What a day...

Since I have no car, and the bus system here is crappy, I go grocery shopping with my trusty pack mule: my bicycle. On the way home, I am a gravity-defying wonder, with bags in my front basket, in my backpack, clamped to the luggage carrier in back, and sometimes hanging from each handlebar. Not something that I like to do in the dark, down the unlit cobblestone streets of the booming metropolis I call home. Ever since The Accursed Daylight Savings Day, the sun is already down when I get out of work, so if I want to get my groceries during daylight hours- and I do!- I have to go on Saturday morning. (This being Germany, stores are closed on Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday.) Anyway, my Grocery Shopping Day dawned gray and sleety. Motivated by the desire to eat next week, I sucked it up and tried to add an umbrella to my shopping ensemble, but the sleet came at me sideways and the puddles came at me from beneath, so despite umbrella and raingear, I was freezing and utterly soaked by the time I made it home, no longer even attempting to avoid the deepest sleety, cobblestony mini-swamps.
And the ATM was another thrill. I get paid in the US, in dollars (sigh), and my US bank only lets me take out 200 bucks a day. So I have to go several times to the ATM, take out the cash and deposit it in person into my German account in order to pay the rent and my other expenses. The whole procedure is a bit annoying at best. But with today's exchange rate (1.31 US dollars to the Euro, YIKES!), I can no longer take out 150 Euros, because that is MORE than 200 US dollars. That was really depressing. It's like getting the opposite of a raise.