Category Archives: Personal

Anniversary

Sixteen years ago I started this weblog in 2000. On this day in…
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005 (a day late)
2006
2007
2008 (16 days late)
2009 (six days late)
2010
2011 (three days late)
2012
2013
2014 (eleven days late, though I posted in the meantime)

… and in 2015 I apparently forgot the anniversary altogether, but at least the post closest to January 25th contains an interesting link to a list of 10 Great National Parks [in the US] You’ve Never Heard Of. André and I have actually been to five of the parks featured in the article, but we might check the other five out too sometime in the future.

If you think there is a National Park (or National Monument, or other place of interest) missing from the list that we should put on our list – especially if it’s in the Southwestern USA – please let me know!

Winter

We’ve had a little bit of snow this week, but not much. Today, we’ve had some snowfall while the sun was shining, and a few minutes ago this was the view out of our living-room windows:

And now it’s five minutes later and has stopped snowing again…

Emotional Labor

A MetaTalk thread reminded me that I never posted a link to this excellent MetaFilter thread from July 2015 on emotional labor:

“Where’s My Cut?“ : On Unpaid Emotional Labor. (July 15, 2015)

“Housework is not work. Sex work is not work. Emotional work is not work. Why? Because they don’t take effort? No, because women are supposed to provide them uncompensated, out of the goodness of our hearts.“

Posted by sciatrix (2115 comments total) – 828 users marked this as a favorite.”

It took me the better part of two weeks to read that thread and some of the AskMetaFilter and Metatalk threads it spawned (selection, in chronological order), plus more time when later threads were posted:

European Mantis

Ah, the joys of living in the countryside: On September 19th 2015, we found this lovely visitor next to our front door:

It’s a European Mantis (europäische Gottesanbeterin), probably a female because of the size. They are quite rare in Germany and are only found in very warm regions like the one we live in.

This specimen is probably pining for the fjords by now, since only the eggs survive the winter.