Roads to Safe Places

It's Sunday evening already? I don't want to go out tomorrow. Thanks to autumn the weather has become really depressing around here. Our car is in the shop, too, so I'm taking the bus, which means leaving the house at 6:45am, and due to various meetings and parents evenings and that type of nonsense I am usually only home after 6pm, which means that in the mornings I go out and at night I come home and the sky looks like this: 

  
It's always cold, dark, and wet. Thanks, Bremen! 

Mild the mist upon the hill Poem

by Emily Bronte

Mild the mist upon the hill
Telling not of storms tomorrow;
No, the day has wept its fill,
Spent its store of silent sorrow.

O, I'm gone back to the days of youth,
I am a child once more,
And 'neath my father's sheltering roof
And near the old hall door

I watch this cloudy evening fall
After a day of rain;
Blue mists, sweet mists of summer pall
The horizon's mountain chain.

The damp stands on the long green grass
As thick as morning's tears,
And dreamy scents of fragrance pass
That breathe of other years.

Title: Persephone's Pamianthe
Pairing: Pomona/Rosmerta
Rating: G
Credits: gvalkyrie's Suddenly Spring brush for the flower, dollfie-chan's Snowflake brushes for the snowflakes, and Tempting-Resources's Sparkle brushes for the sparkles and the smaller snowflakes.




( Read more... )


"Let's not give each other anything," the landlady had said to her that December and Pomona had agreed. She knew that Madam Rosmerta felt winter like an ache, trying her best to cover-up the gloom with the bustle that running The Three Bromsticks provided, keeping herself busy as best she could.

Even though the wild geese haven't all left yet, there's frost covering the ground already and temperatures have dropped below zero.

It's only November. I don't like this at all.

Sadly, everything outside is thawing by now.

We had about a foot of snow, and the icicles were up to three feet!!

I think I am far too exited about these things, especially the ones outside our window.



( + 10 )

You could impale someone with the ones that are hanging in front of my bedroom window: 




( In comparison to our window: )

Too bad everything seems to be thawing out there.

-13°C.

SO COLD. At least there's snow, but it's too cold to enjoy it much, and for some reason, the heating in our bedroom, while doing its best, is not warm enough to heat up the room entirely, which makes our nights very chilly.



( 7 )

On the way to a social networking event with the other students already registered for their finals in Hamburg.



( +6 )

The meeting itself was not too eventful or sensible. They went through the organisational stuff once more, when to give which examiner which topics, what to discuss with them, stuff I've already done a year ago in most cases. In terms of actual networking, it was also pretty worthless for me.

I met angie_21_237  for a coffee beforehand, though, and Crocky and I finally bought a wireless router when I got home, those were the high points of that nine-hour roundtrip. I wish there were someone with similar topics here in Hannover. Maybe I should post a sign on the library notice board after all, I always dismissed that as completely useless.

Land unter [lant 'ʔʊntə] is an expression used to describe flooded grassland - well, the fact that the grassland is flooded, really.

Due to severe rains, every river, stream, lake, or puddle between Uelzen and Hamburg has grown to enormous size during the last couple of weeks. It looks as though the entire northern German lowlands are under water and I wonder what the farmers are doing with their fields now that they are so swamped.



( Take a train ride with me )

“Pladdern” is a German word for “to rain”. (It’s pronounced ['pladɐ], like *pludder would be pronounced in English).

There are lovely words in German to describe rain, most of them forcefully onomatopoetic. “Pladdern” is one, “gießen” (['gisn]) another for rain that “prasselt” (['pʁaslt]). “Piseln” (['pi:zln]) and “nieseln” (['ni:zln]) are for light rain that “sprüht” ([ʃpʁyt]) and “tropft” ([tʁɔpft]).

“Es pladdert” means it’s raining cats and dogs. Pladdern is what it did yesterday, most of the afternoon.
I was out on a walk taking pictures of plants when rain suddenly pladderte onto them in huge drops. Rain pladderte onto my head with such force I felt individual rain drops hitting my scalp. Rain pladderte onto my glasses, making my vision blurry, rain soaked my shoes. Rain pladderte onto my lens and made me fear my camera would be broken by the time I reached dry land. Rain pladderte onto the path and created instant puddles that grew faster than any I had ever seen. Rain pladderte onto the stones of the pavement I reached in a run.
Rain pladderte onto the roofs of the cars that were parking rather than driving on the street, as it pladderte so hard that it was impossible to see anything, even though the were screaming with effort and moving so fast they were a blur.
Rain pladderte onto my shoulders, completely soaking my shirt, rain that seemed to come from below soaked my trouser legs and rain pladderte onto my bag, threatening to soak all my books. Rain pladderte onto the blue umbrella of a little boy who grinned wildly at me as he passed me by in a run.
Rain pladderte onto the tree I reached and under which I tried to wait for the rain to end. It turned out that it was no good at all because rain also pladderte onto the grass below, so I had to leave again, and rain pladderte onto my wet, bedraggled shape as I ran for the house. Crocky doesn’t even live far from the park I had been in, but those were the wettest three minutes of my entire life.
Rain pladderte onto my hands as I fished for the key in my bag, rain pladderte onto my cold shoulders, onto my legs.
Rain also pladderte onto my head as I realised there had been an umbrella in my bag all along. 

Yesterday was fun.

Apart from feeling genuinely stupid for forgetting not the umbrella but about my umbrella I read Feet of Clay, chapters in various books on teaching poetry, and wrote a story for Crocky I am rather pleased with. It consists only of receipts and shopping lists.

I also realised how much I would like to live alone for a month at least before moving in with Crocky. I love her, but I feel that I do need a space where I am alone for a month to ... acclimatise and to celebrate the lack of other people at least for a while before moving in with her again. I want to live with her far too much to live on my own for long, but that one month… that one month I may need.

I don't really have any grand news to share, apart from this item of vocabulary in German, and who knows what that could be useful for.

Life is good.