Therefore, I have decided on a little retraining project for myself. Beginning after the new scanner/printer is set up for use, I will write one page by hand every day for 30 days. I’ll upload it to the blog so you can see how it’s going, and for those of you who are really motivated to help me out, you can send me either your address or leave a comment below, and I will send a special handwritten message just for you (postcard or upload). Nifty, ey?

So let’s get out those notebooks and pens!

For my turn, I promise to spread cheer and joy with my little presents. You’re not required to cry when I leave.

Secondly, my very dear friend M. is also taking the opportunity of a small get-together to toast her recent birthday, which we slyly turned into a Sisi-Dinner. Thus, with good friends, good eats and the warm glow of candlelight in the house, one can very easily forget about the nasty mudfest that dares call itself winter.

If that’s not enough, BFF and I have recently been working on some warm weather dreams after falling in love with The Cliffe, Peppermint Grove, W.A. Should the lotto gods smile upon us before some bonehead tears that wonderful old house down, I’m prepared to make my first major overseas property purchase!

Meanwhile, I’m getting used to the new laptop while the tendrils of Dave McComb’s music curl around me, keeping me on the couch when really I ought to get scrubbed up and ready. There’s a table to set and a cake to finish and a party to prepare for… if it just wasn’t so damn hard to get up!

Kids, it’s almost Christmas! So, falala to you! And what has Santa brought me this month? A Jingle Bell Run with my BFF, some new lovely Christmas markets, and the movie premiere of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol! Yes, that sexy Renner dude and I have a big screen date in the near future, and you know you’ll be hearing all about it…

When I first encountered REM, there was no such thing as “college music” in Germany (and how could there be? Universities didn’t start converting to a similar system until 30 years later!), MTV still played music, and the main categories of music were rock, pop, heavy metal and alternative. If it had not been for the Irish Pub in Sachsenhausen, I would have missed out on a very large part of my musical education. At the time I started my brief stint as party girl, I was still contemplating how I might go about getting to Australia or living in the UK, but then along came the Americans with their weird mixed tapes, and suddenly, The One I Love wore a Hairshirt, drank Orange Crush and sang in unintelligible mumbles about things only grown-ups should know about. Michael Stipe didn’t begin to sing in a more understandable fashion until much later, and I feel vindicated that none of our American friends truly understood everything he murmured into the mic, either.

Over the years, REM became part of the soundtrack of my life. I remember very well sitting at El Torito’s in Monterey with some friends, sharing strawberry daiquiries and loudly singing along to “Man On the Moon.” “Losing my Religion” set new standards in story-telling in music videos, and “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” was the sole reason we queued up at the music store in Laurel in the middle of the night to be there for the debut of “Monster”, an otherwise woefully mediocre album.

Once, when we moved across the continent, we actually took a side trip to Athens, Georgia, just so we could see where REM came from, what inspired them.

In all those years, I only managed to see them live once, just before they rocketed into superstardom with the release of “Green” in 1989. They were playing the Kongresshalle, a relatively small venue near Frankfurt’s main train station. The place was packed. The stage was tiny and hardly elevated above the floor. Had I not feared the masses up front would crush me to death, I could have reached out and touched… someone. It was all wild, frenzied fun. I didn’t buy the t-shirt, but I think I still have the tour book.

In the last decade, the band seemed to lose steam. When I look at the track lists from “New Adventures in Hi-Fi”, “Reveal” and “Around the Sun”, I feel at a loss. But “Accelerate” was soon hailed to be REM’s return to form and a splendid comeback album, so it’s a bit sad to see the comeback only lasted three short years (and spawned another album, Überlin). Just when it appeared that REM might be the one band from Out of Time who might manage to become everlasting legends like the Rolling Stones, they decided to do it their way and bow out of the game gracefully, on their terms, while the love of the fans was still warm and the music still played in our heads.

For me, saying goodbye to REM is not just saying goodbye to an iconic rock band, it truly is the end of an era as it erases the last of the echoes of great times at a pub long gone. To quote another great band: Thank you for the music! At least, we’ll always have Frankfurt…

To my much appreciated reader in Japan: rumor has it that Jeremy Renner’s “Slingshot” has been picked up by a major studio, so there’s more work on the horizon for our man.

The original recipe calls for 6 to 7 kilos of rye flour. If you’ve ever SEEN that much flour at once, you realize you may need to take your shapen loaves and head for the village bakery to have it finished, so we ended up using one-sixth of the given amount of everything. It barely fit into our largest mixing bowl. At this moment, the starter mixture is resting comfortably in the cold oven, waiting to be fed with additional flour; something that needs to be done every 3 to 4 hours for the next three days. After all the remaining flour has been added, all that goes into it is a bit of sugar and some caraway seeds, and off we are to the bakery, uh, baking pan. I’m very much hoping this will come out edible; my experience with sourdough is fairly limited.

While we wait, if any of you have recipes for bread to share, send ‘em on over! They may make it into our test kitchen soon.

For my reader in Japan, there is some news on the Renner front: firstly, the trailer for Mission Impossible is available now, and our man looks both delish and deadly. Also, rumor has it he’s thisclose to signing on for a film co-starring Joaquin Phoenix and Marion Cotillard, which no doubt will lead to rumors about his romantic involvement with the beautiful French woman. Of course, there hasn’t been anything further on this supposed project since June 1st, so who knows.

Last time I sat on anything that resembled a horse was about 26 years ago. It didn’t end well, but the horse was not involved in that incident. My parents had always said riding lessons were too expensive, and so, like many little girls, I could only dream of flying across the fields on a sweaty beast, both of our manes fluttering behind us like banners in the wind. When I met Phoenix yesterday, I briefly second-guessed the wisdom of my gift-giving: he stood a good head or two higher than myself, and since he was neither a dog nor a guinea pig nor a cat, I could not decipher his intentions. He was a Freiburger, a mighty Swiss-bred work horse whose favorite pastime was eating and who, I was assured, would safely carry the most timid of beginning riders, in this case, me. We made friends when we got to prep our horses for saddling, and I quit feeling intimidated. All four of us spent an enjoyable afternoon being led through field and forest, even trying a trot, before getting caught in a horrendous downpour half an hour away from the ranch. We laughed ourselves silly as we stood there, dripping wet, and this morning compared the grievous soreness of our butts, unused to spending any time in the saddle. All in all, we had a great day.

And yet, I woke up this morning with an inclination that something was gnawing on me. It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally figured it out. It’s pissing me off that I ended up being the only one who stayed on the lead the entire time – our hosts walked next to the horses, helping out by leading them and keeping us sorted out properly. Admittedly, I was the one person with the least experience, but I had the mellowest horse and certainly didn’t act any more ignorant handling it than anyone else. So being led around for an hour and a half kind of felt no different than it did when horse and I were smaller all those years ago, and I was being dragged around by my mom. Is this me being overly ambitious? I don’t know. It is me feeling slightly humiliated, I know that. It irks me because if I was doing something wrong, I would’ve expected to be corrected, but like this, it just comes across as if they either just couldn’t be bothered or didn’t figure it would make a difference. Either way: ouch.

So I’m miffed. I’ll get over it, sure. I’m still glad we went, and I still had a pretty good time. And maybe I’ll even share a picture with you when I get them downloaded.

Now while, admittedly, Mr Renner having six upcoming projects in the queue is bound to do a lot for us star-starved fans, I am a little worried about the implications. Let’s roll this up backwards… the latest news seems to be that JR has founded his own production company in order to make (and star in) a biopic about Steve McQueen. To be quite honest, this is the only film of the upcoming bunch where I see potential for another Oscar nod, should he and his team be able to pull this off successfully. All we can hope for from the rest of the selection – Avengers, Mission: Impossible, the Bourne franchise, Ice Age and the truly horrid sounding Hansel and Gretel- are endless sequels with the very real possibility of us getting star-stuffed in the process. I don’t even need to mention that sequels rarely ever get better with time or the advancing age of their stars. But the man just hit 40, so there’s still some room to advance.

With a crazy filming schedule like that, though, I also ask myself if ours truly isn’t heading for burnout. One blogger hopefully declares that action icon Steve McQueen knew only one gear in his life, too: full speed ahead. Then again, by the time he got to 50, McQueen had cancer and died shortly thereafter. So much for screeching brakes. So, does JR know something we don’t? Is he working like a madman to establish a legacy? To prepare for retirement from acting? To make up for lost time? Is he planning to attend all future events with his mom? While that’s kind of sweet for a while, I truly, truly wonder about a guy who isn’t even considering giving himself time for a personal life.

I don’t know about you guys, of course, but I do reserve the right to express some trepidation here. Meanwhile, though, there really is nothing we can do besides hope for the best and enjoy the ride.

What I used: equal parts hot water and baking soda, in this case, 4 tablespoons of each. I applied it to the inside of my oven and the door and let it sit for about five minutes while I took care of something else. Then I used a soft scrub to work the insides of the appliance, wiping clean with a moist sponge.

The result: it’s not perfect, but pretty close! All but the hardiest black marks have disappeared. This definitely compares well to the commercial cleaners I’ve tried in the past, for a fraction of the cost.

What’s next: this cleaner does not get rid of the burned smell, and I want to see if I can get the rest of the ick out, so when I get in the oven cleaning mood again, I will try the solution for hardy stains. This involves salt and lemon juice, which should also bring a more pleasant smell to the kitchen.