No one had to shoot Pauline Hanson to stop her stupid shit and I hope this new idiot doesn’t require shooting either. I would rather live in a community with a muslim element, than in some backward thinking throw back to the Australia of the 1950s.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks but not for any one particular reason. First Em’s 2 new teeth showed up (at the same time) and then one of her little friends gave her gastro 
and then Daddy got it…and then mummy got it too… I’m still not 100% but definitely a lot better than I was on Saturday. Steve spent all day Friday in bed while Em and I went out and infected the rest of Düsseldorf. Then Saturday it was my turn to feel awful. Somewhere in all this excitement Em has really learnt to crawl. Previously she was only doing secret crawling, i.e. when I wasn’t around. And the only things she would crawl for were the TV remote controls. But on Friday she decided to reveal her new talent to mummy and since Sunday has been crawling for anything and everything. She’s quite a handful - I’m glad we’ve got 2 playpens! Video of Em crawling will surely be posted very shortly.
What else to report?
We’re hopefully going to visit Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina in late June early July, so that should be nice and hopefully relaxing. Steve’s really busy with report writing etc right now but is really looking forward to school finishing in 4 weeks. The weather has gone back to being pretty standard grey Düsseldorf weather but hopefully it’ll get its act together soon 
I’m currently trying to work out what to do regarding going back to work after September. There are lots of options but most of them won’t exactly be easy or bring in heaps of extra money so it’s questionable if it’s worth it…but we would have pretty limited options on Steve’s salary alone, so I really need to work out something…
Well, I’d better go off and be busy!
I played softball with the teachers team last weekend against the School’s Varsity team and it brought back memories of my years playing baseball. It also showed me how effective drills are. All those years of baseball training made it so that I didn’t have to think about what to do when I was playing. Things happened and I reacted. It was a blur. The main difference was that the bruises and sunburn took a while to go away. I don’t remember any pain coming from baseball as a kid.
This week a bunch of us are going to play paint ball for our friends bucks party. Another sport I haven’t played in a long time. I don’t think I will have quite the same level of success as I did at softball, so I have spent the week psyching my colleagues out. We’ll see how that plays out.
M crawls and has teeth now. She also laughs her head off when I put my nose on her tummy.
I have always been (and still am) against the death penalty, but the older I get, the closer I am to coming around to the idea. In this case it seems there is no doubt that the accused is guilty and will probably walk free again in 20 years or so. I don’t think the government should kill its own citizens, but maybe there should be some kind of special program for a guy like Hudson.
[end rational thought here]
[begin contradiction]
Do we really need an animal like this in our society? Once he has done his time in prison, someone (preferably a relative of the victim) should sneak up on him with a weapon and put him out of everyone’s misery. The sort of person that shoots someone because they told you to stop dragging a woman by the hair, is a dangerous loser that is surplus to requirements.
[end gut reaction here]
On Friday (had the day off) we went to Metro, which is a cash and carry kind of concern that we have access to because Alex is/was self employed. The place is like a huge warehouse, in that it is a huge warehouse. It is easily the largest shop I have ever been in.
We made our purchases and left with minimal fuss (the German way), but I got to thinking: how will our level of consumption be affected as the developing world catches up to us? Or more specifically, what impact will China* have on our quality of life?
* If China’s economy was a super hero then I suppose it could be likened to the flash. Although when it becomes the enemy of the US as it will have to do in the next 20 years or so, maybe a villain would be more appropriate. The only fast villain I can think of is Speedfreak, but he was/is kind of lame.
>edit< I just remembered Professor Zoom, but I left Speedfreak in there because he is so lame.