Blogger had problems on the 26th because apparently pamrentz.com was down but blogger saved mz post and I just clicked the button and published it. yay.

Now it's the thirtieth: I'm 40.

I don't have much time because we're about to go to dinner so here's the short version:

Bob and I did a day trip to Munich and a goofing around GAP day and a lazy day hanging around. Bob still hasn't shaken his cough and we decided to take it easy and see if we can get him back up to speed.

Today we had a fantastic brunch and cake with the kids (who especiallz liked the cake part) and then Lisa, Bob and I went to the Buchheim Museum (possibly incorrect and too lazy to run in house and find leaflet). The guy who wrote Das Boot did all kinds of things including collecting art and he's the mastermind of this museum. Then we went to Murnau for a quick walk around town and now back here to get readz for dinner (just the grown ups).

Tomorrow we will watch the ski jumping and then pack up all our sh*t (and there's a lot more than usual since we aren't doing the usual hauling our stuff around ourselves as we visit so manz differnt spots) and go to Munich and check into a hotel. We'll meet Lisa, Flori et al. for a New years eve party with their friends. New Years Day I imagine we'll say goodbye and then wander around and on Fridaz we are up earlz and to the airport for the return journez.

We went to the Pinotek Moderne in Munich while we were there and were hoping to go back -- tons of great stuff, great building and not enough time. But apparentlz the museum is closed on the 1st. Bummer.

Russell Banks: Cloudsplitter is verz good but about 400 pages too long. I'm plowing through the last 200 pages or so with a bad attitude. Odd coincidence: Lisa is also reading Cloudsplitter -- our own mini book group. I bought Harrz Potter (Erin alert!) for the plane home. I'm onlz on volume 4 which is still brick sized and should last me until I get home.

Won't check in again before home. See ya.

It's about 7 o'clock on the evening of the 26th. Flori, Bob and the kids spent the day skiing and Lisa and I went for a marathon walk through town. We all arrived home at the same time and just had a wonderful dinner of pasta with leftover mushroom sauce from last night.

I had done additional editing on yesterday's message and realize now that it was lost in the blogger-burp. What a drag.

Back to the Christmas celebration. On the 24th Flori and Bob took the kids sledding to get them out of the house. The Christkind (Christ Child) comes and decorates the tree and leaves the gifts for the kids. It makes the story about the fat guy in the red suit sliding down chimneys sound logical, eh? As soon as everyone was gone, Lisa and I hurried to decorate the tree and put out all the gifts and then got ready for church.

We crammed into the beautiful small community church for the children’s mass at 3:00pm. For the play, the shepards were dressed as Triolers which Bob and I found hilarious. The play was in German but the gist of it was something about no room at the Inn.

After church we headed across the street to a nice local drinking establishment where Flori and Hans and several of the kids were waiting. We sat at the Stammtisch after we were assured that no one would expect to sit there until later. Stammtisch is a German tradition – it's a table that's always reserved for locals to hang out and drink. About three minutes later a group of 4 men came in wearing traditional outfits: green felt hats with braiding and ornaments on the left side, green blazers with buttons that look like log slices and sometimes green leaves embroidered on the lapel and then a sort of embroidered looking bib over a white shirt and black ties with silver pins in them. I will point out that they wear this with zero irony or self-consciousness whatsoever. They’d just come from a funeral (and apparently some other bars in between) and they said it was fine for us to sit there. The oldest guy spoke a dialect that I could understand nothing of but it was fun to sit there with them in their traditional clothes and drink after church on Christmas Eve. Two of the guys ordered beers but they said they were cold and it was bad for their stomachs to drink cold beer so the waiter brought them little copper buckets with hot water to warm their beers.

Next we went to the cemetery where a ceremony takes place to honor the dead family members. We put a candle on the family plot and tried to stay warm as by now it was dark and quite chilly. Ugg boots and wool socks are the best – no more cold feet. In the cemetery a brass band plays melancholz xmas songs and people have candles or sometimes even small xmas trees on the graves of their loved ones.

Next we went to Flori's folks where the kids were climbing the walls in anticipation of the Christkind. We had a fantastic supper of assorted salads and Spanish wine and Parma ham and various other goodies. Then we sat in the family room and read the storz of Christmas and the kids sang songs for us until FINALLY we heard the bell ring annoucing the Christkind had come and left the gifts. You have never seen children move so quickly. The xmas tree was lovelz with real candles and the kids went nuts over their gifts.

And that was Xmas in Bavaria.

holy crap! I just typed a whole second half of my story and blogger ate it. No repeat at this point. Maybe I'll try again later. crap!!!!

Good gollz miss mollz -- what a funkz browser. It sazs Internet Explorer but it doesn't look like the Exploder I'm used to. El crapo. This is going to take forever because of the goofz German kezboard and the fact that I'm enjozing a refreshing adult beverage -- in the handz tankard size. For those of You new to the German kezboard -- thez swapped a bunch of kezs around -- most significantlz the z and the y -- please figure it out on your own as I am too lazy to fix them all.

Okay -- we are here in Garmisch Partenkirchen (all the symbol kezs are moved around -- that's the last URL I'm typing.) It is now Xmas Daz around 16 o'clock the computer says which is about 4pm. Bob, Flori and the kids left around noon for some skiing. Lisa and I went on a hike through the Partnachklamm Gorge and Luis hung out with his Grossmütter and watched a movie about Flipper. We've returned and Lisa is starting our xmas feast and I'm taking about 5 hours to type this message and the others are still skiing. Bob hasn't skied in about 12 years and I've cruelly rejected the idea as I said if I had to nurse him through a broken leg it would be the end of our marriage. But yesterdaz he went sledding and said he had to ski while he was here. I guess mentioning that it is a white xmas would be redundant at this point.

Let me back up -- we left Portland Mon afternoon around 5pm -- actuallz we were delazed because the flight crew was stuck in traffic. We flew direct Portland - Frankfurt which rocked 9 planets and a half. We arrived in Frankfurt to temperatures about 30 degrees below what we left. A light snow had fallen in Frankfurt and everzthing looked prettz. We had a 3 hour lazover in Frankfurt in what had to be the most boring terminal on the planet. Nothing. A guy on a flight from Detroit said that someone on his flight had been robbed of $5000 and he was suspected and arrested in Frankfurt and he missed his flight to Kiev. They found the real thief and let him go and then said hard cheese he missed his flight-- it wasn't their fault so he had to buy a new ticket to Munich and then on to Kiev. And he wasn't even burnt about the monez he was just so tired.

Frankfurt to Munich is like Portland to Seattle. We dozed and arrived in Munich at about 5pm. Lisa and Sophie met us at the airport and took us to the main train station to stow our bags and then we were off to Marienplatz and the Kristkindlmarkt. According to the travel book only the Christmas Market in Nürnberg is more famous. This is a big market place with tons of food and goodies like knitted sweaters and zillions of xmas ornaments and decorations. All I could think about was food as I had onlz eaten airport food for about 24 hours. Lisa had to be the buzzkiller and remind us about mad cow disease so we ordered some pork sausages which were fantabulous. When Lisa took Sophie to order some pomme frites -- we ordered another wurst and mad cow disease: here we come! I should mention that it was about zero degrees at this point and REI silk underwear which is perfect for Portland chilly 40 ° F days isn't crap for Munich 0°. Also I had non-wool socks on and my feet felt like ice bricks.

I've just gone in the house to refresh mz tankard and the skiers are home. Thez inform me that mz husband's legs remain intact and that he was a natural and that he's rented his skiis for 5 days. Hmmmm, sounds like the side trips are out.

okay -- this is the last blog before vacation. I'll blog from the road if it works out.

I've been trying to do about 10 things at once for the last few days. I still haven't packed but I've moved in the general direction of packing. I can throw it all together tomorrow in no time, I'm sure. It's all the last minute odds and ends like making sure the plants are watered and the coffee maker is unplugged that will drive us mad.

I bought a jug of cheap wine last week for making mulled wine. It sounded like a good idea and I didn't make a huge amount but it had a terrible effect on me. I woke up at midnight and couldn't get back to sleep, my stomach felt a teensy bit unhappy (I drank a half bottle of Reeds extra-ginger ale which worked wonders), I woke with a headache and it rotted my teeth somehow. For at least three days I felt like screaming when I brushed my teeth. I've been rinsing with the turbo-flouride stuff I bought from the dentist a couple of years ago when I was having sensitive teeth issues. Meanwhile, I lost my interest in mulled wine (at least my home made version) which is really quite a shame since I have this jug of wine sitting on the counter. Also the jug wine is screw cap and it took me about 15 minutes to get that f*#&ing thing off. I'm not sure the screw cap is the answer.

In other news we got our announcement from Comcast that our cable bill is going up -- like $100 a year. We're getting the everything package which was already expensive and now we're thinking of going back to a smaller package with HBO and then subscribing to netflix instead. I like the option of having everything but Bob is right, I hardly make use of it and the constant juggling of tapes is getting old. I suppose we're ready for TiVo, but I have other things I want to spend my money on first (new desk, new computer). I think cable is the biggest bunch of crooks -- next to the utilities and insurance companies. No shortage of crooks out there. Comcast has a feature where they send you messages and they used to hardly ever send messages. They must have send around a memo or have a new intern or something but we get a message at least once a day, sometimes more. And it's always for something extra to pay for as if $100 a month isn't enough.

Yes, I saw the Return of the King today. They had some major geek fans in the paper this morning (as opposed to me as a just short of major geek fan {I didn't wear a costume or line up at 5 am}) and they were saying after they've seen it -- then it's over. And I'm like: hell, then you can start seeing it again. I totally loved it. I have a few issues. (1) Legolas only had about 15 minutes of screentime in a 3 hr. plus movie -- what is wrong with that picture? and (2) I think it should have ended a few scenes earlier. Small beefs, I assure you. I will see it again and again.

Meanwhile, there is something at the office -- I hate to say I'm allergic, but that I react to. I'm not sure what it is, and it doesn't always set me off. I think it's something the cleaning people use and somehow I get it on my face and then for hours my nose runs and my eyes burn and water and it's pretty miserable. But I can't figure out the pattern. Today it's driving me nuts but the cleaning people haven't been in for almost 2 weeks. I've been home for several hours and still, my eyes are burning and I blow my nose about every 5 minutes.

Can I tell you how many times I've looked all around the house for my glasses and gone back to my desk and sat on them. How do they get on my chair in the first place?

String Cheese Incident
Last night Bob took me to see Cheese. He's been down with the killer flu since Thanksgiving and he's dealing with finals which aren't finished yet. Yesterday was one of the first decent days he's had and it was nice to hang out with my sweetheart and see him like a (relatively) normal person again.

I'd been sort-of dreading the show all day -- just because my sleeping has been hit or miss and I didn't feel up for the scene with all the marginally-bathed and comb-and-brush challenged people -- who I'm sure are very nice. I don't want to be prejudiced against people who are unkempt, I just need to psych up to hang out in a room filled with them. But hey, one refreshing adult beverage and by the time I hit the parking lot of the Convention Center I was prepared to groove with the hoopers.

We plowed through the crowd, busy walking their dogs in the underground parking garage before the show. One girl was walking around displaying some photos of the band at Red Rocks -- apparently for sale. All the people commented on how nice the pictures were. She had an earring in her cheek.

Inside, the party was on. Tons of people running around with bare feet -- saw some Hobbit feet -- only without the benefit of makeup. Bob said, "Look at all these baseball cap guys. I think I've traded with them." I noticed large groups of young girls in camisoles and batik skirts, all of them a half a head shorter than me. I'm not that tall. I pointed this out to Bob and he said, "Cheese is big with the gnome crowd."

We were in the beer garden when the band started so we chugged up and zoomed in, barely avoiding being brained by the rambunctious Cheese dancers who could actually be dangerous with their jumping and whirling arms. We passed the "I love forest fairies" booth (?) and stepped right up to the rail -- left side, just behind Kyle with a perfect view of Kang. If I sound like pro, it's only because of the company I keep. When it comes to Cheese, I'm basically just along for the ride. And if there was ever a guy in need of a Queer Eye makeover -- it's Kyle, geez, all the guys had that haircut when I was in the third grade.

I liked the first set a lot. It was more rockin' dance stuff. I can't remember any of their songs except "Little Hands" and "Rollover" and I don't think they played either of those. At one point I asked Bob: "Is this a Jethro Tull song?" and he didn't even get mad, he just said, "I don't think so." They'd start some noodling and then Bob would lean over and say "Brown Table" or "Beautiful Dirt" -- the songs all had names of things you would find camping. The second set went by a lot slower. They played lots of endless noodly farmer-in-the-dell crap. Bob was blissed out in the perfect hippie heaven and I leaned over and said, "These songs are boring." But it was late and I was tired and my buzz was long gone.

I sound like I'm whining but I truly had fun and am even entertaining the thought of taking another run at High Sierra. Really.

I have been sitting on a hardback of Donna Tartt's The Little Friend since last Christmas. There were so many books sitting on the pile before it and I wanted to wait until I had time to really get absorbed in it. I read the first half at Thanksgiving and finished it this weekend. How totally not worth the wait. It was fantastic writing -- I loved the characters and I was right there in Mississippi -- but I like a little more resolution with my 556 pages. Not sure what I'll read next.

I'm working on my holiday newsletter which means I go through my list of movies seen and books read and my books have plunged to an all time low. I was thinking of trying to read a bunch of books to bring up the numbers but I have less than a month, tons to do, and who's grading me anyway? Meanwhile, the NYT's special book section is sitting by my bed and I will no doubt add twice as many new books to the list.

Bob has the killer flu right now -- the one with the endless horking cough. He's in bad shape. He's been sleeping downstairs for almost a week. We're like roommates. I had something like this at the end of the summer and I'm desperate to avoid it.

When Bob and I go to Orleans we often leave at night and stay in Roseburg (roughly halfway). We recently tried a different place in Sutherlin that was a little bit cheaper. On the Thanksgiving trip we ran into the night clerk jerk -- apparently there was no mall with a security guard job so he had to make due tyrannizing the poor tired folks coming off the road at night. First he berated me for pushing on the inner door -- not realizing he had to buzz me in and was taking his sweet time. Then he scolded us for not filling in our phone number on the form where he highlighted the place for our name and signature but not the phone number. But he did it all good natured like he was kidding around instead of being an asshole. Then he gave us a room practically in the lobby and our next door neighbor had their TV on extra loud at midnight -- why stop at a motel if you aren't going to go to sleep? Not that the TV was the jerk's fault but also I left my bottled water on the counter -- how hard would it have been to (berate me) bring that to my attention or even bring it to our room, only about 20 feet from his desk. We'll rather pay $8 more and go back to Roseburg.

I spent this afternoon catching up on various reading piles and found an article in the NY Times about something that I've long suspected to be true. That big companies intentionally make small billing errors that people who have better things to do then navigate 10 layer phone trees and sit on hold for a half hour are willing to overlook or don't even notice. At the office we have a line of credit with our bank that has an annual fee. Every year they charge the fee to the line of credit the first day of the billing cycle and then bill us for the fee plus the interest. It's less than a dollar but I don't think the fee should be considered a credit advance. When I complained the bank reversed the interest and told me I could call every year and they'd take care of it. Why not just fix their computer system so it doesn't bill it that way?

David Pogue says, "Now, I'm not much on conspiracy theories. But in the weekly Circuits e-mail newsletter (nytimes.com/circuits) I floated a theory that [these billing errors] might be part of a pattern of passive-aggressive robbery perpetrated on the premise that a certain percentage of customers won't notice, or won't bother to protest." He said he got over 1,200 responses in 4 days.

Final topic, I was home all day today, avoiding the dismal weather and cranking away on my writing projects. We got 4 marketing calls and one kid at the door trying to sell the Columbian.

Yes, I'm still here. Happy Forking Thanksgiving. I ate tons of carbs and only about 3 bites of turkey. I'm leading the backlash. Our weekend was fantastic -- no drama (well, Grandma was a butt but we won't get into that) and lots of fun people and good food. I made gumbo and cornbread for Wednesday night dinner -- I think this was my best batch yet. Thursday I helped a little and for dinner we went to BG and Curt's new house. It's not done yet but it was done enough for a big group to enjoy dinner. There was way too much food, especially pies. Mom made a pumpkin cheesecake but had a water bath disaster so when word got out, everyone else baked back up stuff. Then Erin rescued the cheesecake by flipping it over, scraping off the crust and reapplying fresh crust in the form of a topping -- turned out excellent!

I'm suffering unreasonable panic about my holiday shopping. I'm already done with most of it since we brought the family gifts to Orleans this weekend. Bob and I aren't exchanging gifts since we're going on a trip and want to spend our money there. But I have a few odds and ends to pick up and I want to get it over with NOW. My aim is to not leave the house on the weekends in December -- or as much as realistic.

We went to Jax last night and for dessert tried the pomegranate mission fig gelato. Sounds crazy but it was delicious -- I'm still thinking about it.

Don't forget OPUS is back.

And if you're going to New York, plan your nightlife here.