Rodent update.

Tadaa! I proudly present the real Fritz! Dad managed to catch a few snapshots of him, and dutifully forwarded them to all his daughters (and who knows who else...).


Awwww, look at him - isn't he cute? That shiny fur, those black, curious, beady eyes, the fluffy ears... And so self-sufficient, too! No bother at all. That's my kind of pet...

Dicke, rote Kerzen, Tannenzeigenduft...

What a perfectly nice, peaceful start into Advent this has been! I spent it home at my parents' and did nothing much except sit around, eat, drink hot ginger tea and go for walks in the winter sunshine.



Oh, and my parents have a new housemate!
A red squirrel has chosen the flower box just outside our kitchen window to build its nest ( a drey, or so I've just learned) in. Right amongst the faded geraniums! Alas, so far he has been far too quick for us to catch him on camera. He scuttles across the roof, then nimbly climbs down the wall, stops for a second by the window frame to look inside and then vanishes in this brown ball of dry grass, where he rummages around for a fair while, trying to get cosy before eventually going to sleep.
They named him Fritz.
Which is fair enough I guess. But putting those walnuts on a plate on the inside windowsill for decorative purposes - really, Mum, that's just plain cruel!

Worüber man nicht sprechen kann...

...darüber soll man schweigen. Nur soviel: An einer katholischen Schule kann man durchaus auch "a god friend" haben.


Ich hab's ja immer gesagt: Die Medien sind an allem schuld.

Morgen ist Elternsprechtag. Himmel, schick Schokolade! (Und 'nen guten Dolmetscher.)

Autumn flashback.

In memory of those autumn holidays when we were, what 14? 15?, and me and my sisters were home alone for a couple of days and you stayed over at my place and we spent the days listening to this one record over and over again at full volume in the living room (and, come to think of it, Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream, what a weird combination) and discussing our crushes at lengths, whether we thought they looked our way earlier that day across the bumper cars at the local fair, whether we considered it possible that they might actually call us at some stage, and, quite possibly, be the ones we should marry. (I think.)
So this one's for you, Julia!

"The fool who escaped from paradise will look over his shoulder and cry,
sit and chew on daffodils and struggle to answer why..."

The Cat knows best.

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Petulant blog.

Oh, woe betide me, I've angered the beast!
For some reason blogger is very unhappy with me and, consequently, I with him/her/them. I'm sure it's something I've done and I'd happily repent for my sinful ways, if only I knew what it was!
I have the sneaking suspicion it was something about the format of the quote I copy/pasted into my last post, because afterwards my blog title wasn't centred any more. But I deleted the post and wrote it all anew in this here user interface (or whatever it is called). The title is back to normal, but there are still a number of things that don't work any longer:
- The button for choosing the font is gone, along with the buttons for grouped style, right-aligned, index points etc.
- It doesn't even adopt the font, alignment etc. if I copy/paste text from a word document.
- When I upload a video, it dutifully uploads but cannot play or even display the video afterwards.
- Uploaded pictures only appear in some html-code Chinese. They seem to turn up as pictures in the blog, however, when published (or at least in the preview).

Anybody out there who knows how to solve this? What do I have to do to placate the beast?

Life on a paper napkin.

And while we're busy chasing high aims... I'm sure I'd be a much better person if I could realize in my own life even the tiniest bit of what this quote has been trying to tell me for years:

"The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead.

- Which means exactly what? (Arched eyebrows, a little annoyed)

I tried to explain, but didn't do a very good job of it.Sometimes I need to write to think. So I wrote it down for her on a paper napkin. This is what I wrote: To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty in its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget."

Arundhati Roy - The Algebra of Infinite Justice