Hiya :-)

Hey, long time no see! Blogging has just sort of stopped being something that I do regularly. Sorry! I’m trying to keep up with other people’s blogs every now and then. Thanks for remembering me, despite this!

I think Twitter is going to be easier to use, so I might switch to that, if people want to keep up with my (ahem) fabulous life

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For the sake of archiving my life here a bit still:
- we got a little puppy. His name is Tobias. He’s a dachshund. He is very naughty and also very cute and he keeps us busy all day LOL He’s currently taking a nap on our rug; dreaming of the mischief he is getting into next

Ode to the Earth

Google informed me that it’s Earth Day today. I love how Google has those little changes in logo. They feel like easter eggs every time again!

Anyway, yes, Earth Day. I didn’t know it even existed, but for the occassion I’ll put the lyrics of the Pocahontas disney film in our blog. The lyrics sum up my beliefs about our precious planet, and the lines that I have made bold sum up my beliefs about education.

You think I’m an ignorant savage
And You’ve been so many places
I guess it must be so
But still I cannot see
If the savage one is me
How can there be so much that you don’t know?
You don’t know…

You think you own whatever land you land on
The earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know ev’ry rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name

You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You’ll learn things you never knew,
you never knew

Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon?
Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?
Can you sing with all the voices of a mountain?
Can you paint with all the colours of the wind?
Can you paint with all the colours of the wind?

Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest
Come taste the sun-sweet berries of the earth
Come roll in all the riches all around you
And for once,
never wonder what they’re worth.

The rainstorm and the river are my brothers
The heron and the other are my friends
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hope that never ends.

How high does the sycamore grow?
If you cut it down then you’ll never know

And you’ll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon.
For wether we are white or copper-skinned
We just sing with all the voices of the mountain
We just paint with all the colors of the wind.

You can own the earth and still,
All you’ll own is earth until
You can paint with all the colors ohh the colors of the wind.

(lyrics written by Stephen Schwartz)

Spring

Well, I’m officially declaring that Spring is starting today. I don’t care if there’s a blizzard tonight, I’m going to wear my spring shoes from now on.

It’s absolutely lovely outside today. I’ve just spent an hour in the garden and it’s lovely! The birds were out, the sun was out, the little grape hyacinths are out. Lovely.

Something else that is lovely in our bookcase:

Happy Spring Time everyone!

Quick update again

A very quick update before I jump on my bike to catch the train:

- my new job is fantastic and challenging, so far!

- our house is sold! the buyer’s real estate agents were complete &*#()#bleep*@#s! grrrr! Not giving us any security in the whole deal and trying to get more money every step of the way, threatening not to sign. We held our own pretty well, and in the end they signed. Phew!

Hei ho! Off to work I go!

And we’re back :-)

We’ve got internet and tv in our new house, which means it is beginning to feel like home more and more.

We are not at all used to having stairs in our house though. We used to have everything on the same floor. Now we are walking up and down those friggers twenty times before we can finally go to bed, because it seems like everytime you are on the top floor you remember something you’ve forgotten to

a) turn off
b) clear away
c) pick up to take upstairs with you
d) lock

argh… I’m hoping we’ll get used to it soon!

Our neighbours seem very nice, we hear birds instead of mopeds, upstairs’ base music or carhorns and the trees in our garden and opposite our street are absolutely stunning. I’m sure we’re going to like it here!

Quick update

Just a quick update while we are on some gracious neighbour’s wireless

We have moved all our belongings to the new house, and we finished painting 75% of the house and finished about 50% of the laminated wooden flooring in the house. Phew! We have been able to sleep and live in the house for the past two days and we love it. There are still a few bureaucratic things to sort out, and there is a lot of DIY still to be done but so far so good!

We might be able to get internet, telephone and television again today. Fingers crossed. We’re probably not going to be properly up to being on the internet till the beginning of next week though.

Ah the wireless is still on! Better post this quickly!

Moving

I had my last day at work yesterday. It was very surreal. I got everything done that I needed to do, and all throughout the day I was reminded why I wanted to leave in the first place. This made it relatively easy to know that I have made the right the decision. On the other hand…I hate leaving my colleagues behind. They have become more than colleagues over the years. They’ve really become friends. It will be strange not to see them again from now on. Or at least not see them and belong.

Strange contrasting feelings. It felt like graduating and leaving the parental nest all at once.

Today we are going to pack everything we own in cardbord boxes and tomorrow it will be transported to our new house. That’s the plan anyway. Please all gods, may it work!

We might not have internet for a while. (Might be months, if it works the same way it did when I moved to here …grrr..I’m on the phone with them later today.) We might be able to sneak on the internet at my parents every once in a while though.

Kat said that she read somewhere that moving house is the number one reason for couples to split up. Hmm..lovely. You’ll know what happened when she is suddenly reporting from London LOL
Well, we survived putting several items of IKEA furniture together, so I suppose that gives us some level of security that we’ll get through this too

Hope you all have lovely weeks! See you on the other side!

PS for Bärbel: I present to you….

Oh yeah!

moodboard 26th of march 2008

Which probably shows all that is going around in my head at the moment.

We’ve painted most of our new house now (in greys and purples..so gorgeous!). We only need to paint the master bedroom, the garden room and the downstairs hallway. After that we can start laying the laminate floor down… yay?

Next to that there are still a gazillion little rules and/or money related things to be taken care of. What a bureaucracy….

I had my farewell dinner at work yesterday. It was a lot of fun. One of my former colleagues that I worked with a lot came back for it too! My colleagues made some hilarious video sketches pretending to be me, showing my office quirks It’s very strange to still be working here for a few more days though. Speaking of which, I should really get going again. So much to do, so little time left to do it!

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Pythia

I love listening to Tori Amos music, but I love listening to Tori Amos’ interviews even more. She is a modern day Pythia (priestess of the Oracle of Delphi), I swear. She just overflows of apparent nonsense that can - if you pay attention - make complete sense.

Her latest gem (on women and stereotypes in business): “If you want to survive it, you have to know how to play that chess game. I’m not saying it’s fair. It’s not fair. But if you wanna win, you can’t think about “Is it fair or not?”. You have to say: “Okay, check mate, motherfucker.”

That considerably brightened my mood

PS: my favourite search term leading to this blog today: “lezzy pics”  ROFL! Plenty of those around here

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Awful Friday

It’s raining cats, dogs and an assortment of pets. Maybe the winter is showing off one more time before saying goodbye, because (supposedly) today is the first day of spring. It’s also Good Friday, but like a priest jokingly said on TV this morning: “Perhaps it should have been called Awful Friday.”

So today is Good/Awful Friday, Spring Equinox and to me - Almost Cheese day! I have not been eating cheese since Ash Wednesday - apart from mascarpone in Tiramisu twice. I’m pretty proud of myself, and I think I have broken my habitual continuous cheese eating. I do so miss cheese sprinkling on pizza though. I haven’t had pizza since Ash Wednesday either!

We are going to spend Easter Weekend painting the walls of our new house. We already painted one wall in the kitchen and it looked so pretty! I hope it will look pretty still when we see it again today. A cousin is coming over to help us and my parents and sister&boyfriend are coming to help too, so fingers crossed that we get all the painting done this weekend. With the extra day on monday it should be okay.

And then it will be my last week doing my current job and our last week in this city! It’s amazing how fast it has all gone by. I thought it would be slow and I would have plenty of time to get used to the idea of leaving, but as usual it has crept up on me.
On the one hand I’m so glad to be leaving (which is why I chose to leave in the first place), but there are so many things that I will miss too.

A stoic move of boxes
But the real me weeps
I am not a nomad
I was meant for keeps
-2002-

I have an intense hatred of moving house. Yet it will be the tenth time I’m going to do it now. Despite having done it so often, I can’t seem to get used to it though. I get very attached to spaces and places and faces. Thankfully we’ll be moving to a place that I know very well too, so I suppose that will help. I’m really not looking forward to all the physical hard work though, and the stress of planning everything and on top of that the emotional side of the saying goodbye to this house, this city, this job and to my colleagues.

Yuck.
The weather fits my mood.

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