Random thoughts

I woke up this morning mentally moving shelves, so I decided - as I had planned to walk up to the base to get my bike anyway - to actually convert that mental energy into physical energy and really move shelves.

I can already say that we will have a lot of shelves left over. (Okay, Houston, we have a problem here: How do I differentiate between the whole thing and one board? According to LEO, both would be called "shelf" in English. The things we will have left over are the individual boards on which you put the books. The things I moved are the complete shelves, with poles left and right and several shelves/boards in the middle.)

Mostly, they were easy to move as they are assembled in a way that basically does not require any tools to take them apart. However, we have some shelves from an older series by the same company that did indeed require screws, and those were a pain in the arse.

I first had to move a set of four of the newer version of shelves to a different place in the library, which was fairly easy. Then I could empty out the only set of shelves we still had in place of the older system and take that down. It took forever as some of the screws had ben painted over and the whole thing was really dirty and yucky, but I managed.

Then I had to set up a new combination of four sections in its place. Problem was, I only had two section available that were already empty at the moment. So I started out to move those. And found out that whoever had assembled them was an idiot. It was the newer system, except for one piece that had apparently been taken from an older shelve. It lacked the grooves it was supposed to have for the bottom shelf to fit in, so instead of taking the right piece, somebody had drilled holes into the bootom shelf and used screws to put the pieces together. Which meant to take them apart I had to tilt the whole thing (two sections of shelves, which means three poles of at least two metres, connected with two bars near the bottom (there were two more bars at the top, but I had taken those off before realising the bottom shelves were stuck) and lean it against another shelf so I could get the screws off. I was alternately cursing at thed idiot who did it and praying the whole thing wouldn't fall against a window or knock down a row of shelves or land on my head. Lovely.

I did manage, however, and replaced the wrong piece when I reassembled it, so we won't have this problem again.

After I had set up those two sections where they were to go, I theoretically would have needed to move large sections of the journals around to free the last two sections. But frankly, I was sick and tired of the whole thing, so I just vacuumed the places where shelves used to be (the colour of the floor is quite different there, and there are also lines imprinted into the floor where the most weight of the shelves pressed down), moved a few tables to where our reading area will be and decided to call it a day.

Now I'm really tired.
Funnily enough, I'm not hungry, though I haven't eaten anything since breakfast, and that was not very large.
I'm going to make myself some pasta tonight, I think. A coworker made ramson pesto and gave me a glass to try.

I went to fencing lessons for the first time this year.
And oh, my poor legs!

I did go jogging on Sunday so it wasn't like I was completely out of practice, but our coach usually starts with just legwork, and that really hurt after a while.

However, when he tested a specific combination of steps, I did alright while a bunch of others, including people who've been fencing for much longer, had to do it again. And he wasn't just being nice because I'm relatively new, as Alexandra, my friend with whom I started, had to do it again as well.

She did beat me when we were actually fencing afterwards, though.
But I do claim that was because she had cheated when she had chosen her weapon. We have the longer foils used by adults, and the shorter ones for kids. She had a shorter one. It gives her less range, but it also is les flexible and therefore often easier to handle. When you're fighting a stiff stick with a flexible rod, you're going to have a hard time.

I did seem to make the moves using my wrist more than moving my full arm, which is great. It seems like I'm making progress.

Speaking of progress, we now have many empty shelves in the library. I'm going to ask one of the girls to clean them tomorrow, and then we can do some serious moving of stuff.
I'm currently cleaning out old files that are stacked in Katrin's office, so that stuff we need to store but don't want to have within the reach of patrons can be stored out of the way there.
Among those files I have found more stuff I could have used for the school history, but that's bad luck now. I am definitely not going to do a second edition.

I had planned on watching another episode of Supernatural, have been looking forward to that all day, but then was too busy. Oh well. There's always tomorrow.

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.

Today was an exceptionally quiet day. It was almost as it was when I started here, with full days when nobody would ever find his way up to the library. Today it was less than 10 people, I am sure.I did some stuff that came by mail, but mostly it was back to the school history.

I corrected the first layout draft of 2001 to 2003 and 2005. Doing that, I noticed we had forgotten an event in 2004. So after just having been working on 2004 yesterday, I had to again. It was just a few lines of text though, and some pictures, I hope it won't screw up the layout too much.

Then again my predecessor called for another correction. This time it was really minor and will not have any influence on things, but it is annoying anyway. He doesn't seem to be able to understand what a deadline is. But he isn't the only one, really. Betty, who does the layout, is really relaxed now that the end is near, without realising that there still is a lot to do and she'd better hurry. Or at least move a bit faster than her usual speed, which is about the speed of a snail with a broken hip.

I called Alexandra and said I wasn't fit for sports today. I do have a horribly sore throat and I suppose I am developing a cold, but honestly I would have been able to do some exercise had I pushed myself. Instead, I decided to do a bit more of the extra hours I need to build up my comfortable buffer of "I take a day off when I like to because I work way too much anyway".

This weekend, both Katrin and another coworker will move out of the apartments they shared with their long-time partners. The more I hear about Katrin's moving adventures, the more I wonder how she has survived to be 27. The one now is something like her fifth or sixth move in the past 9 years. All in pretty much the same town. She still hasn't sorted out the trouble with her last landlady. At the moment, she's having trouble with the current one and the mother of her ex-boyfriend. (I kid you not, this guy is over 40 but everything where money is concerned is handled by his mother.) She hasn't officially moved into the new apartment but is spending hours there cleaning what sounds like a horribly dirty kitchen. And when I told her to be sure to go through the apartment with her new landlord and make a list of all faults, she seemed very much surprised. Strange, we do that all the time with our tenants. It is the best way to give both parties a bit of security. The tenant can move out without being charged for repairs of damages he didn't cause, and the landlord can prove if a damage was caused while a certain tenant lived there.
Then there is the trouble with the money. In Germany, if you rent a place you have to pay two or three months worth of rent as "Kaution" on top of the regular rent. That way, if you leave without paying your rent at least the landlord has that, and if you leave damage behind the repair is paid out of that money. When Katrin and her ex rented that apartment together, both paid a part of the Kaution. Now Katrin moves out, but he doesn't. The easiest and cleanest way would have been if both had terminated the lease agreement and he had made a new one with the landlady. Unfortunately, only Katrin did that, so now the problem is that she still has two out of the three months of cancelation period. In this time, the landlady could theoretically ask the rent of her if the guy doesn't pay. And he could theoretically demand half of the money from her. Also, he refuses to give her back her part of the Kaution (is deposit the right word?), and she doesn't feel like argueing about it anymore. So there's about 600 Euros she loses in that, and then on top of that she's supposed to pay those last two months of half the rent.
To add to that, she leaves some of the furniture they bought together in the apartment, worth about 1000 Euros. Her ex-mother-in-law said she'd give her the money only after she's definitely moved out. Meaning if ex-MIL doesn't pay, Katrin will have no way to take some of the stuff.
We told her not to do it because it's just crazy, but I think she does it anyway.

If this is just a normal move for her (besides the breaking-up part) I don't wonder anymore that she's complaining about having no money.

The more I think about it, the more I am happy to have seen the other side of the story so much growing up. I know how landlords think, basically. And I have a pretty good idea of what they can and can't do. So hopefully, once I actually move into an apartment, I'll be better prepared for it.

I have been singing a lot of Bowie to myself lately.

Oh, and I rearranged my room. I got a shoerack and a TV stand from linnapaw and had to rearrange everything. Now I have one table sitting in a corner with a bookshelf on top of it. I need all the three bookshelves I have (though usually it's only one per person, meaning - as I have a twin room - I am supposed to have no more than two), but I don't use both tables. But I don't feel it is okay to simply throw one out or put it in an empty room like so many others do. After all, my room is a twin room, it is supposed to house two people and if I do get a roommate, she might want a table.
I need to take pictures of the new arrangement and post them. I like it, actually.

It's raining.

I'm so stupid.

wolflady26 had invited me to her place for the weekend, and we had arranged everything, but then silly me noticed it's the book fair in Leipzig that weekend, where I really should be.

So I had to overthrow everybody's schedule.
I hate that.
I have like 3 calendars, I should probably start using them. :-(

In other news - the ride down here was a bit tricky because of road conditions being simply horrible in Thuringia (I passed three accidents, Tobias later told me he had counted 16 on maybe 100 kilometres - lucky me for leaving early...), but the new car is terrific.
And it looks cool, too, despite being red.

I think I'll call it Gan, short for Ganymede. A car is always male for me. And yes, I know it's weird to name a car.

Workwise, the layout woman is driving me crazy. She's behind schedule and tells me there's no way she'll finish by the end of March, but that doesn't keep her from going on vacation for a week.
Also, they will be without computers for a week in April, and she complained about that saying it should have been done in August, when it's quiet. But she takes another vacation in May, when it's nowhere near quiet.

The captain was not happy about the vacation thing. I hope he stops it, but then she'll probably sulk and not do a thing anyway.

Anyway, it looks like I might finish my main part this week. Phew. We just calculated I've been working on this pretty much since last February or March, so I haven't been doing my real work much for over a year. Crazy.

I am dead tired.
And I've only been in the library for about fifteen minutes today!
We did another of those news shows and that took from this morning until noon. After that, we did a "Sendung mit der Maus" (for those who don't know, that's a show for kids that tells how things work - like how do the holes get in the cheese and that sort of thing) on how the news show is made.
That took until half past three. And then we did another short thing "just for fun".

It might not look like much, but it is a lot of work to do this. For me, it means smiling into the right camera at the right time, saying something probably for the fifteenth time and still sound like it's the most interesting thing I have to say, moving enough to get where I am supposed to be but not so much as to make noises that will screw up the sound, and also being nice to everybody and mediate a bit when things get tough - after you repeated a scene twelve times because the same guy made the same mistake every time, people tend to get a bit less friendly, and that's not helping, really.

Now I have a headache and I totally do not feel like going to the choir tonight, but I am carpooling and am going to be picked up by a person whose telephone number I don't have so can't tell him I'm not going.

Ugh. But that's repeating myself.

ETA: The day just got better: the new Playwitch is out. *smooches ledivinemarquis* It's lovely!

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.

I have the headache from hell.
Work sucks.
I wanna go home.
The layouter not only had yesterday afternoon off, but also today. She has not yet given me any feedback on the things I gave her last week - I doubt she's even started working on that yet.
Dammit, if this thing fails, it's not going to be my effing fault!

I'm hungry.

I skimmed the flist. If I didn't comment on an entry you think I should have commented on, nudge me.

Sorry about not being a very good reader at the moment, but it seems that right now I am always tired, no matte how much I sleep, and the more I sleep the more tired I'll be.

The staff sergeant allowed me to leave at noon on Thursday (captain is sick so couldn't say anything to that). I have the extra hours to use up for that, but it still is their decision to let me go or not, so that was cool.
Means I got home at a decent time and with not too many stupid gits on the road.

Friday Mom and I went to the funeral of our friend. It sucks that you see people only at funerals, really. I mean my godfather was there whom I last met at my confirmation, and that's what, ten years ago? And my godfather's father, the husband of the deceased friend, whom I ran into when I was shopping a few weeks back when he told me his wife was in a coma and they didn't know how things would go.
We used to live in the same house and I'd spend time at their place, and then when everybody moved out of that house, the contact totally broke off.
Life sucks.

And the service was in a effing cold church. And there was no coffin, just an urn, and personally I do not want to be burned because it sucks being carried out by a single funeral guy on something that looks a lot like a tea tray, and put into a hole in the ground that looks more like the start of an outhouse than a grave. It's just not what I want my relatives and friends to have as the last memory of me.

Saturday started with Mom and me driving to the dog training ground to the puppy play hour. Was okay, but again disgustingly cold.
After lunch, we two went to last minute choir rehersal at 3:30. Of course, the majority of the singers didn't show up until like four. Just great.
The concert started at 5, in yet another cold church. How I loove it that I know the songs better after two rehearsals than the other singers after ten at least. And how none of the so-called sopranos manages to sing a decent g.
After the concert we rushed home, changed into a few more layers of clothing and went back to the dog training ground. Set up everything for the nightly training. It's something they do every year on the last weekend of January. In the dark, dogs are very unsure and during the training, they are faced with - for them - weird things to see how they react, find out if they are aggressive or total whimnps (or both) or if they trust their owners enough to folow them to whatever scary thing there is.
So we started out with the dog being checked out like they are for shows and tests - measured, check teeth, that sort of thing. Then my Mom would hold the dog while the owner would hide behind a wall about twenty metres away, then call the dog. Some dogs apparently have much difficulties finding their owners if they don't see them. Then walk between two lines of candles. One dog blew out a candle, some were quite unsure about what this was. The go through a curtain we had put up, and towards a vacuum cleaner. That was really interesting. Most dogs were really afraid of the sound. Not so much of the "ghost" - a sheet in a tree, lit by a lamp. Then we had me - the drunk / disabled / generally weirdo. I was hiding in a bush with a weird, witchy hat and an umbrella, and would come out limping like Dracula'S servant. Then I would have to adapt to the reactions of the dog. If the dog was really scared, I'd walk normal, get rid of the umbrella (most dogs seem to be afraid of umbrellas), take of the hat, talk to them, call them and give them a treat.
After me, there was a tunnel, a wall to climb over for the older dogs and a plank to walk on for the puppies, then they had to get a toy out of a box of plastic bottles and the last was three different sorts of dog treats and the owner had to guess which one the dog would go to first.
Mom and I had planned that out since a week ago. Originally, another person was supposed to help, but she had told Mom on Tuesday she wouldn't be there, so we had to rearrange everything.

My job was it also to straighten things up after each dog, make sure the candles are still burning, switch on the vacuum cleaner again if necessary, that sort of thing.

Plus it's a lot of fun to be faces with fifteen different dogs from small mix to pure-breed Great Dane. Also, if I call a dog, talking in a soothing way, and the owner tells me he doesn't think she'll bite "once she finds out you're not wearing the training arm*" - that's really great. Also, if dogs are scared, they might attack even if they usually are the friendliest creatures on earth. So it's fun, yeah.

And it meant standing around in the cold from six until nine or so, then sit in an unheated office to figure out who has the best results. It also meant nothing to eat between lunch and nine.

When we came home, I was frozen. I took a boiling hot bath to just be able to feel my toes again.

Originally, my Mom had a meeting today, but she called in sick so at least today I can have some sort of weekend. Saturday in between everything, I had to do five loads of laundry to get my own and my brother's clothes washed and at least half-way dry - it sucks that so much can't go in the dryer, it doesn't really dry up on the attic in this sort of weather. It just freezes, it seems.

I am still totally tired. I had a strange dream that might be a fairy tale if I could just remember enough of it to write it down.
The door to my room doesn't close right. That sucks but I don't feel like asking my dad to do something about it because he anoys me just by existing, I couldn't stand communicating with him right now.

I'm done with 1994 in the school history thing. I'm getting there. I will get this done.

And here are some quizzes I got from ... people.

( I am a red Slytherin )


* the training arm is like a sleeve thing made out of a mesh fabric. It's heavily padded and for those training disciplines that involve training the dog to attack an intrudor, the helper will wear it while walking up menacingly to the dog, hitting his equally padded leather pants with a whip. The dog then has to jump at him, bite into the arm and hold on even if the helper lifts him off the ground. Means that some dogs will jump and bite at everyone with a cast...
See picture here: a helper in full gear with arm over his left arm. Pictures of that sort of training in action here.

I overslept today. Woke up at 7:35, when I was supposed to be at work at 7:10. Ugh.
Got up, dressed and was at the library by 7:40.
No breakfast, though.
Had two pieces of cake somebody brought for breakfast break and a cup of tea at nine, a prezel and a roll at twelve.
Now I am hungry. HUNGRY!

Also, it seems a large number of idiots where around today. The newspaper advertised the school history last Friday, but as we were not here end of last week, they didn't have the details, so everybody's calling us to order and knows only half of what they need to know.

To boot, I have been confronted with an amazing amount of my predecessor's weird, twisted thinking today.
But 1988 is finished. Done!
I'm getting there, I know it.

I should really work on the pictures for 1967 to 1988 before I start with 1989 though, or the layouter won't have anything to do. And she's not a fast worker, so that's not a good idea.

Apparently, somebody who has nothing to do with this whole thing offered somebody a book for free. Yeah, sure. It's just that we need another 500 orders or so before we can even afford the printing.

People here are all crazy. CRAZY, I tell you!

Speaking of crazy- linnapaw, WTF??? I listened to Weird Al Yankovic. Who IS that guy???