proving my point, milking a dog, whatever...

sean will kill me for this... or will he? does he even bother to stop by and read his wife's blog? my guess is no. this is his punishment.

this is sean, pretending to milk rena on our trip to france. read my first blog from today, and you'll understand. plus, it just makes me laugh. it reminds me of ben stiller in 'meet the parents' explaining how you can milk a cat.

mara, the cute little downlink station

So last night I had just turned out the lights when Sean woke up and started laughing like a hyena. We then had the following conversation.

Sean: "Look at the cute little downlink station!"

Me: "The what?"

Sean: "The downlink station, she's such a cute little downlink station!"

Me: "Mara's a downlink station? What do you mean?"

Sean: "You know, for a satellite. BONEY'S a downlink station, AND an uplink station."

Me: "That's not Boney. Feel her hair."

Sean: "Oh, it's Rena."

Me: "No, it's Mara. Feel her nipples."

Two things about this are hilarious to me... One, of course, that Sean was convinced that the dog was a downlink station. This morning he told me he just KNEW he was making perfect sense. And two, that the easiest way to tell Mara from Rena in the dark is to feel her nipples. But really, it is...

fruit flies, 2008

so it's that time of year again. we live in one of the wine producing regions of germany, and the harvest and production have begun, as well as the annual infestation of fruit flies. they are EVERYWHERE. it doesn't matter that i don't have piles of discarded grape skins lying around (yes, you oenophiles, they are making mostly white in this area). i have literally TENS of fruit flies in my house, and they are driving me crazy, one by one. and evidently, contrary to popular belief, they live 10 - 19 days.

yolk yolk

so this morning i was making my normal breakfast of egg whites, and i cracked open a double-yolked egg. i incorrectly assumed that this would produce a set of twin chickens, as i think most would. i did a little reasearch and found this information at http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/double-yolked-eggs-are-two-yolks-better-than-one.html

Double Yolkers appear when ovulation occurs too rapidly, or when one yolk somehow gets "lost" and is joined by the next yolk. Double yolkers may be by a pullet whose productive cycle is not yet well synchronized. They're occasionally laid by a heavy-breed hen, often as an inherited trait.

About 1 in 1000 eggs has a double yolk so it isn't all that rare. In some countries, markets sell cartons of double yolked eggs.

Throughout history and in different cultures, finding a double yolk has been considered to mean anything from an impending wedding to a financial windfall to a death in the family.

So would a double yolked egg produce twins?

Probably not:
... the presence of the two yolks would generally lead to an unsuccessful hatch. The nutritional value of the egg white, which is an important food supply for the embryo is insufficient for the two embyros.

has anyone else ever found one of these? Just curious...

p.s. i'm hoping for the financial windfall.

50 euros

so i ran by the bank today to pull some money out of the geldautomat. that's atm to you guys. i was reminded of the last time i visited this particular bank branch...

last time we lived here i opened a deutsche bank account. bills are paid directly from your account here (no checks), so it's a necessity living in germany. i went ahead and kept it open, thank goodness, and by the time we got back we had 50 euros left and waiting for us our second time around.

sean was never listed on the account, so the first month we were here, we went in armed with passports to get his name added and order him his very own EC carte/debit card. also necessary here since many places don't take credit cards, and we're not always very good about carrying around lots of cash.

so we get to the counter, and the cashier helps us get all of the paperwork in order to make the changes. just when we're done, he asks us if we would like to open a savings account. we say no. he then looks at us, apparently very genuinely concerned, and says, "you should really start thinking about putting something aside for your future."

poor guy thought all we had to show for all of our (okay, mostly sean's) hard work was 50 euros/75 dollars. it was all i could do not to bust out laughing while i explained to him that we did in fact have not only a savings account, but other investments as well, all of them located in america.

the jumbo hostel

i've always loved planes... for a long time i didn't necessarily love flying in them, but i have always loved watching them. growing up in houston, near intercontinental airport, my father and i would play this game in the car to see who could name the airline first. i'll never forget the first time i saw southwest's shamu plane in the air. moving near an international airport, the game has become a whole lot more interteresting due to the increase in airlines, and less interesting because i always seem to be playing alone. it's a lot more fun shouting out airline names when you have a competitor. instead, i have sean on his blackberry. ; )

one of my greatest airplane experiences so far was a few years ago when sean upgraded one of our transatlantic flights, and we flew in the top deck of a 747. it's happened twice since then, but the thrill of climing up those stairs (on a plane!!!) that first flight can't be replicated.

but it can be topped. by a night in the cockpit suite on the jumbo hostel, with a panoramic view of stockholm, sweden's arlanda airport. i've always wanted to go to stockholm, too. thank goodness it's not the jumbo hostel in siberia's novosibirsk tolmachevo airport.

sean knows that this is all i want for my birthday, christmas, all of the remaining holidays in 2008 and 2009 if that's what it takes. sigh. i love planes.

UPDATE:

a test...

mom... a challenge. leave a comment, and not only will i take you to london in december, i'll take you shopping on oxford street and we will have tea with the queen. okay, maybe we won't have tea with the queen, but we can have tea NEAR the queen.

come on, figure it out. as far as i know, there are only about three people reading this blog. i want proof that there are four of you.

the luckiest girl in the world

i truly am the luckiest girl in the world today.

we were just getting back from our trip to frankfurt. the three dogs came with me, and we all walked around for a bit. i assumed they were empty.

i needed to stop by bauhaus (german version of home depot) to get some stain, so i left rena and mara secure in the car in the parking garage, and boney came with me inside for the 5 minutes it took to get what i needed.

we got back in the car, and boney started to pant, but i assumed it was excitement. it was not. when we got home, she immediately ran as fast as she could to the back door, and took the nastiest watery poop she's ever had.

it scares me to think how close i probably was to having to clean it up off of the floor of bauhaus. poor boney.

lucky mommy.