Living in Projects

You know how when you get busy, time just flies by? I’m packing up the Lily Pad while juggling all those Vista upgrades and accreditations at work while planning my vacation while starting a new blog (yup, schon wieder). We don’t need to discuss work, let’s just say it’s not very interesting but I’m happy when things work.

Due to Labor Day this coming weekend, I’m looking at a glorious four day respite from office chair warming activities. Claudia and I are going to Cardiff where I will possible try out my newly learned Welsh and potentially fail fabulously, but who knows. It’s nice to go away with someone who’s so enthused about the opportunity, and I hope that despite the not-so-hot weather forecast we’ll have lots of chances to bring back pictures.

The new blog is named Tees Tease (teestease.wordpress.com) and currently still empty. It was inspired by the fact that a lot of my beloved t-shirts from all over the world seem to have fallen prey to the hot water wash and therefore will be donated to the clothing collection. Before that happens, though, they will be photographically documented on that site. I am rather attached to some of them.

Now, I must find out why my fax machine won’t use the tray it’s supposed to to print faxes. You have been informed. I’ll see you with new material next week. Dabo!

Bits and Pieces

Sometimes one must go back to go forward. I simply could not get on with lesson 20 last week, so over the weekend, I went back to 16 to do some review and get the grammar down better. Today, I’m finishing the review on 19. It’s going well. Very well. Hopefully, it’ll continue in this manner. After all, I’m thisclose to being finished with the course!

About The Edge of Love… I very much like Sienna Miller as Cat. In fact, I thought the casting was superb. As with all movies about little snippets out of a person’s life, it leaves you wanting more (ideally), so I’ve been reading up on Dylan Thomas a bit. Very interesting. He should, if he could, consider himself very lucky to be played by the incredibly sexy Matthew Rhys (my motto: one more good reason to say something in Welsh!!), because even with the extra slobby pounds packed on, Matthew looks better than the soft, pouty poet ever did. He also has a better voice, as proven by a recording I was able to listen to on BBC Wales the other day, read by DT himself.

Our Celtic dinner was wonderful, although about half the guests didn’t make it this time. And yet, there was plenty to eat and lots to laugh at. We exchanged recipes, tested our way through a variety of mets, ciders and Drambuie, and learned that Breton fairy tales are probably best appreciated after smoking a good doobie or two… because the ones we read aloud seemed to have been written after exactly that kind of activity.

On Sunday, I nonchalantly jetted down to GAP for the day to go hiking and to dinner with the hubby, and Monday, being a training holiday, I lazed around the house and got caught up on my magazines. In other words, it’s all good. Tonight, I’m hooking up with Daniel Craig and Sienna Miller in Layer Cake (rented after I saw that it was classified as a thriller), and I promise to upload the pics from the brew course pretty soon.

More than I Bargained For

Do you ever get the feeling you got into something a bit deeper than expected, but it’s actually a good thing? After exchanging some friendly banter with the admin of my Welsh Language site, I asked him yesterday if he’d let me add him to my friendlist on Facebook. My reasoning was, if I saw him on there, I’d feel guilty if I started slacking off with the lessons. Well, he did let me, and the first update I got was a whole paragraph – in Welsh! It’s still making me laugh, because of course, just like Radio Cymru, this is WAY over my little head. I’m thrilled to recognize the grammatical structures, though, so I guess there’s hope after all…

Too much can be a good thing.

Knock-knock. Who’s there? It’s me, Friday!

Long awaited, suspected missing, but here it is finally, my nearly favorite day of the week! For the last time it’s off to battle rush hour traffic, speedfeed the pigs and decompress by slaying a vampire or two before throwing myself into the bustling nuttiness which is the Fischmarkt downtown. Last night, I ran, and a pretty decent time too, though not as good as I thought. In Welsh, I’ve managed to complete three more lessons this week, which brings me nearly halfway through the course. And in a mere eight days, there’ll be a fab barbecue at Anke’s house.

No major projects are planned for the weekend, although to prepare the room for the two weeks of ferret sitting, the pigs and I will relocate to the Lily Pad for a while. Maybe I’ll finally make it to the hairdresser tomorrow. The only other firm point, or points, really, on the calendar are the Saturday morning walk with Anke and Daisy, and the weekend long run. I can almost hear the leaves rustle along the path already!

In case you don’t find a post here over the next two days, forgive me; I’ll be too busy being in the midst of things.

Into the Wild

Two things have been driving me crazy since the weekend: the fact that I haven’t been able to run after twisting my ankle in a freak accident involving a very large dogbed, and my recent discovery of the addictive effects of Vampire Wars on Facebook. Today, I can report a triumph for the one (I’m finally able to return to the woods) and a bitter disappointment for the other (the site was down for maintenance this morning, just as I was getting ready to master two of my offensive skills!).

Tonight, it’s back into the wild!

I Cheated in Welsh

Well, not exactly cheated… I am currently taking the wonderful audio language course in Southern Welsh from Say Something in Welsh. Iestyn and Cat have been my coaches for the past two and a half weeks, and although I’m hardly fluent after only six lessons, I’m starting to recognize patterns (which is cool, if you’re a language nerd like me). The whole point to this course is, however, that there are absolutely no written materials for the entire duration. Nada. Zilch. Nix. Amazingly, it works rather well, except for those instances where I don’t take the time to listen to a lesson over in a more quiet environment (I practice in the car on the way to work). So, for example, for one day I was absolutely sure that Iestyn was telling me ‘why’ was ‘ham’. It’s not really. The correct word is ‘pam’. But you see the problem.

Last weekend in London, I purchased a Welsh dictionary for those sticky moments. After all, what better place to buy a Welsh language aid than in a country where people look upon Welsh speakers with a fair amount of disdain? ( ) Lesson 6b made me VERY glad I did! You see, Iestyn is trying to teach us how to start and control conversations now, but I have to admit that I had a lot more problems unravelling all the new sentences than before. So last night, I did some rustling in the pages, and lo and behold, figured out about half of the stuff within five minutes. Plus a couple of things from previous lessons where I had misheard the endings, like a ‘f’ instead of a ‘th’.

So for me, it is useful to have a bit of written support, as well, even though I won’t use it yet to look up new words, which I wouldn’t remember anyway. But I cannot help but feel that I’m cheating here, just a teensy bit…

P.S. Diolch yn fawr or thanks very much to all those people who’ve come here looking for 4th Street Traffic. Now go find them on Facebook and join the club.

The Hallelujah-Girl

I am counting the days until September 28th. It is my honest and sincere hope, that the conclusion of that day will signal the conclusion of a period of my working life that, quite frankly, started out luke-warm and hasn’t recovered in the past ten years. I will hang up my help desk hat and jump ship in order to pursue my passion. Well, at least a little. It is sad when a person and a job are as ill-matched as this computer crap and I have been. It’s been everything I never wanted: a dead-end, dull office job with no prospect of real advancement and a general environment into which I fit as well as an albatross into a mouse hole. It’s killing my will to excel and stifling my creativity. Sad, indeed.

But lest you fear I may find myself out of work and living under a bridge (which, by the way, tend to be very low around here), I have a plan. Being the smart cookie that I am, I’m going back to beginning. No, not back to when I figured I’d be a princess. And skip past the period when I really wanted to be a rock singer. There! Now you’ve got it. Early on, I developed a love for food, travel and foreign languages. I’ve traveled a lot, I’ve eaten well, it’s time to spend some effort on developing that linguistic talent further. So, after 18 months of thinking about it, I want to finally get going on that translator license. On the side, I want to sign up for French class (because I love the idea of doing it with someone, and Anke has graciously agreed to dust off her French books). Depending on the job I get -yeah, the for-money kind- I think I can tackle Italian on my own. And then, watch out, world!

Sometimes, closing one door does indeed open another. And going forward can only be better than getting stuck in the dingy corridor…

Calling Dr. Beat

After yesterday’s EKG, I can scratch another item off my list of “1000 things I need to (not) do before I die”. 999 more to go…

First, I got to confuse the receptionist at the family clinic because I didn’t have an appointment. Not that I didn’t try to make one. But the nice lady at central appointments called the clinic- while I was standing there- and confirmed I didn’t need one. So I sat there. Luckily, I had time and only four people ahead of me.

After about 40 minutes of watching the news and rehashing inauguration highlights, they had found me a nurse who would do the EKG for me. Very nice lady. I wouldn’t have been in the mood that early in the morning. The whole process was astoundingly simple: take your shirt off, take your bra off, lie down, be stuck with electrodes (ok, not stuck. They’re pasted to your skin), record some heartbeat activity, take the electrodes off, get dressed, be done. Ten minutes tops.

The nurse was rather pleased with the result. ‘Everything looks good’, she said. Well, I’m glad I’m not about to keel over and die, but this only means that the mystery illness will remain exactly that. Now I’m wondering if I should even bother doing a follow-up with the doctor.

The Truth about Cats and Pigs

Riley made an unusual friend once. At a time where our cats barely tolerated her and she realized the dogs were not ideal playmates, she discovered Buddy the guinea pig. He was quite furry, much like her, and though he probably smelled and looked a bit odd, she really took to him. Every night, she’d climb into his cage and sit there in front of his house. Sometimes, she’d pat him on the head. And the amazing thing was, he wasn’t afraid. He would run around the piggie room, Riley hot on his non-existent tail, and when it got too much, he’d swiftly turn around and threaten her with his little beaver teeth. She always backed off.

After Buddy died, Riley tried to befriend Louie, but until just a short while before he passed on, they never really warmed to each other. Now, though, there’s the girls. The girls are three-month-old Minnie, nearly fully grown with a lovely rosetta arrangement of black fur, and tiny five-week-old Emmy, who still resembles a mouse and fits into the palm of one hand. At the moment, she has a rather interesting hairdo, kind of like a Mohawk, and nobody knows for sure what will happen when she grows up. But the fascination to Riley is undeniable.

Since the girls moved in on Saturday, she’s been spending hours in the temporary pig room. Yesterday, she snoozed the afternoon away on a crinkle bag next to the cage, but normally, she lies on top of the cage and watches little Emmy zoom around in there. Emmy, on the other hand, is an amazingly fearless pig for her size. While Minnie cautiously sticks her nose out of the house she has claimed as her villa, Emmy is turning out to be quite curious. And as long as we or Riley or even her very large brother Max just look at her, she’ll sit right in front of the cage, munching hay or grooming herself with her itty-bitty feet. Sometimes, Riley will dangle one arm into the cage. Emmy is beginning to ignore that. The only thing that’ll get her scurrying for shelter with her big sister is Max, who gets overexcited sometimes and yelps or barks at her.

I’m not silly enough to allow Riley to “play” with Emmy as long as she is only hamster-sized, but I can imagine that once she is bigger, she might not mind a big friend to cuddle with. Perhaps even Minnie will learn to relax a little. And I’ll be there to keep an eye on everyone.

Schmusi, our grande dame of catdom, has so far shown no interest at all in the muikers. Quite possibly, she is distracted by the wonderful aroma of turkey wafting through the house. There were nine people here for dinner on Saturday, but that bird left plenty of meat for later. So, while Riley watches cat tv, Schmusi patiently waits for us to realize that she reallyreally needs some turkey. It’s good for the fur, don’t you know! Rufus and she are agreed on this point. His fascination with food is much greater than his interest in squeaky furballs.

I can’t wait to see how the girls get along with Julius. I surely hope they will!

The Piggish are Coming, the Piggish are Coming!

The girls are moving in this Saturday!!! Yeah, yeah, eventually, there’ll be room for other topics again. Until then: suck it up!