heat wave

we had some incredible weather this weekend (18C) and I was able to escape the lab for about 4 hours on Sunday to take advantage of these last warm days of the year. some friends and I went up to Boppeland (no joke) then hiked up this cool limestone ridge, the last of the Jura Mtn range, which had a nice view across the Zurichsee valley to the alps, you can almost pick out the Eiger and Jungfrau....



big mountains, small country!

Tuesdays..knitting and voting

knitting in a bar is strangely seductive, even to the europeans. First they wanted to learn how to knit because "it will be too embarassing to learn to knit in a bar"....so, tuesday night found me teaching knitting basics, resulting in some fine non-absorbant, heat-conducting, not-square knitted objects. Pictures from the evening and the objects can be found here. I also got my absentee ballot in the mail on tuesday and immediately filled it out and put it in the mail so that I voted on the election day of the week even if not voting on election day...



Aren't I patriotic doing my civic duty? Now I will completely negate that sentiment by admitting that the only ballot initiative I had any clue about was the oil tax and only because its being covered extensively by the international press.

homesick today

today I miss jon stewart, chocolate chip cookies (made with proper chips and brown sugar), tom's of maine toothpaste, cheap movies, being able to buy just-released cds, and not podcasted editions of wait wait don't tell me.

some things are not universal

much like the pirate movie, some things amuse me more then they should....like how road signs are not universal. in particular the "forbidden" sign is not a red x over a white circle, but an open circle. every day I look at this sign on the tram

some things I love about this sign are that it looks like you aren't supposed to where studded shoes, or saw into the seats. pretty much everyone obeys these rules, except for the no guitar playing. almost every morning I am serenaded by "que sera sera". and yesterday an opera wannabe started in on some piece from verdi. although he didn't have a guitar.

there is also this, the thrift store operated by the salvation army, which translates into Heil's Army, which sounds alot like...you know the opposite...

go see riverrocker's pictures

I think everyone should go take a look at this picture

http://www.flickr.com/photos/56496242@N00/265272041

a party, yoga, the fog, and a David Hasselhoff update

not blogging regularly put me into a bad position - I end up having so much to write about that I don't want to, because it will take too long! so I'll try to get up-to-date here. first, as riverocker said, we met up in oxford (england) for a couple of days - I saw one of the 10 strangest statues in the world, got to see some shrunken heads, and bought tortilla chips for my housewarming party. It may seem silly to go to england and bring back tortilla chips, but I had grand plans for this party: fresh salsa and guacamole. the only thing I miss more than being able to read in my native language is mexican food. in particular, cancun burritoes. anyway, tortilla chips are $7 a bag here, and that's if you can find them. meanwhile, oxford had "plain" doritos for less than a dollar, so I bought 8 bags and carried them on the plane in a giant Sainsbury's bag. Are you paying attention? because this part is hilarious:

I put them in the overhead compartment, failing to take into account the change in pressure. when we landed, the nice swiss man that sat next to me pretended not to notice when I opened the compartment and rained broken tortilla chips upon myself. Fortunately, most of the bags in the bottom of the shopping bag remained full even if the seals broke.

The housewarming party was super, and my landlords put my name on the door, buzzer and mailbox just in the nick if time - only 3 hours before people arrived.


Some more pictures of my house and neighborhood on my flickr page...

Okay, so another story. I love yoga, or at least I loved yoga at Ironworks - they had good instructors who didn't make you ohm or chant incessently. So, now that my home is settled, I thought it would be a good time to put away the videos and go get some in-person direction. You know, guidance for my chakra. And ETH (my employer) has a sportscenter with classes. Unfortunately, it was in swiss-german, so I was down-dogging when I should have been shi-vasyin-ing, facing the wrong way. I couldn't even tell my right from my left. ARGH. not relaxing. And before you think I'm dense for not thinking it would be in german - all of the university classes are in english, because its an international institution.....

and finally, the fog. not the semi-blustery coolness of SF-Bay fog, but the stepped into a freezer fog, kind of like this


except not polar. yup, the winter is upon us, the trees have lost most of their leaves and I am learning to remember a hat, gloves and scarf when I leave in the morning. scary, considering its not even the middle of october. In the midst of all of these adventures, in keeping with my semi-swiss citizenship, I have listened to the new David Hasselhoff single (albeit indirectly from my office-mates radio). It is catchy and the last time I checked, was number 3 on the UK charts.