Workaholic Dad

Although it’s only Sunday afternoon I already dread tomorrow morning’s commute. It is not necessarily the longest of commutes in terms of distance – only 21km (ie. 13 miles) but lately in the mornings it has taken me more then an hour door to door.

There is one particular road that feeds to the highway that has been backed up like crazy – 2 parallel streets are under construction and it triples traffic rolling through.

Actually it really is only this one little stretch of maybe 4km (2.5 miles) that has been a bitch. People on foot have passed me and unlike usually in traffic they are never to be seen again. I move at the wonderful pace of 8km/h – people, I walk faster then that.

When the weather is nice taking the bike is lovely – there really isn’t any traffic going the other way so you can pass traffic with no problem and pass the entire traffic jam in about 5 mintues. But when the weather sucks like it has been the past week I take the car.

It’s not time wasted though – going this slowly I have time to eat breakfast, have a smoke (or 3) and answer all of my email from the night before. When the traffic is really bad I actually already start work a bit early through the wonderful Blackberry Version of Bloomberg.

I hope the traffic situation improves soon, otherwise I might go insane!!!

This morning we had the pleasure of making our little girl a US citizen on top of her German citizenship. It wasn’t nearly as pleasant of an experience as dealing with the German offices.

The new American Embassy is on what looks like an old Army base and has the inviting charme of a Supermax prison. After a we got good and searched, including taking the battery out of mobile phones and leaving them with the security desk. Surprisingly enough, the tiny one AAA battery LED flashlight on the Mrs. was also strictly verboten and had to stay behind.

The service was quite frankly appalling – polite, but with all the nicety of how prisoners are treated. Without wanting to get into this story too much here, I briefly considered handing my greencard to them and picking up the baby and just having her be German only. I managed to keep my cool for the most part, but it is amazing to see how you are not so much a citizen but more of a subject in these good ol’ US of A.

I guess if you followed my blog for a while I am not so fond of any government controlling me so….. it’s not wonder the prison routine of “pick up your ballsack and now spread your ass cheeeks” kind of treatment didn’t make me feel all warm and cozy inside today.

Long story short – I managed not to say something offensive and get myself arrested – although I did have the audacity to turn my mobile phone back on 10 seconds before I reached “German Soil”. Well….fuck ‘em all… passport is obtained and I won’t have to deal with these people for a few more years. Now just a formality visit to our local city hall tomorrow morning and we will have a legal dual citizen baby on our hands.

I think she just blew up her pampers….. so I will cut this short. Time for another solo flight.

Christmas time is starting and it seems the process that has started quite a few years ago is gaining some traction again – stamping out Christmas. Afterall, me celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ my lord and savior is discriminatory for all the people believing in other gods. Well, folks – this might prompt a bit of hate mail but on this blog we’ll be calling it Christmas. I don’t care if you celebrate any other holiday – which you are more then welcome to – here it will be called Christmas. Not “the holidays”, “winter festival” or whatever other new school term is PC this year.

I guess the people that take objection with the Christmas holiday being called Christmeas feel left out. I used to have some hot lesbian neighbors and when they had sex I felt left out. Did I sue someone to be included in their holiday, or even for the to stop celebrating it? No! No, not really – I didn’t have hot lesbian neighbors… but just as this example shows sometimes you don’t need to be included in every activity. I guess it’s just part of our attitude that we can not offend or exclude anyone from anything. Afterall there is soccer teams that play, don’t keep score of goals and then each and every person gets their “MVP Certificate” – don’t get me started on that.

In a move to make Christmas more commercial I guess it makes sense to rename it “Winter Holiday”. So many people who are not Christian perhaps will flood the stores and buy “Winter Festival” presents for their loved ones. Mhh, maybe that’s who is behind taking Christ out of Christmas.

Anyways, whoever is taking offense with my ramblings – I don’t care. Just like you are free to celebrate your own “winter holidays” you are free to not read this blog if I offend you. I for one won’t be offended if you wish me a happy Hanuckah or Kwanza or whatever other holidays there may. I would be happy to hear a few nice words rather than the usual “hey watch the road asshole” or other obscenities commonly heard year round on the streets. Which brings up the real problem of the “winter holidays”: In the rush to buy presents, attend all the “seasonal parties” and get everything done in time for whatever winter holiday you celebrate most people are ready for a hospital dose of anti-anxiety meds by the time its over. Whatever it is that you are celebrating – or perhaps not celebrating – take a deep breath and enjoy these last few days of 2008. Perhaps the real spirit of Christmas like spending time with your loved ones, reflecting on the year we just lived through and perhaps bringing some happiness to a person less fortunate than us will take hold. In my book those actions aren’t threatening or non PC – even if you do celebrate starship XZN234 and its blue toadlike inhabitants.

In that regard. Have a happy Christmas season – even if what you celebrate this time of year isn’t called Christmas. It is snowing here this morning and I am in bed with my munchkin writing this blog. A good time to start putting out some Christmas decorations today. Things seem to slow down here when the snow is falling and things do feel quite christmas-y already this morning. A good time to reflect and be thankful for all that we have been blessed with in 2008.

I have never been a fan of the bathrobe. For years people have given them to me for christmas and I must have more than my share of them hanging in my closet. I used to be the kind of guy who was happy walking around in boxers and t-shirt in the morning while checking my emails and get ready for the day. While I am sure the Mrs. didn’t like the occasional “package slip” there was no one else here to be bothered by it.

Now that the baby is here my cigarette smoking has been banned to the outside and I have to tell you – standing outside in the morning watching the neighbors scratch ice from their windshield in a t-shirt and boxers is no walk in the park. I tried it for the past couple of days but it just ain’t right. Mostly most of the smoke is lost because I shiver too much. Also, getting up late at night with the baby tends to be a frigid as well.

I had to break down and opt for the bathrobe. Last night during one of Mackenzie’s many crying fits I needed a break from the screaming. I grabbed the bathrobe my parents bought me for Christmas last year and headed outside for a smoke. Better, but still cold. This morning I went the real cozy route – flannel pajama pants and the bathrobe – that’s right I moved straight from new daddy to grandpa. But you know what, it’s warm and cozy and so be it. Definitely won’t be winning any fashion awards this way – but oh well.

On the other hand Mackenzie stopped her crying fits – definitely separation anxiety about sleeping in her own bed. Maybe we get the happy baby back today that we started out with yesterday morning.

I just realized, with the excitement of getting ready for Mackenzie’s arrival I forgot about writing about the progress of the wine. As I wrote briefly here, we are making our first two real batches of wine this year. The first is a classic apple wine. A local favorite. The other will hopefully turn out to be a gooseberry desert wine.

Last weekend the wine has rested on the dead yeast cells long enough – fermentation has been over for roughly a week prior. We filled the young wine  into secondary vessels where the rest of the yeast and other particles can settle on the bottom. The wine will remain like this until about Christmas, when we will repeat the whole process. That time around we get to see if the gooseberry wine needs a treatment with Agar-Agar to take additional impurities out.

Professional winemakers might be using filtration at this stage to make the wine ready for bottling quicker – but that’s not the way we do things around here.