Letter of absence

This is my two weeks notice:

I'm leaving. Too much traffic on this site is coming from shady places. I don't feel comfortable writing here any more.

This was me exposing myself.
Thanks for staying with me for such a long time, fellow friends.
Please keep off, all you other creeps!

Take care.
M.

# 2

# 1

October

I know, I'm lame. I'm so lame lately that I really think it is ok to post about october when it's already the middle of november. Pitiful!

However.
Here's how my october was like.
Less work. More work. Some planning regarding theatre stuff. (Far far in the future.) Not far enough though for us to be in time for applying for funds in time. Early deadlines suck. And self management is absolutely not my pair of shoes.

October was officially announced as our month of halloween. We planned on watching one horror movie every day. We had a good start but with some things coming up - a couple of shows we set up for various people or helped at or played at ourselves + a there and back trip to berlin, also to play a show - our goal quickly disappeared behind the horizon.

Still it was nice to see a couple of movies like Halloween, Fright night, Nightmare on elm street and such, some of which I had seen before (or had seen a different part), and some completely new.

October also included some raw treats since it was Sistos birthday. We had raw tabouleh salad (with sprouted quinoa instead of the couscous), raw zucchini pasta with alfredo sauce and I made him an unforgettable cake. Does it look like a molehill to you? There's this cake in germany called mole cake which I never ate, but had in mind when I thought about what to make for the birthday. It consists of a chocolate cake filled with banana and some white cream stuff.

The cake was so good!

Apart from those nice things I still carried some nasty cold around which wouldn't go away. So I went to have my B12 checked. The doctor I went to is pretty cool so she ordered a complete blood checkup, including iron test, I only had to pay for a special B12 test that was not covered, which was ok.
My results came back fine. Off the hook I'd say!
And right now it feels like the cold might slowly say goodbye. Wish me luck!

Now I almost forgot halloween.

We had planned to go to a friends friends halloween/birthday party. This would be the first time for me to go to a halloween party knowing some time in advance and I couldn't resist to fix up a last minute costume. First I would have loved to do something scary but you either need good makeup for that which I haven't or lots of time to built a mask or something, I figured. In the end I found something I'd like to dress like, sat down on my sewing machine and came up with this:

...not puss in boots... 

I like halloween. - Happy scaredy Halloween!

September

I love this time of year.
Right now nature bares such an abundance of fruit: apples, pears, plums while some of my beloved summer berries are still to be had.

Then the first pumpkins (well, ok, that happened like a month ago) of the year enter the shelves. Here it is mainly kuri squash which anyway is my favorite. A couple days ago - though still the owner of a stove-less kitchen - I couldn't resist any more. And finally got myself a couple to snuggle with to place all over our beautiful apartment.
They had some organic ones on sale and since you can keep 'em a while I thought I might as well stock up a little now.

For a month I also have been working on my parents apple trees apples. In august I first made a batch of applesauce. Four small glasses out of a whole kitchen sink full of apples. It's always a lot of work, partly because there's so many worms inside. But it pays off because those apples are just so delicious and nothing to compare with supermarket fruit or Florida apples...
Also: juicing.

Two days ago Sisto and me also collected some pears at a tree I still knew of from three years ago. It was full of fruit but unfortunately they all hang up very high, so we could just collect what was lying on the ground. And those were mostly either broken or half eaten.
The solution to using up a huge amount of not so perfect pears:
Juicing.

Now you know what I've been doing lately. Except for moving, catching mice, dealing with the social welfare system and starting a vegan job. ...but that's another story.

More 'other stories' to be told this month over at vegan mofo 2014. My favorites:

MissKitchenWitch's Harry Potter inspired recipes, Hasta la vegan working on odd cookbooks and even odder recipes, Fork and Beans honoring Halloween, and "Will my kids eat it?" over at veganopoulous.

Goodbye Celebrity Infinity

Being on the ferry that'll carry us from Harwich, UK to the Netherlands. We did it. We almost did it. Crossing this ocean by ship for the second time in our life. We won't miss it, I'm sure!

All the things we didn't do

Captains Dinner, tanning and sweating on the deck, Faberge egg collection exhibition, diamond shopping, lounging and Spa, specialty dining, disco dongo and Celebrity Pilates shape up so you can eat some more all day.

After the storm

The sun is out again, as if it had never been gone. 

One more day, two more nights to Harwich and we're hoping for the sea to stay calm.

Off to Harwich

Later that day we left Ireland to experience the worst night during our 14-day trip crossing the stormy irish sea. The waves were so high they hit the ship probably one deck higher than ours. Sisto feared they were going to smash it while I didn't even notice them being deep asleep.

Rainy irish day - let's have a cup o' tea!

After getting wet through and through being out just a little while, after having troubles finding a place to go online, after being out for not too long, we didn't go for a nice hike due to the weather, but decided to have a chill day aboard.

On the lookout

We didn't see lots of people after walking a little bit off the main roads, 

this cat however sure was telling us to mind our own business.

Downtown streets

Criss-crossing up and down the hill, we explored the small town a little. However the weather wasn't our friend and cold nasty rain made this a short exploration. Unfortunately...

Undecided today

Undecided which picture I'd like to show you today, I'll excuse myself and simply give you both views of Cobh, nearing in sight. The little village, part of Cork Harbour, used to be named Queenstown until 1920 and was the last port of call of the RMS Titanic. Isn't that something?

Ireland, Europe

The sea was rough when we reached the irish coast. The wind was so heavy that our faces got wet and salty while we stood outside on the 3rd deck to watch the vessel enter Cobh's port. Ireland. Europe.

5 days to cross an ocean

It took us only almost six days to cross the entire Atlantic Ocean. That's not too bad. Still our trip in total was like 2 weeks going up along the american coastline, stopping every other day, and taking two more days in the end to make it to the south eastern coast of England.

Pantry stacks

Food on the ship was ok, but we had to stack some things, like bananas, because they only had them in the morning for whatever reason. If we wanted them later on we had to safe some in our room.

Last goodbye, America...

Passing another fortress - Halifax has so many of them - located on an island we took off in the afternoon, leaving behind Halifax, Canada and the american continent to cross the large Atlantic sea.

Farmers market and raw vegan food

Around noon we spent some last dollars to get us great raw smoothies, raw burger and some grubs for the next days - that we weren't allowed to take on board with us, forcing me to chow down two huge pretzels and throwing away the delicious raw dressing Sisto got for his bland salads on board. WTF!

Sunday morning sun

Later that morning the sun came out making all those nice streets even brighter.

Spring sign sightings - Canada

After passing the Halifax Fortress we crossed a nice public garden with curly trees that presented some  teeny tiny spring signs - daffodils, crocuses and such. It sure was lovely!