This week

This week is going to be a busy one. Last week this time I was walking Ronja while we dogsat her when Stefan's mom had a minor and successful stay in the hospital.
This week is full of cooking, babysitting the kids, signing the rental contract and getting final answers regarding when we can start working on the place and get exact move in dates. We'll also try to squeeze in a trip down to the Ikea to schedule the measurement guy (can't do over the phone, totally annoying!), and try to schedule the floor guy to come in and start that process. We're only doing linoleum in the kitchen. That stuff has always been taboo to me, too much childhood exposure, ha ha, but it's affordable and super easy to pull up and remove when we leave. (I know that sounds weird, but we have to consider that with this rental.)

I also think we have a work-able kitchen floorplan. We have to verify that the oven and fridge can still work on the same electrical circuit (please oh please). If not, then I'll have to abandon my dream of having the oven up high. The last arrangements didn't work b/c the cooktop was next to a cabinet wall. So we'll have to see. The image below doesn't have the dishwasher raised up btw. This Ikea software only goes so far.
Also on the agenda this week is prepping for a meeting at the university. I've been asked to teach a "Schreibwerkstatt", a writer's workshop of kinds. This pretty much cracks me up and kind of freaks me out. Since moving here I fell into copy editing research articles that local researchers hope to publish in english language scientific journals. (I had some friends who had friends who were trying to publish and wanted a native speaker to look it over first.) I had to do this fairly often at my last job back in Boston. Not that Harvard and Channing didn't have editorial offices, but because the folks I was working with had so much on their plates that they often couldn't meet the EO deadlines and did it all last minute. Thankfully my desk was literally around the corner from the EO office and we were all friendly, so I picked up quite a few tips. But that doesn't make me an expert!

More than once I've seen a sentence that makes zero sense and had to run that sentence by my chemical whiz of a father or my mom (who's been known to stay up late reading new grammar books). Sometimes my mom or English teacher husband will correct ME! So I'm always learning something. I will never understand the analytical code or how statistical powers and polymorphisms relate. When I think that on Thursday morning one of the people I'm meeting with is the chair of the physics department I just think of the Dismal grade I got in high school physics. I know I'm not teaching them physics, but I certainly don't consider myself an expert in technical writing. However, they've been loving the work I've been doing for some of their researchers, so they're asking me based on seen work, not on some false illusion.
All the same, I'll be spending as much time as possible prepping for this meeting and listing some potential topics to expound on, etc. I just got the AMA Manual of Style in the mail on Friday and will be poring over it this week. I'm also researching online what seperates medical writing style from psychological research and physics stuff. Seems there are different rules. Fun.

At the end of the week we're heading down to visit the Prices. Stefan has a holiday on Friday, so we'll leave early in the morning and hopefully stop at a spa in Bad Kissingen to kick back in the pools for a couple of hours before continuing on our way. I know we'll both be ready to relax and hang with friends after this crazy week!