Ich habe ein neues Blog.
Ein anderes Blog.
Ein besseres Blog.
Dieses Blog!



Die Rote IRis zieht um.
Ab sofort findet ihr mich unter

www.glaubsches.net

Ansonsten bleibt alles beim alten.
Oder vielleicht doch nicht?
Findet es heraus!

Es war vor kurzem, ein paar Tage vor Weihnachten, ich bat meine Kollegin - aus dem Lautsprecher begann eine Weihnachtsplatte von Peter Maffay - unzweifelhaft ein Tiefpunkt der vorweihnachtlichen Klanggestaltung - zum inzwischen dritten Mal wieder von vorne zu tönen - sie möge doch bitte den Peter Maffay verlieren (... to lose the Peter Maffay...) falls sie verhindern wolle dass ich mich schreiend darniederwerfe und mit den Fäusten auf den Boden trommele ...

... als in mir plötzlich der Verdacht erwuchs dass es vielleicht soetwas wie ein "zuviel an Fremdsprache" in meinem Leben geben könnte.

Um dem entgegenzuwirken wird es im neuen Jahr immer wieder und immer öfter auch deutsche Blogeinträge geben. Nicht regelmäßig, aber wann immer mir danach ist ...

Und vielleicht werde ich auch mal wieder ein deutsches Buch zur Hand nehmen. Vorschläge, anyone?

10 Things that I do not like about winter:

1. 5°C and a light rain
2. leftover 'plätzchen' which no one wants to eat anymore
3. christmas kitsch
4. getting sick due to a failing immune system
5. getting up early because of snow-induced trafffic chaos

6. new years day
7. no fresh vegetables
8. constant fog
9. beeing asked what a vegetarian does eat at chrismas dinner
10. the cold

15 Things I do like about winter

1. watching birds at the 'Futterhäusl'
2. the world becoming monocrome
3. spending christmas with my family
4. sunny, bitter cold january days
5. fresh snow

6. a hot cup of tea and the cold outside
7. baking for christmas (does not really count, because of beeing more of a autumn ocupation)
7.2. ice crystals
8. the smell of oranges and mandarines
9. having an extremely geeky new years eve party with your friends
10. snow falling

11. reading or hearing the 'Lord of the Rings' again
12. the fragrance of coniferous trees
13. my version of a christmas tree - done with natural stuff only
14. witch hazel and christmas rose
15. hot spicy indian food to keep you warm from the inside

More often than not, dropping electronic devices is a bad idea.
Fortunately, my Dear got of comparatively easy and did only break the power socket on the back of her laptop.
compared to all the other highly breakable components in there (hard drive, display, cooling pipes etc.) this is one of the more repairable problems.
So, let's roll, this should be easy. One just opens the case and repairs the broken part. Haven't touched the soldering iron in a while anyway, could even be fun. - Oh ok, opening a laptop is not quite as simple? No matter. One just removes all the little screws, then one opens the c.... oh ok, turns out there are n+1 little screws (n being the number of screws you've found so far) holding the case together. Then one removes another m*2(n'+1)+n" screws (m being the number of removable casing panels which are held on by an even number of n' screws and hide n" more srews. n', and n"analogous to n) aaaaand generally fiddles and jiggles for an hour or so, memorising cable routings and building a little forest of screws and heaping piles of components until one can finally see the dc jack.
I wonder - do all laptops have fractal insides?
Oh, so the dc jack is completely buggered and needs to be replaced? no problem. Ah, so it turns out all ones electronic supplies got misplaced by 180km while moving flats? no problem. Let's make yet another foray into the realm of makeshift repairs and hackjobs under it's supreme ruler Angus MacGyver I. (don't forget to pick up your ballpen and chewing gum at the tourist office)!
Fortunately, at this point my brain started routing in emergency supplies of common sense before I started joyously ripping apart innocent household electronics and stationery supplies for spare parts...
Turns out the broken socket is a pretty common part used in dozens of laptops and you can buy it on ebay. admittedly this is a boring solution, but at least the guy selling these parts is from the netherlands so his username sounds appropriate for the whole enterprise (see above).

... and now I’ve done it. Dropped my laptop.
Not very deep, but deep enough to break some sort of power socket.
It needs a doctor now.

Luckily I have a boyfriend who knows his way around a soldering (what an ugly word) iron and a circuit board.

With a bizarre mixture of disgruntlement and glee he sprang into action and dissected the poor machine.
Took him about two episodes of DS9.

Now our living room feels like an operating room.
Everything is DO NOT TOUCH
Theres a whole forest of screws, plastic components, motherboard, CD-drive, more screws on the book shelf ...
And DO NOT TOUCH
WHATEVER YOU DO
- DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING

So, what am I doing when not spending the evenings crouching before the internet and it’s november outside?


Yes, standing in the kitchen, baking.

Looking forward to saying hello to my data sometime soon.

A couple of weeks ago I took part in a small exhibition near my partents hometown.

It really was a very minor thing happening, nothing big.

But as it was my first venture into the wide world of art shows and showing of your art, it was all very exiting and new to me.
I didn’t like all the tam-tam, fishing for compliments and ego boosting, but I have to say it felt oddly thrilling to see some of my pictures (I submitted four, they managed to show two of them) shown openly in public, hear people talking about them and reading descriptions fo them in the local newspaper.


This is one of the drawings they didn’t show.


I was something like a "Bunte Kuh" there with my chestnut girdle, snail shell neclace, ringed stockings and my paintings of animated nature amidst all the watercolours and copies of modern art styles.

In some way it was very nice, especially as I did not WIN the audience award, but got a special reference for getting the second place ... or somthing like that.

Also - and I don’t normally indulge myself in self-praise - the paintings really do look great with a proper passe-partout and a frame around them. Sadly I dont’t have any pictures to show you ...
Memo to self: MAKE PICTURES OF YOUR PICTURES

A thousand thanks to my dad who is something like a hobby-carpender and did all the frames for me.
Also a thousand thanks for the entity that took over my body that morning I cut the passe-partouts. I’m a very impatient person and doing these passe-partouts really was challenge for me.

I’m glad I don’t have to keep the Lovecraft. It frightens the other books.

As I am sitting here, typing, it’s friday evening.
As you are sitting werever-you-are, reading, its afternoon (or maybe not).

If all has gone well the book changed it’s owner by sunday morning.
Confusing? No, why?

Have fun, dear BeRúThiel.

This is an old halloween tradition reaching back ’till 2010 when it was invented by one of my all-time-favorites Neil Gaiman.

Maybe you have never heard of this thing ... best to let neilhimself to the explaining:



So this Halloween I will give the first person to say "pretty please" a scary book from my bookshelf.
No, you don’t get to choose which one, that’s part of the scary.
It will be a book that I have not read. - I’ve read other things by this author and I intend to read something from him sometime in the future. It will be a german translation - and no, thats NOT the scary part.

Maybe there will be candy to. But it will be hidden in a book because a book is like candy for the mind.

So, please comment if you want candy a new book.

Are you giving any books?
Which books do you give?
Which books would you want to get?

Have you looked at the forests lately?
Beautiful! All these colours, cascading from yellow to red, with the occasional green in between.

It’s soooo .... ! I could sit and look outside for hours!
Actually ... I did that a lot during the last days.
Sitting in the Ice-train, listening to some Tori Amos song, looking outside, gazing at the landscape...

I crossed the 'Schwäbische Alb' a couple of times last week, and every time I was absolutely stunned by spectacle outside. This is what we, here in Germany, call Indian Sum 'Goldener Oktober'.

I just can’t understand why most people are more interested in what happens on their mobiles than in what happens in the world...