When it rains, it pours!

True for our weekend: Not only that we had three days of heavy rain courtesy of Kyle, we also had other unfortunate situations to deal with:

1. RCN was down in our area; no TV, telephone or internet for more than 24 hours. And this on a rainy weekend where I had planned to write for my website (www.blog.coach4u.net).

2. In the general election in Austria this weekend, two far-right parties won about 30 % of the votes. Even though we are living here and not directly affected, we are concerned about the political development in Austria. People are angry in Austria: angry about high food prices, angry about the European Union, angry about local politics, angry about the general economic situation (where they point fingers to America and believe, it's all the fault of fraudulent American banks) and angry about the high number of immigrants (many muslims ) despite the also relatively high unemployment rate. And out of anger, they "punish" the ruling parties by voting for the far-right.

3. My husband locked the car keys inside the car. It happenend on Sunday afternoon at an Audobon sanctuary outside of Fitchburg, MA. We had planned to hike there, instead we spent almost tow hours waiting for the Triple A guy to find us in this remote location and open the door.

4. Today, Monday, my husband picked up a colleague, who had an accident over the weekend with his car and needed a ride. On their way to the office, also my husband got into an accident. A lady couldn't stop her car in time at a traffic light and hit my husband's car in the back. The braking system ruptured and our mechanic told us that the car is too old for a repair. We had just spend 500 bucks two days ago for new tires, oil change and other service work. As if this were not enough, it turned out that the lady lied about her insurance and now she is not picking up her phone.

As I said: When it rains, it pours!

In Food Heaven

Moving to a different country includes having to forgo some of your favorite food items. The bigger then is the joy if one finds unexpectedly something old familar.

I happened to have luck yesterday in an Asian grocery store. Not only could I stock up on my favorite staples,



I also found Maggi, a seasoning that is a "Must" for soups and stew in Germany and Austria. Even better, in addition, I discovered a special Dutch Gingerbread/cake (Honigkuchen) in the store, which I always had in my childhood in Germany. Oh boy, you can't imagine what memories are now flooding back - only good ones of course since they are about eating cake....

Fortune Cookie Wisdom

The benefit of laughter at the workplace

Employers, who encourage the use of humor at the workplace will probably have workers with higher job satisfaction and in consequence higher productivity. This is the result of an Australian psychological research study. Read more here

Shaving Cream Fight

This weekend, we celebrated town day in Arlington. While Saturday provided an opportunity for the businesses in our town to showcase their services,



Friday night was the highlight for our kids.

I don't know, who started the tradition, but for years now, several hundred youngsters meet on the night before town day on the athletic field in front of the Boys and Girls Club for a shaving cream fight. It's always a lot of fun:

PYO-Season

It's again PYO-season in New England and recently I have been to an orchard with a few prunes trees for picking.


I was so happy because this is a rare treat in Massachusetts. In Austria we had about 15 prune trees in our garden and didn't know what to do with the hundreds of pounds of prunes every year aside from making our own "schnapps". Here, I'm paying $4/pound of prunes, if I find them in a store at all. I don't know why this is, because they are really easy to grow and the trees are not very sensitive to heat or cold.

I picked more than 10 lbs and first thing after coming home was for me to bake a delicious prune cake based on a traditional Austrian recipe:

Late summer garden

Many people here in New England complain quite often about the weather: It's either too cold,too hot, too humid, too windy....For my part, I just love the weather here. I don't mind the cold and snow in winter and the hot summers, but what tops everything is the long Indian summer. Last year, I picked the last tomatoes in my garden at the end of October! Right now, my garden spoils me with an anbundance of flowers, fruits and vegetables:

Sun follows Hanna's rain

As expected, tropical storm Hanna dumped over night a lot of rain on us - almost 4 inch in our town just outside of Boston - but that was it. After a few cloudy hours in the morning, the sun came through and in the afternoon we already enjoyed a swim in the nearby lake.

TS Hanna

I just found out on weather.com that even we here in the Northeast got a tropical storm warning issued. That's a first for me - it never happened before in the almost 10 years we are now living in Massachusetts. The weather today was very warm and sticky so far and cloudy with rain in the morning. Before lunch, we went swimming in our neighborhood lake - could have been the last time for this year - and now we are waiting for Hanna.

But whatever will hapen here in the Northeast, it will be most likely nothing compared to Haiti where Hanna killed almost 170 people...

Welcomed surprise

After return from our last trip, I discovered that part of my herb garden was just taken over by other plants. At the beginning of July, these plants were still small, sprouting out of the compost as surviving 'leftovers' of hearty winter meals. Now we are looking forward to eating new delicious vegetables.