Saturday, August 12, 2006
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Camp Chippewa
Yeah, strange but true. I'm up in Cass Lake, MN at my camp. After a boring 5hrs drive and a dinner consisting of doritos and water I finally arrived here last night at 9:30pm. It was past their bed-time so I didn't see too many people, but I talked to some of my old friends and then slept on a shorter than comfortable couch. During the night there was supposedly a storm with lots of wind, lightning and rain - I don't trust this statement because I didn't hear jack all night. All the branches and uprooted trees that were lying around the whole camp, I say, were caused by some evil camper!
Anyways, this morning I was, as usual, amazed by how the kids have changed. Some of them are almost as high as I am (and I'm talking about hight and not how blazed) - scary when I think of how small they were last year. Another thing I noticed was that there are more counselors now that used to be my campers...and I turning into an old fart?? Ugh. But yeah, thats the new update for right now. I'll be here till Sunday around 3pm and then head back to Woodbury. I love being at camp, but somehow I'm glad that I'm not stuck there for 9 weeks this year - plus I love my job at Dyneon :)
Anyways, this morning I was, as usual, amazed by how the kids have changed. Some of them are almost as high as I am (and I'm talking about hight and not how blazed) - scary when I think of how small they were last year. Another thing I noticed was that there are more counselors now that used to be my campers...and I turning into an old fart?? Ugh. But yeah, thats the new update for right now. I'll be here till Sunday around 3pm and then head back to Woodbury. I love being at camp, but somehow I'm glad that I'm not stuck there for 9 weeks this year - plus I love my job at Dyneon :)
Sunday, July 16, 2006
I got this as an email...pretty sad if it comes true
Dear friends who value our earth and its indigenous people,
Please judge for yourself if you want to take action here.
In the Valley de San Felix, the purest water in Chile runs from two
rivers, fed by two glaciers. Water is a most precious resource.
Indigenous farmers use this water, there is no unemployment, and the
rivers provide the second largest source of income for the area. Under
the glaciers has been found a huge deposit of gold, silver and other
minerals. To get at these, it would be necessary to break, to destroy
the glaciers - something never conceived of in the history of the world.
And to make two huge holes, each as big as a whole mountain, one for
extraction and one for the mine's rubbish dump.
The project is called PASCUA LAMA. The company is called BarrickGold.
The operation is planned by a multi-national company, one of whose
members is George Bush Senior. The Chilean Government has approved the
project to start this year, 2006. The only reason it hasn't started
yet is because the farmers have got a temporary stay of execution. If
they destroy theglaciers, they will not just destroy the source of
specially pure water, but they will permanently contaminate the 2 rivers
so they will never again be fit for human or animal consumption because
of the use of cyanide and sulphuric acid in the extraction process. Every
last gram of gold will go abroad to the multinational company and not
one will be left with the people whose land it is. They will only be
left with the poisoned water and the resulting illnesses. The farmers
have been fighting a long time for their land, but have been prevented
from making a TV appeal by the Chilean Ministry of the Interior. Their
only hope now of putting brakes on this project is to get help from
international justice. The world must know what is happening in Chile.
The only place to start changing the world is from here.
We ask you to circulate this message amongst your friends in the
following way.
Please copy this text, paste it into a new email, adding your
signature and address. Please send it to everyone in your address book.
Please judge for yourself if you want to take action here.
In the Valley de San Felix, the purest water in Chile runs from two
rivers, fed by two glaciers. Water is a most precious resource.
Indigenous farmers use this water, there is no unemployment, and the
rivers provide the second largest source of income for the area. Under
the glaciers has been found a huge deposit of gold, silver and other
minerals. To get at these, it would be necessary to break, to destroy
the glaciers - something never conceived of in the history of the world.
And to make two huge holes, each as big as a whole mountain, one for
extraction and one for the mine's rubbish dump.
The project is called PASCUA LAMA. The company is called BarrickGold.
The operation is planned by a multi-national company, one of whose
members is George Bush Senior. The Chilean Government has approved the
project to start this year, 2006. The only reason it hasn't started
yet is because the farmers have got a temporary stay of execution. If
they destroy theglaciers, they will not just destroy the source of
specially pure water, but they will permanently contaminate the 2 rivers
so they will never again be fit for human or animal consumption because
of the use of cyanide and sulphuric acid in the extraction process. Every
last gram of gold will go abroad to the multinational company and not
one will be left with the people whose land it is. They will only be
left with the poisoned water and the resulting illnesses. The farmers
have been fighting a long time for their land, but have been prevented
from making a TV appeal by the Chilean Ministry of the Interior. Their
only hope now of putting brakes on this project is to get help from
international justice. The world must know what is happening in Chile.
The only place to start changing the world is from here.
We ask you to circulate this message amongst your friends in the
following way.
Please copy this text, paste it into a new email, adding your
signature and address. Please send it to everyone in your address book.
Rain
View from my bedroom windowAfter a long period of dryness and multiple sunburns its finally raining here in the cities. I'm way excited - not only will this cool down the ambient temp, but also provide the plants with the needed water to become nice and green again!
Otherwise thing are well, Brent and Anna are moving to the cities, I saw the lifetime triathlon yesterday, and I also visited my friend Zuzanna. Life is well....except for the lack in training lately. I gotta get back into it soon. Esp. since I want to kick butt next year :D
Hope y'all are doing well! Enjoy the weekend!
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Tschermany?
Man, I have no clue how to add multiple number of pictures to this blog. I'm trying to make things look good, but in case it looks crappy...well, too bad. You'll have to live with it. You may not see many pictures on the top, but trust me...there are a lot of them!
So now to the long awaited (or not?) recap of my trip to Germany. But before I really get into the Germany part hear this: I had to move out of my old apartment the day before I left for Germany. Due to some family issues Sarah's parents were hoping to quicken my departure. Having things set up already (new apartment and whatnot) I didn't see why not - so I took half a day off from work, packed all my stuff (holy crap, how come do we accumulate so much crap in such sort time??) and got 'er done! Thanks to the help of Brian we got all my stuff over to Woodbury in one trip and carried everything up to my place. Then I had to pack, and go to my friend's house in Maplewood to stay over for the night - no way I'm sleeping on the floor before flying. I got to my friend's house at 9pm tired and ready to crash.
The next day I went to work like any other day and after work met up with Jeff to hand him over the laptop gps system he wanted for his trip. Everything was executed in a hassle, but in the end I got on the plane safe and sound and off I flew back home to ol' Germany.
After about 20h of sitting, waiting, futher sitting, and a 3h nap I got to Germany and was picked up by my Uncle and Cousin to be driven to my parents' place. I dropped off my baggage quick and after a couple of strawberries drove up to the restaurant for my mother's 60th birthday.
The birthday took place in a section of one of my favorite restaurants called "Jagtschloss".
You have to drive through the woods for a while to get there. The restaurant itself is frequently the destination of many mountain bikers, hikers, and lazy car drivers like me :), and sometimes people use the side room (As we did) to celebrate some occasion.
On the way up I knew that I was about to see many of my German relatives, but when I got there I was surprised by the number of people - I hadn't seen them for years and years! Wowo! Even my aunt was there!! And I'm not speaking of the German aunts - no, my mother's sister from Japan was there. I was kind of worried about seeing her thanks to some things that took place, but she was a different person than I had expected.
It sure shows that you see out of different glasses when you're a little kid.The Asian lady in the green kimono is my aunt.
And speaking of kimonos, my mother was wearing this really sweet kimono, too!!
I can't believe you can buy a car with the money spent on the thing. Looks cool though! Anyways, the food was great, the people fun to talk to, and I was DEAD tired!! I sticked around for most the night, but then at around 10pm I started fading in and out and chose to go back than to dip my face in one of the 5 or 6 cakes that we had there.
The next day was my class reunion. I met up with my friends Michael and Andy in the center of Wiesbaden at a cafe. We had some tea, coffee, beer (or whatever...don't remember) and then walked over to the Hauptbahnhof (the main trainstation in Wiesbaden). From there its another 2 to 3 min to the meeting place - the place is called Schlachthof (which translates to slaughter house, cool huh?). We got there fairly early. There was only one table of people there and maybe a couple others grilling. Hmm what to do? We got ourselves some beer and then walked around saying hi to the people we knew or knew from seeing. By the time we got through the group the number of people increased to the point that the place was getting full. From then on it was just all about walking around and talking to anyone and everybody. Man, so many people looked the same!! And some of the girls....sorry, women were lookin' real good! Too bad I'm not that superficial, otherwise I would have....right! Anyways, it was a great night, and we ended that chapter with a large turkish Doener Kebab (the best sandwich in the world!!!) and a couple round of pool!
The next two days I met up with some more friends (the ones that were still in Wiesbaden) then made up my mind to take the train to Heidelberg. My friend Rick was there doing some research at the Max-Plankt Institute (He's going to be a lawyer soon!!).
Alright, so its been a while since I was working on this post...and boy, there is just soo much more to write. But considering that I like having a life I'm gonna keep it short.
After the visits and all my fam and I went to Aachen, Waals (In the Netherlands) and attended my cousin's wedding. Then I flew back to the US :)
The Aachener dom from inside.
The following pictures are from the above. Enjoy ;)
My mother, aunt, cousin and her husband.
My cousin and her husband in a goose costume.
The reception at the wedding
The food in Netherlands - white asparagus...I would totally recommend it to anyone. Great seasonal dish!
People breaking plates so that my cousin and her husband could clean it all up in front of everybody.
Awwww....
Them cleaning it all up.
K, so thats about it. Sorry that I cut it short, but otherwise it would have never seen the face of earth again...and with it all the other posts I would have written. If you want more details let me know, but for now this should suffice.
So now to the long awaited (or not?) recap of my trip to Germany. But before I really get into the Germany part hear this: I had to move out of my old apartment the day before I left for Germany. Due to some family issues Sarah's parents were hoping to quicken my departure. Having things set up already (new apartment and whatnot) I didn't see why not - so I took half a day off from work, packed all my stuff (holy crap, how come do we accumulate so much crap in such sort time??) and got 'er done! Thanks to the help of Brian we got all my stuff over to Woodbury in one trip and carried everything up to my place. Then I had to pack, and go to my friend's house in Maplewood to stay over for the night - no way I'm sleeping on the floor before flying. I got to my friend's house at 9pm tired and ready to crash.
The next day I went to work like any other day and after work met up with Jeff to hand him over the laptop gps system he wanted for his trip. Everything was executed in a hassle, but in the end I got on the plane safe and sound and off I flew back home to ol' Germany.
After about 20h of sitting, waiting, futher sitting, and a 3h nap I got to Germany and was picked up by my Uncle and Cousin to be driven to my parents' place. I dropped off my baggage quick and after a couple of strawberries drove up to the restaurant for my mother's 60th birthday.
The birthday took place in a section of one of my favorite restaurants called "Jagtschloss".
You have to drive through the woods for a while to get there. The restaurant itself is frequently the destination of many mountain bikers, hikers, and lazy car drivers like me :), and sometimes people use the side room (As we did) to celebrate some occasion.On the way up I knew that I was about to see many of my German relatives, but when I got there I was surprised by the number of people - I hadn't seen them for years and years! Wowo! Even my aunt was there!! And I'm not speaking of the German aunts - no, my mother's sister from Japan was there. I was kind of worried about seeing her thanks to some things that took place, but she was a different person than I had expected.
It sure shows that you see out of different glasses when you're a little kid.The Asian lady in the green kimono is my aunt.And speaking of kimonos, my mother was wearing this really sweet kimono, too!!
I can't believe you can buy a car with the money spent on the thing. Looks cool though! Anyways, the food was great, the people fun to talk to, and I was DEAD tired!! I sticked around for most the night, but then at around 10pm I started fading in and out and chose to go back than to dip my face in one of the 5 or 6 cakes that we had there.The next day was my class reunion. I met up with my friends Michael and Andy in the center of Wiesbaden at a cafe. We had some tea, coffee, beer (or whatever...don't remember) and then walked over to the Hauptbahnhof (the main trainstation in Wiesbaden). From there its another 2 to 3 min to the meeting place - the place is called Schlachthof (which translates to slaughter house, cool huh?). We got there fairly early. There was only one table of people there and maybe a couple others grilling. Hmm what to do? We got ourselves some beer and then walked around saying hi to the people we knew or knew from seeing. By the time we got through the group the number of people increased to the point that the place was getting full. From then on it was just all about walking around and talking to anyone and everybody. Man, so many people looked the same!! And some of the girls....sorry, women were lookin' real good! Too bad I'm not that superficial, otherwise I would have....right! Anyways, it was a great night, and we ended that chapter with a large turkish Doener Kebab (the best sandwich in the world!!!) and a couple round of pool!
The next two days I met up with some more friends (the ones that were still in Wiesbaden) then made up my mind to take the train to Heidelberg. My friend Rick was there doing some research at the Max-Plankt Institute (He's going to be a lawyer soon!!).
Alright, so its been a while since I was working on this post...and boy, there is just soo much more to write. But considering that I like having a life I'm gonna keep it short.
After the visits and all my fam and I went to Aachen, Waals (In the Netherlands) and attended my cousin's wedding. Then I flew back to the US :)
The Aachener dom from inside.The following pictures are from the above. Enjoy ;)
My mother, aunt, cousin and her husband.
My cousin and her husband in a goose costume.
The reception at the wedding
The food in Netherlands - white asparagus...I would totally recommend it to anyone. Great seasonal dish!
People breaking plates so that my cousin and her husband could clean it all up in front of everybody.
Awwww....
Them cleaning it all up.K, so thats about it. Sorry that I cut it short, but otherwise it would have never seen the face of earth again...and with it all the other posts I would have written. If you want more details let me know, but for now this should suffice.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
x-men!
Hahaha, somehow true...I'm full of evil :D
| You Are Mystique |
 Sneaky and duplicitous, you're likely to use your powers for evil. You're eternally young looking, people don't realize how old you really are! Powers: Shapeshifting - you can impersonate other people or become a monster |
Saturday, June 17, 2006
I finally have a internet connection at home, w00t...is how I should feel, but I've got a lot of furniture to build from Ikea. So sadly I really can't get into the mood of uploading a full blog post with pics from Germany or pics of my new apartment. You'll have to wait for maybe tomorrow or sometime next week...there are some nice pics though, so stay tuned!
PS: If you have xfire you know that I have been playing some HL2 Ep1, but give me some slack. I need to relax and wind down too! (by killing evil monsters :P)
PS: If you have xfire you know that I have been playing some HL2 Ep1, but give me some slack. I need to relax and wind down too! (by killing evil monsters :P)
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
no internet = no post
ok, i'm at work so here is a quickie. i am back in mn, but not in minnetonka anymore. i'm living in woodbury and don't have internet quite yet - but i'm working on it and i think that i should have a dsl connection by the end of this week. i'll let you all know more about my trip to germany when i get that stuff. and yes, there will be a bunch of pictures too :)
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Ok, I'm not drunk anymore
After that $14 cocktail I had yesterday (that was 1 foot tall) I wasn't capable to write anything interesting. Today though may be different. I'm not drunk, and its freezing here (keeps me awake) So here are some of the things that took place in the past couple of days:
After arriving at the airport last Saturday I was picked up by my relatives and we headed straight to my mother's 60th birthday party. It took place at this restaurant on the top of the near "mountain". There were a lot more of my relatives there than expected (total # of epeople there was around 50) but I was great to talk to them - especially considering that I really didn't have too much interest in those small talks after only getting 3h of sleep on the plane. I ended up staying there till 11pm, getting home stuffed like a sumo wresler after his dinner, and then fell asleep with my tv on. One thing to note though. Except for one cousin all my other relatives are married or are in a serious relationship (they just don't believe in marriage). Great, just great....now they expect me to enrich the family with offspring? Maybe in the next 20 years, but I'm not planning on anything like that in the next couple of years. It sure is hard to have kids when you're single...plus i doubt that I can impregnate my right hand ;) just kidding! But who plans those things anyways, I just want to live life right now.
The next day, Sunday, I had a class-reunion (highschool class of 01). I was expecting about 20 people, more or less uninterested in eachother, drinking one or two beers and going home type of a meetup, but nope. There were 100 people if not more, a couple of teachers (including my chem teacher) and everybody was having a grand time. Man, a bunch of those girls look hotter than ever!...but alot of the people looked just like they used to 5 years ago. Sadly ibt didn't seem like many of them made it across the pond over to the Americas, but a lot of them were in different countries in Europe - especially this one girl I used to like...she couldn't come cause she is studying T-cells in Spain (real T-cells, not Thomas's cells). Anyways, we all had a great time drinking beer, listening to music and catching up. After the party we concluded the night with a good ol' smelly breath causing Doener Kebab and a game of Billiard. Bed time: 4am. :)
Yesterday (thats when I got drunk again) I went to a cocktail bar with my ol' freind Andy. Another friend Tine should have joined us but she was already back on her way to school to get some work done. It was nice sitting there getting drunk and talking about old interests, women in general and just catching up with whats going on. He is dating this hot French girl and I was trying to get some tips on how to be successful like him :). I wish I would have taken my digital camera cause that cocktail was way huge...I forgot the name of it but I think that it was along the lines of Zoomba or Zooma or something like it. All I remember was that they don't allow you have another one because its too strong. Good stuff!
Well, so much for now. I'd like to add some pictures, but my parent's only have a ISDN connection. Its soo slow that I feel like I'm using a 10 year old computer. Considering that my mother has a sexy sleek IBM/Lenovo x60s core duo and my father a pretty fast dell i really hope they get dsl soon - plus that way I could post pictures much easier.
Btw. just out of curiosity. I know that there are other blogsites like xanga or wordpress. Have any of you had any experience with one of them and what do you think? I'm pretty happy with blogspot, but was thinking of giving some other place a try. Who knows, maybe I'm missing out.
After arriving at the airport last Saturday I was picked up by my relatives and we headed straight to my mother's 60th birthday party. It took place at this restaurant on the top of the near "mountain". There were a lot more of my relatives there than expected (total # of epeople there was around 50) but I was great to talk to them - especially considering that I really didn't have too much interest in those small talks after only getting 3h of sleep on the plane. I ended up staying there till 11pm, getting home stuffed like a sumo wresler after his dinner, and then fell asleep with my tv on. One thing to note though. Except for one cousin all my other relatives are married or are in a serious relationship (they just don't believe in marriage). Great, just great....now they expect me to enrich the family with offspring? Maybe in the next 20 years, but I'm not planning on anything like that in the next couple of years. It sure is hard to have kids when you're single...plus i doubt that I can impregnate my right hand ;) just kidding! But who plans those things anyways, I just want to live life right now.
The next day, Sunday, I had a class-reunion (highschool class of 01). I was expecting about 20 people, more or less uninterested in eachother, drinking one or two beers and going home type of a meetup, but nope. There were 100 people if not more, a couple of teachers (including my chem teacher) and everybody was having a grand time. Man, a bunch of those girls look hotter than ever!...but alot of the people looked just like they used to 5 years ago. Sadly ibt didn't seem like many of them made it across the pond over to the Americas, but a lot of them were in different countries in Europe - especially this one girl I used to like...she couldn't come cause she is studying T-cells in Spain (real T-cells, not Thomas's cells). Anyways, we all had a great time drinking beer, listening to music and catching up. After the party we concluded the night with a good ol' smelly breath causing Doener Kebab and a game of Billiard. Bed time: 4am. :)
Yesterday (thats when I got drunk again) I went to a cocktail bar with my ol' freind Andy. Another friend Tine should have joined us but she was already back on her way to school to get some work done. It was nice sitting there getting drunk and talking about old interests, women in general and just catching up with whats going on. He is dating this hot French girl and I was trying to get some tips on how to be successful like him :). I wish I would have taken my digital camera cause that cocktail was way huge...I forgot the name of it but I think that it was along the lines of Zoomba or Zooma or something like it. All I remember was that they don't allow you have another one because its too strong. Good stuff!
Well, so much for now. I'd like to add some pictures, but my parent's only have a ISDN connection. Its soo slow that I feel like I'm using a 10 year old computer. Considering that my mother has a sexy sleek IBM/Lenovo x60s core duo and my father a pretty fast dell i really hope they get dsl soon - plus that way I could post pictures much easier.
Btw. just out of curiosity. I know that there are other blogsites like xanga or wordpress. Have any of you had any experience with one of them and what do you think? I'm pretty happy with blogspot, but was thinking of giving some other place a try. Who knows, maybe I'm missing out.
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