Happy belated New Year!

I hope you all were able to spend wonderful, relaxing days with loved ones, friends and family. Thank you for all the Christmas cards and emails!

Yes, I’m back. I have neglected this site in the past weeks. I didn’t even write that André and I were going away for the holidays. Like every year, we left Bonn a few days before Christmas and went to visit our parents and meet old friends. Every year on December 23, a bunch of friends from school and I meet to eat Weihnachtskekse and talk about what’s going on in our lives and sharing stories. It’s always fun and interesting to see and hear what everyone has been up to in the past months, and I like that we have a set date for that every year. I guess it would be nearly impossible to find a suitable date for everyone otherwise. I hope we will be able to keep up these meetings in the future.

On the day before the meeting, my grandparents celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary with children and grandchildren. They’re 78 years old, and believe it or not, my grandfather has recently bought his very first computer! Now he uses a word processor instead of his typewriter.

After Christmas, we went to André’s parents’ place and met friends. And we got about 15 cm of snow! It looked beautiful outside, but most of the snow melted after a day or two. Unfortunately, I got a nasty cold on December 30, so I had to cancel one meeting, but the rest of our trip was enjoyable. We returned to Bonn on January 1. It’s really cold here, but we don’t have much snow. I wish I were able to enjoy the sunny weather, but I don’t dare to venture outside for longer periods of time because of my cold. I hope I’ll finally be fit again after the weekend.

We got n€w mon€y on January 1, but you’ve probably already read about it and looked at the photos at Spicy Noodles.

While I didn’t write anything these past days, I still read weblogs regularly. There were some wonderful news, some scary news (cute photo though), lots of beautiful photos – and I’d like to thank Al for sharing his stories with us. Megan’s bedtime instructions made me laugh out loud!

I’m rambling. I need to go to bed and get my beauty health sleep. [Whew, managed to flip the page just before midnight…]

Dear Friends, liebe Freunde,

Hope you all have a wonderful Holiday season. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Euch allen ein schönes Weihnachtsfest und ein gutes neues Jahr 2002.

Frohe Weihnachten!

Email
My e-mail address has changed from andrea@spicynoodles.com to andrea@spicynoodles.net. The old address will stop working soon, so please use the new one from now on. Thanks!

Meine Email-Adresse hat sich geändert. Die alte Adresse (andrea@spicynoodles.com) wird demnächst nicht mehr funktionieren. Bitte mailt stattdessen ab jetzt an andrea@spicynoodles.net. Danke!

Weblog Community

Wow, I’ve been nominated for the Scripting News Awards for 2001 in the EditThisPage.Com Pioneers category. Thanks, Dave!

However, I don’t think I’ve much of a chance to win because all the other nominations are such cool and great blogs as well. But I noticed that I’m the only person on the pioneer list who is not from the USA.

If you haven’t done so already, go and vote!

Instant books

Well, sort of. This is the coolest vending machine I’ve ever seen. Book Drop:

“University of Iowa bookCenter for the Book studies students are offering a unique holiday gift idea along with an unusual shopping experience. Handmade books and kits for binding your own books are available at a new Book Drop vending machine installed in the North Lobby of the University of Iowa’s Main Library. […] The machine is stocked with a selection of items bound to delight any book lover”.

I think the idea is awsome. Just today on my way home from work I stood next to a similar vending machine at the train station. It sells candy and cold drinks. Wouldn’t it be cool to have book vending machines at airports and train stations, too?

Link via Acme Book News via Craig (another of the nominated pioneers).

Money Money…

“Today, German banks started handing out the Euro to the general public in the form of a so-called Euro starter kit” – André has the latest news from Euroland. He also brought me a starter kit. I like the new coins. The coins have a common side that looks in the same in every country, while the other side is country specific I think the German coins are rather boring, compared to other countries’. For example, the Greek coins and the Italian coins each have a different picture, while the German coins show either an eagle, the Brandenburg gate, or an oak twig.

Oh cool, Susan (nominated in two categories, by the way) has a link to Eurotrash, a weblog “chronicling this historic leap [from old currency to new Euro] and the ensuing chaos”.

Email

There seem to have been a few glitches with my email during the last 48 hours. If you were unable to send email to andrea@spicynoodles.com or email was returned, please send it again, this time to andrea@spicynoodles.net. The first email address seems to work at the moment, but I don’t know whether any messages were lost. Thank you!

In den letzten 48 Stunden scheint es einige Probleme mit meiner Emailadresse andrea@spicynoodles.com gegeben zu haben. Bitte im Zweifel nochmal an andrea@spicynoodles.net mailen. Danke!

Update: I just knew it. Must be one of Murphy’s laws: As soon as you post a message about problems with email to your blog, it starts working again. I thought it was too good to be true that I didn’t get any spam mails today – well, here they are…