Unfortunately, S will be going out of town for most of the weekend. So I will be here with the fur-girls and we’ll see what sort of things we can find to stir up trouble. I think I will be focusing a lot of time and energy on the dreaded extra room which has been relatively untouched since we moved in. I almost hate to post pictures of it because it really looks terrible (we usually don’t even open the door if we give people a tour lol) but if I don’t, you’ll never see the progress…and I may never get started on it. Of course it’s something we probably would have put off even longer BUT changes in the class reunion plans of S’s old high school friends have led us to the conclusion that it really should be done before the weekend of May 19th.

So I guess I will start with the story about the reunion…it’s kinda long…sorry if you’re not interested but you can just skip to the bottom then 🙂

Back on March 19th I mentioned that the reunion was being planned and we were hoping for a good turn out. Then I listed the mounds of things we wanted to get done before then. As I look at it now, I’m seeing that most of those things on the list have not been done or even started.

• Macky never showed up on April 10th to start redoing the foundation wall in the courtyard because he was ill for a while and even in the hospital. So we have more or less put all that on hold along with repainting the house. A BIG weight from the shoulders.
• We did order a trash container (which took us a lot longer to fill up than we’d expected) but are very happy with the progress there although we haven’t fully cleaned out the bird areas yet which still need a good pressure washing.
• And then we did something not on our list at all which was starting on the garden. Building the raised beds, constructing the foundation and starting the greenhouse construction (part 1 & part 2)…which still has a way to go.

Again I digress….the reunion. So the organization for this whole shindig was started almost a year ago. First it was hubby and two friends of his…and recently a girl joined in the fray. So these 4 have been working for the last few months to compile names and data and work out logistics and so on.

The response has been rather poor and I really would have thought there would be more interest from these people. It’s a 10 year reunion and most of them don’t seem to have much, if any, contact with each other. So I would think they’d find it fun to catch up and see where people have ended up. A few weeks ago, the responses were tallied and it was maybe 20 people including us and the other organizers out of 150. Pathetic at best. This is not to say that the organizers weren’t trying, the people just didn’t seem to care. Some already had plans for that weekend and others just didn’t respond at all…the usual more or less.

Then a few of the organizers started to get worked up about things like what kind of beer would be served. Yes it is an important thing here in Germany, especially since it was about wheat beer…but since it’s in our house and we will likely pick up the beer anyway…we probably would have made the choice. Not to mention the beers the guys were fighting over are only sub-par since we both know Schneider Weisse is the ultimate weissbier. 🙂

And then there were a few complaints sent by schoolmates who apparently didn’t think that these people should be organizing anything and it wasn’t really their place to do so…which prompted hubby to cancel everything. As it now turns out, we will still have a few people here that weekend who are old friends and perhaps the invitation for an informal BBQ will also be extended to the others who showed some interest. We figure that we may end up with 10 people at this point which is just fine. A lot less hassle and a lot less worry!

So that’s the story. With this new arrangement, at least 2 people will be staying here so we figure it would be nice if we could actually use our extra room for people to sleep in. You know, that room we just never talk about? The room which never gets showed to people on the house tour? The room we don’t even talk about ourselves? 🙂

To show you what a sad state it’s in, here are the photos:

I have actually done one round of clean up on it already but as you can see there is still a long way to go before I’d actually want someone to think about sleeping in there.

What’s in the boxes and such? Well, pretty much all of them from the first picture are actually clothes. We had a huge closet system from IKEA in our rental house but we left them behind because they were too high to fit in this house. And thinking about leaving them behind actually pains me so let’s move on…

Where will all of this go? The only place suitable for most of it is the attic here in the house. Naturally it will all have to be moved out again one of these years when we’re able to start on the build out upstairs…but so it goes. At least up there we can be relatively sure it will stay dry and probably not encounter many pests. So I’m still not sure what we’ll do with the clothes but the other junk can almost definitely just go upstairs.

And the good news is that the couches in there are super comfortable and can sleep at least two people…so that gives essentially gives us space for three now without making anyone sleep on the floor. 🙂