A Sunny Sunday

Today was a very busy and productive Sunday at the Harbison Weaver Household!

We washed the baseboards, did laundry, swiffered the first floor, mopped the third floor bathroom, cleaned the third floor shower, did laundry, mowed the lawn, cleaned up the patio, cleaned the stove, cleaned the kitchen, put pictures up on the book case, cleared out from under the buffet, cleaned behind/under the liquor cabinet, washed the dog beds and changed the sheets on the guest room bed.  :D  Phew!  That’s a lot!

A few pictures of our day:

Bookshelf

Here’s the bookshelf with Germany pictures and all filled up!

Caroline in Mid-bark

Caroline in mid-bark with her tail wagging.

Mario on dog bed

Mario on his freshly laundered dog bed

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The beginnings of dinner.

Table setting

With as busy as we were today we had to set the table for dinner!

Dinner

Our delicious dinner of seared ahi tuna and tomato, cucumber, orange bell pepper, onion and lemon soy ginger dressing.  YUM!

All in all a very busy and tiring day topped off with a relaxing dinner.  I hope everyone is having a great weekend and is gearing up for the 4th of July!  :D

iPhones


That is all… :D

Our trip to Germany - Part 2 - Bamberg

We arrived in Bamberg fairly early in the day, around 11 am.  As we entered the city, the GPS instantly became our guiding light.  The roads turned from asphalt to cobblestone, the lanes narrowed and roads began to merge and diverge with greater frequency.  Finding our hotel was the number one priority, so at this point we were pretty much skimming over the beautiful scenery.

We wound through the streets, completely ignorant of where we were and waited with baited breath on the GPS to give us the next command.  We eventually saw our hotel, Hotel Weierich, at the end of our street, and began to wind around it.  This is where we encountered problem number one - no parking spaces.  We continued past the hotel and eventually found an area with designated street parking.  Our guide book research told us that there would be an automated parking machine somewhere nearby, but not necessarily next to our spot as we are used to in Indianapolis.  We identified the machine and I approached it in hopes the German words on the machine would be found in our phrasebook.  No such luck.  I did manage to figure out what the fee was, but we had no Euro coins and it didn’t appear to take bills or credit cards.  We got back in the car and started to drive around a bit more.  This is when we recalled that there was a symbol in our guidebook that denoted the ability to park on the curb.  These signs were nowhere to be found, but people were parked on the curb anyway.  Later we learned that in a small town such as Bamberg, if you’re going to be a short time, it’s entirely acceptable to just pull onto the sidewalk and park.  We pulled up on the sidewalk, blocking the entrance to the hotel, and went inside.

view1View from our room

Completely afraid of the imminent German conversation, we quickly asked if the attendant spoke English (in German of course).  Luckily she spoke very good English!  We had a nice conversation, she gave us a room key and we unloaded the car.  I then inquired about parking and she informed us they had free parking, but they park the employee cars in the spots to make sure no one takes them.  She then ran outside and instructed me to follow her in the car.  I proceeded to drive through many areas marked as pedestrian zones (the attendant seemed ok with this, so I was too) and swapped our car into her parking spot.  I then headed back to the hotel to meet Jess and we went up to our room.  An interesting observation was made - we didn’t have to provide a credit card or sign anything.  We were simply welcomed in.  I can’t say we’ve ever encountered that in America.

view2Another view from the room

The room itself was smaller than an American hotel room, but quite spacious given all the horror stories we’ve heard of rooms the size of closets.  The decor was quite modern despite the old age of the building (600+ years!).  The bed was a platform bed, which we later discovered was standard in Germany.  The TV was a bit dated but it didn’t matter since we weren’t intending to watch it much.  The room was decorated with dark woods and orange walls and was quite charming.  We were informed that the front door to the hotel locks after 7 when the staff goes home, and that if we are staying out late our room key would unlock the front door.  While this sounds odd, it really completed the home-like feel of the hotel.

townhallJess in front of the old city hall

We decided to run out and grab some lunch since we were both starving.  There was a small restaurant called Hofbräu just around the corner so we decided to stop in.  This was the first time we encountered another cultural difference - at every restaurant we went to you would seat yourself.  We also had our first taste of the leisurely lifestyle that many people in Bamberg enjoy.  We each ordered a beer and relaxed on the outdoor patio.  Almost all the dining and drinking we did in Germany was outdoors and the weather was typically gorgeous.  I immediately relaxed completely.  For lunch, I had some sort of sliced roasted pork dish and Jess decided to immediately get the infamous schweinshaxe - pig’s knuckle.  Our dishes each came with sauerkraut and kartoffelkloesse, which we later found out was a potato starch dumpling.  The pig’s knuckle had to weigh at least 3 pounds.  When the waitress expressed fear that Jess did not like the schweinshaxe, Jess had to explain to the waitress that, while it was good, it was simply too much food.

Hofbrau

At the Hofbräu - the beer on the left is Radler - a mixture of Hefeweizen and lemonade

After our meal, we both began to feel the negative effects of getting only a couple hours of sleep on the plane and decided to go take a quick nap in our hotel room.

Pinkish-Berry Frozen Yogurt

Doesn’t that look delicious? Last night we made Kimberly-Michelle’s Pinkish-Berry Frozen Yogurt with our ice cream maker that we got for our wedding. This was an amazing treat that didn’t use artificial sweeteners and was diabetic friendly! :)

The recipe:

1 32 oz. of plain yogurt (I used the Dannon Non-Fat Plain Yogurt)
3/4 cup of white sugar (to make this low-glycemic and diabetic friendly we substituted 1/2 cup of agave nectar)

I Outran the Sun!

I finished with a decent time! For a race that I know I wasn’t prepared for (I didn’t eat right yesterday and I didn’t feel that I had trained enough) I did pretty well! I’m very proud of my time as this is the longest I’ve ever run AND it was a hilly course! I’ve never run hills like that before and it made me really want to run more so that I can better myself and my race time!

My results:

Place    Age
Overall  Grp  Name                     City & State     Sex Age  Pace     FINISH
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
454      61   JESSICA XXXXXXXXXXXX    INDIANAPOLIS IN    W  26   12:17   1:01:29.3

A few pictures:

Me before the race - note my new shades for running and cycling!
The start of the race - I was further back. I didn’t want to be road kill!

Coming around the last corner - I was so tired at this point!

Here I am starting to throw my arms up - I can see the finish line!

Me crossing the finish line!

All in all it was a great race - I’m so glad I did it and pushed myself. I’ve now conquered the five mile race! :D

You’d think I needed more to do…

I haven’t posted in a while and I figured I’d post two of my favorite pictures of the dogs that I’ve taken with Rod’s new camera.

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The focus on this is great - her head is in focus and the rest is blurry!

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Mario looks so scared or really confused.  It’s a little blurry so I figured I’d doctor this up in photoshop…

detective-mario

:D  I think I need to work on my photoshop skills… ;)

Good times.  Have a great Friday!  :D

Our trip to Germany - Part 1

Frankfurt

Now that we’re back from Germany, we have some quality content for everyone!  Our trip was wonderful and we took over 1400 pictures (probably close to 2000, but we deleted a lot of duplicates and out of focus ones off the camera).  After visiting southern Germany for a week, we’re ready to move there!  Everything was so beautiful and relaxing, it was a perfect vacation.

Bamberg

If you’re interested in browsing the huge pile of pictures we uploaded to Picasa, they can be found here.

For our flight, we went with a Delta flight out of Indy that had one layover in Atlanta.  The cross-continental flight experience was great, but typically when you’re booking a flight for vacation you go with either the cheapest or the one that best fits your schedule, so it probably doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to advertise for Delta here.  Our tickets were actually cheaper than our tickets to Hawaii!  In Atlanta, we found out the flight to Frankfurt was oversold (typical) and they were offering either $400 vouchers or a free business class upgrade if you took a bump to a flight that left one hour later and had a layover in Brussels.  Since that would only change our arrival time by 5 hours, we were seriously considering that business class upgrade, but more than enough people piled into the line.

Our plane was a very modern 767 with LCD screens in the backs of the headrests.  Once we left the ground, we learned that in-flight entertainment was actually included.  We had free access to our selection of movies, TV shows, music and games.  That definitely made the flight go much faster!  I only slept 2 hours out of the 9 hour flight, and Jess didn’t sleep much more than that.  Our excitement combined with the 6 hour difference made sleeping a little bit hard (our 7am arrival time would have been 1am in Indiana).  Once we landed, customs and passport control was a breeze.

Bamberg Street

We went with Sixt for our rental car, which is one of the largest chains in Europe.  They also have the largest selection of automatic transmission cars!  We had prepaid the rental car and picking it up was as easy as presenting my passport, driver’s license and signing a form.  We completely lucked out with the rental car and received one that had GPS navigation at no extra cost!  We had printed out Google Maps for all our driving directions, but in retrospect, the GPS was invaluable.

Driving on the autobahn was a wonderful experience.  German drivers are much safer drivers than American drivers.    They signaled when changing lanes, drove in the correct lanes for their speed level and didn’t make any erratic or unpredictable movements.  Jess informed me that obtaining a driver’s license in Germany is a much more difficult process than in America and it requires a lot more skill.  This would probably be a good thing in America.  Our rental car was speed limited to 100 mph (about 160 km/h) but on a good hill I could get it up to about 115 mph.  Nothing really exciting, but faster than you can legally drive in America.  Our poor Mercedes A160 was definitely lacking in the pickup category as well.  We also noticed that there were no potholes or patches on the autobahn.  Whenever the road needs repaired, they tear the entire section up and repave it.  A pothole at 250 mph would likely kill you.  Most cars drove at a very reasonable speed, but the ones that tended to be driving the fastest were usually Audis, Ferraris or Lotuses.  Almost all cars were compacts, hatchbacks or station wagons, so they fit very well within their lanes and were highly maneuverable.  There were very, very few trucks or SUVs.

Post Number 200!

That’s right - this is our 200th post here at Rod and Jess [dot] Com!  We’ve bought a house, acquired two dogs, married each other, got rid of two cars and purchased two cars.  It’s been a crazy two years since registering the domain and I can’t wait for it to continue for many years to come.  :D

Thank you to everyone for being a part of our last two years and giving us so much to blog about!  :)

We’re Going to Germany!

This weekend after our friends Danny and Emily get married on Saturday we’re going to be packing up and heading to Germany! I’ll be there the 17th through the 25th and Rod will be there until the 29th! We’re VERY excited about our first trip to Europe! :D

We’re actually going to be staying in four different cities - Bamberg, Munich, Cologne and Frankfurt am Main.  First off we’re staying in Bamberg at the Hotel Weierich for two nights, which is in a building that was built in 1405!


I love how old world Germany the hotel looks and can’t wait for how quaint it is reported to be according to the hotel sites!

In Munich we’re staying for three nights at a fairly modern hotel - Fleming’s Hotel Munchen-City.  It was last renovated in 2006 and is supposed to have a very modern layout and the bathroom is 100% glass inside each hotel room!  It’s going to be a very cool experience to stay there.


I can’t wait to stay there, plus it’s supposed to have a nice fitness center!

From there we’re driving up the Rhine, looking at castles and then staying the night in Cologne at the Hilton Cologne.  Rod will be in Cologne after I leave Germany for the ANGA trade show so we didn’t want to spend too much time there.

I’m also looking forward to seeing the Dom in Cologne and drinking lots of Kolsch!

After that we’re spending our last night in Frankfurt am Main at the Westin Grand Frankfurt which we were able to get an amazing deal on Expedia for just one night!

I can’t wait to spend a night in the Westin Heavenly Bed!  :D

I think we have some great hotels picked out for our trip and I can’t wait to experience everything that southern and western Germany has to offer!  I just wish we were going for longer!  ;)

500 Festival Finish Line 5k - CHECK!

I did it - I ran my first competitive 5k AND had a race pace of less than 11 minutes! :) I beat my original goal pace by 00:01:05 and was way under the time of my “practice” 5k a few weeks ago!  :D

FIRSTNAME LASTNAME BIB DIV CHIPTIME FINTIME PACE SEXP OVERALL AGE SEX CITY STATE SPECIAL
Jessica Harbison Weaver 53657 Females 25-29 33:54 34:28 10:55 506 1024 26 F Indianapolis IN N

My official race time and results! I’m just blown away by my times and how well I placed. The overall was out of 4000 people and I’m not sure about my division. I just am SO happy that I did so well at my first competitive 5k! Here’s a few pictures from the day:

Me with my pre-race latte. Mo’Joe was closed so we hit up Starbucks.
The 500 Festival Public Art display and the hot air balloon send-off.
The beginning of the 500 Festival Finish Line 5k
Here I am at the 2 mile marker in the purple hat - 22:25 isn’t bad for two miles!
Here I am at the 3 mile marker. At this point I knew I was close to the end and I couldn’t wait to cross that finish line!
Here I am at the end with my medal and my bag of fruit. I was SO glad to see Rod at this point and so proud of my finish.
I thought I had done 34:24 according to my Polar F6 which was about 1:30 less than my previous 5k time.

It was a great race and I’m now SO excited for Outrun the Sun in June. I can’t wait to increase my mileage and set my first record for a five mile race! :D