What Is Carole Up To Now?

Carole is wandering the world. Having had a couple successful careers, as a software engineer then a technical marketer, it's time to take a sabbatical and plan for the next big thing. New philosphy: "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death."

Friday, December 22, 2006

What a week

The movers came in this morning, and packed up what looked like a gigantic pile of my clothing, books, souvenirs, kitchen stuff in 45 minutes flat. And I felt like I fell off a cliff.

The past 2 weeks I have been busying myself with moving. I have a ticket to get back to Rochester on January 12. (At least that's the theory - it is a paper ticket that has not yet shown up in my mailbox here.) Once I set my date for return, wait, let's go back here, on December 8th "I" closed on my house. (I wasn't there, so the attorneys went to the 4-hour long meeting on my behalf. Delightful!) The sellers, who are renting back from me until their new house is completed, officially notified "me" then that they would vacate on January 14. Thus setting off the chain of events to get ready to go, to take a handover in person on January 15th.

In the past 2 weeks I have been creating a pile of my things to be shipped, and finding corners in this apartment that I swear didn't exist, but they do and they were full of my stuff. I have taken loads of paperbacks to the Munich Readery, a used English bookstore. Sorted through my files. Talked to lots of people about how to get stuff home that I couldn't carry on the plane. Finally ended up with Gosselin Worldwide Moving, and 2 cheerful, competent men showed up this morning and packed my pile into several boxes & took 'em away. I anticipate seeing the boxes again 2 - 3 weeks after I have taken possession of my new place.

And, during these 2 weeks, the ladies clubs each had their Christmas lunches and I was involved with the IWC one - set-up, clean-up and making brownies for the crowd; and very involved in the LIA one – making all the place cards, getting the newsletter out to all. One museum tour on the 12th, Alex led us through an exhibition of Rodin sculpture here called – The Kiss, the Pairs. Lots of his works that involve pairs of people. As usual, I learned a lot.

Also, wrapped up my involvement with LIA, got all the files organized and handed over to the 2007 incoming secretary. Took hours!

And the Christmas markets are open! I love browsing them, hanging out in the evening and sipping gluhwein. The smells of the markets are wonderful – at each market, there is usually a booth roasting almonds so there’s a sweet cinnamony-almond smell; the hot mulled wine (gluhwien); the roasting wursts; and the pine scent of the decorations and trees. The weather here had been fantastic – sunny and warmish, up to 45 – 50 F in the daytime. So I spent lots of time walking the city. It has turned sharply colder here now, and the market season is over tomorrow, so I anticipate more time indoors.

And of course, during this season, ya gotta do the Christmas baking. I went to a cookie exchange on the 14th, which requires that you bring 3 dozen of one kind to exchange. There were 3 other American women participating, 2 of them brought the Hershey’s Kiss cookies. Made the roommate happy, he likes them.

And I’ve been grocery shopping for the next week over the past 2 days; stores here close midafternoon Saturday and then are closed until Wednesday. It is Christmas-crazy busy in the stores so I wanted to go early in the day, a few days before Saturday.

So, after all this activity, I feel dizzy with nothing to do. I do have a list of the next items – address changes, backing up of computers & transferring files, the financial homework that the mediator needs us to do but I will wait on that for a day or so!

Logan is heading to Pennsylvania tomorrow, to visit his Mom and see friends. On the 30th he goes to California and will see friends and have several meetings – with our realtor (we’re selling the CA house), our financial advisors, and he’ll poke the moving company. The furniture will get shipped from California to Rochester; there are things in storage I really really want - like the quilt Maggie made for me. And some framed art. And my Riedel wine glasses and the load of platters, bowls and other stuff for parties I have collected over the years of my adult life. Not to mention it would be nice to have chairs & a table. Until the CA stuff gets to me I’ll use furniture saved out of my folk’s house. I am ambivalent about that, at best. But it won’t be for long.

Man, I exhaust myself just chronicling all that I’ve been doing recently. But I love working at full tilt – for a while. Time to sit with a good book. Tonight, “Thud” by Terry Prachett.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Misc

So the weather here has still been mostly beautiful. Last Friday I did some local touristing and will post the pics soon. Now into the throes of the holiday season and I'm baking. Did you know that channel lock pliers make a good nutcracker? And one can crack 400g of walnuts during a Buffy episode. It helps if the dialog is all spoken, though.

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Still beautiful weather in Munich

Can’t believe how fast the time is going! And the weather here is still great, bright & sunny and not too cold today. So I’ll get out this afternoon and wander around the Christmas markets. Every small ‘square’ or pedestrian area here in Munich has bloomed with wooden stalls selling food, Gluhwein (hot mulled wine), and handcrafts. I love to wander around looking at them and it’s great that it is not as cold as last year.

At the beginning of November I was in London, and saw two spectacular things: a Leonardo exhibit at the Victoria & Albert, and a show.

The Leonardo exhibit is part of ‘Universal Leonardo’; a pan-European and UK show this year. Instead of moving all the things to one location, many museums are hosting exhibits showcasing his works. A couple months ago I saw the one in Munich. In all of Germany, there is one Leonardo painting, Madonna with the Carnation – and it’s in Munich. The exhibit showcased the painting, which is now believed by most art historians to be one of his earliest works, and his first in oil.

Experience, Experiment and Design is the exhibit in London at the V&A. It is one big room with pages of his manuscripts under glass, and an excellent audio guide to his inventions, his interests and his firsts. For example, he was the first person to do an ‘exploded’ drawing of an item. It was so delicious wonderful to be in a room with pages that Leonardo actually wrote. After that, spent the rest of the day wandering the museum, which I had wanted to do for a while.

The show was the musical ‘Wicked’, based on the book by Gregory MacGuire. I really enjoyed the book. The show was spectacular. The lead singers voices were fantastic, and the staging and costumes so much fun to watch.

We also went to – had to do it – 'Spamalot'. Tim Curry played King Arthur. Very much fun and reminds me I want to buy the DVD when I get back in the states, and get ‘Life of Brian’ too.

We went up in the London Eye, the weather was sunny and cold all 5 days we were there. We had a great day to do the Eye. I can recommend it if you don’t have to wait in line too long. You get so hig above the city that it’s hard to make out what you’re looking at, (everything looks foreshortened and the same color) but you can buy a guide that helps.

On to other things – it’s been the season for going out here. Several people are leaving Munich about the same time, and we’re having farewell dinners, etc. Judi has hosted a couple, she left first but only for 3 months and will miss the actual departure of a several people so she started having people over. She had one dinner that was a 3 course meal for 22 people – and her kitchen is tiny. I don’t know how she did it. And she cooked one of the dishes that the chef had showed us, in France. She had us mix up and sit with people we didn’t know. I got talking to the guy next to me, he’d worked in Silicon Valley. He found out I’d worked at Sun, and said “You must know my good friend Tony.” And I do! Small world.

Marcia also was on the trip to France. In her earlier days she was a runway model, and she is still gorgeous. She called me up the other day and invited me to accompany her to the Escada outlet near here. You can only get in with membership. Oh boy, was that fun! I restrained myself to 5 items that fill in holes in my wardrobe left by my recent purge. Well, OK, the suede pants the same color as my eyes weren’t exactly a replacement … but they look great. I did buy a suit for when I have a work-type dress up occasion.

At the LIA Fair, I won exactly the prize I wanted, in the Tombola, a gift certificate for a haircut by Ina Fiedler, the best haircutter I have ever gone to. Jackie, prez of LIA this year, found Ina years ago and recommends her to all. I have had several cuts by Ina and the last one was the best. The guy who owns the shop. Kurt Kuchler, is very spiritual, has been to Tibet, etc. Ina is also on a spiritual path and we have great discussions. This time, she asked if she could cover her mirror when she cut my hair, and I said sure. They have decided it makes for a better haircut if the client just relaxes with their eyes closed. I must say it was a soothing experience and resulted in a great cut.

I had been helping with the IWC (other women’s club) Christmas party, ran around buying door prize gifts on Thursday before my haircut. That evening was Logan’s work holiday dinner. Great restaurant, great food, great wine. On Friday, Renu called and I met her in town for a couple errands, then we went back to her place to watch a DVD called “The Secret”. Great stuff along the lines of “What The Bleep Do We Know”. I am so appreciative of having these experiences and having these wonderful people enter my life. I have been working to adjust my attitude, with all that I’ve learned over the past few years and my life is turning wonderful.

Friday night was a trip to Tollwood, the annual winter fair set up on the Oktoberfest grounds. The band was Trouble Boys, a rock cover band. O balm to my soul to hear those guitars ringing out. They started with Whole Lotta Love and cranked from there. But the tent got very smoky, as it will do here with all those idiots smoking everywhere and I felt not so good by the end of the evening. Well, I had a cold coming on. I rather resolutely ignored it yesterday, as the IWC Christmas party was last night. And I was one third of the set-up committee. We did get the place decorated and it looked great. The party was a success and I got home around 11, not much worse for the wear.

Now it’s time to get breakfast and then launch myself out into this wonderful city again. I love Munich. I will live back here again, and soon. I will give Rochester 2 years as my main home base and then I’m either relocating or adding in other home bases for part of the year.

Friday, December 01, 2006

So busy, so much to do here

Sorry sorry sorry! I have been absolutely gulping down Munich life in my last weeks here. First of all the weather has been extraordinary – California temps with beautiful New England style fall color. Unlike in CA, you know it’s gonna end, so I have been walking and meeting friends and sitting outside for coffee, etc as much a spossible.

And I had been extremely busy with the LIA club, our annual Fair is the forth Wednesday of November. We sell secondhand clothes and books, and make handcrafts and baked good to raise money for the charities that we support. This meant cleaning out my closet here, I decided anything that wasn’t flattering was going out – because I’d put it on because I had it. But some of my stuff had gotten too big for me. (Thanks again, Mike – the BEST personal trainer in Munich.) I finally was able to get rid of the expensive black blazer I had bought at Nordstrom years ago – high quality, looked great on me except, it was faced with something white and when I put it on, I could see little white threads working their way out onto the black. Kind of like being covered in cat hair, without the fun purring in the lap part. So, the blazer was too big so I could get rid of it! Yay!

And, we worked and worked on making beautiful handcrafted items – I loved the sequined Christmas trees we made, tiny things – maybe 4 inches tall. Each one took 300 sequins – and 300 pins with a seed bead on each. Took four HOURS each! But they were very pretty and sold very quickly. My fingers have just about recovered from pushing in all those pins.

And I have been buying this house in Rochester. Why is it that the buyer does all the coordinating for all the various parties involved, yet I’m paying them all? The mortgage broker emailed me asking me when my close was to be. I wrote back saying I was waiting for him to tell me when! And there were a set of casually mentioned successive shocks. “ ..details about the process and, oh yes, you need a cashiers or bank check for the closing.” Ummm, I’m in Germany.

So there was a scramble to find FedEx here, and miracle, Logan had used a Mail Boxes Etc. that’s just up the way, and they do FedEx! So I sent a big check from my American bank to the lawyers, to deposit for me and they will generate the required check. All good, except that the girl at the counter didn’t quite know how to do the FedEx, and I too helpfully pulled off the top sheet for myself – including the little barcoded tracking number things. So, 4 days later when I went to check the shipment online, it wasn’t in their system. Aaargh!! But 12 hours later got email form the lawyer saying they had indeed received the check. Phew!

Then, someone casually mentioned, oh you need a power of attorney, I knew that (I’m not going to go there for the close) but it of course it needs to be notarized. I’m in GERMANY! Panic, to find someone (and I was evolving a scheme to FedEx them to Roch to a good friend who is a notary and have her send them to the lawyer) but it turns out the US consulate here does notarial services from 1 – 4 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Good thing too, as it was Thurs morning when I realized we* needed to do this and Logan was going out of town for work the next week. So we spent a couple hours waiting at the highly-secured US consulate that afternoon.

* We are buying this house together, I could do on my own but having had no documented income for the past coupla years the loan on my own would have been a point higher interest rate. So we’ll buy together and split it out when we sell the house in CA.

Now the latest is that the mortgage broker changed the loan 3 weeks ago to get a lower interest rate, good, but failed to ask me or let me know about it, bad. I found out from my lawyer when the paralegal emailed me & said “I see you have a new mortgage.” Whaaat? So I had to contact the insurance agent to give her new info for the homeowner’s policy, and request to get a copy of the commitment letter from the new bank. Hooked up with a great and sympathetic woman at the mortgage broker’s office, she has been very communicative. So she emailed me the commitment letter, and I read it, cool. Completely ignored that part about signing & sending it back until prompted, last week when the excellent paralegal at the closing company mentioned they needed them (the lawyer uses them to orchestrate the closing in New York state, in CA it’s a title company). Logan’s out of town, another panic, but when he returned we signed & faxed them.

Then, the new mortgage bank took a look at all the paperwork, and decided that the appraisal forms used for the first bank were not acceptable, so this week they called for their appraiser to go out to the house & use their forms. Except, the sellers were out of town and no one had a key. … Well, the sellers are back now I’m told, so I should hear later today what’s going on!

I have more to write but the lovely Renu called this morning, and I’m meeting her in town to vicariously shop. And I’ve gotta run!

Here’s what I need to write about to catch you up:
Visit to London, Leonardo, ‘Wicked’; shopping with the devastatingly beautiful Marcia; Judi’s amazing skills, dinner party for 22!; and the antici . . . pation is over, the Christmas markets open today.

Hoping for a cold, foggy morning tomorrow to finish up.