So far I have followed a de-clutter and cleaning schedule – which is also known as getting the flat into the “Schöner-Wohnen-Zustand” (better-living-state) because my parents are coming this week for my graduation (guys I’m really going to properly graduate -we don’t do this at home, so I’m quite excited about it! Batsuit, hat and all the trimmings!) Somehow this de-clutter regimen got out of hand on Wednesday when I started dragging a shelf from the bathroom into the mini-hallway and I’ve been banned from such projects until the end of the month. I did wedge in a mini cooking marathon yesterday (once G was safely out of the house, going to visit the Netherlands office of her firm… people just can’t be that upset over skype…). Our Lamb tagine and savoy cabbage casserole are now prepared and frozen so we can happily defrost most of our dinners, only the living room remains in a state of semi-chaos.

London morning sky

Yey!! Nearly done getting up early – for this year… and almost everything is ready for Christmas.  M’s parents transformed into something like ‘gift central’ for the gifts that weren’t home made … but a lot of gifts are home made (motto: ‘I’ve made something I pinned’ – actually, we made a lot of what we pinned) still 1 1/2 are still waiting to be finished/started, BUT tomorrow is free, except for a – hopefully – short trip to the genius bar and lunch with former housemate J – if she can get away from the Christmas madness.

Look what we've made!

So, G’s just finishing off her holiday hand-over notes and almost ready to disappear from the office, and M’s working on the graphic and translation challenges for one of her Christmas gift projects. Back to work for just a little longer…

But back to the subject. 11 aus 2011 (or 11 from 2011): What did we do?

Got out from underneath the chaos of moving

Bus rides to college…

… no – alas – this is not my college. But nice view from the bus!

Writing (re-writing, correcting) assignments, dissertation and new applications and learning for exams…

a peaceful process for everyone…. especially the all-night stats quest which left me all relaxed as you can see…

getting my sister married off and organising her baby shower (read: “knit lace blanket” – G actually started almost on the day my sister told us she was pregnant – “and hand puppets, Rafi jumper and an owl mobile”)

welcoming my first nephew (who, now, apparently looks into a career as a botanist…personally I predict a career as a ballet dancer – hehehe)

saying good-byes and remembering

Having a microscopic holiday

enjoying the sun from the balcony (us or the plants?)

Getting our kitchen table (and no, the little flowers on the table are not edible – that question has been asked though…)

Reminding ourselves that we need good food and time to eat and extensive Sunday breakfasts… (kitchen table helps)

via pinterest

|Listened to| The Secrets of the Ordinary Farm by Tad/Beale; unfortunately only the abridged version, which I usually dislike, but I really wanted to know what would happen in the book, and I loved it – despite the feeling to be constantly roasted over a small fire as the abridged version doesn’t leave a moment to relax – totally bought the idea of the mushroom (loved it – my friend S called them the pest of modern times) Eragon (the last book) and yes it’s finally ended, could have done with 35% less of the book, but then I fell asleep anyway… so it was a good thing.
|Watched| lots of nonsense
|Did| rest and rest (mostly), read, knit and wait
|Learned| yeast is more temperamental than I thought…
|Ate| tons of comfort food
|Drank| tea (various teas and flavours) and water
|Thought| all in all we have been lucky – especially after I stumbled over Claudine’s story (on several blogs actually  – I know it’s in German and you might need to use a google translator, but the story shocked me as much as the help pouring from the blogosphere is amazing)
|Was happy| to have some peaceful moments
|Wished| I would feel a bit better faster (still) – sigh
|Planned| Christmas (so no, I won’t say more)
|Bought| see ‘planned’ above
|Clicked| NDR Radio for breakfast (what would weekday mornings be without it?)

via niceroom

After a pretty miserable last week with fyoi (fight your own illness) I now manage to sit up in bed, propped up against all my pillows.
So we had lots of comfort food (if Kartoffelpuffer – sort of like Hash Browns in a round version – count amongst this), lots of sleep (probably more than little A had), read some books (finally figured out how to put the library books on my phone – part of why it took so long was actually the library’s fault for migrating to a new server and then having lots of file hiccups), wore the usual comfort outfit (soft t-shirt & blanket) and watched a mind-numbing amount of films (I did fall asleep during most of them, except for Molière which was great fun to watch and listen to – and now gets quoted a lot in our house – makes me want to read Molière again, and I’ll have to wait until I go home for Christmas where all my books are – V gave me a commented version of Molière works when she stayed with us wayyy back). I managed to finish the first of some Christmas knits (is it ok that knitted hats for toddlers fit my own head? Seems excessively large…), working on the second one and on my secret project (which is not for Christmas and involves a lot of family fun and this is all I’m going to say about it ) and on not doing too much (which is problematic as I do have some energy and then waste it all in 5 minutes, feel ill again and crawl back to bed cursing that I should have known better if I’d be more clever/disciplined/etc. I could now sit happily in bed and knit if only I hadn’t…)

I’m working on it…

We went to see latest instalment of the Met’s new Production of Wagner’s Ring – this time Siegfried – on Bonfire night. For those who are not too sure what’s going on in Siegfried, the third and second to last opera in Der Ring des Niebelungen, here a short recap for nervous people: young Siegfried, the incestuous child of Siegmund and Sieglinde (brother and sister who met in the previous opera Die Walküre – you could tell by the names, couldn’t you…?), is now a grumpy teenager with hero powers (after all, his grandfather is the god Wotan). The only person Siegfried knows in the world is the gnome Mime – as Siegfried’s parents didn’t survive long enough to make it into this opera: his father was killed in Die Walküre and his mother died most likely about nine months after the end of Die Walküre. Mime, not your cuddly garden gnome, is a blacksmith with a rather dubious character and the ambition to reign the world, which he hopes to the achieve by wearing a magical ring (sort of a Lord of the Rings one-ring-rules-them-all kind of ring). He has reason to believe his plan will succeed: the ring is currently in the possession of a dragon (formerly known as the giant Fafner, now turned into a dragon; this probably happened after a bad trip to the cosmetic surgeon…) and Siegfried is the only one who could kill the dragon, which he proceeds to do. Siegfried then picks up the ring and the camouflage helmet (a kind of metal mesh which makes you transform into someone or something else). Unfortunately for Mime he also kills Mime, when he finds out that Mime is ready to kill him to get to the ring. Siegfried then wakes up and comes on to Brünnhilde (who was put to sleep at the end of Die Walküre for punishment and, to stay with the incestuous theme, is his aunt). In the process he defeats his grandfather, break the spear that rules the world (sort of a law and order spear) and walks through fire. Death count: one blacksmith, one dragon/giant, one spear, probably also a bird, but we don’t know exactly.

The new production has some great cinematic effects that are projected onto the “the machine”: 45 ton, 2 towers of 26 feet (or 7,9m) holding a 26-plank-construction. The rotation of the planks and projected images onto the them create the scenery on stage. We get to the see below earth (including crawling worms), a waterfall, blowing leaves, fire and a flying bird – lovely imagery. It draws you in and speaks to our Pixar-spoiled eyes. But please: what is it with the dragon? We were presented with this (see the picture above): a rather static toothy earthworm.

I love plunging into opera stories and they have been my friends ever since I can remember. I enjoy thinking about what happens in-between operas (if they have sequels like the ring) or to characters when they walk off stage. I loved reading a book written by a lawyer/opera lover taking the villains in opera to court, treating the story as if it really happened. Some opera stories could really happen; ok, maybe not the dragons, but then again: with back-breeding going strong, who knows!

Obviously then my pet peeves in staging are inconsistency (because I’m prone to it myself) and people who do not read the text/score properly. Some scenes in opera a notoriously difficult to stage. Maybe the composer just had more vision for staging than we can physically realise, but one should think that today’s technical means should make it possible to stage scenes with dragons or those that involve forging a sword. In Siegfried, unmotivated steam rose in the sword scene (when the sword is plunged into water – I admit this is difficult, since the water is only a projected image, which, on top of everyone’s misery, disappears with the spotlight following the singer. Disturbingly you now see the steel colour of the machine, putting you back into the opera house, and losing the magic of the story.

Also, it appears that as a hero you can touch steal that has just been heated up to look read hot… ehm, realistic?! Oh, and when a singer sings something that translates to ‘How hot is it! It’s midday and the sun is high in the sky, I will sit in the shade to cool down.’ I do no wish to see someone who goes from a semi-dark point on stage into a gloomy one. Same goes for the point where someone sings ‘hail you, sun’ and we find ourselves asking if this refers to the pale object projected onto the back of the stage, which could technically also be a brighter moon, especially if the rest of the stage is gloomy. If, in a production, I go to so much trouble to match the movements of the mouth of a singer to the movements of the beak of a projected computer-animated bird (and yes, we get talking birds in this opera, talking dragons too, if you must know) – how could you brush over all those obviously incongruent details?

And the main question for all knitters in opera: when Wotan takes his shoes off during his visit to Mime, and when he then walks around on the semi-tilted machine with what appear to be grey woolly socks – where those ABS socks?? Your guess is a good as mine.

Happy Birthday G... and maybe I should have closed that door before taking the picture...

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|Listened to| Richard Wagner’s Siegfried in preparation for the Met at the Movies next Saturday, and to audio books. We finished our Mrs Polifax Series read by Barbara Rosenblat (there might be more available, but audible.de doesn’t have them) and moaned that audible still (!) doesn’t have The Secrets of the Ordinary Farm by Tad/Beale. sigh. I know it’s out there in German. I’ve seen it on Amazon.de so why doesn’t audible have it although they are part of the Amazon Family ??
|Watched|Bébés – in which we learned that essentially cats bring up the children, no matter from which culture they come
|Did| Belated oral presentation of my dissertation project, rested (rested, and rested some more), painted my Gorm shelf (the one that the big yellow/blue shop doesn’t do any more – the new version’s called Sten) white, re-fashioned 2 old T-shirts (inspired by Anthropology), baked lots of muffins (mostly a somewhat healthy version with carrots & apples) and started to sew again…
|Learned| more about cultural differences between Germany and Britain (I know, even after all these years)
|Ate| apparently lots of muffins… although I think we froze some as well…
|Drank| tea, water and coffee, in exactly that order
|Thought| do people really (particularly neighbours) need loud music at 7am in the morning?
|Was happy| to see friends
|Wished| I would feel a bit better faster – sigh
|Planned| to do a Christmas list (honestly, I’ll not make it to Christmas day this year otherwise, my body has a weird way with (lack of) energy lately so I’d better be organised)
|Bought| an early birthday present for G at Timbuk2, because she’s been taking the bike to work every day and the zip on her backpack was beyond repair. She was using my backpack – which is not waterproof any more … you see, an early birthday present was in order. (I had to have one myself, since a non-waterproof bag is not good for the laptop), paint and primer, sewing material.
|Clicked| NDR Radio for breakfast