Finally a winter photo post

Mar 7, 2012 ~ filed under: A-life & English & Visuelles ~ 1 comment »

Oh well…I just cannot keep up with my blog. I have so many photos and videos that I would like to upload but I cannot do that from home and my laptop is so slow/old to even handle videos.
I decided I am going to wait for the new macbook pro to come out in hopefully April (if the rumors are true). I can’t wait to actually cut and edit all the videos that I have accumulated over the last months, ehm, years. LOL

When I started writing this entry (which was before Valentine’s Day) we had the little bit of snow that looked like it doesn’t stick around too much longer. Everything was on the melt and the green came through. It felt like spring is here (temperature-wise). I honestly didn’t want the winter to be over yet. (I thought I’d never think or even say this!!)
But it felt like winter hasn’t really come yet. I’ve heard so much about the Maine winters. But, where was the cold? I felt colder in Northern Germany, although coastal, but still. Okay, we had a bit of snow over Christmas and here and there, but it was so mild and so sunny almost every single day so far! I mean I love it!

Snow AND sun = awesome! Who would disagree. If the winters are always like this here (unfortunately I was told they aren’t) I want to be nowhere else in winter.

We thought we might as well use our snowmobile before the snow melts. This was so much fun and I really hope we get more snow to do it again – snowmobiling action with mr.natey as crazy driver and missycola as screaming….missy on the back seat:

These things go F-A-S-T! OMG, my heart skipped a beat while I was trying not to slip off the seat. With the uneven frozen ground it is not possible to foresee the bumps and jumps. I felt like I wanted to wear a helmet at the speed of 50 miles/hr (~100km/h)!!! My smile almost froze in the cold wind, but I was happy like a child.

BUT THEN – two weeks or so later, we got another snowstorm. A real one. I mean a snowstorm that actually deserves the name. LOTS OF SNOW in a short time. Yeahhhh – this was the snow I was awaiting the whole winter!

We were excited like little kids. “Let’s build a snowman!” was one of the first words I spoke that early morning, when I woke up in the perfect winter wonderland and the snow on the tree branches looked so heavy as if the branch can hardly hold it any longer.

And before even having the first coffee and before breakfast, we jumped into our snow suits and ran outside into the backyard:

But what are we building? Huh? Noooo, you’re wrong.

In fact we we’re building this:

Still not sure what it is?

GrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRR, meet the CoNa-IceBear:

Also, the second snowstorm brought a lot more snow than the last one, so we could go on another and even better snowmobile ride, because there was more thick snow to slide on.

I made a few videos from this ride and wanted to use imovie to cut them together, but it’s a nightmare. My laptop is too slow to handle this in a decent time (and I am too impatient to wait almost 35 minutes to import a small 130MB file locally! I mean, the video is on my computer already; I’m just trying to open it in imovie. But I guess I need more than 512MB Ram. *cough*
Honestly, who wants to donate me a new laptop? How could I endure this ongoing situation for so long? It’s awful. Anyway, I’m working on getting it done (and hope that Apple launches the new macbook sooner as soon!!!) and will upload it with the next post.

With the last days of the season I enjoy the snow and think ‘Winter is a beautiful season that I have really missed in my years in down under’ (but I never had this nice snow in Germany, so that’s why I thought I don’t miss winter ;)):

Moving registrars – check

Feb 23, 2012 ~ filed under: Blog & English ~ 0 comments »

I was too optimistic. My blog has now transferred from one registrar (GoDaddy) to the other (namecheap), but the latter wasn’t such a great help. I don’t know if anyone has noticed it, but my blog was offline for A-L-M-O-S-T A W-E-E-K!!! Although namecheap promised to have no or very limited downtime if I used their FreeDNS. Ha, as if.
In fact, whatever namecheap told me (in five different support chats) was wrong, because nothing worked and in the end GoDaddy solved it for me. It was a very simple error; the DNS was set wrong (and I knew it, but namecheap didn’t understand sh$t of my problem). Ok ok, I should not bash my new registrar already, but their (chat only) support really sucks. Let’s hope I don’t have to deal with them too often.

Now I really want to make the right decision with my new hosting provider, because that’s where it is important that my site is running strong and reliably 365 days out of 365 days. Ok, here I am dreaming again.

I must say, I never really had any problems with GoDaddy, besides the fact that I cannot view/use/maintain my website at home because of the known GoDaddy+Wildblue+Mac – problem. Their phone support is very good. And I called them quite a few times. They are always very friendly and mostly helpful. Too bad that we have shitty Wildblue Internet, which doesn’t work together with GoDaddy on my Mac. But since we cannot change the internet provider, I have to change my hosting.

Well, now that my blog is finally up and running with namecheap as new registrar, I will look into moving to a new webhost. I only need to decide between the two that I have in mind…stable*host or host*gator…

Why is it so difficult to choose the right webhost? Why are there 99.8% bad ones out there? All-inkl.com, if you read this, please please offer abroad payment methods like paypal or similar, so I can move my sites back to you. (heart) Until then, I have to swim with the sharks it looks like.

Initiated and Submitted

Feb 9, 2012 ~ filed under: Blog & English & Natey&Cola ~ 0 comments »

As of now, February 9, I initiated the domain transfer to namecheap.com. I have changed the domain name server from my old registrar (godaddy) to the new (namecheap), which should insure that my site has almost no downtime during the process. When this is done, I’ll connect the site with a new hosting provider.

I am so excited that I’ll soon be able to blog from home, I could go

Ok, calm down…the birdie on the other shoulder says. You’re not there yet. Who knows, maybe the new hosting provider, which is the more important part than the registrar, will screw it all up as well? There are so many ways how one can screw up. You never know what you get. That’s the world we live in.

****
Tonight we celebrate a little bit. The heartman submitted his phd-Thesis (Doctorate) and the missy is already very proud that and how he has endured the last, today exactly, four years writing that research paper with all those (mostly ridiculous) problems he had to deal with at the university in Perth Australia. Finally, he/we can close THAT book and move on with our lives.

We were planning on going to the movies to watch “The Grey”, but missed the show and are now watching “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” on (rental) DVD.
When I was younger I was kinda scared of the first “Planet of the Apes” movie. (*g*) Let’s see how I cope now – all grown up (you’d think, but I don’t).

****
Please make the missy happy and take part in the poll and vote – in the sidebar. So far no one has voted. Sniff sniff… big-cola-tears and sad-face and a hanging-head and big-blinking-eyes asking you for ONE click.

[thanks]

503′s and even more convinced to move

Feb 8, 2012 ~ filed under: Blog & English ~ 0 comments »

I also get a lot of these with my hosting provider ‘GoDaddy’.

503 Service Temporarily Unavailable.

Argh…always when you need the site to work…it doesn’t. As if I don’t already feel I am cut off with GoDaddy and Wildblue. Thank you very much for making my life even harder.

I never had problems with my previous hosting provider (all-inkl.com) in Germany, but oh well; they didn’t accept to pay via paypal and that’s why I am now stuck with less good options in the same price level – like (m)ass-hosting providers.

P.S. Don’t forget to vote (in the sidebar). Thank you!

Blog on the move (EN-DE)

Feb 7, 2012 ~ filed under: Blog & Deutsch & English ~ 0 comments »

EN
If you are a regular reader you might have noticed that the quantity of posts has picked up. – Yes, I missed blogging and have spent way too much time in other networks that start with F and finish with book. I realized that I am way happier when I blog instead of wasting time on F-book. So, I closed my account and returned to my blog, which will be seven (7!) this year!

One reason why I haven’t been blogging very often in the last few months is that, back in Australia I was way too busy with my 3 jobs, and later even just with that one job. I also thought I don’t have much to talk about. Now here in the US, I have difficulties blogging from home, because our internet provider (Wildblue) plus my hosting provider (godaddy) plus being on a Mac means I cannot access my blog; it is literally not there. I get an empty page. Strange, but true. So, I have to take my blog to another internet spot in town (hej, we live in the country at the moment…) to be able to blog.

I wanted to wait it out until we move to an area with better conditions, but as you may know, I’m too impatient. If I’m not on facebook any longer, I want to fill my blog with stories. Therefore I decided to MOVE my blog to a new provider. I decided to move my domain to namecheap.com and my hosting to…probably either hostgator.com or inmotion hosting.

My blog might not be reachable for some time, but downtime should be minimal.

Soon more from missycola and her life on the colaplanet. Yay!

DE
Die regelmaessigen Leser haben es wahrscheinlich schon bemerkt; es gibt wieder mehr zu lesen auf planetcola.com. Ja, das liegt daran, dass ich gemerkt habe, dass ich viel zu viel Zeit im F-Book verbracht habe und somit habe ich es einfach mal zugemacht, das F-Buch. Ich habe gemerkt, dass mit das Bloggen fehlt und dass es mir viel mehr Spass macht als das stundenlange “Zeitvergeuden” auf z.B. jenem F-Book, von daher bin ich nun zurueck in meinem kleinen feinen Blog, dass dieses Jahr schon sieben (7!) Jahre alt wird.

Ein Grund warum ich in den letzten Monaten so wenig geschrieben habe, ist, dass ich in Australien mit 3 Jobs, und selbst nachher mit nur einem Job einfach nicht die Zeit gefunden habe, nebenbei noch zu bloggen. Jetzt in den USA ist es mir von zu Hause nicht moeglich zu bloggen, da ich mit Wildblue (Internetanbieter) + GoDaddy (Webseitenbetreiber) + Mac keine Verbindung zu meiner Webseite bekomme. Klingt eigenartig, ist aber so, und auch bekannt. (Natuerlich streiten beide Parteien alles ab.)
Somit muss ich mein Mac Laptop immer ins naechste Dorf schleppen, um dort das Internet zu nutzen, bzw. mein Blog zu beschreiben.

Das hat jetzt ein Ende! Nein, meine Geduld ist nun zu Ende!
Ich ziehe um…vielmehr mein Blog. Die Domain zieht um zu namecheap.com und der neue hosting Anbieter wird entweder hostgator oder inmotion hosting. Zuallererst zieht aber nur die Domain um.

Es kann also in den kommenden Tagen passieren, dass das Blog zeitweilig nicht erreichbar ist.

Aber keine Sorge, denn ich bin bald wieder (und dann uneingeschraenkt) da, juchee!
(klopft mal auf Holz fuer mich; ich hab hier grad nix greifbar; danke!)

A new cola-poll that seeks answers!

~ filed under: Blog & Deutsch & English ~ 0 comments »

EN
Dear blog readers,
it has been a (long) while, but I’ve just started a poll in my sidebar and would be grateful if you could stop by (if you read this in a feed reader) to leave your vote.
Thanks, gracias, and danke!

DE
Meine lieben Blogleser,
Es ist schon sehr lange her, dass es hier in meinem Blog eine Umfrage gab, aber ich habe soeben eine neue Umfrage gestartet und wuerde mich freuen, wenn Du kurz vorbeisurfst (falls Du dies grad im feedreader liest) und Deine Stimme abgibst.

Thanks, gracias, and danke!

missy-in-a-new-mission-to-defeat-facebook (and write more HERE!)

Loving the US

~ filed under: English & USA & Visuelles ~ 0 comments »

and especially Maine for this:

Sweet potato fries with ketchup (tomato sauce for Australians) and mayonnaise (typical German I guess).

Even better than chocolate; can you believe?
Oh, when did I have chocolate last? Can’t even remember…missycola is on a new health plan.

Australia Influenced

~ filed under: A-life & English & Natey&Cola ~ 0 comments »

Why do men never listen?

We are at the beach, mr.Natey and I and a few other people we don’t know. There are quite a few people in the water, but somehow I don’t feel comfortable. Not only because it’s winter. No, something isn’t right.

All of a sudden I see shadows in the water. They are about an arm length long and quickly moving. Sharks?

I am pretty sure, but mr.Natey doesn’t think so. He wants to go into the water. I say “Please don’t go, there are sharks in there.” He’s going a step forward and I’m now whining: “Please don’t go. I promise you I’ll cook you dinner every night until the rest of your day, but please don’t go into the water!” I’m totally frightened, but mr.Natey thinks I’m overreacting, as so often.

Then I’m going a few steps back and see all those sharks lined up on the shore. They are standing on their back-fin and they organized themselves from small shark on the left to humongous and extremely large (2-story-house tall) on the right. A line of about 6 sharks, all shapes and sizes. They are kind of smiling at me and the other people at the beach.

Nathan, oh why, is going towards the shore and is lining up next to the largest shark with his back to the ocean. He’s like “Look at me, I’m not afraid, I can even stand next to the biggest sharks and it’s all fine.”

Then, all of a sudden, the humongous shark smirks and swings his left fin, which is about the size of an American-sized van, and hits and pushes (or rather smashes) mr.Natey way far away into the deep and dark ocean. No one would survive that hit. Not even a mr.Natey “hero”.

Why do men never listen to their missy?

[image by C.Haugen]

Dreams

Jan 26, 2012 ~ filed under: A-life & English ~ 2 comments »

[image by Elfleda]

Dreams are
…slippery things.
…like stars…you may never touch.
…so difficult to remember.
…making you smarter.
…answers to questions we haven’t yet figured out how to ask.
…unique.
…real.

Really real?
Well, that’s what g00gle spits out when I ask what dreams are.

I have always been a very vivid dreamer. I sometimes feel like I have a second life, living it in my dreams. Often I “act” so much that the sleeping partner next to me wakes up and thinks I am awake – but I am just in my dreams; even when sitting up, moving around; all with eyes wide open.

It doesn’t surprise me anymore that my fantasy often goes to the extreme, but what really surprised me, so much that I want to write it down here, are the last two dreams I had this week.

The first one was about a former work colleague/friend from my last job in Australia. I don’t remember what it was about exactly, but the morning after the dream I had a facebook message in my email, about me being missed and that someone called with my old work phone which apparently still displayed my name; to the shock of the friend.
Isn’t that strange – first the dream and then the email?

The other dream was similar, but slightly different.
I dreamt about a girlfriend I knew when I was a young teenager (maybe 12/13). I have no idea how she looks like these days, but in the dream I just knew it was her. We were happy that we met and reunited; we hugged and talked and laughed. She was actually not a very close friend, but we shared an important part (the party part, ya know? *g*) of my teenage years together.

But hold tight-here it comes:

When I woke up the next day and checked my email at around 10.30am, I had an email from the social network stayfriends with the following message:

The email said: “Why don’t you go visit the profile of your friend M.J.?”

My jaw dropped almost onto the floor!!! My eyes stared at her name. I had t blink to realize I am not dreaming any more.

Nathan always said I’m psychic. I think I’m at a high at the moment.

Another psychic situation that happened on the same day. We were driving a small side road quite a ways away from where we live and I somehow thought that we probably see Nathan’s mom driving by. I don’t know why I had that thought, because it was rather silly, because his mom works in a totally different area (other town) and would not drive this road really on a daily or even weekly basis. And we drive that road multiple times a fortnight and never met her on the road.

Well….you guessed it, although the little side road had no traffic, a few moments, seconds later her silvery car just came into our direction.

I am a bit scared!
I’m hoping to dream of my future job next. Haha.

Season change

Apr 8, 2011 ~ filed under: A-life & English ~ 0 comments »

And by the way….this is really exciting news!!! How could I forget!

After 6 months without rain, it finally rained yesterday! Unbelieeeevable!

It was so weird (to hear, smell, and see the rain…no I didn’t do a rain dance).
Unfortunately, the temperature also dropped quite a bit, from a very hot 35ºC weekend, to now 15ºC at night. Everything below 25º feels cold! Brrr.

That means:
* we had our first night since December that we slept without the fan next to our bed.

* we had our first evening tonight, where both doors to the street and the garden stayed closed.

* tonight is also the first night we sleep with our regular blanket (and not just with a thin sheet).

I can’t wait for the cosy cuddly time of the year; for more tea, hot chocolates, candles, oven bakings, less suncream on the skin, and finally cuddles from/with my heartman.