  Potpourri First, a rant. I mailed Mom's and Gene's birthday cards in plenty of time on the same day (they were both cards I made myself). Mom got her card on Wednesday, Gene's has not arrived. This is bugging me to no end - I bought a small little something at the beginning of the year and saved it up for his birthday. If it doesn't get there, I am really going to pitch a fit. Really. Damn! And if I get my hands on that sonofabitch who kept the card......... aarrrrgggghhh.
It was really something special just for him :-((( Not much news here, nothing out of the ordinary happening (which is usually positive - out of the ordinary happenings can be quite disastrous, actually). I am spending quite a bit of time at home (with gas being at $5.45 a gallon, I am not driving anywhere not absolutely necessary). Worse than that - a pack of cigarettes costs $4.35 now. Yeah, time to quit probably. I spent part of the day yesterday reading the first 100 pages of the urlLink 9/11 Commission's Report , which I can only recommend as it is certainly interesting reading.
Over 500 pages, it can be downloaded at the above link in Acrobat Format. Let myself get talked into going fishing late afternoon yesterday - I didn't want to because some nasty thunderstorms were headed in. They, however, drifted off. The fish weren't biting, but it was nice anyhow. I hate thunderstorms when fishing - was out on the Ammersee late evening in a boat once, when three surrounding storms suddenly merged over the lake - I never, ever, ever want to experience something like that again.
And fishing poles being such awesome lightning rods..... I spent all of today cleaning. Really cleaning. You know, the "I think I need to dust the lightbulbs" kind of cleaning. Am exhausted but the house is looking great :-) There was a very interesting article in the urlLink Stern Magazine regarding the single women (these are not necessarily young single women who have never been married, it seems more like my generation and age, women married once or twice). The article was informative: "Als Hauptvorteil sehen die meisten Single-Frauen (81 Prozent) an, dass sie tun und lassen können, was sie wollen. 69 Prozent von ihnen genießen es, mehr Zeit für sich zu haben, und 56 Prozent, dass sie das Urlaubsziel selbst bestimmen können. 48 Prozent finden gut, dass es niemanden gibt, der die Wohnung unordentlich macht. Gut ein Drittel (36 Prozent) der Single-Frauen genießt es, dass sie sich keine Sportübertragungen im Fernsehen ansehen müssen.
Nur zwei Prozent der Frauen, die ohne Partner leben, genießen ihr Single-Dasein nicht. " &nbsp; "Perceived as the main advantage by 81 percent is being able to to what they want. 69 percent of them enjoy having more time for themselves, and 56 percent&nbsp;liked being able to choose their vacation destination on their own. 48 percent like the fact that no one is there to mess up the apartment. One third (36 percent) enjoyed not having to&nbsp;watch sport shows on television". I can only agree with the above.&nbsp;&nbsp; Thanks for the feedback on the resume photos, I am back on the drawing board on this one as I agree with all of you - those pics don't really look like me.
By the way the churchbells are urlLink ringing , there seems to be another thunderstorm headed this way (in Bavaria, perhaps in all of Germany, not sure, they ring the churchbells when a storm is heading in - logic behind it being probably&nbsp;previously a religious one, today&nbsp;being the assumption that the&nbsp;sound waves created will get the air masses to move onward). The quality of the bells recording is not so good - recorded it with my dictaphone and fed it into the PC over the microphone, but it will give you an idea of how noisy they can be. Gotta unplug my laptop. 
