I hope everyone had a great time over the holidays! Susanne and I celebrated quietly, quite frankly we didn’t have the energy for much more, we have been stressed out for far too long trying to get settled here. We spent Christmas eve and Christmas Day at Susanne’s parents house. They put up a little tree, first one in years, I guess. I liked the fact that it had edible ornaments on it, can’t go wrong there! Then we spent time at people who live next to Susanne’s parents and the parent’s house. It was a nice evening, I stuffed myself, first with potato salad and then with 2 heaping bowls of spicy chili and bread. At midnight we went out with all the other people on the street and blew off fireworks, the real ones, not the kind you get in American supermarkets. That for me it is the best part of the holidays, seeing and hearing the entire city lighting off their fireworks at the same time. It was snowing too which made it all the better!

So back to work, I made my first birthday card, I had to get the new years card off the home page! Boy, I’ll tell you that is a lot of work trying to keep up with the upcoming holidays, Valentine’s day is right around the corner and I have to get them ready fairly soon. Coming up with ideas isn’t easy sometimes either, I have creative crashes, can’t think of a damn thing to create for a card. Maybe I should go for a walk, but it is cold out there and there is snow. Today I wore my shorts for half the day, I got tired of wearing so many cloths. It felt good to have my legs free!  The cold is nice, it feels refreshing to get out in it, but at the same time I feel encased, encapsulated, engulfed in cloths. Being fresh out of Florida, I need extra layers, a hat and heavy duty thermal hunting socks. That’s right- heavy duty thermal hunting socks! Keeps the feet TOASTY! The hat I mention because it seems that nobody here needs to wear one, they must have super heated heads or something, even when it is 10 degrees here they have no hats on! And not just a few people, I mean nearly everyone! Guess they’re used to it. I was at one time too, back in upstate NY, I remember running around in 20 degree weather in a tee shirt and a hooded sweat shirt! I did have my hat on though. I have grown soft now, the body likes to be warm when it can, it performs better, less bone creaking and aching muscles. Lord, I’m getting old!

And what is with people sitting outside in the cold drinking coffee? I don’t care if there is a blanket, the coffee won’t stay warm long, and neither will I. Another thing that amazes me is that some people leave their windows open all day long, no matter what the temperature is. We open ours for a while to air out the house, but there is a point where it starts getting cold in the apartment. Plus there is the heating bill to think about. I see some apartments witht the windows cracked all day long. It must be freezing in their apartment and they must either have lots of money to throw at the power company or they don’t use any heating at all. Amazing! My father would have killed me if I dared to open a window in the middle of winter. Mind you the winters back in upstate NY used to be a lot colder with lots of snow and ice, here it is alot milder. All in all I am managing to stay warm for the most part.  We will see when late Jan. and Feb. roll around just how well I’ll manage then. I have the thermal pants ready just in case and the apoteke around the corner sells threma care, pads I just slap one of those bad boys on my lower back an I am toasty for 8 hours!

Okay winter, bring it on, show me what you got!

Oops,I probably shouldn’t have said that!

Hello world!

After having a cold for a few days, doing something stupid and not noticing which allowed me to not be able to access my blog and then Christmas, I am able to write again on my blog. I’ve got some good news also! I am now the proud owner of my Aufenthaltserlaubnis, my permit to stay and work in Germany. I got it a week ago Thursday. What a relief and what a long r0ad it had been to get to this point. Now I can apply for any job and can take the integration and language courses.

Susanne and I got married, on the 11th of this month, actually it is a LifePartnership, but it comes with some benefits, it’s a real thing here in Germany!  After 11 years we tied the knot and it feels wonderful! It was a really nice ceremony, Susanne’s parents were there, a couple of friends and my interpreter. We went out for coffee after wards with Susanne’s parents and that evening we had a small party at out apartment.There was a photographer there and he took a lot of photos, we haven’t got the email with the photos to choose from yet, I would like to see them.

So about the blog. After I posted the last time on the 6th, I started messing around with the side bars on the new theme and accidentally got rid of the box with the log in and word press. When I tried to log in thru wordpress ( I didn’t know that wordpress.com was a separate thing from wordpress.org and that I am not part of either since I have my blog on my Go Daddy) and got the error message that my password was not correct. So I tried and tired and finally requested one, several times. I never got an email with a new password. So finally I gave up for the moment, I was busy with getting the ecard site up and running. I did some reserch though and found this site on how to recover lost passwords http://foliovision.com/2007/10/19/lost-wordpress-admin-password and found out how to get into the database on Go Daddy and fix the problem.  Or so we thought. Susanne had gone into the database  and found out that I had misspelled my email address and that’s why I wasn’t getting the new password, so she changed the password, but now the site wasn’t showing up at all. It was Christmas by now and the blog had to wait until after as we spent a nice time at her parents on Christmas eve and Christmas day. Yesterday we just chilled. So today she was able to get the blog working again. In between everything, I had a cold for a few days, just enough to drag me down and not feel like doing anything.

Something else wonderful happened, I finished my 3 cards for Christmas and Susanne did the programming that made them send-able and I am now able to accept money. People have been sending my cards out to friends and family! WOW! I feel so, well it is hard to describe how beautiful it feels to know someone likes your work enough to send it to their loved ones. Another dream  has become a reality. I have been wanting to make cards for 2 years now, every since I got a Jacquie Lawson cards for the 4th of July. I have to get busy though, Christmas is over and I need to make birthday cards to start expanding the site. I have started it, now I have to keep it going! If you want to take a look at it here is the link

http://www.sheilashonuff.com/shomeecards/

I will try to get a new years card up  in the next day or so.

So that’s what has been going on, I am that I am able to post again, I missed writing and shairing what is happening here with the internet world. I am not sure if I will have the time to post before  the New Year,  so I wish everybody now a very Happy and Prosperous New Year!

I called Herr Rudolph to find out what their decision was for hiring me and they want me to come back down to answer a few questions. At least that is what I understood. I should have put the phone on speaker so Susanne could hear it too, that way I would know what he said exactly. Oh well, I understood most of what he said and I told him I would come in tomorrow at 10am. So I am not in yet, but I am not out of the running either! I have no idea what they want, I can sit here and try to guess but I think I am going to forget about it tonight and just be happy he still  has some interest in me. Looks like I’ll be posting tomorrow about the outcome.

Susanne and I walked thru the Weihnachts Markt today, it looks really nice all lit up. The booths have some great stuff. One has nothing but salami, cheese and other meats from Italy. This was by far my favorite booth! I could live in it – honest! I will get some pictures when and if the rain ever decides it wants to stop for a while. It has been really windy and rainy here, not great for picture taking. I don’t have a whole lot to write about tonight, the suspense of not knowing wether I will have a job or not is too much, I can’t think right now. We did some chocolate cake from the store, so that will definately help take away some of the stress. Until tomorrow!

I went to my first job interview here in Germany. The owner of a post production company in Dusseldorf, Chamaeleon Digital Video called me last Friday and wanted to know if I was still interested in working for them. At first I had no idea who he was, I thought it was the guy from the English school for kids calling me about teaching down in Koln. So I slogged through the cold, pouring rain to the interview. It went pretty good I guess but I have absolutely no idea if I made a great enough impression to get the position. I got their floor wet twice, once when I carried my soaked umbrella across the room and the second when I went to take a drink of water and spilled it all over myself and the floor in front to the 2 guys interviewing me and another worker. Lovely, they probably think I am a klutz now. At least I didn’t spill it in one of the editing rooms! Next time I am offered anything liquid, I am passing, better to be thirsty then make an ass out of ones self I guess. It is pretty funny though.

Since I don’t do any 3D yet and am not really a great compositor, I have been looking to find a job where I can work mostly in After Effects and Photoshop. Guess what, they want someone to do just that. I decided I wanted to work in commercials when I first started at the Art Institute, they do nothing but commercials. I didn’t know this whan cold called tham back in October. I think I can do the work, I can at least try it. The owner said he would fill out the necessary paperwork for me to get a work permit for that job. So now I have to call back Wed. and see if they want me.I will certainly post about it one way or the other. I would be making enough money to pay for the rent instead of Susanne and would have money to but luxury items like new shoes and some new cloths. I call them luxury because I haven’t been able to buy much since I moved here and after loosing some weight, I need new stuff.

Thanksgiving is this week, I can smell the turkey already. I am going to miss the big dinners and football. No Thanksgiving here and trying to find the ingredients here in Muelehim is like trying to find a palm tree in Siberia. I have not seen celery here at all. I will not make stuffing without it. I have not seen yams, sweet potatoes and other things that make up a Thanksgiving day diner. I think I will buy a drumstick though and cook it and watch soccer. Next year I am going to the states to see someone on Thanksgiving. Christmas I can do without, but Thanksgiving? I miss the 4th of July too, the hot dogs and hamburgers and of course the ribs and potato salad. Imagine a hot dog on a real hot dog bun. As you can tell by now, I am a foodie, I love to eat.  I don’t know about all the sweets that are now available because of the upcoming holidays. I got burned out on the cookies last year, Susanne’s mother sent us a box of these cookies that are only made around Christmas, Spritzgevaeks and we ate and ate them until I was sick of them. We ended up not finishing the box. It sat in the fridge for months before we finally got rid of them. I had one the other day and that’s enough of the Spritzes. No more. One of Susanne’s friends says she is sick of all the sweets by the time Christmas gets here too. Susnanne was going to buy me an Advents calender, I told her I would just open all the doors and eat the chocolate, she said she would be very pissed if I did that. I told her to save her money, what do I need with an Advents calender anyway? Like I need anymore damn Christmas spirit?

Anyway, I will post on Wed. and maybe I’ll have a job by the time Christmas rolls around. Then I can buy Susanne and Advents calender and I’ll be good and leave the chocolate alone!

This is too funny. Ironic. I am shopping for Christmas music for my ecards. I don’t want to say hate, so I’ll say ’strongly dislike’ hearing Christmas music over and over and over again. It drives me crazy. I have turned into somewhat of a scrooge over the years. By the time Christmas rolls around, I just want to hide  until it is over. I can’t really put my thumb on when the scrooginess started, it just did. Maybe it began when the stores started putting Christmas stuff out in September or the endless advertising on tv for 2 months. Maybe it’s all the commercialism of holiday season. Could be that Christmas (in America) overshadows all the other religons and the solstice. Maybe the less money I seem to have each year at the holiday has something to do with it. Maybe it is because most of my family is now in boxes under the ground.

Whatever.

Now I find myself in a very insanley funny position of making e-Christmas cards. hahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!   lol    ROTFL
What I am doing now is getting music for my library, I don’t have samples anymore, they got lost after a past major computer crash. So I am going to site after site, listening to holiday music. After listening to 10 samples, I am already ready to throw up. How am I gonna get thru this? The one comforting thought is that I cam possibly make a little money off the holiday like other people. I know, I am selling out, right? Yup, I need money. I gotta get creative here and start getting some income somehow. My work permit is still a couple of weeks away, so I decided that instead od being so humbug about the whole dang Christmas thing, I might as well turn it around and make some money off of it. Then maybe I won’t ’strongly dislike’ the holiday season so much. I like money, it is green, like a Christmas tree.
I know there will be another post or two on this subject. The season is getting started. So am I.