Big week here. I received my brother's band's CD in the mail a few days ago and those guys rock. They're called Serial Karpenz and TP (above) plays guitar for them. Generally not acoustic guitar, though. It's great music, hard-hitting rock/metal that they write themselves. Very cool. I only wish I lived closer so I could see them play live. The picture above is from Christmas.

German class is going pretty well. I'm not making progress at the same rate I did in the super-intensive course a few months ago, but I'm enjoying it and I'm learning a lot. There are a lot of interesting people in there. I'm the only American. We don't have class tomorrow but some of us are meeting tomorrow afternoon to speak a little German together.

For Valentine's day Marty made reservations at an Italian restaurant we both like on Pettenkofer Straße, called Il Dottore. There's a lot of good Italian food in Munich, but I think this is my favorite of all the Italian restaurants we've tried so far. Of course, it's no Mario & Luigi's.

I don't think it's the law that one must clear the sidewalk of snow in Munich. I walked this morning to do some errands and found that there were two inches of solid ice on most of the sidewalks. Slippery! Our building's sidewalk is cleared, but it's the only one on the street that is. Our Hausmeister is extremely thorough. It was snowing all day last Saturday, and I swear he spent the entire day outside shoveling so not even a quarter of an inch accumulated. Every time we looked out the window, he was shoveling, shoveling, shoveling.

I had something of an adventure the other morning. I spoke to JC Chasez of NSYNC on the telephone. He was on a radio show talking about his solo album (which is coming out this summer) and I called to ask whether he was going to tour to support it. He is! Some of my friends were in the studio audience for the broadcast, but I couldn't be there, so this was definitely the next best thing. I couldn't stop grinning all day. Here's a picture of him from the radio webcam from right around the time I was talking to him. It was exciting!

In other music news, next week is the Wallflowers concert. I can't wait. And the week after that is Aimee Mann. Whoo! This is a great month!

Oh, Rana has had a great idea. Check out her weblog from Tuesday, February 11 to find out about the photolog she's thinking of doing. I'd love it if some of my friends with digital cameras would come play too. I know I'm not the only one who's going to like this idea.

What else, what else... oh, yeah. Ziggy has a new favorite toy. Behold the excitement of the Staples manila envelope box. Any day that doesn't include at least six hours of sitting in this box is a day that you might as well not be alive...