Bee horror

Recently Liam was introduced to the terror of bees lurking in tall grass. The warm weather has brought sandal season to Entringen. Liam and his friends were out playing around in the lovely fields of clover and tall grass around our house when he managed to step on a bee. The bee naturally reacted poorly to this and gave him a nice big sting.

After a lot of noise and hopping, Liam struggled his way to the couch for treatment. His whole foot went red and balloon like and he developed some pretty ugly blisters on it. Luckily his friend's dad is a doctor and too a look at the balloon foot to reassure us there was nothing to worry about. Some cream was applied and the mega foot wrapped up.

Here is a look at the big ugly blisters, they went all the way around the toe like a lovely blister-ring. I think my photo also does not do justice to the red puffiness of the foot. It looked quite huge.

Return to the Blog

After about a half year of no posts, I am going to try to get back into this Blog at the request of my adoring fans. Starting out slow, here is a nice photo of the Boys.

I just like the way they are looking at each other. I think one of the great pleasures that Liam has given me is his attitude towards Henrik. He has never shown the slightest jealousy for the new guy in the house and if anything is almost too loving and has to be held back a bit from him at times.

Henrik is clearly a fan of his big brother as well. Actually, Henrik is such an easy going jolly guy he is pretty much a fan of everything.

I dont know if I will return to my prolific levels of blogging of the past, but I will make an effort to get some regular posts up here again.

I do take requests if anyone wants to see anything in particular on here.

Business Trips are not glamorous

Sometimes for my job I have to take a business trip.  They are less and less frequent thankfully and I often opt out when I can.  However, when I do go somewhere, it is usually to a place that sounds nice.  Paris, Barcelona, etc.  I know my wife has a totally different image in her head as to what a work trip is like.

I was fairly recently in Barcelona for a week, which sounds quite nice.  Here are the realities.

1) the office is not IN Barcelona, it is in Sant Cugat.  Which is a fair bit outside.  Here are a few comparisons.  Its like saying you are in Stuttgart when you are really in Böblingen.  Or you are in Toronto when you are really in Brampton or even that you are in New York but are really in New Jersey.

2) flying many short connecting flights in economy on the cheapest possible airline ticket is not nice.

3) in Barcelona I stay at the hotel which is walking distance to work.  about a 15 min walk in an industrial zone.  I am not knocking the hotel, it is clean and relatively comofortable, but this is FAR from luxury:

My room is firmly decorated with Spain’s glorious history in mind:

 

and I would be remiss if I did not mention that the hotel is across the street from a power plant, offering delightful views…  Picturesque Barcelona at its finest.

 

So, each morning, I wake up at the normal time, stroll over to the HP site, which is quite nice.  But really just a typical factory site with some palm trees in front of the entrance.

   

It also seems that when in Spain, my head is even more massive than in germany.  Look at the size of this melon in my skillful self portrait.       When I am there, I am just staying someplace not as nice as my own home, and going to an office very similar to the one I see every day.  There is nothing exciting or glamorous about business trips.

Happy New Year – random old photos

Well, 2011 is here and I once again will try to do better with my posting… pre Christmas was busy and full of sick people, including myself.

I would also be lying if i did not admit I played a bunch of xbox and world of warcraft instead of updating the blog, but hey, its MY free time.  you will take what you get and like it.

Here are some photos from our trip to Baiersbronn, where we went for cake at what was apparently one of the “50 best restaurants in the world.”  Baiersbronn has more Michelin stars per capita than anywhere else on earth apparently.  It was very good cake and the place was pretty posh.

Here is the fancy display full of cakes.  As it is in the black forest, there was really no other choice for me than Black Forest Cake.Here is a nice looking slice of cake.Liam had a cheesecake, since he does not like black forest.  You can also see some bits of Claudia here as I am far too lazy to crop the photo properly right now.      MMMMMM cake.

Quick Post

I am in a bad mood regarding work this week.  So here is a funny photo to cheer me up.  Double Kermit Party.

 

The board Game convention

Well, that time of year rolled around again and a couple of weekends ago I headed off to the annual board game trade show.  This year was a milestone in that I brought the rest of the family with me.  There are a few shows on at the same time, this year with Babyworld, the model train and car show, board games, and home show all at once.  I thought there should be something for everyone to enjoy here.

Of course, managing a hyper Liam made me have far few photos this time around. 

We walked by the annual balloon animal section of the place and Liam quite liked it, but was not as thrilled as I am with balloon animals.  This year the theme was China, so there were a lot of dragons and pandas.

                        Overall, the balloon display was not as impressive as in previous years.  I thought that the huge scale of the animals was impressive, but the balloon creatures themselves did not wow me like prior years.  Nothing as creative or funny as last years balloon chicken cooking on a ballon BBQ anyway.

Trip to Rittersport fabrikverkauf

I had some colleagues visiting from Barcelona and India for the last couple of weeks, and since Friday was the last Day in Germany for them, we thought it would be nice to do something different for lunch.

Just down the road (18km) from my office is the factory/HQ of Rittersport Chocolate.  You may have seen them in the shops, I think they are in most countries now.  They are large square bars, with 16 little squares in each.  There are lot of flavours to choose from.

So, we made the quick drive over to have a look.  Sadly we could not do a factory tour since they need to be arranged in advance, but we did go for lunch in their very nice cafe.  Afterwards we looked briefly at the “history of chocolate” display thing and passed on the chocolate museum out of time concerns.

Here is the factory as you can see it was a rather snowy and grey day.  Photo quality is not ideal for any of these as they are all taken with my phone instead of a nicer camera.      

The main reason to go of course was to head to the store.  soooo much chocolate.

In addition to lots and lots of chocolate, they had gift things like shirts, footballs, hats, etc.  We all brought back a good helping of chocolate to enjoy.  Here is my Indian colleague with lots of “minis” to feed her department.  I know that today in Bangalore there are a lot of happy office workers full of chocolate.

It was pretty great, I feel silly that I have lived here for 10 years and never made the 10 min drive over there.  I will be making many more visits to stock up on chocolate now.  so much for health and fitness.

The Fun of German Supermarkets.

Something I always enjoy in countries other than the one I grew up in is experiencing the pleasure of the supermarket.  Food that is a little different from what I am used to is great to see, and on occasion try.  I am a fairly adventurous eater with only a couple of things I won’t try or I know I don’t like.

My quick list of foods I won’t eat at all are:

1) Curry

2) insects

3) anything with “blood” in the name

Otherwise it is pretty much fair game.

I was in our local supermarket a while ago and I came across this fantastic item on sale!  The translation is not hard, but just in case, it says “3% cheaper! 1/2 a pig in two bags”

And that is exactly what you get.  Half a pig in two huge bags.   Pork in itself is absolutely not strange to me, but the presentation and the sign made me laugh….

I keep hoping that next week will be half a cow in four bags.

Space Hulk – Part 2

Liam of course was bugging me about the game since he saw the little munchkins, and we had planned to play after he was in bed, but the excitement was too much for him. After about 10 min in bed, he strolled back down to have a look and whined until we let him sit and watch us play a little. I offered Ryan either side to play in this mission and he chose the aliens. I did let him know that I thought the game favoured the marine side fairly heavily and this being the introductory mission, was likely to be even more unbalanced, but he did not mind at all and went for it.

Oh, here is an example of a painted marine model. When I eventually do it, they will almost certainly look nothing like this. My skills are weak.I had read through the rules pretty thoroughly, but the first game is always a little slower as we get the hang of the game and its many mechanics, but it was not too bad. Ryan figured out the tactics of the aliens pretty quick and I think would have done much better if it was not for the ridiculous success I had rolling dice. Seriously, it was absurd the number of 6s I rolled against him.

I like this image because it looks like Liam is winning. It also looks like he is having a beer with his uncle. I promise its mine.

So, the goal of the Marines was to get the one guy with a flame thrower to a specific room and then set it on fire. I managed to do this without getting destroyed by Ryan and his alien forces. In what most people would say was a poor tactical move, I did fire the flamethrower into the room when my sergeant was still standing there, melting him to gooey slag heap. The mission objectives were reached though, so I am sure he was happy to make the sacrifice in the name of keeping Ryan’s Alien menace at bay.

Space Hulk is mine at last….

So, I game I wanted to get for many years is called Space Hulk.  This was around since the 1990s or so and was from Games Workshop, makers of some of my past favorite board games, such as Talisman.  Anyway, this one was long out of print only to be reissued in 2009 by GW.  Sadly it was well out of my price range, so I began trolling EBAY trying to pick it up on the cheap.  After about 6 months or so of bidding, losing and frustration, I managed to get a copy that was missing 2 pieces for about 30 Euro.  I thought that was fine as I would be able to replace the missing bits with some other GW models if I wanted to.

This is a game with a hefty number of bits.  Here is what it would look like fresh out of a new box. However as mine was used, all the bits were punched out, the aliens assembled and a few of them even painted to a reasonable standard.

The premise of the game is essentially the same as the film “Aliens.”  Heavily armed and armoured Space Marines are off to defend the universe from evil aliens called Genestealers.   Each session of play is a “mission” defined by the rulebook which sets out objectives for the players controlling each of the sides.  The board is modular and is built as defined by each mission. 

The Marines are slow but very powerful, with big guns, cannons and flame throwers, and the aliens are fragile, but overpowering at hand to hand and very very fast.  Also, the Marines are limited to 5-10 models and the alien player has unlimited reinforcements.  The basic tactic is for the Marine player to try and keep a lot of space between him and the aliens to pick them off with guns, whereas the Genestealer player is trying to rush in and bite your face off.

I knew this was a game that was not really for Claudia, what with the guns and aliens and face biting.  Liam is destined to love this, but it is a little beyond him now.  The natural choice of opponent then would be Ryan.  Claudia and Doris were planning to go out to see a show last weekend, so I invited Ryan over for some gaming.  I set up the board for the first mission and placed the required gaming fuel (mmmm beer) on each side of the table.  Everything was ready for the exciting first great space battle.

More to follow in part 2.

Henrik's New Hobby

Henrik recently figured out how to do the wonderful activity of blowing raspberries. He does it all the time for long stretches. I find it very amusing and enjoy this thppppppppbbbb noise as much as he cares to do it.

Here is about a solid minute of raspberries:

Henrik is awesome. It is even funnier when he does this with a mouth full of food.

New Special Flavour Chips

As anyone who knows me can confirm, I am a sucker for "limited edition" flavours of things. As soon as I see something strange on the grocery shelf(usually Chips), I have it in the shopping cart. In the past, this has led me to enjoy taste sensations such as:

Africa flavoured Chips

Turkey and Gravy Chips

Spicy Raclette Chips

Pepsi with Green Tea

Coke with Lemon

Beer flavoured Chips

Gum flavoured pop (worst ever)

and many many more that I don't even recall now.

This one caught my eye right away. Huett'n style chips, featuring a smiling Dirndl girl playing the accordion. I asked Claudia to translate Huett'n for me and she just said "you know, Huett'n" and laughed at them. I think its a reference to the mountain huts/inns that are all around the Allgau and Austria.

The chips themselves were really good. I would say the taste of Huett'n style is pretty much like the chips were cooked in a mild onion soup. Not overpowering at all, just a hint of onion and then maybe a sort of soup broth taste to them. I would absolutely eat these again.

Sensapolis part 3

 

The next big attraction area is a giant space ship full of fun stuff.  There are 3 decks of fun with games, learning, and slides and stuff for the wee astronauts.  All of those tubes on the exterior of the ship are tunnels and slides.

The space ship main attraction is a big video game, where the players ride sort of space cycles and shoot at a big screen with a laser gun.  The cycles for the bigger kids, move around with the video, but there are a couple of stationary ones as well for the smaller, less coordinated players like Liam.

eedless to say, he loved this.  The game itself is very repetitive, first with some asteroids to shoot, followed by space pirates.  The players are competing to get the most points by shooting the targets.  As the smallest player, Liam did not quite get the hang of it, but he had super fun and played it a few times.

Elsewhere in the ship were some suspended animation/hibernation cabinets, which seemed to serve no other purpose other than tossing your kid in there for a photo.   Now if they locked or really put the kid to sleep, I can see many many child care applications.  There was some music inside though and Liam thought it was a blast running in and out of there.There was also a deck of the spaceship full of science and learning type exhibits about space and the planets, but it was a little too wordy-learny for Liam.  He just wanted to run around and play.  Reasonably so I must say.   There was a shooting gallery that he enjoyed as well, where you were supposed to be fighting off boarding aliens or something, however Liam is a terrible shot and he got bored fast with that.  I did not get a photo of it.

What was Henrik doing this whole time?  napping and smiling of course.  Claudia and I took turns going to play with Liam and minding the happy napper. There was also a nice obstacle course sort of climbing thing.  You had to climb up pretty large towers, to an enclosed set of paths up in the roof to navigate.  I liked this too.

That wraps up the trip to Sensapolis.  I would absolutely head back there for a fun way to spend a rotten weather day.

if the Xbox Kinect works this way, I would get one right away.

Thanks PennyArcade

Sensapolis - part 2

OK, the next part of Sensapolis to be enjoyed was the castle.

This was smack right in the middle of the place. It was basically broken up into a bunch of themed rooms with stuff for the kids to mess around with, like most of the place. I thought it may be a little dull compared to the other action spots, but Liam really liked it.

Of course, he had to start off with a grand entrance and pose in front of the gates before storming in to take over the place. I think he looks pretty heroic here.

Then Liam got to live out his knight fantasy a little bit. There were a couple of sets of doors that let him look like a knight without all the effort of putting on armor.

Right next door was the ball room, and Liam had to try out the fabulous giant shoes.

Then after all the hard work of ruling a kingdom, the new royal settled down in his comfy chair to look out over the serfs. Me and Claudia.

The castle was a big hit with Liam. Despite the lack of action, he really liked running through all the different rooms and checking it all out.

I'm back.. and Sensapolis part 1

So, I know it has been a long while since I have updated the site. But I have been very very busy with work and home and generally everything for a couple of months. I will try to get things rolling again now that November is here and my work schedule is theoretically improved.

One of the fun things we did this summer on a rainy day was go to the indoor fun park Sensapolis which is right by my office.

Essentially it is a massive warehouse full of activities for kids to do. The first image is a nice wide shot of the place from one direction.

Liam went nuts in here and I don't blame him. I have to say this was one of the most fun places to take a kid that I have gone to. The first thing we did was go to the area full of foam balls. Basically a room full of balls, with a scaffold five stories high surrounding it. From the scaffold, there is an air cannon every few feet that you can use to shoot balls at other folks. Liam would have stayed there all day. I will not lie, I had a great time trying to shoot other fathers in the head when they were not looking.

Right next to the ball zone is a climbing wall with a bunch of different routes for different skill levels. Liam was too small for this, but I could see Claudia's eyes lighting up as something she would like to do. Sadly she did not bring appropriate footwear or clothing for climbing, but I could tell that this is a part of the place that she will be taking advantage of the next time we visit.

There are also a whole lot of slides in this place. Some of them are up to three stories tall and will launch your child in a variety of speeds. Liam was a bit afraid of the re

ally fast ones, but he had a good time on this giant slide.

For the customers wanting extra speed, you could take a big felt carpet to ride down, something that reduced friction better than street clothes. I tried one or two that felt like I left my lunch up near the top.

More to follow in the next posts. Don't worry Dave, it will not be two months in between them any more.