There are no deep thoughts or social commentary for today, just a little rundown of what I’ve been up to lately - kind of like an open e-mail to my virtual (and real) friends.

Our friends from Brighton, Chris and Karin, were here for two weeks, and it was absolutely brilliant. They showed up on a Friday, and on the next day Chris came by and picked Jeremy and me up, and we drove to an art opening where we played music together for about six hours straight. After not playing together for about a year, and without even practicing or discussing what we would play, we sat down and played all the Beam songs with nary a mistake. We rule.

Over the next two weeks we just hung out and drank a lot of coffee, and ate pizza on a regular basis, and busked, and made a Mexican feast, and generally had a terrific time. They left a week ago; they had to run out of the pub we were in to catch their bus, and the half-finished drinks they left behind on the table looked as forlorn as I felt. The town is a lot emptier without them (our friends, that is, not the drinks).

Speaking of Brighton, I have to go to the Consulate on the 8th of August for my “interview." I freak out whenever I think of it. I’ve been trying to decide what to wear for weeks. A skirt? A suit (not that I have one)? A Union Jack dress?

I’ve been sick. And Jeremy’s been sick. Jeremy even had to have a piece of glass taken out of his eye (ewww…). We haven’t been sick with the same things, but we keep getting sick on and off at the same time, and it’s been fairly miserable. I’m hoping that we’re now both on the road to complete recovery, because I’m tired of going to doctors’ offices.

I have to have my wisdom teeth pulled. I can’t seem to bring myself to pick up the phone and make an appointment with the oral surgeon. It’s like, when I don’t feel well, I’m more than willing to go to the doctor for help. But when I feel just fine, it takes a lot of will power to go voluntarily to a doctor’s office and have some well-embedded teeth yanked out of my head. When Jeremy had to have some teeth pulled a while back, I was all encouraging and comforting and optimistic. I had no worries about him. Now that it’s my turn, I’m scared to death.

I was trapped in my house by the Tour de France. I don’t mean that I was so into watching it on TV that I couldn’t leave my apartment. I mean that all the streets around my house were blocked off, and my part of town was cut off from the rest of town, and I was literally trapped. The tour came into Freiburg on Thursday and left again on Friday. When it left, the starting point for the cyclists was one street over from my house - hence all the barricades and police cars and press vans that were everywhere up and down the street.

I went out to see the cyclists come in on Thursday, and I stood along the street for hours on Friday as they all took off again one by one (I just wanted to see Lance Armstrong go past - and he did, in an intense yellow blur, and I shouted, “LAAAAAAANCE!!" - and that was the end of my Tour de France excitement). It was all pretty nifty, actually, and Freiburg got the honor of being named the best stage of the tour this year. But it was a bit frustrating that on Friday it took me about 30 minutes to get from the market back to my house, instead of the 5 minutes it normally takes. Still, it was fun while the tour was here. Vive le Tour!

And tomorrow, July 23, is my birthday. I have no real plans. I’ve never been a big birthday party sort of person. Other years I’ve had a bunch of people over for dinner here, or I’ve gone out for dinner with a bunch of people. But not this year. This year I just want to go out to some restaurant or another with Jeremy and have a quiet little meal. We’ll probably go to our favorite Italian restaurant where the atmosphere is cozy, the portions are gigantic and the waiter is our friend. I will have some good red wine, eat something tasty and try to gather some sorely-needed energy for the weeks to come.

And that’s about it. I’m off to eat some ravioli and watch a Star Trek movie. Ooh, my glamorous European life!