Worst possible timing

Kezzie posted the other day about how colds always show up at the wrong time – in her case it was losing her voice just when she needs it to sing. For me, it’s a horrible sneezy cold just when I a) have to fly (and I don’t want to be that person on the plane!) and b) am being a bridesmaid for my sister on Saturday. I also have to go into the office in Germany tomorrow (for the final time this year), which means waking up way too early to catch a train. Bleurgh. Currently I am wrapping up warm, dosing myself up with Lemsip, consuming as many hot drinks as I can and tonight’s dinner will be soup. If anyone has any other tips for a fast cure please send them my way (unless your tip is echichnea – or however you spell it – since I have no idea where I would even look for that here!). This cold has precisely two days to do one!

This post is brought to you by Rudolph’s less famous red-nosed relation!

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Friday letters

I say this every week, but how is it Friday again already?! This will be my last Friday letters of 2016 since I plan to take a break from blogging for the holidays. Next Friday I’ll be on a plane at daft o’clock in the morning (remind me why we picked the 7 am flight?!) and the Friday after I’ll be in Glasgow with Jan and K. Good times! Anyway, some letters…

Dear Christmas cards. You will not defeat me! Ten more to assemble and post then I’m done!

Dear Lebkuchen. I knew opening you was a mistake! It appears I’ve eaten you all already. Oops!

Dear scales. I will put new batteries in you eventually… but not until well after Christmas. Right now I really don’t want to know! (See previous letter…)

Dear Lemsip. You may not taste great, but you work and that’s good enough for me!

Dear Dara Ó Briain. Tickets for your show in January have been purchased! You’d better bring your best jokes along 😉

That’s all folks! Friday letters will return in 2017. (Eeep, 2017! How did that happen?!)

A Photo an Hour: 26 September 2015

I finally remembered to take part in photo an hour again! Sadly it turned out to be the most boring day ever, with Jan away for a practice weekend with a choir he’s joined and me being ill. But oh well -at least I remembered!

10 a.m. Out of bed, and possibly for the first time in the history of photo and hour posts, I’m not starting the day with a cup of tea. Instead it’s Lemsip. Uhh, yay for something different?

11 a.m. Working on a self-designed cross stitch project for a pen pal exchange thing I signed up for. More on that in a later post.

12 noon. Time for a shower!

1 p.m. I decided to walk into Basel because I thought the fresh air and exercise might do me good. Also, there’s a post office there that’s actually open til a reasonable time on Saturdays! At 1 o’clock I was crossing the bridge over the tracks at the SBB train station, so this is an awful photo of that.

2 p.m. Still in town. Photo of a random street. The red tower you can juuust about see on the left in the background (next to the crane) is the town hall.

3 p.m. Home and before anything else I need a cup of tea!  (What? You didn’t think just because I missed my morning cup tea wouldn’t feature at all in this post? If you did, you’re clearly not British 😉 )

4p.m. Time to sort out the disaster area that is my kitchen – step 1: load the dishwasher

5 p.m. Peeling potatoes for tea.

6 p.m. (ish) I confess I took this photo ten minutes early so I could just eat and not worry about stopping for a photo. Tea time!

7 p.m. Packing the suitcase. Jan is coming back from his choir weekend today then immediately leaving for a conference in Germany. The next time I’ll see him is at the airport in England! So I had to get all my stuff packed ready for him to take away with him. The birthday present is for my godson – I posted a small one and this one is coming along.

8 p.m. Preparing to watch the rugby build up. Beer would probably be a more appropriate drink, but my choice was some hot ginger and honey thing.

9 p.m. It’s rugby time!

10 p.m. Still watching rugby. Half-time analysis.

11 p.m. Now that England have managed to lose the match at the last minute (should have gone for the points/a draw!), I can finally go to bed. Here’s Eeyore waiting for me.
And that’s it. I managed to take an even number of photos this time. Woo hoo! I hate when my symmetry is messed up!

I will provide a link to the roundup post of everyone’s days once one exists.

Things I learned over the weekend

• 

  Lemons… becasue Zemanta has no pictures of Lemsip (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

  I am not as unfit as I think I am! And I can walk up hills if I have to.

• If you go hiking with a blocked nose, after a while it will start to run instead.
• However, within a couple of hours of returning from the hike, your cold will return with a vengeance.
• Lemsip is amazing!! Actually, I knew that already but it bears repeating.
• The pain from blisters is much worse than post-hike muscle ache!
• Chocolate and cherry brownies are DELICIOUS! (Recipe to come)
• The people I come in to contact with have no idea how I feel when meeting new people. Which I guess means I do a good enough job of acting “normal” (whatever that is…).

I have to go to the Irish pub now to see the owner – he asked us to come in some time this week, I assume to get some Ireland tips – so that’s all you’re getting today. Next post will be longer, promise!

Friday letters

Yes, it’s that time of the week again…
When I wrote my first Friday Letters post, I honestly thought it was going to be a one off. But I actually find it a good way to get at least one post in a week without having to put too much thought into it (I may only write my blog for me, but I still hate to neglect it!). And it means I have a sort of record of what I’ve been up to each week. Here are my Friday letters for this week.

Dear cough. I appreciate you allowing my to sleep for a whole five hours in a row last night, but it would be great if, tonight, you could let me fall asleep faster. A whole hour of having to cough every time I was close to drifting off was not fun!

Dear quiz team (who will not actually read this, because they have no idea this blog even exists). I almost didn’t attend on Tuesday thanks to my cold, but I’m glad I did in the end. First place! We rock 🙂

Dear whoever invented remote access and stuff like that. It’s thanks to you that I was able to stay at home today and not annoy all my colleagues by constantly coughing at them, yet was still able to do work (a bonus seeing as a) I didn’t feel ill enough to stay in bed and b) lying down actually made the coughing worse! Being able to work saved me from being bored rigid after the first few hours of being home alone). I am also very grateful to my employer for allowing us to actually use such technology. I know plenty of people who couldn’t work from home simply because they would have no way of accessing their company’s system from there!

Dear Germany. Why do you not sell Lemsip? I only have three sachets left and my next trip home won’t be til March! If anyone in Germany has managed to find a Lemsip/Beecham’s powder equivalent please tell me what it’s called! And all those hot lemon etc. powders from DM and the like don’t count! While they do temporarily sooth my throat, they contain nothing even vaguely medicinal. Is a hot drink containing paracetamol and decongestant really too much to ask, Germany?

Dear trees. You looked so pretty today with the sun shining on. Do you think you could stay like that for another week or two, at least until the Christmas markets arrive to bring some colour into the winter. And while I’m at it, perhaps you could also show your face a little more often, Mr Sun? All the rain this week really hasn’t done anything for my mood (or my cold for that matter!).

OK, that’s it. Sorry most of these are about illness, but coughing, sneezing and copious amounts of tea/hot drinks is pretty much what my entire week has been about…

For more Friday letters (hopefully slightly more cheerful ones than mine!) check out:

But I don’t WANT pretzels and Bratwurst…

Isn’t it funny how, when you’re ill, you crave comforting, familiar foods. Foods that you were brought up with, that accompanied you through your childhood. Much as I love local specialities, like Käsespätzle (small, thin dumplings covered in lashings of melted cheese) and Flammkuchen (tarte flambée – technically from Elsace but Karlsruhe is so close to the border that they’ve adopted (and adapted) this dish for themselves), for the last few days I’ve been craving English things. Crumpets literally dripping with salted butter. Heinz chicken soup. Mashed potatoes with a large helping of cheddar cheese mixed in. A chip butty drowning in gravy. Horlicks.
I just know I’m going to be disappointed no matter what we have for tea tonight. Plus, I’ve run out of Lemsip. Doooom!