Long time no post; let me sum up

[oloriel]

After we'd been promised (threatened with?) rain last weekend and this week's Monday and Tuesday, yesterday it actually did rain. It is also raining today. This is a good thing because we haven't had proper rain in three weeks. Our rainwater cistern was empty! In March! In Bergia! I ask you! We had to go back to using tap water for flushing the toilet and for the washing machine! Such horror! Such waste! And after preparing the ("useful plants part") garden so nicely, I almost would've had to water it! In March! In Bergia! Incredible thing. Well, now it's raining - rather softly but it's raining. On second thought, the soft rain is a good thing too, because I made a low earth bank on one end of the garden and planted it with wild raspberries and, because it was so dry, I doubt they had a chance to dig their roots in deep enough to steady the bank. So hard rain would probably wash it all away. In conclusion: yay.

I've been pregnant for 26 weeks now. Half a year. That's really rather surreal. Ok, actually it's 24 weeks (they start counting on the first day of the last period, so there's two "idle" weeks), but still.
I signed up for an antenatal class at the local hospital, which will start in two weeks' time. I hope that won't be too embarrassing. On the other hand, as everyone present (aside from the midwife) is sort of in the same situation, I expect we'll all be equally afraid of doing something wrong. ^^ At any rate, I'm curious how that'll go! Next week Jörg and I will go and check out the same hospital's delivery ward. In our case this is mostly just a formality: We don't really intend to check all sorts of locations (as apparently some parents do). We're just going to see whether the local place looks sufficiently nice. Unless it's really off-putting, that's pretty much it. At any rate, our hospital's OB ward has a good reputation, so... yeah. But it's good to see the place in advance, I expect.
(My mom is very anxious for us to go to a hospital rather than try anything funny at home. My grandmother keeps insisting that birthing at home is so much better because she gave birth to two children at home and everything was fine and then the third was born in a hospital and everything was horrible. Which may be true, but a) it wasn't a difficult birth because she was in hospital, but rather she was taken to the hospital because it threatened to be a difficult birth; and b) this is the 21st century, not the 1960s. There's rooming-in these days and no more "cuddling is BAD for babies, don't touch unless absolutely necessary!" even in hospitals. Honestly. And lastly, the last thing I want to worry about - and something I know I would worry about if I were to give birth at home - is whether everything's clean enough or what the midwife thinks about our furniture arrangement and stuff. It's absurd, I know, but I'm ridiculously insecure that way and I don't need that on top of the already sufficiently pain- and stressful business. I'll keep that for fanfic, thank you very much. (Poor Nerdanel.) Hospital it is.)
So far things have been almost ridiculously easy - no trouble at all aside from breast pains in the first months, and occasional shortness of breath now. No sickness, no oedema, no stretch marks - so far. Of course that makes me sort of paranoid because it's too good to be true and there's bound to be trouble at some point... :p

My honeybees did, alas, none of them survive this winter. (Hurrah, I have something in common with Neil Gaiman! But unlike Neil Gaiman, I'm not going to import Russian bees believing that'll make things better. Actually importing bees from Russia is what started all the varroa trouble over here, but I assume they're already having varroa trouble in the States anyway, so I guess now it doesn't matter. Anyway.) This is not a good thing. But thanks to our carpenter we found someone who is selling a couple of (fully-fledged) colonies for €50 apiece, which is really cheap, normally you pay about thrice that price. Apparently, his colonies were so strong last year that he got to make several new starter colonies to make up for the usual winter losses, except that he didn't have winter losses, and now he's running out of garden space. Good for me. So if this works out, I'll soon have one new colony. And if they behave at my place like they behaved at his, I may be able (or even forced to) make a couple of starter colonies, and so it goes on.
Incidentally, our willows have never blossomed as beautifully as they do this year. And no honeybees yet. :( On plus side, wild bees and bumblebees of various kinds are already all busy.

We have mice in the intermediate ceiling. That is not good. We were warned when we bought the house that our predecessors had problems with mice, but when we (and, probably more relevantly, our two cats) moved in, no mice were to be found inside. Last year our tenants noted the pitter-patter of little mice feet in their ceiling, though, and (oddly enough, NOW that it's getting warmer outside) a few days ago they apparently made it across to our part of the house. Of course they're staying in the ceilings where the cats can't reach them. So we'll have to take down the ceilings and block all potential mouse-passages. Hurrah, yet another project. We also have to make some changes to the lovely new cesspit, because basically the local environmental office don't believe in basic physics*. Don't ask me why in Germany environmentalism so often comes paired with a complete ignorance of natural sciences. I really don't know.
Outside, the cats do continue to hunt, catch and kill mice. Yesterday, however, they caught a bat instead. I assume something must have been wrong with the bat because otherwise the cats presumably wouldn't have caught it, but still. Such a cute bat, and it was screeching for a long time before the cats actually killed it. ;_;

As of today, I am officially exmatriculated. Although the past two semesters at university basically just felt like "I hate this place, can I please be done now", now that I'm done I feel kinda wistful. And I'm gonna miss the free bus pass. :p Oh well. Once I've forgotten my annoyance about the silly rituals of academia, I can always try to go back for a Ph.D., right? I'll need one for pretty much all the jobs I'm interested in, anyway. *le sigh* (It's silly, really. Sometimes I look at job offers for lousy internships or traineeships and they want Ph.Ds and years of professional experience and years spent abroad and whatnot. I wonder whether people with Ph.Ds and years of professional experience (in the relevant field!) actually put up with under-paid internships or two-year traineeships. If they do, I hate them, because they ruin the market for the people such internships and traineeships actually should be aimed at. Gnah gnah. End entitlement whining here.)

To end on a positive note, yesterday I was given a surprise!present. I'd gone to the same local photographer who'd taken our wedding pictures, this time for job application pictures. I put this off for a long time (as you can see) because I hate having pictures taken of me. My face is, alas, the part of my body that I am least fond of, and as that's sort of the prominent part in such pictures (I mean, I can hardly send a photo of my awesome biceps, no?), I really really didn't want to have to deal with all that. But now the application deadline for an internship I'd really like to get (and that doesn't require a Ph.D....) is coming closer, I sort of couldn't avoid it anymore. (Yes, in Germany you still have to put a picture on your CV. No, it is pointless to discuss the advantages or disadvantages of that custom on my journal.) So I actually put on some make-up (urgh urgh urgh) and went to the photographer. Another childhood trauma; back in school, a photographer came to take passport & class pictures every two years, and the one who came to our school was a slimebag. (This seems to be common). But this photographer is very nice, the wedding pictures she took of us were lovely, so I figured if anyone could manage anything useful, she'd be the one. And eventually we did manage pictures in which I do not look too little-girly or otherwise goofy, hurrah. And we had a nice chat, too. And in the end, she said, "You know, I had these wedding pictures of you and your husband in my exhibition for a while." Which I did indeed know, because of course she asked our permission first. And then she said, "But I have to replace them with new pictures now. You know what, why don't I give them to you?" Which she then did. For free. Framed and all.
And I don't even look too goofy in them. :p
This was no doubt a clever move on her part ("They'll remember that when the time comes for cutesy baby photos") but still nice. So there.

Standard disclaimer: Everything in this post is (to the best of my knowledge) true, despite today's date. Hope you haven't fallen for any dirty tricks elsewhere! Last year I totally fell for something because it was posted on March 31st so I wasn't yet cautious about what I believed. Turned out the poster was sitting in Australia where it was already April 1st. Anyway. No foolish fish here.

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*Sort of like my "favourite" Trittin quote.
"Sir, that is in direct contradiction to Ohm's law." - "Laws can be changed!"