Roads to Safe Places

Day 01 → Your favourite song
Day 02 → Your favourite movie
Day 03 → Your favourite television program
Day 04 → Your favourite book
Day 05 → Your favourite quote
Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 → A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 → A photo you took
Day 10 → A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 → A fictional book
Day 14 → A non-fictional book
Day 15 → A fanfic
Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)

I don't remember crying when I heard a song, ever, but this probably comes closest.

English: this probably comes closest because I used to watch and love that movie when I was five.




German:


Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 20 → A hobbie of yours
Day 21 → A recipe
Day 22 → A website
Day 23 → A YouTube video
Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Day 28 → This year, in great detail
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

We had a cookie baking-and-decorating marathon on Sunday. A few of the guys from the theatre group came round to see us and between the five of us we baked and decorated eight trays of cookies for us and for the pre-Christmas rehearsal on Wednesday. We had brought out the green food colouring for the occasion and finally had an excuse to use the shiny new cookie cutters we bought on the Christmas market two weeks ago.

And what could be more festive than green Apatosauri, chocolaty clefs, notes, butterflies, dogs and bats? Oh, and some stars, too.



I was so busy organising the actual baking and arranging the trays in the oven that my cookies did not turn out as absolutely gorgeous as the ones of the others, who were working wonders with icing, sprinkles, and especially the lilac sugar colour. Except for S., who formed a whole zoo with the help of the dog shape. We understood how she got the goat - slightly shorter tail because of a spot of drier dough, slightly odd ears - even the seal made sense, somehow - hind legs pressed together, the head being roughly the same shape, anyway - but we have no idea how she got to the cock, the mouse or the elephant.

( Really festive cookies )
 

Day 01 → Your favourite song
Day 02 → Your favourite movie
Day 03 → Your favourite television program
Day 04 → Your favourite book
Day 05 → Your favourite quote
Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 → A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 → A photo you took
Day 10 → A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 → A fictional book

Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. All of it.

Other than that, I'd really recommend Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.


Day 14 → A non-fictional book
Day 15 → A fanfic
Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 20 → A hobbie of yours
Day 21 → A recipe
Day 22 → A website
Day 23 → A YouTube video
Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Day 28 → This year, in great detail
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

Day 01 → Your favourite song
Day 02 → Your favourite movie
Day 03 → Your favourite television program
Day 04 → Your favourite book
Day 05 → Your favourite quote
Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 → A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 → A photo you took
Day 10 → A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy

Fancy sadly as yet untickled. I'll put something in here later.

Day 13 → A fictional book
Day 14 → A non-fictional book
Day 15 → A fanfic
Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 20 → A hobbie of yours
Day 21 → A recipe
Day 22 → A website
Day 23 → A YouTube video
Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Day 28 → This year, in great detail
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

Day 01 → Your favourite song
Day 02 → Your favourite movie
Day 03 → Your favourite television program
Day 04 → Your favourite book
Day 05 → Your favourite quote
Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 → A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 → A photo you took



From our short days on Skye back in 2006. The Highlands are absolutely beautiful, and I fell in love with the surrounding islands as quickly as I thought I would. Seven great days, and worth every minute, even in spite of the fact that I would not hear the end that week of happiness even years later. I did have regrets that I had taken that brief time out back then at all when I found myself fighting about this week for months on ends even years later.

Still. A week worth spending.

When I think about it now, it's the only kind of happiness I knew before I moved in with Crocky - happiness, in spite of. In spite of fights, in spite of a bad conscience, in spite of subsequent regrets. And even today, considering the reaction of my grandmother and other family members, there are many points in which my happiness is still happiness - in spite of.

Day 10 → A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 → A fictional book
Day 14 → A non-fictional book
Day 15 → A fanfic
Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 20 → A hobbie of yours
Day 21 → A recipe
Day 22 → A website
Day 23 → A YouTube video
Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Day 28 → This year, in great detail
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

Dear Reader

Baudelaire considers you his brother,
and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs
as if to make sure you have not closed the book,
and now I am summoning you up again,
attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing
in the doorway of these words.

Pope welcomes you into the glow of his study,
takes down a leather-bound Ovid to show you.
Tennyson lifts the latch to a moated garden,
and with Yeats you lean against a broken pear tree,
the day hooded by low clouds.

But now you are here with me,
composed in the open field of this page,
no room or manicured garden to enclose us,
no Zeitgeist marching in the background,
no heavy ethos thrown over us like a cloak.

Instead, our meeting is so brief and accidental,
unnoticed by the monocled eye of History,
you could be the man I held the door for
this morning at the bank or post office
or the one who wrapped my speckled fish.
You could be someone I passed on the street
or the face behind the wheel of an oncoming car.

The sunlight flashes off your windshield,
and when I look up into the small, posted mirror,
I watch you diminish—my echo, my twin—
and vanish around a curve in this whip
of a road we can't help traveling together.

~ Billy Collins.

Anyway, back to reading up on the fate of poetry in the foreign language classroom, its uses and methods for teaching it to the unsuspecting student.

So, after hours of getting cramps in my hand doing my English Roundhand exercises I googled how other people manage to avoid that, only to find oblique pens and elbow nibs.

Bloody cheats.

I'm getting my flourishes right, but I still have no idea how to get the letters right without using one of those devices that I can only try to get a hold on on Monday. It said on a German site that if you dislocate your hand "with a little practice", it should work out, anyway.

I'm still waiting for that to happen.

Three things I learned today:

1. I hate pointed nibs with a passion.
2. Getting ornaments right is hard.
3. Roundhand will be horrible.

I ought to stick to Carolingian minuscules and my broad nib.

Oh, and another thing I wasn't aware of: while I associate Western calligraphy with fancy lettering from the past, the blogosphere's hivemind seems to file it under "things to think about when planning your wedding invitations".

Huh.

Day 01 → Your favourite song
Day 02 → Your favourite movie
Day 03 → Your favourite television program
Day 04 → Your favourite book

Can't pick just one of the Discworld novels, but in general, I prefer the Witches and the Watch series to the Wizards, and most of the books he wrote before 2000 to the later ones (the Wee Free Men series being a very notable exception).



Day 05 → Your favourite quote
Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 → A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 → A photo you took
Day 10 → A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 → A fictional book
Day 14 → A non-fictional book
Day 15 → A fanfic
Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 20 → A hobbie of yours
Day 21 → A recipe
Day 22 → A website
Day 23 → A YouTube video
Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Day 28 → This year, in great detail
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

I wrote this for Crocky years ago, while she was on her Highland trip with her Chapel Choir. It is a silly little thing, now, and, like so many fics of that time, an AU, but I love it, nonetheless. There are, sadly, a lot of minor mistakes in it, I hope you don't mind too much.

Title: Stalking Severus Snape - A story in 25 receipts and shopping lists.
Pairings: Minerva/Severus.
Author's Note: I would like to apologise for any errors concerning Morrison's products or their prices if they are being portrayed inaccurately by this. I found it very hard to find accurate prices for the items I needed for the late nineties, or even which products they offered back then.
Summary: The items in this file were all retrieved while supervising the convicted and evicted Death Eater and Half-Blood Severus Snape, who was sentenced to the destruction of his wand and exile from the Wizarding community. He is being covertly supervised until his next hearing to ensure he is no longer a threat. See excerpts below.


( File no. 346a - Excerpts. )
 

Day 01 → Your favourite song
Day 02 → Your favourite movie

Again, I don't really have a favourite movie. The movie I have watched most often is the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, so it's probably that one by majority view.



Day 03 → Your favourite television program
Day 04 → Your favourite book
Day 05 → Your favourite quote
Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 → A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 → A photo you took
Day 10 → A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 → A fictional book
Day 14 → A non-fictional book
Day 15 → A fanfic
Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 20 → A hobbie of yours
Day 21 → A recipe
Day 22 → A website
Day 23 → A YouTube video
Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Day 28 → This year, in great detail
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

Well, to be honest, people in Switzerland, they're not that much different from Germans in Cologne, really, a couple of years back with their nno-mosque signs. Central Europeans are apparently never happy when a non-Christian religion wants to add buildings to their houses of worship that are a threat to the easily scared, seeing as they are perceived as obvious symbols of financial and political power. They're a sign that in reality, non-Christians over here are not how people here like their people from a non-Christian background to be - quiet, shy, downtrodden, in their place, grateful, tolerated.

I seem to remember that in Germany back in the day commenting on articles, saying that even if they were fine with minarets in general, they did not want them to be higher than the spires of Christian churches - which, considering that the buildings of banks and several chimneys are considerably higher than church spires and remain scorn free, says a lot about the priorities of our good Christians over here.

Still, the posters back then strike me as... well, a little more tasteful than the ones used in Switzerland:



Really tasteful colour combination there and style there, guys, but still better than the others, really driving home their association of the shape of the minarets with those of rockets in these atrocities.

When I read today that these people, the people with the above posters, the people who made obvious the association between houses of worship and terrorism, that these people won, against all predictions and common sense with a surprisingly high amount of votes, I was absolutely floored. The initiative was launched by nationalists, people I thought were about on one level with nationalists over here, a small group of politicians that is worrying and too powerful for my taste, but still a minority which does not have too much political influence, thankfully, not really. These people made Switzerland add a charming sentence to their constitution which simply reads, "It's forbidden to build minarets".

What the FUCK, Switzerland?

I'm with the people who made these:



"The sky above Switzerland is big enough. "

Too bad the minds in Switzerland are not.

In the documentary "Guys and Dolls", this one guy shares (at about 4:50, I think) that:

So Channel four did a documentary on transsexual children as a part of their Bodyshock series. I have some qualms with that documentary on the "extremes of the human body", because seems to border on being a freakshow rather than a respectful depiction of "extreme" bodies too often for my taste. But so far, so good, congrats on your "extreme" status, maybe it's educational and respectful in spite of that.

A few minutes in, it turns out that it's not - for some reason completely beside me, they decided to use incorrect pronouns because they thought it would make the documentary "more accessible" to the clueless cispopulace.

Yeah, it's so OBVIOUS that it'd be so much LESS confusing to have the Voice Of Authority, the narrator of the documentary, use the wrong pronouns and leaving the doting, supportive parents use the correct ones. Unsurprisingly, people (examples here and here) are quick to point out what is wrong with that and write to Channel four, to which they get the same standard response.

And the response is really lovely. They apologise if "some" people were upset by the use of "biologically accurate" pronouns, but that they felt they were trying to do the right thing, and "almost all" the reviews were "favourable" and everybody loves their documentary a bunch and they were doing the right thing.

I don't know, but I'd imagine that if you're going out and making a documentary about a particular group of people, and the group of people are pissed off about the results, you ought to listen to them?
And maybe, if you talk about how people "will have to get used to using female pronouns" for a person, you ought to take a fucking hint?

I love teaching, and tutoring. I had forgotten how much fun it can be, and I really missed it.

Seems like I'll be coaching and correcting a person's self-study efforts rather than forcing weak, unmotivated students to repeat stuff ad nauseam at the behest of their parents for a change.

For reasons only known to himself, my father once obtained an electric piano from a customer a couple of years ago. I think he said at the time that niaseath might get some use out of it because he can play the guitar and is, after all, The Musical One in the family. Since my brother can't play the piano and the thing has been sitting in Hesse up until last week, that plan was never put into action. Since my father's reorganising his flat he's asked me if we need it and I gladly accepted, and now we have an electric piano!



Crocky can't really use it to practice earnestly because she needs a grand piano for that, but it's good to prepare lessons and play around and for me, because I'm getting lessons, too. I started at the beginning of the week and just now spent a couple of hours with this beginner's version of Scarborough Fair and I Saw Three Ships. It's fun, but my progress on is very slow, as expected. It's a lot more fun to be a complete noob on the piano, though, seeing as the results are never quite as jarring to my ears as the strangled-cat sounds that I'm so good at producing on the trumpet.

So far, I'm not really giving up on the trumpet, but playing the piano is much more fun, so I'm rather pessimistic about the time I'll spend with the instrument in the future, what with the piano looking so inviting and the option to put in earphones and practicing around the clock and everything, which is a definite downside of the trumpet - which I can only practice very quietly and for a very limited amount of time in the afternoons. I wish I could be more optimistic about the likelihood of me losing interest in either or both of the instruments after a while - I'm just not that interested in music, and even though Crocky's enthusiasm is highly infective, I am not sure that I won't be spending my time with other things in future. It's very nice to dabble, though.

The only downside to the piano is that it did not like being left in a car over night and is now its speakers make rather alarming crackling noises occasionally. We had hoped that it'd get better after a while if the piano didn't react well to the moistness in the car and had to dry,  but we're worried. If this keeps persisting we'll have to have someone check it out.

How is everyone?

I finally have a label for myself, thanks to mqnsk, who came up with this label for the likes of us:

Femmebutch Knights of Misanthropy

I want that on a T-shirt, and a shirt that says "Dumm oder was?" for discussions with my sometimes not so smart fellow-Germans. I've seen an icon with that line, and I think I'd love it for teaching.

What I've been doing?

Job-hunting, studying, tidying up our flat, making chainmail, teaching and taking names. I'll post pictures of trips niaseath and I made to abandoned buildings in Hannover in the next couple of days.

A couple of weeks ago I went on an excursion with a group of hunters from Hamburg to see the wild ponies in Dülmen. We had a really good time, and I was told maybe a hundred times that I, indeed, look like my mother, who organised the tour together with another hunter and had invited me to come along. ♥

The pictures can be found if you click on these links.

Day 1: Merfelder Bruch


Day 2: Environmental centre and carp ponds


Day 3: Dülmen

On the second day we listened to a talk at the local environmental centre and took a tour of a nature reserve by horse-drawn wagon. A woman that looked and talked like a Biology teacher told us about herbal remedies, dyes, poisons and folklore, in the afternoon, in the nature reserve, a conservationist from a local organisation talked us through local birds living at the Herzog's carp ponds.



( Environmental centre and carp ponds (15) )

I've not really been into baking, but a friend's birthday changed that. I baked some autumn-themed spice and chocolate cookies which were very tasty. I can only hope that they arrived in good shape (that is, in one piece, and not as hard as rocks).

The fresh ginger roots in the supermarket had been on my mind for some time, and they're the reason why I choose spicey cookies. The results were astonishingly gingerbread-like. I am usually not even the biggest fan of gingerbread, but the fresh taste of the ginger changed that.

Ginger-chocolate chip cookies
Absolutely delicious. The recipe can be found here (it's vegan).


Ginger cookies
Recipe can be found here (and seeing as how the egg is completely optional, really, it might as well be vegan). As soon as I can track down affordable crystallized ginger somewhere, I'll definitely try triple ginger cookies, too.


Lentil "falafel", yoghurt sauce, and salad

Yummy. Yes, the sauce is not on there.

( Sauce )

( 'Falafel' )

This is a backdated entry. I meant to post it at the time, but never got round to.

Yesterday, Crocky and I went to SeaWorld, and it's a beautiful place. The lighting is amazing, the tanks seem, by an large, to be of a fairly reasonable size, the fish were all bred in captivity and there is a member of staff in each room who explains interesting things about the fish and makes sure that no one stresses the fishes with flashlights or hitting the glass.





( Caution, picture heavy (33) )

Ich sollte es eigentlich ja besser wissen, aber ich habe diesen Artikel gelesen:

Gleichgeschlechtliche Partnerschaften - Kinder brauchen keine Hetero-Eltern

Und dann hab ich noch einen Fehler gemacht - ich habe die Kommentare auch gelesen. Hier mal eine Auswahl, es ist zum Schreien:

"Ja, es muss ein tolles Gefühl sein wenn man in der Klasse oder auf dem Pausenplatz mitteilen darf das man eben nicht ein Mami und Papi zu Hause hat sondern zwei Mami oder zwei Papi... Den dem Hedonismus und Egoismus moderner Erwachsener dürfen keine Grenzen mehr gesetzt werden."

"In einem Punkt verlieren einige heterosexuelle Paare doch drastisch, wenn homosexuelle Paare bei der Adoption gleich gestellt werden: und zwar jene hetersexuellen Paare, die auf natürlichem Wege keine Kinder bekommen können. Denn um die gleiche Anzahl Kinder bewerben sich dann plötzlich viel mehr Paare. Und die Wahrscheinlichkeit, den Kinderwunsch erfüllt zu bekommen, sinkt für Mann-Frau-Paare, die biologisch nicht Eltern werden können, drastisch."

"Denn eines ist mal klar, die Anzahl der Kinder die freiwillig zur Adoption frei gegeben werden, ist verschwindend gering und die klassische Familie IST für Kinder der beste Ort um auf zu wachsen und nichts anderes."

"Nur, weil so manche bunte Erscheinungen des menschlichen Lebens immer hoffähiger werden und sich auch ein entsprechendes Lobbywesen dazu gesellt, ist hier noch längst nicht alles im Sinne der Natur."

"Ich hätte auch erwartet, dass Homo-Kinder öfter homo werden."

"Homosexualität ist natürlich- aber ob es natürlich ist, Kinder durch homosexuelle Paare großzuziehen? Homos haben gegenüber Heteros in der Gesellschaft keine Nachteile. Sie können es offen ausleben ebenso wie Heteros."

Was soll einem dazu noch einfallen...?

So, ich gehe mal wieder an die Arbeit hier.

I sorted through links I had saved on del.icio.us a while ago, rediscovered Wordle, a device that turns the most common words in a text into pretty word clouds, and decided to feed it shady online versions of popular Fantasy books.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

So, who is this book about?

( More worldes )

I've been searching for fresh peppermint plants for ages, but even though they always have rosemary and sage in stock our shops never offered any. One of the things I missed most when coming back to Germany from Glasgow was the lack of peppermint plants, or even peppermint extract. Maybe I just go to the wrong shops, but I've been searching and not finding anything for months. I was very exited when I finally spotted two scrawny plants in the herb section of our local supermarket, and they've now got a new home on our living room window sill and have been growing happily so far.

( Peppermint lime sorbet recipe and nectarine sorbet recipe. )

The lime sorbet was unexpectedly good for the cold I had last week, and tea with fresh peppermint is also a real treat.