My marriage to  pantryslut is now old enough to vote and appear in porn. ;)

Happy slightly belated anniversary, dear!

1) For anyone reading this, so you're not too startled: As an experiment in "What do I look like?", I have shaved off my beard.

2) I can also assert without fear of contradiction that my beard does not contain my weirdness magnet. A late-night trip to Colonial Donuts, which houses several chess games at many hours of the day, brought about the following result>

I go in, and wait in line.  I have a headache, so my tolerance levels for noise and annoyance are low.
A blitz game (5 seconds per move) finishes up, and the winner proclaims himself, loudly and repeatedly, to be the Blitz Champion of The Donut Shop. I look in his direction, and probably look irritated (loud noise, headache, etc.)
So he challenges me (calling me "White boy"), and asks if I play chess.
I admit that I do.
He wonders if I'd take the bet and play him.
I say "Sure; if I win, you pay for my donuts and milk."
He says "And if I win?"
"Hey, you're the champion of the store; you're defending your title."
"All right, you're on."

I even offer to let him play white.

He does. And gets more than a little overenthusiastic and overaggressive against my modest little hypermodern opening, and I blow him off the board.

Yay, free donuts! But clearly, the weird was not in the beard.

I am pleased to have once lived in this man's Congressional District:

(If the media doesn't work, or you can't play it where you are -- short summary, from Daily Kos:

As Rush began speaking against racial profiling, he removed his suit jacket to reveal the hoodie underneath, flipped up the hood and donned a pair of dark sunglasses. Immediately, Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS), acting as speaker, repeatedly banged his gavel and called Rush out of order.

I'm back; it took me much less time than MacArthur, so do I get  a freeway too? ;)

Or, as my co-worker Mario and I agreed, it's the little things that trip you.

1) In the U.S., you get so used to hearing "credit or debit" that the rare occasions when a debit card won't work become remarkable.  Here in Germany, I've already been bitten three times by "No, we don't take credit, only debit."  This is especially irritating because when I am using a credit-card, it's because I'm letting work pay for something -- and so to pay any other way means I have to pay for it, then submit a receipt and wait to get reimbursed.

2) In the U.S., I often see ATMs with withdrawal amounts going: 20/40/60/80/100/other.  Here in Germany? 100/200/400/500/other.  That's right, you can take $650 at a shot out of a German ATM, and the *smallest* amount listed is larger than the *largest* in some US ATMs. I don't think I've ever seen that much in the US.  I also find it amusing that the "other" is clearly intended for *smaller* amounts, while in the U.S. it's for the possibility of *larger* amounts.

Would anyone else reading this find it weird to be at a lunch of 9 people, only two of whom order a beverage? (With no water on the table at all).

In the new version of the RPG Paranoia*, the citizens of Alpha Complex are allowed to participate in Extracurricular Activity Programs, as a way to stay happy and show their love of the Computer.

There are photography clubs, but, as the rules point out, there are so many surveillance cameras in Alpha Complex that Photography Club members don't take their own pictures, they instead sit before scanners looking at surveillance footage, looking for particularly artistic or blackmail-worthy (since treasonous) pictures.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you this.


*"A game inspired by Kafka, Orwell, and the Marx Brothers"

(N.B. -- I need to generate a "Steven In Germany" usericon.)

So, let's see --

1) I'm here. Or, more precisely, here.*  (And yes, some of the fancy furniture has me faintly nervous in that "This is why we can't have nice things" way.

2) Thank you, Lufthansa, for providing me with Sherlock and a documentary on Gerd Müller for viewing before I fell asleep on the plane, and to wild_irises for reading for after I woke up.  And thank you, nice people who didn't book the seat next to me, for giving me that little bit of elbow room that's very conducive to sleeping.

3) It would not, however, be Steven Goes Overseas without a bit of travel drama.  So...
    a) The taxi was fine into town, save that when it came time to pay the $90 cab fare (which my work pays for) the cab's credit-card machine wasn't working. Needless to say, I was *not* going to pick up that cab fare and wait a week+ for reimbursement, so we had to drive around to find a place where the card machine could connect to its wireless. Yay 3G wardriving?
    b) Between the taxi kerfuffle and general travel disorientation, I had a hard time getting to the person renting me the apartment -- until two nice people came out and pointed me to the door around the back, which had a buzzer with his name on it.
    c) Brookstone mislabels its travel adapters, so that the one for Germany doesn't work, and the one for Italy does.  This is a much bigger deal when you're setting things up at 8:30 on Sunday (in a town notorious for closing everything on Sundays due to being located in very Catholic Bavaria.)

4) The ad said "Quiet apartment". They weren't kidding. This place is dead quiet, to the point where I'm having to play iTunes music to avoid having it being creepily so. The street outside is very much a "back street" by comparison to most anywhere I've ever lived, and the car density is much lower here anyway.

So, here I am, and so far, things are going well!

In light of recent discussions here:
( The Lyrics To Cthulhu's Wake -- you have been warned. )