License Plates

I don't generally blog from home but here I am. Some of you know of my lasting infatuation with license plates. If you don't, here's the story. When I was in high school my parents bought a new car. My mom, the observant one, said, "I sure hope the license plate isn't a ZIT." I was confused, and wondered why the heck she would say that. Turns out, she knew the trick about license plates: In California, they are issued alphabetically, so the first one was 000 AAA 000. Then 001 AAA. And so on. So when they bought the car, the state was on license plates such as 000 ZIT and 001 ZIT etc. Turns out, mom didn't need to worry. Our license plate was xxx ZYT. Hmmmm. Maybe she should have worried a bit more, because how else would someone pronounce ZYT but "zit?" But things made sense then. We'd had an old station wagon: 535 EOL, and an old '68 dodge dart: ZST 196. My dad's dodge colt: 137 UJQ. Later we drove that colt to Texas, and then it was HCQ something. Texas followed the same license plate pattern. And so does Oregon.
It's fun when license plates spell things besides ZIT. I've seen vans that have the letters CAR, and cars that have the letters VAN and VCR. We're generally unfortunate in the plates we get, things like UJQ, HCQ, PGQ, VBB, VKZ, YCF, and XJZ. We gave our girls personalized plates for Christmas one year: BUN 1 and BUN 2. It's what they call each other. I don't know why. I hope to see a plate on a VW bug that says BUG (by accident, not by design). Right now the most recent plate I've seen is EDF. Soon there will be an EGG. Maybe it will be on a yellow car.

home again

And seriously jet lagged. I tried to stay awake as long as I could, so I went to bed at 9. I woke up at 3 am. 3! If I count right, in the last 54 hours I have slept for about 10 hours. If you would like to sell me a ladder to the moon, today is probably the day to do it. I'd think it made perfect sense.

Crochet, part 2

And here is the scarf again. I got some of my friends to help me hold it down so that I could take a picture. Now the body of the scarf is 2/3 done. After I finish the skein of multi colored yarn I'll figure out how to put the fringe on.

Travel

I have now been to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Hessigheim, Bessigheim, and Bietigheim (I think). On Sunday we drove to Rothenburg, checked into our hotel, and then went for a walk. Rothenburg is one of just 3 cities in Germany that have a castle wall all the way around them. We walked along/on/near most of the wall. In some places it was made of wooden planks, and some places were made of stone or brick. There were a few too many places that had planks or ceilings above our heads that were a little too short for Rob. He thunked his head a few times. Ouch! Even though most "stores" are not allowed to open on Sundays, a few were open because they sold beverages/food. So Rob finally found the perfect Bavarian hat. We had dinner in a "classic" German restaurant, with great steak for me and goose or duck for Rob. On Monday morning we drove to Hessigheim to meet Laura and Jorg and their girls. Jorg grew up in Hessigheim and we enjoyed seeing his hometown. From there we followed them to Bessigheim where we walked thru a really old part of town (some buildings from the 1300's), and then we drove to Bietigheim, where we had lunch, walked, played on the playground(s) and walked some more. I think that all day the temperature hovered in the mid to upper 20's. Brrr! Finally, we drove home. It was a very fun day, and so good to see old friends again.

Christmas and after

On Christmas day we got up late, had breakfast, opened gifts, went for a walk, watched a movie, ate coffee cake (a tradition) and had a roast beef dinner (also our tradition!). The roast beef was roasted on a rotisserie spit in our toaster oven. I had to get creative when it came time to tie the roast so that it wouldn't droop on the spit. I ended up using embroidery floss. There was no option of finding an open store, because here EVERY store is closed on Christmas day. In fact, they all close by 2 pm on Christmas Eve. And, to our surprise, they were all still closed the day AFTER Christmas. I'm glad we had leftover roast beef! We went for a short walk that day too (ok, so every day we go for a walk of some sort) but it was sooo cold that we didn't stay out for long. I won't complain, I've heard it's been even colder and much wetter in Oregon. I wish I could have been there to see all the snow, but cabin fever may have gotten me! On another topic, in the last week two sets of friends have become grandparents, so congratulations to Brad and Darsy, and Gail and Joe!

Bunny!

I told Rob a few weeks ago that I needed a snuggly creature for when I get homesick and lonely. And tonight, I met my new friend. He's perfect!

Crochet

A couple weeks ago when I was at Hertie looking for bias tape or thread or something like that, I saw some yarn and fell in love. When Lauri was here for a visit two weeks ago, she wanted some yarn too, so that she could knit on her plane ride back to Oregon. I took it as a sign that the yarn and I were fated to be together. I decided that I should learn to crochet. But I don't know how, and seeing pictures of the process isn't very helpful. So I am learning by trial and error (lots of error). Here's a picture of what I've got so far. By the way, it's a scarf and I figure it's about 1/4 done.