The lyf so short

> Weather feels positively autumnal: grey, cold and wet. I am not objecting to cold: Monday was too hot for my tastes and it wasn't even particularly warm for summer. Yesterday was grey and had the sort of drizzle that can't decide whether it's rain or fog, which also appears to be the weather of choice today. I'd rather have proper honest rain, but I doubt the weather cares. Oh well, at least with the foggle no one has to worry about stuff getting washed away in the garden or elsewhere.

> It's due date day! So far, however, no change is noticeable aside from some light twinging. CTG showed a whole lot of action including some powerful contractions, but I am not really feeling anything. I'm wondering whether maybe it's actually noting down some of the more powerful baby movement as contractions? Offspring has, at any rate, grown very strong, and when he turns, my entire midsection moves along. The day before yesterday Jörg was surprised and delighted to actually see proper mini-human outlines move around under my skin!
The bump now looks ridiculous - whenever I think it can't grow any further it does, and it still grows only to the front. I look totally un-pregnant from behind, quite confusing some judo parents when I accompanied Jörg to a belt testing (he was the examiner, not a testee) yesterday...

> Offspring has also grown quite "vocal", in his way (that is, voicelessly). When I kind of need to go to the toilet but am too lazy to get up, for instance, he'll PUSH and PUSH and PUSH against my bladder until I have no choice. He'll do the same with my intestines if he somehow feels they restrict his movement. PUSH push push push push push. Sweety, I understand it's getting crowded down there, but mommy needs to eat and drink occasionally, yes? For your sake, too. If it's getting too cramped, why, there's a whole new world out here.

> Today's CTG session meant that I finally read those last two chapters of A Game of Thrones that were still missing. The pathetic attempt at epic promise in the last-but-one, and the hysterical masturbatory fantasy (with dragons!) in the final chapter, certainly drove home the point that I have no interest whatsoever to re-read this book or take a look at any of the sequels. Oh God. So bad. SO BAD. I couldn't even feel relieved when I'd finally finished it because I felt so horrible about reading it. I'll probably have to write a lengthy rant just to purge this from my brain. I know some of you gals really like these books and I'm trying to respect that just as you respect my shameless Tolkienism, but gods. I don't even. I don't think I want to take a look at the TV series, either, no matter how well it is done. Ye Valar, I had more fun reading Twilight and that's saying something. And I was really trying to like it this time around, too.
Maybe those contractions on the CTG were actually my stomach turning at the sheer awfulness of it all?

> Yesterday we sort of accidentally watched football. Sort of accidentally because so far we've only rarely zapped into some of the Women's World Cup games, quickly got bored, and switched the channel (neither of us care overmuch for football-for-its-own-sake, so watching a game just because it's a football game - even a world cup game - isn't really our thing). Now yesterday we zapped into the Japan vs. Sweden semi-final, and wow, that was intense and gripping and fast and actually quite exciting. So we ended up watching the whole thing. If football looked like that all the time, I'd probably be a proper fan. Seriously, that was beautiful. And Japan won, woo hoo! (Sorry, Sweden. At least you can kick for third place, now?) Now I just hope the Japan vs. USA game on Sunday turns out to be equally watchable.

> I've sorted various paper-y things that I've been procrastinating to tackle (some of them for years), finally decided to cancel my membership at the Cologne kendô club (I haven't gone to practice ever since I returned from Japan, and that was three and a half years ago), and sent out the CfL artwork for hhimring and lanyon. Perhaps this is my version of a nesting/cleaning spree?

Just in case anyone interested in this kind of thing missed it, there's a Temeraire fanart contest. Winners and runners-up will be published in a chapbook, get a story inspired by the picture written by the author, and a free copy of the chapbook. Profits go to the OTW (so here, we assume, is an author who hasn't forgotten her roots? ;)). AU allowed, crazy ideas allowed. Quoth the authoress, I mean, if someone sends me an NC-17 piece of dragon-human porn art, it will have to be a work of staggering genius or my reaction as a judge will be LOL NO, but I don't feel like there's anything I would rule out on principle.
Collaboration and international participation allowed, too. So, hey. Everyone's a winner, and all that?

Now I just need an idea.

In completely unrelated news, it's actually cooled down outside. YESH. Let's see how long that lasts!

In yet different news, the husband got himself a new flashlight yesterday. It calls itself a "self-defense LED flashlight" (don't ask) and has been produced by "SureFire - maker of the world's finest illumination tools". My inner Silmarillion fangirl is snickering madly.

Das haben sie nun davon, die Kollegen, die übermütig meinten, So, jetzt ist Frühling und dieses Jahr schneit's nicht mehr. Das haben sie davon, die Leute, die nach der Schneeschmelze im Februar meinten, jetzt hätten die Winterreifen ausgedient. Liebe Leute, die "von O bis O" Richtlinie mag ja abgedroschen klingen, aber sie hat schon ihre Existenzberechtigung. Eigentlich ist O(stern) immer noch zu früh, aber wenigstens liegt das per definitionem jenseits des Äquinoktiums und Schnee und Eis werden zumindest etwas weniger wahrscheinlich*. Es gibt aber auch'n Grund, wieso man früher (TM) den eigentlichen Frühlingsanfang hier erst am 1. Mai gefeiert hat... und die Eisheiligen heißen auch nicht gerade so, weil man Mitte Mai erstmals draußen in der Eisdiele sitzt. Und dann ist da noch die Schafskälte...

Also nochmal 30 cm Schnee- und zwar der schwere, pappige, der total super ist zum Schneemann, -laterne oder -haus bauen, aber total beschissen wegzuschippen ist und sich auch nicht zum Skifahren eignet.

Naja, hübsch ausschauen tut's ja. Und mein Fitnessprogramm hab ich für heute auch hinter mir. Sogar der Schneepflug war schon da! Und kalt + Schnee ist so viel besser als nur kalt.


Die erste Dachlawine hatten wir auch schon.




Der Baum da unten ist Xynthia zum Opfer gefallen, da kann der Schnee nix für.

- - -
*Wobei ich da prompt wieder ans Rohan-LARP 2008 denken muss. Macht das LARP nicht im November, haben sie gesagt, da könnte es schneien, haben sie gesagt! Macht es im April, haben sie gesagt, da passiert sowas nicht! Weniger Kalender und mehr Phänologie täte manchmal nicht schlecht.

We've been waiting for rain all through the past two weeks. The garden needed it; I couldn't even weed because the earth was baked so hard (our soil is very loamy) and I refuse to waste drinking water on soaking earth for weeding; and the rest of the environment kind of needed it too. The weather forecast has been promising rain for every day ever since last Sunday.

It's been pretty cold for a week, though not as cold as up in the north, where they actually had frost. In June. (Cold (though usually not frost) in mid-June is, before anyone panics and cries ZOMG GLOBAL WARMING/ FIMBULWINTER/ WE HAVE KILLED THE PLANET/ THE WORLD IS GOING TO END yet again, a natural phenomenon that has been observed ever since they started writing the weather down, even though it surprises people again and again - but then people also act surprised when there's like, winter in November. Or winter in March. But I digress).
So: Cold. But dry. No rain.

Now this weekend we'd planned to continue the pigsty renovation. We've made some good headway - the Eastern wall is dug out completely, and it has been smoothed and repaired and even partially been covered with tar. I made a pit in the corner for the pump pipe (in case it rains too much for the normal drainage system that we're also building just now, we can put an immersion pump into the pump pipe to get the surplus water out), which was a major pain in the rear end and various other body parts, because of course the rock in the corners is not slate like most of the rest but Blaustein (which is not the same as bluestone and I couldn't find the English name of the bloody rock - EDIT: grey limestone, thanks, cowboy_r). Grey limestone is less yielding than slate.
A lot less yielding.
And in a ditch corner you cannot use a pickaxe. Unless of course you want the whole wall to come tumbling down, which I assure you you don't, especially when you're standing where said wall would land. It was also a Sunday, so we couldn't use a jackhammer (because, loud machinery = unhappy neighbours or stupid hikers that call the police on you because you are being noisy on a Sunday).
So instead I chopped at the lovely grey limestone with hammer and chisel.
(Next person to say something about "Waaah, Nerdanel was a MUCH STRONGER WOMAN CHARACTER before CRJT went and made her ONLY a sculptress!" in my hearing - because apparently sculpting is totally stereotypically soft and womanly, oh yes - will have me chisel their eye out throw great amounts of grey limestone at them. I can haz muscles of steel from chopping at grey limestone. And grey limestone is nowhere near as hard to work as marble. Just sayin'. But I digress again.)

ANYWAY, what I was meaning to say, in the past weeks we've made so much headway that we finally ordered the gravel to fill up the ditch on the Eastern side. 20 tons of gravel. That'll be dropped in our yard on Tuesday. And all we needed to do this weekend was prepare the Southern wall as far as possible: digging, cleaning, plasterwork---
Guess what happened?
Did I hear "it rained"? That's right! It rained! Mightily, too! Repeatedly! Both on Saturday and on Sunday! Guess what you can't do when it's raining? That's right, digging, cleaning, plasterwork...

So, virtually no work done. But we'll have 20 tons of gravel on Tuesday. In the middle of our yard.
To make things better, the tenant has finally told us when he's going to move, and of course it's the coming 2-4 weekend. He has been told that he should let us know well in advance - because there'd be the whole gravel thing at some point, and you cannot drive a moving van into our yard when there's 20 tons of gravel lying around. FOUR DAYS isn't well in advance. Especially on a Saturday evening when you can no longer call the gravel pit and tell them to wait another week after all.

There was some housework done instead, and we sawed some part of the wood that cluttered up our shed. We probably have firewood for the next five years now. Which, energy crisis and all, is not so bad. Jörg finally installed the exhaust hood for the kitchen (he's been meaning to do this for two years now), we did some preliminary spring-cleaning and sorted through some stuff.
And of course we voted in the European election (ZOMG HOW EXCITING >_>).

Still feeling kinda unproductive.

On the plus side, we were invited to a brunch by fuchs, kaneda and eliathanis, which was veeery delicious (including such perverted delights as tomatoes pickled in fennel and aniseed), so thank you folks a lot, that saved the day! :)

Well shiver me timbers and split me infinitives, the weather forecast was right.

SNOW.
Lots and lots of SNOW.

I am still at work, and have to be for two more hours. I hope I'll manage to get home afterwards. Am not afraid of my own driving - I got winter tyres and proper Bergian snow-driving skillz - but am afraid of other people's.

I was hoping I'd be at home with tea and the fire on by the time the snows set in. Obviously not.

Eek.

So now we seem to have what usually passes for November weather. Frost. Hard snowfall in the morning, thaw by midday, no snow left except on the shovelled heaps by evening.
Well, it's better than this perpetual moskito-breeding pre-spring thing.
I wonder whether we'll have the usual January weather in May, then?

Do you know these days when for some reason you feel like you could take on the world? I had that today, right until after I left university and came out to the mud and dripping and dark outside.
Oh well, half a day isn't bad either. I needed that.

The semester is finally over, and I'm glad that it is. There were too many seminars that were just a drag and a bore. And far too many project meetings with an annoying and unreliable presentation partner. >.<

Well, it's over now, and the wrap-up week went by pretty nicely. German professors believe in having classes right until the end, but our Irish reading course teacher, for example, was totally wonderful. She came into class with two bottles of sparkling wine, a bag of chocolates and a little shrine-like thingy a friend had sent her. Sigrid - that's the teacher - had just passed her Ph.D. examination two weeks ago. She wrote her thesis on the Austrian author Joseph Roth, so her friend had plastered a photo of Joseph Roth onto some stand-up cardboard. It came with two speech balloons that could be held (or pinned) to the photograph. One said "Thank you! for writing on me." and the other said "I hate soldiers! with high heels on." I have no idea what the latter is supposed to mean.
At any rate, we spent our last class of the semester sitting in a circle, sipping sparkling wine from Winnie-the-Pooh plastic cups, munching chocolates and talking about Joseph Roth, Europe, accents and dialects. Which was highly enjoyable.

Creative Writing was wrapped up with a little performance; the last two classes had been dedicated to drama, and today we had to write a dialogue in groups of four to six people. Plot: Four to six people got stuck in a lift. (Teh Aczel seems to be obsessed with people stuck in lifts at the moment. I wonder whether there will be a play about six people stuck on a lift soon. When Aczel got obsessed with fish in petshops, a year later there was a new play by Richard Aczel titled The Company of Fish.)
I got to play a Japanese actress that didn't know any English. At least I know now that my Japanese suffices for panicking and cursing in a stuck lift. Isn't that cheering!

- - -
In other news, nyourdrms and coppertone have decided that it's time for an LJ poetry slam. An LJ poetry slam means that you don't have to get onna stage and make up poetry on the spot, but that you just post some poetry (presumably, some that you like). Can be some of your own, can be someone else's, can be song lyrics. Just has to be poetry in some way or other.

I'll start with something angsty yet hopeful, because Claire stole the Mythopoeia already.

( Carl Sandburg - Prayers after World War )

You may guess why I like this poem, like, now. I don't need to interpret it properly if it vaguely fits with my fandom. :P

It's finally snowing for good.
*_____*

In other news, don't forget Rabbit Hole Day tomorrow!
*shameless pimpage*