It's three o'clock in the afternoon and the sun is streaming through the windows. I can barely see the monitor. After four gray, slimy days, finally blue skies. I should go out and enjoy the weather, but I've been working all morning and I really need to spend a few hours preparing for tonight's German class at the Volkshochschule. Tomorrow I'll go for a ride and a skate before the clouds roll back in, then set off on a major shopping expedition down Rheinstrasse into Steglitz.

After a few days' procrastination, I finally settled down to work and finished a small freelance job, a batch of icons. It does take me a while to get going, particularly when I've been out of the working habit for a while.

Yesterday - what did I do? Dopey all morning after having stayed up too late (again) the night before. Left in the afternoon for a long, circuitous three-hour ride in the gray drizzle, stopping for various errands: returning the silly modem cable, stopping at the Wilmersdorf ice oval to talk to someone about skating, down to the university to drop off some receipts for Annette, back across town to P's to bring back the spare keys, then home with a pit-stop at Kiepert to buy an overpriced grammar book. The skies cleared at the end of the day, though I missed the best of the sunset stuck in an Aldischlange [this one requires some explanation, which will come soon].

Some things are stupidly cheap here, other things stupidly expensive. Wine, beer, yogurt and cheese are bargains. Cat food is absolutely extortionate - almost triple the price at home. 90 DM for a 10 kg bag of Science Diet? The trick is to know what's cheaper on each side of the Atlantic, and stock up where appropriate. Annette will be flying back from Chicago with a suitcase full of books, jeans, ibuprofen, anti-perspirant, shampoo and twenty pounds of kibble.

Yes, Annette returns on Thursday afternoon. I haven't heard from her in far too long (I suspect that she's busy, not mad at me, but I always get a little nervous after 24 hours without email). Soon I'll begin to fuss about preparing for her return, cleaning, doing laundry, stocking the pantry. Vita will be pleased, as will I. Having not heard otherwise, I assume that the dissertation defence will go off without a hitch.

Before we left Vancouver Annette made a small fleece pad for the cat's carrier box. I put it behind the bathroom door, where the floor is very warm from the heating pipes, and that's where Vita curls up during the day. It's too adorable for words.

Life is good, here in the sunny capital of Switzerland's Bad-Ass Neighbour.

I received this wonderful image in the mail the other day. It's now my desktop wallpaper, at least until we have some non-ironic German guests about the place.