One of the supermarket chains here that I frequent is named Billa. They seem to have a yearly penchant for making a set of stickers that you can collect (in a stickerbook purchased separately). You get a set of stickers free with a purchase of 10 euros. Twenty euros will get you two sticker packs, and so on and so forth with the nice calming amount of logic you would come to expect with mathematics.

The first year I was here, the theme of the stickers was ‘Amazing records of the world’ or something to that effect. No information to be found on the backs of the stickers, other than the name of the thing they depict. You want to know what is so amazing about that Item? Buy the accompanying stickerbook! Me being kind of a kid at heart, I went for all the free stickers I could dredge up, because, really, why not?

The second year brought about the incredibly different theme of ‘Amazing animal records!’ (It’s entirely possible that I have confused myself, and the animal records came before the everything else records, but can you blame me?)

This year? It’s all about Austria. If it’s Austrian stuff, it’s gonna be on a sticker. So I’m kind of excited about this, because I might learn a thing or three. Got my first packet of stickers, got home, and with great anticipation tore open the happy orange wrapper…

…And found myself staring at meat.

Yes, the very first sticker in the packet was some kind of Bacon product (unsliced) from the region of Tirol. I’m still struggling to figure out who thought meat was a good sticker item. I mean, really? Huge lumps of bacon on a white background? Weird.

I wonder where I’m going to stick a meat sticker…

So we purchased (over a month ago) a whole bunch of new furniture. New computer desks and chairs (yes indeed, I get my own desk and chair in this scenario!), a stand for the tv (no longer will it be sitting on the awesome computer desk with all the other monitors), two closets (his and hers, I suppose), and a new bed. Tip: if you don’t want to be bumped into a new mattress bracket, avoid trying out a tempurpedic mattress. I swear the thing is made out of marshmallowy clouds and angel wings.

Anyhow, guess how much has arrived thus far? If you guessed none, you’re right! In fact, the computer desks have been delayed three weeks. The other stuff might be delayed too, we just haven’t had the heart to ask about it.

We have bed, couch, and internet… and a dinky little coffee table that isn’t the right height for anything. Stefan’s computer is set up in the corner, monitor balanced on the tower unit itself and keyboard/mouse on his lap as needed. It’s not the most comfortable arrangement, but at least it’s functional for things like checking email or paying bills online or playing music. The tv isn’t set up either, so our main powerhouse of entertainment at the moment is my laptop. Go lappy!

Given that our computer desks won’t come for another few weeks, and we’re used to having our own separate computers, this is putting a light strain on things. We have to (gasp!) actually interact with eachother and agree on what we want to do! This is unheard of! It’s crazy! It’s… actually kind of nice in a way. But Stefan does sorely miss being able to do stuff at his computer for hours at a time, like playing games. Hard to do that when you can have the keyboard or mouse within reach, but not both comfortably.

What else to say. Hmm. We’re slowly getting to know the area we live in now. We’ve got three grocery stores within easy reach, and another a couple of tram stations away (or a longish walk). We also have a drugstore type thing nearby, a post office, an ATM (highly important, those), a few other old familiar store names that we’re happy to see again, and a few new restaurants to try. You have your choice of pizza… or asian cuisine… or pizza… or pizza… or asian cuisine… or italian (ok, it has pizza, but also a variety of tortelloni type pasta to-go which is kind of interesting)… you get the idea. I did spot a couple of gelati places nearby, and we’ve tried one out. It has slightly less selection than we’re used to, but it had some more exotic flavours in the mix (mojito, plum, and rhubarb-lime for example) to make up for it. Maybe we’ve discovered a hidden treasure!

As for me right now, I’m in a bit of state of confusion. See, up until today things have been warm and summery. The grocery stores are starting to stock types of lebkuchen, which is a sure sign of the Christmas season approaching. Other things have appeared too, like a sort of a fruity sweet bread loaf thing that I’ve always associated with Easter. Or at least it’s always looked that way. I finally went out on a limb and got one, and yup, it’s exactly what I was thinking of. So I was dressed in short sleeves, wandering past the Christmas stuff, and buying something that was Easter-y.

I have NO idea what time of year it is anymore.

It’s hives.

Yup. That’s it. Just hives. And they have no idea what caused it. Ok, so an unknown cause seems to be typical in cases of hives, but it’s still annoying that after multiple tests they still don’t have clear answers.

All I can do is wait for them to go away. Sometimes it takes weeks, sometimes it takes years. Luckily, I think they’re almost gone. Instead of being coated in various-sized red itchy lumps every day, I have a small handful of them every day. I also still have pills and creams to deal with the itch. Fingers crossed that they go away for good soon!

To celebrate, I’m making myself some soup. It’s got noodles in the shape of Smurfs! How could that not make you smile?

In other news, contracts have been signed and we have new apartment keys! We’re going to be owning both apartments for a month or so, to make moving a little easier. Wish us luck in getting everything from point A to point B! (Now, where in the world are we going to find boxes?)

Item the First! I have hives. Itchy, annoying red welts on my body that come and go as they please. Why do I have them? Well that seems to be the million dollar question.

I went to my usual general-practice doctor one morning, when my hives (which up until that point were relatively well-behaved things) were all over my face as well as everywhere else they could manage to turn up. I thought ‘Hmm, this ain’t right’. The doctor agreed with me, and sent me to a dermatologist.

The dermatologist took a lot at me, thought ‘Hmm, this is a curious thing’, and sent me to get a blood test done. A week later, when the results were in, the dermatologist looked them over. ‘Hmm. It’s not conclusive one way or the other. Here’s a referral to the hospital’.

At which point my stress levels hit ‘OH CRAP HOSPITAL AM I GONNA DIE?!?’.

It turns out that the hospital here has many many sections which are referral points for doctors. You can think of them as really equipped doctor’s offices, and they operate much the same way. Wander in, hand over your insurance card, get told to sit and wait, and eventually you get called in. It’s not as scary as it first appears when first you realize you are heading to the hospital.

The only major difference is the waiting times. Two hours I sat there twiddling my thumbs, wishing I had bought a book (or even spare change to buy a sandwich when the snack and beverage cart rolled around), and eventually I get called in. Now, I had been sent there to give a skin sample. Instead, they looked at my blood test results, and decided to take more blood for more tests. They also took a pen and drew around a few of my currently active hives, and told me to come back the next day to double check if they were moving itchy lumps or stable itchy lumps, and to also come back Monday because we said so.

The next day was a Saturday, and my referral was to the emergency department. Again, the mental ‘OH CRAP AM I DOOMED’ alarm bells started going off, but after a bit of thought it became clear that I was only sent there because it was the only thing open. Got called in, and the guy took one look at my almost-erased pen marks. It’s not that I was trying to get rid of them or anything, it’s just that it’s been hot out and sweaty skin is not a very permanent medium. Yup, those hives are mobile critters. Have a paper saying such. Come back Monday.

So Monday (today) rolls along, and I dejectedly wander in for what is no doubt going to be another long boring wait. But no, somehow today I got lucky and it was only 20 minutes or so until I got called in. Surprise, the blood tests aren’t ready yet! They won’t be ready until next Monday! But while you’re here, let’s stick a medical-grade giant Q-Tip up your nose and into your throat to check for bacteria or other whatsits that might be lurking there!

On the plus side, she did ask whether or not I had been prescribed anything for the itch yet, and thought that it was kind of cruel that her colleagues had done nothing of the sort. So now I have some pills and some lotion to toy with when things get bad. We shall see what next week holds in terms of answers.

Coming home from the hospital, we segway into Item the Second! An email from Stefan, asking me to meet him somewhere shortly after 1. Surprise, we’re looking at an apartment!

We arrived early, and took a meandering walk to look at the surrounding area. Frequent shops, but quiet all the same, and a lot more green than in our current location. The district is partially pre-approved because of this. The tram and subway connections still seem to be pretty good, so getting around is also not a concern. In fact, Stefan can take a single tram to work from this location without any transfers necessary.

Eventually (the person showing us the apartment was 15 minutes late due to holdups at other showings) we got out of the hot hot hot hot sun (did I mention it’s hot out today? Because it is. 31 degrees, feeling like 36.) and into the very nice and cool building. A slight downside is that the apartment is on the fourth floor, but luckily there is an elevator! And the building isn’t looking old and falling apart and kinda unpleasant (but you’ll get used to it) like our current location. This one is old, yes, but it’s aged with more grace and style somehow. It’s homey and inviting.

The apartment itself? Very nice. A larger kitchen, with (gasp!) a dishwasher, a larger fridge, and a space for a laundry machine! A larger shower area, complete with a bathtub, and a separate small room for toilet purposes (which seems to be standard here, and our current apartment is abnormal in that respect). A roomy enough entry hall to house some cabinets, plenty of outlets, and two large rooms to use as we see fit, which would most likely be a bedroom and a living area. It’s also even cooler in the apartment than it was in the hallway of the building. That is to say, it’s not boiling hot and humid and sweaty like our current locale.

No dripping action in the bathroom areas. Modern, well-insulated windows. No cracks in the walls to worry about. Lovely location. And the price is more than reasonable.

So… it seems we’re moving soon. Egad. Wish us luck!

First off, the tale of my student movie career. It was a very very long day, and surprisingly tiring. Yeah, I know, you think that saying my handful of lines on camera wouldn’t take that long, and that perhaps I wasn’t the best at remembering what to say and when to say it. Not really the case.

The rundown of the procedure was as follows. First, set up the camera. Then, do three to five takes of the scene so we as actors know where to move and how to not block the camera with our posteriors/shoulders/awesome hair/whatever when we stop moving. Then, do another three to five takes just to try to get the One Good Take where everything is Just Right. Then, as we only had the one camera, we had to move it to a different angle and run the scene again three to five times. Then again, three to five times with another angle. Then three to five times with a closer angle. Depending on the scene, there might be a weird angle where you could get one person but not the other. That one person had to do their part, acting as though the other was there, three to five times. Then the opposite angle to that, with the second actor doing their thing by themselves three to five times. Then closeups of our faces during the dramatic parts, yes, you guessed it, three to five times.

And that’s just one single scene. As I said, it was a very very long day. Thankfully, the small chunks we were filming in resulted in not messing up our lines too terribly much. My friend is still in the process of editing the end product, so I have no idea how well (or poorly) things turned out.

In other news, I renewed my residency visa recently. Well, I say ‘renewed’ in past tense, when really it’s still ongoing. Not for much longer, though.

We had a good start. Showed up early, and got an awesome number which placed us fourth or fifth in line. Got called in quickly, gave them the information, and bureaucratic surprise, there are more things that they didn’t tell us to get! Since we had already started the process of applying, we had two weeks to get everything else. Now, a couple of these things would take a couple of days at most, like supplemental banking information detailing our loans (if we had any) and the payment schedule thereof, for instance, but the one thing we were worried about was the passport issue.

Understandably, they require your passport to be valid for the entirety of the visa’s validity. As mine would expire in early February… Well, I was going to get a new one soon anyway, might as well see what the Canadian embassy has to offer in terms of passports. It was only about 9am by this point, so maybe I’d be able to get it in today if I was lucky.

The embassy was easy to find, and I quickly got your standard passport application. When I got to the part where I needed to put in references, I was a little stumped. Sure, I had the names of people I knew here, but not their addresses. Back out of the embassy I went, to retrieve my cell phone. (Standard procedure seems to indicate that they confiscate any and all electronic devices, like phones and cameras and laptops, and give them back to you as they leave.)

After waiting for a few minutes for my phone to wake up and be able to access the internal memory (where, you know, phone numbers are stored), my problems were solved and I had two names and addresses for my form. I wander back in, and finally get to talk to someone about not having a guarantor here in Austria. Oh, that’s no problem, they say, and hand me another form… which requires two other references. ARGH. Back out to my phone, and a felt-longer-than-it-actually-was wait later, things were again filled out.

So I wander back in the embassy, giving the security guy a bemused nod by this point as I hand over my phone again, and go inside to wait. And wait. And wait. And finally we in the waiting room get told that they’re dealing with an emergency case, could we possibly come back in a couple of hours?

I went home for lunch. Really, what else was I gonna do? When I got back, it only took a couple of minutes to hand in my forms (and my payment). Nothing to do but wait.

A week and a half later, my new passport arrived. Last Thursday we brought in our remaining paperwork to the visa people, and they told us to wait for a letter in the mail telling us what to do next. Hmm, that’s a new thing, though I appreciate not having to call and ask repeatedly if the card is ready yet.

Today, the mail delivery contained my letter, and I get to go pick up my new residency card next week. Hurray!

In other other news, my bestest local friend Kaylie is currently on a long trip back home to the US for general visiting and recharging and feeling less homesick. I’m happy for her being back home and happy, but I was left without my local awesome. Before she left, though, she told me to get in touch with one of her school friends here, saying that he matched up well with our weird wavelength.

I’ve since met the guy, and her prediction was accurate. When you find yourself in Starbucks singing 80′s cartoon theme songs together and grinning at shared nostalgia, it’s an awesome feeling. It’s a little weird that we’re on a similar cultural wavelength since he’s from Saudi Arabia, but he does have dual citizenship with the USA so that might have something to do with it. In any case, I foresee many giggly coffee meetups to come.

And in other other other news, I’m off to a Star Wars marathon tomorrow. All six movies. I will be prepared for the event with some cola, some potato chips, some gummi bears, and some pocky. I figure that carbonation, salt, sugar, and chocolate are the four food groups for movie marathons. Feel free to correct me if I missed out on something important, but know that I can’t do anything to change the plans as it’s also a holiday tomorrow and the shops are closed.

The force may not be with me, but the snacks certainly are.

Last year you may recall that I had a part as an extra in my friend’s student movie. This year the stakes have risen considerably.

The script this time is in English, so I’ve been asked to not only actually act a speaking role, but what looks to be the main role (with one other actress). It’s a film about a mother and daughter, and something to do with abusive relationships. I’m playing the mother, and I need to be able to be emotional, possibly teary, on camera. (The ‘mother’ role might be changed to an ‘older sister’ role, if we can’t make the age difference look convincing. It wouldn’t change any of the dialogue.)

I have warned my friend that I might not be able to pull off this role well enough, and that she might get what she’s paying for (I’m working for free). She remains convinced that this is a role I was born to play. I hope she means that I care about people easily and tend to wear my heart on my sleeve, not anything else…

Rehearsal is tonight, filming is Sunday. Wish me luck.

Walking away, it occurred to me that I wasn’t paying much attention to the conversation, yet it still came rather naturally and easily. Hurray for me!

In other news, one of my friends broke my brain. We were playing a karaoke game of some sort (sadly I can’t remember the name of it), that featured mostly German songs. Since I wasn’t likely to know any of them, I said to toss at me whatever she wanted to, and I’d try to learn it as I went.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rbkpL8rCt0  (Hopefully the link will be available in other countries. If not, then try searching up Helge Schneider – Käsebrot)

This game had the music video playing in the background, so right from the beginning I got the visual weirdness of a guy at a piano dressed somewhat like a Monty Python Pepperpot lady with a very fake banana-ish nose. Then the lyrics started. To translate the chorus:

Cheesebread is a good bread

Cheesebread is a good bread

Cheesebread is a good bread

Super sexy cheesebread.

I wish I was making this up. I was singing about how bread with cheese was sexy. Between my shock and incredulous laughter I don’t know how I managed to sing any of it. The worst part is that it’s a disturbingly catchy song, and it’s still stuck in my head. On one hand, I want to visit my friend again and get a different song stuck in my head, but on the other hand I feel I should be careful what I wish for.

To paraphrase the Simpsons, stupid sexy cheesebread.

What’s new with me… well, not much. Life here is getting to be rather routine. I am now used to things like the random acts of logical humanity while waiting in the grocery line. Not only do you get the ‘hey, I only have the one item and exact change, mind if I jump ahead of you?’, but you also get the ‘hey, I have a huge load of stuff to purchase, you have a smaller load, go ahead and jump in line ahead of me’ sorts as well.

My employers, after a 5 month lack of communication, called me up and wanted me to work again. Finally! So now I am once again making money by dealing with very small fiddly bits of doom. (I got a raise as an apology, so that’s good too!)

Stefan’s in a bit of a funk at the moment… he’s unhappy with his job. He loves the type of work he does, but the stressed out environment he works in is getting to be too much for him. He would seriously consider quitting, but given that we need to show proof of income to get my immigrant status renewed, he’s rather stuck trying to cope with it. My job, though rather well-paying, is too infrequent and unsure to be the sort of income proof that the authorities would want.

Speaking of my job, I should be heading that way quite soon, so I’ll end this here so I have enough time to seek out some breakfast before I go. Maybe some chocolate cream cheese on toast. Mmmm.

(And lastly, I am amused to note that ‘weirdos in Austria’ is the current popular search term that brings people here.)

Instead of putting myself through the frustration and possible disappointment of a thorough search for bagels, I decided to try making them myself. How hard could it be?

It turns out that they’re really not that hard to make at all. The recipe doesn’t require fancy or strange ingredients I don’t have access to, and the actual making of the dough is simple, even despite my lack of proper measurement devices here.

Selection of flour here, for me, is on an eenie-meanie-miney-moe basis because I really don’t know what’s what. Going out on a limb and picking a random one doesn’ t really hurt the budget; they don’t come in very large bags. I figure they contain somewhere around five cups of flour. Given that a batch of bagels takes somewhere between four and five cups (or at least what I have arbitrarily determined cups to be, what with my lack of measuring cups and all), if things don’t turn out I’m not left with a large amount of flour that I will never use again.

Surprisingly, it turns out that the kind I tend to gravitate towards using the most is spelt flour. On one hand, it seems exotic and nifty, but on the other hand it’s just a run-on-the-mill option here. Spelt bread is also a normal option in your typical grocery store. I’ve also recently learned which kind is rye flour, and I might try a batch with that just to see how it turns out.

In the end, I have made two batches of bagels thus far. One with not nearly enough cheese in it, and one cinnamon raisin. My bagel-shaping skills are next to nonexistent, but in terms of taste they’re pretty darn good! The Husband also approves of my bagels (because homemade breadstuffs of any kind is always good), though he prefers them without holes. It’s easier to spread things on them that way. I figure I’ll meet him halfway by poking holes in them that are small enough to close back up while baking. I get the shape I want, he gets the spreadability he wants, and we both get tasty bagels.

Over the weekend, I plan to make either sunflower seed bagels or pumpkin seed bagels. I have the makings for both; it’s just a matter of how I feel at the time.

And finally, I have been requested to go over to a friend’s house on Monday to teach her how to do the bagel baking thing, and I’m possibly going to another friend’s house later this month for the same purpose. I hope I’m not sick of bagels by February!

Maybe I should branch out to pretzels…

In the latter quarter of the 23rd, I developed a slight sore throat. This seems to be one of my bodily ‘Impending cold! Take action!’ signals, so I loaded up on vitamin C and hoped for the best.

Over the course of the 24th, my nose decided to open the gates and start generously flowing. Luckily, I was at Stefan’s sister’s place (Claudia), and they had an ample amount of tissues to provide. Regular type tissues, but still it could be worse.

(Have I mentioned how evil tissues can be here? You can come across some varieties that have a pressed-in bumpy border around them, like you might find on a napkin. I’m sorry, but when I’m sick, my nose wants the softest substances it can get. It most certainly does not want to take the opportunity at that moment to try to learn to read Braille. I dearly miss the wonder that is Puffs Plus with lotion. If I had a box now, it would be exploding with rainbows and kittens and unicorns in it’s awesomeness.)

Still, the Christmas festivities were enjoyable. Half of the main room was curtained off in a wondrous makeshift fashion (I think there was a broom and some clothespins involved) to hide the tree from view until the Christkind would come and magically decorate it later, as well as leaving presents. I’m still trying to figure out how and why the Christ child got finagled into this gift-giving business. Also, I’m wondering why the Christ child happens to be female. But I’ve learned to smile and nod and go along with it for the sake of the season.

Julia’s offspring is now about three years old, which gives this Christmas a very different feel. Last year, he wasn’t old enough to really understand what was going on, but this year was full of glee and anticipation and impatience. Seeing things through the eyes of a child just makes things a little more magical… and a little more devious.

See, with what I grew up with, you open your presents the morning of the 24th, and your issue is getting to sleep and staying asleep and waiting until morning. Here, you open your presents in the evening of the 23rd, and the issue is the waiting. The long long hours of waiting. …I think I like my Christmas a little better in that regard; it was easier on the nerves.

But when it gets to be the right time, everyone (except a select couple of people) is shuttled off to wait elsewhere, in the dark. I don’t know if the dark was traditional, but it’s been there for two years running, so at the least it’s traditional in this family. You wait and wait and wait, but you have to be quiet. Quietness is key in being able to hear the signal to come back in, that signal being the ringing of a bell.

Ding ding ding! The Christ child has been and gone! Come and see! And with a mad rush everyone zooms back into the room to behold the tree, candles and sparklers lit and presents underneath. And I’ll admit, I can see the appeal and wonder of the flickering burning lights in the tree. It has a special magic all it’s own. …All right, the chocolates hanging from the branches are also appealing in a different way.

In terms of presents, Stefan and I came home with alcohol, cookies, many varieties of tea but somehow all of the green variety, and I got some more books. The children, however? Mounds of loot. Toys galore. Mind you, they’re still quite small, so whatever they get is liable to be oversized in some way, like a box of Duplo, but still there was quite a lot for them to open. (Also, there was a lot of ‘some assembly required’.)

And just when things are opened and kids are settling down to play with what they got, guess what? It’s dinnertime! Oil fondue! As I must have mentioned last year, this has to be the most patience-trying meal ever. Every small bite takes a few minutes to cook. And it must be even worse for small people who just want to get back to the toys which are sitting mere feet away!

Shortly after dinner, things start winding down, people head home, small people crash and burn and fall asleep, and my nose had kicked things up a notch. After saying our goodbyes, the husband and I were off to his mother’s place to spend the night.

I wanted to sleep. I really did. But my nose had other plans. Sniffly, runny, horrid plans that made me spend most of the night awake.

Around 8am, I decided to heck with this whole lying down in bed thing, and got up. Stefan’s mom was up as well, so I was delighted to not be alone (and also very very delighted to be able to ask if she had any more tissues in the house, having almost run out). We spent the next few hours conversing and breakfasting and generally having a good time despite my constant nasal interruptions. (Also, hurray for me for being able to converse in German well enough to make myself understood most of the time!)

Eventually (around 10:30) Stefan woke up and wandered out, looked at me, and shooed me back off to bed to sleep a little longer. It was a very good idea. When I had gotten up, I was at that awkward stage where I was too tired to get up but too awake to sleep. By getting up and staying up, I had shifted the balance back towards being tired enough to sleep. I had a very very restful and helpful nap, and woke up to Schnitzel for lunch. Mmm.

Then off we went to visit the set of grandparents that Stefan is close to, me dragging along the rapidly dwindling 100-pack of tissues. It was a few hours of cake and conversation, laughter and happiness and general visit sort of stuff, as well as the general assessment that I looked quite ill and that they hoped I got better soon, and oh did I want any more cake?

I also encountered a different sort of evil tissue format. Scented. Why in the world would you want a scented tissue? Your nosegoo is always in there, it doesn’t smell bad, no need to cover it up with a happy flower scent or anything. Besides, scented tissues make my nose run more, thus making things kind of worse. However, with the alternative back at the apartment being a roll of toilet paper, I brought home a package of the smelly stuff. As of yet, I’ve been too scared of the small packet of menthol tissues to even try them.

And I think that’s everything that’s worth typing out about my festive adventures. By now, I’m about 95% better. I’m sleeping well, my eyes no longer water, and my nose is mostly behaving itself.

In closing, it’s Stefan’s birthday today! Happy birthday!