I have used a similar title before, back in October, when all sorts of school-related things had to be organized, parties had to be attended, birthday gifts had to be wrapped; to make a long story short: CHAOS HAD TO BE DEALT WITH. This title, in case you were wondering, is also stolen from the lyrics of Robbie Williams’ song Love somebody. Just sayin’ - so that at the end of the day you can brag about how you have actually learned something by reading this blog.

So much is going on these days, I rarely find the time to blog about what’s currently happening. Ergo, this bullet point list:

• My friend N has accepted the study/apprenticeship deal that she had applied for and passed with flying colors. As I have mentioned before she’s flying up to Scotland at the end of the month to check out the company that will train her. She is, however, going to be studying here in Germany, flying back and forth all the time, so she’s currently looking for an apartment down in Cologne where the private college is located. I’ll be going to Cologne with her to look at a couple of places next Tuesday. It should be fun!

• My mom’s birthday was on the 11th, and so was my grandma’s. We had a cook-out here at my parents’ house and the usual crowd showed up. We put some brats and some steaks on the grill and had tatersalad with it and, you know, whatever the heck else people brought along. My uncle P and I had built Cornhole boards last summer and we put them out to play last night as well. Obviously, his girlfriend and I beat my brother and him effortlessly; THE GIRLS BEAT THE BOYS, just in case that needed clarification.

Grandma and all four of us will go to brunch at one of my favorite places ever, the Bernstein, tomorrow morning. I’ll go and pick her up from her house and then get my mom, dad and brother from our place and then on we’ll roll!

• My other grandma’s sister Anni died this morning in an old people’s home. She had been physically challenged all her life and over the past couple of months her condition had worsened dramatically. The doctors say, she basically died of starvation. Her body had been too weak to accept any sort of nutrition any longer. Other than my grandma, nobody is particularly upset about this - meaning, that we can go on with our lives because her death was really just a release to herself, above all else.

What bothers me is that I had promised Anni to come see her before going off to Kentucky back in 2005 (!) and I didn’t and also haven’t visited her ever since then. This seems especially cruel, now that she’s no longer with us.

Tonight I went to my grandma’s place to write addresses on the funeral notifications. I did the same for her when her husband - my grandpa - died a couple of years ago. It’s depressing but I’m obviously always glad to be of help. The funeral is next Thursday.

• I’m having trouble figuring out what to do about television at my new apartment. I won’t have cable TV or anything which doesn’t bother me but I need to have my TV and my DVD player with me. The thing is that there is no room to put my almost-vintage only two-year-old CRT-TV but I hate those silly flatscreens because the quality is never as good as on CRT screens no matter how much money you pay. My grandma has a smaller CRT-TV that she doesn’t need anymore so I may just use that one.

The girl that is renting the apartment to me suggested that she just leave her small flatscreen-DVD-recorder-smooth-black-blue-light power station in there for me but I hate these things and I’d rather just have my grandma’s old TV.

My dad is going to find out tomorrow how big or small my grandma’s CRT actually is and then I guess I’ll check with that girl how much room there really is left and I’ll make a decision based on all that.

• In other apartment news, I have been buying a few more things that are not worth photographing (there not as photogenic as, say, a can opener - geez, I mean, did you think I’d take pictures of anything?) - such as a funny bottle opener, a measuring cup and an electric kettle (is that the right word?).

• Also, my dad and I have been checking online to get me a better cellphone deal. I never really use my cellphone to actually call people because I hate talking on the phone and love short, concise text messages but once I will have moved to the apartment in Aachen I won’t have any other phone than my cell. So far we haven’t really found anything satisfying and my dad is somehow excited about the idea that with a new deal they will probably throw in a new phone and I’m all like, NO TOO MUCH IS CHANGING AND I LIKE MY PHONE.

• My parents are debating where we’re going to go on vacation and if we should go. They are determined to squeeze in some sort of quality time at the beach with the whole family between now and my moving-out around July 27th. It’s getting alarmingly close to total madness. The worst thing is that they just won’t decide! In the case that we would actually rent a house on the coast, it would be as of next Friday which is less than a week away. For heaven’s sake, just say yes or no already!

Last Saturday night, my friend J, my friend N and I went to a bar slash restaurant called New Orleans in a town not far from here. They serve typical southern cuisine, or at least that’s what they aim to provide paying customers with. Really, they just serve all kinds of American foods.

We arrived pretty early and were actually the first guests there. The restaurant is set up on two levels with a gallery that offers you a great view of the bar downstairs including all the cute bartenders and the tough guys sitting at the bar chucking beers.

I hadn’t been to this type of place for a while and as of July 1, smoking is prohibited inside all clubs, bars and restaurants here in Germany. Which was amazing. I hate smokers and I hate the smoke because it stinks so bad. In my eyes, it is the worst, most useless drug there is. Why would one even start smoking in the first place? God. But now those who can’t be seperated from the butts dangling from their mouths have to stand outside. Which, I guess, is fine during the summer but it should be fun to do so in the freezing cold of the night in, say, December or February.

The food was amazing and so were the cocktails, although I couldn’t have any actual cocktails because I was driving which was kinda lame. I don’t do alcohol very often and this seemed like the right place and the right time and the right occasion but J had only gotten her license the day before and N doesn’t have hers yet and so neither one could stir us safely into the big city. Which left the job to me.

I was glad to see them again because ever since graduation in early June, it’s been kinda hard to keep in touch with everyone. We had planned this night forever. This night, that had originally started out as a James Dean night (the video store had a DVD box special offer) but was then changed into a girls’ night out.

But it wasn’t my best night, I could hardly think of clever things to say and it bothered me that I even had to think about saying things to begin with because, really, if you meet with friends you haven’t seen in a while, shouldn’t the conversation just flow? J is a talking maniac, she wouldn’t shut up if she stood on fire which I love and admire and she and N appeared to be talking on the phone every damn night because I kinda felt left out. There were numerous Remember, I already told you? occasions, and I would just nod along, thinking that no, how could I know, we’re doing this night out to do just that, to catch up on stuff.

For some reason, I can’t laugh about the things that they find funny or entertaining, that’s what struck me the most. It seemed different from before because, normally, all my friends make me laugh. A good sense of humor is what I typically look for in a person and my friends know that I use sarcasm as a defensive mechanism whenever I feel over-powered, embarrassed or insulted. Laughing about the same things is probably the base of every relationship I am in.

But then they began to talk about boys and J said this guy at work drove her crazy because he smelled so good and he had a tattoo on his hip bone and was always lounging around and that she thought that he was maybe 21 or 22 and I was all like, SOUNDS PRETTY GOOD TO ME. And then J continued, apparently she had found out that he was in fact thirty years old, THIRTY she emphasized, THIRTY OH MY GOD EW! And N’s eyes widenend and they started giggling and suddenly burst out laughing and N was all like, COULD YOU IMAGINE? A THIRTY-YEAR-OLD?

And they proceeded to cry from laughing so hard while I thought that, yes, I could imagine and how could anyone feel as though N had just told some sort of joke that required laughing?; I could imagine spending time with a hot, grown-up guy like that any day instead of sitting around with you silly people wasting my time by talking about how your neighbor keeps wearing a skirt that looks actually more like a belt and how everybody always confuses your seriously annoying brother for your boyfriend and, did I know, how so totally embarrassing that always was?

No, I don’t fucking know. Also, I’m not interested in any of it whatsoever.

As the night went on, I felt more and more ashamed of dismissing my friends that way. I kept wondering why I couldn’t force myself to listen to all the useless talk about boys and perfect body weight and I’m going to the bathroom, wanna come? and everything else in between that I can’t remember because it was of no significance at all.

At times, I was literally looking around and realized that I really loved the New Orleans and the atmosphere and that I wanted to see both J and N and I wished that I could understand why I wasn’t like them. I would have loved to turn the conversation into a different direction; to talk about places we would like to travel someday or what our plans were for the future and if, maybe, they wanted to come visit me in my new apartment next month, to discuss the latest music and movies in depth, to compare what books we have read, to come up with silly plans to save the world. To have a real conversation about things that matter where people take sides and argue just for the argument’s sake or because they actually believe in something.

Maybe we just don’t have anything in common and to them, the fact that N has just dropped a French frie again - Gosh, I am so clumsy tonight, I feel so stupid! - is much more hilarious and of higher importance than everything else going on in the world.

It’s frustrating. How come there’s no one around that cares about the same things that I find interesting? How did I end up becoming friends with such girly girls that would do anything to always have perfectly manicured toenails but don’t have an opinion on global warming or the upcoming US election?

I do love J and N and I feel horrible about all these things that rose to my mind during our casual 4-hour dinner at the New Orleans. And because I want to be a part of what they think we have, because I want that friendship and because I want to feel the way they feel, I wanted to let them know how I felt.

On the way back to the car we went for a walk through the inner city and it was so peaceful and mild and quiet that I just wanted to smack them both up the head and then hug them and blurt out everything I just typed but I decided to swallow, to keep quiet, to hush and force a crooked grin when two Turkish boys whisteled after us and J and N, yet again, burst out laughing.

Last Thursday I went to Dortmund with my friend N. She had an interview there for a study/apprenticeship thing which is basically the new cool thing to do because companies pay your college tuition and on top of that you’re being paid for your work as an apprentice. In the case of my friend N, they would also pay for her flights to and from Scotland because half the year she would have to be up there and work on their petrochemical manufacturing site and the other half of the year, she’d go to college in Cologne.

This last fact, she didn’t know about until after the interview. She also didn’t know that the interview was going to be in German and not in English which was a bummer to me since I had done my best to prepare her for casual conversation in the foreign tongue. For God’s sake, there were instances where we had to decide whether I LIKE TO RIDE MY BICYCLE was an appropriate hobby to mention during this type of interview, or any interview for that matter.

We went to Dortmund by train which only makes sense because traffic here is always so insane, you literally don’t get anywhere because there are just too many damn cars and semi-trucks, traffic just stops.

So by train we got their on time, or, actually, early - and went over to the hotel by the station where my friend N was going to meet with the interviewer. They were also going to have lunch which totally freaked N out but she just had to roll with it.

While N met with the guy, I went to one of the greatest book stores I know. They have this whole huge front of windows, just glass and more glass, and super comfortable leather chairs and soothingly colored carpets in front of it and they invite you to just sit there, skim through a few books and watch the busy world pass by down on the street. Trust me, it is amazing.

N’s interview was set to last almost two hours and I loved every second of it because that book store, seriously, they have everything. And by everything, I mean a broad selection of books in foreign languages. I ended up buying Stephenie Meyer’s Eclipse even though I’m not finished with Three Cups of Tea yet. And then I sat down in one of the comfy chairs and watched the sky turn dark. It started to drizzel and then it stopped again but the wind picked up while I began to read Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult.

Everytime I heard high heels click-clacking on the wooden floors, I turned around to see whether it was N. We had agreed that she would meet me at the book store whenever she was done.

I made it to page 46 of Nineteen Minutes. And then, it was finally her.

From afar I could see her broad, bright smile, her blushed cheeks and her hands clutched into excited fists. She was shaking a little bit and I could tell immediately that she was doing her best not to scream out loud right there in the still book store.

She didn’t have to say anything and she probably wasn’t capable anyway. I drew her into my arms and we hugged tight and some of those sitting in the leather chairs stared but we didn’t care. My heart pounded wildly because this was great, amazing, perfect.

I don’t remember ever feeling so proud of somebody or so happy for somebody. I literally wanted to yell out loud, wanted to tell everybody else that my friend had just scored the best possible educational deal there is after high school. That she took Math and Chemistry AP classes in high school, that she was the only girl in Physics class and that she was honored with a special award for her extraordinary natural scientific knowledge on graduation day.

And that, today, it had all paid off.

I congratulated her and couldn’t stop smiling. It was obvious that a rush of crazy adranelin had bolted through us, we couldn’t stop giggling and we decided that even though it was barely lunch time, we would find a place that had champagne.

And of course we did find a place and it felt so cool and grown-up and perfect to be there and celebrate N’s success, to raise our glasses to it, to drink on it and not worry about anything else in the world for a few minutes.

N told me everything about the interview and that she was supposed to fly to Scotland on July 28 and stay there for three days to take a look at the company and, possibly, sign the contract. It had been in German after all, the interviewer had asked a few questions about petrochemistry and physics but also personal ones. And it had gone simply great.

When she went to the bathroom and I sat by myself for a moment, the overwhelming feeling of pride took over and I felt tears rise to my eyes. I can’t imagine anybody who deserves an opportunity like this more than N.

When she stepped out of the bathroom, walking back to our table, the most perfect song was played on the radio, booming out of the speakers, causing both her and myself to laugh out loud; Bicycle race by Queen: Bicycle, bicycle, BICYCLE; I want to ride my bicycle. It’s such a stupid song but it fit the situation so perfectly that everything felt even more surreal.

N still hasn’t made a final decision whether she feels right about the whole thing, though. The first excitement has died off and now she needs to think it all through. I’ve been encouraging her to do this because you only get chances like this once in a lifetime. She’ll be flying out to Scotland on July 28 and make her decision, probably while she’s there.

I am so endlessly proud of her.