Phewff!

Boy the violent weather back in the States sure is putting the Dusseldorf drizzle into perspective! I'm pretty sure no one's house has been destroyed by lack of sun.

While Monday was not a holiday in Germany, it is a holiday in England. And since Skip is an employee of the UK office, he had the day off. I took him on the abbreviated Anne Russ tour of Dusseldorf. Some of the things I regularly show visitors and newcomers to the area, he had not experienced. We did have lunch at one of his favorite restaurants and we went and bought Birkenstocks. We felt it was wrong to leave Germany without them.

Today, he is paying for his leisure. He even has a conference call that starts late tonight because it's with folks in the States.

I have been working to sell the items of furniture we aren't taking with us to the UK. Our classified in the Radschlaeger didn't seem to help much, so I took pictures of everything and sent out a mass e-mail last night with the visual aids, and today, almost everything has been spoken for. Anyone need a table and chairs? I've spent a good portion of my day checking and responding to e-mails and setting up appointments to check out and/or pick up items.

The moving company sent someone today to look at all our stuff and put together an estimate for the move. Two weeks from Thursday, we move to the hotel and they come get our stuff. Yikes!

In light of the intensity of the next few weeks, I went by the Apotheke (pharmacy) today to get a box of Neuropas. It's homeopathic medication that is a mixture of St. John's Wort, valerian root and passion flower. It's good for depressiver Verstimmung und nervöser Unruhe, which in English translates to: depressive disgruntlement and nervous restlessness. It's quite effective. I've taken it before, but this time the pharmacist warned me that when you take it you have to be careful of overexposure to the sun. I laughed and she said, "I know, it's not usually a problem." But a lot of people here use tanning beds, so she cautioned me about that as well.

Tomorrow I am off on a field trip with Maddie's class to the Duesseldorf Botantical Gardens. Normally, I don't do well with large groups of young children, but for whatever reason, this group seems to like me. They don't know my name (Maddie's Mom), but they're basically pretty sweet.