Of vacations, spoons and immigration services

Hi folks,
how're things?

I'm still on vacation, using the time to catch up with friends, work on forming some new good habits (for a change). My trainer saw me at the gym twice today and I thought he was going to fall over in surprise. We'll see how long my latest wave of motivation lasts, or how long my impending hectic schedule of doom will let me keep at my workouts and pilates, but I'm hoping to get the best out of the time that I have. In other news, I was at immigration services about a week ago and officially got my visa extended for two years with unlimited and unrestriced access to the german job market. I'm elated...mostly because technically I'm not even eligible (love your caseworker and she'll love you back is all I've got to say about that one...) and because when you've experienced having to check in with a government agency before even thinking about changing your job, knowing that your potential employer is going to be hunted down and grilled by the german department of labor regarding why they want YOU to work for them instead of a perfectly good, out of work German...well, it's just nice not to have to deal with that.

Not that I'm thinking about changing jobs. I've been listening around and for most Kindergartens and nursery schools aren't half as employee-friendly as ours is. My boss is fantastic and hardly ever plays the Boss Lady role and my co workers are mostly pretty cool. We all know what the odds are of those conditions cropping up in most places of employment. A lot of friends of mine who also work in "the business" can't even take vacation days during the first six months on the job. I know, I know...in the states it's normal, but I've gotten a trifle spoiled where I am now, I guess.

Let's see...not too much has been going on recently. The annual Beer Mile was this past weekend a few blocks from our place. We went down there Friday and wound up throwing a spontaneous party for some random people Stephan knows from school cause it started to rain. I drank a Polish kid under the table at a game of spoons...the poor bastard is still mad at me, I think. Oh well. He kinda had it coming.

Anyway, I just spent a fantastic hour skyping with Colleen (all y'all who have skype can search for me under tyler.margaret) and now I think I'm going to go dig into the leftover tiramisu. I mean...why else was I at the gym twice today?

Take care guys...I'm thinking of you!