Wordless Wednesday - Didn't Happen

Sorry there was no Wordless Wednesday this week. David bought a brand new super fancy camera. In fact it is so fancy that it is a snob and refuses to talk to my beat up ancient MacBook. Hopefully at some point Apple technology will work with new Nikon technology and I will have lots and lots of pictures to post. David says he is sure he can find a work around for the problem, then he will have to teach me how to do it. In the mean time we are super busy enjoying our time at home with family and friends.

Kindle, Computer, Camera, Contraband

This weeks round up is being hosted by Jan at Ogles and Observations. Click over there on Friday to check out the happenings in the FS world. The topic is birthdays in the foreign service. I didn't intend to write anything this week since I am going slightly crazy trying to write a novel (or a novel length collection of gibberish) in one month, but then Donna wrote something and I just had to response and happily my response fits the topic, more or less, of course it is going up so late that I don't know if it will make the roundup.

So my birthday is coming up soon, right around Thanksgiving as a matter of fact. David being the sweet wonderful husband he is, ordered me a kindle because as we all know I am slightly book addicted. It never arrived. David started calling to see if he could track it down. He did. It was in a warehouse that was rapidly filling with computers, kindles, digital underwater cameras, and anything else that uses a lithium battery. Apparently there had been a plane crash somewhere and it was being blamed on lithium batteries so no more lithium batteries were being allowed in the pouch.

I posted a comment about my sad situation on facebook

Just found out that David was getting me a kindle for my birthday! Yay! Also just found out that the pouch refuses to deliver to deliver it and it is getting returned. Boo!

I got lots of comments including this one from Donna at Email From the Embassy.

Do you have a DPO? I just ordered a new computer; can't remember whether it was thru pouch or DPO. It hasn't arrived yet - now you have me worried.

Uh Oh! A bit later she posted more comments.

Ay yai yai. I guess I'd better check. I know people who've ordered computers, ipods and kindles without a problem, so it never occured to me to worry.

We have pouch and DPO. I just went to the mailroom and inquired, and they said there are no rules for either system prohibiting computers, etc. So these rules must be brand-spankin' new if they haven't heard of them yet. Hopefully my computer is really on its way here. What a hassle. Oh, and p.s. my husband's new-since-June Kindle just broke.

For the rest of the story you will have to go to Donna's blog. She has written one of the funniest, posts I have ever read. Really click over to E-mail From the Embassy now.

Wordless Wednesday--Boys and Their Toys

Computer Woes and a Really Long Bid List

My computer died. Dead. Really truly goners. It was working fine. I pushed the button to check my e-mail and also set it to retrieve any new podcasts on itunes (sadly NPR addicted, yep, that's me) satisfied it was doing its thing I went off to cook dinner. Came back a little while later hoping it was done so I could sync my pod and listen to the newest Splendid Table while cooking only to find that the rotten thing was frozen. Tapped a few buttons hoping what ever the problem was it would fix itself, Hey! Stop laughing! It usually works. Instead I got the dreaded grey screen with the blinking question mark. Not good. I left it hoping Dave could fix it. He came home fiddled with it a while and pronounced it dead. Initially he hoped to be able to retrieve some of the data, but even that didn't work. What ever happened it fried itself good. Yesterday we went to the local computer parts store and picked up a new hard drive, so now it is working again, sort of. It looks like my computer but sure doesn't act like my computer. All of my settings, bookmarks, files, downloads, and everything else that made it mine are gone. Dave said it will take a few days to finish loading all the programs but then it will good to go. In fact he says it will be better since the old hard drive was only 60 gig and the new one is 500 gig. That's quite the upgrade so I guess there is a silver lining. Now if only I could remember everyone's e-mail address.

On to other matters. Lots of you have been asking where we are going after Germany. (quick note- my husband is member of the foreign service so we move every few years to a new country) All I have been able to tell my friends is "I don't know yet." We do know when we will be moving but not where. This week we received our bid list so now I have new answer, "We will be going to one of the places on the list."

The bid list is basically a list of maybes. We receive the list, have some time to research the different places, submit out bids - requests to go to a particular place, then wait and wait and wait. Of course there are a whole bunch of other people out there all over the world doing exactly the same thing and chances are good if you want to go to a particular place someone else will too so we actually submit a list of places we would be willing to go to, then hope we get the one we really really want. For example on our last bid list we really wanted to go to The Hague in the Netherlands but we are now living in Frankfurt Germany so obviously that didn't work out. Frankfurt was our 2nd choice so can't really complain, we are living in Europe after all. Some times you get what you want, and sometimes you don't. It is really more complicated than this, there are all kinds of things to consider, and the bigger your family the more complicated it gets. I will skip the details for now. If you want to know more just e-mail (it's working now) and I will get back to you.

With no further ado here is our bid list. It is really long this time. Some of the places have more than one position available but I will skip over that part and only list each place not each position.

THE BID LIST
Abu Dhabi
Abuja
Addis Abada
AIT Taipei
Algiers
Amman
Ashgabat
Asmara
Asuncion
Athens
Bangkok
Bangui
Banjul
Beijing
Beirut
Belgrade
Berlin
Bissau
Brasilia
Brazzaville
Bridgetown
Bucharest
Budapest
Buenos Aires
Bujumbura
Cairo
Canberra
Caracas
Chengdu
Ciudad Juarez
Conakry
Cotonou
Damascus
Dar-Es-Salaam
Dhahran
Doha
Dubai
Frankfurt
Freetown
Georgetown
Guangzhou
Guayaquil
Hanoi
Harare
Ho Chi Minh
Hong Kong
Hyderabad
Istanbul
Jakarta
Jeddah
Jerusalem
Kathmandu
Khartoum
Kuwait
Kyiv
La Paz
Lagos
Libreville
Lilongwe
London
Luanda
Madrid
Manila
Maputo
Mbabane
Mexico City
Moscow
Muscat
Naples
New Delhi
Olso
Ottawa
Paris
Phnom Penh
Prague
Pretoria
Rabat
Rangoon
Reykjavik
Riga
Rio De Janeiro
Riyadh
Rome
San Salvador
Sana'a
Santiago
Sao Paulo
Seoul
Shenyang
Sofia
Tallinn
Tashkent
Tegucigalpa
Tel Aviv
Tokyo
Toronto
Ulaanbaatar
Valletta
Vienna
Vientiane
Vilnius
Warsaw
Yaounde
Yerevan

In case you are wondering when we receive the bid list it only lists the city NOT the country. I have been trying to do research via my ipod touch (not fun) so I haven't had a chance to look up all of the posts yet or I would have listed the countries. Did you know where all of these cities are? Not me! I have my atlas right next to as I do research. It also lists some stuff about the position that is only of interest, or even intelligible, to the employee. If you are FS yourself my husband is an IMS, that's computer geek to the rest of us. (Sorry Babe! LOL!) Thank goodness or my computer may have been gone for good!

So where would you want to go if you had to make this choice? Remember there are as many people staring at this list as there are positions. Someone WILL go to each and every one of these places but only ONE lucky person is going to Paris, the rest of us are going some where else. Oh the possibilities!

Cinnamon Bear, or Life Without TV

The TV died last week, actually my husband assures me that it is merely in ICU and should recover nicely once the capacitor transplant is complete. You have to understand that I have 4 children, while my husband has two extra babies, his 40 inch flat panel LCD TV and his Nikon D40. So the problems with the TV have been somewhat traumatic. To compound the trauma this is the season where we (the kids) watch endless Christmas videos while Mom (that's me) frantically tries to get everything accomplished without losing it and turning into a screaming banshee. Banshees aren't exactly filled with Christmas spirit and can turn unexpectedly violent when provoked by whining children.

Thank goodness for the computer and internet. It has saved the day! I found The Cinnamon Bear while blog surfing last week. Cinnamon Bear is a radio show originally broadcast in 1937. Each day starting on November 29th a 15 minute episode of the story was broadcast with the final episode on Christmas Eve. The first day the kids thought it was lame, by day three they were listening quietly (miracles DO happen) and begging me to play the next days episode early. It isn't too late to add this to your family holiday, just double up a few days to get caught up.

Youtube has allowed for a few minutes of peace when I really need them. If you search Christmas Cartoon Classics it turns up a treasure trove of Christmas classics from long ago. Such wonders as Christmas Comes But Once a Year (1936) and Jack Frost (1934) are just a few keystrokes away. This is youtube though, so some parental oversight is required.

Christmas music can be found on the internet too. Mikes Radio World has been providing me with a link to home since we moved overseas. I still listen to many of my favorite hometown radio stations even though we are in Germany. In addition to the many station links from around the world, this time of year there are Christmas Music only feeds with holiday music from many different countries. Instead of watching TV we are listening to a lot of holiday music and breaking out the board games. Maybe we will just leave the TV broken a little longer.

**For a chance to win some international Christmas music on CD head on over to Live From Waterloo and check out the contest.