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hell yeah!
2003-08-11 @ 9:16 p.m.

Monday

It's twenty minutes past six, and it's 39C. That's 102F, for those of you who are non-metric types. Not that I'm complaining, since an hour ago it was 40C/104F. And after Germany, I am complaining not at all because at least in Cascais, there's a breeze, if not a full fledged wind. There hasn't been much of one today, and yesterday not at all, but it's certainly started to blow now.

I've got a bunch of windows open, had a bunch of windows open all day and all last night. About fifteen minutes ago, doors started slamming shut inside the apartment, scaring the bejaysus out of the cat and nearly giving me a heart attack. I've since discovered that I need to buy some door stops. I used to have some, but after a concerted search they're still missing. Right now I'm using a garbage can, a basket of firewood, a scratching post, a chair with books piled on it, and a basket- cat bed combo.

I bought the cat bed for Calliope about four years ago, when we lived in Germany. She had to go to the Kitty Hotel for a couple weeks, it was suggested by the woman in charge of the KH since she hadn't been to one before, and I thought she'd like to have it with her. It looks like a tiny quilted pup-tent, and I figured she could hang out in there, hiding from the other cats. I bought it well ahead of time so she could get used to it, and stuffed a couple of our unwashed tee-shirts in there for good measure.

Apparently, she spent the whole two weeks in a cardboard box with a ratty towel in it, that the KH keeps on hand for those unfortunate cats whose owners have forgotten to bring a cat bed. Being used as a door stop is the most use either of us have gotten out of it.

It's gotten downright windy in here. I love it.

Except for the fly. I could easily do without the fly.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Miss Kitty is safely settled in Munich, and I am back in Portugal after a pair of moderately unpleasant flights. But hey, Dad's Rule of Flying was met (equal numbers of take-offs and landings), so I won't complain about that, either.

And our apartment wasn't the total shambles I was expecting, possible because Elvis didn't spend all that much time here. Near as I can tell, he spent all most all of his non-working hours at the pub. Which is OK, since he wasn't too lonely and they presumably fed him there. Not to mention the fact that, once we'd gotten the driving bit out of the way, I was spending a lot of time in pubs myself. And bier gardens. And bier halls. And a brief period of time at a street festival, but it was too damn hot, so we went and found ourselves a nice, cool pub instead.

Well, cool-ish.

Almost all of the Irish pubs in Munich, by the way, seem to have live music, almost every night of the week. Not only that, it was decent live music. We only found one pub that had a real dart board, though, and there was no live music at that one. Which is OK, because they have a great selection of CDs.

Apparently, Miss Kitty has even found an Irish pub that's open 24 hours! She didn't find it until after I left, however, which is either good or bad, depending on how you look at it.

What I really love about Munich is the bier gardens. Bier halls, too-- we had a lot of fun at those, including the mandatory drink-fest at the Hofbrauhaus. The trick to bier halls is to pick the right table, as you'll end up chatting with, prosting, sharing pretzels with, and otherwise carousing with your table mates. We had some fun ones the night we were there. They poked fun at Miss Kitty for using both hands to drink from her mass of beer. A mass is one liter, and it comes in a very large and heavy mug. You don't pick it up and drink from it by the handle, though. Instead, you wrap your hand around the glass, running it under the handle to give yourself a bit more support and leverage. I have long fingers and a lot of beer-drinking experience (with the biceps to prove it, alas), so this was no problem for me. Miss Kitty, on the other hand, is "only little", with tiny hands and weaker wrists. The East-German gal at the table, about our age and only little herself, tried to show Miss Kitty how to balance the mug on the back of the forearm, with little to no success. She'll get the hang of it eventually, I'm sure. While she was practicing, the EG amused us all by picking up all the masses on the table-- seven of them, in various states of fullness. I don't think she could have walked too far with them, though. Small hands.

Our drinking companions also offered Elvis and I accomodation for Oktoberfest, should Miss Kitty's place be full up with revellers. Oh, and I found out that the Chicken Dance polka is called the Duck Dance in Bavaria, if not all of Germany. Things are a little hazy around that point of the evening. Still. The Duck Dance. Sort of makes sense, when you think about it.

So. Bier halls are fun, but Bier gardens are better, especially in the summer when it's hot. Sitting out in the sun, giant pretzel on your picnic table. It's fun, just what summer ought to be. They do masses of bier there, as well. In fact, in most halls and gardens, unless you're drinking weissbier, it's a liter or nothing. I have no problem with that; none at all. I drank mostly helles, which is a light colored ale, although I like dunkle (dark) bier when it's colder. Plus, it leads to conversations like this:

"Ein mass, bitte."
"Hell?"
(nods) "Hell, ja."

I never fail to get a kick out of this. What can I say-- I'm easily amused.

Miss Kitty is fortunate to have several bier gardens within walking distance from home, and luckily for her most of them sell helles by the half liter, although they're more restaurants with bier gardens attached. Which is good, since they'll be open in the winter, too.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Another thing that kept us indecently amused was the Keymaster.

The Keymaster is living in Germany now, too. He used to live here, but he got transferred a couple of months ago. He came down to visit a couple of days after we arrived in Munich. Since he is not blessed with air conditioning in his car either, he wanted to take a shower before hitting the bier gardens-- something that we sympathized with completely. He left his bag, and the new shirt he'd bought before he left, in his car, so Miss Kitty gave him her keys so he could get back into the building. We stayed on the balcony with large bottles of water, praying for a breeze, any breeze.

Suddenly, we heard Keymaster calling up from the sidewalk. "Um, Miss Kitty, you do have a spare set of keys, right?"

The man had locked not only his own car keys, but also Miss Kitty's keyring, in the trunk of his car.

Fortunately, Miss Kitty did have a spare apartment key. She also had a spare car key, which miraculously she was able to find, considering she had just moved in and she hadn't yet received the stuff she had shipped. What she didn't have was a spare key to the garage where the car was parked. Getting out of the garage itself was not a problem from the inside. However, getting out of her parking space might be, since her garage is a duplex. You use a key to operate the machinery to move the cars around until your car is on the bottom, or tilted the correct way to back it out of its spot. It's sort of like those plastic puzzles they used to give away at fairs and so forth, where there are eight squares and nine spaces, and you have to slide the plastic squares around in the frame until you make a picture or all the numbers are in order.

Miss Kitty found her key, and ran downstairs to see if her car was in the down position or if it was up, up and away and she was suddenly carless. She was in luck, and she was able to move her car to the street.

The Keymaster had no keys at all, so he went to the garage around the corner to summon help. It was Saturday night, and most things in Germany close around 4 on Saturdays, but he was in luck. The mechanic was still there, playing cards and having a few beers with his buddies around a table outside in the back. "Der Schlussel fur mein Auto ist in mein Auto," says the Keymaster. Not the best display of grammar and vocabulary, but it got the point across. A couple of them grabbed some tools and came to take a look.

His luck didn't extend to them actually getting the keys out, unfortunately, although the mechanics did have a good giggle about it.

His new shirt, by the way, was still in the car, on the back seat. He didn't want to call his father, either, even though he has the all-singing, all-dancing membership in the automobile club that would have dispatched help, because he didn't want him "to know what a plonker he has for a son." Fair enough. The Keymaster extended his stay until Monday.

Which gave us two days to tease him about it. Miss Kitty enjoyed that especially. "Everybody got their keys?" she'd ask as we left the house. "Oops, sorry!" Or, to new acquaintances who wondered how long we'd be staying, "That's a good question, you see. . . "

On Monday, he went and joined the German automobile association, which is a good thing to be a member of if you're going to go around locking all sorts of keys in your trunk. Once he'd signed everything and handed over his money, he started in on his spiel, speaking slowly, doing his best to enunciate. "Der Schlussel fur mein Auto. . ." This was the first time Miss Kitty had heard it, and she found it hilarious.

Poor Keymaster. He'll never be free of it now. Miss Kitty is still probably repeating it to herself, softly, at odd minutes of the day, and chortling hysterically.

I know I am.

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