And I have to say that genius has "recommended" extremeley good lists from my library.

Okay. Enough fanboy talk.

Slurp

Kindergarten

It was Katharina's fourth day in kindergarten today. She knows she's going back tomorrow but she is also glad the weekend is coming up. All in all we're very pleased with how things have developed, how well Katharina is adapting to the new situation.

Angela Merkel in Schweinfurt

The pre-election schenangigans are heating up in Bavaria. Now they're bringing in the national big wigs to spruce up the regional electoral fight. Angela Merkel is speaking in nearby Schweinfurt today. The CDU is stepping in to help the CSU.

Here is a picture of a graffitti'ed and badly fixed poster of her, right here in Zeilitzheim:

Petition

I'm working on a petition (to myself) to increase the amount of days off each week from one (Wednesday) to two (Tuesday and Wednesday). I'm not sure I'll be able to approve such tomfoolery.