The Name Of The City

I made my trip to Town today. It was a 3.5 hour bus ride: From BFNW (here) for about 30 minutes on a gravel road (and across a bridge) to a crossroads, left and straight lead to other godforsaken places, so the bus turned right onto a real road with a lot of holes, which right now are nicely ice-covered. On for another 10 minutes, across a river next to a power station, across another smaller bridge, 30 minutes later across a railway line to another crossroads. Left leads to the Big City (10 hour drive), so the bus turned right onto an undivided highway. 1 hour later a short stop at some settlement, from there after another hour: The Canyon Of The Crescent Moon!
No.The Town, of course.
For better illustration I would like to provide this self-made map:Although the bus depot is located kind of out of town, the bus dropped everybody off right downtown. All I had to do was walk across the street into the glasses store, where after checking in with the very friendly but fast talking staff I spent some time looking at available glasses (variety not so great, kind of disappointing at first). Then the flown-in from America Doctor examined my eyes and at the same time chatted with me with a heavy kind of Italian Accent, yet he has, or so he told me (also his last name suggests it), German Ancestors.
He did a quick yet thorough eye exam, including making sure I can tell red from green. Result: My eyes have not changed since my last visit with an eye specialist.
Afterwards I picked out my new glasses (which will be mailed to me), then walked to the liquor store, to McDonalds (I had to discover around here Cheeseburgers are a little more expensive, 2.40), to a grocery store to pick up some fresh fruit, then by taxi to the bus depot and the long bus ride back.
Nice evening light. The sun had become a pale milky orb behind streaks of grey clouds, and where the clouds ended and the trees began, the horizon was bathed in an orange glow. Later on the grey streaks turned purple, and as the sun went down she seemed to grow larger and larger and very intensely orange. Then: Darkness.
I dozed off for a while, dreaming an incoherent film with a soundtrack by Roxette: "I'm gonna get dressed! For success! Shaping it up for the big time, baby!"

About 5 minutes outside BF the bus was pulled over by cops. They (a young male cop and a good looking female cop) then entered the bus asking everybody to show their bags, which then were examined for forbidden substances: "Got any liquor, whiskey or nothing?"
They even had those cute little flashlights that Jack Bauer always uses.
I put my innocent face on.
The cop guy looked at the grapes hanging out of my grocery bag.
The cop lady smiled at me. I said: "Hi" and smiled back. If I wasn't married I'd probably would have asked her out at that moment. Imagine! A cop lady! In a uniform!
Sometimes I envy people that have a distinctive job description like that. Maybe they should introduce uniforms to owners of master degrees in literature who work at supermarkets. Oh, wait, they did that. At work I wear a uniform: A vest with the name of the supermarket on it.
However, after the cops spent a period of time checking the luggage compartment the bus finally drove on. Five minutes later we arrived in BFnowhere, I got out of the bus and walked home, one grocery bag on the left, one grocery bag on the right.
One car passed me.
A second car passed me.
(I always step away from the road for safety.)
As I walked I thought about the cops and all the uniform stuff I mentioned above. Another car approached from behind, and as I turned I saw it was the police, the same two cops from earlier, stopping right beside me.

Thinking of the devil.

She was driving, he rolled down his window and said: "Want a ride?"
I politely refused (I like walking and I didn't really wanna ride in the backseat of a police vehicle). Besides, I didn't want them to check my bags. Although perhaps they don't even care, because I am not a local.

And now I must have evening meal.

To Everything There Is A Season

Yesterday was monday.
Today I opened boxes and marked merchandise all day.
Tomorrow I'm going to Town.

In the morning we listened to German talk radio.
During the day I listened to ever repeating pop songs on the radio station played in the store.
In the evening, right now, I am listening to Country music (special 3 hour session on the German radio, it's 2 in the morning over there).

A few days ago I made the chess move that lost the game.
Today I was finally checkmated (in my absence, but that is the nature of long distance chess).
In a few days we will be well into a new game, which I might win or not.

And so on.

Get Away

I don't know what was wrong with me yesterday. This artificially elongated post serves only one purpose:

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... to get rid of Dr. Phil.

I do not want the first thing you see on my blog to be him. I dislike TV.

Smug

This picture was sent to me in an email today. Dr. Phil McGraw always has a way of explaining things so I can understand them.

Bad Cooking Day

Sometimes cooking does not go smoothly at all.
Sometimes everything spillable ends up spilled, everything wet, squishy, sticky or otherwise disgusting ends up on the floor, everything burnable ends up burned, everything with potential for a mess ends up a mess.
I'd like to call that: Bad Cooking Day.
Today is such a day.
I didn't do anything different. Things just ended up differently. Every step towards the finished meal seemed to result at least in two steps of fixing or cleaning up.
Must be the weather, or some earth core magical energy fields.

Can somebody please tell me how to distinguish between different sorts of potato in this country?
Does it say floury or waxy or mealy or firm or something somewhere on the bag?

This Tuque Has My Name On It

I'm wearing a tuque indoors, because my head feels cold. That is because today I decided I wanna listen to Michael Jackson music and at the same time cut my hair (its length had been bothering me for quite some time now).
So I did that.
I used a cheap conair machine with a maybe 12 mm comb, but hair got entangled in it all the time, preventing me from getting visible cutting results, keeping from me the feeling of success. That's why I had to switch to a shorter one.
Much better. In no time all my hair hit the floor. It felt good. Suddenly I looked more manly. Like a special forces guy or some type of field agent, especially because I have a nice 5 o'clock shadow at the moment.
But it also feels cold. And tingly sometimes. That is why I am wearing a tuque indoors.

I baked A Cake

All of a sudden we found ourselves invited to a turkey dinner this evening. On top of that I found myself volunteered to provide dessert. So I made a cake.

It looks like this:(from left to right:) cherries, peaches

Friday Makes A Guy Lazy

I understand a supermarket is a highly dynamic thing. Therefore it must be normal that five minutes after tidying up the clothes area (removing empty changers, picking up clothes, putting them back on hangers, putting them back where they belong et cetera) is again in a state of utter disarray.
These costumers! I understand them, too, because I myself buy clothes like this: Öhhh, I don't want it anymore, but I don't put it back where I found it, too much work. I just it hang it here. People who work here can put it back.
Well, FU costumers.
I hereby promise to be more considerate while shopping from now on.
Yet thanks to my mother and my grandfather and lately developed OCD'ish cleaning up behaviour I seem to never loose patience, I might even find a weird pleasure in tidying up after those careless ignorant costumers.

Except fridays. I think they put something in the water on fridays, something that makes me tired. Not lazy!
Just tired.

Pop

Man, people buy a lot of pop. I devoted half of my worktime to refilling the drinks-shelf today. What a variety. Every sort has least three sub-sorts, usually named weight- or colorwise: Regular, Light, Max, Orange, Lime, Root, Berry, Caffeine-Free. Especially orange and lime are very neon - like radioactive liquid. I put 591ml and 1l bottles into the fridges, 2l bottles and 12can packs onto the shelfs.
In between I went back "backstage" (as I like to call the storage- and delivery area of the store) to get more, and when I came back out people had already bought various amounts of pop and with that destroyed my nice and tidy piling. What had just been an awesome immaculate wall of pop suddenly was full of holes.
But who cares.
I, who buys maybe 3 bottles of pop a year, just find it amazing how much of the stuff is sold every minute, even here in BfNoWhere.

For some weird reason I bought myself a DVD today. For 3 bucks. "The Matador" with Pierce Brosnan. I have no memory of this movie at all. I have never heard of it. But I like Pierce Brosnan. We'll watch it tomorrow.

Right now I am listening to Martin Böttcher's Winnetou-Melodien. (listen here & here)

Da kommt Freude auf.

Growing Older

Lately I'm getting these weird little hungry feelings in the evenings around 9 or 10. Sudden desires for cookies or chocolate or potato chips. I didn't have that before. That's something new, probably some kind of left-over from Christmas, and I don't like it.
It just doesn't seem right to start eating all kinds of junk food so late in the day and so close to sleepy time. So I tried having a banana or an orange, or a carrot, but honestly, that doesn't really work. All these fruits and vegetables just lack the satisfaction only junk food can bring. At least that's what it seems like.
On the other hand, maybe being exposed to today's madness about slimness has finally gotten to me and succeeded in making me paranoid. I am finally paranoid. All this healthy eating, whole wheat and home-cooking, vitamins and enough fluid intake per day has finally intruded my mind and fucked with my brain-wiring.
Didn't I frequently enjoy Doppelkekse back in Europe? Didn't I always have a roll or two stashed somewhere? Then again, back in the day I also smoked about 10 cigarettes a day, more when drinking, and didn't I have beer many times a week? And yes, didn't I not cook and didn't I get all my nutrition from frozen pizza?
By the way, I also listened to music differently then. I have a feeling now I can appreciate different styles of music much more. That I was kind of close-minded. Like horses with blinders. But back to the food issue:
I don't think I can allow myself to give in to those cravings. I don't wanna be fat 10 years from now. I will have to keep substituting fruit for other snacks. For health's sake.
I will now go and have an orange.

Why So Serious?

We have a trip planned. To Europe. And although this trip is still weeks away, we're growing excited and excitedter about it. There's a certain vibration in the air.

I must say (now for something completely different):
The ingredients make the difference. Today: Broth.
I have a made a lot of grean bean soups in my life. Back then a year ago or so my ignorant self decided that pulverized instant broth would do just fine. So I used it, and the soup was good. Later I found they sell broth in cans, so I tried that, but it didn't make much difference. The soup still turned out good. I've used chicken broth, beef broth, vegetable broth, whatever was available and/or handy.
Then there came a time when I totally forgot to put any kind of broth in. Well, that soup was... different.
But the last grean bean soup I cooked brought me a revelation, an epiphany almost. To explain why, we have to travel back in time a bit, back to days after last Christmas, and doing that we can't but remember: The turkey.
How I boiled the crap out of its remains! All the bones and fat and gristle bubbling in the hot concoction! How I poured that hot liquid through a sieve, filtering it, and how I ended up with the finest and purest turkey stock one can imagine. And, last but not least, as the observant reader of these pages will remember, how I froze it into broth-cubes.
Long story short: This time, instead of instant or canned broth (which both constist of mainly salt anyway) I used no less than 12 (twelve) standard ice-cube-size homemade turkey-broth-cubes.
The resulting soup was, as formerly mentioned, a revelation. The best grean bean soup ever. Perhaps a millimeter short of Ambrosia (and we can't get higher than that).
I conclude: It's the broth that makes the soup, or, to put more general: It's the ingredients that make the meal. I know this now.
Yes, I know, you wanna say we've known this before, but believe me: You think you know. You're not a believer. You will never really know, unless you've experienced it yourself.
So go ahead: Cook your favourite meal and enjoy it, but next week, next week cook it again, but this time, this time choose only the best and highest quality ingredients.
And then: Try to enjoy it.
But the first bite will instantly take you a place where your favourite angels sing peace into your heart. You won't just enjoy, instead you will feast with relish! Indulge and wallow! Savor a meal that satisfies on every level imaginable. That makes your soul... smile.
Only fools aim for mere taste bud satisfaction.