General OOC

A bit too much excitement for one night... Mordae stepped on a nail so instead of a quasi-relaxing night at home, we got to spend 3 hours in the ER. Ugh.

eeewww...

This is not a monkey wrench. This is trying to push things along toward giving the military guys something to do.

D: Done that before. Did they give you the proverbial one stitch and send ya home? Or did you have to stick around for the tetanus shot in the stomach?

So, I've been very bogged down in my latest project: Reloading .308 WIN ammo! It's been filled with ups and downs, but, tonight I was finally met with success! 10 brand new rounds were loaded, fired, and reloaded. It sounds ridiculous, but that sort of thing apparently takes a lot of time.

Anyway, the game plan is to really kick things off with Friedrich tomorrow. It's a shame he didn't overhear that juicy radio transmission, but, perhaps it's best for Sarah's and von Braun's collective sanity anyway

Wasn't it though...

Sarah knows she didn't use quite the right words to say what she wanted, but doesn't realize exactly what she just said to a native speaker. I on the other hand had a pretty good idea that she would be putting her foot in her mouth, and managed to confirm that...

But what's the fun if the only person who knows what she just went and said is Klaus? True she was trying to pass a message just to him, but i was expecting some collateral. I just didnt know who else knew German.

So if you want in on that juicy, humiliating tidbit, you could always have been within earshot of Sarah at the time she radioed down.

No no no, that's just too cruel. I've been off the ball, so I'll have to suffer for it :'( No juicy tidbit here.

I'm sure Sarah and Klaus will be quite relieved to have dodged that bullet (even if they don't know it). It will probably be awkward enough once Sarah realizes what she actually said... not sure if its better or worse than me announcing to my college German class (this would be back in the day when I knew more words and grammar).

"Es tut mir leid dass ich mein Gummi verloren."

Now here I was thinking I was saying "I'm sorry that I lost my eraser" since the German word for eraser is Radiergummi. Unfortunately what I actually said was "I'm sorry that I lost my rubber." The students all understood me perfectly, not knowing the slang for "Gummi" but you should have seen the shades of red that the TA turned.

My German is about six years rusty now, so I generally struggle along, but it held up well enough to work with the Kraut Medics in Afghanistan and did me just fine for my two week vacation there. I'm sure I've said some equally stupid things, but usually everyone around me was kind enough to gently correct me :P

I've got an aunt who moved to Munich about 20 years ago. I don't get to visit much, but I've crashed with her a couple of times. It's been about 15 years since I last had to demonstrate proficiency (gah! its been that long!) but my reading of the language has held up from singing German choral music (damn German choir directors!).

Downside is I look German enough and am familiar enough with Munich that I get into real trouble... people seem to think I know what I am doing!

My gaffes in Germany, though were in English. Some of my aunt's friends asked me how I was doing (having just gotten off the plane the day before) and I answered that my internal clock was "out of whack." They didn't know that phrase, so I changed it to "screwed up." Well, apparently they have learned most of their American slang from our military... and they were quite horrified at what they thought I had been doing. Thankfully my aunt was there and quickly translated the intended meaning of my slang.

Moral of the story... don't take short cuts in speaking with foreigners (or if you are the foreigner)! If only Sarah had learned.