Another victory, another blog post

This whole situation could get old very quickly.

To conserve photos of our recent trip to the states (in full anticipation
of some ridiculous Cleveland Indians win streak), we're going to travel
back in time (cue science fiction sounds and bendy screen effects) to this
past Christmas in Adelaide. When the sun was shining and the
temperatures were soaring. Sort of like Berlin today. The odd thing about
spending Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere is that the whole approach
to the holiday changes to match the weather.

For example, here's kate giving the all clear after checking in on Trevo, the Australian Christmas turkey (not to be confused with Trevor, the German Christmas turkey):

Turkey on the grill for Christmas is still a little weird for me. Although not as odd as working through the Christmas lunch while sitting outside in 35 degree weather wearing a sun hat and shorts.

I can't believe the Indians won again

Nevertheless, a promise is a promise. Here's Kate feeling optimistic before the Australia's World
Cup match against Germany.

We won't talk about what happened during the match.

We even got Eila, the daughter of our friends Scott and Dawnnica, to get her Aussie spirit on:

Not that it helped them all that much...

Dudded Up

Good morning blog people! Right off the bat, I'd like to note that, true to my word, Cleveland Indians victory = new blog post. I am nothing if not dependable. I had actually hoped to bend the rules a little bit and post one last week after the US football/soccer squad beat Algeria. However, an inopportune rearranging of the Stool Internet Empire (resulting in absolutely no access to the Tinternet) made that impossible.

One of the main reasons for going to the states was my sister's wedding. Huzzah! We presented us the rare opportunity to put on nice clothes for a change. Check it out:

Of particular note are Kate's fantastic red suede shoes and my dashing paisley tie. It should also be mentioned that 2.5 year old nephews in mini tuxes make awesome fashion accessories.

Update: along the lines of the laser-queen-muppet debacle. Would you go see Prince in concert? I saw him about 12 years ago and it was a ridiculously good show. I just saw a poster up that he's coming to berlin in a few weeks. How old is that dude? can he still play 20 minute bass solos? Will he sing 1999? i'm torn.

The Spoon

Hi hi hi. We're back. After 2.5 weeks romping around America, we have returned to Berlin to watch the football and eat the sausage.

The holiday was great. Friends and family were visited. Sushi was consumed. And sunglasses were purchased. The only real bummer was that wicked insomnia was the name of the game for much of the trip. But don't worry blog friends! In a classic lemon -> lemonade situation, I took advantage of the many sleepless hours to rethink my approach to the whole blog posting situation. Or lack thereof, as you may have noticed.

So here's the new plan - for the remainder of the season, every time the Cleveland Indians win a game, I will write a blog post. As you may have guessed, they won last night (check here), so here's your post. I wouldn't get too excited - the way those pack of fools play, I seriously doubt that the frequency of random Stool bursts will increase that dramatically.

While there are numerous stories to relate, and many fun pictures to caption, I think I'm going to keep a promise to a certain Chop Brother (hi dougie!!) and talk about a spoon (pictured above).

The background here is that my Dad has really gotten into woodworking the past few years (to the extent that we bought him a hunk of super-duper Australian wood for Christmas). He makes, among other things, spoons. We have a lot of his spoons. And use them all of the time.

This past Thanksgiving, we had people over for the traditional turkey feast. Among the guests were our friend Paul and his daughter Lotte (if you can't figure out who is who, then you have problems). Lotte became quite enamored with one of my dad's spoons. To the extent that we decided to give it to her. Like I said, we have a lot of handmade spoons. And who wouldn't want to make a small child happy? As part of the gift though, we explained that my dad made the spoon, and that it was very special.

Later in the evening, Paul asked Lotte if he could this spoon to make pancakes the next morning. Lotte replies very firmly - "No. Because Jeff's Dad made this spoon for me."

As it turns out, Lotte's affection for this spoon has not cooled off - the latest report is that she sleeps with it at night, and still won't let Paul use it for pancakes.

And that is the story of the spoon.