Snowflake Storms

Hey there, I'm back! Mostly. I'm way too addicted to LJ and fandom to ever stop reading my friendslist but I've rediscovered the joys of being a lurker. Radio silence is really relaxing but it's also really boring so I think I'm done with it for now.

My thesis is handed in and all that's left to do is the colloquium to defend it on tuesday. I'm taking turns between being completely cool about it and being utterly terrified. Hopefully tuesday morning will fall into one of the completely cool phases.

What's keeping me in good spirits regardless is that I WILL BE IN ROME IN ONLY SIX MORE DAYS :DDD
And so far there haven't been any freak-outs about the flights, not even when I printed out my boarding passes today. I'm counting that as a major win!

( And now meet the newest member of my family )

My mom found out one of our neighbours had a litter of six jack russel puppies and there were two of them still without a home and they're one of her favorite breed of dogs. Needless to say, my brother and I encouraged her even though she barely needed encouraging and now we finally have a dog again :D

I'm a little sad we didn't get to name him, but he and his sibling were so old the neighbour had gotten tired of calling them "dog" all the time and he already kind of listens to his name. And he is completely adorable, loves to play and also loves napping on my lap after he tires himself out playing around ♥

Every time I think I'm ok with the Panic split something else comes along and makes me upset all over again. When did I become such an oversensitive little snowflake? D:

I'm feeling restless this week too. I worked out the last two days and I have the urge to bust out the yoga mat today too. The only problem is that I'm already feeling sore and I don't have an actualfax yoga mat (parquet floors and a towel just don't cut it, the bruise on my back is proof).

The one awesome thing I did this week is finally figuring out a good approximation of the thai curry I liked so much. I think the secret was the right kind of curry paste and adding fish sauce. OMNOMNOM!

( Curry picture and recipe )

In fours years of going out in Heidelberg I never managed to be this stupid, but today I actually had to take a cab home because I managed to miss the last tram /o\

I had a nice night out though. I went for drinks with a couple of classmates to celebrate finishing our last exam and it was a surprisingly good time. It always surprises me that I can have a good time when I do hang out with these guys, but somehow I never manage to make plans to do it more often so after two years of being around the same people every week, I still don't have any real friends over here. Why so socially awkward, self?

I found something for my brother! It turns out he already has an Avatar game for his DS and all accessories he could ever want and my parents are giving him another game as well. But I found a book on rivers and creeks as biotopes and all the creatures that live there that looks really cool.

He's in a club at school that deals with this sort of thing and they wade around in ponds and look at tiny aquatic life under microscopes and stuff so I hope he'll like it. I'm worried it's a bit too geeky, but he really enjoys that club and he didn't mind non-fiction when he was reading about bearded dragons in every spare minute he had.

Now I've spend almost an hour online again instead of just checking my e-mail quickly. I wish I had more self-control than that. Gotta get back to that presentation :/

Fuck you, Fossil, for producing shitty glasses that can't take the strain of cleaning!

( A story in (mostly) pictures - because I love taking pictures of and laughing at myself :) )

Anyway, replacing glasses because they're broken is always a stupid hassle because I have to deal with inferior replacements until the new ones are done. Not to mention I hate it because they're always so damn expensive. On the other hand, I've been unhappy with those Fossil frames for a while now, if not always, because I prefer solid colored black frames and I don't like having brand names visible. If I'm lucky I can find something similar to the first pair with the bigger lenses. I &heart; nerd glasses!

I've been back from the Netherlands since sunday and back in Heidelberg since yesterday, but being around the internet semi-silent, reading and commenting but not posting has been kinda relaxing. I really need to take a step back and concentrate more on school, but I hate being away and out of touch so this might be how I'm going to be around for a bit if I feel like LJ is taking up too much time.

I'm also much too lazy right now to write anythig substantial about my vacation, so here's pictures instead!



( Pictures from Breskens )

nasssty and wethepainted have posted pictures of their awesomely organized art supplies/desks and made me facepalm at my own mess. Still, I love sharing pictures, so here's one of my desk.

( Beware of clutter! )

It's actually less messy than usual, since my watercolor stuff is still mostly packed away from traveling! And there's somewhat distinct heaps of stuff instead of one giant pile!

ETA: ♥___________♥

I'm back home from my field trip and I'm so tempted to just fall into bed now! The visit to SDL itself wasn't even that tiring, but the car trip involved was kinda exhausting. The entire autobahn between Heidelberg and Stuttgart seemed to be riddled with construction sites and then there was an accident somewhere as well and it took forever to get there.

In addition to that, our professor was riding with me, since I have the biggest car and could fit the taller people in our group more comfortably than the others. He's a really nice guy, and definitely my favorite out of all my professors, but I'm already bad at casual conversation and particularly not very talkative when I'm driving so it was a bit awkward to have him in the passenger seat for almost three hours!

I dropped all my passengers off at the parking lot right next to the turkish grocery store and took the chance to have a look around. They always have different interesting produce on sale. Since the vegetable compartment of my fridge is already bursting at the seams I restricted myself to a fresh artichoke. The last time I tried one was so long ago I couldn't remember anything about it at all.

The artichoke ended up in my thermomix and got steamed with some lemon and garlic in the water. I wasn't very impressed with the results though. The meat from the leaves was very bitter. I had a dip made from yogurt and vinaigrette that didn't go well with it at all. Just the plain meat tasted fairly bad too. It turned out to be ok salted and with a bit of my radish pesto though. The one part that was super tasty was the bottom of the artichoke, but if I ever want to have that again I think I'll go for the canned version instead of bothering with the rest.

Now, I feel like I haven't said a single fannish thing in weeks and that's just not on. Time for a couple of recs I think! Here's the last three things I saved to my delicious:

Weekend Wars by icyanahita Bandom, ensemble with various pairings, AU, ~25,000 words

For the Public Good by blamebrampton Harry Potter, Harry/Draco, 23,500 words

And Maybe by reni_days Bandom, Brendon/Spencer, 6,500 words

One more thing...splitting commenting between LJ and DW is annoying me more than I thought it would, so I'm switching to disabling comments on LJ and redirecting everything to DW for now. I figure pretty much everyone I talk to regularly has a DW account by now so it shouldn't be a problem.

Oh sweet procrastination, the things you make me do to avoid schoolwork! I have the rest of the week off until monday, because apparently the uni in Mannheim has a two week easter break so I only had to show up to class on one day this week in Heidelberg. I should really be using the rest of the time for homework and reading, but in an effort to avoid all that without feeling too lazy I started cleaning up my balcony.

I never sit out there, partly because I feel under scrutiny from all the neighbours whose windows face it, but also because it's a giant mess. I stored some crap out there when I first moved in and then set up a bunch of flowerpots and stuff, but everything started getting dirty out there, the flowers all died and it mostly became a place to dump crap that was too messy to keep inside my apartment. I tried cleaning it up several times before and I managed to get as far as getting rid of all the boxes from moving. But because it's outside I always ran into tons of spiderwebs and both living and dead spiders and got too grossed out to finish cleaning. This time I think I might finally get it done.

Mostly my plan is to throw away all the dead flowers and soil, rinse the pots off so I can store them in the pantry or basement and then vacuum outside to get rid of all the spiderwebs and srub the floor and outdoor furniture. Maybe by the weekend I'll be able to sit outside and not feel embarrased by my messy balcony :D

Happy easter everyone!

I'm spending easter the way I like to spend a lot of my time. Lounging around reading fanfic and cooking and I may go for a bit of a walk later if some of the clouds I can see disappear. My parents are spending the holidays in their vacation home in the netherlands. I would have come too, but I have to be back in class tuesday and it would have been stupid to take a second car up there for only three days. I'm not particularly sad though, my family doesn't really celebrate easter beyond some colored eggs and an extra elaborate breakfast sunday morning so I'm not missing much.

Yesterday I went to the castle gardens in Schwetzingen with slashbabe, her husband, daughter and her daughter's boyfriend. The gardens were gorgeous! It was already a bit too late to see the cherry blossoms in their full glory but it was still very pretty.

( Some pictures I took in the gardens )

The day before yesterday I made bread and a bunch of smaller bread rolls. I followed this recipe, which is originally meant for a bread machine. I substituted whole wheat flour for the regular and divided the dough to make one small loaf and ten rolls. The texture of the bread was pretty crumbly, but I liked the slightly sweet taste. Maybe I'll try adding an egg white or some more water to make it less crumbly next time.

I also looked at a couple different food blogs to find a recipe for homemade granola bars. In the end I didn't find one that convinced me 100% so I used a few ideas out of all of them and created my own. The results didn't stay in their bar shape for so much as a second before breaking apart, but they still tasted amazing. Instead of in bars, I ate my granola crumbles over some plain yogurt. Delicious! As soon as I can afford to splurge I'm planning to go back to the asian grocery I found last week to buy some different types of dried fruit. I think dried cherries, pineapple or even ginger would be delicious added to the granola mix.

( pictures and granola recipe )

I also have some more cooking from today and a meme from nasssty_slyth to share, but I think this post is long enough as it is so they'll need to wait a bit :)

Today had the potential to be so good, but the little annoyances just kept piling on.

I had to run a couple of errands in the city and got to walk around in the sun a whole lot (without buning! Sunscreen FTW!). That part as well as discovering a new asian grocery store with a great selection of dried fruits and grains was nice.

However I also: Waited forever at the institute for gerontolgy library so I could get at the copier (guy in front of me needed to copy a whole book), had to leave two books to be copied tomorrow because the copier needed cash and I only had 1,80€ on me, waited forever again at my institute to copy some more stuff because one copier was broken, got my period, forgot my driver's license at the institute for gerontology which was already closed by then and felt like I was starving most of the time. adjasjfsjafjasfljsdfjd

At least the period thing explains why I've been starving all day. I was hungry when I started to walk back home this afternoon so I bought and ate two big pretzels and when I reached my apartment an hour later I was already starving again! I'm currently munching on a huge plate of raw veggies and yogurt dip because I couldn't wait until my actual dinner finishes cooking. *stomach rumbles*

And while I'm talking about food... I own about a gazillion tupperware containers and it's still not enough! Okay, so my pantry is ridiculously well-stocked for someone who is a) a pretty frugal cook and b) cooks for one person only most of the time but I just got a whole bunch of new containers and they're already all in use. Maybe I should learn how to limit myself to keeping only one type of flour/dried beans/rice etc. at once but I like having variety!