Hey, you chose to come here.

It's hard to come up with something to post, that I don't feel stupid about. Basically, our lives over here are back to normal. Of course the tragedy that Ginger and her family suffered is still on our minds, like I said though, it's basically back to normal. But to me it seems that there is no more normal for them. How could there be? They somehow have to find a new kind of normal that is so radically different from their former lives that it's hard to imagine what it will be like.
In appreciation of the void that Wyatt has left behind, I decided to blog about something that is neither entertaining, nor funny or thought-provoking or anything. Something completely meaningless and void itself. It involves some technical stuff about the blog and will probably bore you to no end. So enter at your own risk.

[+] I guess I'll give it a try.Item #1: My Geocities page was shut down because of alleged violation of the terms of service. I wrote them but haven't heard anything and will try again. I used that webspace for the images I used on the blog and the sound files. I could use Blogger's images, but would have to come up with something new for the sound files.

Item#2: For quite some time now, the text at the top of the page that said "Welcome to the world's second greatest blog" has been generated by a Javascript I found via Google on www.codelifter.com. I don't endorse that page or anything and haven't used it since but wanted to give the credit. I modified the generated HTML, but that was it. My intention had been to have a number of snappy taglines which would be chosen randomly on each page load. I finally got around to actually having more than one. And snappy they are. If there's anything you wanna read up there, let me know. We will give shoutouts.

Item#3: Javascript number 2, the one that causes this text to magically appear and disappear. It involves three things.

1. Two entries in the stylesheet such as this:
   • .posthidden {display:none}
   • .postshown {display:inline}


2. The Javascript, which is this:
   • <script type="text/Javascript">
     
     function expandcollapse (postid1, postid2)
     {
     
     whichpost = document.getElementById(postid1);
     
     if (whichpost.className=="postshown")
     {
     whichpost.className="posthidden";
     }
     else
     {
     whichpost.className="postshown";
     }
     
     whichpost = document.getElementById(postid2);
     
     if (whichpost.className=="postshown")
     {
     whichpost.className="posthidden";
     }
     else
     {
     whichpost.className="postshown";
     }
     
     }
     </script>


3. And the HTML that goes in the post, which is this:
   • <span class="postshown" id="3"><a href="javascript:expandcollapse(3, 4)">[+] show this post</a></span><span class="posthidden" id="4">THIS IS WHERE THE TEXT WOULD GO<br /><a href="javascript:expandcollapse(3, 4)">[-] hide this post</a></span>

And that's it. In Blogger you just put the script somewhere inside the "head" of the template document. The script takes the ids that have been assigned to the different parts of the document via the "span" tags and changes the status from "postshown" to "posthidden" or the other way around, whenever you click on the text inside the anchor tags.
And this is where it sucks: Every time I use this script, I have to manually change the ids for the "span" tags and function calls. Blogger originally intended the HTML to be used in the template, but I wanted to be able to show some text and hide the rest, and have different text for the clickable texts to hide and show. Blogger also used this <$BlogItemNumber$>1 to create unique ids, but that only works when it's put in the template. If anyone that reads this knows how to create unique ids automatically, don't be shy and share the knowledge.
I think that's all for now.

[-] You're lucky I'm not suing for reimbursment for that wasted click. And this one.

Yeah, like I said, that was completely bland, and purposefully so. As usual.

Somewheres in the distance there's seven new people born

I still can't think of much else than Wyatt. Well, it only just happened so 'still' is not really the right word. I keep reading the condolences left on his memorial website religiously. And I just can't believe this really happened. I can't even begin to imagine what it must feel like for Ginger and the rest of her family. I hope the condolences and remembering him with other people helps the grieving.
I wish I would have known him better. Being friends with Ginger, we probably would have spent time with him eventually, and considering how great the rest of the family is, I feel like we would have gotten along.
I wasn't even sure if I should post at all. It somehow doesn't seem appropriate. On someone else's blog I read that they were thinking about how long the time of mourning should be, and if they wouldn't be betraying Wyatt's friendship if they stopped morning him. I think that you never really stop being sad about someone's death. At least that's how it is for me. Last time we visited my parents I went to my maternal grandfather's grave, and I still found it hard, even though he's dead for 4 1/2 years now and died at an old age.
So in the end, I have nothing uplifting to say, probably only things that don't help at all. Because despite all the heartfelt sympathy and memorializing, one fact remains the same: Wyatt is gone and he's not coming back. All the great things that life still had in store for him, all the people that he would have still impacted, all the good times his friends and family still had to share with him, all the small things in life. It's all gone. And all we can do is try to live with it as good as we can.

Tragedy beyond understanding

We only learned yesterday that Wyatt lost his life in a tragic accident on November 18. Even though we hardly knew him, and most of what we did know about him was through his blog, we offer our sincere condolences to his family and friends.

Today's theme: produce.

It's been a long time since we had one of these, so it's long overdue for the next installment of the sing-song-sing-along contest. This time, it's a band that I would almost certainly never have listened to if it wasn't for Christina. And it was actually only recently that I played that album a whole lot in the car. Oh, and please people, do try and guess. It will be a whole lotta fun, I promise. And don't forget about the awesome prizes.
I think after this song there will be two more, and I'm done anyway. Until I come up with another meaningful way for you to interact on this very blog. There was another little episode from our visit to the US iwanted to reveal, but I don't think I can remeber right now. The weekend we came back to Germany we had a little Halloween party though. It was loads of fun. We carved a pumpkin and it rotted pretty bad a few days after. Shouldn't have put it by the heater. Hey, wanna see a picture? It's kinda nasty though, so click to see the pictures if you like fur.

[+] show me the dang mess already
Yeah, this is the first one, you can guess what's inside by looking through the eyes. The weird thing was, that the night before it was fine, we even had the candle on inside I think, and then the next day, it was ready to be thrown out, long overdue as a matter of fact. If only we would have put it on the balcony. I would also like to point out the Javascript that I have incorporated in order to be able to hide and show parts of a post. I looked for that some time ago but never got around to actually using it. Plus the available scripts (I do not know how to code them myself) offered different solutions. Some would show the headlines only. Nope, didn't want that. Others were doing something else I didn't want. But in the end I looked at the different things I wanted and how they worked and was able to piece something together. Anyway, here's the second picture:


See all that fur? It's incredible. There was also some juice that i had to clean up, but it wasn't too bad after all. It didn't stink or nothing. Alright, I'm too anxious to see if the hiding thing works to finish this. Maybe in a minute.
Yeah, so that worked pretty well as a matter of fact. Just a few corrections to suit all my needs and meet my high demands. Let's have another look.
Alright, just like I had envisioned it. Okay, so much for the pumpkin.

[-] Noooo, go away.

I noticed that buying chocolate or strawberry milk in the US means buying a much, much, much sweeter product than in Germany. It's especially bad when you have gotten used to the stuff from over here. I swear I could have mixed that stuff 1:1 with regular milk and the amount of sugar would have been enough still. I assume this is a conspiracy to sell more diabetes products in the end.

Macaroni and cheese is not a vegetable.

We went to a buffet restaurant in Terre Haute pretty soon after we arrived, I don't remember exactly what day though. I know that what I'm about to reveal presents one of the most wide-spread stereotypes about the US, and I'm not a big fan of reinforcing these. But it somehow stuck with me. And as it seems Germany is going down the same path. Anyway, we go into the restaurant and walk by the buffet to our table, past all the pepole working and eating there. Families with kids, couples and so forth. And I notice that about 90% of them are overweight. 90% of the freaking people in there, some surely would have qualified as obese as well. And not just grown-ups, who had a lot of time to gain weight, kids too. And that's what scares me the most. The chubby kids. If you know Chrstina's brother, you also know that he could beat Iggy Pop in a hide-behind-freshly-planted-trees contest. That dang kid grows upward only. I'm not saying every kid should be like that, but I question some people's common sense. That's all. A family where everyone is overweight should think twice about stuffing themselves at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
It's not that I don't like seeing bigger people or anything. I'm mostly concerned about their health, and how widespread of an epidemic it has become. And the poor kids, somebody please think about the kids.

How my head disappeared.

Obviously, we did a fair amount of shopping during our stay in the US. How could we not? Wait a second, I had planned on writing about the troubles of adjusting to life in the US and then back in Germany again. Thought you could trick me, huh? No no no. Profound intercultural observation wins over shopping, you sneaky little... Well I'm not gonna use that word today. But I digress.
The first couple of days of being in the US again were the hardest. Not that I have never been back and forth, I have plenty of times. And that's one of the intersting things: Adjusting is always different. Every time I notice something different, or I struggle with one thing in particular. I assume it's cause I changed, and it's the experience that changes me, so it makes sense that it's never the same. This time, I found that things were just going at a different pace somehow. Nothing I could really point to, but just realizing that people's attitudes are different. The weekend we arrived was also homecoming weekend, which is an entirely strange event for me anyway, so that didn't make it any easier.
Now shopping. We took some advantage of 24-hour and Sunday shopping, and got some sweet deals. My biggest pride is a 2.50 hunter's camo baseball hat from Wally World. What's Wally World? Wal-Mart of course and I totally didn't catch it when Christina's dad called it that. I also annoyed him with an infinity of questions during the baseball games on TV, but by the time it went to the World Series I pretty much had it all figured out. The Covered Bridge Festival was also cool, but basically a big flea market. Oh well, can't bore you with specifics or the customs office will get us.
What else happened? Ginger visited us of course, and we walked the longest trail in Shakamak park, which is like 3 miles long. She got hit on by a drunken stranger the night of the kegger, who soon thereafter got punched to the ground by a well-known-to-everyone-there attendant of said event in an unrelated matter. We also played wiffle ball that afternoon, which was a lot of fun as well. AND I got to roast hot dogs all night long. It don't get much dang better than that I tell ya. Played Clue and Boggle and Yahtzee with Jeremiah a lot, beat him at chess as well even though I don't really know how to play and must have gotten lucky since he beat Christina and I always lose to her, which I did when he almost had me that one time but I could still castle even though he only had like his queen a rook and a bishop plus like 3 pawns left and we had to look up castling in the dictionary but I won in the end. I didn't have the tiniest fraction of a chance in checkers though.
We also visited with Joey and got Christina's driving record so she can get her license. Joey kindly gave me his copy of Invisible Man. Thanks a lot. Oh, and we went and talked to Brandi's students, which was very enjoyable as usual, and went to a weennie roast her and her fiancé Nathan were having that one night. Met Addie there as well who came and visited us with Brandi in Trier back then. I really liked Nathan's house and upon commenting on the big barn Christina embarrassed me by telling everyone about my plans of building my own skate ramps in a barn one day. I don't even know why that embarrasses me, but I guess it makes me look a little silly.
Alright, enough for now, if I remember something else worthwhile I'll write about it. Like when we went to a buffet restaurant.

Starstruck.

We didn't keep up with our running too much while we were in the US, but today we started back up, doing 10 minutes of running, 3 walking and then 10 running again. We decided to go in the morning, so we can run in daylight for at least a little while more. And it wasn't really all that bad. It's just a matter of getting used to getting up a little earlier.
And now the BIG thing that happened. When we were almost done running, we ran by Werder Bremen's coach Thomas Schaaf. How awesome. He was about to go running with two of his players (I assume) in the Bürgerpark. If it's good enough for one of the most succesful German soccer coaches at the moment, it's good enough for us. When we saw them from further away, I was almost gonna make a joke about their matching running jackets. And then, when we did pass them, they all said "Moin" real friendly. So cool. I mean, it's not a really big deal, but it's big enough. I like running in the mornings. Yay.