Yucky Rainy Weekend

The weather this weekend was really the pits. The reason why I'm all worked up is this tends to be the way it goes in Cologne - gorgeous spring weather in April and May, lulling you into thinking, gee, so much nicer than in Chicago, and is that the Biergarten calling my name when SLAM, the rain starts nonstop in June, JUNE. One year I caught myself still thinking summer will be just around the corner - when it was already end of August. Pathetic! Jochen seriously objects to this view of life and he claims Cologne gets 950 hours of sun a year vs 1000 hours in Chicago...see how a man pulls do-doo out of his ears...

On Saturday we went on the bi-annual kindergarten woods outing. This was scheduled long before the municipal daycare employees went on strike, and surprisingly they decided to go ahead with it anyway (the strike is currently on hold for one week next week). Naturally in addition to the overcast weather the conversations were pretty much along the lines of "I had to ask my neighbor's dog to watch little Britta because I couldn't miss work on Tuesday." When will the strike end? Dunno, but the union is saying they can last until August. AUGUST. Who's the HR person in charge around here??!


Then again, bad weather never stopped this family from heading out. Today we went to a local community fest where Pig honed his circus skills.

Thank goodness part of the event was indoors, because twice this afternoon we had to duck inside to avoid the serious downpours.


It was still a lot of fun and Pig picked up a tip or two.


And if you don't believe how windy and shivery it was - just check out the most accurate weather forecasting instrument around.