Doorway

Taken at the Saint Nikolai Memorial, Hamburg, 1 August 2011.

14:28 Saturday afternoon

I should be packing. I did pack four boxes this afternoon, but I really should be packing. You see, we sold our house, and we need to move. Not that we’ve found a replacement house yet. Because that house – that house – broke our hearts.

It was beautiful, and we could see ourselves living there. And I even found a spot for the books. And a spot where I can sit and read.

But, alas, that house is, apparently, not for us.

But I guess it is a little understandable. We had this great plan. Sell our house, go rent another house for a while and then pack up and go to the wild blue yonder. Not sure which wild blue yonder, as this week, we want to live in Germany. Last week it was Cape Town, the week before that it was Japan. We have wandering hearts.

But so, for the last couple of weeks, we have slowly started packing our belongings into boxes. And looking at houses. We looked at rentals, and then we thought that maybe, just maybe, we should buy a house. And we got our hearts broken, because we fell in love with a house, but put in an offer just a little too late.

So we’re back to looking at rentals, because we are running out of time. And back to wanting to live all over the world.

Packing up your things is an interesting journey. I enjoyed packing up our CD collection, because we have some great gems that we often forget about.

And the graphic novels and comic books…

And the many…

Many…

Many…

Books…

Have packed 13 boxes of books so far, and I haven’t even made a dent.

And, of course, I keep buying more.

In just under 80 days, we are on our way to the UK, so we need to find a house and move quite quickly. No pressure

A road revisited

I must be going through some kind of mid-life crisis or something. I have been seriously re-examining my life recently, as one does from time to time, and while I am fairly happy with the life I have, I am not so happy with what I personally have achieved. I mean, I was supposed to be an astronaut and published author by now. 9 year old me is very disappointed.

My brain has decided it needs to be fed, and so I have decided to attempt studying again. But I have decided to study outside my comfort zone, and pursue a B.Sc. over the next couple of years, hopefully with an Astrophysics focus. This year, I will spend some time catching up on all the Math that I missed in the 20-odd years since I left school. Living in the digital world is fantastic, as there are just so many free resources available to the enquiring mind.

And yes, I know, it is possibly not the best year to tackle this, what with us moving and travelling and things, but really, when is it? There will always be a reason not to study, there will always be a reason to procrastinate. If I don’t do this now, I will probably write a very disappointed blog post in about 20 years from now about missed opportunities, etc. And that is something we really do want to avoid.

I will revisit the novel and the writing one day when my Muse and I are back on speaking terms.

Here’s to a year 9 months of Math.

This and that

As I threatened, herewith some pictures taken this week getting to know the camera.

Frank, our pot cat

At Zoo Lake:

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The light wasn’t optimal, I will need to figure out how to compensate. But overall very pleased with results.

New toy

We picked up a Fujifilm FinePix S4400 today, so I will probably be posting some pictures here for a bit as I get to know the camera and learn a little bit about taking photos with something other than a mobile phone.

Rosemary

Same image, closer crop

Messing around