The lyf so short

Jörg and I have spent the past weekday evenings watching "Great British Menu". (Yes, this is what we've become. People who get hooked on cookery competitions. To be fair, as Felix goes to bed very late and he now begins to a) understand what's happening on the screen and b) assume that it's real, we can't really watch our usual evening movies anymore, anyway. Whenever you think he's happily playing on his own, he'll get tired of it and join us. We have a crapload of unwatched DVDs on the shelf because Catching Fire, Deathly Hallows II or even The Hobbit AUJ are not good options ATM.)
The banquet this year is happening... today, so you can guess what it's commemmorating.

Now, it felt like everyone involved in "Great British Menu" had at least one person in their family who was involved in D-Day in some way - planning, driving (?) one of the landing craft, actual fighting on the beaches, coding, feeding the homing pigeons or whatever. In the course of the program, they all talked about how their grandparents', parents', (great-)uncles' or (great-)aunts' wartime experiences inspired their dishes.

And I couldn't help thinking (and, eventually, telling) Jörg: "My granddad was in Normandy too. Probably shooting at their granddads. >_>"

- - -

In further "liberation" news, our tenants have indeed moved out! In spite of the lawsuits and slander ahead, the prevailing emotion is relief. Massive, staggering relief. Seriously, on Sunday we broke our fast on the terrace (which is overlooked by two windows of the tenant flat, and no, that is not a good arrangement, but we didn't build this house nor the tenant part of it) in absolute peace and bliss. We went across the inner courtyard to take away garbage or get tools from the shed without fearing that we'd be waylaid by their children. (Nothing against playing or inquisitive kids! Everything against destructive-for-the-sake-of-destroying or annoying-for-the-sake-of-being-annoying kids.) We started restoring their part of the garden to some sort of order - things that have been frustrating us for months! - and I could finally turn the compost. (Finding a bucket full of rusty nails in the process, but OH WELL.) Felix could run free without one of us always having to worry that he'd run into "their" territory! In short, we could move on our own grounds as we wished and without fear, a feeling that had become completely lost in the past ten months. Even my mother, who is not the most observant when it comes to our situation - her idea of a great birthday gift for completely broke me was... a voucher for repairing the dishwasher. Seriously, mother, doing the dishes by hand is the LEAST thing that bothers me! - observed that a load seemed to have fallen off our shoulders.

We have to rent out because we can't afford renovating the house otherwise, but for four years now, we've put more money into the renting than we got out of it. As a result, we're not going to search for new tenants the usual way, praying that this time, it'll be reliable, peaceful and (ideally) nice people. Instead, Jörg's mom is going to move in. It's funny: A year ago, neither she nor we would've wanted that (and my parents would have been horrified by the idea). NOW, we all can only see advantages in this arrangement. She's spending every free hour here, anyway; we've already had a lot of arguments (and there are going to be more, but the point is, we know how to get out of them afterwards); she's getting out of a somewhat toxic situation in her place, and we're going to get a "tenant" who's on the same side, who knows our situation, who actually helps, and whom we can tell "sorry, not possible this month".
She can't afford more than half the rent that all previous tenants have been paying, so we're not going to restore our finances this way. But is peace of mind worth 450 € a month? It damn well is.

Cat!Fëanáro is allowed to leave the house again. That is one happy, happy cat.

- - -

I really have to tell you the whole tenant story some time. But not now, because I have to prepare the next chapter for the Silmarillion Re-read Project. To be entirely honest, I'm quite tired of it right now. Not of the Silm, but of the project. I have the best possible collaboratrix in the world (thank you so much, Indy!), and I've learned a lot of new things about my primary fandom in general and the HoME in particular, and there has been a lot of fascinating input (well, on the earlier chapters; participation has dwindled as summer came. I can understand it! I just can't walk away from it, can I!). But the fact remains that Indy and I are basically doing the research and presentational work for a whole university lecture - in our spare time, and it often is a lot of research and difficult to present - and we won't even be able to use it as "job experience" because it's, well, not a job. Ah, the curse of the amateur!
Whine, whine. It's one of my favourite chapters, too. But ugh, there's so much going on and so much to write and THE DAYS ARE SO SHORT. (Yes, in this context, the days really are longer in winter.)
Ah well. It may not count as job experience, but I guess it builds stamina. :P

First things first:
Happy belated birthdays, coppertone, dawn_felagund, juno_magic, kaneda and macalla_! I fail so hard. I hope you all had reasonably enjoyable days, whether you celebrated on a grand scale or not.
- - -

Yesterday I had to decide between being lazy and eating sandwiches or being good and cooking the main course of the fall menu I'd decided on last week. Then I checked the best-before date of the duck and the decision was made for me: either make it now or risk that it turns bad. So I made the duck.
This turned out to be a very good thing (aside from the fact that it tasted awesome) because I then found out that Julie & Julia was on TV. I hadn't seen it before, so I grasped the chance to watch it now, and I don't think it's a movie you can easily watch with nothing but sandwiches (or, for that matter, nachos or popcorn) to go on. Duck à l'orange with mushrooms, pumpkin and sweet chestnuts, on the other hand, was an acceptable accompaniment...

Also yesterday, in a moment of madness, I signed up for NaNo after all. I won't actually be very creative, though: I'll just use the chance (or not) to write a (retrospective, perforce) diary of our first three months with Felix before I forget everything and tell new mothers "Enjoy this wonderful time" myself. (Disclaimer: I love my son and I wanted to have him, but the first three months with a baby are full of horrible, stressful moments, and the last thing you need implied is that it's actually wonderful and you're doing something wrong if you don't think so.) We'll see how that goes. At least I won't have to come up with a plotline ;)

Speaking of Felix, his sleeping schedule (which was reasonable nice for about a week: he only woke once per night) is shot to hell again, meaning that he wakes up and cries miserably three or more times, and has trouble getting to sleep in the first place. *sighs* I really don't know what to do. Everyone and their dog's brother's boyfriend keep telling you that after three months, all should be well sleep-wise. Actually it seems that 40% of children don't develop a sleep rhythm that vaguely matches their parents' until they reach the age of 6 months, or so I've read, but as everyone I know seems to belong to the other 60%, I feel vaguely guilty again. (And I really do my best in terms of good-night, rituals - cuddling, nursing, song and all!) It doesn't help that he seems to be preparing for another growth spurt, which tends to make him peevish anyway.
Oh well. If he already had a rhythm, it'd probably have been shot to hell by the return to Winter Time last Sunday. Now it's dark at 5 pm again. I really wish we'd do like the Russians and stay on Daylight Savings Time all year round.
At least Jörg has a chance to get some sleep - he's on a business trip to Munich this week. His paternity leave ended last week and about the first thing he was told was that this trip had to be taken (for the sake of a seminar that apparently wasn't really worth the long journey, but at least he's away from the company).

This morning I had a bad case of Teh Stoopid: After breakfast and changing Felix' nappies, I went down to the compost heap (because yesterday's duck orgy resulted in lots of organic waste). As I went out the door, I slapped the pocket of my pants and heard the reassuring "clink" of keys, so I cheerfully pulled the door locked behind me. When I returned, I found out that the key in my pocket was the one for the ex-pigsty/now-laundry room. Where was my house key? Well, not out here where I was.
Now normally I would've asked one of our neighbours to use their phone, called the mother-in-law who has a spare key, and then she'd have come over and saved me (us). But the mother-in-law has just had knee surgery: She's lying in hospital and in no shape to come driving anywhere.
After some colourful curses and a short round of the grounds (to pacify Felix, who apparently sensed my agitation and started crying), I tried to lure Mr. Darcy outside - I knew he was inside because he'd insisted on cuddling while I'd been changing Felix diapers; then he curled up in Jörg's Poäng chair and fell asleep. Mr. Darcy is a very clever cat who knows how to open doors, and generally does so when nobody expects him to. Now, however, he was fast asleep and didn't react at all. I waited a while, tried again, then gave up and rang at our tenants' door. Fortunately, these tenants are lovely, lovely people. Mrs. G. immediately dug out the old infant car seat of her daughter and gave me her car keys so I could go to the hospital in Remscheid where, fortunately, the MIL had our key. So all was well - but damn, that was stupid.
About three hours after our return from Remscheid, Mr. Darcy woke up - and opened the back door to let himself out. Thanks, cat, I love you too!

And that concludes today's status update. Take care, be good, and always make sure you've got the right keys on your person!

... or rather "somethings", but that's ungrammatical, so.

* The date for next year's Drachenfest has been announced and against all odds it's not at the same time as the Mittelerdefest, but a week later! I've been waiting for - and dreading - the announcement because it was pretty likely that both events would fall around the same weekend and then I'd have had to decide for just one (that is, for the MEF...). As I'm already missing this year's DF for obvious reasons, that'd have been very sad. So yay for actually being able (time-wise; anything else we'll see) to do both! \o/

* Five of my stories have been nominated for this year's MEFAs. To be sure, with the majority of them I'm pretty much certain they don't stand a chance - one might just get lucky, it's got Fingon in it and contains no overly complicated or controversial concepts, which always makes for crowd-pleasers - but it's still nice people liked them well enough to nominate them. Of course, as in past years, there are some stories where I'd secretly hoped someone would nominate them and nobody did (I tell myself that of course people loved them but didn't remember just now because they're old stuff :P), and as I despise self-nomination and fail at self-advertising, I'll just have to suck that up. Ah well. Five noms is still awesome, particularly as I've been a very unproductive fanficcer these past months.

* Today I managed to catch up with my gardening plan for the kitchen part of the garden, i.e. I managed to finish weeding all nine veggie patches and sow everything that had to be sown by June. As it's still June (if just barely), I consider this a splendid success. We'll see whether I'll manage to take care of the rest of the garden soonish, too, but there's less pressure - although all those spreading weeds are a pest, they're not interfering with anything important. Now I just have to harvest and use up the redcurrants and blackcurrants, as well as all those ripe woodland strawberries. And figure out what to do with my surplus tomato plants - this year, I actually have too many. (When you sow tomatoes, you bring out at least twice as many seeds as you want plants, because usually at least half of them won't grow anyway. This year, all of them grew, and two so powerfully that I had to take slippings, and these slippings in turn all took root, and then I got another plant from the uphill neighbour which I couldn't politely refuse, so now I have rather more plants than I bargained for -- which I guess is good, but I have to re-think my initial plans to make room for all of them.) Eh well, if they all manage to bring me ripe tomatoes, I shan't complain further!

* Am having an "actionism!" phase. Unfortunately it's neither typical nesting ("CLEAN ALL THE THINGS!") nor fannish actionism, but rather (mostly LARPish... it's that time of the year) creative stuff for which I lack the materials or skillz or both. Might nonetheless be tempted to try. At any rate, motivation is a good thing, even if it's kinda pointless motivation. Particularly if it's motivation for something other than sewing (current creative project of choice is "Pimp my cheap IKEA nursing bag!", which will result in something reasonably awesome, but my sewing finger is pretty raw by now, so I'll need a break after that). So there we go.

* Oh and I made carrot cake yesterday, with some variations from the original recipe (WTF what kind of crazy person puts ground apricot kernels into a cake? Don't those contain, like, Prussic acid?) and from my first attempt at the recipe (which was tasty enough but kinda dry). Added more baking powder, replaced apricot kernels with sweet almonds (I just trust those more, 'k?), replaced maize grits with just more "normal" flour (well, wholemeal spelt flour, but that's still more normal than maize grits :P), added chopped apple. Refused to mess around with the eggs as the recipe demanded (in the original recipe, you're supposed to separate the whites from the yolks, beat the whites, beat the yolks and mix them with all the other ingredients, then put the beaten whites back in. I assume this is supposed to make the cake fluffy or something, but as I said it was pretty dry nonetheless. So this time around I just put the eggs in whole from the start (I mean, without the shells, clearly, but whites and yolks together, yes?) because I hate separating eggs and certainly won't do it if it doesn't serve some sort of point. And I even used less eggs than the recipe called for because I only had two eggs left and our uphill neighbours' chickens had an unproductive week. AND IT WAS AWESOME. Not the least bit dry, instead sweet and fruity and juicy. Despite the spelt flour, too! Screw you, absurdly complicated recipe with your weird ingredients. I MADE YOU SIMPLER AND BETTER.

And that concludes today's random joyspam. Not a "Five things that made me happy" meme participant, but it might as well be...

... der Küchendrowfee, hier das Rezept für den Honigkuchen!
Darf natürlich auch jede/r andere nachbacken. :)

( Rezept unterm Cut )

- - -
*Das Rezept sagt einfach nur "Honig". Klar. Ich empfehle allerdings dringend, von einigen sortenreinigen Honigsorten Abstand zu nehmen, nämlich Linde (sonst schmeckt's recht... medizinisch), Lavendel, Kastanie, Heide oder Tanne (zu starker Eigengeschmack. Mit dem teuren Zeugs sollt ihr aber eh nicht backen!). Raps ist ok. Orangenblütenhonig geht, dann aber vielleicht lieber das Orangeat weglassen. Am besten irgendeinen normalen Blüten- oder Waldmischhonig nehmen.

²Man kann auch nicht abgezogene gemahlene Mandeln nehmen (also halt das Mandelmehl, das man am einfachsten im Supermarkt kriegt), aber saftiger wird's tatsächlich mit nackten Mandeln.

³Ich Faultier nehm stattdessen einfach Backpapier...

... kann man Pistazien in der Mandelmühle mahlen, oder sind sie dafür zu weich/ fetthaltig/ sonstwas?

*teuflische Pralinenpläne*

Most Fascinating Object of the weekend:

Sushi in gold leaf.
Sushi. In gold leaf.

Truth is stranger than fiction, guys; truth is stranger than fiction.

First things first:
Four years of stress, psychoterror, arrogant colleagues, asshole bosses and impossible demands, and an exam with rather bad prerequistes:
My boyfriend passed it anyway.
Now he finally is a fully licensed instructor (the work of which he's been doing for the past year anyway, but now the title and the salary get adapted to the facts).
Weeee!

- - -

This year I remembered to prepare woodruff syrup! I could probably have waited for another week because the plants are all a bit slower this year due to the long winter, but the rule is that you can only use woodruff before May, so I did it now. Traditions have to be followed (even if they're invented traditions, but that's a different topic, albeit a fascinating one).
Now my fingers taste of lemons and woodruff and if the finished syrup tastes like that I am going to love it.

- - -
( Sekt und Sirup )
- - -

Ach ja! An die Kölner: nächsten Mittwoch habe ich bis 15:30 Uni, danach kann ich theoretisch gleich Leute mitnehmen, wenn irgendwer schon so früh nach Wk will ;)

I found a reason to make the stuffed pumpkin again after all. (After my lovely pumpkin plant, let's call it Míriel, the Great Pumpkin rest her leafy little soul, produced one perfect pumpkin only to die as soon as the pumpkin began to ripen, I've been waiting for an excuse.) There's little point in making stuffed pumpkin (and we're talking about 7 kg of pumpkin here) for two people and two kittens. But coincidentally, Jörg's Hawai'ian cousin Kurt and his boyfriend and an elderly ladyfriend of theirs happen to be in Germany just now, and after we met them in Cologne on Sunday, we invited them to take a look at our lovely construction site and have dinner with us, and adding Jörg's mother, we were enough to dare battle the pumpkin. Richy - that's the boyfriend - fell ill, unfortunately, but we were still five people, so only half the dish ended up as leftovers (well, at least now Jörg has something to warm up while I'm at Ring*Con!). And they liked it (or were polite enough to feign enthusiasm, at any rate). Everyone was very friendly and relaxed, and between two people who travel so much as Joy and Kurt do, there were a lot of exciting and funny stories. Joy - that's the ladyfriend - asked for the pumpkin recipe in the end and offered me (in return?) to stay at her house should I happen to fly to Tôkyô via New York.

Which is, I suppose, the other news. It's official now: I shall be in Tôkyô from the beginning of December until early March.
PANIKU.
I mean, YAY.
*deep breath*

... it's after midnight? Whoops. I meant to comment on the autumnal equinox and all that on the right day, I swear.

Oh well. You all know by now that autumn and spring are my favourite seasons, so I don't have all that much to say. I will say that this place pretends that it's still summer - 25°C are not a fall temperature - but Canada was nicely cool, and on the edge of Indian summer (which, even on the edge, with only the staghorn sumach and the very first maple trees bearing red leaves), so there's fall feeling enough.

I made Stuffed Pumpkin. Go. Read it. Stop ignoring my pretentious art and randomness journal. *mope*

'náro has been showing a terrifying interest in swords (we've been showing ladyelleth the sword Jörg made from junk, and his katana). He even began pawing the junk-sword (which is not a good idea, as it's sharp). I think I shouldn't have named him after a smithcraft-obsessed Noldo after all.

Aaaanyway. Happy autumnal equinox; happy Mabon to those of the Wiccan conviction, and happy beginning of spring to those of you in the southern hemisphere. ^_^

Picspam of the vacations, whether you want it or not, will come at some point. You have been warmed.

The presentation preparation is done - and it's not even midnight yet!
I'd like to see that as a sign that my procrastination habits are a bit more under control this time. It's probably got nothing to do with that, but humour me, ok?

The overheads turned out lousy, though. I let the transparencies dry for one and a half hours before packing them, and still they're smodged. Fuck this. I definitely need my own laptop so I can do this sort of thing via PowerPoint. Gnah.

Also, made Kim-chee today. Now my fingers scent of ginger, chili and garlic. I keep sniffing them. I'm a spice junkie!

- - -

Die Referatsvorbereitung ist abgeschlossen - und es ist noch nicht mal Mitternacht!
Ich würde das gern als Zeichen dafür sehe, dass ich nicht ganz so schrecklich aufgeschoben habe wie sonst. Vermutlich hat es damit nichts zu tun, aber lasst mir meine Illusionen, ja?

Die Folien sind allerdings schrecklich geworden. Ich habe sie nun schon anderthalb Stunden trocknen lassen, bevor ich sie bewegt habe, und trotzdem sind sie dann wieder verschmiert. Scheiße. Ich brauche eindeutig meinen eigenen Laptop, damit ich sowas zukünftig per PowerPoint regeln kann. Gnah.

Außerdem habe ich heute Kimchi eingelegt. Jetzt duften meine Finger nach Ingwer, Chili und Knoblauch. Ich schnüffel die ganze Zeit daran 'rum. Ich bin ein Gewürzjunkie!