Twitter

So my husband decided today that he wanted to have a twitter account. I had signed up for one forever ago so I was like well maybe I should give it a shot too. So we're both playing around with twitter and this super creepy girl starts following him. Totally raunchy vulgar tweets. Seriously, how do these people think that it's okay?? It blows my mind that some people have no boundaries. He blocked her etc but really people, is that necessary??

No AC

The past week has been hot here. And it's supposed to stay hot until later in the week. Its been in the high 80s to high 90s every day. That temp doesn't sound terrible but there's no air conditioning here. Anywhere. So there's no escape from the heat. Luckily our house stays fairly cool. But riding in the car is the worst. No air conditioning and the window shield just makes the sun feel that much hotter. Really nasty. Sunday was in the high 90s, it might have even been over 100. We opted to hit a local indoor pool for the afternoon with some new friends. That was the best idea ever. The water was a little on the warm side but it still felt way better than being outside.

At the beginning of this nasty hot streak I had been doing some basic maintenance to my bikes. Cleaning chains and gears, tightening odds and ends, staring at my breaks wondering how I repair those (it can't be that hard, right?), etc... But it's been too hot for this girl to go out and bike. Hopefully when it cools down this weekend I'll go. I'm hoping we're getting into fall now and the weather will continue to cool down but someone said it can get pretty hot here in August and September.

I started up school again yesterday. I think this semester will be a little crazy with 3 classes but they look really interesting.

Topic-less Thursday

Second day in a row posting, pretty impressive for me.

I really want to get to go camping or backpacking before it starts getting chilly here. So I've been working on doing some research which feels more challenging than I think it should be. So I've switched from on-line research to book research and made a little more headway. Over Labor Day weekend we're hoping to make a trip somewhere but we're not sure where yet. Munich and Brussels are at the top of our list so far. But part of me just wants to go camping and hiking. Makes me wish we were back in the states a little. Just punch into the internet where you want to go and a million state and national parks pop up and you pick one and just go.

Anyway. I took both my bikes out for a short ride yesterday. They need some work before I can actually ride them but I stopped by Outdoor Rec on base and picked up what I needed (hopefully I can locate my bike tools at home this weekend). Outdoor Rec is a very small outdoor store on base. I think they mostly do rentals. But it's nice to know where to go if we need something. They also have a nice climbing area which I think I'll take advantage of. The climbing intro class is 25$ and they have women's climbing group every Tuesday night for 5$. Maybe I'll make some fun outdoorsy friends.

Germany

Here we go again. Not making any promises with this blogging ordeal. Just thought I'd write a little about what's been up in Germany.

Our household goods were shipped June 4th from Minnesota and showed up at our new home on August 13th! It's so nice to have all our home stuff. I had waffles for breakfast this morning just because I could! We really don't like our German washing machine. It doesn't get clothes clean and its super small. I can barely fit one of Levi's uniforms in the washing machine. But as much as we don't like our washing machine, we are loving our German dishwasher! Gets everything perfectly clean and no water spots to speak of. Totally impressed.

Today is garbage day, which is what I actually wanted to write about. I should have taken pictures but I'm already writing and don't want to run down to the street. So, Germans are big on recycling. Imagine your 'American' garbage can (the black or green plastic thing you set out by the curb on garbage days) and cut it down in size by about 40%. That's the size of our garbage can. No big deal, right? Well, garbage is only picked up every other week. So that small garbage can of ours has to hold 2 weeks of garbage in it. Which is where recycling comes in. The other weeks are recycling weeks where you take your recyclables (mostly paper and plastics) out and the recycling man picks them up. So if you don't recycle you'll be hurting a little for garbage space because your garbage can lid is 'supposed' to shut all the way. We have become very good at making sure recyclables get washed out and put in recycling!

I'll try and post a few pictures soon! Looking for my camera cord.... It should be in one of these boxes.

Weekend pick me up

 Coffee is my fail-proof beginning/mid/end of week pick me ups. I went on a bit of an iced coffee kick a few months ago and have finally perfected my recipe. It's delicious, and super easy. Sure to brighten any day. Even my husband (a life long coffee lover) frequently asks for MY iced coffee over going to Starbucks :) (he may be a little biased)

So here is my wonderful, tasty, easy, and fairly low calorie iced coffee recipe:

These are our favorite ingredients. This almond milk is 

very tasty and the french roast instant coffee is dark and flavorful

12 oz cup

2-3 teaspoons of instant coffee (or two packets if using single serve)

2ish teaspoons of white sugar

1/8 cup of warm-hot water

Mix until dissolved

Fill cup with desired amount of ice

Fill cup 3/4 full of vanilla almond milk

Top off cup with water (you don't have to do this, you could fill it all the way with almond milk but I think it gets too thick that way.)

Optional: coffee creamer of your choice! (we like to put just a little splash of vanilla coffee creamer in ours)

Mix, enjoy, de-stress, and look super hip on the way to your local library!

**Note** Yesterday I posted this blog from my blogger app on our ipad. I was NOT impressed. I wasn't able to move the pictures where I wanted them to go. Other than the picture part it wasn't terrible. So I deleted it and rewrote this morning. I think I would use it if I wasn't posting pictures, but personally I think pictures are the most fun parts of blogs :)

Excess and moving

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is being a 'minimalist'. I don't want to label it or be legalistic about it. There have been some book suggestions from friends that I'm planning on checking out.

This is something Levi and I have been talking about ever since we packed up our house back in August. We had only been married 13 months and we realized we had waaayyy too much stuff. It probably wouldn't have mattered so much if we weren't moving. But we are moving. And we will likely be moving again in 3 years. And maybe again 3-4 years after that. And maybe 3-4 years after that. You get the idea. Military life. Military life and having a lot of stuff do not go well together. Unless you really don't mind packing and unpacking.

After packing up our entire house in August (and taking numerous bags to good will) we decided the less we have the happier we will be. And we plan on sticking to that plan as well as we can.

Microwave update and others

Back to the microwave! That week I kept track of my microwave use. I used it 8 times in total. 4 times to cook frozen veggies. Twice to reheat my coffee and twice to melt butter. I could have used the stove to melt the butter and cook veggies. The coffee I suppose I could have thrown out and made fresh but that seems plain wasteful. All in all I think we use the microwave pretty minimally. I'm not sure if we will have a microwave when we move. I guess it doesn't matter one way or the other.

This weekend we went to Oklahoma City. We spent the morning and most the afternoon at the zoo, ended up getting awesome tea at this odd Asian place, at Chipotle, and saw the Hunger Games! It was a relaxing weekend, which was just what we needed.

I got out the bike last Friday. I'm not sure why I haven't been using it more. Probably because we've been running. We took a week off running and never really got back on track. We've been keeping up with going to the gym but running has decreased to once or twice a week. So I got the bike out Friday and did a fun 20 miles. It felt good to spin my legs for a bit. I did another 15 miles today (sore butt!). I'm looking forward to biking more and hopefully alternating it with running (and continuing to go to the gym). It's starting to feel like summer here!