Optimism

This is on my way to school. Pretty, huh? It's cheers me up in the morning when I am otherwise not feeling particularly optimistic (one part morning grump, one part having to work on beautiful days, one part reading "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, and two parts the feeling that my students have learned more English this year from Outkast than from me).
It got cold over the weekend, though, and I expect the flowers to be gone when I head back tomorrow. Luckily, this weekend, I went to Franzi's birthday party, the memory of which will probably be able to cheer me up for at least another four or five days. Franzi is a music student, and so are most of her friends. So Franzi decided to have a karaoke birthday party. Saturday night we all went down to Monster Ronson's Sing Inn, which is a good bit seedier than it sounds. At Monster Ronson's, you rent tiny rooms with tiny monitors and sing for just members of your party. Not that there isn't heavy drinking involved. A good thing too, because I'm pretty sure that without heavy drinking, Carsten and Nils would never have treated us to their (slurred) rendition of the popular German drinking song "Whatta Man" (originally by Salt n' Pepa). I don't know if it gets much better than that....