Much the same...

The pile is still on top of my monitor...it's kind of leaning over, like it will fall any minute.
I used to live in a city in Germany that had a leaning tower.  The story goes that way back when the tower was being built, there was a drought and so wine instead of water was used to mix the mortar being used to build the tower, and therefore the mortar wasn't as strong as it should be...

It was quite fun to tour the tower.  You would climb and climb stairs to get to the top, and by the time you got up there the tilt was very pronounced and it was very hard to stand up! 
I still miss the little city where I spent part of my growing up years.  I don't know if I'll ever get to go back there.  We lived by a vineyard, where we used to ride our bikes in the summer, and go sledding in the winter.  I would go to school in the winter and, riding in the bus across the new bridge over the Main River, see great sheets of it frozen...when we came back to Louisville in 1986 the Ohio River was so huge, I've never seen it frozen over....
We used to pick plums from our neighbor's yards, and would then get promptly scolded by old German women.  We had schnitzel for dinner almost every night...it was a treat when our parents would take us out to eat and we could get hamburgers and fries...or pommes frites as we called them there.  An even bigger treat was the occasional trip to the big city of Wurzburg, where we could go to McDonald's!
I came back to the States when I was almost thirteen years old...having spent my crucial growing up years in a different country, it was major culture shock!
to be continued...