- If you want to get pitiful looks, take a big envelope, put a christmasy sticker on it and wait in line at the post office on the 23rd. (Nope, I wasn't waiting in line to mail someone's Christmas present in the vaine hope it might still arrive in time ... the envelope contained something someone ordered from me on a swapping site and I just put the sticker on because I had some left over from my Christmas mail)

- This year, my selfmade presents are mostly made from old, obsolete money (jewellery, keychains and stuff ...). I had no idea how much of it there is until I started to look through my stash of coins and discretely asked friends and family if they could provide some. And it's not just money that has been replaced by the Euro either. I have coins from England and Switzerland too that are no longer in use. Also, Ireland did have the prettiest money.

- And here's some homemade ginger bread, before everyone descended on it.

I think this place needs a little update. So, this is what I've been up to while I wasn't updating:



This is on Lake Constance. I've been working in the area for a while and the free time was pretty awesome too. There's all kinds of watersports of course and you can easily visit 3 different countries from there (I think that's Switzerland there in the background of the picture ... or Austria?) and all kinds of interesting stuff to see and explore. One of the highlights for me was an airship museum with real airship interior and everything.

Quite the reality check if your mind has been under the influence of certain steampunk stories that make airship travel sound so glamorous. The cabins are all on the inside, no windows, and they are so very tiny, like the ship cabins that are on the smaller side. The type of cabin that requires you to wait in your bed while the person you live with gets dressed, because there is no way two people could do that at the same time and not end up looking very funny.  And then you have a dining room on one side and a common room on the other side and that's it. And no bathrooms, just toiletts and the little basins in the cabins. There just isn't enough space for all the stuff that tends to happen on airships in the stories. I'd totally chose an airship over a plane though, of course I would.

But, summer is over and we're well into autumn now, with foggy mornings and everything. Time to think about what to do for Halloween (no Zombies, no Vampires ... )

Odd how something like summer can keep you so busy. See, in Germany we're usually done with summer in a week. Before and after you have a kind of in between seasons weather and people complaining about the lack of summer. Now we're in the fourth or fifth week of straight summer and since this is Germany no one seems to believe that the weather will stay that way so everyone is squeezing as many summer activities in as possible. So, I've been busy with sailing, swimming, BBQ, skating, a white picknick, more BBQ, loads more swimming, open air cinema (Pacific Rim and Wolverine) , water fight flash mob, my aunt's birthday party, summer of love party, much more sailing (to Denmark), shopping (because everyone is running out of summer clothes ...) ...

On other news - new Doctor! (*not sure if "medicus" is used correctly in this phrase ... Latin grammar police, don't sue me)
And it took about two seconds for the usual suspects to complain about Peter Capaldi being too old ... I'm pretty sure it's the same people who complained about Matt Smith being too young ... and of course there are people who complain because neither one of them is David Tennant ... anyway, I'm happy with the casting. I was afraid they'd go with another hot young guy or something deliberately controversial.

Also, I might have finally found a sewing class that isn't female centred, it's aimed at cosplayers. So even if the class isn't that great I would still be in nice, geeky company :D


How is everyone doing? Enjoying the summer?

I just noticed, again, that it's so much more fun to write a review about a bad book than a good book ...what does this say about my character? Or good books? Or reviews? Or, you know, life the universe and everything?

Also on the fun side - someone took a picture of me at a fashion week event I attended with a friend!!
You've probably seen the dressed up sideshow that is the audience at these events and in jeans, a button down with cut off sleeves and another button down around the waist you're planning to use as a jacket on the way home you just don't look the part. And I'm really really bad at recognizing z-list celebrities (you know, the "he was on X-factor two years ago" or "she's the ex-ex-girlfriend of ... " type ...)


*Marco has finally watched Tron Legacy and finally gets my "I'm only watching this for the soundtrack" thing.

I haven't walked off to facebook, I have walked off to real life ... how depressing, this whole being an adult thing. I haven't walked off to Instagram either, because I am so bad at taking the obligatory food pics. My first, really old fashioned, thought when I see a plate of yummy food is that I want to eat it, not take a picture of it. And yesterday we went strawberry picking ... strawberry fields forever and all that, it was pretty awesome. And I didn't take a SINGLE pic. Hopeless case, right? On that same note, I am also still watching concerts with my eyes, not with my iPhone raised in the air ... I'm a very hopeless case.

Anyway, I just wanted to say hello :D

PS: My part of Germany is thankfully not drowning and despite the financial benefits the government has just decided on we don't have any wedding plans.

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Lately, I find myself more and more annoyed with the commentmania on the internet and I think I'll make it my year of the snake resolution to stop scrolling as soon as I have reached the end of the article or news item I was reading.

Because in 9.5 out of 10 cases the things random strangers have to say are either, pointless, rude, ignorant, off-topic, stupid, very poorly written or a combination of all of these things. Somehow, the smart and well spoken people seem to stay far away from the "post a comment" buttons. And what do I gain from knowing what random stranger A in Glasgow thinks anyway? Nothing.

Also, I don't understand why there is a comment option for news at all. News are not blog posts or something of the kind, something that you post to start a conversation or get some feedback for your work. The news are just the news and they have done very well for many years without the input of barely literate randomers.


Horsagne has reached Germany (yes, that's lasagne with horse meat where there shouldn't be horse meat and said horse meat comes with horse meds and probably other shit that humans shouldn't consume ...) and I have stayed away from everything containing meat ever since. It's not the thought of eating horse meat that I find repulsive, it's the fact that you can't be sure what you eat. Might be a conspiracy of the vegetarians or maybe the Christians? It is lent after all ...


PS: Hope everyone had a nice Valentines Day ... or managed to ignore it, if that's more your thing. We didn't have time for anything really, but we're having sushi tonight :D

I wish I had something exciting to say as opposed to "let's post an update to show I'm still alive and despite the evils of Twitter am still capable of writing more than 140 characters at a time".

January has been a bit busy with real life, so I didn't have time for fun stuff ... although, I did have some work related fun of course. Like, I found out you can build "clouds" that actually float and look quite realistic out of helium balloons, tissue paper, glue and pillow stuffing. Creating them is a messy job, but the results are great and you get the funniest looks when you're walking down a street with a big cloud hovering over your head (bless nylon strings for being almost invisible ... )

Oh, I got a resolution for the still new year - I won't fail my reading challenge on goodreads again. Yeah, not really a challenge or a resolution, since you can pick the number of books you want to read yourself ... but I want to make a visible dent in my huge pile of unread books this year. So I haven't checked out any new TV shows, in fact, the only thing I watch at the moment is Fringe ... and Elementary if I don't forget it. It's like one of the CSI or CIS? (I never get that right, starts with a C anyway ...) shows, the cases are usually interesting enough to hold my attention for an hour, but nothing about these shows makes me want to record them or seek them out online if I missed an episode.

Anyway, how is everyone doing? Snowed in or already in spring mode?

Happy boxing day or second Christmas day (never heard anyone actually using that term in English, but in Germany that's what the 26th is called ... because Christmas is so much fun there are two Christmas days there)!

Now, let's talk a minute about Doctor Who ... great, yes?! Last year's Christmas special was quite forgettable, IMO, so I didn't expect much this year, but I ended up loving it. The Doctor as a really rubbish Sherlock Holmes alone justifies a re-watch.


Btw, since when is LJ sending out mails every time you log in with an IP that comes with a different location than your previous one? I get the idea behind it, but really, it's 2012 ... people are using mobile devices to connect to the internet, not that many people are limited to just having the one computer sitting on their desk at home. In other words, that feature would have made a lot more sense like 10 years ago.

This time the end of the world is very well timed. It's the last day for me and quite a few friends to be in town, before going on vacation or visiting family for Christmas and it's also a Friday ... so yeah, apocalyptic party it is! Usually, we're just having a little get together to exchange presents while drinking Glühwein and eating cookies, but this time there will be games and pizza too.

I'm in charge of the "what happens next" game. For this game, you get to see a scene from a film and then you have to sit down with your team, write the next scene and present it when it's your turn. You get points for making the right guess of course, but there are also bonus points for original script, acting and such ...

I've done two of these for horror movies before, but to go with the apocalypse theme I chose disaster movies this time ... and I really had no idea how many hilariously bad movies there are in this genre (for obvious reasons you can't pick well known films for this game, so you have to dig deeper ...all the way to the bottom of the bargain bin ...). My "favourite" is one about a deadly hailstorm ... you know these white styrofoam balls that are used in various craft projects? That's what their hail was made of and there are various scenes that even show bouncing styrofoam balls. Also, the amount of styrofoam balls was apparently limited so a deadly hailstorm never lasts more than a minute. I was in tears from laughing at several points.

I hope to check in again before Christmas ... laters

Thanks for all the birthday wishes :D

I'm having a little get together tomorrow, because the week and especially my actual birthday were incredibly busy. On that day like half the world felt the need to get married and Marco and I had to split up because we were invited to two weddings and didn't have a Tardis. I really don't understand the obsession with certain dates. If I believed in marriage, which I don't, I really wouldn't care what the date on the certificate said. It's the name next to mine on the certificate that would matter to me.

Also, I went to a Hobbit preview party, which was a lot of fun because it came with people in costumes, food and a livestream from the UK premier. I won't go into spoiler territory here, but let's just say I'm still not 100% convinced of the need for 3 movies. But of course I might have a different opinion once all 3 are released and I can watch them back to back.


And question for the creative people - what can you do with black felt? Because I have this nice black felt that used to be a pullover (ooops) and I think it would be good for a little project ...

I just noticed I haven't updated here in quite a while. These days, Twitter and Tumblr seem to work better for me, since they require less time and I don't have much of that at the moment. But hey, at least I haven't walked off to Facebook, right? I don't know why life always tends to get so busy by the end of the year ... probably because not much is happening once the holidays have kicked off until everyone is back from family visits and vacations sometime in January.

So, this is what I've been up to:
https://twitter.com/dailyweirdness
http://infraschwarz.tumblr.com

Also, I'm getting a Hobbit preview for my birthday this year, how cool is that? Well, it's not specifically for my birthday, it just happens to take place on my birthday, but it's still pretty cool. The Hobbit is also the book I'm currently re-re-re-reading, I still prefer Gandalf the Grey over that other Grey fellow.

See?! This is what happens when you mess with the natural order of things. Like, when you put Christmas cookies and chocolates in the shops in the middle of summer. Poor nature gets all confused and thinks it better gets started with the whole white Christmas thing early too ...



The snow only lasted a couple of hours in my part of Germany. I basically rushed out with my camera as soon as it had stopped snowing and by the time I returned the trees were dripping from all the melting snow ... but it was still quite confusing because I don't think we ever had snow that early. It's not even Halloween yet and some trees have barely started to change colour.

But for now - back to bat cookies, pumpkin pies and listening to Halloween radio :)

So, Elementary (that's the "we want to Americanize Sherlock but the BBC wouldn't let us, so we did it anyway" show, in case you wonder).

It's not bad for a random crime show that is, like many random crime shows are, somewhat inspired by Sherlock Holmes. But it would have been so much cleverer to do it like House. Don't call it a Sherlock Holmes adaptation (since there are so many elements that are different from the canon anyway) and let the audience feel clever for noticing the Holmes references that are in it. But then again, Americanizing British shows is pretty much the opposite of expecting your potential audience to be clever, so no wonder this didn't happen ...



*yes, time to bring out the cheesy, Halloween themed playlist. Also, it's a holiday in Germany today, so it's also a good time to bring out the cheesy Halloween themed decorations :)

Best insult I heard in a while: Facebook-farmer! I'm loving it! And talking facebook ... "good luck with that" was probably not the reply a girl was expecting when she said "I'll friend you on facebook".

So, Doctor Who ... I love that Rory gets to die three times in his last episode. By now, he has probably died more than the Doctor himself, is there any statistic about this? (There probably is, you know how nerds are ... :p) And once again I noticed that it's not the Weeping Angels episode itself that feels so creepy to me ... its going out afterwards and suddenly being very aware of the fact that there are so many statues all over the city ... MOFFAT!!!


And as you can see from the subject - I'm starting to get into full Halloween mood :D

My favourite mug died (a minute of silence, please) and it went with a bang. The handle decided to separate itself from the rest of the mug while I was about to carry it out of the kitchen, filled with tea. Now, take another minute to imagine the mess, the stupid look on my face and my sudden need for new socks and jeans. *lol*

It was so pretty, the perfect Tardis blue, the perfect size ...

I did some work at the IFA (consumer electronics exhibition thingy ...) this week and came across two girls who did some research on internet use and one of their questions was

"What was the first website you ever visited?"

My reply to this is kind of boring actually. When we got internet I visited the website of the internet provider, set up an e-mail address, looked around a bit on the website, perhaps read a news article or two and that was it. This was of course back in the dial up days, so it probably took me an hour to do this and of course, the internet wasn't as busy back then either. I did a search for some of my favourite bands a bit later and a lot of them didn't even have a website ...

So, what's yours? Or what's your guess, if you fail to remember.



*talking Doctor Who ... I will be personally offended if the Doctor doesn't get a "I have had it with these motherfucking dinosaurs on this motherfucking spaceship!" line in the next episode. Or maybe Rory would be the better candidate to say it ... anyway, someone has to say it. Alternatively, I would accept a guest appearance by Samuel Jackson ...

So, Doctor Who tonight. I prepared by watching some Ood on the loo and listening to a 50 shades of grey clip, read by a Dalek. I haven't read the book, so I'm not angry for having wasted time on it, but still ... a fan fiction type sex scene (you know, the type of sex scene written by someone who imagines how it COULD be, as opposed to writing about stuff they know ...) combined with a Dalek voice is absolutely hilarious.

I would put up a link, but it was sent to me by Marco, who got it from a friend ,who got it from another friend, who thinks it might be from some podcast ...  but maybe the original source will pop up ...

Also, I'm starting to really hate capatcha codes.Yes, I get it, it's  spam protection and all that, but is it really necessary to make the words nearly and in some cases totally unreadable, so you have to try like ten times to get it right and start to feel just a tiny bit illiterate or like you should go see an eye doctor?!

When you're drinking your tea from a Christmas mug in August you know it's time to check the horizontal surfaces in the house to find out where all the more season appropriate mugs have gone ...

Also, I finished True Blood and now there's a spot on my TV schedule for Doctor Whooooooooooo (only one more week to go, can't wait). First thoughts on this season, especially the finale - what a blood bath. I'm wondering if the manufacturers of stage blood are ordering new cars or booking expensive vacations or something like that when a new season of True Blood is announced.

Is someone up to date with Fringe? We recorded season 4 when it was on TV and I just finished that and I think I'm missing an episode or something. To keep this spoilerfree - does the episode in the future which has Desmond from Lost (sorry, can't remember the actors name ... Henry something ...) in it  have some kind of follow up that explains anything that happens in it?


*I read this word in a newspaper today and just had to write it down because it's pretty epic. And yes, I do prefer to play scrabble with German words ...