Quick lookalike

Same hair, different decades.
Joelia Timosjenko and Princess Leia.

Too busy for anything

No new posts since last week. Too busy doing stuff. I'm finishing starting a paper on Magritte which is due on Monday. And finishing another on an early sixteenth century panel, which is due on ... Monday.
So no rest for the wicked.
I finally managed to do some shopping today, which was long overdue, since I hadn't bought food since Dr Livingstone was home. Well, except for that loaf of bread at the start of the week.
I've been doing the full student experience this week, even eating at the student restaurant.
And subsequently having a gruelling cold and germs to match. Bleh. I hate being around that much people.
Anyhow. I'm going to resume my creative writing, shove some healthy fruit and veg down and then finish the day with a nice detective on the telly.

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Dr Livingstone!

I posted you a blog entry but blogger ate it.
Blogger had issues on Friday and all posts I made disappeared. So I had re-post birfday greetz.

The Politics of Traditionalism in French Art (19000-1914)

Just got back from an entertaining lecture by Neil McWilliam on the politics of traditionalism in French art (1900-1914).
I was familiar with the work of Emile Bernard just up to the point he left for Africa. This because I had recently read 'The Yellow House'. What I didn't know was how Bernard's work evolved from the cloisonist to the idéalist style he later defended within his favoured approach of art (dubbed traditionalism). Very enlightening and very elegantly worded by Professor McWilliam.
I refrained from asking a question as I didn't want to make a complete arse of myself in front of my two professors who organised the lecture.
I don't know why but throughout the words Marcel and Proust leapt to mind...

Book worms mice

I made my way to yet another faculty library to get some books -well, duh- for my paper. Looks like they haven't been read much at all over the past 100 years. They're the type that has pages that had to be sliced open before you could start readig.
The sides look like there have been mice at it.

Metallica in the library

When I was strolling from the faculty library to the central library, the belfry was playing. Every Wednesday during lunch hour sweet tunes emerge from the tower. Not your some unknown music, but the musician manipulating the bells adapts contemporary pop songs. Yesterday, during my brisk walk, I heard 'Killing me softly' by The Fugees and an excellent 'Nothing else matters' by Metallica.
The library is absolutely dead silent (except on market days), but when the big bell is struck you can feel the sound going through the whole building.

It's .... another book!

I brought this beauty of a book home with me on monday. Het Vlaamse Wandtapijt by Guy Delmarcel. The student club had put in an order for a massive amount of this work and was able to sell them to us at a discount. A bargain at just 15 €. It's sold out at most bookstores.
I'm taking a course on decorative arts next year, and it was recommended to us by a professor.
I'd say tapestries are one of our most successful export products to date. That and vertical windmills.

Statler & Waldorf at the archive

I was at the Mechelen city archive today working on my next paper due at the end of next week. Very friendly people. The reading room is in an attic. Tables are shoved underneath the sloping roof. So tall people like me need to be cautious not to bump our heads when standing up or moving around. I bumped into a roof beam, although I managed to dodge most of it. I didn't hit it head-on like Dr Livingstone hit our glass door last month.

The archive opens up at half past eigh, I got there around quarter to nine, traffic was slow. Next to my working area were already two pensioners hard at it. They were reading aloud to each other. They were like Statler & Waldorf.

Anyhow, I ordered tons of archive material to thumb through. I was halfway into a box of stuff and found something of interest. I'm currently doing research on a cycle of 25 paintings on the life of Saint Rumbold.
I discovered a missing tableau. Hurrah!
Alas, that was not really the focus of my angle. I was writing about them from an iconological viewpoint, more specifically the nachleben of some panels in 19th century building 'restauration'.
Ah well, can't win them all.

A colour orgy

If someone knows what these flowers are called, please post me a name. There are three stunning bushes which I can see from the living room and kitchen and are all of them sporting three different kinds of coloured flowers. One of them is the bush I so drastically pruned earlier this season. In the old place there were lots of these kinds of bushes and they used to blossom two to three times a season. The only thing I know about these coloured bee traps is that I am allowed to prune them just after they've flowered.

Greetings from the garden

A very lovely surprise when I opened up the front door to let Mouser out. A solitary flower greeting me in the morning.
All prim and white, slightly glistening with morning dew.
It exceeded all expectations of what would come out of the buds I posted on earlier. I thought they were going to be some king of ordinary orange or pink. But this pristine white bloom is so pretty. If I were a bee I'd choose this one to gather pollen. It has these attractive folds. Nature really outdid itself again.
Pitty Dr Livingstone is not around to see them.

The Veg Patch

This is how the veg patch has evolved after some time. Some leaves are appearing on the berry-stick-things and the onions are rearing their heads. Still no sign of the potatoes, they should be on the right. Well, they are on the right, underground. My guess is they've already been eaten by earth worms and ants. A big, short rain and hale storm swept of this part of the country yesterday, so it got a good drenching. All the plants need some massive amounts of water. Some even have drooping leaves.

From studying to soldering

It's back to fixing stuff for the mo. I handed in my paper this morning. Finally done with it. It turned out to be a good 46 pages of full text and I added another 9 or so image mash=ups. My eyes are a little sore from staring at the computer screen.
Ah well. All in a good cause.
Now on to the next ones. I have just under three weeks to write up another two. Wish me luck.

Grassplantation gone wrong

Dr Livingstone's grassplantation has gone awry. It hadn't rained in a fortnight and it has gone all brown. Hopefully it will start to grow again, after the few drops we've had over the last two days. It isn't much, bit it might spark a bit of life into the bits of lawn, now looking very much like crude band aids.

I love the smell of sewage water in the morning

Before Dr Livingstone left to tour he managed to borrow a water pump and pump out all the water that was in a pit in front of the garage. Funny Tragic thing is, the tank has no outlet. Very strange. The water can't sink into the bottom either, as it has a concrete floor. This is puzzling. Luckily it is now nearly empty. It is where the dirty water from the washing machine goes. And possibly even the rainpipes from the car port. But we haven't figured that one out just yet, as it hasn't rained here for weeks. Well, it did very briefly on Friday afternoon, but that barely lasted more than half an hour.
There was also a toilet hooked up to it, but we removed that one. It currently resides in a skip at the container park.
Needles to say the odor coming from the tank was a strange blend of sewage water with a hint of lavender fabric softner.
As I said to Dr Livingstone at quarter to seven in the morning: 'I love the smell of sewage water in the morning'.
We pumped the lot in the adjoining field very early so our nosy neighbours didn't have to inquire in our waste removal activities.
So another job well done! And a big thanks to S. for lending us his pump!

Interesting blooms

With great anticipation I'm watching these flowers at the front door. This week some extra's have popped out and are keeping me interested every time I'm passing. Wonder how high they'll grow before they change colour/open up/do something else to confuse me.

A glass of flowers

I decided to cheer the place up a bit now Dr Livingstone is out on the road again for a three month stint.
Like Mrs Bucket says: 'Bring the outdoors indoors'. So I cut off a whole bunch of lilies, bound them up together with some string and put them in a champagne glass. I'm not the sort of woman to hoard vases in all different kinds of shapes and sizes.
They smell absolutely yummy. I hope they last a good while.
There are enough in the garden anyway, I might as well enjoy them inside as I can't go out in this beautiful hot weather. The sun blinds the computer screen and I need to finish this paper I've been slaving over this week.

From dull things comes beauty

I love all the pretty flowers outside. I made a small round up of the ones emanating their lovely intense colours and smells.
We've got skimmia (bottom right) all around our circle patio and climatis (bottomon left) the car port! Still waiting to find out what kind, I'm not very good at determination by leaves or other stuff. Also, the garden is simply teeming with lily of the valley (centre). I do miss the lovely magnolia we had in our old garden. That smelt terrific too.

We've also got some awesome red flowers (top left) and lovely light pink blossoming trees (I hope their fruit, but that would be a bit too much to hope for). There is a tree that is supposed to be a cherry tree. The neighbours told us it was dead. It isn't it is just bothering them I think. I trimmed some dead branches away, I need to get onto the ladder to do it, but that'll be for another season.

Emmanuelle chair

Mouser giving away an impersonation of Sylvia Kristel.

Under two hours

Not even two hours. That's how long it took.
Yesterday I put some junk at the roadside so passers-by could take it. All I added was a sign: Free lawnmower.
It was an electric mower that the people who we bought the house from left behind. It was junk. The electric leads were bare, the traction was broken. And I have trouble mowing with a cable anyway. It takes way too long to shift it so I don't run over it.
The mower was gone when Dr Livingstone got home. I had only put it there just two hours before.
Looks like people here are pretty desperate to mow their lawns.
I hope the sucker who took the thing home doesn't electrocute himself.

Plans have been found

The plans have been found. They'd gotten buried under tons of other stuff that had nothing to do with my research.
So it was off to the archive again. Took some pictures, put my brain to work. I'm transforming it into text as we speak. Still a long way to go, but we're getting there. I'm on page 13 or so and steadily progressing. I've also done some illustrations and worked out some visual comparisons which I'll shove in somewhere in the back.
I was also working on an interactive website, but I'll see if I still have time to finish that up.
Anyway, must get back to creative writing before my cup of coffee runs out and writer's block sets in again.

Mystery Morph

I'm keen to find out what everything will be turning into when it flowers. There's some strange looking leaves shooting up in front of the front door. They're ultra thin. This week something that will become a flower of some kind popped up in between. It's just as flat as the leaves. Strange. I think it could be some kind of gladiolus. But I wouldn't put any money on it just yet.

Gardening schemes (part 3)

We did this about a month or so ago, but due to lack of time I haven't blogged on this part of the garden. We pulled out plants with the car before (read all about in Diggin' in the dirt), but this small adventure kind of got on our nerves. It was car vs plant. Needless to say the plant won. Dr Livingstone put a noose around the thing, hooked it up to the tow and drove off. We only managed to pull off some bark. The rest, annoyingly, stayed in the ground. I did manage to clean some stuff up, but we're far from having accomplished the tabula rasa action.
I trimmed the bush that will sport some pink flowers later this year (yes, I don't know the name of that bush either). The only thing I did was cut away all the dead twigs and the ones growing in the wrong direction. It does look rather unscrupulously done, but it's all for the best.
It looks really neat from the before and after pictures I took.
When term is over and exams are finished I will dig around some more.

Gardening schemes (part 2)

The gardener in Dr Livingstone has awoken. I thought he wasn't serious about wanting a veg garden, but when I got home from the mill he had already prepared a little bed to plant some stuff. I had bought three roots of red gooseberry. I'd like to have fruit I can simply pluck off and eat. [With a good wash of course. That darn black Bonney cat sprays everywhere, I assume these new plants will not escape the obligatory baptism.]
He had preformed a grasplantation and filled up the lawn where the conifer had once stood and its acid in needles eaten away everything.
I also bought some onions to plant, but far too many.
There wasn't anything else to put into the ground, so I got a couple of potatoes and some garlic from the kitchen.
Yeah, that's right. We actually haven't got a clue what we're doing.
I think he even forgot to water everything after he buried the lot.
Lulz.
The veg patch is of a very discreet nature if you can see the scale of (a small part of the garden which goes on and on behind the wall of (yet more) conifer.

Prepare the guest room

Well, they weren't at home to Mr(s) Cockup. I was in front of the building I'm doing a paper on. Neighbour who was getting rid of all the moss on his drive way with a water pressure hose shouted they weren't in. 'Their car isn't there so they must be out'.

Fantastic. They're not in the phone book, there's no name on the letter box. Just my luck they're not in on the day I drive 252 kilometers (with the price of diesel this time of year!).

So no trick or treat. And yes, I guessed correctly, they are old age pensioners, very reclusive. The man across the street doesn't even know them.
Even the woman down the village library Oh, I know everyone in the village except them didn't have the foggiest.

Anyway, I took some pictures from the outside, sat in the pub till the local library opened, rang the bell again (still no one home) and then returned home.

The paper is coming along nicely now though. I've typed up eleven pages and still haven't scratched the surface of it. Ah well.

Plans are missing

I spent all day in the archive yesterday. I was planning on thumbing through some plans of the project I'm currently working on.
I've already waded through some extensively boring administration and letters penned in ink & gruesome 19th century handwriting.
So on to the plans. And I found out they ... weren't there. -_-
Someone had already taken them away to archive heaven. The archivist there yesterday (there's about 5 of them, all working part time or something) didn't know anything about it. So I emailed the archivist archiving the archives I'm working on to see if she could find the plans for me once again.
My paper is due at the end of the month and I'm starting to get a little bit worried now.

Bleh. Today I'm going to visit the little town and the building I've been doing research on.
I'm going to play trick-or-treat. I have to ask the people who live there if I can come in and have a look around.
Wonder how that's going to be.
'Hi there, I'm a student from the x University, currently writing a paper on the architect of your house.
I do not look like a student, as I am already in my thirties. It's ok if you do not trust me to let me in, especially with all the break-ins that have been happening in the area. Yes, I have a camera with me to photograph the building, not to inventorise your belongings to flog them after I've cleaned the place out.'

I wouldn't let me in if I was them.

Business as usual

Went down to Brussels to meet up with some friends on tour with Jamiroquai. Very nice to see them all again. Some of them I haven't seen since touring with that band.

They were all well. Mending and healing from broken bones, limping on busted kneecaps and nursing their hangovers.

Solidarity Button

I bought my solidarity button at the faculty library last week. All proceeds of the sale are going to the Japanese Red Cross.

Here's a link to the Japan Earthquake and tsunami donation page.

Gravity map

ESA presented new results of the GOCE gravity mission. Here's an example of a gravity map. This is what earth looks like if modelled on the strenght of gravity. Blue areas (the flat ones) have less pull on objects, red and orange parts (the bulges) more.

Jenny McCarthy Body Count widget offline

My Jenny McCarthy Body Count widget had gone off-line and I haven't had time to look into it, until today.
Apparently the lay scientist has gone offline and layscience.net won't be back relaunching until summer 2011.

Dilemma

What to do?
1) Finish Start paper on a 19th century gendarmerie that is due by Easter?

or

2) Spend all day loitering in the garden, pulling out weeds, sipping beers and relaxing with Dr Livingstone?

Hmmm. Tough choice...

Gardening schemes (part 1)

The sun is out and I feel like I have enough energy in me to do a spot of gardening.
17ºC on Tuesday and I got the tools out. My little project for the day: eradicate the entangled-bush-I-don't-know-the name-of, clean up the excess earth and wood chip, make it nice and tidy.
Bonney joined me, and then scratched me till it bled while I was stroking kitteh.
Mouser wondered around, but spent the rest of the afternoon indoors.
Here are some before (on the left) and after pictures (on the right).

View from the kitchen:





View from the side where we've put down some chairs and a table I Hammerited a while ago:





As seen from the stables:






As you can tell from the pictures the sun had moved about a bit, it took me a good 4 hours (!) to get those sodding roots out of the earth. Those entangled-bushes-I-don't-know-the name-of are a thorn in my side.

Next step will be to prune the bush without killing it. And put down new wood chip.
Mouser will have a lovely little place in the shade, and the view from the house and our sitting corner will have improved (just a bit).
We're planning on having everything torn out, in August we're going to sort out the water pipes and stuff.
But that is still a couple of months away, I've already done this. I'm quite pleased so far.
Follow-up posts will appear from time to time as I make my way through all the flower beds accordingly.

Supermarket peeves

Supermarket peeves: I have lots.
But today I'll leave you with just the one.

Everyone must be familiar with those plastic dividers people put on the conveyor belt to keep their shopping apart?

Ok. About a decade ago those things weren't in existence here. Which was awkward. 'That bread isn't mine, it must have slided over' and stuff.

But now they are everywhere. Joy.

BUT: People now expect you to put one of those things immediately after you've put the shopping on the conveyor belt. No delay permitted. It has to be done in the same flow of the cart-emptying business.
Usually the belt is so long and the dividers scarce you can't reach one from where you're standing in the queue.

So the person behind you is getting all stressed out because he/she doesn't want to have the shopping mixed up with yours and is holding off putting stuff on the belt al long as you haven't put down the divider.
And so this huge gap empty space emerges behind your shopping, like it has lepra or something. You are considered an asocial person if you do not put down the divider. You, being in front of the other person, have to fulfill your altruistic duty.

ALSO (ok, this is the second peeve): supermarket etiquette requires you say thank you and nod politely to the person in front of you putting down the divider. As if your shopping has been gracefully saved the embarrassment of being added to someone else's bill.

Gah. I need to go down the shops again today. Do not want.

Le nouveau spring est arrivé!

Well vive to that and an eclair for both of us!

Owl hunting

We went on an owl spotting walk with the little green men volunteering to preserve nature around these parts.
Quite big group of people turned up. About 25 or so. Needles to say not all of them can be quiet while walking for about two hours in the dark.
This was a recipe for disaster. Didn't hear one single owl that whole evening.

Of course these parts are teeming with at least four different kinds of owls.
So Dr Livingstone and myself did a bit of owl spotting walks these last few evenings. Lo and behold, we had hardly put our nose round the door and were bombarded with hoots coming from all sides. And different squeeks at that. Dr Livingstone is an owl fan and can distinguish between them. I'll just take anyone's word for it.

A Tail of Two Kittehs

Mouser's nemesis paid some visits over the last couple of days. They seem to tolerate each other, no hairs standing upright, no claws extended. They've been checking each other out from a distance (2 meters).
Today Bonny (which I presume is his name) darted out of the bushes when I wanted to sit in the garden. I fetched Mouser to see its reaction.
Velvet Claws stayed in the veranda. Bonny stayed outside the veranda.
It looked a lot like the mirror-act mime actors perform.

The Yellow House

I started reading The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles by Martin Gayford on google books a fortnight ago. I speeded through to page 70 or so. And of course that was the end of the preview... So it was the perfect excuse to do some online shopping. I found a second hand copy through Amazon for a measly 2£ (shipping was twice the price of the book...).
Anyway, the printed work was forced into the letterbox just before the weekend.
It's a light read so far, easily digestable. Giving me ideas on how to approach some subjects for research.
We studied Gaugain and Van Gogh during the first semester. I wish I had read it before. The book was recommended to me over teh interwebz on a forum I frequent. Very glad I followed up on it and was able to have a little taste of it and not order something on a whim.

Hans Solo

This Japan business is dreadful.
I needed some cheering up.
This made me chuckle this morning.

Pi Day

Happy Pi Day everyone!

Although I don't really feel like celebrating anything. I haz a sad thinking about Japan.

Maru & his human are doing well!

May Ceiling Cat protekt Maru frum teh ebils of Poseidon.

Thinking of our Japanese friends

Making plans

No OS

It's funny 'cos it's true.

Saturday Night Fever

Sinusitis is back with a vengeance.
My head feels like there's a Frenchman living in it.
Everything is sore, even my teeth hurt.
I've blown my way through half a box of tissues since yesterday, but the brain drain has subsided and I'm just counting the hours until the chesty cough come seal trump noises start.

Bad enough having to spend the entire weekend in bed with fever and all bodily faculties manifestly causing distress, not only on my part, but also Dr Livingstone's. He wanted to go walking, swimming and move stuff about in the garage, but some bug in my system thwarted his plans

Gah. I really, really don't like these seasons changing all the time. Where's my lovely sunshine?