What's Irish and sits in your backyard? ...Paddy O'Furniture! Happy St. Patrick's Day, and a special Namenstag shout to Patrik ...Irishman for a day.

Standing around looking at construction sites has always been popular with children all over the world, especially boys. Even before the movie "Transformers", little boys have watched backhoes and bulldozers, pile drivers and steamrollers, just about anything with a large tread or huge wheels, and imagined these machines as robots. In Germany, this demographic is filled by middle aged or elderly men. German men love to stare at construction sites. And they don't have to be massive city block size sites, either. If there's a guy from a road crew filling a pothole, there will be at a least one old German guy watching him do it. The big sites are the most popular though, with at least half a dozen men, hands ALWAYS clasped behind their backs, noses inches from the chain link fence, muttering to themselves (or anyone within earshot) about the quality of the work. Sometimes there's a tall wooden fence with head-sized viewing portals, sort of like those things you stick your head through to have your picture taken at the boardwalk or an amusement park. Invariably, there are more men than portals, and as no one would ever be so impolite as to suggest you shove over and share your hole, it can be very frustrating for the odd man out.

I bring this up because there's a construction site in the corner of the park next to the building where I go for therapy. It's been active for a couple of weeks now and it gets so noisy they have to close the windows in the practice. Along with the usual assortment of small equipment there's a pile driver, a backhoe, a bulldozer, and a huge drill that looks like something you would use to take core samples in the Arctic. As I left therapy yesterday and passed by the site on my way to catch the bus, I stopped for a few minutes to watch the drill bring up these 40 foot long pretzel rods of dirt and mud. I was standing there for a good five minutes before it hit me ...I had just added another item to the list of things that remind me of how long I've lived here. I'm becoming a middle-aged German man who stands around staring at construction sites. Well, really not very German as my mutterings were less constructive and more like, "Wow, the dirt from that drill looks like a giant pretzel rod." At least I kept my hands in my pockets.