Happy Thanksgiving

It's my favorite holiday! Marty and I went out to dinner at Edison & Co., where they were serving an authentic American thanksgiving dinner today. Well, you could get the turkey dinner "Uncle Sam," which came with mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables, or the turkey dinner "Franz Josef," which was served with a potato dumpling and red cabbage. We both opted for American style. But we drank weissbier.

I am bursting with pride today, because my high school band marched in the Macy's parade in New York this morning. If you saw a huge band from south Georgia during the parade, that was my band. The Lowndes High School Marching Bridgemen!

A few years ago, I spent a really nice thanksgiving day going to New York with my sister Dixie to see that parade. We had a blast, and the story is here.

Hope y'all are having a happy thanksgiving! I am thankful for the people who still read my page after all these years and this long hiatus! Among many other things. Have a great day, if you celebrate. And have a great day even if you don't.

So I took this quiz called "Which 20th Century Theorist Are You?"


You are Michel Foucault! You wrote groundbreaking
histories of prisons, hospitals, asylums, and
sex. Interestingly, you thought basically the
same thing about all of them. Your historical
accuracy is a bit dodgy, but that was never
really the point. You were very obsessed with
power roles - so obsessed that you frequented
gay S&M clubs, and died of AIDS in 1984.


What 20th Century Theorist are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

And I didn't even cheat!

Two Holidays in One!

Last night we celebrated Thanksgiving and Marty's birthday with some American and German friends here in Munich. We had a great time! The party was at our friends' apartment. Here are a few pictures.

Carol and I cooked the turkey together. Here she is learning how to carve it (sorry, vegetarians!).


Thanksgiving! With a little resourcefulness, it's the same even in a foreign land.


I made Marty a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream frosting, and pressed toasted pecans onto the sides.


Action shot!


With my older man.


Being away from home at Thanksgiving makes it very clear what an American holiday it really is. Cranberries aren't really available here (preiselberries are almost the same), and neither is canned pumpkin puree (although you can get a whole pumpkin and make your own puree, and make a pie from that, what fun!). Sweet potatoes, if you want them, are a special purchase at the Viktualienmarkt. We ordered our turkey a week in advance so we'd be sure to have one, since they're not widely available. Even the cornmeal for my cornbread dressing was a challenge to find. But I prevailed. I am resourceful, and really, what's the difference between fine-ground polenta and cornmeal? There isn't one.

And of course, Thanksgiving itself is just a normal Thursday here. Marty and I do have a reservation to go out to dinner this Thursday at a restaurant that's serving Thanksgiving dinner, where we'll go after he gets off work. Although I did notice last year that the Christmas shopping really kicked up on that Friday after Thanksgiving. And this year I think the Christmas markets might be opening that day as well. (Though I'm not sure about that.) Maybe Thanksgiving itself isn't required for there to be a Black Friday.

It's fall! Seriously fall. The trees across the street are turning gold.

I've been catching up this week on things that fell behind while I was away these last couple of weeks (and very sick the week before we left). One thing I need to do today is run the vacuum (fyi: Staubsauger in German, dammsugare in Swedish; both mean "dust sucker"). I am swimming in an ocean of cat hair, here. There's a reason why we call Ziggy "da fur," y'all. (Although I should mention that it started as a pun on the German word dafür.)

Recently heard at our house:

Susie: Zig, you da fur!
Ziggy: . . .
Susie: Marty, you da man!
Marty: . . .
Susie: Hmm. Wonder what I am?
Marty: You da frau!

I laughed very hard.

Long time, no... type?

Hey y'all. I just got back from two weeks in the US. It was great to spend some time with my family and a few of my friends, and I really had a nice trip. Marty was there, too, for the first week. We visited his family in Athens, GA, and Mount Airy, NC. Then I flew home to south Georgia and saw my family, while Marty came back to Germany to go back to work.

It was a busy visit and a lot of fun. The weather was great, too, except for a couple of days of rain early last week. I wish I could've stayed longer, but at the same time it's nice to be home.

After two weeks in the States, my German felt a little rusty yesterday, but it came right back once I started.

Last night on TV, we saw an ad for flavored milk that has chocolate, strawberry, and chili pepper in it. I know that sounds strange, but seriously, that's what it is. There are a lot of flavored milks here, they're very popular, and apparently this is new and maybe for a limited time only. Look, I even found it online: „Lava“ überzeugt seine Fans durch eine perfekte Kombination aus Schoko und Erdbeer sowie – Freunde pikanter Würze aufgepasst – Chillipfeffer. Hier tanzen die Geschmacksnerven Salsa!

The funniest part is, the ad campaign for this stuff uses the slogan "Ich bin dagegen!" (I'm against it!) -- then people try the milk and change their tune to "Ich bin dafür!" (I'm for it!). I'm pretty much against it, myself.

The Harmunichs have a small performance this Friday at the Neues Rathaus in Munich -- that's our town hall, aka the building where the Glockenspiel is. We're just doing five or six songs during a wine festival. Tomorrow will be my first rehearsal in about a month, thanks to my vacation and a week I missed due to illness right before. I hope I can get my voice back in shape by Friday!