Annette and Frank are going back home to Germany.

Tonight we hosted a good-bye party for Annette and Frank. They are headed back to Dresden tomorrow. Patricia and Martin came over also. I was a bit frazzled since we decided to have the party at our house only this morning, so all day I prepared for the party. I made two pork dishes, one with apricot and mustard sauce and the other with a catsup/vinegar/Tabasco sauce. Both turned out well. I took Dad’s advice and splurged on a $25 bottle of wine and it tasted wonderful!

Sweden.

So Ben is back in the big apple after his trip to Sweden. He and Johanna went to their first prenatal exam while he was there. The little one is due on German reunification day, October 3. Their current plan is that Ben move to Sweden on June 1st and then finish his dissertation before the baby arrives, then once the baby arrives, Johanna has a 9 month maternity leave and they will start that. He has a one year post-doc lined up in the fall in Berlin, but he’s hoping to delay that until the spring. Then he, Johanna and the baby will move to Berlin until August 2006. And then they would move back to Stockholm where Johanna would go back to work and Ben would be a stay-at-home dad and look for work in the US in Fall of 2007. Meanwhile, Johanna is interviewing for a job in Bogata, Columbia right now and Ben is also waiting to hear from post docs from Harvard and UChicago, so many things are still up in the air for them. But they are happy and Johanna and the baby have made it through the first trimester healthy! Yeah!

We are trying to overlap with them while living in Germany, but I think it may be a stretch.

So I’ve been submitting poems to literary journals, and I’ve been getting the steady trickle of rejection letters, but I’ve been reading on the web that if an editor pens a personal note on the rejection slip, that that is a little sign of encouragement. So, I got my first personal note! The poem is still rejected, but the editor of Diner wrote, “Try again after June -you can submit up to 5 poems -Editor” !!

Weird…

I geuss Blogger doesn’t like you being logged into 2 computers at once and modifying your blogs. 😛

Anyways, here’s a photo from yesterday. Ronnie and I went to Fry’s to do some window shopping. It was a good time checking out computer hardware in person. Kinda nerdy. I haven’t done it in awhile. Ronnie ended up walking out with a DVD burner tho. 😛 Too bad I think he has to return it tho. It didn’t really burn very well.


Adventures in Fry’s Posted by Hello