Melantrys’ Page

… I took the car out to the woods close to the river Ems.

Seeing how nice the last water pictures had turned out to be I walked over to the river first.

real river spray this time

view into dam under the bridge

view upriver

yeah, more flowers

And a few pictures, the taking of which made me seriously seasick:

view…

… down from…

… the bridge

true cross roads of paved road and forest path

tired tree, resting its branch on the ground

same tree from other side

the ditch it’s leaning across

tree that I suspect likes to go for the occasional walk…

… or what do you think?

approaching dusk & thunderstorm

Hey, this is really fun!
Although I have to admit that traipsing around wildernesses for more than an hour at a time really takes it out of an untrained, lazy person such as me. *blushes*
Maybe that’s a good reason to do that more often this summer - if I can find the time.

… I took some pictures.

Unfortunately, Blogger now also has the “I don’t feel like uploading pictures” sickness, so I had to use the Hello bot. 10 useless posts to be deleted again to make this one. Thank you, Blogger! What’s up with the guys these past weeks?

a tree I needed to take a picture of

pretty flowers

artistically mossy phone mast

“Good grief, why is this madwoman stalking us?! Come on, let’s turn around again to shake her off!”

more pretty flowers

and again

spray on the local brook

spray seen from the other side

bridge to nowhere

yes, that’s a clever idea, putting down rat poison where kids play…

These pictures I took yesterday during my lunch break. I had been sorry in the morning about being in my routine hurry as I’d never have thought it would stay like that all day long. But it did. So there you go. Hope you like the pictures.

Today it snowed and the temps went up to around 0°C, and what with the sun and all this beauty started to disappear under snow and to melt a bit.

Hm, I haven’t been posting much lately, except for the mountain/forest pictures last weekend.

A week ago Johannes Rau, one of the few good politicians, has died. From what you heard on the radio half of the Nordrhein-Westfalen county had had the pleasure of meeting him personally at one time or another, which is something I don’t share. But still I was sad to hear of his death. He didn’t really have time to enjoy his retirement (about a year ago I think), which is a real shame.
I remember - as well as senile me can, that is - him doing this radio show on a youth station once. Every week they had some VIP (mostly musicians) doing that two hour evening show, talking about whatever they liked and playing their favourite music. And one week it was him doing it. I don’t even really recall what he talked about. He did talk politics a bit ( “To make the young people realize how important it is that they participate.”) but not just politics. I only remember that the show was one of the best. Thankfully he didn’t play his fave music (except for some classic I seem to recall with dread) - he was already pretty old back then - but played what his daughter had advised him to play.
Maybe this all doesn’t make much sense but I felt like mentioning it.
Yes.
Um.

I apologize to all my faithful readers for discussing something totally off-topic with Nathan in the comments section of my last post, which I didn’t feel like discussing in his.
I am still a tad miffed about the whole thing, but as of today I am feeling a whole lot better.

I am drinking woodruff flavoured wine and…. not listening to any music. Why am I not listening to any music?! *puts on “Two sides” by Clawfinger*

Furthermore I am… very disappointed with the support forum of my favourite Anti Virus Freeware AntiVir. Due to extensive virus warnings (they could have mentioned a tad earlier though that it mainly spread through sex mails; that would have saved me some trouble…) I decided to upgrade my software before today.
Instead of the simple virus info upgrade I got a de- and re-install, as they had a brandnew version out. That version’s virus info was older than my latest update so I tried doing another update, no worries. Thanks to this major upgrade though the servers were not able to handle the massed requests. I couldn’t get a connection for more than 24 hours. Other people were having the same problems, some even over a longer period of time, as I found out when checking out the support forum after a loooong absence.
I read a couple of days worth of posts and comments and noticed one very sad thing. Trolls repeatedly ridiculed the people asking for help, with hardly anyone minding, and some even defending the trolls.
This is the official support forum for the privately used freeware version as well as for the business Premium version. I remember from a year back or so when I read the forum on a more regular basis that there was the occasional AntiVir programmer logging in at night and at times spending hours to solve some helpless n00b’s problems. That was extra. It said nowhere they’d do that. They “hire” moderators, knowledgable forum users, to keep an eye on people and to help with the occuring problems of users. Other, non-mod users with some knowledge used to try and help out when no mod was around, so that sometimes the problem was already dealt with when the mod appeared. Not that everyone was one big happy family back then, but I hardly ever saw registered forum users telling people asking for help that the fault lay with the “chair keyboard interface” - which was among the nicer things they were saying. In a particularly bad thread it took two days for a mod to appear, close it and advise users seeking help to open a new thread.
The mods always used to be overworked (they’re doing this for nothing after all - or possibly a free Premium version? - and all have regular jobs as well) but, well, other people used to help out then. Also in dealing with trolls.
*sighs*
Good manners are going down the drain everywhere, eh?

*ends this post while listening to “Do what I say” by Clawfinger*

A bit of Black Forest

Unfortunately the better sights were along stretches of road without any parking spaces to pull over into. And you don’t just stop on a rather narrow and winding road.

my hand today

You asked if my scars were healed already, David, well… here’s your answer.

Hhhhhhm, no real news.
Oh, I had some yummy eggplant, tomato, peperoni and leek soufflé today. Dunno if that counts as news though.

the Externsteine

These huge sandstone stones are situated not very far from here.

They’re said to have been a place of worship in Celtic times already. Every year, at times like Midsummer, Samhein and whatnot, hippie heathens go there to party.

They’ve definitely been used by the church, which soon becomes obvious when you approach one of the main stones - a huge biblical scene has been hewn into the poor innocent rock.

I don’t know if the picture can bring that across (especially as it’s in such poor quality, but it’s a photo that has been scanned by an ailing scanner…), but if you just stand there and look at them, it’s like… wow. They’re awe-inspiring.

You can vividly imagine those Celtic “heathens” climbing up them and feeling grand, just like you yourself are doing, standing there.

Sceptics always said that that was more wishful thinking than proven fact.
And during the last month the media announced them to be right. (The sceptics, not the starry-eyed neo-Celts.)

I read an article in our local newspaper which announced the scientifically proven fact that the caves in the stones have not been used before the Middle Ages. It then went on to explain the scientific method the scientists who spent 1.5 years doing their stuff there had used. But let’s skip that for a moment.
As I don’t have the newspaper anymore I dug up a Spiegel article on the web.

Basically it said the same thing, only in more detail.
Two fire marks in the caves are said to have been made in 1325 and 1425 AD.
The marks in the grotto are decidedly older and are estimated to be from 735 and 934 AD. Even with the given margin for error this would mean that the earliest mark cannot have been made any earlier than 555 AD.

Then the article goes on to explain the scientific method used.

Apparently it is possible to date the time when the quartz and feldspar grains within the sandstone have been heated the last time.

See anything green? I sure did right in that Glocke article. The Spiegel people were at least honest (clever?) enough to mention the obvious flaw of this method.

It’s failsafe against smaller fires (as it is a known fact that people have been lighting fires in the caves and the grotto until the 1960’s), but it will only tell you the time of the last really big fire.
The caves could in theory have been in use for 10,000 years, and the method would only show those latest fires.

Yes, I admit I want to believe.

But as long as science does not provide any real proof I dare say that is my right.

While I was mulling around the facts that led to today’s first post I was slaving away in the garden.
Summer has returned for a few blessed autumn days, so that I was only wearing a sleeveless shirt while pulling weeds.

No, no, Krankie, weeds, not weed; you can put away your cigarette paper and grinder.
No, really.
There’s a good boy.

Anyway, I hope it will really stay that way for a while, so I’ll be able to get the garden back into shape.

Hhhhm, writing that other post exhausted me a bit (loooong planning and writing and re-reading), so I can’t think of any more witty things to say.

Good night, dear readers, wherever you are.

Some things just make you feel old.
Like, when a woman not much older than yourself gives your t-shirt a thoughtful look and then says: “Korn… Our Florian has just started listening to Korn.” And somehow you get this feeling that “our Florian” is around 14 years old.

Or of course, when you’re crawling around in the garden, pulling weeds, and your back and knees are hurting like the blazes.

Or when you almost knock out your front teeth with your bottle of beer/orange mix cos your aim was off. Must be old age setting in.

*feels teeth with tongue*

I feel there was a lot more I wanted to post before the drizzle outside washed my brain out of my ears this afternoon.
Yeah, it drizzled all the time I was slaving in the garden. And it was coldish. Looks like the Indian Summer is over.

This beer is…. odd. Coke-beers by almost all brands are fine, but this orange-beer by Warsteiner….. dunno, dunno, dunno. *takes another sip* Bluh. Huh. Half-way through the first bottle I thought it wasn’t that bad after all. But half-way through the second now…. nah. Not so yummy.

On a concluding boring work note - I am almost done with “my” department (yeah, besides doing the till I’m also responsible for foods reaching their sell-by date, ordering cosmetics and cleansing agents and keeping the shelves of the latter two in order, which isn’t exactly easy when you are shackled to the till 4 days out of 4.5 days per week plus having to catch up on the holiday during which colleagues put it all in the wrong places. But I’m almost done with restoring order, yup. Hooray. All hail me.

And now I’ll end this post, before I start telling you about what I had for dinner.

Finally I am tending to the poor garden again, i.e. I’m weeding like a maniac. Yes, that’s as much fun as it sounds like.
I may be thorough, but I am slow, which is why I have a few very neglected patches to work on, preferably before the unseasonably good weather catches on to its mistake.
Today I carried out my CD player, so I at least had some good music (Project Pitchfork, Skyclad, Godsmack, Die Krupps) to listen to while slaving away.

Seeing how my blood pressure ran amok while shopping this morning I’m very glad I could do that without further incidents.

Yeah, dear blog and prospective audience, I put on two nice shows today; the most intense one in the next city, the most noticed one in front of the local ALDI.
Nice of two out of three regular customers of “my” store to notice that something was amiss with white-faced, mildly hyperventilating me, sitting on a small ledge in the parking lot…..

As to the last comments:

I’m not good on the fine details but when I see stunning I know that a male hetero would consider it super-sexy.

I don’t know why you’re reading my blog, Dutchie known as KrankImKopf; maybe because it is mine?

Sister, dear, anything good showing in the cinema these days….?

You should come and visit, everything is looking so strange now; even you should notice.
Bad neighbours!!

And on a political note:

I know now who won’t get my vote in the upcoming elections. The CDU. Thursday evening one of their cars (returning from catching voters I dare say) ignored my priority and drove onto the road right in front of me, forcing me to brake - only to pull over again around 50m further on. Psychos.

Well, ok, no, they wouldn’t have gotten my vote anyway. But it’s a nice idea to base it on that I think.

I’m giving up on changing the colours and images of this page for the moment or else I’ll be up till it’s time to go to work again.

Damn, is the weekend really already over?

Anyway, I am sure that you will all share my grief concerning my okra plants, which seem to be dead now for sure. The new warmth spell came a few days too late.
*§$*#%* this filthy German weather! I mean, what else could I have done except putting them in our greenhouse thingy…? Bah.
Maybe I should really try to raise one in my living-room…. I want fresh ones for a change.

I also ran out of sweets and chips. Maybe I should just go to bed?