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I have been sick all weekend. I did go out on Friday night, which I probably shouldn't have done, but hindsight is 20/20. I felt fine on Friday night. I had a tiny bit of a sore throat and it wasn't even all the time that it was sore. But Saturday morning I woke up at 5am, 6am, 7am, and every hour thereafter until I finally dragged myself out of bed to go to the Apothecary. The pharmacist gave me some pretty sweet drugs that helped me feel better for like...6 hours. Unfortunately, one of them tastes like shit and the other one I can only take once a day. Today I'm trying to split it into two doses. It doesn't seem to be doing as good of a job as it did yesterday either. I bought some Teezucker so that I can choke down this tea that I bought. The only problem is now I don't drink the tea, I just eat the big chunks of sugar (zucker). The best part of the whole thing is that I know I'm sick because my body temperature seems to swing 5 degrees in 5 minutes. Thats a whole degree a minute. I get REALLY hot and sweat like mad for 30 minutes to an hour, then without even moving, I'm freezing my butt off. Then last night, my throat hurt like hell and the coughs were the worst I've ever had in my life. They hurt so bad. I went to bed at 1045pm then woke up every two hours, ON THE DOT, coughing like crazy and I had to pee. That was wierd cause I didn't drink anything. After I woke up at 445, I did a little experiment. I layed in bed and breathed real shallow and I wouldn't cough much. Then I would breath deeper and cough uncontrollably. The only thing I could figure is that the stage of sleep that I enter 2 hours into sleeping is the one in which I start breathing very deeply. Since it feels like my entire brain is being squashed by snot, I couldn't breath out of my nose so I would breath deeply out of my mouth and start coughing. I took a cough drop and fell asleep at about 615 or so. I gave up on sleeping at 815 and layed in bed in socks, long pants, a tshirt, a sweatshirt, covered from head to toe with two heavy blankets. When I woke up, I was sweating my genitalia off; 3 minutes later, I was shivering and my teeth were chattering. Being sick in a country that doesn't have Campbell's chicken soup sucks!

I made a band-aid out of a rubber band and a piece of toilet paper.














"Dane! You said you'd do these dishes a week ago!"
"Actually, what I said was..."

Yes, thats right, my apartment has a marsh full of marshmallows.

I wish I would have brought my textbooks and several other books. I just opened the blinds and had an overwhelming desire to model them somehow. They're the vertical/venetian blinds so they spin around a vertical axis and perform an impressive display of rotational oscillation, then when I open them, they dance "The Pendulum".

I have been trying really hard to learn German. Not only is it a pain because everyone at work speaks German, I also feel like since I'm in Germany, I should learn. Its the only decent thing to do. I bought my favorite book in German to read so that I can learn more. However, I'm not sure if it's helping. Since its my favorite book, I already know what happens so all I need to do is pick out one word every 5 sentences or so and I'm good to go. I'm going to keep hoping and reading though.

My apartment doesn't actually have a marsh full of marshmallows.

No one tells me to do my dishes either. Except after I took my drugs, I swear that banana peel suggested it.

Cooking at home was enough of a pain. I would make one of three things, spaghetti, mac & cheese with a can of tuna in it, or some form of eggs. I could fry them or poach them (sometimes) or make an omelet from them or scramble them or... actually, I think thats the extent of my egg cooking abilities. Here they make it harder. I can't find any Kraft Mac & Cheese. Instead, I have pasta with red sauce three or four times a week. Sometimes I treat myself to some form of meat in the sauce. I tried making a chicken breast the other day but failed miserably. I bought it from this fresh market business (see pictures in previous entry) and left it in the fridge for 3 or so days before I tried to make it. It was NASTY when I took it out. There was a layer like half an inch, sorry, 1.25cm, thick on the top that was all tough and dry and gross. Then the middle part had a bunch of blood and fat and stuff in it. I tried for a bit to cut it up into something I felt comfortable eating, but that failed, so I threw it away.

I want to do a radio show and have people listening, but I have a serious doubt that that will ever happen again. Sucks...

Have you ever seen anyone that you didn't know at all, but they looked so down, so distressed and sad, so naturally dismal, like they could hardly look any other way, that it made you feel sad too? I saw that kid on the subway the other day. I just wanted to buy him a twisty cone or something to make him feel better.

I bought a cactus the other day.


































I'm really happy about having a cactus. I hope it gets as big as the dude who sold it to me said it would. He said it would grow to be like a meter tall. That would kick ass. I wonder if you're supposed to transfer cacti when they get so big? Hmm. I went past the market again today and bought another cactus. A little one. this one has a flower too!

Everything seems to be engineered here better than it is in the States. No wonder there's that stereotype of them being good engineers. Its all the small things, I think. Like their windows, which can open both swinging out around their vertical axis or open a little on one of their horizontal axes.































And this cough drop box.

























That little flap on the outside is perfectly sized to fit under the flaps inside where the cardboard had to be folded to make the top. That's awesome.

I have seen so many American shows dubbed in German already. I watched Scrubs, Star Trek: Enterprise, ALF, Operation: Dumbo Drop, a Men In Black cartoon, and a few shows on MTV. Except Pimp My Fahrrad (Bicycle). That one's straight up German.

Insurance here is pretty cool. Maybe it's similar in the US, but here, I can get an insurance against accidents. So like...if I'm riding my Fahrrad down the street and I fall on the Streetcar tracks and the streetcar has to slam on the brakes and then 5 cars slam into the streetcar, that insurance covers all the damages I caused. It can even be if I borrow a friend's tennis racket and while I'm using it, it breaks. Insurance pays for it. And since everyone has that insurance, its affordable. In fact, I think the only insurance that you get raped for is health insurance. But when you consider that you can go to the doctor every single day for only 10 euro a year, its not really that bad of a deal.

They also have an insurance that will pay if your luggage gets lost. A health insurance for when you are travelling, incase the doctors who treat you abroad don't use health/medicinal practices recognized by Germany.