Gotta be Lomo

So I've been teaching the kids at school a bit about Halloween. It's no good without pictures and demonstrations and stuff though -- you can't just explain it, you have to get them in the spirit of things. Unfortunately there isn't a huge spirit of Halloween here, so I guess I'll have to wait until Carnival season. Carnival sounds like a sweet mix of Mardi Gras and Halloween, so when that takes place I can point to specifics and say: "THAT is what I'm talking about. Dress up like an idiot and run around town!" I did mention that one of the "tricks" people pull is egging houses, which they seemed surprised at. I hope I didn't just plant the seed of revolution. But they told me that on a slightly similar holiday in Germany, they do stuff like put toothpaste on car handles and such -- that kinda sucks too. I blame the plaque industry, trying to give toothpaste a bad name.

I went on a bar tour or pub crawl with some people involved in the University of Mainz Campus Radio program tonight. It was actually less of a crawl and more of a standstill, since we only saw two bars and only sat and drank at one of those, but that's still two new places I got to mentally note for further visitation. Eventually I'll find others. The first place I had seen and would have bet my life that it wasn't fun. Why? You already saw why if you read the title of this post: it's called LOMO. How can a bar called LOMO be anything but terrible? But against all odds, it actually looked pretty nice, and I saw they have a breakfast buffet from 10-2 every day for less than 5 Euros. Obviously I'll be back to try that out soon. My one weakness is that I have many weaknesses, including a fondness for buffets.

Anyway, Lomo was full (yup, apparently other people got past the name too), so we went to a bar called Quadrait Mayence or something similarly pretentious. Yet another bar I would have never found, let alone entered, considering its proximity to the police station -- getting drunk at a bar directly behind the local law enforcement building seems like an unnecessary risk. But this was also a cool place with better-than-normal prices, so I'm sure I'll be back.

Anyway, gotta get my beauty sleep in preparation for a costume-less Halloween tomorrow. Since I can't wear a mask I gotta try to keep my own face presentable. I know, I know...very disappointing -- I've never had a costume-less Halloween I don't think. But even without costumes this party should be awesome, so I guess I'll try it the German way for once. At least their way involves a holiday on November 1, something which America is lacking. Can somebody do something amazing on Thursday so in the future it will be a national holiday and we can sleep in the day after Halloween? Go big then go home.

Lesson Planning

What are you doing for Halloween? I've been preparing one of my first real attempts at a lesson plan, focusing on this wonderful holiday, of course. It'll be for a 6th, a 7th, and four 8th grade classes, so I figured a Word Search would be an appropriate exercise. I dunno, is there a minimum (or a maximum) age requirement for a Word Search? They're not that hard, which may be why I always enjoyed them and probably still do. Thankfully there are websites that also make it not that hard to create a word search these days. I used a site called Discovery School's Puzzlemaker for this one. The words involved are a bunch of typical Halloween costumes, such as "vampire," "pirate," and "doctor." I thought it was odd that I came up with doctor since almost all of the rest are "scary" costumes of some sort, but then I remembered that doctors are also pretty scary. I certainly wouldn't want to BE one in real life.

Germans have a vague idea of Halloween, and people do have some parties, but in general it's nothing like in America. While figuring out what traditions to describe, I wasn't sure how much time I should spend elaborating on the "trick" portion of trick or treating. If I inform them of Halloween tricks, will I be ensuring that they engage in such heinous acts? Is it better if kids not know these tricks exist at all until after marriage, just like with sex? Throwing eggs at houses and having sex are quite similar, after all: they're sloppy, soggy, hateful activities, after which somebody ends quietly sobbing into a pillow, right? Hm, maybe my sex education wasn't so great after all.

I decided to talk about it anyway. I hope the government doesn't pull my funding over this.

By the way, in case it was missed, I'm joking about the crappy abstinence-only "sex education" that the US government believes is the best thing for school kids. "Hope is not a strategy," to paraphrase a paraphrasing I recently saw.

Don't you forget about me

It's been a while, hasn't it? Yeah, I missed you too, give us a hug. Okay, you can let go now...awkward.

What to tell, what to tell? I'll start off recent, don't want to get too ambitious or I might scare myself away from this thing again. Gotta ease my way back in. Be gentle. Sam came to visit this weekend. I must say we had a good time, but Friday was tops. We had a fantastic lunch buffet at the Eisgrub (it means "ice cavern, basically) -- a place where they not only brew their own delicious beer, but also have some of the cheapest buffets I've ever seen -- and right after that we had an even better wine buffet.

There was a "Wine Forum," whatever that means, for the Rheinhessen region, so for five and a half hours we tried our best to work our way through over 150 types of wine. I mean, we gave it the ol' college try...which meant that instead of swishing a little sip around in our mouths and then spitting out the rest and dumping half a glass of perfectly good wine in a big bucket, we swallowed each large gulp we took. There was no way we were getting through 150 types of wine, but I still felt like I accomplished a lot. Namely, I got my money's worth and didn't throw up. Seriously, when everyone else around you is spitting wine into giant communal buckets, it is not a relaxing atmosphere. We soldiered on, though, and had a delicious time.

Did you eat some peanut butter today? I did, for the first time in a couple of months. They don't have good peanut butter in Germany. Brittany and I found a connection to the military PX in Wiesbaden, so she brought me a jar of Jif yesterday, and it is glorious. I recommend you spread some on an oreo or some other treat right now, just because you can.

I just set my clocks back for European Daylight Saving Time, but I'm not fooled: I know it's not that early, and I am tired! Thus, bed.

Go Sox.

And Pats.

And go, Gadget Blog Post.