Neighbors' First Impressions of the Halletts

I feel like I lecture my kids about this all of the time...it goes something like this:  "People will form a long lasting opinion of you, without even realizing it, upon first meeting you so make a good first impression. It takes longer for them to change their opinion and much more time invested by you"...Keeping that in mind, I was told at some point that there was an "aristocrat" living in our building.  Frau Von Something.  Anyway, last thurs, late in the evening after receiving all of our household goods and dealing with movers for 8 hours, I went back to wiping out cabinets, etc to prep for the inloading. This also after a few trips out in the drizzle. Let me just say, not my best look. Anyway, I headed out to the trash area to get rid of some stuff and wound up meeting a lovely, older woman who was dressed in a beautiful cardigan set, dress pants, and pearls, and who spoke some English, but not much. It started with a simple "guten abend" before her face lit up and she said "You must be the new family upstairs.  Your husband is a pilot?" She and I spoke for about 10 minutes and promised to get together for coffee to get to know one another better. During this conversation, It never occurs to me that I am wearing the apron pictured below or that I look like a drowned rat, until I get back on the elevator and see my reflection.  I get upstairs and tell Josh and The Boys about my new friend and what I was wearing.  Josh is cracking up, saying "NO you were not!!!" (and takes the below photo). Of course, I later find out that she is Frau Von Aristocrat (so lovely;  I never felt judged).  I apologized to her days later for not realizing that I had the silly apron on.  She kindly looked confused and said that she noticed no such thing.  Seriously, how can you not notice...she is too kind.

Later the same evening, we made another great first impression, I think.  When we first moved in, they were working on some pipes in the floor of our unit and ceiling of the flat below us (who is occupied by the Spanish Consulate).  Since our kitchen water/dishwasher was unable to be utilized during this time (two weeks), we were given keys to an empty flat on another floor to use that kitchen to take care of dishes. Our first night after delivery, around 10 pm, about an hour after the garbage/apron meeting, I had loaded this bin of dirty dishes into the elevator and turned away to get something else. Evidently someone else called the elevator so it left without me and it arrived to get them like this: 

No person in it, just a container of dirty dishes...can you imagine getting home to your beautiful flat, after a long day's work and opening the elevator to find this?  Turned out to be the Spanish Consulate, who happened to cause the long delay in the repair work so I didn't feel so badly in the end.  Perhaps he got the gist as the plumbers fixed the issue the next day and we had working water and dishwasher in the kitchen!  I am sure our neighbors love us...