A Different Kind of Retreat

Off to rehab

Mon, 03 Aug 2020 15:57:12 GMT

So finally, after a year of fighting for it, I'm off to physical rehab on Wednesday. Five, maybe six weeks in Sankt Peter Ording (North Sea). Yeehaw!

I have no idea if I can get online there, meaning how good the WLAN is... we'll see... but hopefully the weeks will restore my energy so I can post more regularly on here again.

See you all somewhere in September!

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The owl lives... and Happy Birthday Christian Kane!

Sat, 27 Jun 2020 18:37:03 GMT

Oh dear Lord, it has been two years since my last post...

I planned to come back to DW for quite a while now, but stuff kept happening... not all bad stuff, mind you! Just exhausting stuff. And this is just a quick peek to tell you all I'm still alive :-) And I will finally, after fighting almost a year for it, get my paid rehab to get myself back on my feet again. It will start in August until circa mid-September. And when that is finisheh, I will hopefully have time and motivation to be more social. Feel free to poke me :-)

Anyway, Happy Birthday Christian Kane! Have a picspam! *cheers*

I still love that man so much. Even his hats :-)

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Happy Birthday Christian Kane!

Wed, 27 Jun 2018 08:11:01 GMT

Happy Birthday Christian Kane!
Sadly I don't have new pictures, so have a few oldies but goodies.

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Merry Christmas!

Mon, 25 Dec 2017 15:36:09 GMT

Wishing everyone around a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Days of what you celebrate!

The picture is the Nativity Scene in our church. The figurines are a few decades old and belong to the church, but the barn was made by my Dad four years ago. Makes the christmas visits pretty special :-)

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About those holiday cards...

Fri, 24 Nov 2017 16:54:40 GMT

...yeah, looks I won't be able to do them this year. I'll be having another surgery in a week, and then sitting down is gonna be a problem again. I thought maybe I'll do Easter cards, or spring cards early next year, what do you think?

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Baby Falcons

Sun, 13 Aug 2017 16:02:38 GMT

I promised this for a long time, so finally, have the story of our baby falcons! Click on the images for full size.

To explain, we have an old house with a small attic that has a window. The outside of the house has brickwork, with a small hole where the window is. My Dad installed a box behind it, as a potential home for kestrels. He didn't have much hope, because usually kestrels choose their home much higher up (think clocktowers), but hey. And one day in spring of 2015, he's outside in our garden and hears a very specific bird cry. He looks up, and lo and behold, Mrs. Kestrel has decided to move in.

Weeks later, it was finally clear that Mr. and Mrs. Kestrel succeeded in making a family - two baby falcons in the box! Wisely, my Dad had put a removable lid on the box so that he could peek inside, and one of the little guys reluctantly agreed to model. He certainly could compete to Grumpy Cat, but still :-)

It's hard to believe that these fluffballs are gonna grow into majestic kestrels! Also, no worries, you can touch baby birdies (with caution, of course!), the parents don't mind the smell. As you will see.

More fluff:

Falcons don't build nests like blackbirds or storks, so this doesn't look very comfortable, but that's normal. They usually brood in rock holes, and the eggs lay on the bare ground, with maybe some leaves or feathers.
But they grow up nicely. This is only two weeks later:

And only a few days later, Falcons Junior were already pretty sassy, and apparently had decided that their weird landlord with the camera meant no harm at all.

And, like in every family on earth, kids complain to their mother about their siblings.

"Mooooom! He took the best part of the mouse. Again!"

Mrs. Kestrel in the middle, checking in on the kids and the landlord.

Almost ready to fly! Only a few of the baby downy feathers left.

And he is on its way too. Bye, little kestrel, good luck!

For a few days, the younglings returned for the night, so Mrs. Kestrel had to check on her kids. So here we have a kestrel in a pear tree!

The pear tree is about two metres away from our house, and this is the view from Dad's bedroom window, below the falcon box.

And then I hear my Dad call "Elke, get here and bring your camera!!"
Mrs. Kestrel had decided to sit on the windowsill. The bedroom window was open, she flew down from the tree and sat on the sill, looking inside. I could have touched her easily, that's how close she was. Completely unafraid, always on the watch, of course, but she didn't mind at all that we were moving around and taking pics. Here she is:

Such a beautiful creature. We saw the family around for a few days more, and then they moved to new territories. Maybe they come back again another year, the box is open!

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F U, Photobucket

Fri, 04 Aug 2017 08:00:47 GMT

So Photobucket doesn't let you embed pictures anymore unless you upgrade to a paid account. Ugh. No. So I downloaded all my pics and deleted my account. Luckily I used PB only until 2010 anyway, so it was manageable. I fixed every link on DW, but not on LJ since DW is my main journal now. But as a safety measure, I downloaded all my pics from LJ image hosting. You never know... and I have no idea about storage space as soon as I go basic account, so before it gets cut off, I decided to save.

And ugh... apparently I copypasted a lot of entries with a fixed font color. Namely black, And I have a dark grey layout on DW. Yay. *LOL* I thiiiink I fixed that too. Fun to read old entries on the way!

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Microsoft scam

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 16:59:39 GMT

Just got a phone call from "John" from "Microsoft" to tell me that there's trouble with my computer, and I need to install... Yeah, yeah, heard it before. He has been calling us for weeks, but always only got my Dad who hung up as soon as heard an english speaking voice. And I had already googled the number and knew what they were up to (they tell you that you have a virus, and you need to install TeamViewer so that they could take over and get rid of it. Yeah, how about no.) So I cut him off and told him that I know it's a scam, that he would never get on my computer, and he should never call me again. He started to get a hissy fit. I told him to fuck himself with a cactus and hung up the phone. Time will tell if that worked...

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Happy Birthday Christian Kane

Tue, 27 Jun 2017 16:46:05 GMT

This is a tradition that I have awfully neglected. But now!

Happy Birthday Christian, hope you have a good day, love you lots and lots!

Picspam of the Birthday Boy, I just opened a pic folder and picked a few faves...

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Wasps for koryou

Wed, 24 May 2017 16:36:14 GMT

koryou , see, this is what happens when Dad thinks he needs a picture of wasps doing Kaffeeklatsch :-)

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Small Update

Tue, 23 May 2017 18:35:08 GMT

I decided to move posting to Dreamwidth, crosspost to LJ but downgrade LJ to a free account. I don't want to give them any more money. The whole Russia thing creeps me out, and being told that the TOS translation to a language I can frigging read is not a valid document... well. No.

Anyway, you can comment here or there, I will check both journals and both flists as long as they let me stay. :-)

So what is going on with the owl? The two unwanted holes in my body (groin and tailbone) are still in healing process. Sigh. I can sit if the chair is comfy, I can work, but I'm still not allowed to do sports, so no gym, no ballet... *cries* And every morning clean out the wounds and bandage. And be patient. I am patient. I AM PATIENT. AAAARGH! *lol*

Also, I got new glasses. Variofocal. I love them, but good ones are pretty expensive. And of course at the same time a molar tooth decided that it didn't like its filling any longer, and spat it out. And since it was the third time it did that, I needed a crown. *bank account crying in the distance* Well, at least I'm royalty now. *grin*

In nicer news, I spent Easter weekend with my friends in Nürnberg (yes, you can buy ginger bread all year, no, the Christkind is NOT there all year) which was lovely. Pics to come!
My Dad is doing good, always on the road, either on tour or for photo exhibitions. I'm glad he does that and not moping around at home :-)
Work is getting better - after the Big Software Conversion of Doom with all its curses and hair tearing, it now works pretty well. Still some smoothing out to be done, but the basics work. Yay.
And I finally broke my writer's block! "Enzian" only needed some minor edits and is now ready and posted. The next big monster story about amnesiac!Lindsey sits with 38.000 words and is not even remotely finished, oh dear... and some old comment fics need fleshing out and a good beta (havenward is not gonna be unemployed with me for quite a while...). Most important, I have fun writing again.

Fandom wise I need to catch up with so many shows, it's not even funny. The Librarians, Teen Wolf, Doctor Who... but I saw the first seasons of Supergirl and The Flash, and loved them. Definitely sticking around for those. Also, Tyler Hoechlin as Superman. HEARTEYES.

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Face Value update!

Mon, 22 May 2017 19:08:07 GMT

Yeeees. I still owe y'all a health report and tons of pictures. But somehow I managed to break my writer's block, and post a new old part of Face Value. "Enzian, Sleep Deprivation..." got fleshed out, beta'd and finally posted on AO3.

Here we go:

Title: Enzian, Sleep Deprivation and How They Go Together

Author: elebridith

Rating: NC-17, just to be on the safe side

Genre: Slash, Crossover Angel/Leverage

Pairing: Lindsey/Eliot

Summary: Eliot is tired. Lindsey is drunk. Guess how that works out.

Disclaimer: Not mine, no one, none of it. Just playing.

A/N: Set in the Face Value!verse, around 22 months after Face Value.

Enzian is a liquor, strong and a little bitter. Has about 38 % alcohol (Jack Daniels has 40 %) and is said to help if you have an upset stomach. Tried it once. Eeeeevil stuff!!!

Originally written for merry _gentry's prompt "Drunken making out" over at comment _fic. Now fleshed out.

Beta'd by

havenward . *tacklehugs*

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Christmas Cards?

Mon, 09 Nov 2015 10:11:09 GMT

I'm determined to send out Christmas Cards this year, or at least New Year's Greetings :-) So if you want one, please leave your adress on my LJ entry so that I have everything in one place:-), even if you think I should have it.

The link is here.

No obligation to send one back, I'm happy to do it!
Comments are screened over there. You can of course send me your adress via message, but in that case please leave a comment that you did so. Thanks:-)

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