Bye-bye!

Okay, not really. But for now. Today (in half an hour), I’ll take an early train to my parents. My grandparents are coming over for a belated birthday cake and coffee. On Friday, André will come as well, and together we are going to a friend’s birthday party. On Saturday, we continue to Celle, to visit André’s parents. We’re going to spend the weekend there and visit the Expo on Monday. We’ll be back in Bonn on Monday night, but I guess I’ll post the next update on Tuesday. I hope to be able to get some photos of the Expo online!

While I’m away, you can still participate in my

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Und tschüß!

Heute geht’s los. Ich fahre zu meinen Eltern, wo am Nachmittag sich auch meine Großeltern einfinden werden, zwecks versptäteten Geburtstagskaffee. Am Freitag kommt André dann nach, und zusammen gehen wir zu der Geburtstagsfeier einer Freundin. Samstag geht’s dann weiter zu Andrés Eltern nach Celle, wo wir das Wochenende verbringen werden.
Am Montag geht es dann noch zur Expo, bevor wir am Abend wieder nach Hause fahren. Das nächste Update ist also am Dienstag zu erwarten. Vielleicht kann ich auch ein paar Fotos von der Expo bieten!

Bis dahin gibt’s noch einen (letzten) Aufruf zu meiner

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Ergebnis.

Late in the evening…

Hmm… almost time to flip the page again, but not quite. Sorry there’s not much here today. It was too. damn. hot.

This evening, we got a nice little thunderstorm with a bit of rain, so it has cooled down. Nice.

We just returned from having dinner with the family of a friend of a friend. Their son has just graduated from Gymnasium and is thinking about studying physics after his nine months at the Bundeswehr. Our, or rather, André’s friend, told them he knew two physics students, and they invited us three to dinner so we could tell their son about the university and stuff. We had a wonderful dinner and talked a lot.

The mother of the physicist-to-be is a teacher in elementary school, so we had a lot to talk about, and André was surprised to hear the son knew UserLand Frontier!

Two beautiful Herbariums

The images were made with a flat-bed scanner.

Herbarium Berolinensis Digitalis (I took the picture from this one.)

Centre for Plant Biodiversity Research and Australian National Herbarium

It seems like Sheila liked them, too!

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Sorry, “Germs”, heute nix auf Deutsch.

Außer:

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Wer liest mein Weblog auf Deutsch bzw. Englisch?

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Ergebnis.

Summer solstice
Susan about the solstice:

Although Solstice is a time, a day of the year, I also picture it as a place, a spot along that ellipse that this planet traces year after year as we wind around the sun. We’ve been hurtling toward this place for a while now, and today, some cosmic marker is waving the checkered flag as we go on by. (Insert doppler effect sound: eeeeeeerrrrroooooom) Now we’re heading to that equinox place, and from there, to the shortest day place.

The way she puts it, it makes me kind of sad. Sounds like summer is almost over – before it even has officially started! On the other hand, it’s so damn hot in Germany at the moment, I don’t want to find out what the real summer is going to be like…

Harry Potter

Oliver has finished reading “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. He says he’s hooked, and so am I. I’ve read the first two books so far, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and the one Oliver mentioned, both in one afternoon, I think. They’re great books for children and grown-up children as well!

Ego surfing

I just searched for “Andrea” on Search.EditThisPage.Com. The search engines found 310 matches, more than half of them on my own site, of course. But I also discovered two links to my site on ETP sites I didn’t know yet:

Do you remember I posted a question for a Mohnkuchen recipe on June 7? It was posed by Roland Tanglao (DreadNet):

“Quest for Mohnkuchen continues!

I’m (almost) famous! Andrea put my quest for a Dornier Kantine-like Mohnkuchne recipe on her website today. To be continued on my next web site!”

And I found another birthday wish on Blivet. Sorry I didn’t notice earlier, and thanks a lot! Hal uses the little icons with links to other weblogs; I like that idea!

Here’s my icon:

10 Books

Sean has posted a Top Ten Book List, too!

The meaning of grades at school

The Curmudgeon has two links to interesting articles:

In Schools, ‘A’ Is for Arm-Twisting

We’ve lost that learnin’ feeling

And Sheila, this might be interesting for you as well. John asked yesterday: “What’s the chance of that happening?”, “that” meaning the coincidence of our birthdays. I remembered I once took a statistics course and calculated it, and John added some thoughts to that.

Survey – Do you read my site in English and/or German?

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Results.

Umfrage – Wer liest mein Weblog auf Englisch und/oder Deutsch?

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Ergebnis.

Heiß, heißer, zu heiß!

Wir haben momentan so um die 35°C. In Andrés Arbeitszimmer, wo die Computer laufen, kann man es kaum aushalten. Im Garten auch nicht. Vielleicht sollte ich nachts was für die Uni tun und dafür tagsüber schlafen?!

Auf jeden Fall werde ich jetzt hitzefrei machen und nicht darauf warten, daß mir hier das Keyboard unter den Fingern wegschmilzt!

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Back to normal

My birthday is over. It was a nice but busy day. I think there’s never been so much “traffic” on my weblog before. Yesterday’s homepage got 516 hits (well, in 36 hours) and made it to number 5 on the Most Read Messages list of my site.

Thanks again for all the birthday wishes!

I just discovered Sheila and I received birthday greetings from Karl Martino as well. (André told me.) I don’t think I’ve ever visited his weblog, but of course I read it today. Thanks, Karl!

You don’t own a TV?!
In the “background” – that is, on my Discussion group, Susan and I compared reactions of Germans and Americans upon confessions that we don’t own a TV. In my posting, I tried to explain about the German Rundfunkgebühr and the GEZ.

I found a little article about the öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunk:

“Public Radio and TV

There are two public tv stations in Germany, one is the ARD, the other the ZDF. The ARD consists of 11 regional radio stations, which produce jointly the nationwide ARD tv programme. Parallel to this joint programme, all state stations offer some limited tv programmes on their own. Moreover, these 11 stations produce 49 different radio programmes. Also the Deutsche Welle, a worldwide radio service, is produced by the ARD.

The ZDF to the contrary is a federal tv station only. Public broadcasting stations are ruled by special statutes. Among other things, these statutes limit the available time slots for advertisements and their timing. Public broadcasting stations, therefore, rely heavily on broadcasting fees (in 1993 the ARD alone received DM 6.9 bn). However, they are losing more and more ground to private competition, which is not subject to these rules. A further problem is the structure of the ARD network itself with its transfer payments and mutual programme exchanges. This system is no longer supported by all state politicians, who are responsible for the ARD statute.

Theoretically, public broadcasting itself is politically independent, in reality, however, most stations have some affinity to one or the other party.”

The GEZ I mentioned above is the organization that collect the broadcasting fees. They get information from the Einwohnermeldeamt, the residents’ registration office. I guess that’s another thing that’s unfamiliar to US citizens. The office collects data about every inhabitant of a city or community, like name, date of birth, address and – for emergencies – whether the person is a doctor. When you move, you have to register at your new location.

The GEZ gets the data from the registration office and tries to get people to pay the fee, but they can’t really force you to pay if you don’t want to. For example, you don’t have to allow them to search your house for a TV.

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If you lived in Germany, it would be your birthday right now!

I flipped my homepage early (before going to bed) in order to be the first ETPer to be able to congratulate Sheila on her birthday – on the correct day!

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag! – Happy Birthday, Sheila!

Birthdays


Thanks to everybody who wished me a happy birthday:

André, Imke, Gabi (via Email), Sheila (twice), Brent, Al, Jörg, Martin (Who’s the lady? ), Dave, Duncan (friday), Frauke (Thanks for the flowers!), Garret, David, Susan (She picked nice pictures, too!), John, Jeff, John (who would have liked to eat Bienenstich with me) – and everybody who called on the phone!

BookNotes

Seems like I don’t need to post an update at BookNotes today, since Craig posted something while in Prague.

He also dropped in to my weblog!

Survey – Do you read my site in English and/or German?

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Und auch noch mal auf Deutsch, obwohl bisher alle meine deutschsprachigen Leser zugegeben haben, auch Englisch zu können:

Vielen Dank für all die netten Grüße zu meinem Geburtstag!

Umfrage – Wer liest mein Weblog auf Englisch und/oder Deutsch?

Bitte hier abstimmen! (Dazu muß man Mitglied sein oder werden. Nährere Infos über die Mitgliedschaft gibt’s hier.)