This Is The Day!

The following entry is taken from my travel journal:

Day 1 July 9, 2009 9:52AM In transit
This Is The Day!

I have been planning our travel itinerary for this month for like days now. I was tasked by Hubby to make an 18-day itinerary around Austria, Munich, Italy and Zurich and today, we are on our way to our first stop: Vienna, Austria.

We started off at around 7am from Stuttgart today. It is a bit cold, as expected, because of the rain. The weather forecast says to expect cloudy skies and rains on the way. And rain, it did, and heavy at that. It is a downpour! Thank God Hubby saw to it to have the car checked a few days back so that it is in perfect condition. The wipers were also replaced so that he did not have difficulty with visibility.

Packing was another thing for me. I try to keep in mind what most travelers advice, to “travel LIGHT”. But with a one-year-old in tow, this seemed impossible. I had to make sure that I packed everything that she might need so that we had two big luggage, her stroller and two other baskets filled with baby necessities. Thankfully, our luggage fit inside the car and we still have enough leg room.

Sam is still her usual behave self and is sleeping peacefully in her car seat beside me right now. I woke her up at 6am and she didn’t seem to mind getting dressed at all. I guess she understood that we are traveling again because I spoke to her last night.

We’ve been on the road for 2.5 hours now, with a brief stopover at a parking area for some coffee and to empty our bladders. We still have around 4 hours more to go since Vienna is a good 6 hours and 30 minute drive from Stuttgart.

I hope that by the time we arrive, the rain would have already stopped so that we could enjoy the sights around this Austrian capital with the glories of its Imperial Habsburg past, a strong musical tradition and natural beauty.

I’ll try to keep you all posted. Thanks for dropping by!

Food Friday: Beef Caldereta

It has been a while since my last Food Friday entry. I admit, I missed posting for this meme. So now I am back!

And here is my beef caldereta:

This is my first time to cook this Filipino dish and it wasn't bad at all! The beef was tender and the veggies cooked just right. The sauce was just enough too! Thanks to the recipe that came with the Mama Sita Caldereta Mix packaging. Hehehe!

I am happy because Hubby loved it!

Of Twitters and Roadtrips

I have been rambling about my Twitter account being suspended here and thanks to what most of you thought that it was just a glitch, I am now back to twitting and my twitter widget is now back on my sidebar. If you want to know what I have been up to these past few days, check my tweets. It is all there!

Original photo by mkeedy

And just to let everyone know, I will be gone AGAIN beginning today, July 9 until July 26. We are going on a long vacation, or better yet, a LOONNNGG drive! So please bear with me if I won't be able to comment or visit you back. Hope you will check this blog out from time to time since I will be posting updates of our trip.

Thanks for dropping by and may you all have a great summer!

In Their Shoes & Gloves

Our generation is lucky to have lived after the Third Reich (the period in Germany between 1933 and 1945). We never experienced the human suffering brought about by war, discrimination and violence. We are so blessed to be living a comfortable life, and I guess we owe it partly to those who have suffered and died during those hard and difficult times.

An Installation Art of some 400 shoes and gloves inside a church ruin at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum.

This is the Hand and Foot, an installation art by German Artist Raffael Rheinsberg, that serves as a visual archive of human suffering under the Third Reich. It can be found at the Germansiches Nationalmuseum in Nürnberg, Germany.

Entering this part of the museum was eerie. The air smelled pungent and greasy, as if you can feel the suffering of those who have lived during those times. The worn-out and shabby gloves and shoes once belonged to those who were forced into labor. This is indeed such grim reminder that tells us to be watchful and vigilant for this to never happen again.

The artist collected these at the deserted Anhalter Bahnhof train station, located in "no-man's land" near the Berlin Wall. Barracks for forced laborers stood near the train station during the Third Reich.

I wonder who had worn these shoes? May God bless him/her.

I Got Suspended!

What?!? Could this be happening?

I opened my Twitter account this morning to write a tweet. I remember I have been neglecting it for a few days so I figured, it is time for an update since Hubby and Sam are still in bed. But after logging in, here is what I saw:

Oh no?! Could this really be true? So I wrote Twitter Support a ticket explaining my situation and requested for the suspension to be lifted.

It could be that I am suspended for the following reasons:

User Abuse
* a large number of people block the profile or write in with spam complaints
* aggressive following
* imbalanced ratio: the number of followers is small compared to number of people following
* misuse of the reply feature
* updates consist of duplicate links and/or text
* updates consist mainly of links and not personal updates
* updates consist of updates poached from others' timelines, passed off as one's own

Technical Abuse
* updates consist of links pointing to phishing sites, malware, or other harmful material
* a large number of accounts is created in a short amount of time
* an account is identified as belonging to a spam cluster

It could be that my violation is this: *updates consist mainly of links and not personal updates but whatever it is, I hope it will be sorted out soon. My request is still on process though so while I can't access my account yet, I will have to busy myself with travel plans and tending my virtual farm! And you can just follow me here on my blog!

Yellow Monday: Balcony Blooms

I have been working on our balcony to make it feel more homey and did some gardening. I got my hands dirty and worked on it the three Saturdays ago. It was back breaking work I tell you but very much worth it! Below are some photos:

Our rectangle planters: it is designed such that water can be stored at the bottom so that the soil won't dry up but without drowning the roots.

The blooms are in season and are of different colors. They are now ready to be transfered to the planters. YELLOW will always be there, of course.

Now transfered to their individual planters.

The daisies in their assortment of colors. Yellows, purples and whites!

And of course, the YELLOW cluster of blooms!

And here is Hubby helping me out on my small project. :D

It is not much of a garden but I am proud of it!

A Lovely Blog Award and Friendship Chain Award

It is a weekend again. It amazes me how time flies and how kind and thoughtful people on the blogosphere are. Like my new online friend Dee of Tales From The Mom Side who thought my blog worthy of the Lovely Blog Award.

And of course, there's my sweet friend Enchie of Sweet Nothings who gave me the Friendship Chain and who just had a fabulous blog makeover.

~~Begin Copy~~

This is the easy way and the fastest way to :
1. Make your Authority Technorati explode.
2. Increase your Google Page Rank.
3. Get more traffic to your blog.
4. Make more new friends.

Rules :
1. Start copy from “Begin Copy” until “End Copy” to your blog.
2. Put your own blog name and link. 3. Tag your friends as much as you can.

1.Picturing of Life 2. Juliana’s Site 3. Hazel-My Life, My Hope, My Future.4. Jeanne-The Callalily Space5.My Family is my Life 6. The Simple Life of a Baghag 7. On A Wonderful Day Like Today 8. House Everything 9. The Creativity in Me 10. Travel and Photography 11. Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 12. You Are My Sunshine 13.Song to Remember 14. Super Blog 15. Philiippine Tv Marathon 16.Simply Blue 17. Breaking the Boundaries 18. Top Five 19. A Simple Life 20. Simple Happy Life 21. A Great Pleasure 22. Glossa~licious 23. Time Goes By 24. Sweet Nothings 25. Just About Anything 26. You're NEXT!

~~End Copy~~

Now I am passing both awards to my pals:

Niko, Cookie, Beth, Issa, and Bambie