How hard can it be?

Train trip from Oslo to Bergen 

Lenny sent me details of this great game for the iPad – for cats – but things being what they are in Mac World I have not found a way to download it.

I can download the free version which gives me the laser but I am not going to have my cats chasing a fake laser - I want them to chase  a fake mouse – and of course the mouse costs money – although not much – and this itself is not a problem except that you can only download the free versions from Apple stores and then have to buy the mouse version online.

Well – I have to do this from the Apple store in Austria – through my iPad  – and here we have struck a snag.

I don’t know why but I am working on it. The solution could take any time from days to years so I have told Sissi it will probably be a birthday present – and in any event it is a fake mouse so why would she care.

I spent some time on the weekend wondering why ‘Find my iPhone’ and ‘Find my iPad’ were not working in my iMac.

These are wonderful little bits of software that allow you to find your iPhone and iPad if you lose them – and lock them if you want to – or send a message to the screen. Well – they are wonderful if they work.

I mislaid my iPhone on the weekend and I thought it was in the house but to make sure I went to ‘Find my iPhone’ and there it told me it was not operating. Brilliant. Apparently when I changed to the newfangled iCloud thingy it turned off the find thingy.  

So I fiddled about for an hour or so and then went to Mac Forums like I should have done in the first place and solved the problem in seconds.

Today I cooked a new dish for the first time - from a Bill Granger cookbook. It is Lamb Biryani – or it was when it was ready - but it was prehistoric Lamb Biryani with crusty rice when Cate got home.

On Thursday I am going to help Frau Knickerbocker put together a wardrobe she bought from Ikea. It has utterly defeated her and she was almost in tears at today’s lesson explaining the impossibility of comprehending the sliding door plans provided by the manufacturer. 

Well I can just imagine. It is the stuff of nightmares.

Now I am not much good at this myself - as I demonstrated very clearly early in our Viennese days when I was foolish enough to buy things and put them together.

It took me three days to build three cupboards and I hung the doors upside down. You think I am joking but I am not. These are three cupboards  – the tallest no more than one metre – and it took me three full days to build them.

But Frau Knickerbocker just has sliding doors. How hard can it be? 

It is a language composed in bedlam

Cate is sort of on the mend but is still at home and of course this is an added strain on my home duties as it requires constant attention  to her needs for water and lemon juice and coffee and such.

Last night she spent from 7:00 PM until 11:00 PM on a telephone call and I simply would not have thought this would have been possible – but clearly it is because she did it – barking like a seal every now and then - but muting the call when she did so as to not alarm the other participants.

I have just finished my second week with Frau Knickerbocker and I must say that up until a week or so ago I thought that separable verbs were the worst things the Germans had ever invented – but no – there are in fact more ghastly things.

Each – yes EACH German noun is Nominativ, Akkusative or Dativ and (depending on what they are) this will determine how you form the rest of the sentence you are about to construct.

Did I mention that you also have to know what the gender of the noun is? EVERY noun.

There are of course many other rules – too numerous to mention. Some so arcane and so baroque that they would make Machiavelli swoon.

It is astonishing to me that Germans can communicate at all.

I am eternally flabbergasted that Germans do not meet each other in the street and emit guttural grunts while flapping their arms uselessly in the air - attempting to convey the meaning of their words.

It is a language composed in bedlam by a committee of loons.

Sissi was disappointed with the snowfall

Cate has been ill in bed for the last three days so I have been playing nurse. This is the consequences of not getting an annual flu shot which we all should do in Vienna - and which I did.

Cate says it was not her fault because she travels so much – to which I say – Foofle!

She should get this at her work and she was not there when it took place but she can always go along to see Dr Mordor with me and I will make sure she does that next year because the last three days have not been a happy time for either of us.

I have done the best I can providing fresh orange juice and hot lemon juice and using a Bobcat to clean out the used tissues but it has not been a happy time.

She is however on the mend and is now wading through the six million emails that arrived during her time of incapacity.

You can tell when Cate is really unwell – she is too feeble to use her BlackBerry.

However – on the bright side – as she has been running a ferocious fever she has been generating enormous heat so the cats have been able to warm up nicely by lying on top of her - and she has been too weak to shrug them off.

I have shown a photo of the drizzly amount of snow we got last week. Sissi was most disappointed with the paucity of the fall.

I should mention that last week Merisi went to Vorarlberg and stayed near Damuls which calls itself the 'snowiest village on earth'.

In this area they measure their snowfalls in metres. This is where Cate and I should be and we may go there this year instead of Schladming which is our usual spot at the end of summer.