Random thoughts

A very happy birthday to lucie_p. I'm sending good (and electronic-device-safe) thoughts your way.

*hugs*

Happy birthday to cleverusername2!


Hey, I really like that fancy LJ addon thingie for Firefox. Maybe that'll help me keep track of birthdays.

I have deleted several communities and some people of my flist.
This doesn't mean I hate the people in question or they annoy me or bore me or whatever.
It simply means I had to cut down a bit because I felt I couldn't be the sort of LJ friend I want to be.
I hope you will understand.

In other news, the school history is out for sale and the first complaints started to come in. Mostly it's from people who resent not being in the book.
Oh well. The commander said he likes it, and that means I've fulfilled the taks I was given, and that is all that counts. I expect that at some time, I will even stop the wry smile from appearing on my face whenever somebody mentions my predecessor as the author.

Two people have congratulated me on being a civil servant. I still don't have it in writing, so I am going to not feel too secure about it, but at least there is a chance it might turn out well.

In fencing lesson yesterday, Alexandra and I were allowed to actually fight against each other, using the electric equipment to count hits. She beat me, unfortunately. I am too competitive not to be a bit disappointed, even if I can claim that she already had about 18 months of fencing back when she was in university.
But it was a lot of fun. And I now have a large bruise on my thigh and I think I will have one on my stomach, too, because I remember that she hit me there really hard.
I did beat one of the kids, but as they are fighting with shorter foils, that is not much of a feat.

That is all.

I had a wonderful weekend down at wolflady26's.
On Saturday, she and I went shopping in Regensburg and she forced me to spend way too much money. (Sandra, I'm wearing the necklace with the pink stones right now and it's gorgeous)
We went to this beautiful town I had never heard of before which had a really nice castle ruin. And even though she had trouble walking because of an injured ankle, Sandra walked all the way up the tower and back down with us. (Maybe she thought if she let me walk up alone with her husband, one of us would come down the short way on the outside of the tower, not by the stairs... ;-D )
And they gave me a ton of CDs for my birthday, so as soon as I have my laptop I can watch Gilmore Girls and Ranma and then the next time I come down to visit and bring some CDs they'll copy some movies for me. Yay!

Also, they helped me broaden my horizon. They made me watch Army of Darkness which even a whimp like me could watch, even though I would probably not watch it again. And we watched several episodes of The 70s show and Corpse Bride, which was a really cool movie and made me curious about Nightmare before Christmas.
Sandra and I worked on our respective cross stitch projects and I managed to finish most of mine. Still got a bit to do, but the end is near.

And there is more: I read some more of the Sandman books while there and took a stack with me. Unfortunately, Sandra won't give me the last one until I've read the one she doesn't own, so I need to figure out where to get them from or I'll never figure out how the story ends. And then I am kind of worried to read volume 9 because maybe there will be a cliffhanger and then it might take ages until I finally find out how it ends. *sigh* Life is tough.

All in all, I had a great time. And we may be going on a long weekend trip to Venice at some point this spring, which would be marvellous.

At work today, I got stuck with the really boring stuff.
I had had some trouble chosing pictures for the year 2004 of the school history. There had been a huge event here, the 2nd European Infantry Seminar, and the only pictures I had easy access to were in a PowerPoint presentation. But the woman who does the layout said she could get them out and use them, not a problem. Well, of course it was a problem. So now I am sorting through 12 CDs of more or less unsorted pictures. (On each CD, they are sorted first by date and then by name of the photographer, for whatever reason. And several of them are either too dark or too light or completely black or not useable for some other reason - very annoying.)
I have found some of the ones I need, but still do have quite a way to go.
And to add to this, I had an email from my predecessor telling me which pictures to use for another article - without sending me the pictures. It turned out he had sent them to my boss, for whatever reason. And then I got a second email from him with some change he needs to be incorporated. Of course, the change is not in any year that is still being prepared for layout. It's in 1956. So then I get to talk to the layouter about what's feasible and then call my predecessor to figure out what to do, as the change he wanted is not doable in the way he wanted, it would screw up the layout for basically all 50 years.
Added to that is the fact that he happened to find some pictures he wanted to be included. In a spot where he's sure it won't affect the layout. No, of course not. How about we delete a few paragraphs in the way beginning and don't worry about that some pictures will not be on the same page as the related articles anymore.
The good thing about it is that it gives me something else than cataloguing to do in my extra hours, and I have used so much of those I need to blatanly work longer so that my boss will not get angry about me taking another long weekend on the 7th.

Mom needs me for taking care of the dog that weekend. She actually would have like me to be there both this coming Friday and the 7th, but I told her that for some reason, people happen to like to have me do the work they pay me for.
You would think we have a werewolf at home, not a friendly if a bit overactive puppy. It seems I am the only person on the planet who can take care of her when Mom's not home. And apparently, it is quite impossible for my Dad to stay home, so instead I have to take a day off from work, drive 360 kilometres after a full day of work on Thursday night and it might be I have to sleep on the couch in case the dog still needs to go out at night.
Don't get me wrong, I love the dog, but I do happen to have a life myself.

But there are good news, too. I have decided to become a better flist reader. Lately, there have been too many days when I just skimmed the pages and didn't bother to click on cuts, but that's over now - or so I hope. It might not leave me much time for commenting but at least I will know what's going on in you guys' lives.
So I know that there are new haircuts and new hair colors, new jobs and new friends and it seems many of you have a great time. Very good, continue!

Oh my, what an interesting entry. D2, welcome to my flist and I told you it wouldn't be much to read. Don't say I didn't warn you.

As I can't make fancy banners and post nice pictures:







Thank you all for being my friends. You are great, friendly, fun, creative and simply a wonderful bunch of people and I am very lucky to know you.





In other news, I have a horrible headache. And I am hungry. Time for dinner.


There is now a negative version of the Johari Window thing.

Mine's here

Third post today - would that be a good place for actual information?
Maybe. But then again, I am bound to ramble which will fill large parts of your flist window without actually transporting any useful facts.

It is Monday.
On Friday, I went up into the general direction of home, but not home. My deceased aunt's husband celebrated his birthday and as contact is very scarce since my aunt's death, my Mom had called me beforehand and had asked me to go visit and meet my parents there.
So I went up a different route than normally. It's a new Autobahn, which is nice as it sees little traffic and is in good condition - except for the rain and snow.
Of course, this was too many good things at once (after all, there was at least one good thing in there that was not yet balanced by something bad - the expectation of good company and a nice piece of cake), so this couldn't last. And indeed, it didn't.
My car started acting up yet again. I suppose it was due to the wet, cold weather and the fact that I hadn't used it in about a week.
And I got lost on the tiny roads around my uncle's place. After a while I decided to just ignore the print-out I had made from the internet that supposedly would have told me where to go, except that it told me to go through towns I could not find on any sign, and go towards the nearest larger town. When I felt I had a pretty good idea of how to find my current place on a map, I dug out my atlas and navigated myself to where I needed to go. Supposedly, women are unable to read a map. Well, I found my way just fine when I decided to use a map rather than the route planner.
( more about the car and the ride up )

Today I found out civilian guests are not supposed to stay overnight unless they get a special card instead of the usual form they need to fill out. So I discussed that with the responsible officer who happens to be somebody I know quite well as he is one of the captains of the "inner circle" - school history-wise. And he was very happy I didn't call him because of that, too. *g*
So, linnapaw, it should be no problem to get you in here. It might be they won't even ask you for an ID, anyway. Or they might accept you as a member of an allied armed force. We'll see. If all else fails I have to get one of those of my soldier friends whose rank allows him to take people on post if they chose to do so without requiring those guests to have any ID.

There is more of the school history done as well. It seems as if the end is near. The end of - something, at least. We will see.

I need to write tuva. She's been gone way too long without a note from her.

Now I'm hungry, time to go home.

LJ somehow had cut off the last paragraph of this post.
Weeeeeiird.

magsspiritwings has a great idea. Please support her and the Cranes for Peace project. Sounds like a great idea to me. And the story about the little girl in Hiroshima always moves me whenever I read it. There's even a song about her, but I can't remember. It was a more political song back in GDR...

I got an icon as a present from disinterment. Check my user info to see it! Isn't that great?!