It's amazing to think that I've now been in Stuttgart for 4 and a half months. Only 6 more weeks and I can claim the 6 months mark. Four and a half months doesn't sound too long, but when I put it in terms years - half a year - it suddenly becomes a much bigger amount of time.

Four and a half months brings me to the middle of December, which means that there's only another week until Christmas. In the true spirit of Christmas, Rebecca and I went shopping for nearly the entire day. Hours later we end up spending a couple hundred Euros at Ikea. Rebecca has been stalking this giant living room rug at Ikea for months, and although Ikea's online inventory system showed that the rug was out of stock, we happened upon it at Ikea today. Of course we had to get it, which later turned out to be a mistake. So we ended up purchasing two rugs (one for the living room and another for the study), a Christmas tree stand, a bunch of plastic Christmas decoration balls, and a few small miscallaneous items. From Ikea we went straight to Patch for some groceries, and then finally we headed back downtown for one last stop before going home - the local Christmas tree seller. Rebecca and I ended up quickly picking a 20 Euro fir, and within 5 minutes had the tree wrapped up in my Jeep, and we were on our way home.

It only took us 3 up and down trips on the 6 flights of stairs to get all of our stuff up, and to our massive disappointment, the big living room rug that Rebecca had been wanting for weeks and big stains all over it. It was obvious that someone had purchased the rug, used it for some point of time, and then subsequently returned the rug - for us to today buy. It'll be a pain in the ass, but against our will, we'll have to bring the rug downstairs and drive it all the way back to the Sindelfingen Ikea next time we can find time.

Aside from the rug fiasco, the rest of the evening seemed to progress nicely. I put up our first Christmas tree, and it was also my duty to string the Christmas lights while Rebecca made garlands from cranberries and popcorn. After putting up some of the lights, the garlands, and all of the decorative balls from Ikea, the tree didn't look bad at all. So that was that...

I really wish I've been more diligent with keeping up with this site, not for anyone's sake but my own. I think it would be very interesting to read back over the entries later in life as a reminder of perspectives, even just entries from the past four and a half months. For this reason I'd like to be more active in my blogging (I hate the term), but the consequence of it is when I do sit down to write something, I get way too ambitious. All of a sudden, it is overwhelming how much I want to put down, and then it becomes a huge chore. I think the resolution is to write more often, because surely I'll run out of things to write about.