Catch-up race

Ok, ok, I know. I haven't blogged for one and a half month. So what. There's life to live. Writing can be made later...

So here I am, telling you, kind reader, what you missed. First, some beer. Then some barbecue. A few visits, a monastery, sunburns, the end of my probation period, my daughters first day in the local Kindergarten, our almost new cat, a coward theft, our new cat, tons of sun and sweat. You see, nothing exiting at all.

But let's make it detailed. We had a few visits. My in-laws and my wife's sister came with my nephew and nice to visit. A nice visit to Garmisch-Partenkirchen for the family. Later one of my oldest friends - I'm speaking about how long I know him, -not- how old he is -Toby came to visit. He was travelling to see his half-brother in Austria and we had a nice evening together at Kloster Andechs. That is a very famous monastery just 10 miles away from here. They are famous for several things. First, it's old. You see buildings 600 years of age. And of course thousands of american tourists. They seem to be everywhere they can see things older than their own country. But this monastery is even more famous for its beer. It fantastic. One of the best. It is shipped around in whole Germany so I had a few of them when I was young. Now that I live close I can get it fresh from the brewery ;-)

And then they are famous for their bavarian food. You ought to get the very best pork knuckles there. In beer sauce, of course. And the pork belly is just awesome. Funny thing is, a week latewr I went there again. Four freinds from good old Paöatinate came to visit. Christina, the newly wed fled his little screming daughter to spend a weekend with just guys. So he took three of them and drove to me. On the first day of their stay we had a barbecue at my house. I bought a beed tenderloin. It was meat from heaven. That went along with a self cooling 15 liter ceg of Ayinger, a local Munich beer. Perfect day.

The next day we went to Andechs. We ate almost everything they offer, we had lot's of beer, we all bough stupid blue caps, we all got sunburned. I was the lucky one to only have the upper half of one ear burned for I sat with the back to the sun. The others that sat opposed to me got burned faces, my....

Of us five only one got really drunk. He almost managed to get us kicked out of the taxi five hundred meters after we started back home. Crazy guy, Holger...

Then, there is this other story. We live close to a farm. On that farm there's several cats. One of them got kittens and one of those kittens liked to walk into our garden. My dog Luke just fell in love with this eight weeks old fur ball. He immediately adopted the little tomcat. Angelina, my elder daughter, named it "Flucky" and it slept in my dogs basket. But we weren't prepared for kitten. So, the other day, when a bunch of children from the neighborhood came to fetch the cat we handed it over. The children said they discussed it with the owners of the farm. One day later we learned that was lie. They were explicitely not allowed to get the cat. But instead of bringing the cat back the children - and their parents - just locked it up for several days. We later heard the cat fled from their grounds and has since disappeared.

As Angelina was so depressed from this strange eposide we talked to the farmer. He promised us a cat from the next flock of kittens. It was luck that this was only days ago, as the farm has several cats. Now there it is: our newest family member, Caillou. He is a little red tomcat, named after one of Angelinas favorite TV shows. And to satisfy pouplar request of a single lady here's some pictures of him:

Lake Starnberg...

... is just around the corner. Behold Luke, our dog. He enjoys the view not like I do. In fact he doesn't care at all. But that makes the moment not less beautiful. This picture has been taken today, an hour before sunset. Too bad I didn't have a panorama camera ;-)

It's been a while

I'm back. I haven't blogged in a while and there is no reason for that other than normal course of life. During the week I'm busy at work. I get out early and return late. And this is the first weekend since I don't know when that I'm at home without an agenda.

Last weekend we were at the wedding of my good friend Chris. It was great to see him do the marriage vow. He has been the one that alwas said "I'm not going to marry". He is godfather of my daughter Angelina and when that ceremony happened he said "my family plan is closed now with two godchildren". Did I mention his little daughter Paula is just four weeks younger than my sweet little Christina. So we sort of went through the pregnancy together *grin*. And of course the wedding and the feast - there is no better word for it - was back in Palatinate.

Now that I read what I wrote I realize that it's kind of odd. I was speaking about "boring" normal days and then I mention a wedding and a feast. Let's say the proportion saves me. Interesting side show to the wedding trip. We took only Christina (she is currently screaming so loud I can't even hear the computers keyboard clicking as I type) on that day. So everyone asked "Where's Angelina?" and I alsways answered "She's got too much appointments". And that's the truth. As it was clear we would spend the week back in the old home she made plans to visit all her friends. She spent time with her grandmas adn with Fabi9enne and Lennar, her two best friends. That made four appointments in two days. She was a busy little girl...

My mum will visit us later this week. So that will also be good for Angelina. Too bad that currently the weather is a mess again. Yesterday it rained tho whole day after tha last week was quite hot. We had storm warnings for friday evening and yesterday heard that there were a lot of damaged around upper bavaria. Lucky for us none close to us. When we drove to Weilheim for shopping we missed our magnificent view. Between Bauerbach and Haunshofen, the next two villages between Bernried and Weilheim, there's a spot where one has a wonderfull panorama. I must remember to take a camera with me the next time I go there (and the weather is fine).

Quick addition

I found a picture taken with our camera. It's a lot better in quality. And to make this clear: This is what we see every morning when we get up. It's taken from the balcony in our bedroom...

Back to the future

We're online. German Telekom finally managed to activate our phone line. Interesting is that they sent a technician. I never ordered them to. And I'm not going to pay for that. Lucky me I have a written note from them that I didn't order installation service. We'll see. Tomorrow I'm going to see my laywer for a nice dinner so no stress on that account.

Now that I'm equipped with bandwidth I'm going to upload some pictures of my new home. For the start I have some with very bad resolution as I took them with my cell phone (no, not a phone by Apple...). Don't blame me for the bad quality:

On saturday we went to a big furniture store. This trip was like hell for our children. Especially Christina is way to young for that. It is just too much stress for her. Nevertheless we bought a few things. Two sideboards that normally cost 175 euros each. We got them together for 70 bucks. Then we ordered two couches, one for the guest room and one for Angelinas room. Interestingly when we left a German pop singer started to perform at that store. Her name is Sarah Connor and I can't stand that bitch. My favorite Oliver Kalkofe did his part in making fun of her and the reality TV show she starred. If he knew that she now sings at furniture store jubilees... Sometimes god is just.

First new friend

Finally my daughter Angelina has found a new friend. His name is frederik, he's four and a half years old and lives only a few meters away. He comes over to play in our garden and since this is possible Angelina seems to relax. She also now attends kids' gymnastics. Yesterday she was there and my wife could go away during almost an hour. It was without any problems, which feels very astonishing. Sometimes I feel she won't really stand only one hour without her mum but when she's really occupied with something it is no problem AT ALL...

Yesterday night I asked my wife how happy on a scale from 0 to ten she currently is. She said she was pretty happy now in Bernried. Of course westill have some issues to be resolved. Our TV doesn't work correctly as we have a DVB-S based Pay-TV subscription and the satellite antenna on the roof is currently an old analogous one. So a lot of channels are just broken. To compensate we just watch DVDs. We bought the "Pippi Longstocking" DVD box for Angelina and she enjoys that alot. Its fun watching her when she's really deeply sunken into the world of Pippi.

Then the heating doesn't work yet. Ok, it produces hot water to bath and shower but it won't heat the rooms. It is not cold at the moment (see the title of my last post) but for our little baby girl it is necessary to have the bathroom quite warm. The thing is that water is missing from the heatings circuit. It has been refilled several times but always without having us informed before. So the air in the empty radiators prevent the water from reaching our radiators. *duh*

And we haven't found the time to do all of the official stuff and paper work. The cars will have to get new numberplates but that just hasn't happened yet.

At the company there's going to be some restructuring. I was told that I'll change the desk here on the floor. We're changing the team structure and every application team will be assigned an architect. Thus from being one architect of severals I will be "promoted" to being the architect of the logistics team. The team lead of that team will be the superior for functional decisions and I will be the one for technical ones. And that after two months. *grin*

Interesting is that today one of the programmers was fired. And that does NOT feel like it did in the old company because last week we had like five different candidates here. In almost two weeks a new architect will start working here and in september another one. We're still growing, so loosing one or another on the way is more a sign of improvement that a sign of decay.

So much for now.

Ah, by the way: German "Telekom" didn't manage to activate our new phone line yet. It'll take until monday now. And until then I will have to continue to go online wherever I can because at home there's no internet :(

But a blessing in disguise I will get 16 MBit/s instead of the 6 MBit/s I used to have back in Palatinate. Even more bandwith I will not be able to exhaust.

Summer...

...is finally here. At least I hope that's the case. The last two weeks have been full of rain and that really had some influence on my girls' mood. This has been a problem as my big girl starts projecting her bad mood onto each and everything she can get hold of. And unfortunately the first candidate for this is my wife. But Steffi won't stand still to receive the bad mood, she counteracts. This leads of course to some tears. So Angelina turns to an easier target and that is Luke, our dog (no, he is NOT named after that Skywalker guy. His original name is "Luc", which will make "Star Trek - Next generation"-Fans listen up. But even that is not by intention. The dog breeder where we bought him doesn't know one or the other...). Poor Luke is so goopy for her and she treats him like a slave at the moment. I really hope that the sun coming out will help distractingh her.

It is about time she gets to know some children from the neighborhood.

The weekend itself was a very busy on. My in-laws came to visit us. They brough my nice and so Angelina had a child to play with. They went to the Zugspitze, Germany highest mountain. They climbed, they went into the Eibsee (lake eib), they went to an adventure playground. A lof of fun for the kids on that day.

In the meantime I was four hundred kilometers away, celebrating the bachelor party I spoke of earlier. The party was good, as expected. The preparation was perfect, Marco - the groomsman - did a great job. We had good drinks, the food was awesome and we sat and talked until four in the morning. Ok, sounds a bit lame you think? What about the nudes? And the silly games?

First of all: We're not too old for this shit. We just feel it's not a necessity anymore;-)

The husband-to-be used to be the wildest one of our bunch. But now he's settled a lot. We stayed among ourselves and had a good time. We all dressed as roman senators. That was rather cool. But now I know why the roman empire perished. It takes two helpers to dress and the romans could never have made it into modern times because driving a car in those clothes is NOT recommended. Believe me...

Let's Party

So, now even my friends in palatinate will benefit from me being a "zu-g'reister" in bavaria. I'm going to buy a so called "cool keg" which is a self cooling beer barrel. My friend Marco found out which beer flavors offer theese and one of thzem is Ayinger, a beer brewed south of Munich. They have a list on their website where one can buy it. Funny thing is, two of those places are in Starnberg. One is in 14 Munich street, the other in 16 Munich street. You might find this interesting when you know that I work at 15, Munich street *grin*

One could call this "a sign"...

Tomorrow we're going to celebrate the bachelor party for Chris, one of my best friends. This is going to be a great thing. I won't tell anymore details before it. I don't think he'll find my blog (or identify it as mine) but prudence is the better part of valor.

This will be a hell of a weekend. Driving for at least four hours, help preparing the party, drink really a lot of beer and good wine (did I mention Chris is a wine connoisseur and we complied with that?), sleep - most probably in the car - help cleaning up and then drive home after my alcohol level is low enough. I will surely need the few remains of sunday to recover to be able to work again an monday. Phew...

Oh, by the way: My wife is a workaholic. She managed to unpack ALL the boxes from our moving. The only thing left to do is placing a few lamps (I finished like six of them yet, another three or four to go) and setting up my desk. This isn't needed at the moment and this weekend is planned otherwise, so we will see when I will have that finished.

Our TV is not working as inteded, but that is a known problem. The satellite dish and the signal distributor are both analogous and we have a digital receiver, so lots of programs are in a frequency range the dish won't deliver. It has been reported to our landlord and he is really a nice guy that always tries to have things done right away. So I think this will be solved quickly.

Sick me

Now that my girls are fit again I suffer badly. I am really the poorest one. No, just kidding...

I have a bad cough and a hell of a headache, but that'll pass. The really worst thing is that I am not really fit for helping Steffi. Since yesterday no boxes are left in the ground floor. Finally we can start to live here. The house starts making fun, now. Today I cooked in the kitchen. This was the first stime in weeks that I could prepare the meal for my family. That felt good.

And my sweet little Angelina ate a huge share. That made me proud. I must have done something right.

Yesterday we went to a big supermarket (and forgot to buy the most important things, fly flatters...). It is in Weilheim and called "REAL.-". Interestingly it was hard to find, even when having the address and a navigation system. We passed it two times on the back side (which is the official street address) without noticing it. They should do something about that.

After that we went to "Media Markt" (big electronics store) to look after a new bigger fridge. We searched for an american style, but after having seen them we might go for a "german" style model in the end. The ice cube creators won't account for all the "other little problems", like the quality, the energy usage or the partition that is just not very usefull at all. In the end Angelina behaved terribly, their selection was not very impressive so we went home quite early.

Sick family

Now that we slowly start to live normal again my while familie is sick. The two small ones are coughing badly, my wife got fever yesterday evening. Tissues are everywhere, just to make sure...

And I have to go to work and leave a sick person to care for two sick children. Don't like the idea but can't help it at all.

But now for something completely different: Moving (and home improvement) is a lot about mood. The other day I had a terrible mood because nothing worked out as intended. Yesterday I tried again and everything went flawless. Sometimes it is the right thing to reboot and start over, not only with Windows ;-)

And a third subject for today: It's official. We're bavarians. Steffi went to the local authorities and got us registered here in Bernried. My ID has a neat little sticker on it with the new address.

Panorama

No, this is not going to be about my former job. It's about getting up in the morning and the first glance out the window is showing a panorama that many people only ever dream about. I can see the alps. There's even snow visible from here. While I'm sitting on my balcony waiting for the 30 degrees celsius (86 Fahrenheit) the weather man promised for today to happen.

Just kidding. No time for sitting around (other than the few minutes to write this blog entry). I still have to move around hundreds of boxes. But waking up in the new house really feels good. The last two days have been horribly full of work. My whole body aches. The two kids rooms are "usable" (Chrissi's one is ready, just missing a few pictures, Lina's room is at, say 80 percent). The kitchen ist taking progress, but the rest is still a mess. Boxes everywhere. Oh, I almost forgot the room with the washing machine. That is quite usable. A necessity with two children, believe me...

Maybe I'll manage to take some pictures later. I just haven't found the camera yet.

Oh, by the way: I am quite astonished that I'm online at all. The new phone line is not yet active. But nonetheless the router went online when I connected it... Strange things happen sometimes.

Sanks for travelling wis Deutsche Bahn

Yesterday I went "home" for the last time. I was using train instead of the car. When going to the train station in Maisach I was stuck in a mini traffic jam between a parked car in front of me, a bus to the left and a car crash behind me. Noone could go one until those stupid drivers behind me settled their accident. That took me so long that I missed my train. Waiting for the next one made me miss the ICE in Munich. I could see it leaving Pasing station when I arrived one train later. It was a special ticket, cheaper but bound to a train so I was now in Munich without a valid ticket to go home. Thanks alot, DB, for once leaving right on time...

Now I had to wait for half an hour in the line at the travel center to get a new ticket (that I had to pay for again of course). And then the last part from Mannheim to Kaiserslautern was in the must f#%cking slow train available with a lot of stops in between and the most uncomfortable seats to find in German trains at all.

So instead of getting home early travelling first class I had to pay twice, got home almost two hours later than planned and my back was aching again. "Sanks for travelling wis Deutsche Bahn!"

By the way: I still assume it is a necessity for ICE train drivers to NOT be able to speak a sufficient English in order to be hired. None of them seems to able to pronounce a "th" correctly.

Now let's see if I can get my money back from DB for the missed ride wich was not my fault. I was told there is a possibility for "fair dealing". There's even a special department for such events.

Other than that it will be more packing today. Tomorrow we will fit all our stuff into a large truck, take the dog and the children and head on to bavaria to finally become "zu-greiste", a very special bavarian word for - yes, for my blogs title. More to come...

Murphy's Law

As a "computer guy" I often stumble upon this life wisdom. I even had a professor that wrote his diisertation about it. Funny man. All student's loved his classes for he made good grading whatever the quality of the efford. Won't bring you forward in life but who cares anyway...
Back to the topic: Yesterday I did another round of painting. Again a room in pink for my older daughter. Bought a lot of stuff to make it better than the first room. I bought a drill machine and a paint mixer, more lightbulbs and a set of torx scredriver insets.

• The insets didn't match my variable screwdriver so I couldn't dismantle the fence to make life easier when carrying the furniture on saturday.
• The lightbulbs didn't match the lamp. Altough they were of the correct type (E27) in terms of the mount they didn't match because of the depth of the mount inside the lamp. Stupid thing.
• The perfectly mixed paint didn't last. With less than 2 squaremeters left I ran out of paint and had to mix a bit more. I'm almost sure the new mixture doesn't match the first one but I couldn't tell in the dim light.
• The paint seemed a bit too dark in the first room so I mixed it with more water. Therefore the paint did spray a lot more. Either way you do it, you're fucked...

So you see: I was better prepared than the day before but still it felt like a disaster afterwards. I still won't become a professional painter. Maybe that's better for the world...

Paint it black

Although this old Stones classic is a great one I stuck with pink when painting my baby girls room yesterday. Black would have been a bit depressive for a three month old baby, don't you agree?
After work I went to paint for another 6 hours. Phew, thank god no one wants me to be a painter for a living. I would end up under some bridge...

Also got an email from Andreas Rücker. He is a former collegue of mine from Spheron days. He has cancer which was a shock to learn. He is about my age and really a nice guy. He has a blog describing his fight against the cancer (in German) at http://www.himmelsreiter.de. If you understand it feel free to read. Makes you think about your life. Let's wish him all the best.

By the way

Now as I have started to blof I also started to mcroblog. So here's my all new twitter link:
http://www.twitter.com/wagnerdennis
Feel free to follow, or ignore, or whatever. Just don't spam, or I'll send Murray after you. Buahahahaha...

Finally, this is the week

Yesterday night I drove to bavaria for the last time as a "foreigner". The first car - my Polo, the little mile-eater - will not leave bavaria anymore. On Wednesday I'm going to travel by train. This is the first time I go by train in first class. Let's see if I can manage to get home without my back aching this time...
On friday we will load everything into a truck in Steinalben. The moving company will drive all my stuff to Bernried and I'll take my family friday evening, leaving palatinate.
We'll have some sort of camping in the new house on friday night. Then we'll have another day full of work, setting up our furniture in Bernried. Then this tedious driving on the weekends will end and I'll have my kids with me every day, at last.