My low tolerance for bullshit, etc.

Dear Pharmacist:

If you don't want my husband to be able to pick up my prescription for me, fine. If forcing me to make a special trip to your rather not-on-my-way-anywhere location is your preference, whatever. I'll get over the fact that this dopey location is where my husband works, so he can easily nip down the street to your office, even. I'll be irritated, but I'll even deal with the fact that it is impossible, at any time of day, to park the car legally anywhere near you. I can be flexible, if cranky.

But could you at least have the common courtesy to not lie to me and tell me that this unfortunate restriction is due to a HIPAA regulation. It's unbecoming. Take a deep breath, and just tell me the truth: that your organization finds inconveniencing patients preferable to educating its employees about what HIPAA actually requires. Or, that you don't give a shit about HIPAA, it's just easy to blame them for your inability to use the professional judgment HIPAA assumes you have.

Suck less, and have a nice day -

Kimba

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NaNoWriMo is over, and although I feel pretty good about how well it motivated me to get my project together, I didn't make it to 50k words. C'est la vie. I blew off writing for the several days last week I was gritting my teeth through an odd stomach ailment that made it hard to sit up, walk or move suddenly, and then I blew it off again for the holiday weekend. Hmmmm, write, or hang out with the husband who's home for once? That's kind of a no-brainer. Got a Jim walk in early today, though, and it's raining, so I might have a burst of productivity as a result.

So I've been thinking about a new car. My current car, a lovely Mercedes-Benz SLK 320, is the perfect car for California - a small, fast, sporty convertible. I love it. But, it's getting a little long in the tooth, and more importantly, it's not likely the right car for right now. Honestly, I have no idea why anyone here bothers to have a sports car. Traffic is brutal, the roads are small, the speed limits are tiny and arbitrary, and there are speed cameras hidden all over the country. Other than the stretches of autobahn between cities, where one can drive as fast as one dares, driving in Germany is a stop-start, 62mph-and-below experience. So why not do this in a nice BMW 3-series wagon, or a similar Audi, that'll handle my occasional 100mph+ rural aoutobahn trips just fine, too? Then I can buy the car I really want when we get back to California, where driving 75-ish mph is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, more or less legally. Here, where I have to drive like an old lady, looking around for speed cameras? What a waste of horsepower.

On to things that do go fast - Saturday we're taking the TGV high-speed train to Paris. My only train experiences are 1) whatever trains were toodling around between Garmisch, Vienna and Salzburg in the 1970's 2) local, pre-deregulation and Intercity trains in the UK, and 3) The VRE in Northern Virginia. I suspect the TGV is going to be a completely different experience - it'll be like getting shot to Paris out of a cannon, or something! Fitting, really, since we're visiting with our circus folk friends while we're there.

Back into writing mode, via my new obsession with Ommwriter.

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The book

So I've been working on a book. Yes, a book. No, writing a book. Yes, me.

*sigh*

Why I think that when those words come out of my mouth - or my pen, or my keyboard, I suppose - they sound so pretentious and delusional, as opposed to when they come out of the mouth, etc. of any other reasonably intelligent and talented person, I cannot say. But I feel foolish every time I say it. And you know, I generally don't suffer from a lack of self-esteem; if anything, I overestimate my abilities to do the impossible and/or unadvisable. So I should be seeing this as easy, and be confident that others think it's a completely reasonable idea. Instead, when people ask what I'm up to, I mumble something about writing and lack of a work visa and quickly change the subject. How ridiculous.

So, I'm going to say it again, ah-hem, with authority: I am writing a goddamn book.

It's been a slow process. NaNoWriMo has been an excellent motivator, but the chances of me getting to 50k words by Sunday are essentially nil. However, I'm damn happy with my 27k or so, and the effort has also gotten me focused on knocking out that lingering "incomplete" I pulled in my MFA program this spring. And, I've taken a serious look at the collection of short pieces, notes and chapters I've amassed over the years, and made some important decisions about where the project's going. Where it's going, as it turns out, is a strange land, where chapters of narrative non-fiction cavort shamelessly with chapters of fabrications based only loosely on actual events. Which genre will claim it? Who knows?

So, back to it, I guess.

Quick pic of Zürich:

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Good Morning, hello and I'm back (I think)

Two and a half months. I thought I might be gone for good. Pretty sure I was, in fact. So sure that I actually typed "I used to blog" as part of a sentence in an email the other day. Like any bad girlfriend, though, I'm not willing to commit.

A couple of business items:

1. I owe a list of people a bag each. You'd think this would be old news by now, but you'd be wrong. I used to think, "Wow, if I didn't have a job, I'd get so much done! The days would stretch out before me, endlessly, just sparkling with possibility!" Reality: I'm only just now finding time to do a damn thing, and I still haven't finished furnishing my guest room. There may be folks out there for whom a move from the west coast of the US to Europe doesn't take 6 months to complete. I am not one of those people.

Bags are on the list of things I WILL get to soonish. And I enjoy making them, so no worries. Realistically, though, it will likely be early next year before they're done. And no doubt they will be fun and useful, but in no way worth the wait.

2. Personal blogs are self-absorbed to some extent. Yup, this is something I've struggled with. My being back here is my admission to myself that I'm ok with that. Took long enough.

3. Blogging is not the same as journaling. Yes, I do both! And for a while there, I didn't know why. Seemed redundant somehow, all this self-reporting and recording. But it's really not the same, in really important ways. There are things in the Kimbaland archives that have no place on the internets; that stuff is what journals are for. Keeping the public stuff interesting and the private stuff private - that's where I aim to be.

So! That being out of the way, I begin. Again.

I thought about moving over to Wordpress, finally, now that I've got a blog with two posts instead of a couple of thousand or so. But, as I just spent 45 minutes discovering, in order to do that, the truckload of posts I moved over there as a backup would have to be deleted manually, page by page. Wordpress FAIL. So despite the limitations of the Blogger platform, it would appear I'm here for the moment, and possibly for the duration. I do need to update my rather sparse appearance, though. Baby steps.

Crap! I said I was going to be interesting, and already I'm not. Fuck it, that might be too high a bar anyway.

Life stuff: Germany's been a challenge these past couple of months. I like it here well enough, but as much as there are lovely people to be discovered here and there, I'm just not of a German temperament, I guess. This cracks me up a little, since the only (known) solid part of my ancestry is my 25% of undiluted German-ness, via my grandfather. Nonetheless, I'm not quiet, private or difficult to approach. I've never been accused of being particularly sunny - my face, at rest, does not smile - but on the other hand I don't walk around town scowling, either. Horrid generalizations here, I know, and I'm perfectly willing to admit that I've also met wonderful, helpful, lively people who I've enjoyed interacting with, even with my still-horrid German. But the flavor of public life in this part of Germany is rather dour. After friendly, insane California, the southern familiarity of Virginia, and the relative effusiveness of even the British (I know!), it's been an adjustment.

Could be that I'm just itching to travel more. Well, ok, that's definitely part of it. We took a day trip to Zürich Saturday, and I felt like I'd been set free. Zürich is a gorgeous city, filled with people hanging out outdoors, enjoying the stunning scenery, smiling, smoking pot and generally having a good time. J reminded me that Stuttgart is also a lot more laid back than the little towns in the 'burbs here, and he's right. (No pot smoking in public here, though.) Still, there was something special about Zürich; it was just a happier place somehow. Also - water. I simply do not do well without being close to water. This is the first place I've ever lived where water isn't nearby - beach, river, or firth - since I lived in Belgium. Zürich gave me a much-needed fix.

So, the other day, I sat down with my laptop and a notepad and wrote out a list of places we can get to in just a few hours. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it solidified my resolve to get out of the house, with or without a husband, and see what's close(ish). Looking at a list that includes places like Prague, Munich, Salzburg, Milan, Paris and Geneva got my ass back in gear. Of course, we're in the holiday slide now, which means petsitting will be an issue, but there are SO many things to see within an hour or two of home that we should be able to take several cool day trips in December and early January. Plus, we've already scheduled a trip to Paris in December and the petsitters are lined up and ready to go, so it's definitely time for me to stop feeling blue about the lack of smiling in southwestern Germany and go find some stuff that makes me smiley-er.

Another positive: were been discovering some damn good eats in and around town. Of course, there's the ever-present wurst, käsespätzle, maultaschen and heavy breads - all wonderful - but there are also unexpected things like pumpkin-curry soup, roast goose, amazing local field greens, red sauerkraut and venison goulash. Although German peasant food is the majority of what we've seen on local menus, there's a good amount of French influence, too, which I suppose shouldn't be surprising, as close as we are to France. Of course, we're stunned at the prices - even coming from SoCal - but at least it's the restaurants that are cripplingly expensive and not the groceries.

Even though I'm not a Christmas person, we're gearing up to hit several local Weinachtsmarkte. I haven't yet had Glühwein, and we were low on Swiss Francs Saturday, so we still haven't had any roasted chestnuts. Helpfully, Bon Appétit features Stuttgart in their December issue, so now I know where and how to get started.

And now it's noon. Holy shit.

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Archived, moving on.

If for some reason you're interested in archived blog posts dating back to 2005, you're welcome to email me: kimba AT kimbaland DOT com. I'm closing the door on some old shit, prior complaints, stale rants and other items that aren't important enough to me anymore to display on the intertubes.

In the immortal words of Nigel Tufnel, I hope you enjoy my new direction.

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