More from the Swiss Miss

With a possible hurricane bearing down on Florida, my attention turns even more to the yodeling greenery of the Swiss Alps.

I've become positively obsessed with obtaining one of these:




It's a Raclette Grill, which is a completely single function (well, mostly single functioning) that is the stuff of swell dinner parties in ol' CH. The idea is you place Raclette cheese in the little trays underneath the grill and then on top of that you grill sausages, potatoes, pita bread or anything you fancy really and top it with the grilled/melted cheese. Then you eat it with pickles and pickled onions as garnishes. I love cheese. No, I really, really love cheese. I like fondue a great deal (cheese fondue, mind you. I'm OK with the hot oil fondue but don't care for how smelly you get afterwards). But Raclette is far more savory and who the heck doesn't like slightly browned if not burned cheese? What is not to love?!

This is the first year I probably won't be hosting Thanksgiving OR Christmas. Raclette would be the bomb for Christmas Eve but, alas, it will not be this year.

It's nice to think about stupid things like this, when you're worried about things swirling in the Atlantic.

You Can't Stop Progress..or looking back

Why am I continuing to miss Oerlikon?! Today's flash back is remembering the time I decided I was sick of Migrol gas station food and wanted to try to find "anything." I ended up getting wicked lost and found a Thai restaurant. The menu was entirely in Thai and in German. Given my heritage, I should have had no problem with that but I was so tired and hungry and damp. Oerlikon's climate it that of sitting in the bottom of a very active spitoon. I moved on, not wanting to deal with the long line or the translation. I found a Coop supermarket and went in and found, yet again, nothing. Nothing that didn't require advanced cooking anyway. I remember buying chocolate and potato chips.

And as far as progress is concerned, I lost my tenth pound this week. I had challenged myself to lose 10 lbs by the end of October. I beat that by a month so now I want to lose another 10. But it paid off. Today I ran into a co-worker I haven't seen in ages and he looked at me surprised and said, "Look at YOU!" That was awesome.

far away, so close indeed

Oh how loverly a weekend it's been already. Yesterday at work was heavy on the politicking and annoyances but I left around 2pm to come home. Then it was alll good from there.

I got home and had a notice from DHL that a package was missed. It turns out it's a flat screen LCD monitor that work ordered for me so I can do imaging work at home. It's so pretty, I hope I can keep it for awhile or buy it off in the end. Then Jillann got here to help me set up for my party. I was pretty chuffed with the turn out and I thought I'd have a ton of martini (we made Appletinis and Cosmos) stuff left over but I actually barely had enough. Everyone sobered up well before they left and it was a very successful party and hopefully everyone got home OK. "Lucy and Ethel" (aka, Dawn and Maritza) cleaned my kitchen up while I was saying good bye to a couple folks so I had nothing to clean up afterwards except to run the vacuum.
After that I talked to another friend of mine til around 3am and finally went to bed.

I woke up at 7 and weighed myself. I have lost 8lbs in the last three weeks but last night's appletinis, enchiladas and molten chocolate brownie took that down to 6lbs. So, I took my grocery list and instead of driving my car (which is low on gas. however the value of the 4 gallons I probably have left is probably $45..hee!) I rode my bike to the market. I am getting in such better shape, it's amazing. There was a guy riding in front of me - probably a quarter mile ahead. I completely closed the gap and he fell way behind. I was also toting about 10 lbs of groceries on my back too. I'm thinking about focusing not so much on losing weight when I ride but I think next year I might really like to do a biking week in Europe. In order to do that, I have to get in a lot better shape but I know I can ride at a high speed for a bit over an hour but I have to be able to ride at a moderate speed for 8 hours on those trips.
At bare minimum, I'd like to be able to go to Austria or Southern Germany and ride there at least on the odd day trip.

So it's only 10:32 am and I feel like I've had a full weekend already. I'm hoping to get over to Epcot and to see Corpse Bride today or tomorrow.

Anyway, I didn't intend to journal about the minutae of my weekend thus far. I just had two weird urges - one to go fishing (??!) and the other to be jet lagged. I have no idea why I want to be jet lagged. I think I just miss that sensation of being hammered by culture shock and being in no condition to handle it. That fatigue, mixed with disbelief and a physical stupor that comes when you are starving at odd times in the day. There's nothing better than wanting an enormous breakfast at 3pm in the afternoon, local time. So you start drinking coffee, Red Bull or the local spritzer drink. And then dusk starts to arrive and instead of feeling the calm settle of the end of the day, you are getting bright eyed and bushy-tailed. Then around 9pm you start to get extremely tired because you're running around with usually only 3 or 4 hours of sleep and the night has fallen. So you go back to your hotel or your friends wonderful apartment in Germany, take a hot shower and hope your body will buy into the idea that it's 10pm now. So you put on your jammies, crawl into bed and get mad at yourself for pointing out to your inner self that it's only 4 in the afternoon at home and you'd still be at work. So then you lie there wide awake, staring at the ceiling until you finally fall asleep around midnight. Then you wake up at 10 or 11 the next day and you curse yourself again for pointing out to yourself that it's 2 or 3 am at home.

Jet lag is a wonderful thing. You go through all that only to come home and fall asleep at 3pm for a few days until your body adjusts.

Anyway, I don't know why I think that's a good idea for me right now but I guess I just want to be on the move. Hopefully next spring.