10-14-2006 Cruisetoberfest IV

[Viking]

We finished 9th in the 250m-class due to eventually winning a race today - needed 5 tries for that
And we eneded up on 7 in the 1000m-class. Fortunately the weather was OK today: Lots of sunshine, blue skies, but temps only about 18°C/66°F and a strong wind. So after each heat we had to change into dry clothes. Fortunately there was enough time between the heats to try our stuff. We now have a nice silver cup to show in our trophy display in our company's cafeteria. There will be another race in two weeks, but without Anja & me. But next year we'll be back in the boat.

 

[Viking]

In 20 minutes the voting halls will close allover Germany and the thrilling part of the evening bgins. All the polls predict a very close result, but if it gets really close we may have to wait for another two weeks as in Dresden a candidate for the Bundestag (Our Congress) died three weeks ago and had to be replaced by a new one. This required the election for that city to be delayed by two weeks. As there are 220,000 voters this may very well change the final result - Our last election was decided by a 6,000 votes-lead for our present Chancellor!!!

 

[wendym]

Eric - I never even noticed! must make my 1000th post a good one - perhaps I will post a reply to the China culture thread on the community board - I cannot believe how narrow minded some people are!
Congrats on your placing - I know how hard dragon boating is! As for the election our papers are predicting the female is going to win - she is already being called the second Mrs Thatcher.
Wendy

 

[jeanneg]

Rosemary,

Additionally we could check another state off our list as according to my knowledge Lady Liberty and Ellis Island are not in New York, but in New Jersey

Ha-ha, Eric, you are so right about Liberty Island being part of New Jersey. But since it's located in New York Harbor, it's probably the most popular NY attraction in terms of souvenir marketing. Tourists usually have no reason to visit New Jersy (the armpit of the US), but i think their souvenirs probably feature Jersey cows! I actually think Ellis Island officially belongs to the US goverment, so i'm not entirely sure which state claims ownership. Although I was born and raised in NYC, I lived in NJ for almost 15 years and my kids pretty much grew up here, so I get a kick out of the ongoing controversy between the 2 states. I've been to Liberty Island only once, but not higher than the base of Lady Liberty (which is still quite high). I've been to Ellis Island many times (mostly as chaperone to class outings) and it's an amazing place.
Rosemary, we are arriving on Friday at 9:46am at LGA. Since the group is not interested in doing theatre, John and I were hoping to catch something Friday evening. I still want to see "Lennon" because I really like Terrance Mann, but we also have not seen "Wicked" yet, so it will be one of those 2. Other than that, we have no plans and would love to meet up with you on Friday. We'll try to stay at whatever hotel Peter books for the group.And at some point we'll need to swap cell phone numbers so we can be in touch.
Nancy: I feel so much better after you said that they probably gave Bobby John and IV.......I kept thinking that if I were on that show, I would have definitely called for help. I know some people take the game seriously, but this really seemed to be a true life or death sitiation. I really wanted John to see it when he gets home from San Diego so I could get his reaction, but Jason accidentilly erased it from the DVR. In any case, I think it's going to be a good season.

 

[Viking]

Eric - I never even noticed! must make my 1000th post a good one - perhaps I will post a reply to the China culture thread on the community board - I cannot believe how narrow minded some people are!
Congrats on your placing - I know how hard dragon boating is! As for the election our papers are predicting the female is going to win - she is already being called the second Mrs Thatcher.
Wendy

No way: This was your 1000th post.

She may be as ugly as Iron Maggie, but right now it doesn't look like she made it. It looks more like a tie.

 

[wendym]

Much happier this thread was where my 1000th post was!

 

[Viking]

Jeanne,
I heard on a German radio show on Friday that 'Lennon' on Broadway is being discontinued very soon.

 

[Viking]

Our elections are over and now we have complete chaos:
the estimated results are
35% for the Christian Democrats (Comparable to your Reps)
34% for the Social Democrats (Comparable to your Dems)
10% for the Liberals
8% for the Greens
8% for the Socialists

We don't vote directly for the Chancellor. In Germany we have two votes:
The First Vote is for your Representative (Like for your Congress). Germany is divided into voting areas sending a representative each. The person getting the most votes in one of those areas represents that area in the Bundestag (Our Congress).
The Second Vote is for the party and is counted nationwide. The parties have lists with their candidates, the better a candidate's position on that list, the better his/her chances to get into Bundestag.
So roughly half the seats are filled directly and half through the party.
A party has to reach at least 5% of the votes to get into Bundestag. All votes for parties under 5% are thus worthless, but usually only a small percentage of votes goes to those small parties.
When some weeks after the election teh new Bundestag convenes for the first time the Representatives elect a new Chancellor, who needs an absolute majority (More than 50%). If after two tries there is no such majority, a simple majority af the votes is sufficient.
As you can deduct from the result posted above there is no party with a mojority right now. The Socialists are considered Pariahs and nobody wants to make a deal with them. The present adminstration (Social Dems & Greens) doesn't have enough votes. The same goes for their opponents (Christian Dems & Libs). So now a Grand Coalition between Social Dems and Christian Dems is the most probable. We had that only once in our history from 1966 til 69. There may also be a so-called Trafficlight Coalition: Red (Social Dems, Libs (Yellow), and Green (Greens), but that's highly improbable as the Libs are -opposed to their name- very conservative.
Another possibility would be a minority admnistration: This would be an adminstration with no majority, but tolerated by at least one of the other parties - Also highly improbable.

So you can see that we are in for some interesting weeks

 

[JJsmama]

Thanks for the history lesson, Eric. We Americans certainly know how stressful it is to have unclear results in an election.


On a fun note: We are trying to plan our next WDW trip (3 generational trip with my mom, her daughters and our sons.) My countdown has it set for January. That is one of the contenders for dates, but my mother can't get excited about going in January. She wants May. However, May doesn't work well for the older boys as students or for me as a teacher. We are trying to avoid the mad crush and higher rates of April / Spring Break / Easter when we went this year.

Any advice on January?

Here's a pic of us on our last trek. If it works. I have the dark hair and my sons are in the stripes.

Jennifer
http://www.kodakgallery.com/PhotoView.jsp?&collid=297881953205&photoid=708881953205

 

[Twinave]

Hi Everyone,
Great Posts. Love reading all the latest news. Even if some people aren't Yankee fans. LOL
Jennifer, Thanks for sharing your picture with us. Your boys are so cute. Who are the other people in the photo?

Excited about tomorrow, first day in our "new" clinic seeing patients. Keep your fingers crossed.

Goodnight, sweet dreams.

Avé

 

[Tulirose]

Wendy - Too bad you couldn't hop on over to NYC. That would certainly surprise and please us all!

I must respectfully say here that Eric and Jeanneg are misinformed. The Statue of Liberty, located on Liberty Island, is indeed federal property located within the State of New York.
Ellis Island, however, and Liberty Park (which provides access to SoL & EI from NJ) are located in Jersey.

Jeanne - I spoke with both my sister and then my niece again today and my sister prefers that Wendy take the Hampton Jitney. I would like Peter's take on the following: It seems my brother, who lives outside of Boston, states that even if one has tickets for the Chinatown bus, it does not guarantee a seat on the Chinatown bus. (My brother is presently in Europe, so I can't ask him for clarification of this statement of his.) Peter, have you heard of anything like this? Do you guys plan on taking this mode of transport to NYC?

In addition, Wendy will be bringing over her kitty and a trek around Manhattan would not a happy kitty make. The Jitney leaves Boston at around 3 p.m. It takes a Connecticut ferry service to Long Island and we would need to pick her up out here on the island at around 8 p.m. So, I would not be able to go into the city on Friday to meet up with you guys prior to the rest of the group's arrival.

Again, sorry to be posting on a thread that no longer is "mine" but it is DIS meet-related.
Welcome to the new cruisers. Sorry to say I won't be cruising with you but you joined a nice group of people to share the ship with!

JJsmama - No advice here for Disney World in January but that was a nice photo. Thanks for sharing. Cute boys!!

Good luck Ave with the new office.

 

[Viking]

ooops, you're right, Rosemary. I just found this:
Liberty Island is federal property located within the territorial jurisdiction of the State of New York.
on the Statue of Liberty - homepage.
This is funny as AOL just recently listed 10 very common misconceptions and the Statue being part of New York was one of them.

 

[WDWCrazzyCunninghams]

Slip sliding away......Don't want to fall off the first page!

Eric, THANK YOU again, for the updated list!

 

[padisneyfan]

Welcome Nanci and friends!! Just jump right in.

Michele - laughed about your post -- Jim will tell you that I quite often fall asleep while watching TV. I can't tell you the number of endings to programs that I've missed.

I don't fall asleep during Survivor or Amazing Race though. Anything else is fair game!

Finally made adr's for our Dec trip. The night of MVMCP we are eating at O'Hanas -- we both really like this restaurant and we aren't eating here in October as we wanted to try new restaurants on the dining plan so that was easy. I also booked the Candlelight Processional dinner package on my actual birthday at Rose and Crown. Haven't eaten there but hopefully it will be good. I wanted to see Jim Caviezel (spelling is probably wrong) and he's only the narrator on my birthday while we are there since we are leaving the day after my birthday. Hopefully it will be nice. At least we aren't eating Hamburger Helper then!

Went to the Jays/Yankees game today. Lots of Yankee fans there wearing lots of Yankee merchandise. The Jays lost 1-0 but it was still a really good game. We won't go tomorrow though -- one Yankee game a year is about Jim's limit. While we love the Red Sox fans can't say the same for Yankee fans -- no offense intended but they tend to be loud and pushy. Two got into a fight at the end of the game and one guy ended up with a bloody mouth -- we saw a cop going after the offender. Interesting end to a game. We also saw Alex Geddy who's a big Jays fan. He stopped and signed some autographs as Jim is asking who is he? (He's a band member of the group Rush btw). Funny part was the lady sitting next to us was trying to convince her husband that it was Alex Geddy and her husband, like Jim was going "Huh, who????". Obviously no taste for good music.

Good luck tomorrow Eric.

Fiona

Fiona--- I wanted to let you know that I just found out that Jim Chiavez is not going to be doing CP on 12/7. He has been moved into a later Dec slot. Jaqi Velasquez who is a Christian artist is going to be filling his slot. I so wanted to see Jesus doing the CP, but will keep my CP package anyway.

Rosemary--- You are always considered part of our group, so please post anytime.

Eric--- Are your elections always held on the weekends?

Jennifer--- Cute picture. As for Jan, I would think the crowds would be low and the weather would be hit and miss. Somewhere that month is the Disney marathon. I have been in late Feb but never Jan.

Nancy

 

[bettemom]

Hi Guys, Kim here..

Rosemary, I have not forgotten your request for the recipe. I will be sorting all my recipes this week as I loll around on my bed with NOTHING else to do.

I actually sorted a 1 gallon jar of buttons this weekend and put them into colored groups, how very pathetic.....

At least I can look forward to going to the "big" city tomorrow for my MRI scan. Of course I still will not ge the news until next week. Come on guys send up your hand mending, I need something to occupy my time...

Bye, Kim

 

[Viking]

Yes Nancy,
all our elections take place on Sundays between 8am and 6pm - Always!!
Every adult (18 and older) is a voter, of the 82 million people living here 62 million are voters, about 49 million (79%) voted yesterday. Included are a couple million immigrants who obtained German citizenship.
But we don't have as many elections as you Americans: We don't elect sheriffs, district attorneys, judges etc. Those jobs are done by civil servants over here, which makes them less susceptibtle to corruption and opportunism.
We only elect mayors, city/county senates, state senates, and the federal congress. Coupled to city/county or state elections we also often have to make decisions concerning laws or changes to the constitution.
The only persons we vote for directly are the state and federal representatives - and for the mayors. Federal elections are very foru years, stets and cities vote every four or five years.
Our Chancellor (Head of administration) is elected by the Bundestag, our Congress, but the parties state before the elections whom they will vote for.
Our President (Head of State) is elected for five years by the Federal Congregation, which is made up from the Congress, the Senate, and a some dozen citizens (Usually celebreties nominated by the parties.

 

[Viking]

PixieDust to Kim *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

[JJsmama]

Jennifer, Thanks for sharing your picture with us. Your boys are so cute. Who are the other people in the photo?

Avé

Oops, sorry. That is the whole group who goes each year. We were on the monorail. As I said, I have the dark hair and boys in stripes. My sister is in the middle and the other two boys are hers. My mom is on the left. We don't take the husbands / daddies.

 

[Viking]

We received good news:
Perhaps some of you remember that we received a kind of rent raise of about $220 per month last year before we went on Cruisetoberfest III, which was effective 5 months before we received it. So we had to pay a kilobuck then.
Now we received a new calculation and it was lowered by $120 - valid three months ago. So we'll get back about $360 this week
Sounds a bit strange, and even we still haven't understood it completely, but it works like this:
The appartment we live in belongs to the City of Frankfurt. Anja works for a City Hospital. So we are elegible for one of those appartments. The rent is kind of subsidized, so that especially families with kids can afford them. When your income is above a certain level you have to pay a certain amount to the city to enable them to subsidize those families (Part of the European policy to bridge the gap between those who earn more and those who earn less). As our salaries are considerably more than that level we have pay the highest possible amount, but it must not be higher than the average rent for a comparable appartment in Frankfurt. Obviously the average rent in Frankfurt went down considerably and so our additional payment was lowered too - valid until June 2008 This is like a $120 per month net raise
Perhaps they also made a mistake when setting the first amount we had to pay, but we won't argue with them as according to the law we have been obliged to pay that fee since about the year 2000 - they simply couldn't work their way through all teh paper due to lack of manpower in the City Hall
Additionally the gas price dropped by about $.60 per gallon during last week Nevertheless I paid about $75 for 12 gallons yesterday

 

[wendym]

Kim - hope the MRI scan goes well! Do you want me to send you some marking - that would keep you busy!!
Eric - that is a great saving each month!
Oh how I wish I could join you all in NYC - unfortunately school and finances don't permit!
Wendy