Spoil myself

pet talk – cat language

2009-07-19T12:21:00.001+02:00

“How cats manipulate their owners”, that’s the title of an article recently published on Spiegel Online. While it told nothing really new and the title promised more which the article did not deliver, the title was also wrong. We all know that “cats don’t have owners, they have employees”.

The article focused on the purring and meowing and that cats include some whining sounds which trigger our “someone small needs help” syndrome ;)

I’m not sure if that’s true, but it’s a fact that our cats have trained me well. Though I think that’s more through non verbal communication.

Maxi, our male cat, simply stares me into action. Whether it’s in the morning when he tries – and often succeeds – to stare me awake or in the evening, when he places himself somewhere where he can observe me and stares at me until I notice him.

Wölkchen, his sister, is completely different. Contrary to Maxi she is not constantly begging for food. She’s also a very talkative cat and has many different sounds for ordering me around. A very deep meowing though means “cradle my head, now!”

When she stares at me, it often means I did something wrong, e.g. her pillow is not on the spot on the couch, where she expects it.

Both cats have trained us to open the doors for them, why use the cat door when a human gives access to the shorter way, with less steps? ;)

Blackie is yet a different story. She can’t meow, she always chirps like a bird and that extremely loud. When she’s running around and chirping like crazy on the upper floor, she means “you forgot to refill my water”. Unless she wants to play or cuddle ;)

After all – I don’t care if there’s a scientific explanation why my cats (or pets) always know what to do to get me doing what they want me do. Each of them has their own character and we get along just fine :)

Testing the straight factor

2009-07-16T09:07:00.001+02:00

There’s a new “how hetero are you”-test that made the rounds of twitter this week. But don’t worry, it’s nothing homophobic, it’s a joke made available via Stockholm Pride. The query analyzes your twitter feed and gives out a percentage plus an evaluation of your character. But no matter the result, you’re still welcome to participate in their pride event.

I’m just baffled at how they new about my secret passion ;) Vanilla ice-cream with chocolate chips and half baked cookie dough.

62%? Way too much, there’s work to be done ;)

What’s your score?

music – interpretations and cover versions – Hallelujah!

2009-07-15T08:01:00.001+02:00

There are hundreds and hundreds of versions of “Hallelujah!” out there, some better, many worse. Even Leonhard Cohen, who wrote the original version, covered himself.

There’s no discussion that this is a wonderful song and either you perform it in the unpretentious ways of Leonhard Cohen or you need to be a terrific singer.

Annie Lennox even moved her translator to tears, when she performed this song while being in the studios of a French radio station.

Annie Lennox again, this time it looks as if this was taken from tarata

one of the best versions is – undeniably – by k.d. lang

tv-series: Chuck and others

2009-07-14T08:31:00.001+02:00

What’s the fascination about Chuck? I’ve got no idea and yet I’ve been watching it religiously since the first episode aired some weeks ago. I could do with half of the idiot characters and I don’t really get the hype about Agent Warner but I can’t wait until this evening when the next episode airs.

Yes, I’m that old fashioned (sometimes) to watch series and movies on tv. This time it helps that it runs without any commercial breaks, the torture is over soon enough.

Would I choose it over any other preferred series of mine? No. But this won’t probably ever happen cause it airs in the early evening program.

Let’s see how this one develops ;)

Btw, my first thought when I heard the title? “Why would anyone make a series about trainers?”

The Mentalist is a completely different topic. I didn’t like it - even hated it in the beginning. That has changed completely, I like it that much, that I even manage to stay awake until it’s finished.

The characters work better now and while Jane was in the center from the beginning, the others have had their time too. And Agent Lisbon is quite adorable ;)

But I seriously wouldn’t mind if the reruns of CSI stopped and we got some new episodes. What happened to all that talk about summer not being neglected by networks anymore, seems only to apply to the US and not to Europe.

The only highlight in the next weeks? Mistresses starts airing on German channel WDR this Thursday and can thus be seen via satellite almost everywhere in Europe. I only hope they didn’t synch it.

I just read that Arte will air Mistresses too, from August on. They’ll definitely stream the English audio too.

favorite music – old time favorites

2009-07-13T07:33:00.001+02:00

There is something about Cock Robin, it’s not only the songs but also those lines when both sing together, not really harmonizing but it’s got something to it. Songs like “Thought you were on my side” still give me goosebumps.

“When you heart is weak” is one of their greatest successes, don’t laugh at the video, the song is from 1985 and so is the video – high season of the eighties bad taste and fashion ;)

geek stuff – learning more about blogging

2009-07-12T12:52:00.001+02:00

I love learning new things and about them. There’s a lot of truth behind this phrase on my profile “I want to know how things work and why they work, how they work”.

There are lots of things I’ll probably never learn, among them are punctuation and proper quoting. It’s so difficult and why does every country has to have its own rules? Well, that was a rhetorical question and i don’t really care to know ;)

It’s the technical, the geeky aspects of things that spark my interest. My current adventure is “blogging”. Nothing too complicated about this, but once I’ve understood something I’m always interested in taking this to the next level.

Ever since I set up my blog with blogger I’ve been at odds with the pages “behind the front”. The editor doesn’t include a spellchecker, inserting pictures is very tedious, especially as they never go where they are supposed to go.

In the end, I started refreshing my html knowledge but also looked for offline blog editors. Word 2007 includes the possibility to directly publish to your blog, but blogger ignores the picture settings and it’s impossible to add any tags/categories.

Scribefire is a terrific Firefox addon – when it works, half of my posts just don’t get published, displaying a quite non-descriptive error message.

The I discovered the Windows Live Writer, which apparently just got into it’s first official version. Actually I don’t care, but it’s easy, have had no problems so far. It’s not that different from Scribefire, except for the live-preview. Live Writer downloads your blog settings and writing is as if you were writing directly into the design. Very nice feature.

What’s keeping me really busy though is not yet for show, but I’m hoping to move to a self-hosted blog soon. It’s already up and running, but I’m totally geeking out over all the possible designs and even more about the plugins.

I even managed – with the help of the corresponding tutorials – to install a local version on my laptop, which really helps if you want to try out templates or plugins first.

Let’s see where this will take me ;-)

treasures from the interwebs – colorful world

2009-07-10T08:51:00.001+02:00

While surfing and searching geeky stuff I came across this fantastic site call tag galaxy.

It looks quite boring when you start it but shows its geek factor soon enough. Start by entering a tag of your choice, and the software shows you (in the form of planets) what other tags are connected to your choice.

Click on any planet to add this tag to your selection, I haven’t tested the maximum of tags, it probably ends when you’ve run out of possible connections.

When you think you’re done, click on the planet in the middle and the software starts adding pictures from flickr, compliant to the selected tags, and adds them to an object shaped as a globe.

They didn’t issue a warning “Addictive”, though I think they should have.

I started out with some obvious selections like sunset, which gave me this:

Next was something for my girlfriend:

And it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you can create your own rainbow-world, by playing with the tags lgbt, pride, lesbian and others :-)

or going by colors – red, yellow, pink, orange etc.

Wonderful idea :-)

geek stuff – feeding my e-reader

2009-07-09T07:12:00.001+02:00

Once in a while or precisely once a year (i.e. not often enough) even a geek has birthday and sometimes, especially when her girlfriend knows her well enough, she’ll receive geek stuff for her birthday.

The last days I’ve been busy getting acquainted with my newest gadget, the Sony e-reader prs-505.

Installation was easy enough, but I had to start the difficult quest for acceptable reading material. Acceptable for me. Thanks to tedoe’s euRgeek column on eurOut, I already knew where to look.

The only problem was and still is that those sites have thousands of categories for real books, but only one category for their thousands of ebooks – called “ebooks”. *sigh

Then I remembered Bold Strokes Books, a fabulous source for lesbian books, who have their entire catalogue available as ebooks. It got even better once I checked some books; since my last visit they had added the format epub for the Sony e-reader.

The rest turned into a perfect Sunday spent outside, in my newly purchased hammock chair and reading away with my e-reader.

I’m sure I’ll come around and order ebooks from other bookstores too, especially the non-lesbian books, but it’s kind of difficult to browse when the selection is not broken down into further categories.

I’ll probably borrow ideas from my goodread friends :)

favorite music - duets

2009-07-08T14:00:00.001+02:00

Going through older posts, I came across a post where I had linked to video with Sarah McLachlan and Pink performing together.

This video has been unfortunately removed, but I got lucky and found another video of the same performance which I don’t want to withhold ;-)

I still think that Pink does look as she was wearing drag and she has had much better hair, too. Thankfully, this doesn’t have any influence on her singing.

Thoughts on the women's finale - Wimbledon

2009-07-07T06:41:00.002+02:00

My last post on the matches Wimbledon 2009 and I must say, I'm glad it's over. While the first post were lots of fun to write, the last one took it's time to get written.

I had seriously hoped for a three-set match, but soon after Serena won the tie-break and thus the first set, Venus crumbled and the second set was over way too soon.

I knew they were to play the doubles final later (which they won too) and though I had heard the name of their opponents once or twice throughout the tournament. This might come as a surprise to some of you, I do have a good memory of names, but need to be linked to some event.

From now on, I’ll never forget Stosur/Stubbs and will look specifically for them ;)

(Samantha Stosur)

(Rennae Stubbs)

Did you see those arms?

I also wrote another article for eurOut on this topic, exploring the gayness of Wimbledon.

Happy Birthday - ???

2009-07-05T10:14:00.002+02:00

Happy (belated) Birthday to Bettina Böttinger, with a portrait on eurout.

Happy Birthday to Amélie Mauresmo! Turning 30 today.

more Wimbledon, part II

2009-07-03T17:02:00.003+02:00

While writing the Wimbledon posts is lots of fun, watching the matches and confirming facts is a bit time consuming. That's why you get yet another blogpost about the women's singles at Wimbledon.

The finale will be on Saturday, and looking at the draw, the tableaux and recent performances it comes as no surprise that we'll get to see another all Williams finale. Read my account of the semi finale once again at eurout.org

more Wimbledon

2009-07-02T06:46:00.003+02:00

It's still Wimbledon time and for once two things come together, some matches are shown on free TV and my schedule allows for me to see them.

I'm not that much interested in the guys matches, tennis is not only a power sports - it also needs an extremely good technique, brains and a good oversight.
While DSF, a German sports broadcaster, shows the matches on Centre Court and Court 1, I prefer to watch, respectively listen to, SF2. This is a Swiss TV-station that shows every match national hero Federer is playing in, plus other top matches.

Both channels often show the same matches, but the commentators at SF2 sound more professional and give more background information, not about the private lifes of the players but about the technique and match itself.

Most interesting was their detailed dissection of Dinara Safina’s serves and why so many of them ended in faults (striking most of them blind, cause her head goes down too early)

Today are the semi-finals of the women’s singles, head over to eurOut to read my account of the quarter-finals.

Reaching the quarterfinals - Wimbledon

2009-07-01T15:45:00.003+02:00

Following up eurout's article Halftime at Wimbledon, we now take a look at the women who made it into the next round.

It was hot yesterday at and in Wimbledon, everybody complained about the heat and some players really suffered. Just like Nadia Petrova who had to seek for medical attention several times and still lost to Victoria Azarenka in the one of the two women’s matches that needed three sets.

Desperate was Ana Ivanovic who had to declare defeat in her match against Venus Williams due to an injury.

Head over to eurOut to read the entire article.

photo blog: from the garden

2009-06-30T08:05:00.000+02:00

- or playing with pol filters.

These pictures where taken the same day and while the clouds looked quite dangerous at same point and it stayed windy, the thunderstorm never came.

the marguerite waving at me ;)

Halftime at Wimbledon

2009-06-29T08:40:00.001+02:00

Serena and Venus Williams Sisters made it both safely into the 4^th round (remaining 16), just like Amélie Mauresmo who was only seeded 17^th.

Dinara Safina, who lost the finale of the French Open to Svetlana Kuznetsova, also made it safely to the fourth round. Will the current number 1 in women’s tennis pull through and win her first big tournament?

Head over to eurOut to read the entire article.

my non particular reason crush - Amelie Mauresmo

2009-06-28T09:10:00.004+02:00

Ok, I lied, there is a reason. Amélie made it to the fourth round in Wimbledon, and while you can look at pictures from recent matches - incl. some with her doubles partner Svetlana Kuznetsova, on her homepage, I wanted to share the following ones with you. I directly admit, my.shallowest.post.ever

Favorite Songs - Eurythmics with a hint of Sharleen

2009-06-27T07:35:00.001+02:00

While I was picking gooseberries and struggeling with their dangerous thorns, I had to think of the Eurythmics. I've tolerated Dave Stewart but the one I've only ever really liked of the Eurythmics, is Annie Lennox.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a good live video, which gives the song, their performance and Annies singing proper respect.
I know they must be out there, I own the DVD's.

While I was looking for a video where Annie is wearing leather pants, like in this one

- cause I had something very specific in mind. I also wrote the title of this post before I had found all the videos. So while I was looking for videos I came across this one, a performance at the Grammy Awards

The original end I had in mind for this post went like this "around that time, there was only one singer who wore leather pants as well as Annie Lennox". Now I have to end it like this

Now, Annie, Sharleen did this way better!

And a live version

June 25th – RIP

2009-06-26T07:22:00.002+02:00

June 25^th 2009 will be marked in my book (I don't have a diary or write one and this blog isn't one) as one of the weirdest days ever. I know things happened before 5pm (GMT +1 on summertime), but that's when this day turned for worse.

Natazzz informed us that news had broken on Belgium TV that tv-presenter Yasmine had died. A suicide, a measure I've never really understood but this is not the right place to engross these thoughts.

News of the death of Farrah Fawcett followed shortly afterwards. Though it didn't surprise me, I was still shocked that it happened so quickly. The news that she and her longtime partner Ryan O'Neal thought of getting married told me that they had run out of hope. That she died only a couple of days later is still a blow in the guts.

This morning, while catching up, I learned of the death of Michael Jackson. The news broke on twitter, but everybody was thoughtful and waiting for confirmation from serious sources.

They were right in doing so, cause only shortly afterwards news of the death of an actor made the rounds – this one was a hoax. How horrible is that? Playing with the emotions and empathy of people is just downright awful.

I know that Ed McMahon died too, but I've never really heard of him before. Whereas Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson accompanied my youth; before Michael went totally crazy – and sometimes even then – he made some really good, extremely awesome music.

And Farrah Fawcett – show me the lesbian who was not a fan of Charlie's Angels? I should give this some thought, if these three Angels weren't at the source of my still ongoing love for crime serious with women detectives?

treasures from the interwebs

2009-06-25T17:53:00.002+02:00

more writing, more surfing, more pictures, more findings. I found the following creations on a mexican gay site, I really want to learn how to do this!

music – interpretations and cover versions

2009-06-24T18:15:00.002+02:00

Those with a good memory will remember that I already posted the following song once, back then I didn't know how to include videos into blogposts.
And I simply don't need any reason to post videos showing Ina Müller any time ;)

or by Pink

tech talk

2009-06-23T08:56:00.002+02:00

Yesterday felt like xmas in summer.

The reason for that was not really funny and gave me a fright on Saturday and much work on Sunday. Saturday morning I realized that the NAS wasn't running, at first I wasn't that surprised cause there was a power outage on Friday evening, and because those happen frequently and sometimes repeatedly I've programmed all computers not to reboot when the power comes back.

After rebooting though the NAS still wasn't available and that's when the trouble started. The system said "no disk" and G said "oh no, where's my data?!" Most the files we need to use both were stored on that disk. The rest – pictures, movies and music where just backupped there for easier access.

The rest of the weekend turned out to be very technical. Removing HDD from NAS, inserting it into PC, understanding the file format and finding a program to make the disk readable.

I learned everything I never wanted to know about ext3 partitions but all that counts was that I was able to recover all of the data. Because those programs couldn't find any errors on the disk, but the NAS was still insisting that the disk was broken, I decided that it was in the fact the NAS that was broken and quickly got G to agree to buy a new one asap.

I found one from Linksys but a visit to their forums convinced me to wait some more time to get their newest media hub. It's very tempting, but has only been available for a couple of months and is still suffering from minor problems.

We headed out to a huge electronics store yesterday morning, and though I had in mind to get a NAS with two HDD's I settled on a model with only one (Buffalo Link Station 1 TB). Those models which allowed the installation of several HDD's didn't have the media-options. I decided to go with more functionality and need to rethink and seriously setup a backup-system for the rest of our data.

The rest of what we bought falls into the category "do you really need that?"e.g. yet another satellite receiver, a power cable for an internal SATA-disk, and many many dvd's that were on sale. Oh and a case for G's iPhone, cause the one I ordered was to be delivered around mid june. Yesterday evening I received an e-mail that it has been shipped :-)

After the exhausting shopping we both had our first Subway-Sandwich – yummy :-)

Better smoke than kiss a girl?

2009-06-22T08:10:00.004+02:00

A couple of weeks ago, on the occasion of the World No Tobacco Day on March 31^st, the European Commission launched version 2.0 of their campaign For a life without Tobacco. This campaign is scheduled to run through 2009-2010 and focuses this time primarily on young persons and young adults.

An interesting aspect of this campaign is the fact that the target group was asked to help with its development

“This campaign is being fully developed with the help and advice of the target group: both individuals and youth organizations. For example, the idea for one of the new TV spots has come directly from an Internet consultation with young people.”

I didn’t know all of this when I saw the first short-movie of this campaign. I didn’t even know that it belonged to campaign urging people to think to stop smoking or not to start at all. The first time I saw it, I was that upset, that I even didn’t remember the internet-address shown at the end.

I was too busy complaining and thinking “WTF, that’s totally homophobic!”

The campaign includes three short movies, and it’s the first one I want to mention here. You can watch all three of them on the website accompanying the campaign. The site is available in 22 languages.

“As this is an EU-wide campaign, the strategy will be fine-tuned at national or even regional levels according the cultural and social needs”

The movie shows a girl, who whenever being offered a cigarette jumps on the guy next to her to kiss him.

The last scene shows her with two other girls and when being offered a cigarette by one girl she starts turning to other girl and stops.

And the off-voice says “Nice try, Anna, but for an advice that really works, visit help-eu.com”

It’s okay for a girl to kiss boys to avoid smoking, but not to kiss girls? There must be another way to follow through with the idea of this movie.

Please leave your suggestions or other “strange” advices – as requested - on their website.

The idea behind the campaign is highly innovative and I simply can’t believe that advisors let this go through. After all this is an initiation of the European Union!

As far as this short-movie is concerned, thumbs-down from eurOut.

Originally written for and published at eurout

sunday morning musings

2009-06-21T07:48:00.002+02:00

Ever since I "moved out", Sunday mornings have been my favorite part of the week. As soon as my presence was not required anymore at the family breakfast table, I became an early riser. I don't do much; it's my personal version of celebrating slowness, my own slowup which only requires me getting up.

When I was living in apartment, I took a book and my walkman (you know the thing you needed before mp3) with me and headed out to a park.

Nowadays, whenever weather permits, I take my cup of coffee and go out onto the terrace. This morning though with only 13 C° (55 F°), which is way too cold for June, I'll prefer to have my coffee inside and watch the Sunday morning rerun of my favorite talk show with my favorite talk show host.

Then I'll be probably awake enough to start research for a new NAS; the old one crashed yesterday, but at least I was able to recover all the data on the disk.

Cu l8er

fan crush

2009-06-19T16:18:00.003+02:00

Yes, me too, I succumbed and joined the ranks of those becoming "fans" of really famous people on facebook and twitter. I don't follow everybody, especially not on twitter and especially not if those persons are dishing out a million tweets of selfpromotion a day – I am very choosy. Every day in life.

So far I've limited my eaves-dropping on the life of the rich and famous to two people – Jane Fonda and Marlee Matlin. I've even read – with great pleasure – some of Jane Fonda's recent blog posts. Barbarella goes Bionic Woman, and while you hear other people complaining and bitching Jane Fonda tweeted from Paris from the set where she was shooting a new campaign for L'Oréal and the next day she was already at the hospital preparing for her knee replacement.

Marlee Matlin's style is completely different; she mixes tweets about the daily struggles of raising kids with charming tweets about her book and regular political posts. And that's she's an advocate of gay rights is just one of her many facettes. She recently started "caption action" because Netflix doesn't think it necessary to include captions to most of their movies.

The cutest tweet of all was the following one

gotta love her for being nice!

photo blog: from the garden

2009-06-18T07:55:00.003+02:00

All of the following pictures were taken over the last days in my garden. The next jam-production is only a question of time.

While I like flowers it's this side of garden I like even more. The bushes and trees go through the biggest transition, each spring I think "Oh no, that one didn't survive the winter" and then after a struggle in March/April most of them pull through.

Blackberries, they take their time. Each year.

Black current, I love their flavor, even the leaves smell like their fruit.

Raspberry, we do have different sorts which give us fresh raspberries from June till September

Golden Raspberry, finer and sweeter than ordinary raspberries.

music – interpretations and cover versions

2009-06-17T07:45:00.000+02:00

Tarata is a french music show, with live musicians and there's always a suprise guest doing a duet with the main artist.
If you don't know this show, please check out their website, where they recently uploaded videos from the older shows, going way back til the early nineties.

I haven't bothered to look up the guy in this clip, his partner is Sharleen Spiteri and they performed "I heard it through the grapevine" in the show on November 5th, 2008.

food - making jam

2009-06-16T07:45:00.000+02:00

There are some things in the kitchen I never do and there are things I excel in but many others are afraid of. I will spare you my thoughts on the psychological and historical aspects of this. It's quite simple with me – I'm only good at making what I also like eating.

I'm not even trying to remake favorites from my childhood that never works. I've developed my own style and try to combine this with remembrances from when I was little. One of my favorite "dishes" until today remains fresh made jam on still warm bread.

The white stuff is cream cheese, I don't eat butter.

Everybody said to me "making jam is extremely complicated" and judging by samples I received from friends, I really believed them. There are many things that can go wrong, but the most common – and in my eyes the most offensive – mistaken is when the jam is almost liquid! Huh? And you give that away as a gift?

One summer, when we were drowning in raspberries and blackberries, I decided to give this a try. Like with many other things, first came the intense research and then the actual jam-making. Guess what? There's no secret in it. Simply don't try to discover your dietary conscience, i.e. don't start skimping on the sugar, follow instructions to the bone and you're good :)

My best experiences were with preserving sugar 2 plus 1, which translates into 2 parts of fruit and 1 part of sugar.

The only area where I go creative is the combination of fruit I use. In addition to those mentioned above, we also have gooseberries, black red and white current, etc. Most often I use the blackberries as basis and add whatever is available. And they go really well with all other fruit from the plum-family and with pears. Recently I added bananas (roughly one-third) which came out extremely delicious.

Now I want to have fresh bread with jam :-)

the perfect gift

2009-06-15T07:55:00.000+02:00

It's that time of the year again - girlfriend's birthday. And those of some other people too.

Presents are really important to G, coming right after birthday congratulations, they don't have to be big or expensive it's the thought that counts and she likes the unwrapping ritual. This is why I often tease her with the wrapping - creating a form that has got nothing to do with the content at all.

I always have a hard time choosing the perfect gift, also because of one rule which I always apply - I never buy anything I wouldn't buy for myself. I'll make compromises where the color is concerned but that's about it.

The most impersonal gift you can make is giving money, unless they asked specifically for it to buy something big. What I truly like are gift cards. I'm an avid Internet shopper and when you're not around me daily, chances are high that you're giving me something I already have.

And you can even vary the gift cards depending on the current needs, e.g. when my brother married I gave him gift cards from IKEA.
Then there are cities that offer them which means you can shop and pay with them in almost any store you want.

To me gift cards are not an excuse or even a sign of disinterest - next to geeky gadgets - they're my favorite gift.

2009-06-14T07:40:00.000+02:00

Last Sunday I voted for the first time in France. Not for lack of wanting to, more for lack of knowing the French system.

(digitalfrance)

Moving from one country to another is really easy when you're a European citizen. But exactly this - being a European citizen - also works in your disadvantage - everybody thinks you know how things work or are supposed to work because you're from Europe. Trust me - you don't.

When we wanted to register for the European elections in March 2004, we were told we were too late! Registration deadline was December! WTF? Germans can register up until a few weeks before; and don't need to register at all for German elections; being officially registered makes you eligible to all elections. In France you need to register for the elections, even the national ones – and you do this at the same place where you need to register when moving there - so why not combine this?

And while I'm on this topic, where is the logic of allowing me to vote in regional but not in national elections? Why force me to vote in an electoral district I’ve only lived for 16 months before leaving for France? Bite me!

But back to last Sunday. Sunday? Why not Thursday? Like the Dutch or British?

Ok, ok – back to last Sunday.

Before heading out, I made sure that we had both our passports and election cards (as in I was carrying them) with us and checked the address in Google Maps. Google Maps wasn’t accurate, telling me a/the distance was 700 meters while being 400 meters max. and b/to turn left where we had to turn right.

We still made it though :-) There was a guy checking the cards and while handing our cards over to him, I said that we needed his help, because we didn’t know how the process was in France. Ok – so I lied – a bit, I didn’t want to believe what my girlfriend had told me.

The guy saw the cards “oh, européennes, c’est compliqué” (Europeans, that’s complicated) and went onto explaining; the only complicated part was that he needed to see our passports, that was it. He patiently explained how to proceed and when I turned to G asking her in German “did you get all of this?” he explained all again in German.

There was a table with all the flyers of the parties participating in this election. You were to take one or more of them with you into the cabin. There you had to fold the flyer of the party you wanted to cast your vote for into a teeny tiny envelope and put it into the ballot-box.

Did I mention the only people in that room were us, the people helping with the election and an older citizen who came in shortly after us and who had refused my offer to pass in front of us? Nevertheless I almost choked when guy #1 called to his colleague down the hall “eh Jean-Luc, voici deux européennes qui n’ont jamais voté en France” (hey Jean-Luc, here are two Europeans who’ve never before voted in France) and that he should help us with any questions we had.

Because I knew which party I wanted to vote for, I only took one flyer with me. G said, we should have taken flyers from the other parties too, now everybody knows what we voted. Everybody = 5 people ;)

The ballot box had a counter which is how I knew we were voters #20 and #21. Before putting the envelope in the box though, we had to sign a list and our still virgin election cards received their first stamp.

I’m quite happy, yet still surprised, that the party I voted for (an alliance of several parties called Europe Écologie) came in second place in my town and even in my department. The turnout was extremely deceiving with only 32% (national turnout was 40%)

Looking at the detailed results, there’s one thing confusing me – if we were only to put in those flyers into the envelopes and the cabins didn’t provide any pencils, how is it possible that some voters voted specifically for a certain person?

As I learned via Facebook that other election offices were providing electronic devices for voting, I’m sure the procedure will have completely changed until the next election.

All I’m waiting for is access to detailed figures from all countries to get really geeky with statistics :)

Originally posted on eurOut.

Stupidity – and the award goes to…

2009-06-13T07:44:00.001+02:00

Monday I had – judged by my standards – a really nice shopping trip. Except for that occasion when I wanted to buy a gift-card for ITunes. You might wonder what's so difficult about that? We were in Germany and the card was for a Swiss friend. I asked the guy if I could use this card in any ITunes-shop in any country and he said "Why not? It's via internet, isn't it?"

Uh – working 10 km from the border to France or Switzerland and not knowing…anyway – I breathed deeply and told him calmly that it's impossible to buy from the US-Store which somehow got through to him. Simultaneously we started reading the back of the card where it said "only to be used with German ITunes-Store". Bugger. At least – besides being a dork - he had tried to help.

Tuesday morning we made a quick dash to Switzerland, in hope of getting that gift-card. We started by adding more dvd's to our collection. Then G asked an employee who was busy sorting dvd's "We're looking for the ITunes card. Do you have them here?" – We were in the entertainment section, after all. This woman responded, with a voice sounding slightly slurred "No, I don't know what you mean. Cards? You should head over to the computer department. They will be able to help you". She repeated this about four times and grew louder each time. G and I fled as fast as we could; this situation had a wee dose of surrealism ;)

This was by far the most stupid person I've encountered in a long time.

We ignored the advice and headed to the checkouts where we found the gift-cards right away.

Treasures from the interwebs

2009-06-12T07:41:00.000+02:00

There are days, when I spent more time finding the right pictures for my eurout articles than writing them. And sometimes I find pictures or graphics that attract me, but still don't fit the article. Just like the following one:

No, this is not a rainbow in the wrong order. The colors symbolize the voting districts France is divided into. I came across this while researching pictures for the European Election.

I honestly wish I had some talents in drawing, I'd love to have this one in rainbow-order. It even would look great without the ballot-box and envelopes. :)

Photoblog – from the garden

2009-06-11T06:44:00.004+02:00

Did I mention I like taking pictures? Just in case I didn't until now – I really like taking pictures :) I'm also interested in learning more of the technical aspects of photography or specifically my camera and fear at the same time of loosing "my eye" more motives.

These are some pictures I recently took in the garden and the last one pictures the security guard ;)

(dahlias)

(sage)

(nature in action)

(security guard)

Pictures are mine.

European Elections 2009 - The Aftermath

2009-06-10T07:36:00.000+02:00

Did you vote last Sunday? If you were eligible and didn’t – why?

I did, together with my girlfriend and we were voters number 20 and 21, at 9 in the morning. At the occasion or to be precise, after leaving the polling station, we finally found the campaign posters. No wonder I hadn’t seen them before, they were facing the parking and not the street, as if somebody was ashamed showing them.

But I wouldn’t say this was the main reason the turnout for this election was the lowest ever, with 43,1% (provisional as of June 9^th, 11:04 CEST)

Chart – turnout per country.

No, the results, though different from country to country, show one similarity – only parties who concentrated on European topics were able to mobilize new voters. When you look at the outgoing Parliament, there’s only one party that gained votes in this election, the Greens

(Results are still provisional and will only be confirmed on July 15^th)

(Screenshot from data provided on June 9^th, 13:31 CEST, original chart can be found here)

Unfortunately they didn’t gain all the votes the other parties lost, as always the non-voting lead to the fact that splintergroups gained largely in this election, most of them attributed to the far right. And these parties based their campaigns on being against Europe, which is a logic I don’t really understand

The big loser is the socialist camp which was disciplined by its voters in more than one country (not only Germany).

This election showed once again, protest voting or refusing to vote out of protest against the current government will make room for extremist parties.

I’d like to give you an in depth view of the results, but so far we only have the bare results compiled by several sites, e.g. BBC, and analyses by countries themselves, i.e. not really accessible to me. If you don’t know which European party represents the one you voted, here’s a good explanation of the coalitions.

The new Parliament will get together for its first session on July 14^th in Strasbourg. At the same occasion the fate of the current President will be sealed.

Originally published on and written for eurout.org

pet talk - who are you?

2009-06-09T08:51:00.003+02:00

This happened about two weeks ago. I looked outside the window and couldn't believe my eyes.
So, who are you?
My garden, but not my cat. And it got even stranger:

Maxi wasn't lying that far away and he didn't move a muscle.

Actually, the stranger is quite cute and even bold. He looked right into the camera. And I'm sure about him being a he ;)

european election 2009

2009-06-06T08:07:00.002+02:00

Only the better part of two days and we will know the results. And while I liked discovering so many new things, mostly because of being the political editor at eurOut.org, I will be relieved when political life won't be dominated by the Elections anymore.

I admit, mostly it was my own fault. Apparently politicians believe that it's sufficient to reach out to voters 2 or 3 weeks before the elections? What about all those voters using "vote by mail"? Don't they have the right nor need to be informed too?

Thanks to Facebook and twitter I probably got more than the normal share of campaigning information, some sources proved very valuable and I'll keep following them.

The other part I cannot really grasp is why is everything different in France? All other countries have one national list; the French have 4 or 5 lists for the bigger regions. And it's so complicated to get information. There hasn't been a single poster in my community. Wednesday my girlfriend received material by mail and mine arrived yesterday! How am I supposed to build an opinion in such a short time frame?

Oh and the postage was paid, something on the letter says it's been sent from the mayor's office. Does this mean my tax money is being used to send material for parties whose names I refuse to write?

Thanks to the campaigns by D66, GroenLinks and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen I learned enough of the campaigns and have known for quite some time who will get my vote.

Tomorrow I'll make my first voting experience in France; I only hope I don't mess up ;)

favorite songs

2009-06-05T10:55:00.003+02:00

Still working on my mix tape and rediscovering some of my favorite songs and albums from back then. So why not share with you?

Favorite food - coffee

2009-06-04T15:14:00.003+02:00

Coffee is my elixir. If I don't get my morning coffee, or if I get bad coffee my day (and subsequently yours) will be hell.
I'm not even that picky, I like strong, short and long variants, with or without milk - it all depends on how it's been prepared.

The only coffee I don't like is that kind that tastes bitter, as if it had been reheated several times. Yikes- not even milk and sugar can save this.

I start most mornings with one or two pots prepared in a Bodum coffeemaker.

Later in the day I'll use Nespresso capsules or sometimes my Philips gourmet cafétiere. This machine uses filters and grounded coffee, the big difference is that the entire load of water is boiled in the reservoir and then pushed through the coffee powder very quickly. This gives you a coffee of intense aroma and - just like espresso - less caffeine.

As much as I love Nespresso coffee, I find it mighty inconvenient that I either have to visit a special Nespresso shop or order it online (which I'll end up doing most times).

Then recently, while shopping coffee for the Philips machine in an ordinary supermarket, I came upon the vast selection of blends for Senseo-machines. Back at home I started the project of convincing G that we needed to get a Senseo machine next. I was quickly successful, but we decided to wait until the Nespresso machine had to be replaced.

Until….we went shopping this week and among the remainders of Mother's day (like so many other things, the French do this their own way, not when the rest of the whole is celebrating) there were Senseo-machines for an incredible low price.

So now we're owners of a Senseo and busy tasting our way through coffee blends.

Tanita Tikaram wrote a song "The cappuccino song" which is featured on the album "The cappuccino songs", unfortunately I couldn't find a video for this song, so you have to contend yourself with an excerpt on last.fm

Oh, and I also love to read books about coffee, or women running coffee shops ;)

Music of the nineties

2009-06-03T07:56:00.001+02:00

Blame faith (faithfulchosen) and her nineties radio program at crossradio for this post. Her call for "requests ?" made me instantly think of Elastica and of my Brit-pop/Brit-grunge phase. These groups lay the grounds for many that came afterwards and one thing they almost all had in common was that they wrote their own material. There was an unusual rise in bands with female leaders, "leader" in its literal sense and not just as a pretty face.

Very spontaneously I suggested to make a mix tape for Natazzz, (there's something with eurOut, eurOut editors and mix tapes which needs to explored – but by somebody else than me) based on British albums from the nineties – out of my album collection.

First I had to import the albums to my media library and get reacquainted with them. I'm regularly surprised at the wondrous workings of my brain – can't remember where I placed a paper but remember the lyrics to songs I last heard 15 years ago.

Another surprise was me realizing that I do own more than two albums by guys and that while I was only looking for albums from the UK. My music collection is very eclectic but I've always preferred listening to women's voices. I found albums by Blur, Edwyn Collins, Radiohead, Supergrass, Suede and Prefab Sprout.

So far I've re-listened to Elastica, some Echobelly songs, Sleeper, Lush, Blur – well I own more than one album of each group ;) And I already know my next mix tape – American grunge from the nineties ;) Though I first need to finish this one.

I vividly remember the Elastica and Echobelly concerts. Echobelly's bass player was a lesbian (Debbie) and the venue they played was really, really small – after all it's was called "the world's couch", it was like any lesbian party, only with a live band playing. *g

I'll leave you with a typical song from that time:

favorite language

2009-06-02T07:09:00.002+02:00

A couple of days ago there was this poll on facebook about your favorite language. Mind you, there were only five choices but the selection included some of the language I speak.

English, French, Spanish, German and Latin.

I took Latin back at school and hated it. I only wished I had come across Rita Mae Brown's "Starting from Scratch" earlier; I'm sure those classes would have been more fun.

German is my native language and I've lived in many different regions in Germany and sometimes hate how certain dialects but also groups of people butcher this language. It's not the most romantic language and it doesn't sound sexy when spoken, but it gives you so many possibilities with the times and nuances that I don't really understand why people would voluntarily reduce these possibilities.

English is a different matter; I learned this language at school, like most Europeans. I'm still regularly surprised when I meet people with five and more years of English classes, who are not able to speak the language.

I admire the Dutch and Scandinavians cause all I've ever met with those nationalities mastered this language to a level I'll probably never will.

And still I chose to write most of my blog posts in English, to the dismay of some (sorry, I'll try to write more in German in the future). I started reading books in English when I was about 16, discovered English tv-channels at about the same time – thanks to a satellite dish and listened for a long time exclusively to music with English lyrics.

So what's my favorite language? I'd love to speak Spanish, started this some years ago but never got far due to lack of time. Apparently I got the basics right – this might also be related to the despised Latin – cause I do understand bits and pieces of it, especially when written or when spoken by my brother-in-law (though that's a mix of Spanish and Catalan)

Surprise, surprise, it's French. I loved the language already before I was able to speak it - only some more years and I will have spent more years of my life in France than in Germany. There are many different dialects as well, not all of them sound nice to my ears and yet I still love this language.

I didn't have the best education at school, too much about using the right vocabulary and grammar, but once I got over this, I really had fun speaking this language. And the French didn't mind mistakes – ok, they were a special crowd and I sometimes felt as their mascot but those were great times.

French is very melodious, no matter from which region the speaker comes. They have preserved their origins by some harsh rules (specific amount of French songs on radio, etc.), but it's only done them good. The language is always related to a certain "savoir vivre" and "joie de vivre" and even though I hate writing the language, French is my favorite language.

And I love Paris, but that's a different post. This picture was taken in the Jardin des Tuileries (that's the park attached to the Louvre), looking onto the Place de la Concorde and the Tour Eiffel in the background.

Food: it’s all about….

2009-06-01T07:46:00.004+02:00

The colors? The preparation? The taste?

For me it's about all of that together, though I like the combination of contradicting flavors and colors are equally important, read more about his in my previous post My obsession with food and it's colors.

While cleaning up my iphone's photo cache I stumbled upon many, as in tons of, pictures of fruit salads. I do eat other things, but fruit salads seem to combine the best color compositions.

Don't you think so?

And my favorite picture:

There's some other use for strawberries, as demonstrated in the following pictures

And the finished product ;)

This is not a clafoutis, just in case you were wondering – I simply used a special pudding for baking.

And the last picture for today

Can you guess what this is, or better, going to be?

All pictures are mine, and except for the last one taken with my iPhone. The last picture was taken with a Canon Powershot S3 IS.

music – interpretations and covers

2009-05-31T11:57:00.000+02:00

There are many great songs out there and even before our days there have been some great singers too. Many of those songs are a reflection of their time and some of the greatest songs suffer from the same deficit, at least in my eyes, which is that female singers were not allowed to "belt out" the songs, the vocals sound suppressed.

Sometimes we're lucky enough that those singers interpret their own songs differently, when they're still performing or still alive. And sometimes new singers come along who still have that raw notion in their voice and songs that sounded "clean" before suddenly give me goose bumps.

Let me start with "River Deep, Mountain High", which I first heard on Sandra Bernhards ""Without you I'm nothing", then I was lucky enough to zap into a screening of Annie Lennox' famous concert at the Montreux Festival. There's this series of EP's "Cold" "Colder" "Coldest" that include some of those live-songs, unfortunately they've been unavailable for a long time.

It's only much later, after having seen the movie "Tina" (with Angela Bassett) that I realized that the original version was by Tina Turner.
And here we go again, the original recording was "nice", but later live-performances of that song are "stunning".

Listen and watch for yourselves.

Pet talk - Blacky

2009-05-30T07:55:00.002+02:00

My first pet talk was mainly about Maxi and Wölkchen, this time I'll concentrate on Blacky.

Blackie isn't entirely black, her belly and chin are white and she wears white socks - in different lengths.
She's a year younger than the other two and only half their size (and weight), she's a Swiss export and we often joke that this is the reason why she's so small. On the other hand she just might be a normal size and the other two huge.

Blacky has been very shy from the beginning and she instantly claimed me as her mother. She was already 4 or 5 months old when we got her, but really small, she was small enough to nestle in the crook of my arm. She's grown since then, though new cats seem to think she's part of the neighborhoods cat kindergarten. Each spring she's followed by a new playmate;) At least until about three years ago.

Suddenly one winter this cat decided to turn into a housecat. She still loves to lie on the window sills but she hasn't been outside once this spring.
Since we renovated my office (which doubles as the guestroom) and put in a roof window in the process, Blacky hardly ever leaves the room, she's claimed it as her own:) She follows the sunlight and changes places often enough to have her belly warmed by it. When I leave the house or come back she sits at the window and observes me. When I'm at my desk writing she wants to sleep in my left arm. She's the cat to sleep under and not on the covers ;) and she must try everything I eat, she's especially fond of fresh cheese and Häagen-Dazs ice-cream.

Trying to get her into the carrier needs a strategic approach. I have to act as if I was settling in, cause if I stay in my outofthehouse-wear she always seems to know what's up and disappears in the farthest corner under the couch or bed. I've got to surprise her, wrap her tight on a towel and get her into the carrier quickly. There's no other way to fit her through the opening, she stretches all four legs as far as possible and has scratched me with her tiny sharp knife claws more than once, and shredded more than one t-shirt, incl. my favorite (and only) Cowboy Junkies t-shirt.

Friends call her the phantom cat; they don't believe that she exists, as she is always hiding. The pictures are proof enough :)

action movies

2009-05-29T19:15:00.003+02:00

I confess I'm really into action movies. It's not always been like that but watching Speed, Stargate and Terminator 2 on the biggest screens in Europe (Le grand Rex, Gaumont Italie and UGC Normandie) completely changed my viewing style.

Speed was a revelation and I often said it felt liking having watched three movies in one. I'd never seen any movie like this one before, it was also one of the first action movies where a woman was displayed as the hero.

What I like in action movies is the combination of muscles and brains; I don't need blood and many dead people. Choreography of martial arts fights are way more interesting. You're right I own both Tomb Raider movies on DVD. Movies like Mission Impossible also attract me in a strange way - I loved the series and the movies found a great way to combine geekdom with action :)

That's probably the same reason why I liked the Indiana Jones movies and the more recent National Treasure.

Looking back though, it looks as if I had a thing for movies with tough women? Why not!

Movies and tv-shows – my „un“favorites

2009-05-26T07:49:00.002+02:00

Let's first establish the fact that I love movies and watching them. There are just some I will never watch and even if they were the only movie left;) Not only am I known to not being a romantic person, what I really despise are romantic movies. Especially those that tell no other story that of straight-love. Ugh.

My favorite hate-movie is Titanic. I know, there's the story about Titanic, the crew, the passengers, the fight for life – and Celine Dion. I can't remember when that or what happened, I guess I even sort of liked her at some point, but at some point her music started sounding sterile, without soul, you could physically hear how much the production of the album had cost through the songs – I don't even change channels when she comes on, I switch off.

Then there are those movies that won every possible award or those who were a major success at the box-office and I can't even stand to sit through until their end. To mention just a few: Chicago (only one song for Queen Latifah?) and No Country for Old Men (too bloody). We didn't finish I am Legend (though the sound was really great) or Volver (too overwrought). The Departed was ok, except for the ending. Was that really necessary?

As for tv-shows I try to stay away from every story that is not finished within 45 mins. Translated this means, I like crime series because most of the episodes can be watched as standalone episodes. My most hated tv-shows therefore are soaps, even more the daily soaps.

So this is the point where I have to confess that – yes – I have never seen a single episode of The L Word. Do you like me less because of this? When it finally arrived on German television, it was buried late in the night, starting at 11 pm, which is really hard to stay awake when you get up at 5 am. Then I tried DVD, I own 4 complete seasons and never got around to watching them. This being more or less a soap, I always found other series I had to watch first. By now I know that I missed some cool ladies, though I probably would have stopped watching when Erin Daniels left the show, from the few things I know, she would have been my favorite woman on that show.

Posting this pic so you know, that I know what I'm talking about ;)

watching tv-series

2009-05-25T07:08:00.004+02:00

Apparently I was mistaken; they're still showing new episodes of NCIS. Yesterday's episode didn't pick up the open threads from the episode before, but next week is the last new (s06e14) – followed by reruns until forever probably. I've really liked this season so far and wonder what kind of secret they'll be digging up about the new director – there's something going on, hints have been placed all over the episodes. As long as Ziva stays on and has some good moments….*cough, I don't care.

I hope that ZDF will start airing new stuff in their Sunday-Night-Crime-Slot, waiting anxiously for Wire in the Blood and Waking the Dead. I know, I never mentioned Waking the Dead before, it's another British show, in film length and shows the work of a Cold Case Unit, involving some really awesome forensics and a psychiatrist. British detectives, a least the "SI"'s apparently need to be grumpy, which is also the case in the show, he's still likeable – sort of. Guess that's because the role and influence of the psychiatrist on the team is such a strong character.

Sue Johnston

These two left after the last season, the detective was killed in the last episode and I don't know what happened to the forensic's specialist.

Claire Goose

Holly Aird

I already checked, this week we'll finally have a new episode of Numb3rs, all those interruptions by soccer matches seem to be over :)

pet talk - visiting the vet

2009-05-23T21:05:00.003+02:00

This being the first post of - hopefully- a series of posts, I'll start with some background information.

I am a dog person but I firmly believe that you shouldn't own a dog when you're gone ten or more hours each day. That's why we got cats - yes two at once. We wanted them to stay inside and everybody tells you if you don't want to redecorate every six months better get two of them. So we got two, sister and brother.
They were already nine months old when we got them, somebody working in the same company as g and the funny thing is that their mother was a kitten of g's late cat.

The cats' characters were totally different from what they had told us, but except for their dislike to travel by car they changed in positive ways. They were cute which each other, sleeping together in the same basket, grooming each other and so on. This changed because nowadays the two hate each other ;) Being eleven years old though they're starting to mellow again. They didn't stay indoors for long. Neighbors' cat Elliot started teasing them by parading on our terrace while the cats where inside trying to get through the windowpanes. Soon it became impossible to keep them inside and after both had jumped out of the window on the first floor we installed a cat flap in one of the basement windows.
Even when we moved we didn't manage to make them stay inside for more than two days ;)

Back to the point
Trips to the vet always put a strain on my patience. Not only that at least one them manages to get injured before we go on vacation - no once I even had to go to the emergency on xmas eve. When I want to put Maxi in the box, I need to put on protective gear (thick winter jacket and gloves). Wölkchen is easier, especially when she's currently in pain she almost walks in on her own.

Getting Blacky (yes, there is a third cat, nicknamed the phantom by friends and Madame Rapide by the vet) is a different story altogether which will be tackled in a different post.

Wölkchen suffers from arthritis in the hip-joints (longtime result of an accident) and we've tried different treatments but about two times a year she seems to need a shot. I don't know how that happens or why, but sometimes it just gets worse from minute to the other (yes - I already considered that she might be putting on an act). Thursday morning she was ok, I even saw her jump up on a bank and Thursday evening she was limping extremely and almost didn't make it up onto the couch. There wasn't much improvement on Friday, so we started on another adventure to vet.

From the moment I put her into the box she didn't stop crying. Or shouting. Or screaming. Or singing. Sometimes she even speaks. In German, dialect unknown – "dooolll" (great). She didn't stop when we got to the vet, nor in the waiting room. I was lucky that the three dogs that were already there (Golden Retriever, ChowChow and a young Lab) were quite well behaved, though the Lab had a crush on the Retriever ;) At some point she got tired of crying and went to sleep. Inside the vets room she didn't want to get out of her box, but that's not uncommon with cats. When I wanted to demonstrate her limp, there was almost nothing to be seen. Well she was more crouching than walking, but it still looked better than at home. As she is no stranger to this vet, she (the vet) knew how to treat her and what to check to get the real diagnosis. Warm, summer days – like those we're having currently – normally ease the pain and don't worsen it. So there was still to be found out, if she was in a fight, had hurt her leg or if she was having an untypical pain attack. It turned out to be the latter.

Onto the balance (13 pounds, if you're curious) and then Wölkchen decided it was enough already and hid in a corner. Growled like a tiger when I tried to get her, and I know when that cat threatens me. I asked the vet for a broom, but she called the assistant to a/get the BIG gloves and b/get that cat onto the table and c/hold her while she gets the injections. At least the cat is now up-to-date on her shots too ;) And she already moves better, tried to kill her scratching post twice this morning.

Wölkchen is such an elegant cat, sometimes there is a delicate, aristocratic air about her, she isn't one to jump on your lap, no she cuddles up next to you and then lays her head on your arm or leg. And then at the vet, she's the most unfriendly cat everybody's ever met. The vet calls her the "bad mood cat" ;)

She's just a cat, a typical cat with her own mind and who plays humans like a piano ;-)

photo blog: alien?

2009-05-22T09:37:00.004+02:00

From my garden

Isn't there a striking resemblance to alien? The dark red one is called Akelei (Aquilegia vulgaris)

pictures are mine

typical

2009-05-21T15:10:00.002+02:00

That's so typical for you - is what my girlfriend said after my latest adventure. What outrageous crimes did I commit? Nothing extraordinary just the typical stuff. This time it required a trip to Mulhouse to the Sous-Préfecture (sous as in under and not money).
Last year I bought a new car and with the border being so close and this being the European Union, I bought my car in Germany. I didn't even save money on this, the reasons for this decision lay elsewhere. E.g. Alsace is the region of Peugeot and whenever I tried to buy a car in France there was something wrong, crying foul.
And the next dealer for Toyotas is in Mulhouse which is not that far but it involves stress and going into districts I don't really like. The German dealer is even closer and we've only heard positive stories about him.
Plus they employ somebody who does all the necessary administrative walks on the French side.

Long prologue but I'm coming to the point.
One of Sarkozy's first moves was to introduce a new tax "Eco tax" (seriously I don't know why it's called like that, this should be applied to older and not to brand new cars).
Apparently, that's what they told me, its amount is tax-deductable. Beginning of May and the tax forms finally arrived - what I couldn't find is the paper for that Eco-tax. When I called my car dealer they told me that I had to go to the prefecture to get another copy.

G insisted to come with me and also strongly suggested going Tuesday whereas I had wanted to wait until Thursday or Friday. Guess what had slipped my mind? Thursday is a holiday and besides Easter and Xmas one of the few, which is a day off not only in Germany but in France too.
I gave in and we went yesterday. I had looked up the opening hours on the Internet but it didn't even cross my mind to check the address nor the route.
Last time I went to Mulhouse was before the tram era. Some things still looked familiar but I admit I had my doubts when directions lead us a new way.

I've got quite a good sense for directions and my gut told me to go slightly left but they (directions) were taking us right and even further.
In the end we arrived after having gone half circle.
A parking spot was easily found, in the doorway I remembered that I had forgotten an important paper and had to go back to car. Back at the Préfecture they were sticking a note that they would be closed this Friday!

G had already taken a number and there were about a million numbers between ours and the last one called. So I did the only totally untypical thing in this affair and went to the reception desk and asked. Besides the fact that I couldn't remember the proper word for taxes I was talking about (impôts des revenues) this went smoothly. The guy didn't know what I was talking about, asked me if I had my carte grise with me and showed me a field on it, which said that this tax had been paid and even which amount. He was unaware that this was deductible from the taxes, which I ignored - after all this was the Préfecture and not la Trésorerie ;)

Don't ask what G things of this unnecessary trip. She had me stop at a nursery on our way home where we bought some tomatoes and herb plants for our garden.

Taxes will be finished this weekend, they're due end of next week. If you think that I'm late you're wrong we always have to wait until the forms are delivered which also state the due date.
Not my favorite task though.

And tell me again – why do I have a mobilephone with GPS?

Technical: playing around with blogger-templates

2009-05-19T08:22:00.000+02:00

I'm not really happy with this blog's template, also because I have some technical problems with some of the widgets, e.g. the eurout-logo is actually animated and I've got no idea why it's not animated on my blog.

I'll be fooling around with some templates, which won't affect this blog, as I created a test blog for especially this reason.
Finding a template which works with blogger and suits me personally is not as easy, e.g. I really care about the right colors and am looking for something which is easy on the eyes, incl. not having to read black on white.

Currently I'm favoring this one http://testingspoilmyself.blogspot.com/

Feel free to leave comment with this post and thanks in advance :-)

Eurovision - my thoughts

2009-05-19T08:00:00.000+02:00

It's over - finally - the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) that is. And those who still thought this was about the best song or the best singer will perhaps finally change their minds.

I feel sorry for France, Israel and Sweden, cause their singers were the best.

Israel - Eurovision Song Contest 2009 Semi Final 1 - BBC Three (Final Place 16th)

France made the 8th place and from what I read, this is the best French result in years and Patricia Kaas also attracted more viewers than before which is why France calls this year's participation a succes. The Swedish song took a different a different approach, but why not try something else when copying old songs (like some do) doesn't bring the expected success?
What I don't get are those disco beats and oompa oompa is not really my kind of music. So it will forever stay a mystery to me how Finland made it into the final and came in last, whereas Andorra did not (btw, the singer is originally from Denmark).

Eurovision 2009 Andorra - Susanne Georgi

or why didn't Ireland survive the semi-final?

Ireland: Sinead Mulvey & Black Daisy - Et Cetera

It's a good sign for the quality of the entries that Iceland came in second.

Yohanna - Is It True (Iceland) (Final 2nd Place)

And did you take notice that most of the points where attributed to the first six entries? How do you define a middle field, when the ninth place was the last to get more than 100 points? In my eyes people saying that germany's result was better than last year didn't look at the points.

Honestly I don't care, what I care about is that Norway will host the next ESC, which is one of best news in years. And it doesn't hurt at all that Norway is one of Europe's gay-friendliest countries :-)

I kept the best song of the entire contest for the end, Estonia - the secret winners.

Sandra Nurmsalu & Urban Symphony - Rändajad Estonia (Final Place 6th)

Watching TV-series

2009-05-18T18:06:00.003+02:00

I started this morning wanting to write about ESC (Eurovision Song Contest) when I made the mistake of looking into my tv-recordings folder. Instead I started the day by watching some tv-series, I had started watching most of them but fell asleep shortly before the end. Not because they were boring, but because I didn't care to zap during the commercial breaks, which is something that puts me to sleep regularly. I lower the volume and off to the dreamland I am.

When channels started to air new episodes some weeks ago, I seriously intended to blog about them every week. I quickly grew tired of this, there was nothing really interesting report and I refuse to simply summarize the episodes. What upsets me though is that airing of Numb3rs has been interrupted for the sake of live-soccer-matches; they showed reruns only for the last weeks. Not much fun.

And now the "new episode season" seems to be already over. CSI Miami stopped in the middle of the season, CSI Las Vegas apparently too, Law & Order New York (SVU) ended last week, Criminal Intent reruns have been going for weeks and apparently NCIS also stopped yesterday and none of the last episodes were a season-finale episode.

That leaves us with new episodes for The Mentalist - a show which I didn't like in the beginning but I'm slowly taking too, Fringe - a show I loved from Day One, Bones - no need to say anything about if you follow me on twitter (I love it) and Life.

I've really come to appreciate sidereel, which introduced me to Lie to me, a show I like just as much as Fringe.

I always seem to forget to mention Cold Case, a show I truly like for the stories. I'm missing Criminal Minds, The Closer and Without a Trace. There are still some unaired episodes of Wire in the Blood, and despite this being a series I more think of the episodes as movies because of their length. And of Simone Lahbib.

Video of the Day: IDAHO 2009

2009-05-17T07:54:00.002+02:00

The site organizing the IDAHO 2009 challenge suffered from a DDOS attack on Friday, which was a clear homophobic attack. Unfortunately they were not the only gay-site and I sincerely hope that all sites are back online again and that all of them have the means to find the culprits and file complaints against them.

International Day Against Homophobia (May 17th)

2009-05-15T15:47:00.000+02:00

I have to admit, I ignored mentions about this for several weeks, just because it was about IDAHO, took me some time to understand that this was not about some state in the US, but simply an acronym.

The International Day Against Homophobia goes back to an idea of Louis-George Tin, today the president of ILGA's French section. May 17^th was chosen as the date to coordinate international activities against homophobia as it was on May 17^th, 1990, that WHO removed homosexuality from the International Classification of Diseases. What started in 2005 with only a small group of countries participating evolved into a day with activities in over 50 countries worldwide. For a full list of the countries and detailed description of the objectives of this day, please read the according ILGA document Taking Action!.

This year, in 2009, the name was changed to "International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia", though everybody keeps referring to IDAHO.

Following the lobby work of the Spanish national federation FEGLTB the Spanish Parliament asked the Government on May 5^th to officially recognize May 17^th as the "International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia" (hat tip @ ana)

Organizations offer or participate in a wide range of activities and this year's May 17^th being a Sunday will probably/hopefully attract even more participants. It's impossible to mention all of them, you don't even find an exhaustive list on the official page, so I'll just give you an overview on the diversity of events and actions.

Another great site is this Canadian one : http://www.homophobie.org, which also provides you with promotional banners

You probably all heard about the IDAHO Challenge, which asks you to create a video and submit with the site by May 10^th (eurOut reported).

If you're in or around Berlin that day, you might check out a rally and symposium organized by LSVD (German Lesbian and Gay Association) referring to their ongoing campaign to include lesbian and gay persons in the German constitution (eurOut reported).

Also in Berlin, you can participate in the "protect every kiss 2009" event

Some pride events coincide with the International Day Against Homophobia, as e.g. in Blackpool or the Belgian Lesbian & Gay Pride in Bruxelles.

There are definitely many more events, are you participating in any these? What do you think of this idea?

This article was originally written for and published at eurOut.

photo blog: tough day for Maxi -

2009-05-14T08:12:00.000+02:00

no comment ;)

My „no particular reason“ crush – Marie Labory

2009-05-13T12:33:00.004+02:00

Marie Labory is a French TV journalist who has worked for ARTE Culture, hosting the shows alternating with Annette Gerlach for the last couple of years. The first time I saw on her tv I thought "well if she Is not a lesbian then I don't know who else is";)

Internet resources didn't deliver the expected results and trust me, normally I'm really good at digging. Ok I found out that she had worked for the gay channel pink tv, that was a hint but no proof. There's a certain type of women who appeal to the gay community and who therefore work for gay programs, events, magazines because they are successful at their jobs and not because of their sexual orientation.

Imagine my surprise and joy at finding an article on the French site têtu, confirming my hopes. Apparently she's been out forever :)

The article is about her being the only out female journalist and - here's the actuality angle - today's starting Festival de Cannes and how arte's daily show tries to be different from the others, e.g. Canal +. They're allocating the same space to all three sections of the festival, so we're going to learn more about the movies running at Un Certain Regard.
Looking forward to getting my daily movie dose presented by Marie Labory :-)

Official trailer at ARTE, looks like fun.

First guest will be Isabelle Huppert, president of this year's jury.

Love is gay

2009-05-13T07:43:00.000+02:00

Love is gay? But what's the news in this? In this case, I took some liberties with translation. I don't know what was originally said respectively written, according to a German translation the Russian participant for the Eurovision Contest Anastasia Prikhodko
gave this as an answer in an email when asked about supporting Slavic Pride. The literal translation would have been "love is colorful" but "love is gay" fits so much better.

According to some fan blogs some of the participants are gay (I don't know who and if they are out) and no signs of support for Slavic Pride from them - except for Gordon, singer of the Dutch group, who said that he was going to boycott the show, if there would be aggressions against homosexual activists.

I have to take up the cudgels on behalf of Patricia Kaas whose answer to the question about her support for Slavic Pride was that she hadn't heard of that before, yet everyone should have the possibility to live their life.

It's not been that long that I came across the term Slavic Pride, until recently it had always been referred to Moscow Pride. Nikolai Alexeyev, founder of gayrussia.ru, has been trying to get official permission for a pride parade in Moscow for years now. Mayor Yury Luzhkov, an extreme homophobe, refused permission repeatedly, for various reasons. With international support Nikolai Alexeyev still organized unofficial pride parades, some of which you probably heard of in the media, e.g. police stood watching skinheads and other militants aggressing and attacking participants of the parade and ended up arresting participants of the parade.

This year though, they had hoped to be granted permission, as they scheduled the pride parade on the day of the
Eurovision Song Contest and the fear of international TV showing Russian police breaking up the parade would result in a positive decision.
Unfortunately Moscow's mayor doesn't care about this and after weeks of stalling and claiming that he never received a request for the parade he finally came around this weekend and officially prohibited the march. Reason: out of fear of the safety of the participants.
That's not only the most hypocritical reason I've ever heard, this is outrageous. This comes from the same man shouting "satanic" and worse whenever he has the occasion and also called in representatives of the church to help him fight against homosexuals including organizing an anti-demonstration on the same day.

Nikolai Alexeyev will still organize the march this Saturday, May 16^th, and as upset as I am about the mayor, I wonder as much if this is really a good idea. After all we're talking about disobeying in Russia, I'd be more than happy when proven wrong, but I fear that this year actions of the police will be even harder.

What do you think? Am I too pessimistic? Would you participate in this parade in Moscow?

This article was originally written for and published at eurOut.

Names – ever think about them?

2009-05-12T09:30:00.000+02:00

Ever wondered what's in a name and what this might imply?

In Germany we have this thing called saint's day and in some families this day is given more attention than anniversaries.
Most of those saint's days go back to religious persons and there are complete books on that topic. If you're from a religious family you probably have a more traditional name, one that can be traced back to a saint.

I recently read that there is a wave of choosing more androgynous names like Luca or Lena though I don't see anything androgynous about either of them. Sure, normally a name ending on an "a" would lead to the assumption that you're dealing with a woman - unless you're facing an Italian name. Italian Luca's and Andrea's are always male. As for Lena (and who is not thinking of Lena Heady at this moment?) nothing modern and androgynous about this one, as it's short for Magdalena - very religious, very traditional and definitely very feminine.

Family names are a different matter, sometimes left open to speculation, e.g. I have at least three versions that really make sense as to where my family comes from. I prefer that version where it would mean "on fire".

And I'll leave you with that thought.

Random Stuff: Questions, food for thought?

2009-05-11T08:39:00.001+02:00

This is not planned as part III to "boring and random stuff about me", these are questions I often wonder about, some are meant rhetorical, some are real questions.

Why do so many lesbian authors choose androgynous names for their characters? Or "male" nicknames? And why do they often pair blondes and brunettes? I can't believe that so much of lesbian fiction is alt- or uber Xena-fiction. (really don't know the difference between alt and uber, yet I'm sure that this is not fanfiction)
Is there really no base-line below which political elections will be cancelled? I can't believe that elections with 30% of attendance can still be valid. Sure, people who stayed at home will have to live with this, but still….
What is the point of having a non-smoking policy on trains but not at the stations?
If I stopped thinking for others for an entire day, e.g. on the road or avoiding run in with those little monsters at the supermarket, will I still be alive in the evening?
Why are most current lesbian plots on TV spoiled by one of them being pregnant, some sooner, some later?
E-books prices don't differ as much as I expected from "real" books. I hope that authors get a bigger deal from e-books as production costs are extremely lower.
I'm beginning to like facebook's "pick your 5" and wonder if there's a possibility to cross post them to my blog.
Dita von Teese is supporting the German Act at the Eurovision Song Contest? Seriously? I'm glad that my tv fees support Patricia Kaas ;)

54th Eurovision Song Contest (2009)

2009-05-10T15:02:00.004+02:00

Should we take the results of this year's Eurovision as a prognosis for the EU-Elections? Just kidding ;)

I fear that the German result will not be much better than last year, though I could be proved wrong and that's not because of their scoop of adding Dita von Teese (for serious?) to their performance but because of a change in rules. The juries are back and points will become the decisions of the juries and of the votes called in by viewers. This in hope of avoiding another votes-cluttering of the eastern connection.

I'd say if this still does not help and Germany will still come up last, someone should seriously consider of pulling out of this event. After all, many events have been cancelled due to the economic situation and I hate the thought of four countries paying for the larger bulk of this event while somebody else is having a blast.

Anyways, I don't care as much about the German result as about the French result.

Patricia Kaas, did I mention that she's not only extremely attractive but also a great singer?

Many think that she doesn't stand a chance, just because she's coming from one of the big-sponsor countries. They're forgetting that Patricia Kaas has huge fanbase in Russia. That would be the greatest thing happening – Patricia Kaas winning with the help of her Russian fans. Totally giddy, I know, but still, just imagine…..

Just in case you didn't know, this will be next Saturday (May 16^th) and the semi-finals on May 12^th and May 14^th. Check the official website for details or the channel on YouTube to listen to your favorite songs.

You should also checkout eurOut, especially during the show on Saturday evening.

Random Thoughts: Things that drive me crazy

2009-05-08T09:12:00.002+02:00

Normally I'm not that a person who's much into details, at least not at first glance. But there are some details, especially in tv-series that drive me crazy. Sometimes they irritate me that much, that I stop watching the show altogether. The irritation on SVU was that strong, that I already wrote an entire blog-post on that subject.

Currently I'm watching "La vie est à nous" on a regular basis (read the recaps on eurOut if you want to know more). Marianne looked great in the first episodes and had – compared to the other women appearing in that show – an unusual haircut. Lately she seems to be growing out her hair, a style hovering between boring and slightly ugly. To give the show some credit, it's not the only show doesn't seem to be able to be giving their actresses a decent hairdo.

Do you ever pay attention to what they are wearing in the shows? Sometimes the same outfit during the entire episode (e.g. some "Tatort"s), even when the storyline suggests the story spanning over several days. On a recent episode of CSI Las Vegas the team pulled an all-nighter (plus 24hrs) and none of them changed their clothes once, what do they have in their lockers if not a change of clothes?

I know, that I drive people crazy talking about this; they think that paying attention to these details is weakening the story-line, but hey, especially CSI stories are about details, so they should get them right too. If you don't want me to notice these things, have them wear overalls, or look over to NCIS where Gibbs is constantly drinking coffee, Abby getting her power-whatever-fix and they use non-see-through containers. I never wonder or count how much they've been drinking ;)

More boring and random stuff (also known as part II)

2009-05-04T14:02:00.003+02:00

I barely had posted part I, that I already thought about facts I had missed, which is why I instantly started on part II. These points also trigger ideas for "normal" blogposts, which had been awfully scarce lately. Let's see with what I'll come up next.

Missing the "winners" gene, I don't play to win but to have fun, I've been known to give the craziest answers at trivial pursuit just to see the reaction of the rest of the group.
I'm not a very tidy person, but everything I do follows some hidden, extremely analytical agenda
When I recently made the switch from winter to summer shoes, I realized that I own more than 10 pairs of "good" summer shoes and not a single one of them is black.
My favorite reading and viewing genres are crime, mystery and sci-fi.
I can be extremely stubborn, which sometimes ends with me simply ignoring specific persons. Especially when they ended some argument by making a dramatic exit incl. slamming doors.
I do have a sensor for true emotions (that's perhaps the reason why I can't stand soaps) and have major issues with people, especially in professional life, who are clearly showing to which type of communication-skills-seminar they've (just) been.
Lived above a bakery when I was a wee child; until today the smell of fresh bread makes me feel at home.
I hate people who come to ask for my opinion and then try to persuade me that I'm wrong.
This also extends to colleagues who want to know how something should be done only to launch into an argument why this doesn't make sense. If they want to run head first into a wall, let them.
I'm allergic to dust and several fabrics.
I can be a real snob about food especially when it comes to brands.
Sometimes I think that I'm extremely accident prone. The run-in with the black elder seems to have left a scar on my arm.
Several weeks ago I set the kitchen on fire, a towel which was too close to the stove was the culprit
I can remember really weird or unnecessary facts, but it's also happened more than once that I couldn't remember why I had gone down to the basement. Or that I needed to make 3 trips until I had what I initially went for.
I can't take horror movies seriously; but movies about or with real animals often leave me upset.
Ice-cream is my favorite food, especially of the frozen yoghurt kind
I never do "stuff" just because everybody else is doing it.
I never leave house without my sunglasses but have forgotten everything from my jacket to closing the doors and windows
I love to observe thunderstorms.
I'm afraid of crowds
It's been proven on twitter that I'm completely unromantic, at least in ways that are commonly considered romantic. Please refer to # 17.
I care about words, language and correct pronunciation and some dialects make me physically sick. And though I don't really speak a dialect and also cannot place them geographically when hearing them, I understand most of them after listening for a couple of minutes, incl. most Swiss and Austrian dialects, and to some extent Dutch.
I talk to my pets, always ask them how their day was and if they slept well.
Went to Malta and Iceland in the same year, Malta in August and Iceland in December and always wished it had been the other way round.
Spent last Sunday re-watching the latest 5 episodes of Bones for the 3^rd time

Exploring random facts

2009-05-03T07:59:00.006+02:00

Before posting more random, boring facts about me, a post which is already finished, I’ve got something else I need to get out of my head.

I’ve always been a “daddy’s girl”, I’ve got no idea why and there’s no one left in the family with whom I’ll discuss this. Next to being a “daddy’s girl” I also was a “grandpa’s girl”, and there’s nothing wrong with neither of this, I had a lot of fun with both of them.

Most of my pre-teen summer vacations where spend at my grandparents, and with my parents being an hour of a car drive away this meant pure freedom. Most of the family lived in the same city where my grandparents lived, which meant visiting a lot of aunts and uncles. That family had a weird generation gap, at least on my grandma’s side but the youngest were still about 8 years older than me, which is an aeon when you’re only 7.

One of the things I clearly remember is the basement at my grandparents, or more precisely the space allocated to them, as they lived in a house with 3 other families. There where shelves on three of the walls, with one wall being reserved for self-made marmalade and conserves. The fourth wall, right below the window, was reserved for grandpa’s tools including a traditional workbench.

I never understood why my dad let himself talk out of getting this workbench, after grandpa had died and they had to empty the apartment.

Back to being a daddy’s girl. This included some embarrassing moments for him, cause there is a long line of years during which you could bet on me knocking over some glass or cup from the table during meals, this also happened regularly when he took me for his morning pints.

When I was about fifteen, my parents decided to build their own house, which was when the real fun began. My dad had always been very talented when it comes to the “handyman” stuff, which resulted in the financing of the house being based on lots of our own hours. In some ways, that summer was even better than the summers spent at my grandparents. There was not a single day when we weren’t at the construction site and despite me having small accidents every other day; I also learned lots of things.

There are only a few tools which I’ll never use, e.g. I have a weird fear of buzz-saws. Guess I’m lucky that we don’t own one.

But – look at this treasure, and please ignore the clutter around ;)

This post went in a completely different direction of what I had initially intended, so there’ll probably be a part two of this.

Boring and random stuff

2009-05-02T00:18:00.002+02:00

Following a tradition started by Ingrid, continued by Natazzz, picked up by megelder to be taken up by Natazzz again – I feel compelled to bore you with a list of random facts myself

1. I moved about a million times but the last time was about 9 years ago.

2. My favorite place is somewhere in the Provence, not too far from Lavender fields in the garden of my yet to buy vacation home.

3. The modern Tate Museum impressed me more than the Louvre.

4. I lived in Paris for 5 years and never went inside the Louvre Museum.

5. I don’t like beer, except on hot summer evenings when I crave Panaché

6. I don’t like Cola, neither Cola nor Pepsi. My favorite “soft drinks” are water and fruit juices.

7. I’m not a vegetarian, but can go without meat for weeks and I don’t eat red meat.

8. “They do have salads on the menu” is not the reason why I would choose a restaurant. When dining out, I want to eat dishes I won’t get at home.

9. When I cook, the kitchen always looks as if an experiment had gone wrong. I never learned cooking and am most at ease with dishes that get their finishing in the oven. On the other hand, I do have some talents in baking and my marmalades have a large fan base.

10. I am a nerd and a geek and our living room and my office often look as if they were right out of an SF-movie.

11. I love learning about new things and always research those topics exhaustively.

12. I’ve suffered from various degrees of insomnia all my life but my cat Wölkchen was the best cure against it. For the first years, she always slept on my chest and her purring still puts me to sleep.

13. For reasons unknown to me, pets and kids take to me instantly.

14. I’m incredibly shy.

15. I don’t run nor jog, never.

16. I never smoked, not even once. This accounts for cigarettes and joints. But I was high at least once, on “secondary” smoke at a Pretenders concert.

17. Ages ago, my apartment was burglarized. I’d still like to know what they thought of the “Desert Hearts” tape which was still in the video recorder.

18. I’m not into accessories, not on me, not in the house; and this even extents to cooking and baking, you want decoration or garnitures? Not from me.

19. But I love gadgets, mostly from the electronics department.

20. I hate shopping, doesn’t matter if it’s for groceries or for clothes. The earlier I’m done, the better. Despite this handicap I love shopping at IKEA and most DIY-stores.

21. I can’t read maps but have a good sense of direction combined with a very good, almost photographic memory.

22. I’m not good with numbers. No matter if this stands for a date or a phone number, I’ve got my gadgets to remember to them.

23. Despite the fact that I’m often up early, I’m not a morning person.

24. I’ve always had a thing for women older than me.

25. I love coffee; you wouldn’t want to cross my way until I had my first 3 or 4 cups of morning coffee.

Maintenance people

2009-04-14T17:46:00.000+02:00

There are only few things in the house I don't feel comfortable to deal with, i.e. repair, install, whatever.
Once this led to an emergency call on Sunday to EDF (power provider) because I'd managed to drill into the main line. This gave me a major shock, but nothing more. Oh, and before you start wondering why I didn't know that the line was passing through there - this is quite an old house and our predecessor perfected the French system called "Système D". Which means he just did what he felt like doing, this also includes not obeying color codes and many more.

What I never touch though and I also don't really understand how that thing works, is the heating. It's not even that old, and doesn't give too much trouble.

But lately, we had this accumulation of weird sounds. First I thought that it was one of those trucks running too fast and almost flying over the hump (you're only allowed to go 30 km, and there are several "humps" on the streets which make you go really slow, unless you care losing your bumper). Sometimes it was accompanied by the cat flap swinging heavily. By pure accident I realized that this came from the heating.

This happened about 3 times over the last months.
Then 3 times in less than 24hrs over the weekend. I panicked. Well first G, then me ;) There was a smell of burning but also gas. And I completely hate what I can't see and therefore have no control whatsoever.
So I turned off the heating, called the service company, left a message stating at least 3 times my name and phone number. Called them again this morning at about a quarter to 9, "I was about to call you". Yeah? Great, why didn't you do this earlier?
She promised a technician to come by in the afternoon, first half of the afternoon. Which translates in my book between 2pm and 4pm latest, because they only work until 5pm.

The guy finally arrived around 3.30. He parked in the driveway and still didn't think of bringing his tools with him.
He didn't know my name, he wasn't aware that there's been a maintenance about three weeks ago, didn't take me seriously enough - meaning when I say, that the entire house was trembling then it has to be something serious.
In the end he did this and that, changed this and that and said if it happens again, I should leave the heating's door open. WTF?

I guess I'll end up calling my assurance to ask them what to do. They also offer maintenance in- and outside of the house, when it's within the line of avoiding accidents.

Not sure if I'll sleep well tonight, which probably has a complete different reason - more tomorrow.

My obsession with food and it's colors

2009-03-30T07:28:00.002+02:00

"Das Auge isst mit", a german saying which refers to the fact, that food also has to please the eye.
Have you ever thought about that? Preparing a meal or setting a table to have colors match or contrast in a way that it has heightens your appetite? I constantly think about this.
E.g. I'm totally convinced food cools faster on white plates than on blue ones.

Have you ever drunk coffee from a green mug? Didn't it taste weird or bitter? I've broken - only by accident - all of our green mugs and refuse to drink from the last remaining one ;)

What about green food? If you're into vegetables it's almost impossible not to eat green food, but green meals? I always need splashes of other colors in there. The only green food I really love is mint ice-cream, the one with bits of chocolate in it ;)

But it too tastes best with a splash of red with strawberries or strawberry ice-cream.

What about blue food? There is none natural except for blueberries, even plums are not blue and they come in shades of red til dark violet. Also in greens and yellow, if you include reines claudes and mirabelles

Spring is late this year and the garden is still mostly dressed in faded greens, but I can't wait until everything starts blooming and blossoming in all colors.
The vegetable garden is organized in a way to observe the good/bad neighbors rule, but everything else is there to please the eye (and mouth) coming in all shades nature has to offer.

Did I already mention that my favorite place on earth is the Provence? Strolling along the markets every city offers is like discovering new tastes at each stand. Olives noires aux herbes de provence never tasted better anywhere, a dish with vegetables from the market tastes way more intense than with vegetables from home (even if they're from your own garden) and the colors even seem to shine brighter.
I still remember the scent of the lavender-fields we drove through last year. Won't be repeated this year, as we're opting for an autumn visit.

I had set out to write something different, before I lose completely track, I'll leave you with this:

copyright is mine

Live Music - Music DVD's

2009-03-25T16:34:00.000+01:00

Cranking the surround system up loud and listening to some live music by my favorite musicians is one of the guilty pleasures I indulge in when I'm "home alone". I don't hear the doorbell, the floor is trembling and I've got this juvenile feeling ;)

Sure, listening and wachting a dvd is not the same as being at a concert. But my fav bands simply don't tour as often as I would like them to.

Or take the Indigo Girls, when have they been to Europe last? Have they been to the continent at all or did they only perform in London? And that was in the nineties, if I remember correctly.
What about Sarah McLachlan? Same problem.

And what about Texas? Yep, don't think they'll ever tour again, now that Sharleen Spiteri has her solo career going. Do I mind? Not really. I just watched the Texas live in Paris DVD, and when she made introductions to "I don't want a lover" I suddenly thought who had I been fooling, the fascination with that song (remember the video?) was always about her.

That wasn't simple fan worship, that was a major crush I had on her. If there ever was a certain type of women I felt attracted to, than it's definitely the Sharleen type.
I really hope, that she'll play some of the summer festivals and that I'll be able to catch at least one.
Just in case you're following me on twitter or are a friend on facebook and didn't understand the "Shelvis" reference, look at this:

Next I watched an old Indigo Girls DVD, Live at the Fillmore. This one provoked another revelation: my own guitar career was over the first time I heard Emily Sailors play, not that I was very gifted, but I realized my limitations very quickly. I guess it was also while watching this video that I became a fan of Amy's, before I always liked songs by Emily better. Nowadays I'm back to loving them both as Indigo Girls and Amy as a solo artist.

Going through my Music DVD collection I had to realize that it's been some time since I bought something new. I can't believe that there's no DVD of a Sarah Bettens concert available.
Do you have any suggestions what I should buy?

Frida Kahlo

2009-03-24T13:15:00.002+01:00

Can't say that I'm a big fan of arts, what I am though is being interested in women, biographies of women who took a path that was not the obvious one.

Frida Kahlo is one those, the leaflet for a new permanent exhibition of her paintings in Baden-Baden describes her sexuality as bisexual. But for once I knew her paintings first, before I read about her life ;)

Read more about her in my article for eurout: Frida Kahlo.

(photo copyright by Nickolas Muray / Nickolas Muray Photo Archives, LLC 2004)

What I forgot in this week's tv series

2009-03-24T10:47:00.001+01:00

Fringe, I totally forgot about Fringe and wonderful Anna Torv, aka as Agent Olivia Dunham. The show started airing last Monday with the 90-min pilot on pro7. I sincerely hope that - as much as I would like to see new episodes of CSI:NY - VOX won't take the bait and program unaired episodes against Fringe.

Fringe is like The X-Files, only better - that's what I heard from several sources. It's true, in a certain way, but Fringe is also completely different in its own way. The main character is a woman (yeah, you already knew that, don't ya' ? ;-)) and intriuge and secrets also make up for a good part of the plot and the suspense. Then there's the technical, scientific aspect of the show - CSI and Bones put in a mixer and brought to next level.

Well it's somehow frightening how these old research results seem so completely plausible to me.
And this is where Fringe is so completely different from The X-Files. With The X-Files I always knew that most of the story were simply unbelievable and too constructed, they also lost me completely some time before the movie came out. Just to make this clear, I'm quite sure that we're not the only life in this universe, but I don't think that we're that important that others will constantly observe us ;)

It also helps that Agent Olivia Dunham is played by Anna Torv, former Mistress

and object of desire for Shelley Conn.

I'm looking to forward to see the next episode or more precisely the ending of the second episode, cause - once again - I fell asleep while watching TV. This doesn't say anything about the quality of what I've been watching: lack of sleep, waking up at 4am and pain killers are mostly the main reason for this.

I also watched Bones yesterday afternoon, that was one hilariously funny episode - the one where Bones has the guard of a baby for some days. This situation results in some of the best bantering dialogue we had for some time. And not only Bones, but Angela and Cam were also in this; Cam having the best line with "giving this body up for that?" - I'm so with you on this, Cam - especially when you're dressed like that!

The ending was so in line with Bones character, they had me almost thinking that she was setting up a fund for the little kid - but no, she provided help for the entire city and work for the adoptive mother.
I think I'll keep this episode for some time, I need to rewatch it - several times :)

This week's tv series

2009-03-23T10:47:00.002+01:00

I'm not only behind on writing; I'm also behind on watching ;) This week's tv series offered the usual stories and somehow more of them than normal were deceiving.

Having watched 3 episodes of the Mentalist I don't think I'll ever get into that series. It focuses way too much for my taste on the main character (yeah, I know, that's what main characters are for) while the other characters remain hollow.
NCIS had its moments, which required an immediate post from my part already last Monday. Yesterday's episode concentrated almost exclusively on Gibbs and Gibbs sen., not much to write about Ziva. But she's always worth some screencaps.

CSI Miami featured Kate Moennig, but having never watched TLW I can objectively say that it wasn't the most important role in that episode, as it centered on the story of the M.E. and her son being the suspect in a drug deal and subsequent murder. Oh, and it's still my least favorite CSI, though I'm starting to think that this might be due to the synching.

Criminal Intent is also strange this season, at least Wheeler is back but all in all there are too many intrigues doubled with strange behaviour going on. Let's see when Criminal Intent and Life will change slots, I'm betting on this!

Law&Order SVU did a really weird plot this week, about homeless living together as a family and having harsh rules like disrepect requiring the death penalty. At least they didn't have any inconsistences with Det. Benson's hairdo.

CSI Las Vegas is still missing more female characters.

I forgot to tape Cold Case and Numb3rs, on my backlog watching list remain
1episode of Bones
4 episodes of Exes and Oh's
1 episode of La vie est à nous
1 episode of Wire in the blood

You don't know La vie est à nous? It's a french soap showing on TF1 Saturdays at 5.50 pm. Read what you missed so far on eurOut.

Iphone

2009-03-22T07:38:00.001+01:00

It's been a week now, that I received my iPhone and the exhilaration is still there :)
So far I only needed to consult the manual twice, once to find how to place the sim-card and the second time to learn how to uninstall some application. Everything else comes naturally and the usage is very instinctive. These are the same requests I make to software as well, if the first page doesn't appeal to me and when I'm required to go through a configuration process that lasts 10 mins or more, then I'll get of it as quickly as I can ;) I'm more patient when it comes to software for computers, but not when they're destined for usage on mobilephones.

So far I kept:
Twitterfon
Facebook
Evernote
Stanza
eReader
AroundMe

I'll keep AroundMe for some more time, even if it ignores the fact that the Rhine has to be crossed and the restaurant is in fact 15km away and not only 3 km.

Just yesterday I installed Shazam but haven't had a chance to test it so far. Apparently it's able to tell which song is currently playing at the store, shopping mall, cafe or whatever. I'm curious if that really works.

While putting together the Lesbian News Snatch for eurout, I came across this headline: "New iPhone 3.0 Operating System Revealed!", nothing really new, but the source where this headline came from peaked my interest - as it was queensspeech, the site which is collecting lesbian and gay news from around the world.

Why would they feature an article on the iPhone? Turns out the article was published on gaywired.com and they weren't the only gay site or blog to pick this up. To summarize this, apparently it's gay to be gay and to own an iPhone ;)

Apple and software designers are also picking up on this trend and several new applications for the gay community were released since the beginning of this year. I tried some of these and as always I'm wary when it comes to the word gay cause it's been proven often enough that gay doesn't mean gay and lesbian, but exclusively gay.

You can check for yourself by searching for "gay" in application section of the iTunes Store. The community apps only work when others sign up to this as well and I'm ambiguous of those, could be fun though during all those pride events ;)

The only app (only talking about free ones) that made sense to me and didn't require any signing up is called GayCities and offers addresses and other information for currently 70 cities around the world. Based on your location it shows the nearest cities to you, Zurich for me.

More important to me now is that I'll find a case for my iPhone. As I've got an issue with how things feel when touching them I'll have to head out to the stores and touch-test acceptable cases. I'd really like to get one of those silicone-things, but will probably end up with a leather one ;)
Any suggestions? The colour has to be uni, no discussion.

Why I like NCIS

2009-03-16T09:25:00.001+01:00

No, I hadn't known anything of this, when I predicted that the teasing would be back shortly in NCIS. Yesterday's episode though had some of the quality stuff, why I like this series so much.
It starts with Abby opening a cake box, given to her by Ziva, a thank you for allowing her to spend the night at Abby's appartment.
Tony get's totally excited at the thought of Ziva and Abby together and those two just play along.

Don't they look cute?

This week's tv series

2009-03-15T15:36:00.000+01:00

Wow, tv-wise this week had a lot to offer. So much, that I completely forgot about Numb3rs, even taping it ;-(

It started on Sunday with 2nd episodes of NCIS and The Mentalist, and Life and Wire in the Blood. NCIS was cool as always, too much budding between Ziva and Tony, though I bet that the teasing will be back shortly. After all, the team had to be brought back and we can focus on more important things starting next episode, which will be on tonight.
I don't know what to think of The Mentalist, it focuses too much on building the main character while the others are quite shallow. Knowing that the series is a big hit, I'll give it some more episodes.

Haven't watched the Sunday episode of Life so far, as it also started showing on Vox and I wanted to see where everything started.
My current favorite quote comes from this series

Crews: "You were once a child too,..."
Reese: "There's no proof for that"
Yep, wouldn't think so ;)

Monday's offer mostly reruns, except for Shark, but honestly? Without Jeri Ryan something is terribly missing from this show.

Tuesday had CSI Miami, which I watched but didn't pay attention too. Today we watched the first episode and this one had me wondering the entire time, what about this episode required the "not suited for under sixteen"?

Exes and Oh's also shows on Tuesday (gay station Timm), I watched some of it, which I like so far. I didn't like the fact, that I can't switch off the German subtitles, well but that's not Michelle Paradise's fault.
Wednesday went by so quickly, I'm sure there was an episode of Criminal Intent with Eames/Goran, but staying up late for Exes and Oh's took its toll and I was asleep half way through.

On Thursday I continued my obsession with Det. Benson's hair, CSI Las Vegas and Bones came later but I watched them on Saturday. CSI Las Vegas is missing another female character; there are too many men around in this season, hopefully this will change soon.
Bones, well Bones is Bones. I like it.

And the week finishes with Cold Case on Fridays, a series I not only love for Det. Rush but also for its plots. Most times they are not simply about murder or crime, but also tackle the reasons including society's problems from that time, which are not always that different from today's problems.

And don't forget, Fringe will start on Monday!

Testing mail2blog

2009-03-15T14:51:00.001+01:00

From mobilephone ;-)