Damn, we have a…

Feb 18, 2007 ~ filed under: English & USA ~ 3 comments »

in our

mouse drawn by mr. n., house by missy c.

Weather chaos on Valentine’s Day

Feb 16, 2007 ~ filed under: English & Natey&Cola & USA & Visuelles ~ 0 comments »

The weather is totally weird here in New Mexico. When you think it is already spring and sometimes as warm as it could be summer (remember my sunburn), then the weather forecast reports about a huge snowstorm and you do not want to believe it.
Well, the forecast was right and we got a lot of snow, right on Valentine’s Day.
Valentine’s Day, either you love it or you hate it. Mr. N. and I owe it to chance that this day always is our half-year anniversary. This year we had our two and a half year anniversary. Wow…time flies by fast.
N. had a day off and we wanted to do something; go on a trip. When I looked out of the window in the morning it looked like this:

It snowed a little bit, but it did not look like the snow will stay long.

Although it was not recommended to drive on the roads that day, we gave it a try and packed a sleeping bag and warm clothes in the case that we get stuck in the snow. ;o)
We drove on the so called “Turquoise Trail”, one of many trails south of Santa Fe. After half an hour we thought, well, we cannot see much, because it is so foggy because of the snow storm. “Nice” car drive through a white-grey landscape where you could not even see the mountains any more. Too sad. We had a good time though. I will post some of the photos soon when I have more time.
The weather climate changed immense on our journey. While we had only a little bit of snow in the beginning of the trip, it snowed heavily later. The roads got worse and we were happy that our car still has the snow tires on.

At home we relaxed a little while and afterwards we drove into town (Santa Fe) to eat dinner at our favorite sushi place, the Kohami. It snowed very bad on the way. It was an exhausting drive, because N. could not see much, but we could make it in time (did not lose our reservations).
Because of Valentine’s Day they had many guests, the favorite tables had been taken, but by chance our favorite table became free when we arrived. The former guests just left. Lucky us.
We ordered our favorite sushi and waited. After about 20 minutes the waitress brought us a Miso soup for free. We didn’t know why, but we guessed because we waited a little bit longer until the food came. It was not long, in my opinion. I mean, it was their second most busiest day of the year and I can understand that they have more guests than on normal days…but we were happy with the soup. Yummy. In the end we payed less than we expected. Again we thought they might have taken stuff off the bill, because of our waiting for the food. The staff at Kohnami is very nice and very friendly. We love that place.

Happy and full we went home. It did not snow that much anymore. Good. But we saw at least five accidents on the way back and police car lights everywhere. New Mexicans do not know how to drive, was N.’s conclusion. I have not seen that many accidents on one day before. Ok, it snowed a lot, but the roads weren’t icy. They just had a layer of snow. If you don’t brake hard, you don’t slide. If you leave enough space to your front man you don’t slide into him. N. said it is much better to drive on fresh snow than later when it becomes flat and icy.
A long part of the interstate, which goes to our home, had been closed because of the snow storm (or because of all these accidents).
We were on a slow road next to the interstate and then, since the interstate was closed, we had all these crazy drivers in front of us. I wondered how less distance they leave to their front man. No wonder, why they crash easily into each other. Weird NM drivers. They live in the mountains and should know how to drive on snow.
Well, at least we arrived safely at home.

I did not want to believe it, when N. on the following morning said, “it snowed a lot last night, hon”. He heard a loud “oh noooooo” from me. What I then saw, was this:

We got the same amount of snow that we had with the last snow storm. It is so weird. A few days ago I got a bad sunburn while sitting outside, and now all this snow again. It is too early to put the winter clothes away…too early.

Hope you had a good Valentine’s Day.
Hannah, thank you very much for the nice e-card!

Health issues

Feb 13, 2007 ~ filed under: A-life & English & USA ~ 4 comments »

I was 16 and went with my best friend A. to Rendsburg (a small town near my home town in Germany) to get my belly button pierced.
My friend wanted to get a piercing through her tongue. We both were a little bit nervous because back at that time (it was 13 years ago), the whole thing with piercings was quite new in Germany and there weren’t many professional studios who offered this modern stuff.
A. and I arrived at the address and looked up into the sky. We stood in front an ugly sky scraper in a very poor looking neighborhood. It made us feel uncomfortable, but now that we are here, we want to do it. We opened the front door and went inside the house into a small hallway. There weren’t stairs, only an old and not really reliable looking elevator. We looked at each other, both frightened. We tried not to touch the dirty and stinky elevator too much, hopped in, pressed the button for the floor that we needed to go to, and waited for our journey to death…or better journey to the piercing experience. I don’t know how, but we made it. The piercing guy opened his door and we went inside. A lot of different smells reached our fine noses. This was not a piercing studio, it was just the living room of a weird guy. Weird, because he had two or three very fat long-hair cats, his flat looked kind of messy and anyway this place looked dirty. I doubted that this was a good idea to come here. The guy was friendly and told us how he would do it and gave us a few thick photo albums that showed his work. It showed people who pose with their new piercing or tattoo. A lot of these people were (half-)naked. Either man or woman, we could see all kinds of external sex organs with sometimes so many piercings that there was no skin left ‘free’. To look at these photos didn’t give me a better feeling. I didn’t know what to think about the piercing guy. I hoped that it would be enough only to life my shirt a little bit to get my belly button pierced. A. was first. I saw how the piercing guy put on latex gloves, started to do preparing antiseptic things, pushed one of his cats between his legs away (with the gloves! yummy..)…and finally my friend A. had a piercing through the tongue. Then it was my turn. He sprayed ice-spray on my belly to make it numb. The pain of the ice-spray was worse than the actual pierce. All done.
That is all I can remember from that day, when we got our first (any my only) piercing. I never had any infections with it (although the whole process in that dirty environment was weird). I never took my piercing out, not even when doctors wanted me to (e.g. when my knee was x-rayed).

Last week Mr. N. went to an acupuncture appointment in town. I accompanied him. The “acuboy” (as I call the acupuncture guy here) was very friendly and explained his work procedure to me. Why he uses the different needles and what happens when he does this or that. Very interesting. I always wanted to know more about acupuncture and have never seen it ‘live’. After a long talk about health issues and Chinese medicine I asked him what he thinks about metal in a body, like piercings. He said that there are different theories and one is that, especially with belly button piercings, it blocks the ‘chi’ flowing in one’s body. Hmmm.
I thought that I have a lot of health issues since…yes, since I am 17/18 years old. That was when I got hay fever and one by one all my other allergies. This was the first time I thought about a relation to my piercing with these allergies. I never took it out for a longer time so how shall I know? The talk to the acuboy influenced me quite a bit. I removed my piercing in the morning of the day when I got my sunburn. Now I have a quite large hole in my skin. It looks weird…without it. I lived so long with it that I think my belly looks totally different now. But it is maybe only my view. N. (always diplomatic) said I look fine with or without it. He likes Cola belly. ;o)

If you go back to the post called ‘Die Sonne brennt’, you can see my belly without the piercing. It is not the best belly picture (and don’t look in my face!), but you can see the hole. Sigh. I didn’t ever think about removing it before I will be pregnant and it grows out or so.
Well, I will see, if I feel better without metal in my skin. Anyway, belly button piercings only look good in a well-trained, strong, and muscular belly… I think, nowadays, it is cool to not have a belly button piercing. Yeah! Back to the roots, back to nature, back to a plain beautifulness of a body…whatsoever I already convinced myself.

Discovering the environment

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

What a perfect day to go fo a hike!

The weather is getting nicer and we spend more time outside. In the last two weeks we went for a few hikes in the near mountains and environment of Santa Fe (Bandelier National Monument, Bear Canyon, Tsankawi pueblo, and another one that I don’t know the name).

For those, who haven’t seen the pictures in my gallery yet, I will post some from the Bear Canyon trip now.

The Bear Canyon hike was the adventurous one, because we walked behind the maintained paths into the wildness. Wildness means one only had a 30 centimeters wide path to walk on and if stepped too much left or right, one sinked down into the deep snow (up to knee deep). It also means that, if you walk beyond the maintained paths, that you hike on your own risk. Yeah, we like adventures like these, so we didn’t even think about stopping.

Here a photo of one of the paths through the forest:

You can’t see it very well, but the snow beside the path was very deep.

In real life my Mr. N. is a monkey because he climbs on everything that you can climb on. When he means hiking, he rather means climbing. So we climbed up a little mountain (little? fo me it was huge) that had such a steep gradient, nobody would have the idea to “hike” it up. We did. Half way up the mountain we enjoyed the first great view over the area.
On this picture you can see the gradient a little bit (was very exhausting for Cola with bad stamina):

and enjoying the warm sun beams

Mostly, we had to hike through very deep snow. Sometimes we found dry areas where the sun melted the snow. Good for a picnic. N. always, as monkeys do, climbed up very fast, and Cola had to keep up with him as good as possible…pant (hechel)…I was very dizzy and out of breath most of the time. Yes, I am honest.
Here our picnic place on the mountain (N. build a chair for us to sit on):
(look at his pants, how soaked they are *g*) and our view

N. wanted to hike..eh climb up to the top and every ten minutes he said “we’re almost there, hon”…I didn’t want to give up, so I followed him.
He promised that we will have a much better view from the very top of the mountain, but unfortunately the trees in front of us were too high to see much more than before…well, at least we (I) made it to the top.

I was more scared to hike the whole way down because of the gradient and the slippery snow. This time N. was right as he said that I should slide down; it would be much faster and easier as well. Sliiiide down? I thought he is joking. If you would have seen how deep and steep it went down, you probably would have waited for helicopter help or something.
No, it was not bad. Actually it was totally fun! The snow held me well in my slide tracks and I only had to watch out for hidden stones or stuff that would let me trip over. This is how it looked like, when I slid down with tremendous speed (unfortunately the photo cannot show my speed) ;o) :

My shoes and pants were totally soaked with snow and ice, but I didn’t have cold feet the whole time. Good winter boots. I love them.

When we hiked back the sun already started to go down and it was chili. I was glad that we found out of the forest :). When we looked back
we were proud of our adventurous hike. (On the picture I marked the mountain we hiked up)
N. could not feel his toes anymore and he had ice-cold snow water in his boots, but in the end we felt great after that day. Excluded: my muscle ache that I got later…

Phone terror

Feb 9, 2007 ~ filed under: English & USA ~ 1 comment »

…or how your credit fades without even talking to people on your phone. Grrr…I just got another of these ad calls…I saw the 800 number (another state) and interrupted the call by pressing my hang-up button. Then I heard a beep (alarm), which means I have a new voice mail. Weird. I was not sure, if a marketing company would even leave a voice mail. Most of the calls are made by computers and you listen to recorded voices. Very nice, that you cannot even interact with the person. Maybe it is better for them, because I can easily be furious about such things. For instance, I could do something with their number 800-742-6390, but it probably is just a fake number, too.
Out of curiosity I checked it and…GRRR, yes, it was “them”. Damn. This reminded me on the tip from Hannah, to register my phone on donotcall.gov. Yesterday the site was down, but today I can register. It only took a few minutes and I only needed to provide my email address for activating the service. It said that companies should stop calling me in the next 31 days. For the next five years, until 2012, my phone number is on the do-not-call-list. I hope this works. I will see and report.