The lyf so short

This is a Pinselohrelf (the zoologically correct English term would be Red River elf, but the joke gets kind of lost in translation).
macalla_ knows why.
fuchs knows why his (yes, it's supposed to be a he) name is Oshwatadelooohioht.

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Heute in der Firma haben wir in der Mittagspause kurz Galgenmännchen gespielt. Die Worte, die geraten werden mussten, waren FUSSNOTENTRENNLINIE, REAKTORSCHNELLABSCHALTUNG und LUFTSCHUTZBUNKER.
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...
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Das hat vermutlich eine tiefere Bedeutung, aber sie ist mir temporär entglitten.
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In less amusing news, my project partner - the one from the museum project - wrote to tell me today that she's starting an apprenticeship this summer, which means she's dropping out of uni and thus no longer needs the certificate we've been working for.

At least she's e-mailed me her part of the project report. Well, "her part"... it's supposed to be 15 pages in the end, each of us is supposed to do about half, she sent me four pages. But it's more than nothing, I suppose. >_>

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Began chapter 8 of That Plotbunny From Angband. First time I got beyond chapter 2 of anything, so yay. It now features not one but THREE different character points of view, capslock!Fingon, and a lot of blatant general description. But at least it's still getting written.

Wish I could say the same about my term papers. >.

On Saturday I met up with ladyelleth and her mother to haunt the Spectaculum in Dortmund (the Spectaculum is roughly comparable to a RenFaire, only less serious). I picked them up at the main station (driving there, I already had the chance to notice that the directions I had were total crap). After a few circles around the station - remember, the directions were crap - I just turned right at random, which turned out to be a street that actually led to where we were headed. We found a parking space from which there were already arrows towards the market. Yay!

Except that it was a walk of about 20 minutes from there to the Spectaculum. Oh well. We eventually reached it in the sweltering heat - and it was yet getting warmer.
It was, if I remember correctly, larger than the one in Gelsenkirchen around Easter - the camps of the non-selling folks, at any rate, took a lot more space. They had lovely tents (and lovely decoration) and were cooking their suppers over open fires. And there were bands and fools, and a tournament... (for which we didn't want to pay the admission, though, so we watched from the adjacent playground *cough*)

We tried our hand at archery (I managed to hit the black once in my five tries, which won me a red jasper) and were tempted with wonderful fruit wines and excellent sheep's cheese and wild boar salami and venison salami (yes, of course we succumbed both times). I was also tempted by a very beautiful dress (which I didn't buy after all) and jewellery cut out of coins (which I didn't buy either). After the football game (Germany vs. Sweden), the market grew a lot fuller, but it was never overcrowded.

The dream spectacle in the evening was wonderful again (though, again, I didn't care much for the Iron Heinrich), especially the firedancers of the formation Spiral Fire.

It was past midnight when we made our way back to the car, heavily laden with bottles of berry wine, and made our way back to Solingen. Back home, ladyelleth and her mom admired the kittens properly. Darcy especially seemed to have taken a liking to Elleth's mother. They were their usual adorable selves and at once turned to conquer the makeshift bed for the visitors...

We had a small bottle of cranberry wine and then gave in to tiredness. We slept well into the next day, had a lazy hobbity breakfast (including the above-mentioned sheep's cheese and deer salami), went through the photos and the (highly embarassing) film material Elleth's mother had shot. After that, alas, it was already time for them to catch their train home...

Later on, I picked my parents up, who were just returning from their two-week vacation. The bastards expressed their astonishment at the sun setting at 9 pm (and they'd missed the thunderstorm earlier on, during which it was dark as night in the early evening) and had a lot of stories to tell from their trip to make me nice and jealous. They brought me a CD of nifty Finnish music, Moomin troll cookies and a seat cover made of reindeer fur (which was originally meant for my brother, but as he at first expressed no interest in it, I managed to snatch it *shifty eyes*)... of course, I had to look at half their photos right away.

You, however, will now not be shown their photos, but ours. (wow, wasn't that a smooth transition?)

( Spectaculum Picspam! (And there will be kittenspam further down, so stay tuned ;)) )

all courtesy of ladyelleth.

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( And the kittenspam. )

--- how cruel. The Italian team just won in the 94th minute against Australia. 94th minute! That shouldn't even count! *cries for Australia*