Dorfdisco

On Saturday we attended a short live concert of a queer-lesbian country-punk band in the next village. The venue was an old GDR restaurant that has been lovingly conserved by a artist Frank Suplie. He’s inviting every once in a while for an evening of dance music and drinks. Its just lovely and cool to meet so many diverse people from the village and beyond.

Friends

On Saturday we finally had good old friends over for lunch. Due to the illness of my wife we weren’t able to invite friends over to us for about 5 years now. But since her conditions are slightly improving we finally able to have people over and enjoyed a wonderful reunion with a couple from France/Turkey and her lovely kids. This was long needed 🙂

DIY

This week we had to take some blood samples for a lab test. Living on the rural countryside it’s quite a trip to the next town for a doctor. Also… you’d have to wait in a crowded room for a while. Not really something a patient with severe ME/CFS condition can do. While we have support from a care-taking company, their staff doesn’t have the proper training to take blood samples.

So eventually I do this kind of stuff on my own. Its not rocket surgery and just takes proper instructions (learned it from several ER nurses) and a bit practice.

Oak Blossoms

Ever wondered what oak blossoms look like? I did. As I couldn’t remember to have knowingly seen oaks blossom. This year I was lucky to see this period of the oak vegetation period and took a picture (slightly out of focus though). The blossoms are rather unspectacular brown feathered strings hanging down under the edge leaves.

Movie/TV

After finishing “Doppelhaushälfte” I moved on to finally watching “Killing Eve“. It’s brilliant. A few years old already, but still gold. Many episodes are produced by the brilliant Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I love the play between Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer in there.

Links

Some assorted bookmarks I collected over the last week:

go-meteologix – Go packages for accessing Meteologix/Kachelmann Wetter/WeatherUS data from Lord Neessen

Solar-Akku für Alle – Wie du einen 15 kWh Solar-Akku selber baust!

ARTE Doku über die Geschichte Chinas

Reunion

On Saturday we celebrated the reunion with the Ukrainian families we helped to find accommodation in our village last year when Putin started a war on Ukraine. They have all found new places across Europe meanwhile, some went back to the Ukraine even. It was great to see them again and have good conversations over dinner and drinks.

We’re still amazed that the help for those four families basically sparked a whole bunch of new relationships in the villages. Beside meeting new friends in those people from Ukraine we also made new friends locally that we hadn’t met before. Despite living their alongside each other for several years already.

Helping those families helped bonding as a common cause and we enjoy the new company very much. Of course its sad that it took a war to start this.

Woodwork

a few weeks back I cut, split and stacked my wood. Was rather proud of my round stacks and how well they stood stable. Of course I was too lazy or busy to set up some stabilization around the stacks. And then the sunday before last sunday we heard a rumbling noise. One of the stacks collapsed as I had put a metal firepit on top to protect the stack from rain.

So I had to remove all the loose layers (almost to the ground) and restack the whole thing again. Took about 3 hrs. This time it put some fence around the stack right away to not touch that wood again this years …

Appliance failure

looks like this week was the week of appliance failure. Our fridge/freezer combination in Berlin doesn’t work anymore. So I had to order a new one. This is, beside the oven, probably the most important device in the kitchen as we need it store food and freeze the meals I’m preparing for my wife during the week for the next week.

Finally tuesday the new device was delivered and installed. So good to have chilled drinks again 😉

In our house in the #Uckermark the water heater broke finally after the 14 years. The magic smoke escaped and it has to be replaced now.

I hope this was the last bit of equipment that suddenly stops working…

Sunglasses

few weeks ago I lost my beloved sunglasses in the Baumarkt. Fortunately I found the same model on Kleinanzeigen and picked it up on Sunday evening. They ware dirty but fortunately in very good condition otherwise. A thorough cleaning and the look like new. No scratches anywhere.

And as the weather finally feels like spring or even summer, I could have lunch on the balkony and put them to good use right away 😉

Doppelhaushälfte

Started watching “Doppelhaushälfte” in the ZDF Mediathek upon recommendation from @klappstulli. This is brilliant TV once again. The stories are super funny and intelligent and the cast is really outstanding. We love it.

As mentioned in the last post, we were preparing a party for the night to May 1st. We decided to have pea soup for main course as we were expecting around 40 people. I tried the soup a week before and decided that it was good. But now the dimensions were much bigger. We scaled up the recipe and figured that we didn’t have pots large enough in size and quantity. Although we already had quite large pots with 10 and 7 litres each. Anyway… it was more than enough food and we had a lot of leftovers.

We lit the fire and had a wonderful evening with many friends. Some of whom we haven’t seen in person since about 6 years.

Although it was May 1st, the night still had frost. But the next day was beautiful and sunny so we could have a “Frühschoppen” with the leftovers 😉

I took some of the leftover pea soup to Berlin to converse it in the freezer. But I noticed that in the last couple of days the fridge didn’t seem to get really cold inside. I put a thermometer inside to confirm it’s not properly workin 🙁 Didn’t got the temperature below 13 ºC in the fridge part.

I’m all for repairing stuff, but this fridge/freezer is old and ugly. I think it had its time and its about time to get it replaced with a new one. That’ll hopefully arrive on next Tuesday so I can finally store some fresh produce again.

Beach cleanup

On May 1st the village society has the tradition to clean up the beach of the local lake. That is a fun event were we rake the beach area and clean it from the debris and junk that have accumulated over winter. We even clean the several meters into the lake and remove branches that have been fallen or thrown into the lake and remove reed thats growing too much into the entry.

Beer & Burger

On Thursday our local beer & burger “Selbsthilfegruppe” had it’s regular gathering again at Hirsch & Eber in Prenzlauer Berg. It didn’t disappoint.

As always – great conversations and fun, good food and good beer. best burger crew ever 😉

3D Printing

I saw something useful on Printables that I had to try out. The magnetic clips to hold together curtains. My curtains also don’t properly close and would leave a gap in the middle. With these clips I can hold them together easily.

I have to adjust the magnets a bit. Currently I’m using rather strong neodym magnets which are a bit too strong. When opening and not holder the clip fast to the curtain, one side would just slip off before the magnets would release.