I know that it's an odd time to have a birthday... it may even be the last thing on your mind. Especially since today is bumma's birthday.
Still, the 19th is your birthday and I want to take this opportunity to send you a hug, a big birthday kiss and the wish that your next year may be free of sorrow.



Here's a digital card, made from a picture of a piece of polished paua shell from New Zealand. Simply because it's pretty.

Have a good year, my friend.

I suddenly realised that I've never posted anything about the trip to NZ I took with gummihuhn in April. I simply never felt like it. I loved New Zealand, but I don't like writing all that much!
Still, here's a short episode I thought about today... so why not write it down. The pictures are Gummihuhn's.

( Click to read it... )

For a different perspective: compare gummihuhn's story... it has more pictures. And if you ever find yourself wanting to rent a motorbike in Christchurch or Auckland, head to the good folks at City Motorcycle Rentals and tell them I said hello.

Real postings, I mean. For now, here's a tiny little NZ anecdote I just posted to Chit-chat on BookCrossing.com:

I read that Dunzy (a fellow BC member) was not well, and wanted to send him a card... so I picked a nice one, and had Stoneshop and Rubberchicken sign it too.

I meant to post it at the airport before going to New Zealand, but forgot... and found it in my bike jacket pocket, after riding through half of the South Island. So I decided to stick an NZ stamp on it in addition to the Dutch ones, and mail it from there.
A hundred kilometres later, it was still in my pocket!
Eventually, I left it on a table in the communal kitchen of a motorlodge in Haast, with a note that said 'Please mail this, thanks'!
I thought, since things like the honesty box system seem to work here, I may as well give this a go. Someone may well mail it.

Looks like someone did. Because yes, my friends, that card got to Dunzy in Canada.

• The first flight was OK even though we couldn't really sleep.
• The short visit to HongKong was amazing and utterly worth it, and so were the noodles we had there.
• The second flight was delayed because the plane was broken and they had to put us into a different one and it took them several hours.
• The other plane was a similarly old clunker (while the first one was fine!) as the one that we would have been on if it hadn't been broken. However, we did manage to get moved to a seat with leg room for Gummihuhn.
• We did, of course, miss our connection in Auckland and no one told us what to do so we ran around the airport like headless chickens but ended up on an Air NZ flight which was amazingly comfortable. The purser took one look at us and put us next to the emergency exit. Leg room!
• We had breathtaking views on NZ during the flight.
• It was great to be greeted by familiar faces and picked up from the airport.
• We hardly fell asleep on the scenic drive Lytteltonwitch and Futurecat took us on.
• We loved the tacos but were quite happy to go to bed right after dinner (=tea).
• We slept well and felt a whole lot better in the morning.
• Today we went to pick up the bikes and they're sweet. Handling is great. They feel light as a feather and the bike shop folks were really friendly.
• We're going to bake a nice big stack of Dutch pancakes for tea (=dinner) now.

More later!

You've shown me yours (or your housemate's, to be fair), now here's mine!

( X-rated stuff behind the cut... )

...for it to be buried in the comments of a posting.
So here it is.I enjoy working on the bike and I enjoy smelling of oil afterwards. I'd put the bike back together today except there's a pesky oil leak somewhere that deserves a bit of extra attention, and now that the engine is out of the frame it's all a bit easier to get to. So stoneshop  and I will look at it tonight. And if I get a strong urge to ride today I guess I can borrow his bike.

We also spent some time looking at a map of New Zealand. The trip is starting to feel a bit more like something that's actually going to happen. It's very exciting.
We now know that we'll have nine days to ride around the Southern island, and that sounds entirely possible and very, very tempting.

Oh, and this is the type of bike gummihuhn  and I want to rent. Nice, huh. Feel and handling should be rather similar to mine. And it's BookCrossing-yellow!

I found another tea mug exactly like mine... after gummihuhn  took the trouble of going to a very good Chinese shop in Amsterdam and was told they were sold out, and not going to get any new ones in stock! That may well have been true, as I couldn't find any in the wholesale store of the same chain, either. Why yes, I do have a card for the wholesale instant noodle soup store...
The one I found was in a shop in Nijmegen, where I went yesterday because of a BookCrossing meeting... always a good reason.

This mug is slightly darker, the characters stand out a bit less.. on the other hand, the glazing is thicker (which may well cause the other two differences, yes) which results in a lovely craquelé pattern.
Anyway, I'm happy.  Bcuz tea r srs bsniz.
Here it is.

That's sad as it was a lovely mug. Very large, covered in dark blue Chinese squiggles on a soft, friendly green background. And it had a lid. Well, it still does, but it no longer has an ear.
I use this mug at least twice every day: first thing in the morning (big mug of very strong Pu Erh tea) and right after dinner (the same). If I'm spending the day at home, the mug is never far from where I am and often full.

This is not my mug but a very similar white one,
that I made green to give you an impression of what my mug looks like.

The good news: it's replacable. gummihuhn works fairly close to the excellent Chinese shop where I bought it, and is willing to get me another, one of these days.
It's good to have friends.

My friends, I invite you to follow this link. No nasty surprises, promise. And SFW.

*sings*
Falalalala lala la laaaa. And I've actually decked the halls, sort of.

...who's not feeling down at the moment? It seems that way.

Vibes, hugs and best wishes to all of you who need them. May you feel better soon!

Three things that happened lately:

- I went to Belgium with aka_phoenix  to be present at yellow-star's goodbye ceremony / funeral. Like Phoenix, I didn't know her personally; yet I enjoyed her very positive presence in the forums, and I have a fond memory of the time when she won a 10 kg box of release fodder in my Newbies prize drawing. Since someone was kind enough to deliver the box to her home address in Belgium I could send an even bigger box so she ended up winning 20 kgs of books, and her surprise and happiness were so great they were contagious.
I'm still glad she won that prize drawing.
Yellow-Star, even though you're gone forever, you'll always be a winner to me.

Phoenix described the ceremony quite well in her journal so I don't have much to add. It was a bit strange for me to be at a religious service, but I'm glad I went. I'm pretty sure that our presence meant a lot to Yellow-Star's father and that alone was a good reason to be there.

- I joined stoneshop  in helping out at a motorcycle trials event. They always need so-called observers to watch the participants closely and see if they touch the ground with their feet, or make other mistakes while riding through the course. They get penalty points if they do.
It's a fun type of event because the sport is not based on speed but on balance and control, which makes it interesting to watch. For a competition sport, it has a decidedly relaxed and non-competitive atmosphere; riders will congratulate each other on good results, or point out tricky bits of the course to each other while exploring the course on foot before riding it.
Each course has different routes for different skill levels, marked with arrows of a specific colour, so each rider can ride at his or her own skill level. It's typically a parent-child event where fathers compete against their sons or daughters. Mothers, not so much; maybe in time we'll see that too.
I managed to punch my finger with the punching pliers that we used to mark the participants' cards to show the results. I'd never thought that was possible, but it was. Apart from that, it was a really nice way to spend a day outdoors.

- Last night I dreamt I found my Leatherman (which I hadn't been able to find for a while, and I was obviously starting to miss it). Then when putting on my working clothes this morning, I found it in one of my safety shoes.

My, this entry sure needs a lot of tags.

Yesterday was the birthday of my favourite ex. He didn't feel like having a great big party but he wanted to come over and bring his minibike, so we could ride it on the parking lot. I'd never ridden one before!
Another friend showed up and brought his girlfriend, and one of the neigbours joined us, and the birthday boy had brought cake and beers and soft drinks. We ended up having a nice little parking lot party, in the rain. It was fun.
( Click to see a video! )

These are for you!
Two LJ comunities you may enjoy:

library_mofo
libpatronssuck

Somehow I have a feeling that you'll fit right in!
Hope they may help you feel a bit better.
The rest of us may enjoy reading them. I know I will.

...when I wrote this entry about those silicone egg poachers that I saw on the net, and immediately starting lusting after.
And thanks to gorydetails, I now own them. This posting is to inform you all that I'm very happy with them and that they do egg-zactly what they're supposed to do (although it is possible to make the eggs stick to them, but I knew that before I got them).
Here is the glorious bowl of ramen noodles I had last night. With a poached egg. It was lovely.

I'll be off to Rubberchicken's place in an hour. Tomorrow morning we fly to London for the International BookCrossing Convention. I've heard  the weather won't be all that good, so I've taken my precautions.
Fellow conventioneers, 'tis by my Brellycumber thou shalt know me.

(Originally posted on MySpace)
Even though I love my work and the job at hand is great, I'm so looking forward to going on vacation. That's because it promises to be a lot of fun!
Not only are we going to this international hacker's convention (remember?), we're going to have a Temporary BookCrossing Zone there, we'll be setting up a BookCrossing Village, and some of my favourite BookCrossers are coming: Rubberchicken, Raffizack and Phoenix-Flight (you may know her as Phoenix).
Phoenix will even travel with us, which is going to be quite an adventure since we'll be traveling by motorcycle, not our newer bikes but the ancient two-strokes: my Jawa and my boyfriend's MZ. Both the Jawa's trailer and the MZ's sidecar will be stuffed with books, camping gear and more books!
Here's a pic of me on the MZ, even though I won't be the one riding it:

(Click makes very big)

(Originally posted on MySpace.)
 As some of you may remember, I was in Bremen last november, to meet the delightful antof9 . Read all about it here.
We 'released' eight books that day, and two of them were caught within a few days.
Now the third one has been reported as found, too! Three out of eight, that's wonderful. And the journal entry is quite elaborate, too.
Seems the book has done a bit of travelling on its own since I left it, it's gained a new member, and it has been read and will eventually travel on! What more can an old, battered hardcover sans dust jacket hope for?

Those of you who can read German will probably enjoy reading the journal entry.
Others can at least click the picture for a bigger version... it shows where I left the book.