One Year Since The Fire

It was the Tuesday after Pentecost last year that our backyard shed was destroyed by a fire. So with a year behind us I thought that I'd take a look back.

Because Easter was earlier last year, it has actually been more than a year but because the event is so tied to the Pentecost holiday, it seems more like a year. The fire is one of those events that is hard to put a time on. On the one hand, it doesn't seem like it has been a year but on the other hand it seems farther away.




While I can's say that this is the single worst event in my life (losing my mother to cancer on The September 11th and losing my grandfather are certainly up there is well) it is certainly up there near the top. Looking out my bedroom window I could see the flames blazing out of our shed, stories tall, and I could feel the adrenalin flow. Immediately I was relieved that my family (including oma, who was staying with us for the holiday) was all together and I could see that everyone was safe. We all waited what seemed like an eternity for the fire department to arrive and put out the fire. The fire never reached our actual house and we were lucky that it only destroyed the shed, fence, and the other damage it caused but as it was burning I didn't really know how far it would get especially since our backyard is not so big that you could look at it as just a little fire in our shed. I have a newer appreciation for those people that have watched their homes destroyed before them, unable to stop it. I won't pretend to fully understand how such victims truly feel, because that would be unfair to them, but I did feel fear and a sense of helplessness like I'd never felt before. Since my wife was woke by the sound of the blazing fire and woke me up around 3:30 am and it was pre-dawn, the fire had the element of darkness that you can't really see what is going on and how bad it is, that magnified the intensity some how.



As daylight came and I was able to have that initial view of the damage, I was shocked to see it all. As time went by you start to realize more and more the things that were in the shed that either need to be replaced or that you have to live without. Looking at the damage it was more a sense of absorbing the magnitude of it all and feeling the associated emotions. Looking around of course you notice the charred and burned wood of the shed and surrounding wood fence and melted metal and melted rubber of all the things that were in the shed.



When you think about a fire, you realize that there will be work afterwards, but you don't realize how much there really is to do. For months after the fire I had all kinds of work. Getting rid of all the debris took several days and trips to the local dump and something that would have been a lot harder if my neighbor Gerhardt hadn't helped me so much and let me use his trailer to haul some much away. After cleaning away the debris, I started working on putting up a fence. We briefly thought about putting up a metal one but it didn't take long to realize how expensive that would have been, so we decided upon a wood fence. I felt a lot of pride and accomplishment as the fence went up and I painted it. Gerhardt helped me design the fence and was an immense help in putting it up. After getting the fence up, it didn't take long to realize that Hobbit would be able to slip through the rows, so first we tried to put up this bamboo type material, only to find out that it was strong enough and wouldn't work. Later on I added two more rows across the fence (and of course had to paint that all too!). The new shed was finally put up in August. Clearing and digging out the area where it was to be built was a lot of work. Gerhardt and my neighbor Frank, helped me put the cement sills in that would support the shed as well as putting cement around the sills. Around the time that the work crew was scheduled to put our shed together, it was discovered that more support was needed under the shed. This meant further delays as I needed to put wood beams 90 degrees to the cement sills and now we had to wait for an opening in the schedule of the work crew. After the shed was stood up I painted it with the same stain and sealant that I had put on the new fence. Putting a couple of coats on took a few days.



There is still work that I need to do. I still need to put grass in the yard in the area where the old shed had been and am currently planning to do that later this Summer or fall. I'm also going to add another couple of coats of stain to the fence and shed. I hope that by using only stain that the color will be closer to that of the rest of the neighbors. I put several pictures from the fire and the work done for the shed in an album at Myspace.

DSDS Final Tonight

Tonight is the final of D.S.D.S (Deutschland Such Dem Superstar, the German version of Idol) sixth season between Daniel Schuhmacher and Sarah Kreuz.  I'm really looking forward to it.

I was first lured to the show in the first season.  I didn't really watch so many of the shows but the single "We Have a Dream" (a song sung by the top 10 finalists) released during the show's run received a lot of radio play and I have a fond memory of listening to the song on the radio at the hospital just after my youngest daughter was born. I watched the final of the first season along with an estimated 12 million people.  Alexander Klaws (here is his Wikipedia bio and website) beat Juliette Schoppman (here is her Wikipedia bio and website) singing Take Me Tonight.  Alexander seemed like a very nice guy, whom Dieter Bohlen (a jury member of every season) said seemed like the kind of guy that you'd want to date your daughter (or something to that extent). 

I didn't see any of the shows during the second season until the Final.  This was primarily due to working in the Netherlands and the time.  Elli Erl (her Wikipedia bio and website) was the winner that season.

Season three is probably my favorite of all that have aired so far. There were four singers that I really liked that season. Nevio Passaro (his Wikipedia bio and website) was of Italian heritage and Dieter convinced him to sing a song in Italian, which was very good. He finished 4th that season.  Not too long ago he released a cd called Nevio, which contained songs in English, German, and Italian, I bought it and listen to it from time to time. A relationship blossomed between Vanessa Jean Dedmon (her Wikipedia bio) and  Mike Leon Grosch (his Wikipedia bio and website) apparently going back to a duet that the two of them sang at the beginning of the show in Berlin.  Lady Vanessa, as the jury referred to her, sang songs from Whitney Houston very well.  I was hoping that she'd have a career but I haven't heard about her landing any recording deal or anything. Mike had a very soulful voice and sang Seal and Joe Cocker very well. Tobias Regner (his Wikipedia bio and website) was the winner and the first his Straight cd was I Still Burn.  Tobby was the first "rocker" to win the show and he seemed to be able to sing almost anything from Metallica to Frank Sinatra.  Tobby and Mike went on tour and I went to see the two of them. I believe that this is the only concert I've been too since monving to Germany.  Because Tobby's style is so much different than Dieter Bohlen, it seems that he didn't get a lot of promotion after winning.

Mark Medlock (his Wikipedia bio and website) won season four and has no doubt been the most successful of all the Superstars so far.  His story is inspiring when you consider he was unemployed before the show and on welfare (Hartz IV) with not much of a bright future and now he has released several well selling cds. Mark faced off against Martin Stosch  (his Wikipedia bio and website) in the final. Lisa Bund comes from Wiebaden, and sang like Kelly Clarkson, she did release a cd last year or so. The rest of the top 10 from that seaon included the Enns brothers (Thomas and Jonathan), Francisca Urio,  Max Buskohl, Lauren Talbot, Laura Martin, and Julia Falke


Thomas Godoj (his Wikpedia bio and website) beat Fady Maalouf in the finals of season five. Thomas was another rocker to do well in the show. It was said that he had "no plan B" that he had pinned all his hopes on winning the show.  He did great versions of songs "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" from U2, "Behind Blue Eyes" from the Who, and a very memorable version of "Let It Be" from the Beatles. The remaining Top 10 included Benjamin Herd, Collins Owusu, Jermaine Alford, Linda Teodosiu, Monika Ivkic, Rania Zeriri (her Wikipedia bio and website), Sahra Drohne, and Stella Salato.


Season six has had quite a bit of controversy. Annemarie Eilfeld has managed to get her picture in the Bild (the German tabloid newspaper) what seems like every week.  In last week's show she sang her final number with a snake around her neck. Vanessa Neigert was a cute young girl that sang popular older German songs that people liked (espeically those of people that aren't teenagers anylonger) but weren't exactly what you'd consider Top 40 of today.  Holger Göpfert was dubbed Chaptain Entertainment and it was amuzing to watch him dance around but there were definitely better singers that were kicked off before he was finally kicked off. Cornelia Patzlsberger was kicked off relatively early.  She played the harp and had a great voice, but it seems that she became too identified with the harp and therefore when she was playing it, it apparently didn't seem right to the jury and audience.  Benny Kieckhäben was entertaining, maybe to the point that it distracted people from his singing and he might have seem too flamboyant for many people's taste.
Dominik Büchele sang like an awful lot like James Blunt.  The jury commented on that point very often, to the point that it was hard to hear him sing without hearing James Blunt.  He always sang his songs well, but his performances didn't have the intensity that the jury seemed to be looking for.  For the longest time I had expected that Daniel and Dominik would be in the Final of this season. Sarah Kreuz has a great voice and there was one show where they had someone work with her on being more of a diva. Daniel Schuhmacher has a very unique voice that you can tell immediately is his, he recently sang a famous Joe Cocker song and didn't try to sing it like Joe, but he did his own version and made it his own.

For the last weeks I've been playing the songs sung on DSDS on Blip.fm,where possible I would play the original version of the song or one that might have inspired what was sung on DSDS. If you like to read more about DSDS there is a lot of information on Wikipedia and of course there is the RTL offical DSDS website.  I wrote a post last year in preparation for the finals as well.  While I don't know who will win, I'm sure that it will be a good show.


Photo credit: retro singing girl courtesy of stefa.

30 Years of Star Wars In Germany

Easter weekend last year I attended the Jedicon in Duesseldorf, celebrating 30 years of Star Wars in Germany. I recently posted some pictures at Flickr, so I thought that I write a post about it here.

First off you might think that the movie came out in 1977, so it should have been 31 years, but apparently the counting of years goes back to 1978, when it played in Germany.  I was told by a friend that the convention was typically held every other year, I had never attended  a Star Wars convention and l decided that the 30 year celebration was a good reason to attend.

Star Wars came out when I was 10 and at an impressionable age.  It quickly became one of my favorite movies.  My devotion never reached the fabled heights of some fans (i.e. a rumored fan that saw the movie 17 times that first summer, must have liked the popcorn I used to joke).  Like many other fans I was excited to hear that Episodes I-III were going to be made.

I was only there on the Saturday, but I did get to hear Robert Watts, Jeremy Bulloch, and Daniel Logan talk about their experiences with Star Wars.  Robert Watts was involved in the production of the first three movies and one or two Indiana Jones movies, so he had some interesting stories to tell.  Jeremy Bulloch was Boba Fett in the orginal films, while Daniel Logan played Boba Fett in the newer movies. Saturday night was a variety show and of course there was all kinds of stuff that you could buy. 

It is nice to do something like this to meet other fans, to meet people involved, and to learn more about things behind the scenes. It is hard to believe that Star Wars has been around for over 30 years (sure makes you feel old sometimes).  So heres to 30 plus years, "May the Force Be With You."

Stormtroopers in full force

Stormtrooper ready for Easter

Boba Fett

Yoda in Carbonite

Droids on display

Darth Vader under the helmut