Cake :)

I really missed being in the office. Well, that's not really the truth, I didn't miss all the uncool stuff like priority shifts etc., but I missed the colleague who always knows where to find cake. Thus I had to make cake on my own. I decided to do something with apples. The decision wasn't caused by our strong longing for apples or anything related to the nutritional benefits "eating apples" might have, it was due to the fact that we had a massive amount of apples.
I decided to try something new and so we had "French Apple Pie". Please don't ask me why it's called "French", it's really not that special, apart from the rather complicated process of baking parts of it twice.

Today is All Saints Day and we used it to do (more or less) recreational things. I spent the day with Christmas preparations,  sewing, and bread baking. Andreas fixed his PC and Rolf eliminated tones of paper :), as I said more or less recreational.

Thus today we had raisin bread instead of cake. To be honest I just can't stand apples anymore. I tried to mix them into our meals as often as possible but I'm still not a hugh apple lover. 

Here is a picture of the bread and the orange butter:

The Wall - part two

Facing the most horrible three hours of its life the wall knows that you never ever should trust comforting silence. The ones from upstairs really had the nerve to put in a door.

Before they finished the door they also made other strange things. They brought metal things and green stuff downstairs. There must have been a source of that green stuff upstairs.

 After bringing these green stuff downstairs they started to put all these things together:

In the end there was a new wall. The ones from above argued about sockets, they weren't sure yet were to place the sockets.

The wall felt released at least the ones from upstairs were done with it. It wished the new wannabe wall good luck and decided not to worry anymore.

Once upon a time...

... there was a wall.

The wall was bored being a wall. The thoughts of wall had been: "how lucky I am, I am a wall. Well, a useless wall, which has nothing to carry but indeed a wall. I live in the basement and nobody is there to disturb me. The ones from above already pierced me to hang up a picture, so nothing can happen to me now".
The wall was wrong :)

Now we proudly own a new door in the basement. Tomorrow we will put up a wall and soon there will be  sauna waiting for us to relax.
Stay tuned, there will be a lot to look at soon.

Handbag

I soon will be famous for my handbag. We are preparing a webinar with a "how to session" at work at the moment and one of my colleagues asked me if he could have my bag to use as a demo item. The upside of that project is that it's quite different from what I usually do at work, and of couse that I got a nice picture of that purse ;). I'm really curiouse how this whole webinar thing will turn out. Apparently, webinars seem to be a big issue in the US. They do exist in Germany too but I couldn't find noteworthy ones :(.
It's odd to start this weeks post with work related topics, because I am on holiday. Well, we decided to use a full week for construction issues in our home. To show all the changes we already made we took some pictures. I'll post some as soon as Andreas converted them ;).

Until then take care.
Christina

Autumn

As you can see autumn arrived with all the great and not so great aspects. The world got quite colorful, well, if you can spot anything due to the fog. Although I enjoy every day as much as I can, my mind is already preparing for Christmas. I guess that's because of all the cookies and stuff in the supermarket. To be well prepared for Christmas this year I already started to motivate my violin teacher to pick up some pieces :). Somehow he is not as motivated as I am.... but I'm not the only Christmas maniac at the moment. Some colleagues from work are already enjoying Christmas cookies like cinnamon stars, and "Dominosteine".

Apart from Christmas, I'm longing for the next snowboard event. I don't know why but I missed it so much. 

Let's go back to reality, it's autumn and that's fine too. We did cool things during the past days and weekends. One of the most interesting thing we did was visiting the maize maze at night. Just imagine a field of corn with aisles inside which form a maze. We had to find six hidden places and we found them all. 

We used some kind of algorithmic trick to master the maze. Unfortunately it didn't work out the way we wanted it and we had to use our gadgets to find the last place. 

To sum it up, maize maise is fun! Hiking boots are an advantage, and don't believe everything a computer scientist states.

Autumn also brought us fruits :). Both of our apple trees had apples this year. Yippii I threatened the bigger tree because it tends to grow instead of being productive. How do you threaten a tree, you might ask yourself. I learned this particular way of dealing with plants from my mother in law and I really never believed in it but I thought it's worth a try. Basically you threaten trees exactly the way you would threaten a human. Just tell them what you are going to do to them if they don't full fill the desired state. For my tree it was something like this: "no apples this year and I'll cut you down". Worked! Here is a picture of Andreas harvesting the apples:

Craft wise there is nothing to post yet. The summer sweater is still waiting for a union of the body part and the last sleeve. I started a winter project but I'm still in the middle of it. I played piano a lot in the past and I practiced singing. I guess the seminar caused the change. I listened to great classical pieces and I want to be able to sing them all. Due to a small cold I'm not hitting the really high notes at the moment but soon I will. 

Normality restored!

Hello fellow readers :),

normality returned during the past days. Last Monday I wrote my exams and after that I took the week off. Well, not really, I went to work and did a lot of stuff but I used my spare-time only for actions I really wanted to do. To give you a hint most of the time I spent sleeping, watching star trek, or practicing singing.
The weekend prior to my exams had been an eye- , more an ear-opener, for me. I picked up a masterclass seminar in classical singing. The place where it was held is plainly beautiful:

I don't remember why I had that seminar on my annual resolution list but it was worth it. My emotions ranged from pure fear up to real happiness. I learned that apparently I didn't learn how to sing, or practice singing properly during the past 3 years. That might sound a bit harsh, but somehow it's true. I finally understood some of the fundamental techniques and I do know how to practice. Apart from singing related topics I also learned a lot about myself. Thus I do not regret any second of that weekend. Maybe I'll be visiting that masterclass next year again.

What else? I should have made some notes on what happened... 

Some colleagues are going to leave the company or have already left. So the atmosphere is frosty at work. According to a Dutch proverb is every goodbye the birth of a memory. Maybe that's why we celebrate every going-aways. Such moments are always a chance to be creative and prepare a gift. 

For the last one I sew 8 beanbags, one for each remaining team member to sign. Here is a picture of the bag I made for the beanbags:

This weekend is a somewhat odd. The weather had been stunning but still something is missing. I knitted  my summer sweater and I'm nearly done. I know some 4 month to late. Well, at least I'll be ready for next summer. I'll post a picture as soon as possible.

Enjoy the day and take care.
Me.

Life is like...

I love life is like posts. I think I had one on life is like a roller-coaster already. Today the theme is "life is like a high school cafeteria". This simile applies to all aspects of life but especially to business. Having had a conversation lately that amused me I was reminded that I wanted to write another "life is like" post. So here it is:

Let's pretend you are a carpenter (it's just an example, hopefully far enough away from everything you are doing :).  Let's further pretend there is a tool that can help you to assist you with your work. The tool itself is rather complicated and expensive but it's also impressive. All in all, the tool itself will not do your job but it can help you to strengthen your results. It also will aid to your professional reputation once you've made the investment.

Now, fellow readers we opened up the doors to the high school cafeteria and you'll never find a way out of it again. Do you remember how people divided themselves into groups? Yeah that's exactly what I mean. Our carpenters will split up into at least two groups those who have the tool and those who haven't. Their argumentation will probably be the following:

1. Those who own the tool aka the geeks: They will advertise the tool and it's usefulness. Eventually (in business not eventually but more certainly) they will find people (C- level executives) who credit their ideas and value the professionally.
2. Those who don't own the tool and discredit the results aka the purists. These people are great, they try to convince everybody that the tool is just an unnecessary tool, because you can gain equal result with fewer resources. Even if it is true, this group will face tough times. They have to market their ideas even more than the carpenters who own the tool because they are lacking a unique selling point and professional recognition.  People will always question the credibility of this group.
3. Those who don't have the tool but know about the strength and weaknesses of the tool. I guess these carpenters have a good chance to get along and keep their profession value up. By knowing the price for the tool and the limits they can propose cheeper studies without  appearing as whiners or people who don't grant other success.
4. Those who don't care.

Thus what can we learn from the high school cafeteria? It never paid of pissing of other fractions in high school, didn't it? First you have to search for weaknesses then you have to find people who will support your ideas etc. At the end you will end up with a mess of accusations, believes, and ideas. You waisted time, and energy and got where? Nowhere you're still in the same cafeteria. In the business world being stuck somewhere is the worst you want to achieve. So take care of the "purist's moments". Question yourself why you are thinking in that way. Maybe it's just because you would like to have that tool, the possibilities, the marketing skills? Once you've answered these questions honestly it's easier to think like the third group of carpenters, and still be successful ;).  

Me watching people facing their "purist's moments".