April Highs and Lows 2015

I just realized a few hours ago that today is the last day of April! Tomorrow is a holiday here - May Day / Labor Day - and we're planning to go for a drive in the Black Forest in our new car, which I actually enjoy driving! More on that shortly.

Things are picking up again. There's been some sun this month, mowing and weeding season has begun, it's warming up, and everything looks more cheery even when there are dark clouds overhead. It's amazing what leaf buds and blossoms on trees and blooming flowers can do for a person's mood, isn't it? April was a good month with one major and extended lowlight. Read on...

HIGHS

•  my Schwiegermutter staying with us for a week around Easter and the two day trips she and I took together - one to Nöttingen and one to Rottweil.

Rottweil

• being asked by a founder of Multicoolty to do an interview for their website!


• one of M's employees (I'd call him a friend of mine, but he's German and probably wouldn't go that far) fixing my sluggish Nexus tablet by wiping the data and loading the factory image magic, so now it's not so slow anymore! 


• passing 21,900 hits on this blog. Woot! Feelin' like a celebrity...(yeah, not quite).


• our favorite restaurant adding my blog to their website's "interessante Links"


• Spargel (asparagus) season has begun!!


• Having lunch in Reutlingen with my new friend HC, who agreed to be my Sprachpartnerin (language partner) and then touring a riding stable where she used to ride and is still active. I also chatted with an 86-year-old woman who was preparing her horse for a riding lesson and met a 3-year-old son of the dressage wonderhorse Totilas.

• a day trip with my Schwiegermutter to Ulm


• this meal at Straub's Krone
  
  

  

  Bondorfer Spargel mit Kartoffeln und Sauce Hollandaise
  und Lachsfilet mit Bärlauchkruste
  (Asparagus and potatoes with salmon)

• flowers, flowers, flowers!
  
  
  

• watching bits of the Rolex 3-day event (horse show) in Lexington, Kentucky online, where local boy Michael Jung won first and third on his two fabulous horses Fischerrocana and La Biosthetique Sam.


• picking up our new car, which M ordered in December. When the salesman brought us into the room where the car was waiting, it was actually covered by a soft shiny tarp, which he then invited me to pull off. That was a bit overdone, but that's fine. Though I have hated driving here since arriving 2 1/2 years ago, I actually like driving this car! I'll admit sheepishly that it's an automatic, which means one less thing for me to think about while driving. I'm planning to drive to Nagold tomorrow, and home from Freudenstadt (M will do the rest of the driving). 

new car - darker shade of gray than the old one
(plus 4-wheel drive and memory seats)

LOWS

• tending the hellcat who lives in M's office while its human was on holiday for more than two weeks. It's a cute cat as long as it's asleep and you stay at least five feet away from it. It only took five days this time for the vicious beast to draw first blood, while M was trying to free it from the harness it wears to go outside.


• taking a bunch of "selfies" so I'd have an updated picture of myself for the Multicoolty interview - totally awkward even though I was home alone. Since I don't have anything like a Smartphone, a "selfie" in my world involves a tripod, my Canon 40D and its 10-second self timer.


• catching another cold - what the heck?


• discovering at about 335 feet up the church tower in Ulm that I have a touch of Höhenangst (fear of heights)

Neither High nor Low

The 17-day daily and very effective reminder of why we do not and will not ever have pets.

Stinky* the Hellcat

*name has been changed to annoy the vicious

Other Pics from the Month

Kapellenkirche, Rottweil

Römisches Legionsbad (Roman bath), Rottweil

Ulm on the Danube

The reason I love collies and writing - Albert Payson Terhume (1872-1942)
My other favorite writer as a child - Marguerite Henry