Melantrys’ Page

I dunno what bit me, but I spent most of yesterday in the kitchen so that I was able to serve this to my esteemed family: Middle Eastern type bread, hommus, marinaded fried eggplant slices, falafel and baba ganoush.

“That’s no baba ganoush,” I can hear the Arabs say. All I can say to this is that it’s not just the Moslawis that are cheap. *pokes aNarki in the ribs* I found that it does influence neither taste nor consistency if I use the whole eggplants, including the skin. Makes it a lot darker though…

… but I have no clue when I’ll feel like continuing my Amman postings again.

Yeah, I changed this post. Seems like the best thing to do, so I won’t get more cryptic comments from strangers passing through.

I never meant to say Amman wasn’t all fun. Sometimes things just are connected in a way.

Whatever.

untitled

As she grows older
But none the wiser
Loyalties shift
Attitudes change
She stares in wonder
For here she stands - alone

Nice of you to drop in. Go on, have a seat!
*shuts door*

Yeah, thanks, I think that’s a really cool colour as well. *blushes*

Wow, did these days just rush by you like that as well? One day it’s Good Friday, and the whole long weekend is up ahead, and all of a sudden the freaking acolytes have been there chanting and making a ruckus at 2am on Sunday morning (And had the nerve to come collect money later at a more reasonable time of day. Do I look like a Catholic? Buzz off, the lot of you!) and the heavy smell of wood smoke from Sunday evening has left the air….

Is something the matter?

Well, and now it’s Monday already; the weekend is over, and there’s another boring work day up ahead.

Yes, that’s a flowerpot, very nice plant in, even if I say so myself; are you paying attention to what I am saying? Why are you sniffing the plant, it has no flowers, now, has it…?

Anyway, at least those’ll only be two days of work before I have time off again. I am going to go to that concert in Brussels; I’m sure you remember…

… What exactly are you doing there poking around in that corner?

It’s me, ok? Me!
I smell like a mud pit! Yes, don’t look at me like that. It’s because of my hair. Or rather the colour. You know how I’ve been complaining about the dies destroying my hair? Well, now I went and bought some natural henna and whatnot colour. Why don’t you just open a window then?

Ooh, sorry ’bout the watering can; I always put it in awkward places. Good thing you only watered your hands, haha. Well, you know where I keep my towels.

Hey, what’s the matter, why are you cursing like that?! Hey, wait!!! What the….?

*picks up towel*
*sighs*

*opens window and hollers at departing car*
Hey, I know what it looks like, but it’s only that henna stuff!!!

Hm.

*shuts window*

*sits down and admires self in mirror*

I may smell of mud and have a bathing towel that looks as if someone with some serious diarrhoea has been using it as toilet paper, but I really dig my new hair colour!

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*

Yes, dear fans, I’m still around (and listening to “Steelrose” by Project Pitchfork right now, hhhhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmm).

I’ve been busy with:
- lack of motivation
- watching the first three episodes of Alien Nation
- having a nervous breakdown cos there’ll be no Lost before January
- reading old books again in lack of new ones
- reading blogs, and commenting on those blogs
- starting my private convo with David in this blog’s archives
- playing cards on the comp
- work of course
- and any old crap

I’m looking forward to:
- presents (BOOKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
- devouring all the vegan goodies I ordered online
- actually being able to make it to this year’s LAM, if only for a short weekend
- the days getting longer again

I’m not looking forward to:
- the stress and freezing of the annual fireworks sale next week

I made a few pictures a couple of days ago when it had been snowing again. Maybe I should upload them for Christmas, considering that the forcast for this region is: rain and drizzle. Buh.

Oh, by the way, A. is “fit” (still has a few stones, but apparently passed the most evil one) and back at work again, silly man. I should tell him to drink more beer to get rid of the rest quickly.

Aargh, sorry, folks, that’s it for today.

….. for I have nothing much to say at the moment.

A. is in hospital with kidney stones, work is stressing me out, and on top of it I seem to have developed a weird allergy - apparently to work.
If there I break out in itchy welts and rashes, at home they disappear and I’m fine. Hm. And considering how the boss’s wife getting angry at me for taking off sick the afternoon (doctor’s orders….) stressed me out as well I suppose I’d rather vote for something at work being the cause (buggered if I know what though) than work itself, as much as I hate it these days.
(If you’re new to this here blog just read up on posts like “Damn them filthy thieving Arabs”, and you’ll get why I don’t like my boss’s… huh… policy much…)

See title.

Listening to Oomph! again. (For those who care: “Nichts (ist kälter als deine Liebe)” at the moment. “Nothing” up next.) Singing along as well. Lucky neighbours that it’s winter and the window is closed.

Drinking my favourite poison V+. All non-Germans, please don’t throw up; it’s Veltins beer with coke. Yummy.

As I already told the Muffin Man, I was pinked at work today. How can a woman wear light pink winter boots (dirty), white woolly pants, a light pink down jacket, an even lighter pink jumper, very likely also pink underwear I am sure and pink lipstick?! And she was not 12, but more like 60.

Anyway, just went and made a few more enemies on the Mad Canuck’s blog I’m afraid, but what the hell, Programmer Craig hates me already anyway. (And seeing how he acts towards other people I’m not sorry about that anymore but wear it with pride. YES, I am proud to be “the abusive German person”, yay!!!)

What is this world coming to if people consider “anti-war” to be a curse word? When did we take 100 steps back in terms of liberty, democracy, peacefulness and freedom of speech?

Still Oomph!, “Tief in dir”. Am I the only one who doesn’t quite get what Dero is singing about…?

Sorry, folks, that’s it for today.

Winter can come now (although I’d prefer it to stay away, thank you very much); I changed the car’s tires. Well, they predicted snow, so we figured it might be wise to be prepared.

To survive the cold of winter I bought the ingredients needed for brewing up some gløgg / glögg. Don’t think I’ll do it this weekend already though, but I wanted to be prepared here as well. Thank you Susie for sending the spices and the recipe. Oh, and if this Danish brew sucks I’ll give you a ding around the ear next time we meet!

On a more serious note - I followed a link from somewhere to a US soldier’s blog which I found rather disturbing. Both the fact that the half-Iraqi person linking to it seemed to find the author concentrating on tanks and guns the only thing that people might have problems with and what the soldier writes about when not describing tanks, guns or tasteless pranks amongst the soldiers.
Out of piety and respect he does not describe how fellow soldiers come to their death on their mission in Iraq. The same courtesy is not extended to dead Iraqis though. I read some very sick descriptions of soldiers having fun looking at a mutilated corpse and a soldier jumping off a tank on a bet to originally turn a dead Iraqi over but - being ordered to stay clear of the corpse in case it was rigged up with explosives - settling for straddling and humping the corpse from a safe distance which all his fellow soldiers considered to be roaringly funny. Even if these dead Iraqis were indeed insurgents… dead people deserve a certain amount of respect. Allegedly civilized people should know this and live up to it.

Ayyyy, I just babbled so incoherently that the Kid’s internet connection broke down!! That’s what I call a baaaaaad influence!

I think someone stole my brains. Or parts thereof.
*curses the cold she’s having*

Do I have anything else to say? I dunno. Thinking is so hard.

I think I might watch something not intellectually challenging on tv now.

Sorry, folks, that’s the post for today, mwahahahahahahahahaha!