Serendipita

Christmas in August?

Yay, Audrey and Hal received our Christmas card yesterday. Because we didn’t find their home address on the web, we sent the card to the Department of Anthropology at the UNLV.

Of all the Christmas cards we sent last year, now only two are still missing…

(Hint: If you want this year’s card in time, let us know your postal address! )

Happy Birthday!

Heute hat mein Papi Geburtstag. Alles Gute und herzlichen Glückwunsch!


Books

Not enough time to read all the books you want? Try Book-A-Minute, a website that has condensed versions of many classics, science fiction/fantasy and bedtime books. For example, try The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams: “Simon: I’m only a kitchen boy. (slays hounds, soldiers, and a dragon) – The End.”

Link via le bleu blog.

Sunsets

Wow, Garret had a beautiful sunset photo yesterday – um, the day before yesterday. It’s past midnight already. I really ought to go to bed…

Sunset at 9 pm today.

Nach dem Sonnenaufgang jetzt wieder einen Sonnenuntergang für Jörg.

Ein paar Kilometer weiter westlich sah das ganze übrigens so aus. Iris hatte in Rheinbach die gleiche Idee wie ich in Bonn.

Geburtstag!

Happy Birthday to you, Hal!

Hope you’re having a great day!

Reading

While I was “downtown” yesterday in order to return all those books, I also paid my favourite bookshop a visit. They have recently redecorated and moved all the sections around. Why do they do that every couple of years? It takes a while to get to know the shop and find your way around, and once you know where to find what you want, they move everything around.

The only section that stayed in place is the section with foreign books. Unfortunately, they shuffled the furniture around there as well and got rid of some large bookcases and replaced them by narrow tables. Of course, they now have a lot less space for books. Again, why? Those bookcases were perfectly okay, and they had the biggest selection of foreign books in Bonn.

Now they only offer about half the books in the French section than they did before (okay, my French is not really good enough to read books in French, but whatever), and the English section is considerably smaller as well. They used to have quite an amount of classical literature that is gone now; you can only find a few stray classic works among the “normal” books.

However, they now have plenty of room to feature new books, among which I found the British paperback edition of The Constant Gardener by John le Carré for only DM 21 (US$ 9.85). Remebering Craig’s review, I bought it. I haven’t read any of le Carré’s novels, so this is my first. I started reading it this morning, and it probably won’t take me long to finish it. Any other books by le Carré you can recommend?

Now, what am I going to do today? It’s too hot outside to ride my bike or do anything else, but I’d hate to “waste” the day and the sunny weather inside…

Getting up early for exams has one advantage: You get to see the sunrise. Photos taken this morning at 6:04 am.

I heeded Susan’s advice, and today’s exam was much better than the one on Monday. And now I deserve a weekend! This week’s weekend will be this afternoon and tomorrow for me. Hmm, what am I going to do with my time?

First of all, I’m going to return about 20 books to the library. Yay!