I cooked a new recipe last night – red lentils and vegetables in a pan. It was really yummy. Towards the end of the cooking time, you should crush a clove of garlic and throw it in the pan. Guess who didn’t remember to look for the crushed garlic clove in the lentil-y mushness and ended up eating it! Oh yeah – and the back of my throat is still paying for it this morning.

Other stuff: we spent last weekend in England to celebrate Timo’s 30th birthday. It was very nice. I think eight people flew over from Germany for a surprise weekend and then some others came from different parts of England as well. On Saturday, the boys went paintballing. None of them came back dead or maimed, which was good, although Flo did bleed from his head because someone shot him too close. Good that I wasn’t there. I can’t take it when people bleed out of their noggins. We actually didn’t take a single picture while we were there. Bit lazy I guess. But y’all know what those guys look like anyway. So kudos to Ruth, who’s been planning this massive venture for months and managed to keep the whole thing a REAL surprise for Timo. The look on his face when he walked in the room and saw all of us there was really priceless. And Timo always has something to say, but I think for the first 15 minutes after we all arrived, he just ran around the house from person to person, looking at them, shaking his head with his jaw dropped open. I’m glad he didn’t drool or anything.

And, I finally read a book I got about four or five years ago for Christmas. It was one I’d wanted and I started reading it then, but somehow didn’t get into it. I picked it up again a few weeks ago and couldn’t put it down! It’s called A Bright Shining Lie and it’s by Neil Sheehan. It follows the life of one man who fought in the Vietnam War. It was really fantastic. I can recommend it if you enjoy war stories and don’t mind reading books nearly 800 pages long.