Week 23: Rainy Columbus Day Weekend

(I am about a week behind on posting. I will, hopefully, fully catch up later this week, as for the first time in a while, I'll have a full week with no travel.)

Our long weekend was a bit wet, so we did some more inside based activities, including our first trip to a climbing gym here in Germany (they have *no* pads on the floors in the top rope area--just industrial tile on concrete; despite the fact that I knew Jason wouldn't drop me, it took a while to get mentally over that), followed by a stop by IKEA.

The stop by IKEA was primarily to finish up the living room--or get it *closer* to finished than it was before. As you may remember from an earlier post, since our walls are really bumpy and not really white, I built a screen for the projector. I finished that maybe six weeks ago, finally finding some appropriate material for the screen, and getting a can of white paint. The result isn't too bad, as can be seen below. The picture is a little uneven in places--I think I'll need to do a second coat of paint at some point.

The screen in place

The big gain, though, from the trip to IKEA was to finally get the projector high enough above our heads that we didn't have to squinch down on the couch while watching TV. We ended up deciding on one of IKEA's modular units, which is just about the right height for the projector, when placed upside-down on the top most shelf. I like this position much better as it is going to be great for Wii playing during these long winter nights--something I should have done long ago when we had this setup in RI. I do want to paint the unit. Any ideas for anything interesting? I was thinking a 'film' pattern on the legs...

The projector: Standing Tall

We did get out late on Sunday and went by a local Weinfest in Piesport. We had some sausage, wine and then...Waffeln am Steil! And I thought Americans had cornered the market when it came to putting things on sticks. The stand where we bought them had this great little waffle iron that could make up to four of these babies at once. It was a delicious find, with a little powdered sugar.

Jason and the Waffeln

Piesport is a big wine area (as can be guessed by it having a wine fest in the first place). After indulging in the festival food, we took a walk out next to the Mosel, by some vineyards. In the picture below, the hill behind me is covered in vineyards. There were more vineyards behind Jason. Those have already been picked clean. We still don't know just how they do it. We assume by hand, but it is a huge project, so I was expecting to see a roving band of migrant laborers completing the task, but haven't yet seen proof of that guess. Until that point, I will assume it is gnomes. They are in everyone's gardens.

Mosel valley