No, I didn’t fall off the planet 3 months ago …
… though I know I’ve given every appearance of having done just that. Let’s just say that it’s been … interesting. Both August and October were insanely busy in RL, chiefly due to a new case concerning a client literally being robbed blind by their former managing director (even after he had been fired once […]
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2020 in Facts and Figures
I already posted my main 2020 in Review and Looking Ahead to 2021 posts a while ago — only on my new blog (separate post to come) –, but I held back on my 2020 reading statistics until the year was well and truly over. And for all my good intentions when posting my mid-year […]
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Staying Zen in Stressful Times
24 Festive Tasks: Door 12 – World Philosophy Day, Task 2: How do you stay zen / sane over the holidays or in other stressful periods? And / Or: How did you manage to stay (more or less) zen throughout 2020 … if you did? This, too (like my favorite rainy day reads can easily […]
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2020: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
We’re still a month away from the end of the year, but my reading will probably consist mainly of Christmas books in December, and I hope and pray that life won’t come up and throw anything else at me in the final month of the year, either. So I might as well post my “Year […]
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Spices!
The sort of online rabbit hole one is liable to fall down in lockdown times … There’s a company named Spirit of Spice that specializes in “whole seed” spice mixes all coming in their own little mills: I’ve been a fan of theirs for quite a while, though so far I’ve been buying their products […]
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Pandemic: Desperate Measures
Desperate times call for desperate measures … I’d never have believed I’d ever let a monstrosity like this cross my front door, but with supermarket and drugstore shelves persistently empty in my area (despite rumors that elsewhere in this country, the hoarders have had their fill and stocks are being replenished), the other day when […]
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“Lockdown”? — Tell me again Germans are supposed to be law-abiding as a rule …
I went for a short walk earlier this afternoon (alone, of course) — the kind of thing we’re still allowed to do to maintain a modicum of exercise and intake of fresh air. This is what our street looked like — and what it, and all the streets in our neighborhood have been looking like […]
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#Stayathome: Working Moms and Helpful Neighbors
Snagged from LinkedIn: It reads: Mom has a conference call! 09:00 – 11:00 AM. !DO NOT ENTER! The answer to your question may be: * It’s in the laundry. * NO! * I don’t know yet what we’ll be having for lunch. * Have a fruit. * Look in your room. * Ignore him and […]
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Hoarding: The Figures
… for Germany, according to the federal statistics monitoring agency (Statistisches Bundesamt): Sales of disinfectants: up by up to 800% — then down to zero sales, because stores went out of stock. Sales of soap: up by 400%. Sales of toilet paper: up by 300% (this is surprisingly low). Sales of pasta, flour, sugar, rice, […]
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Meanwhile in Brazil …
See: www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/25/821327282/in-brazil-bolsonaro-doubles-down-on-exaggerated-coronavirus?t=1585223690880 I know it’s extremely small comfort for those of us worried about their own governments’ responses, but I’m still glad we don’t have to deal with this sort of mega-f*ckery. No wonder Brazilians are furious. Original post: ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/2105131/meanwhile-in-brazil
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I’m just going to leave this here…
My car’s dashboard thermometer, earlier this afternoon. (43°C = 109.4°F) Can I just say I was very glad to be back indoors when I got home?? Original post: ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1924880/i-m-just-going-to-leave-this-here
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Those old cheating dissembling tricks …
“To the office, where all the morning sitting and did discover three or four fresh instances of Sir W. Pen’s old cheating dissembling tricks, he being as false a fellow as ever was born.” — Samuel Pepys (@samuelpepys) March 8, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js This (originally from Pepys’s diary of March 8, 1666) was the first […]
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House Cleaning
… well, figuratively speaking. RL has been both busy and more than just mildly annoying lately, as a result of which I’m behind on everything from updates to reviews to just plain responding to people (sorry!); not to mention that I also still haven’t had time to select and acquire stickers for my super-pretty physical […]
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Germany & Central Europe, seen from the International Space Station
Just had a chance to take my first photos of dried-out Central Europe and Germany since a few weeks, and was shocked. What should have been green, is now all brown. Never seen it like this before. #Horizons pic.twitter.com/o2XoddPdrM — Alexander Gerst (@Astro_Alex) August 6, 2018 Tweet by the current commander of the ISS, German […]
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Let the Cult Begin …
So here’s my super-shiny, super-pretty, brand-spanking new card, with very many thanks to Moonlight Reader, um, Madness: First — still very vague — book ideas: Country House Mystery: No specific idea yet, but I’ll try to combine this one with my Detection Club quest, if possible. Cryptozoologist: Probably either a book from Terry Pratchett’s “Night […]
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Payoff for the Summer Heat …
… well, of sorts: These views from my balcony, a few minutes ago. (And yes, it’s dark now, but I’m still sitting outside, savoring the fact that we finally have a tiny bit of a gentle breeze …) Original post: ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1780699/payoff-for-the-summer-heat
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Summer in Germany
My car dashboard thermometer, yesterday at 1:55PM — the week before, we’d even been up to 39°C … at 4PM. (That’s 101F and 102F, respectively.) These are temperatures I know from desert areas … Phoenix, Tucson, Yuma and pretty much anywhere else in AZ, Death Valley, El Paso, TX; even Los Angeles. They are NOT […]
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Bleepedybleepedybleepedybleep
… or for the non-American TV-challenged: Fuckedyfuckedy … (you get the picture). So it didn’t just turn out one more week, but 2 1/2 f*ucking solid weeks of me and a select few equally fortunate people being chained to conference room chairs and computers, with straight 15-18 hour work days practically the whole time […]
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