First things first...

Happy belated birthday, dame_grise!

I hope you had a good day despite all the upheavals of the past weeks. *hugs*

And this may be the summary you've (not) been looking for

Or, I am too lazy to talk about last week at length, but I know I'll be annoyed that I didn't later on, so I'll try the good old "brief summary" routine. We'll see whether it actually turns out brief. (It could always be longer, at any rate! MWAHAHAHAHAH!)
Cut for length, naturally. Mostly interesting for myself, I suspect, should I ever look back at 2011 and go "First week of May... I wonder what I did back then?".

( May 1st: Going to Norderney )

( May 2nd: Norderney I )

( May 3rd: Norderney II )

( May 4th: Norderney III )

( May 5th: Coming home I )

( May 6th: Going to Baiersbronn )

( May 7th: Baiersbronn )

( May 8th: Coming Home II )

Oof, done! Now I can finally get back to my normal blogging. Or normal silence. Or whatever. At any rate, I've beaten the "Can't post about that yet, you have to catch up on …!" routine – so yay!
Cookies to anyone who actually bothers to read all this. ;)

Now that's out of the way...

... here, have some funnies!

coppertone discovered this entertaining chart. You may need to know the Silmarillion to properly understand it, but if you just want to know how hilariously cruel to its characters that book is, the chart will be informative enough. Contains spoilers, obviously.
(No, I don't know why Orodreth is missing, either, unless they go with the version where Orodreth is Angrod's son, in which case I guess his absence is ok, seeing how Gil-galad isn't on there either. Also, it probably says a lot about me that I was going "Aw, where's Argon" before I went "Aw, where's Orodreth"...
For the non-Silm people: It is a STRANGE, STRANGE fandom full of STRANGE, STRANGE developments. In case you hadn't gathered that yet.
Don't ask me why it says "A quite lot of time passes". I don't know what's happening to English syntax these days.)

fileg, meanwhile, discovered a variety of new exciting IKEA offers over at CollegeHumor. Most of them I do not find terribly amusing, but the Tjardiis almost made me spit my tea at the poor computer. (I really should know better by now.)

Also via fileg, a short note on a test of the Hungarian emergency broadway system. This would not be funny if they hadn't, in order not to scare anyone by mentioning real places, decided to choose settings in Middle-earth. So if you were in Hungary and wondered what was up with the broadcasts about severe storm floods in Gondor, now you know.
(Also, like fileg, I love how it says "OMG DO NOT DISTRIBUTE" at the end of the article - right above all the handy "Share this on Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/whatev" buttons... Perhaps it's a reverse psychology thing?)

Our beloved co-creatures

We have been gifted bucketloads of old baby stuff by various relations and friends. To my great relief, the cats mostly ignored it until...

... until I had the smart idea of washing everything.

After that, 'náro discovered that he loves baby stuff. As long as it smells of our detergent instead of other people's cellar, apparently...





*le sigh* Not a habit we can support, I'm afraid, no matter how cute it is...

- - -

Yay, a quiet evening, I thought - time to finally prepare that spring picspam!

And then I heard the peacock crying.
Loudly.
Very nearby.

I looked out on the terrace (home of our barbecue grill) where I thought I had heard it... but no peacock in sight.

I go back inside.

I hear it cry again - definitely from the terrace. And lo! - it isn't talking to the barbecue this time.
It has reached our tenants' windowsill, where it admires its reflection. Or something.




I feel pretty! Oh so ~pretty~!

The tenants, of course, have likewise heard the peacock and come to look. Peacock is surprised by movement behind the window, and takes flight...



...onto our roof.



Nothing is safe. NOTHING. Last Saturday my mom-in-law was stung, of all creatures, by a bumblebee. (To be fair, she had been weeding our driveway and apparently uncovered a bumblebee nest in the process, so it's understandable that the lil' beast was annoyed. But still!) Animals, you never know what they get up to, do you?

- - -

Right. Back to the picspamming. (Which is, um, sort of what I just did, but this was harmless compared to what's coming up...)

Oh wow, a meme!

I've seen this one go around; now I've been tagged by rahja. Ok, why not, it's been a while!

The Rules:

1. People who have been tagged must write the answers on their blog and replace any question they dislike with a new, original question.
For a given value of "original", I hope.

2. Tag six people. Don't refuse to do that. Don't tag who tagged you.
Yeah, this is the one I'm replacing with "No need for tagging. Whoever wants to can play along."

( On to the meme... )

Wasn't that exciting now! Back to sorting pics.

I'll stop spamming soon, I promise.

But first: Happy birthday, applegnat!