Boredom

I'm bored, and slightly tired. SO, I thought I'd post a few more pics I have on my computer at work to twiddle the time away until my doctor appointment at 4:00. Aren't you all SO excited. Let's see what I can find.

This, is my insanely cute child. At the wedding, they had a table set up with "props" to take photo's with for a scrap book. Skyler raided it the minute she set eyes on it. There's also a few of her with a red feather boa and HUGE red hat. I like this one best though. There's one of her close up that is to die for! Why can't I keep her this little?

This is Anne, Eli and Anne's sister's. The sister in Pink is Katrin, her older sister. The guy behind her is her boyfriend Thomas. He's very easy to look at in person :)! The sister in the blue is Julia, her younger sister. There's a picture out there of Eli, Anne, Tom and I in the same pose, but it hasn't surfaced yet. I'll post it when it does.

This isn't in Germany, but it's a good picture of me, so I'm posting! This was in Charleston in February. Tom surprised me with a anniversary getaway to Charleston. This was me in front of some fountain. Not the pinnapple one, but some random one shooting water out of the ground. We had much fun this weekend!

Here's the pinnapple fountain. See, I wasn't sitting in front of it!

Lastly, me and Tom. This was taken at the start of the reception in Germany. I like it.

Ok, I'll go back to work now. Argh. 2.5 more hours till I head out for the doctors. Yeah!
Hope all is well!

Germany Pics and such

Here are some pics from our trip!


Our Hotel ~ The Landstuhl Schloss Hotel! I highly recomend it. It has some downfalls, but we didn't mind. You could rarely find hotel staff, but you could always find bar staff :) They're trained to work in both settings. At night, you can hear the people on the patio, but it's not that bad of a thing. It was Germany. It was the World Cup. It was going to be loud!


Here's my carriage ride! Tom has promised me a carriage ride through a European city since we went to Prague in 2001. We ran out of time then, but we found time this time. We are in Salzburg Austria. Home of Mozart and crazy drivers!


This is Georg and Annelise Schweinach. They were our landlords in Germany. We love them! Georg is 80 years old. He was in the Nazi Army during WWII. He is FASCINATING. The history according to Georg is nothing what you learn in the states and it is nothing short of amazing. After the war, he and Annelise moved to Chicago for 30 years. They have one son, who was born in the US and served 7 years in the Airforce before moving back to Europe. He now lives in Switzerland.

That's all I'm going to post for right now. I'm going to try to send pictures individually because there are just SO many. We also have film we have to develop that has pictures on it! Argh!
If you can log on to the myfamily.com website that Eli and I have, you can see some more pics there as well!

Sacajawea

This, is Sacajawea.

We also called her Pocahontas and Bob. She is the devil!! We were oh so very excited when we figured out how to make our German Mercedes talk to us in English.

We could find the radio tuner, the CD eject button, but most of all, we could figure out how to work the stupid GPS and input destinations so we wouldn’t have to rely on a map. One word ~ F.U.C.K.!
Sacajawea was good to us at the start. We found our way from the airport to Landstuhl, but we pretty much already knew that route. She was just back ground noise that trip, but seemed to lead us in the right direction had we been map and location illiterate.
Her next test came with navigating us to Garmisch from Landstuhl! We were both so excited to have her bob and weave us around some larger cities and to inform us of upcoming Staus (traffic jams) and, for the most part, she did a nice job. Until….
I’m not sure what went wrong. Between the map I had in my hand, and Sacajawea’s directions, we seemed to be doing ok. We got right out side of Garmisch and right off the Autobahn, just like we had been instructed. Tom, however, had to pee. Tom doesn’t have a bladder, period. It’s the size of a small ant and needs to be released on a frequent, yet untimely interval schedule. Anyway, we’re hitting Garmisch, Tom is doing the I need to pee dance and Sacajawea is saying “Please turn right in 3 kilometers onto the B2”. The nice thing about Germany, is men can pee on the side of the road. If you have to go, pull over and go. There are also these little pull off’s called Parking pull offs where you can stretch your legs and do a picnic, but have no bathrooms NOR are you allowed to pee here. Makes no sense, but such is the law of men peeing on the side of the road!
Anyway, we turn left and start heading UP this large mountain. There's road construction on this large uphill mountain road, which leads me to laugh, because, well, Tom has to pee! We got ten shades of distracted and stopped looking at the map and just listened to Sacajawea. Bad move. Tom pulled off at those lovely parking pull offs and peed in the woods and we arrived in some random little town. Pretty, but not Garmisch.
We keep listening to Sacajawea and we think we're just taking a back route and we're almost there. She tells us, turn left in 1km. We do. Then, in 100 meters she says "You have reached your destination, have a nice day!"
Tom and I both look around. We are in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!!! We're not even in a town, we're in the middle of NOWHERE! B.I.T.C.H.!
Needless to say, we back tracked and found our location. Unfortunetly for Sacajawea (who we made the mistake of using ONE MORE TIME) it was the end of the line for her. Stupid Sacajawea!

AOL!

I was watching the evening news last night, from my lovely room at the Edelweiss Lodge in Garmisch Germany. (Yes, that just had to be thrown in! Here's my view!)

Anyway, a story popped up that caught my attention, for obvious reasons. Please refer to MY story, here http://kimrific.blogspot.com/2006/03/march-03-2006.html

Not 2 months ago, I was making this phone call. Now tonight, on the evening news, they have a tape-recording that was given to them, by a man trying to cancel his service! On his tape, he repeatedly asks 19 times to Please Cancel His Account. 19 TIMES. I should have counted how many times I asked before loosing my patience which resulted in vulgarity! You know I get my way if I swear one time! At least that got him off his rocking chair and up to actually cancelling my account, which, in all honesty, he had no intention of doing the day I called. We’ll give you 6 more months free. We’ll give you 2 years free, just don’t drop our numbers! Anyway, the frightening thing is that he probably found the same website I did and did, basically what it had said. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat. They cut you off. They want you to stay. They take it as a personal attack to their character that you are, by god, DROPPING their service. You must be planning on coming over and murdering their chickens tonight as well! How dare we customers make our own decisions! I now wonder if tapes of calls are kept for “training’ purposes. When I get home, I’m going to go through and see if I can find the names and times I called and write a letter of my own.
AOL does have a good product if that’s what you need. The problem is, that over the last few years, other products have been advertised to us that we know will serve us better. We move on. We need to move on to what fits us more. Vicious cycle of the world. Maybe AOL should take a moment to review the reasons their customers are leaving and which providers they are leaving too and why. What do the other providers have that is better than what AOL has to offer? My first vote is customer service, not in India and not staffed by high school dropouts with Napoleon complexes.

VACATION!

I'm on VVVAAACCCCAAAATTTTTIIIIIOOOONNNN!!!! I'm sitting in the Greenville airport at the moment waiting to board my flight. Tom and I could possibly explode with excitement at any minute!
SO, stay tuned to the BBLLAAAWWGGG and I'll post pictures and updates when I can!

Hehehe! If you want anything send me an email.

SSSQQQQUUUUEEEEEE!!!!!

Yeah Day

Yep, it's a YEAH day:)! I got my financial aid award letter in the mail today from ECU! I am officially going! They offered me money. I'll have to pay it back for the rest of my life, but hey, it works!
SO! I'm going to ECU in the FALL!! I'm a bit excited:)

Let's all take a moment to reflect in the irony and ask some "Hey Kim" questions, shall we?
I started my career, 11 years ago THIS MONTH at WESTERN Carolina University. Ahh, the things I wish I could go back and change, but, alas, no can do. Let's face it though, I wouldn't be the person I am today without all of the experiences I had at Western or Norwich. I don't regret a bit of it. I feel that I am now ready to complete my ongoing, never ending, forever college student degree. That, and I don't want to be an accountant anymore, even if I did get that 10% raise.
So I know, the ultimate question is "KIM! Have you been going to college for 11 years?" Yes and no, but more no than yes. 1995 and 1996 I was technically in college, but I perfected the art of drinking and not dying instead of reading and writing. Good times, those that I remember. After that, I took some time off. I got married, had a child, divorced and got married again. It was somewhere around 2002 that I started taking classes again, and actually paying attention. I left Hawaii at the end of 2003 with a 3.5 GPA and 20 some credit hours. While in Asheville, I've taken classes sporadically at the community college and have managed to keep my GPA and get a few more credits. SO, all in all, I've only been a part time college student for 4 years-ish. I'm estimating it could take a little less than 4 more part time years to finish, but that's ok. All the stupid piddly classes are out of the way and I'm down to the nitty gritty.
So yes, I screwed up when I was 17 and 18 and 19 and 20 and, well, you get the point, but I've learned a lot. I've made a lot of wonderful friends and I've learned a lot about who I am and who I'm not. I wouldn't change a thing. NOW if my CHILD thinks she's doing this B.S. to me, she has another thing coming. She gets 1 semester on my payroll. She screws that up and well, I'll miss her :)! She is cute though!

In 11 days I'll be on vacation. I NEED a vacation! We're heading overseas for my ex husbands wedding. Yes, we're weird. I can't wait though. The wedding is 2 weeks from today. We'll be there for 10 days. I CAN'T WAIT!!! I'm taking the laptop and hope to get some pictures up while we're there, so stay with me:)!

Have a great day!
:)