Meet Aja!

We've adopted a dog!  Say hi to Aja.  She's a 6 year old Boston terrier/mini-pinscher mix. We adopted her from one of Amanda's new knitting buddies who found that while raising two young children, Aja (then Asia, but we changed the spelling to reflect Amanda's favorite Steely Dan album) wasn't getting the attention she deserved. Let me tell you, if attention is what Aja is after, she's come to the right place.





Aja is a ridiculously sweet little dog. She's very well behaved and loves going for walks in the Englischer Garten. There are generally a lot of other dogs in the Garten, and she eagerly greets each one we come across. She also enjoys chasing pigeons. 

She seems to be adjusting quite well to her new home.  She spent the first hour or so crying by the door when her previous owners dropped her off.  After we took her for a nice long walk she seemed to perk up a bit.  Today she has been much more curious and comfortable moving about the house.  She's found a few favorite spots to lay down already.  We were thrilled when she took to playing with one of her toy stuffed animals this morning.  She still hasn't eaten, which we hope she'll do soon.

Anyway, that's Aja.  I'm sure we'll have many more photos to share in the future.  For now, check out some of the others that we've taken over at our Picasa page.

Changing topics, I don't know what the weather is like in the U.S., but Fall has arrived here in München. The trees are afire, and the air is crisp and cool.  The smell of baked apple deserts has been filling our hallway, and one of these days I'm going to kick down someones door ready to plunder.

Our street is lined with hazelnut trees and over the past couple of weeks they have been showering the sidewalks with hazelnuts and the fuzzy green packages that they are wrapped in.  Just when Amanda and I were discussing harvesting some, we saw a couple with buckets full of nuts foraging along the side of the road.  Pretty cool.  We also found some trees down the road that must be some kind of cherry relative.  The fruit is cherry colored, but small and oblong.  Amanda said they tasted like sour Kirchen (cherries).  Maybe we'll have to harvest some of those as well.