A less than perfect update

I've been busy recently, and I'd love to post multiple posts with news of my various activities, but in light of Juliette's post, I thought I should stop waiting for perfection to arrive and just blog a bit.

I was just in Berlin for a few days for a work conference, and my husband got to tag along and we stayed an extra day to visit some sights. I took about 4 pictures, all in the Rosengarten of the Tiergarten, and posted them on Instagram, but the rest of the time I let my husband do all the photography work.

It was our first time in Berlin, and I'd like to go back to visit some more sights. I decided I wanted to eat Turkish one of our free nights (we went to Hasir), and when our orders arrived my husband admitted that he hadn't wanted to eat Turkish at all but as the food was excellent he was glad I had had the idea. The hummus alone was way more delicious than any version we've had in France.

I was initially a bit disappointed there weren't more "authentic" portions of the wall, but the expo at Checkpoint Charlie explained that after the wall came down, Berliners went out with hammers, drills, and anything else they could find and chipped away the wall, before a company was hired to tear it down completely.

At my work conference, I had the opportunity to reconnect with a woman I met in Lisbon at a partner school back in March during a different work trip, and we had an interesting conversation about feeling young and inexperienced/not legitimate in a crowd of deans (usually older men, always faculty versus us as administrative employees).

On our last day I happened across Idee at Wittenbergplatz, but I was reasonable and only bought some buttons (no fabric), since I have not yet made up a Cambie dress with the fabric I bought in New York last year, nor a dress with the jersey I bought in Madrid a few weeks ago for a Bettine.

Other news:

• My balcony garden is going pretty well, with the tomatoes growing well. Half my strawberries have fallen victim to pests or other problems, but my hot peppers are finally sprouting and I hope to have some peppers by the end of the summer. I have lots of flowers growing too. I took pictures on my phone at one point to illustrate a blog post, but my computer refuses to recognize my phone and emailing them to myself and then saving them to the hard drive is more than it's worth.
• My dance recital is coming up at the end of the month and I'm both excited about one of the dances I'm doing (I've learned the choreography rather well), a bit scared for another (we haven't practiced it in a while and I had trouble back when we were rehearsing it a lot), and a bit disappointed none of my friends are interested in attending.
• There may finally be a new volunteer for my position with my alumnae association. I've been wanting to give up the role for a while now, and I really hope this summer will be the last time I have to do the newsletter.
• The local French American club board is driving me crazy by waiting to send emails until 5 people (with various time constraints) have all validated the content of the email. Can't we all just have confidence that the secretary of the club can successfully reply to an email or two?
• I copied an existing pair of pyjamas to make myself a new pair, except my copy of the shorts wasn't not great, and they were too small. I picked apart the side seams, but I have yet to clear the table, wipe off all the crumbs, re-press the fabric, cut out extra fabric, sew it in as side panels, press the seams, finish the seams, sew the hem, sew the elastic casing, put in the elastic, finish the casing, then put my machine, tools, extension cables and everything else back.