Too hot!

 

It's so unbelievable hot right now in Berlin...Living in an old 19something building is normally wonderful but in summer you might experience the downside of awful temperatures. It's barely cooler than outside in the sun and we don't live at the highest floor (which normally means you get grilled thoroughly).

I wish I was at my parents being able to jump into one of the nearby lakes. Which is what we gonna do next week after checking their gardens and digging up the first potatoes this year. Yummy! After finding potatoes imported from Egypt in the supermarket -which is mind-boggling for me to be honest- I am again grateful for the "will dig for food" option we have.

 

 Personal weapon: having a lot of (warm) tea and ice at hand. I'm a big fan of Ben&Jerry's but the heavy ingredients are mostly sick day and "whoopee I swam 2 hours, ready for a yummy treat"-food. In summer I usually swap together frozen fruits, yoghurt or buttermilk, vanilla, if needed natural sweetener (I prefer NuNaturals stevia or... old school sugar) and seeds. Cheap, you know what's inside and it takes only some minutes.

 Even the cats are quite affected by the heat. Hantje just gets very calm and for her it's rare to not crave constant attention with a lot of mewing. She ends up napping at the weirdest places... be it in/on our towels or under the sofa.
Tretel just flops down everywhere while walking... sometimes we have to shove him aside with the foot because he ends up ... everywhere and most likely near a door.

 The (mostly) only good thing about summer: All the fruits O_O! Enjoy the huge summer selection of seasonal fruits while it lasts. We have the last local strawberries and blueberry season started which I was looking forward a lot. I admit I'm a foodie by heart.

I hope it gets cooler over the next couple of weeks. I can't skate over 27 degrees because 16 km skating in burning heat is simply insane :/ Even the marathon skaters I usually see on my route have been absent and that's kinda creepy. Being inside the appartment all the time is quite unnerving.

Let's pray for weather where you won't end up sticking permanently to your desk, paper or tablet.

Happy Cupcakes!

One of my motives made it into the Könitz Porzellan catalogue. You can get the big mug HERE and probably in stores selling Könitz. I think the big description is a bit weird but if it sells... oh well. >_<

A chair for (mostly) girls only!

First some nerd-news: I actually set up my old nano cube some weeks ago because my ramshorn snail (you can see that one blurred in the background) had some problems and because I had her since she was a tiny blob I decided to give her a single appartment without fishies and added two Brotia Pagodula. These horned beauties are a tad more critical to feed and keep but after one week we were suprised with 8 little babies... and a week later the other snail gave birth to 10 more. I was stunned since these are no hermaphrodites and I managed to get two pregnant girls. O____O

The babies are really tiny and I'm always scared to kill one when I clean the cube or the aquarium (6 moved over already because the cube is simply too small for 21 snails). I wonder how many will survive and grow up. At the moment they measure between 2-3 millimeters but. They only eat alga and fluid chlorella (that's the tricky part with these) and I'm still fiddling around with finding the right balance. Duh! Did I mention I love my water snails? Weird hobby I know but these critters are fun to watch when they eat and hover around.

 And something interesting for the girls: The saddle swopper. My old chair is still okay but I sat hours and hours on it, unmoving (except my arm), hunching over the table and with crossed legs. Really healthy *cough* The problem was: It's pretty unhealthy for the back and neck and legs and mostly everything. Since my hubby has a normal Swopper I knew this one would solve 99% of my problems. And so I bought one after mulling over it for quite a while. Honestly, that chair costs over 550 bucks so it's something you HAVE to decide slowly and probably check if you really need one.

 The design of the saddle swopper is ... like a saddle. That's why my hubby eg can't really sit on that thing. It's probably like sitting on a huge lady saddle for bikes for hours. He hurt and said it's probably not wise for a man to sit on that thing if you still want babies in your future. As a female it's nice to sit on that thing. One thing you have to keep in mind:

 Never crossing your legs again. At least not on that thing. Sorry for the awkward perspective... anyways, on the swopper you have to sit with open legs (so no short skirts in the office on that thing either).
Your pelvis gets moved forward and you end up sitting straight and use your back muscles.
In the beginning this might hurt like hell after some minutes (I actually got sea sick) but add some minutes sitting on it per day and get used to it. The good thing is that it has this awesome 3D spring. While typing I'm actually moving left, right, back, forth and don't sit still.

If you want to check out the details about the chair, click HERE. It's definitely a good investment and if you have a cheap chair you can switch to if you back gets too tired the better.
Otherwise ask me anything if you have any questions.

Random cutie pic: Tretel still trying to sit in his bed after it fell down from the side table. I'd say "success" since he still managed to look not that stupid.

So Fluffy!

 

I can't get over Hantje's paws... these are so effin fluffy I want to poke them all the time! It looks like instant slippers. She hates getting cold feed and won't go outside in winter (seriously!).

short vacation- heading north

 Guess where I spend the week-end? Crowds, lotsa fried food, pretty bad (and sometimes good) music and a lot of wind and salty air? Oh yes, we were in Hamburg. I needed a break pretty bad. We headed north on Friday and since the Hamburg habour is honoured yearly with a big party we spend some hours mingling with too many people and enjoying the quirks of slightly chaotic traffic.

 Left is Sonja, one of the best friends you can wish for (aka willing to let us mooch time and a couch to sleep on), right me. Excuse the look... free time= instant slob mode- the all black thing was an accident as well. Behind us: Hamburg habour near the Landungsbrücken before the hauler ballet started.

 Oh yes! Before heading to Hamburg we went to Warnemünde (if you ever visit Germany in summer... GO THERE! At least for a day.... really!). It was so nice to dip my feet into the baltic sea. Some brave girls were already swimming.

Pretty amazing view: zero people, muchas sunny skyline. Oh I love the sea in May. My greedy Gollum self loved the humanfree view we had.

I came back with lots of ideas, a fresh amount of motivation and tons of fruits and asparagus. We usually don't leave Hamburg withouth visiting the weekly fish market (every Sunday, 5:00-9:30 am) and I shopped myself to death on... fruits and asparagus. I love asparagus... it's a never ending love-story.

What a month + random cutie Han

 Fluffy Han still sports a lot of fluff. I wonder if the fuzzle attack ever stops. Unfortunately she loves to hog the bed, couch, me, Timon, clothes... everything cozy. Well duh- I guess the perks of having cats.

These arrived some weeks (months?) ago and getting these from the customs was pretty epic since it was a hugggeeee package and only these small figurines inside which nobody understood. I think Renee did an awesome job. The small pumpkin hat is removeable. I love it so much.

Otherwise I was sick as a dog and try to make up the lost weeks. It's a lot of work and I spend some hours at the lawyer clarifying some stuff I actually didn't want to deal with. I think a lot of people underestimate the need for a good lawyer.
When you start to freelance make sure you have a good contact you can reach fast and who does a good job. It's annoying but important and if a shit storm starts you better make sure to use everything you have to fight back.

But whopee... next to that I'm pretty fine and will post more work-related pics soon. Today I just want to enjoy the great weather. I hope you have some rays of sunshine as well. I craved these a lot. Thanks god the good weather is back.

Huuugggee WTF

A fellow deviantartist linked me the information and image this morning. The anti stress ball is sold in the 123Mart in New Zealand. Seriously?! It looks like a chinese production and is a rip-off. IF you happen to see it: do NOT buy it- it's illegal and I already contact the laywer. Cross your finger for me the thing gets solved.
I am kinda tired of this stuff happening. It's not so complicated to send me a mail with a license request. Gah!
I am thanksful for everybody who keeps me informed and sends me those information... even if they happen to not make my day more shiny and happy. Networking will someday- me being optimistic- show those fuckers that artists actually care pretty much about being respected for what they do. In these moments I feel just like a doormat. Duh.