The lyf so short

As I've been stalking my bees for a goodly while now, and taken waaaay too many plant+pollinator (and other random) pictures - it's time for another picspam, it's been over a week since the last one after all! Mostly bees. Some other animals. And flowers. Also, weather.

( The birds, the bees and other beasties, cut for your convenience. With bilingual commentary! I looked up all those plants for you English-speaking folks, I hope you appreciate that! )

In other news (heads-up courtesy of cowboy_r), they've found an 18th century ship in some WTC rubble. This makes me feel strangely fuzzy inside (though perhaps not quite as much as the Staffordshire Hoard).

And slightly jealous. All WE find in our excavated rubble is... more rubble. With the occasional mummified cat or witch bottle thrown in for diversity, ok, but still. SHIP.

At some point there will also be a building update. First, however, I have to finish the Drachenfest preparation. JULY ALWAYS COMES SO SUDDENLY, WTF.

Andererseits, wenn die Aschewolke vom Eyjafjalladingsdajökull jetzt hier den Luftraum erreicht, kann ich mir das mit der Frühlingsaussaat für dieses Jahr ja auch schenken. Und das mit den Bienen.

Oder lustige Genexperimente machen? >:D

[/böse]

Aber dafür hat sich gestern in den Nachrichten ein echt cooler Isländer... echt cool geäußert.

Das ging in etwa so:

Irgendwer Irgendwersson: "[Auflistung schlimmer Dinge durch den Vulkanausbruch], aber wenn's nicht schlimmer wird, geht es noch."
Reporter: "Und wenn es schlimmer wird?"
I.I.: "Wird es auch irgendwie gehen."

Das ist doch mal eine gesunde Einstellung. Þetta reddast!

I should have known my return to kendô was too easy to last. After the first three training sessions after my prolonged absense went fairly well, the most recent two were pretty much desastrous. Wrong kamae, lack of concentration, wrong technique...
The wrong kamae (apparently I held the sword too far to the right instead of central) is the most frustrating thing. I didn't notice any difference to the way I held it before, so either my perception's severely off or I have been holding the shinai wrong all the time. If the latter be the case, I am vaguely annoyed that nobody just bloody said so before so I could have changed it at some point before the wrong way went into the subcortex.
Bah.
This led to René sacrificing his entire practice (he was there not as an instructor but as a participant that day) in order to practice me, which is kind of flattering (because, well, he could just as well have left me alone with my idiocy) and kind of scary (because, well, it's René) and very depressing (because he was actually being very nice and very helpful and I still kept fucking up).
Yesterday in practice I fucked up during kiri-kaeshi, which was partly exhaustion and partly inaccuracy; the former is forgiveable, the latter just plain annoying; I kept making stupid mistakes with the most simple techniques. I keep swaying because my sense of balance is refusing to cooperate after months of no practice.
I am frustrated.

The only nice thing about practice yesterday was that Andrea said "Hey, it's good to see you again, it's been, what, a year? Two? We've been wondering where you were." Which is funny because the occasions when I met Andrea at practice can be counted on one hand (which is not her fault but my laziness) and still she not only remembered me (and even remembered my name correctly) but missed me? I stand amazed.

Gnah.

They say that women have problems with maps and abstract thinking, but today my disdain of that theory has received yet further support. Jörg needed an address in Radevormwald and asked me to look it up, which I did, and give him the directions, which I did. They were of no use because they were working with street-names, not memorable landmarks (which I can hardly see on the map, because sadly enough the map didn't sport traffic lights, bus stations or Aldi markets). "I don't know where XY street is, so I can't relate to it!" Relate? What for? You're not supposed to marry that street, you're just supposed to take a bloody right turn there! And you'll see where it is when you get there, which you do by simply following the directions, won't you. "But I don't even know where I'm coming from! I know Radevormwald, I just need a point to relate to!"
At that point I'd gone and found a satellite map (hurrah for Google maps) because those do sport memorable landmarks. Still no help because apparently the road he would be using (as mentioned in the directions) absolutely couldn't have been where it was on the map. "No no, that lake isn't so far to the south of Hückeswagen, the map must be wrong!" Strangely that lake was in the same spot in relation to rode and Hückeswagen on both the normal map and the satellite map, and both of them were northbound, too. Sorry, but I doubt they faked the satellite picture just to make it match the normal road map. Unless we're dealing with another conspiracy of cartographers.
This went on to the point of both of us getting angry.
And I still don't get it.
Do you have to relate to spots on the map? When I plan a route to some place I haven't been before, I don't feel any need to relate to the directions. I just look at the bloody street signs and look at the watch and the mileometer until I end up where I wanted to get. Strangely that's always worked out*. And if something on the map doesn't quite fit my expectations or my personal memory of the local geography, I assume I must have remembered wrong, but I certainly don't take it personally. I mean, what the hell.

Men.

I have cold feet, stiff fingers, and that bloody nerve in my lumbar region is irritated yet again. On plus side, I managed to weed at least another small portion of the garden.
The daffodil bulbs are beginning to bud. Are they supposed to do that in November or have they just been confused by the change from frost to mild weather? Dear daffodils, two days of snow followed by mild temperatures does not mean that spring has come.

- - -
*Except on one memorable occasion when the highway suddenly ended and I had to drive around for two hours until finding the place where it continued on my way to Veldenz. By now I find there without directions. But then, by now I've been there so often that, now that they've changed the kitchen arrangements, I keep running to the wrong corners whenever I need a plate or knife or whatever because I have the old arrangements engrained in my brain...