Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in dream_labyrinth's InsaneJournal:

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Friday, January 7th, 2011
9:50 am	New year Happy new year, everyone! Okay, it's a week old, but that's still fairly new. Copy and Paste if you have enjoyed the blessing of meeting people online that you never would have met any other way. This is my end of the year shout out to the many "friends" I have never been in the same room with but who have inspired, amused, comforted, encouraged, and touched me in so many ways. I love you people! Here's to another year together!! Thanks everyone for still being there even when I drop off the face of the earth for months. Thank you for sending Christmas cards. And apologies that there were none from me. I didn't feel very Christmas-y most of the time. In 2010, I read 239 books and listened to two audio books. 123 of those books were in English and 4 in French. 65 of them were non-fiction. 28 were re-reads. I might post a complete list, but as I write the list by hand throughout the year, that would involve a lot of typing, I'm not sure I'm going to feel up to that. I would have a hard time mentioning anything that I did in 2010 that left a huge impression on me. The year seems to have rushed by without much participation on my part. (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 18th, 2010
10:30 am	*blink* I had three posts on my flist today of people talking about having been to the hairdresser. Three posts. All in a row. And I really need to go get a haircut, but don't have time. I came up with an idea yesterday of something that would fit into the SS/HG I'm writing. Except that the way it came to my mind it required Hermione's POV, and so far I'm sticking to Severus'. So I was about the shelve the idea, but then I realised I could very easily - well, not very easily but doable - change it to work from Severus' POV as well. Actually, it might be even better, because it means I will have to work harder to make Hermione's feelings clear as Severus perceives them. Given that the situation is complicated, that is going to be a challenge. *iz mysterious* What I originally thought would be the centre point of the story is going to be solved soon, I believe, but it looks as if the problems for them are just beginning. *plots* I'm also reading Douglas Adams and find I don't like him as much as I used to. Meh. (Comment on this)
Monday, July 12th, 2010
7:37 pm	cooldown It's still too damn hot, but it's thundering on and off and there have been a few raindrops (three maybe over the course of this afternoon?), and it seems we might get below 30 tomorrow. Hooray. Also, I did very little work today and spend quite a bit of time writing SS/HG. I'm trying very hard not to jump ahead in the story. I know if I do that, I'll never go back to fill in the holes. I also finally managed to pick up my climbing gear and get in touch with the person who'll tell me how to use it. So I won't end up like that idiot kid on the news today who went paragliding and forgot to close the leg straps, ending up hanging only by his arms for 15 minutes before he fell and killed himself. Nineteen. It's a pity, but also a good candidate for a Darwin Award, really. I'm just sorry for his family. The thunderstorm is coming up again, so I should probably not be online. On the other hand, I don't really care actually. But there is rain. *happy sigh* Now this sounds like a good summer thunderstorm. Finally! (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 6th, 2010
5:10 pm	Long weekend I'm feeling good. When I came home after only five hours or so on Saturday, my body was clearly puzzled. That all? Mind you, I was glad to be out of the heat, but the walking was fine. Now I'm off to go jogging, but before that... CONGRATULATIONS, KAIT!!! *hugs* YAY! And also a very happy, though belated birthday to the lovely chickbrarian, who would probably leave me in the dust if I ever ran in the same competition. Lastly, there's a fantastic exchange story up, Whom the gods annoy. Great read! Current Mood: happy (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 17th, 2010
8:09 pm	Good deed this week I have made a microloan to these people here: Tulwanirewamu Group, Kampala, Uganda Now I feel like I'm a good person. Hopefully, the money will actually reach them. Thanks jonthedull for linking that page! (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
6:31 am	I really need to do a real post one of these days. Last week was the bookfair and the library congress. I met a bunch of people I knew, got to shake hands with our former President Richard von Weizsäcker (who happens to be my sister's boss), got in touch with a guy from the booksellers' association who's responsible for the organisation around the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, for which exists an exhibition we might arrange to have displayed in my library. I also managed to get a bunch of free books and radio dramas. And I read almost all of last year's library journals. Not bad, eh? Today I have to do the announcements for swearing in ceremony of the new recruits. Next week I'm in Berlin and from 12th April on my boss will be off on sick leave and I will have to do his job. Good times all around. (Comment on this)
Monday, March 1st, 2010
6:30 am	Happy birthday to knight0fswords! It's march, so there's going to be birthdays every other day. I didn't do much this weekend. Last weekend I was in Meiningen, which is pretty much the nearest town with an actual theatre around here, and watched a Verdi opera of expected oddity of story, but with very good singing. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_forza_del_destino, if you're interested in the odd and very confusing story.) So this weekend it was mostly sitting around. On Sunday I read the lecture in church and set up everything for the service beforehand and cleared up afterwards. Our regular pastor was away, so the military pastor did the service. At the end our organist informed him that he should know me (he asked for my name) because I was working at the same place as he did. And then he asked me whether I was in any way related to the lady doing the school news every three months, because that girl looked somewhat similar. Well, that similarity comes from her being me, you know. *snort* He's not really one of the brightest, it seems... I went jogging on Thursday and discovered I'm made of fail. However, it looks as if we're finally approaching spring, most of the snow is gone, temperatures are above freezing and when it isn't raining it's quite nice outside, so I'm going to go jogging again and hope for improvement. Yesterday I went inline skating but only for about half an hour. The wind was so strong it pushed me up one hill, and on my way back I had to fight it uphill (that makes sense if you keep in mind that around here, no matter where you go, it's always uphill. Fact of life.) and barely made it, especially as it kept blowing all the sand and split on the roads into my face. Good thing I was wearing sunglasses. Off to work now. If I'm lucky, I will finish reading "La peste" this week. No more "concitoyens"! Fou, French question: Le docteur eut l'impression qu'il s'agissait de quelque chose de plus sérieux que ne semblait dire Paneloux. What's with that half negative there? Why the "ne"? (Comment on this)
Monday, February 22nd, 2010
7:37 pm	&$#°^€§$%'*&/%$!!!! Yet again, the stupid Hermes mail delivery service managed to not find the huge military base in the middle of nowhere where I work. At least, yet again, they have been unable to deliver my amazon order that should have been there by Saturday. Bloody hell! I just wrote a mean and sarcastic mail to Amazon asking them how I can make sure these people will never ever handle another order from me. Ever. They are made of fail. Huge, miserable, unmitigated FAIL. I was waiting for these books, dammit! I have no icon that fully expresses my wrath, so Jason Isaacs will have to do, because his expression best pictures the full potential of what my wrath could do to these people if I got hold of them. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 25th, 2010
6:26 am	Failings For once, I didn't stay at work long enough on Friday to finish everything I had wanted to do that week. I was just sick and tired of crossing out our stamps in the books I'm tossing out, which is just as boring as deleting the records in our computer catalogue. The upside was that I got off work earlier than I normally do. The down side is I still have that stuff waiting for me today. Secondly, thanks to the lovely and very helpful foudebassan, my to-be-read stack (which is practically nonexistant at the moment, to be honest) now contains three French books. Two, rather, I've already started on the third: Robert Merle's Idole. I've read it in German years ago, and it's written in modern French, but gosh, it takes forever to read! It really makes me notice how unused my French skills are. Un the upside, even though I refuse to use a dictionary and thus have to understand everything from the context, so far I don't think I missed any vital information. Still, I wonder how I managed to survive in France not once but twice now. The first time, back in 1997, I was living with a host family and had to communicate regularly, which I remember doing, though now I couldn't say how. The second time, last year, I didn't need to talk that much and it was mostly the same things everyday - paying entrance fees, finding a place to stay for the night, that sort of thing. Sometimes chatting with people I met, but not all that much. French definitely doesn't come as easily to me as English does. Though I discovered a few days ago that reading English non-fiction is still harder than reading German - I took quite some time going through the background literature in my edition of Thomas More's "Utopia", though I guess letters by Erasmus or the writings of philosophers would take me longer in German, too. I'm woefully behind on books read this year. January is almost over and I have finished 19 books, eight of which were nonfiction. So far, only one has been a re-read (and worse, it was an Amanda Quick I needed for a quick romance fix in between serious reading). Though part of the problem is that there really aren't all that many unread books on my shelves anymore, which makes it harder to find something to match my mood. *sigh* Too few books. Anyway, I better get going. It snowed again yesterday and I don't believe anybody cleared our sidewalk yet. (Comment on this)
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
6:21 am	The good, the bad and the ugly... The good: I have converted the wife of a friend to the cult of Lilith Saintcrow. He said she's desperately waiting for the next book and worried she'll finish the current one before the next one's available. The bad: I ordered Dante Valentine 4 (And also the first Jill Kismet, but that won't be out until May) on Monday, but the idiot delivery guy to whom amazon gave it was unable to drop it of at the mail on the base. He couldn't find it. (*headdesk*) They're going to try again today. Stoooopid! I had hoped to get it all labeled and everything in time for my friend to take it home with him for the weekend. The ugly: I'm deleting old records of journals we don't have anymore, copies that we passed on to other departments. The deleting hasn't been done in years, meaning I have approximately 2000 records to deal with. And the computer system made marking them for deletion not a simple, one-click process. It takes forever and is the most annoying work imaginable. Grrr. (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 9th, 2010
6:05 pm	Happy Birthdays! Happy Birthday to David Bowie and Severus Snape. For Severus Snape's gifts, see the severusbigbang community. For David, I give you an old, old song of his, and an ancient performance (compare his moves with later years! OMG *L*) The song, for some reason, was one of the very first that really, really touched me deeply. Okay, what do I say, "for some reason". I know exactly why. One line in there was like a well-needed slap in the face. Anyway, Happy Birthday. And to everybody else who became a year older around this time. Oh, what the heck, you can never stop at one: That's a Jaques Brel original. There are several recordings by Bowie, but the studio version didn't have the same raw emotion as this one does. And here the reason why I need to see him live at least once in my life, and preferably in a small club or something similar. Current Music: David Bowie: Seven (Comment on this)
Friday, January 8th, 2010
3:58 pm	schools I came across this looong text. Once more, you'll have to make do with my limited translation abilities... ( Should it be allowed that we be governed by nothing but churls and brutes? ) Except for the old-fadshioned language which I didn't want to change too much, and the clear division between the estates and the sexes, this is a surprisingly modern text. Anybody want to guess who wrote it? (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
11:31 pm	Booklist 2009 In 2008 (I did recounting), I read almost 190 books. Let's see what I did in 2009. As last year, the ones marked with an * are re-reads. ( fiction ) ( non-fiction ) All in all, that's 214 books, but less than 50 were non-fiction. And there are still a number of books that really are a waste of time to read, and some of the non-fiction was very simple self-help stuff that doesn't really count. I did improve my reading matter, but there is still room to improve some more. Only 22 re-reads, however, that is good. Current Mood: accomplished (Comment on this)
10:09 pm	winter wonderland As I posted weeks ago, we have had winter in Germany. Complete with snow and cold weather, go figure. Back at my parents', we had almost half a metre of snow, which totally threw off any attempt to clean the roads. There also was no salt. Which means that the roads are in a lovely state. On the 31st, Mum and I went to a concert in town (the organ players of two churches got together for an "organ duell", playing organ and cembalo duets. It was great.) and on our way back discovered that if we had parked where we usually do, which we didn't because I suggested otherwise (go me!), we would have been blocked from leaving by a broken water pipe. And it must have been a big one, because there was looooootts of water. On the last day of the year. In the middle fo the town. With temperatures of about -12°C. Lovely. While my parents were in Munich earlier this week, I took care of the dog and one day took her for a walk on a path where literally nobody had walked before me since it started snowing. I sank in up to my knees. The dog didn't mind so much, but I had a cold and fever to begin with, and stomping through deep snow for an hour didn't improve the matter. Driving home today, I discovered that northern Bavaria had less snow and milder weather. That is not how it's supposed to be. Not only the towns weren't prepared for winter. The German train service was extremely unhappy about the fact that it's cold in winter, too. Many trains, it turned out, were not fit to be moved in what the Deutsche Bahn calls "Siberian conditions" (making my Dad, who's been to Siberia, fall off his chair laughing). Condensed water killed the electricity. Technology is something wonderful, as anybody on a train through the channel tunnel would undoubtedly agree... And another funny thing! Do you remember Y2K? The end of the world as we know it to come with the change from 1999 to 2000? Remember it didn't actually happen? Well, lots of people apparently fell victim to a delayed Y2K problem. The chips of some credit and cash cards can't cope with 2010. And don't work. Meaning people can't get money from some ATMs, and can't pay with any kind of plastic. Meaning that shops are planning to sue banks, because they say people don't buy stuff they would want to buy because they're worried they won't be able to pay. Personally, I went to three shops today paying with my cash card and had no problem whatsoever. But it's amusing nonetheless. Obviously, I'm easily amused. I went to IKEA today and bought some pictures to hang on the landing right next to my apartment door, and also some boxes because you can never have too many boxes. And I'm going to update my "books read" list to contain everything I read last year. This year, I believe I'm up to five books or so. Not too bad. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
9:46 pm	The spoonishness of a spoon One day around Christmas, I was in the kitchen with my brother and he asked me to give him a spoon, which I did. Now, my brother likes to start on philosophical discussions with the least bit of encouragement, and this was one. How did I know what he meant when he said spoon? How do I know what a spoon is, despite the fact that some are small and some are large, they are made of wood or plastic, steel or silver, with simple or decorated handles. What makes a spoon a spoon, and how do I recognise the spoonishness they all have in common? Together with some other thoughts I had while reading a book on human dignity - what is it, what is it worth, who has it and how do you define it - and an anthology of texts trying to explain basic ideas of protestant Christianity, the problem of the spoonishness of spoons brought me to the problem of the humanness of humans. I don't want to say humanity, the word is used for other things too much. What makes a human a human. We can't define it by the way we look. There are people who don't have two arms and legs, five fingers on each hand, five toes on each foot, who don't have a nose and two eyes and two ears. There are people whose genes aren't the same as those of the majority. Yet would a person with three instead of two chromosomes 21 not still be a human? Would a child born without arms not still be a human child, and a mute man or a blind woman still be humans? We can't define the humanness within us as how we use our brains, because then what would a mentally disabled person be, or somebody who's in a coma? Somehow, we share a general, silent agreement that all these people are still people, that they have something in common with us that is not shared by even the primates, who are so close to us in their behaviour, or the pigs, with which we share so much of our genetic make-up. Not even the Nazis, who differentiated between life worth existing and life that had to be destroyed, expressed the opinion that disabled people were not human. In their ideology, a disabled person was still a person, though a person with no right to live. Then what is it that makes us human? What is that thing that makes us different from every other being on this planet? And even worse: When does this humanness appear, and when does it vanish? Is it a human, that small bunch of cells in a woman's uterus? Is it a human, that lifeless shell of a coma patient, only kept alive by machines? How do we, the people who aren't biologists or theologists or philosophs, explain what we are? Not with a definition that applies to most of us, but with one that applies to all? Then there is the term of human dignity. In the German constitution, the very first paragraph states that human dignity is inviolable. (Interestingly, if you look up the line in the English Wikipedia article on dignity, it is translated as Human dignity shall be inviolable., which is the translation officially used by the German government in English language publications. However, in German it says "Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar - is inviolable, not shall be. To me, that is a more binding rule than saying that something "shall be".) You'd think, therefore, that there would be a pretty clear general - or at least German - agreement on what this thing called human dignity is. There isn't. There are definitions that fall back on the human rights, but would a person lose his dignity when his human rights are violated? (And that doesn't even discuss the question of who has human rights...) Christianity says human dignity is something we have because we were created in His image. Image, in this case, would be a rather loose term, considering the variety of humans we all know, but at least this would mean that because dignity is something that wasn't given to us at some point in our lives by somebody human, it is not something that can be taken away from us by anybody around us. It would also mean that at every point in our lives, we are endowed with that dignity. But if we don't know when we start and stop being human, because we don't really know what makes us human, how do we know when this dignity starts and stops being invested in us? Many laws in many countries, and even more many of the problems we face with new technologies and new situations, would require if not knowledge, then at least agreement on the answers to these questions. In the "Protestation" in Speyer in 1529 (hence "protestants"), the Protestant estates and towns declared "In things concerning God's glory and the souls' beatitude, everyone has to stand before God for himself and has to give account, so that nobody can excuse himself in this with the acts or decisions of a minority or majority." (The translation is mine, sorry about that.) For me, that means that beside the law's definition, I need to come to an agreement with myself. Is it killing of a human being and violating his dignity when an abortion takes place, or the artificial respiration of a coma patient is switched off? How do I define the terms human and human dignity? What does it mean for me, and what does that in turn mean for my life? And, excuse my language, I think it's bloody damn difficult. I can think of a number of reasons when I would consider abortion an option. I don't think abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. However, I also believe that even an embryo, even a being in the first moments after fertilization, is human. And that means that while I think a mother can have good reasons to abort (illness of the mother or the child, rape, whatnot), I also think that the person making the decision should understand what she is deciding. Similarly, if I was lying in hospital with lots of brain damage and little likelihood of ever even waking up again, I would prefer for the doctors to let me die. But it means the doctors - or my family through making the decision - have to kill a human being. Sometimes, I wish I wouldn't think quite so much about things for which there are no simple answers. Current Mood: thoughtful (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
6:33 am	more Messiah According to the choir's website, they're performing not even all of the first part of the Messiah, but only from No 12 on. For one thing, that's not all that much to do for the choir (thanks to Wikipedia for not only listing the pieces but also having recordings of them). For another, that's no more difficult than Bach. Big deal! So if Mum manages to get me the music, and I get my voice to agree that yes, I actually am a soprano even though I've sung nothing much lately, and the choir director agrees, I am definitely going to sing. (Three ifs for one definitely - oh well...) (Comment on this)
Monday, December 14th, 2009
6:31 am	Point of view Early last year, the minion was whining to me for weeks at a time about the extreme difficulty of singing Händel's Messiah with her choir, going on and on about how she couldn't dare to miss a single rehearsal and had to listen to a recording every day at work because otherwise there was no way she was going to be able to learn it. A while ago I had the following conversation with my Mum: Me: Is [my former choir] doing the Christmas Oratory again on Christmas Eve? I'd really like to sing something a little beyond the chorals and stuff we do in our little choir here. Mum: No, they're doing Händel this year, parts of the Messiah. Me: Drat, I've never sung that before. Mum: The last rehearsal is before you get off from work, but I really don't think it matters. It's so easy, you can probably just show up and sing along. *snort* Then again, I come from a family that, while baking cookies, sings chorals - for two or three voices. My sister and I sing soprano, my mother does anything from soprano to tenor, my younger brother's a bass and my older a tenor. And yes, we have done stuff for four voices before, but that takes a rehearsal. Off to work. (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 12th, 2009
3:03 pm	Servicewüste Deutschland I know some Germans who claim they don't like shop assistants to smile. Because we all know they don't mean it. Personally, I don't care why a person is friendly, as long as they are. Just as I expect of myself a certain amount of friendliness rather than just politeness, so do I expect the same from others. Especially when those others want to get their hands on my money. I just had reason to wonder about the service mentality of one of my suppliers, given they lost my phone number and told me they really couldn't remember my name. Nothing speaks customer orientation quite so clearly, doesn't it? Yesterday, I stopped by another bookshop. The owner had some books ready for me and when I inquired about the rest of my order, she told me the books should be in at some point in the future, maybe not this year. I asked to be given a list of the things that would come later, together with an approximate delivery date. The idea seemed highly unusual to her, but after some thought she managed to copy the order cards with her notes for me. Then I went to the shoe shop. Not only can one always use another pair of shoes, I really do require a pair of brown winter boots. I have black ones, but I firmly believe that any kind of shoes should be had at least in those two colours. They had one model I liked (and it tells a great deal that it was not more than this one), but it was a size too large. So I asked one of the assistants whether they had it in my size. She went to check, returned empty-handed and said "nope, sorry, we don't have that one in any other size." I did wait, but there was no offer to show me another model. No suggestion I might like this or that shoe, or whether I'd be interested to try on something else. Thanks a lot. Today, I went to the third supplier I have in town (only the really bad one is a real bookseller, the others are basically stationary shops with a side of books). While most of my order of Friday had come in and the bill for that stuff was ready, the lady told me she hadn't been able to place orders with all the publishers - some stuff couldn't be bought through the wholesalers. Friday, obviously, is not a time publishers wish to be incommodated by pesky customers. I have learnt my lesson about the friendliness of the service one can generally expect in German shops. I have learnt to not be too angry about shops closing over lunch or early in the evening, taking it as a fact of life of living in Germany. However, it annoys me when people don't even bother to do their work during those times they're paid to do it. We still have more than 3 million people out of work, and if many others weren't conveniently deleted from the statistics thanks to various courses in professional training, it would be more than that. Which means that just about anybody you have dealings with on any given day could be fairly easily replaced. It would be good for some of them to come to realise that. Note: The term "Servicewüste" is, I believe, uniquely German and singularily adept at describing our problem. Literally translated, it means "service desert". Current Mood: cranky (Comment on this)
Friday, December 11th, 2009
6:24 am	memes and stuff Here in my dream_labyrinth, I feel safest of all. Which song was this lyric from? Get your own lyrics: People are currently asking for warning labels. I don't think there would be one that could be attached to me, so I won't follow. Too bland for warnings. Well, I survived the day yesterday mostly by avoiding being with the others for most of the afternoon, and sitting on one end of the table for dinner. I also bought enough CD cases to make the guy at the shop wonder what I was doing with this much stuff. I went into a bookshop and found some titles I'm going to buy for the library. I did walk through one department store and a mall without even the slightest interest in buying anything for myself. Early this week, a big box arrived from Amazon with Christmas presents for the family and some stuff for me. I haven't even opened it yet. Oh well. Back to work. It's raining cats and dogs and I've made arrangements to go up to work with a friend so I can run back. Not one of my brightest ideas, but I do need the training. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
6:33 am	Random book note The next Lauren Willig will be published in January! *happydance* I'm currently reading my way through the Pink Carnation series again and already am on the last book (Temptation of the Night Jasmine) (Comment on this)