Spouses in Germany

Last month I said that I would write about what spouses do while in Germany.  And finally I am getting to that.  Some spouses of other post-doctoral researchers leave Germany early, others find part time jobs.  For me I was trying to work remotely for NREL, however that didn’t go too well –a large part of the problem is “out of site, out of mind” and I have been out of site for a year; plus I have been traded to my 3 manager in less than a year, so not much work was coming my way.  Therefore I am going back to school.  Tomorrow I will start classes at the University of Stuttgart, in an all English Masters degree program in the field of Computational Mechanical Engineering.  This will give me something to engage in while in Germany.  …and the surely the subject of future blog posts.

But there have been some other things that have occupied my time in the last few months.

Apartment renovations:  Calking bathtub, painting window frames, install better lighting.  Left picture is what one window frame looked like before repairing and painting.
I have a modest weather station, and I have been writing programs and building some instruments for it.  Right picture is me investigating the circuit of a humidity sensor.

I have also taken several long bike rides. And those are worthy of their own blog post…