Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 19:17:14 +0200
Subject: "The Periodic Adventures and the Adventurous Periodical of Marleigh," Issue 9

Hi All,

Administrative junk first...

I finally have a network, and a Lotus Notes Server, and even a
wall-mounted bookshelf and telephone.  My office phone number, in case
anyone wants it, is: [***********]

Also, Ralf took some pictures of me at the various caves and the castle
last Monday.  I put them on line with the others at:
http://web.mit.edu/marleigh/www/Germany/
(for those of you who looked at these before, they have commentary now)

I thought this was going to be a fairly junky week, but a few things
happened in the last few days that made me happy.

I went to a dance thing last night.  It was a get-together thing for the
University of Ulm Ballroom Dance Team.  I went to find a partner and to
find out which classes I should take.  I met this guy named Christian,
who's not that bad, though he's never competed.  When I brought it up,
he seemed interested in competing in Standard, but not Latin (sniff!). 
He's busy Monday nights when they have Latin practice.  Anyway, so we
were dancing and talking and stuff (my tango is terrible, by the way),
and things were going well.  I said I still wanted to look around for
partners, so I could find someone who was more psyched to compete Latin
and he was cool with that.  

It was getting late, and a friend of his was leaving and as he was
going, asked Christian if he had found a sixth for their Diplomacy
game.  I was so shocked, I even answered in English, "You guys play
Dimplomacy?"  The friend gave Christian this look which said, "Good
work, my minion.  I leave this in your capable hands" and wandered off. 
Hence, I am invited to play Diplomacy at a friend of Christian's place
tomorrow.  Cool!  Not that I've ever played Diplomacy, or would be that
psyched to in other circumstances, but hey, it's people, it's Saturday,
and it's social.  Why not?

To cap it all off, I got an email from Christian today, saying that he
has a friend who is interested in competing in Latin, so I might be able
to get a partner for that too.  Having partners at my beck and call is
going to spoil me for when I go back to Boston, and it's an uphill
battle again.

German Word of the Week
die Gabel = fork

So I was at lunch in the DaimlerChrysler Cantina a few weeks ago, and
had the oddest experience.  I couldn't pick up my fork.  The reason for
this seemed to be that it was firmly attached to my knife, which was
stuck under my plate.  After extracting my knife from under my plate, I
could then pick up the fork, but the knife was still dangling from the
end.  These were the handels that were attached, totally smooth handels
that really should have no reason to be attached.  Besides, I'd
initially gotten the fork and knife from seperate bins.  This really
confused me, but I managed to pull the silverware apart and eat, and I
mostly forgot about it.  Then it happened again about a week later, this
time to a co-worker.  I figured out at that point that this was
happening because the silverware was getting magnitized, but couldn't
fathom why that would be happening so regularly.  Ralf explained it to
me today.

Apparantly, DaimlerChrysler has a rather modern automated kitchen.  When
you're done eating, you put your dishes back on your try and send them
back into the kitchen via a conveyer belt.  The trays go under a magnet,
which picks up the silverware off of the try, thereby seperating them
from the other dishes to be washed in their special bin.  The side
effect is that sometimes they aren't de-magnetized after being washed,
and we get silverware that sticks together.  Cool, huh?

Honor and Glory...
	to Mom and Shelly, for letters (and air mattresses, and pictures)
	to Dave, for his kind rememberance to me in his SAP message (can
	   you believe he called me a sweet girl?)
Dishonor and Notoriety...
	to the weather.  It's snowing again!
	to the important Japanese people coming Monday, forcing us to
	   personally clean all of the offices
	
Tschuess!

Marleigh