This is one in a series of posts on ways I have discovered that Germany and America are different. See the end of this post for other posts on this topic.

When we were first married, Rob and I had just one car. However, we both worked at Bed Bath & Beyond, which is on South Glenstone, and we lived up at Glenstone and Grand. We drove each other the 3.6 miles, and the person who didn’t have to work spent time, lots of time, at Border’s, which is next door. Eventually, we saved up and bought a second car, a Nissan Pathfinder, so we had the small Honda Civic for long trips, and the gas guzzler for short trips around town. Like almost all Americans, the car was our main mode of transportation.

Germany is Different

But when we moved here, not only did we not own or plan to buy a car, but Europe is a little different. Instead of buying a car as soon as we could, I bought a one-month bus ticket each month. For €32, I could use the city bus system five days a week as many times as I wanted to. Rob and I would take the bus to Real to buy groceries before we found a closer grocery store, Toom. We’d meet there after I was done at school, then lug all the groceries home. It was an hour and a half affair just because of the walking time.

When Rob’s Mom and her boyfriend brought down Rob’s old bike and an extra one for me, it was great. We could meet at school, ride to Toom (about 5 minutes), shop, and be home within 45 minutes or an hour! I could be at school within 10 minutes whenever I wanted, without adjusting my life to the bus schedule.

Then, my bike broke. The back brake wasn’t working when I got the bike, but then the gear shifter stopped working. It was stuck in a high (low?!) gear, which made pedaling up even the slightest incline feel like Heartbreak Hill.

Buying New Bikes

After a couple weeks of my persuasion, Rob agreed to start shopping for a new bike for me. After all, while it might cost us between €50 and €150 to buy a new (new to me, but used) bike, we would be saving that €32 each and every month I would have bought a bus ticket, which quickly adds up.

On our second try, we found a new and used bike store on Frankfurter Strasse, a major thoroughfare in Giesssen, but their selection of used bikes consisted of three that looked older and more decrepit than the one I was replacing and one that looked perfect, but was already “spoken for.” The other used bike shop we found, Fahrrad Second-Hand Klaus Landau, is owned and operated by a friendly older man, Herr Landau, who was proud to show us his wares and describe each bike: how many gears it had, how tall it was, and the price. His shop was easily a fourth the size of the other shop, but was neatly filled with ten times as many used bikes, all conservatively priced. We settled on a newer used bike with three gears, both a front and back light, and pedal braking for exactly €85, the amount we had with us in cash.

Rob’s bike was also on its last leg, so after seeing all of the possibilities at Klaus Landau, he decided to take both of the broken bikes back to the shop and trade them in for a newer, fully functioning bike for himself. After explaining the problems with our bikes and picking out the bike he wanted, the owner gave us a great deal for the trade-ins.

Biking is Awesome!

Now, we both have bikes that work properly, so we can ride to Schiffenberg monastery castle on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, go grocery shopping in a bearable amount of time, meet my colleagues at the Dutenhofener See for a relaxing afternoon watching Beauly play with the other dogs and beering on the shore, or getting to the Bailey’s place in just 10 short minutes.

Related Posts
It’s All Foreign to Me: Semester Breaks
It’s All Foreign to Me: Water
It’s All Foreign to Me: Three-ring Binders
It’s All Foreign to Me: Food in Germany
It’s All Foreign to Me: Teaching at a German University Part I
It’s All Foreign to Me: Teaching at a German University Part II

A few weeks ago, I announced my bid for the 2008 Berlin Marathon (for those of you who read the 4-part series on my running history, it might be interesting to know that every time I try to type “2008 Berlin Marathon,” I start typing “2008 Chicago Marathon“), and today is officially the opening of Linden’s running season. It has been really cold this winter and Linden just doesn’t run in the cold. I could have started running last week, but there were some threatening cold days this week, and when I start, I don’t want to stop again.

So we rode our bikes the 10 minutes through town, straight to the entrance to the Stadtwald Giessen, locked the up, and ran. As you head into the Stadtwald (”shtaught-vault,” or “city forest”), you run up a slight incline for about 2 miles. There are places where it levels off a little bit, but for the most part, it’s a long killer incline. I am used to running on flat ground, this even this baby “hill” leaves me way more winded than I should be. Nice thing is that I always go faster down the hill, so that means negative splits!

When we made it back to our bikes, we saddled up and headed back into the Stadtwald. We have heard rumor of Kloster Schiffenberg, or the Schiffenberg castle monastery, a castle which housed monks for nearly 800 years. We headed in the general direction, but turned around, we think, right before we got there. All in all, we were out gettin’ the blood pumping for just short of 2 hours. I like this bike riding thing! (Hint, hint, Vanilla!)

Some of my favorite quotes from today’s workout:

• As he ran behind me so we could make room for other runners and after the other runners had passed us, Rob said, “I can smell you. (long pause) You smell delicious. I wanna have you with some potatoes.” I can only hope he meant I smelled like a bratwurst or Frikadellen, because Germans sure do like those two dishes with potatoes.

• After the run: I had told him during the run that he was a bad running partner, so when we were done, he said, in his best Valley Girl impression, “If you had just finished running with Sarah, you would totally be chattin’ it up right now. (Throws his hip out to one side and twirls his imaginary hair) Well, actually, you’d be twittering to each other. You would talk like that, too: (Different girl voice) ‘Sarah is twittering: How was your run, Linden?’ (Back to Valley Girl) ‘Linden is twittering: I feel good, Sarah! What about you?’”

Sarah is definitely a better running partner because her Run Talk motivates me (Rob is, to me, most annoying when we’re running), but he sure does crack me up!

Today is RSS Awareness Day, and as a daily user of RSS feeds, I’ve got, né, want, to do my part! I love the convenience of RSS, and that convenience is behind every reason I love RSS feeds.

Easily Email Articles to Friends

Not a single day passes that I don’t come across an article that reminds me of someone. Some web pages provide an “Email this!” link, but then I have to go look up my friend’s email address. Google Reader, since it is linked to my Gmail account, auto-populates my friend’s email address after I have typed a few letters of their name, just like Gmail does.

Plus, I can send the article to as many people as I want (some sites only allow you to send the article to one person!) and include a note.

Compile My Favorite Articles in One Place

You can use a social bookmarking site, like del.icio.us or Diigo to compile all your favorite web sites, but those sites only link to your faves. Using Google Reader’s “Share” button, I create a web page, on the fly, that contains all my favorite sites. Here’s my Shared Items page.

Get the Best from the Web Without Lifting a Finger

Okay, okay, you got me. You do have to lift a finger, but just barely. Lift it enough to click that little orange RSS Feed button, the set it back down on your mouse to click. That’s it; you have subscribed to your favorite web page, be it the New York Times Health feed, the Astronomy Picture of the Day feed (one of my personal favorites), or one of your friend’s/family member’s blog.

The word of the day is “convenience.” If you find yourself wasting time browsing the internet without purpose; if you find yourself missing out on news, world or familial; or if you just want an easier way to share cool websites with your friends and family, an RSS reader is what you’re looking for. Try it for one month.

(This post wasn’t intended to explain how RSS works, but if you are curious, Common Craft’s video “RSS in Plain English” explains RSS in, well, ya know, easy-to-understand terms.)

Related Posts
Today is RSS Awareness Day!
May Day is Big This Year
Sarah Writes about Feedburner
Blog Changes: Subscribe via Email

Man, is this beautiful. Because the atmosphere is a bit thinner at 13,500 feet, space shines through more clearly. Maybe this is something that Rocky Mountain-dwellers are used to, but the Ozark “Mountains” I grew up in never afforded an image like this. Silhouetted mountains; a bright Moon and sparkling Venus; and clouds, lit up by the moonlight, make for a breath-taking image, even when viewed on a computer screen. I can only imagine how beautiful it must have been in person.

(Frayed Laces, maybe you can tell us!)

On Monday, I told you about Twitter, how I use it for advertising this blog and interacting with Facebook. Today, Charity forwarded me a CNN story about James Karl Buck, an American journalism student who sent a one-word tweet—”Arrested”—when he was arrested while covering a protest in his adopted home, Egypt. That tweet alerted his friends to his fate and set in motion his release, thus proving that Twitter has some serious uses, other than telling the world what you’re doing, marketing your blog, and updating your Facebook status.

Let me share a little email I got from Sarah:

Hey, how would you feel about doing a guest post about Twitter? I’m thinking about jumping on board…convince me!

And here was my response:

Sure!

Actually, my true response what much more detailed, as I was unsure of whether I should write the post. By the end of my email, though, I had convinced myself (and hopefully Sarah!) that I was ready to write it, but that it would not be much like any other other posts I’ve read about Twitter.

So, without further ado, you can read my first guest post on Sarah’s blog, A Fool of Myself.

Also relevant…
Follow me on Twitter
Follow Sarah on Twitter

A couple weeks ago, I announced my bid for the upcoming Berlin Marathon, and yesterday, NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day featured a marathon of a different kind.

In the 1800s, Charles Messier, a French astronomer, dedicated much of his time cataloging objects in the sky that he and other comet hunters might incorrectly identify as comets. Most of these items were deep sky objects, like nebulae and galaxies. He cataloged 103 objects in the sky, and this astronomical marathon challenges amateur astronomers to view all 110 Messier objects (7 were added to Messier’s list).

Because of our rotation around the sun and a viewer’s location on our planet, there are certain times when running this marathon is possible, and one of those times is around the March equinox, from mid-March to early-April. I seriously doubt that it would ever happen, but I would love to complete this marathon some day!

Image source: The 110 Messier objects

Take a moment to watch this short film, called “Possessed,” which

enters the complicated worlds of four hoarders; people whose lives are dominated by their relationship to possessions. The film questions whether hoarding is a symptom of mental illness or a revolt against the material recklessness of consumerism. When does collecting become hoarding and why do possessions exert such an influence on our lives?

POSSESSED from Martin Hampton on Vimeo

It is no news to regular readers of this blog that I have been making changes in my life over the past year. I think that one of the biggest changes that has taken place in my life is the way I handle money. Rob and I have struggled for years with my bad spending habits, but I finally feel like I have them under control.

The next big change we are working on is my hoarding, and that video inspired me to share my story. Mine is not anything close to as dramatic as those in the film, but it’s my story. It has always been quite apparent to me since later in high school that I like to save things. Every little thing. Programs from events in high school and college. News clippings of interesting articles (usually recipes or funny comics) from magazines or newspapers. Ticket stubs. Unique bottles.

I started getting it under control sometime during college—having to move in August and May and August again during the first two years of college dorm life and then once a year for the next two years—made me realize that I had too much junk. That’s when I began getting rid of it, but not seriously. Then two things happened that started to help me fix this problem and the pretty much cured it.

The first thing was simple. I was using StumbleUpon and I came across LifeOrganizers.com. I read a few articles the first day, then a few more the second and third days. And then I just started leaving the site up and reading a little more every day. Then I wanted to start trying out some of the things I read about. Within one month, I had decluttered our files at home (I had cell phone bills still from a company I was no longer contractually obligated to and almost every single bank statement—some of which were 8 to 10 pages long—I had ever received. I found a great shredder on sale ($50 for $30, gotta love Wal-mart) and taken care of all those extra papers I had hoarded away. I saved a few important ones, but I significantly reduced our clutter in one little area.

It was catching. Next, I tackled my office at school. It was disorganized and messy. However, I had been jealously eyeing Sarah’s perfectly organized files every time she opened her drawer, so I asked her for some advice, then sat down between the recycle bin and a stack of new hanging file folders and tabs and a plan to make sure everything was uniform. I finally had a well-organized system.

At home, I was slowly organizing little parts of our home. Then I got this job and suddenly we had six weeks to pack up our entire life and move to Germany. If there is one thing that will cure a cluttered home, it’s making an international move in 42 quick days. That move was the second thing that jump-started my organizing.

I know how hard it is to throw stuff away. I seriously couldn’t have done it without Rob’s griping encouragement. And Bethany’s help. Nothing helps you realize all the crap you save and for what stupid reason than cleaning out that crap in front of a friend. All the excuses that make sense in your brain and in front of your husband no longer work.

So where are you at? Are you suffering under too much Stuff? What’s your strategy for getting out from the pressure? Or are you like me and find yourself on the upswing? Share your success story in the comments or on your own blog and then leave a comment letting us know about it!

Related Posts
How Moving to Germany Made Me Re-examine My Habits (Part 1)

Related Websites
Life Organizers: Short, easily digested articles for organizing all parts of your life: home, office, time, education and more!
The Positivity Blog: To change your life and habits, you must change your mind.
Unclutter: How to get and stay organized, but truly about living a “simply, remarkable life”
Zen Habits: despite its new age-y sound, this blog gives great advice for achieving your organization, productivity, health, and money goals, plus many other areas of your life.
Dumb Little Man: Not every post here is about organization, but they’re all great.

Okay, I’m with you… I can’t wait until May 1 either! Not only because it is a school holiday in Germany (WAHOO!), but also because it’s the first every RSS Day!

Here’s a preview of some of my favorite reasons for clicking on those little orange buttons so often.

• There are many feed readers out there, buy my preferred reader, Google Reader, makes it easy to email an article to a friend I think will enjoy it!
• It’s easy to create a page of the articles I’ve shared, without clogging up inboxes.
• I like the focused approach to broadening my horizons that RSS offers. I don’t have to aimless browse the web or spend time looking for articles I want to read: they’re delivered right to my feed reader every day.

And, if you haven’t watched this video one of the other thousand times I’ve mentioned it, you should check out Common Craft’s “RSS in Plain English.” It does what all of Common Craft’s videos does: Explain a really cool web technology in clear, simple terms, and highlights why you should give it a try. Hey, it ain’t called “Really Simple Syndication” for nuthin!

This idea has been around for quite a long time. In fact, its most famous version is from Hemingway, who wrote not a six-word memoir, but a six-word novel:

For sale: baby shoes, never used.

This most recent iteration was sparked by SMITH Magazine’s book called Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure. NPR even has an enjoyable slide-show to accompany the six-word memoirs they have collected.

So without further ado, I am joining the six-word memoir meme that is sweeping the blogosphere. I’ve been tagged by Sarah at A Fool of Myself, which means I have to sum up the last 26 life-filled years in six little words.

An optimist-at-heart, teacher-friend writes, runs, loves.

Now it’s my turn to play tag! I think you’re technically supposed to tag only five people, but I am excited to hear what my friends come up with. I really enjoyed brainstorming and word-playing, and I hope you do to!

Beth and James at teco/teca
Deanna at Something clever here soon.
Dr. Cadle at Techsophist
Steph
Lindsay
Betsy
Charity at The Hoot’s Nest
Jill at Ingenious Fool
M at Colorless Green Ideas
…and last but certainly not least:
Дж. Хьюз at Bright Yellow Gun

And here are the rules of this little meme:

1. Write your own six word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you want.
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post, and to the original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
4. Tag at least five more blogs with links.
5. Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

P.S. Just to head off your doubters and nay-sayers, I have it from a pretty darn good source—my former grammar professor—that compound adjectives, which are joined by hyphens, count as one word, and I think it’s safe to assume that the same goes for the compound noun I use to name myself.