This One Goes To Eleven

Hey, World. It's Monday morning-ish and I'm at Thorlef and Brigitte's. In response to Mark, my German is still not great--I can understand a decent amount of stuff, but still have trouble speaking and such. I imagine this will change once I get to school and have a month of intensive language study. And the food is awesome, of course, but it seems to be catching up to me, as I'm finding myself running to the bathroom too often the last couple days. Which is why Brigitte and I didn't end up going to Mainz today--I didn't think I'd survive. It could be the beer, too--at least one gets consumed per day, but it's not quite the same as Natural Light. That means the brewers don't get their water downstream of a small community who has no toilets and just uses the stream. But that's probably enough on that subject.

So I'm just hangin' out I guess, which is relaxing. I've played tennis a couple of times, although I don't provide much more than cannon fodder for my relatives. Maybe a swim later, and hot tub action, but I don't think I'll try the steam room again just yet, that thing was too much for me. Watch some movies, or more German MTV, which is a lot like American MTV if American MTV still played music videos--that is, the majority of music is in English. I've been makin' some musik on the piano, too.

Saw cousin Hennie yesterday, although not for too long--he's a workin' man, which is hard to believe but true. He studied in Freiburg for 2 years so he was telling me about it. Saw cousin Philly a few days ago at Britta's, and it turns out she'll be working at a hospital in Freiburg for a few weeks starting today I think, so it's great that she'll be there for some of the time I will. I still have a ton of great pics to put on a website, but I'm waiting for the chance to do it all from my computer rather than dealing with this German computer/internet stuff for some pics, so unfortunately you still have to wait half a week or more.

Just a few funny things before I go. One, I get e-mail newsletters from this site Tremor, which isn't the point. The point is that in these newsletters, which I don't usually pay attention to, I've noticed that they like to put "Fun Facts" at the bottom. I'd like to share with you two of Tremor's ideas of Fun Facts:
Fun Fact With three or more teen passengers in the car, teen drivers are 20% more likely to be involved in an accident. Study by the Southern California Injury Prevention Research Ctr, Dailynews.com 6.18.05
Fun Fact The most painful areas to get a tattoo: 1. Ribs 2. Top of feet or hands 3. Knee 4. Elbow 5. Triceps ESPN THE MAGAZINE 8.1.05
Weren't those fun, kids?

And I'll be leaving you with this: I haven't seen the actual product, but there are commercials on TV advertising an alcoholic drink called "Desperado." Can you guess what Desperado is? Don't search for it, just take a moment and try to guess what it is, and I'll let you know next time. Adios, amigos.