30 Juli - No hot water

Last night was super windy! It wasn't storming or anything, but the wind kept slamming all the windows and doors. Something must have tripped something with the gas heater though because we have no hot water. I called the landlady and she said the people that needed to come look at it were very busy, but would come by this evening. I took a quick cold shower, but I have too much hair that takes too long to wash out to withstand the cold for that long, so I just braided it.

I met with Wendelin about my project and he gave me some new directions to focus on. He knew of a book in the US that has drug prices and there is a similar list here in Germany, so I can at least compare manufacture's prices. Finding costs of complications might be more difficult and means going back to the literature.

Michele emailed me that the guys at the climbing gym are planning a camping/ climbing trip to Frankenjura (www.climb.frankenjura.com) at the end of August and wanted to know if we wanted to come. Heck yeah! I don't know all the details yet, but the place looks beautiful! He told me his car was broken, so he was unable to climb for a bit. I would offer to come pick him up on my bicycle, but since Skylar has the basket spot, he'd have to sit on the handlebars :)

Speaking of which, the buses were driving me crazy and I had to see about Skylar getting a new bike. So we went to a place in the industrial part of town that said they had a couple used kids bikes. The place was huge with an indoor track to try the bikes out on. They actually had quite a few choices and we found one that fit him quite well. It was a bit more than I wanted to spend, but it would be worth it. Then we realized that it was too far to walk with the bike and we couldn't bring the bike on the bus. They don't have those bike carriers like they do in the states. I didn't think Skylar could ride me on his basket seat, so we decided to go back tomorrow and just put it on hold today.

We took the bus back to town and I stopped at the health food store still in search for flax and honey. The storeowner didn't seem to even know what I meant and said he didn't know of any place in Germany that carried it.

The landlady called and said they wouldn't be able to get over to the flat today. When we got home I realized the refrigerator was off too. Seems the outlet that it plugs into was not working. The light in the kitchen worked, but the outlet didn't. I looked at the breaker box and none were tripped, but I switched them all anyway. Nothing happened. I found an extension cord in Nora's room and plugged the refrigerator back in so that our food didn't all go bad. I couldn't leave the dishes so I boiled water on the stove... brought back memories of camping.