It's January

It's January and I'm long overdue for a post. First, Fröhe Neu Jahr und Weinachten.

About a week ago, the whole family (Mom, Dad, Tim, Heidi, Gus, me) made the trip up to the Frankfurt Airport to see Mom and Dad, as well as four suitcases off. Their trip would have been more successful had I not been nursing an unhealthy throat most of the time. It was still good to have them here and it seems like a long time to wait until I see them again in August.

I came back to a seemingly more relaxed yet constrained schedule. For instance, on Friday, I had my alarm set so I would be ready for the normal workday breakfast at 7:30. However, when I went down, nobody was up. So I went back to bed and got back up at 8:30, yet nobody was up still. I thought to myself that perhaps today is another day off and went to back to sleep without setting an alarm. Apparently 9 was the scheduled breakfast time, yet no one had failed to tell me, though Heike said she yelled up at me but those yells got lost in the floor that separates the ground floor and the top floor. Result: I now have 2.5 less hours to take time off because of no information. Whoo. The same thing happened on Monday, except Heiko was up at 8:30, so I only got an hour taken off that day. I wish people would tell me when things are different.

Heiko had gotten sick during Christmas and that prevented the family from taking their planned holiday to go ski near München. I had been wondering if there was something in this world that could slow him down, turns out there is. He still has a cough, but he's back to work...though he's extremely grumpy. The past few days I've been doing everything as I'd done it before, but now it's apparently wrong. I didn't put enough wood in the oven. I didn't arrange the boxes correctly on the pallette. I'm too slow in my labelling. I'm now careful when I ask a question because I don't want to get barked at or told I'm doing it wrong and this has caused a seeming depressed atmosphere in the house. I'm not the only one getting the 'special treatment' as he's been yelling at the kids more than usual too. Hopefully with the brightening days, attitudes will brighten as well.

There's not much else to report. I've been trying to find cheap ways to use up the rest of days off that I have. I have 4 or 5 left and a month to use them. If you've got any (cheap) ideas, leave a comment!

Until next time,
Jon