It's hot outside, it's warm inside, there already was an iced coffee after lunch today, and I will be off on summer break now. 

I'm planning to make the most of the next few weeks to relax and see friends and then sneakily catch up on stuff that has been neglected for too long. The website is freshly updated, all current orders have been sent out, the quarterly tax stuff is taken care of, cat food stock is large enough so Madame will not go hungry - it looks like I'm all set for the break. 

So I will leave you with this image of an ice cream that has stripes like a tunic with clavi... very summer-appropriate, I think.

I'll be back on the blog on August 7. Have a lovely summer! (Or winter, if you're in the other hemisphere...)

Another Monday! Somehow time flies like a banana on speed - or did that saying go otherwise? 

Anyways - things are progressing here, slower than I would like, but nothing new about that, right? I have my tasks for the week laid out and it's already clear that I will not be bored. This evening is also already planned for - the cat needs more food, so there's another batch to be prepared. Which means shopping, and then pulling out all the cat food ingredients and mixing something for Her Furry Excellence.

I'm not sure now if I wrote about this before here on the blog, but we've had to find a different way of feeding her. She's always had some food sensitivity, but it has gotten a lot worse a while ago, and there were constant issues with her digestion. Even on the food that she'd always tolerated well. Our guess was that she has become sensitive against the thickening agents which are in about all the canned cat foods, with very few exceptions. And those exceptions contain other things she cannot tolerate. Or come in tiny little tins - and sorry, the cat is already the largest producer of waste in our household. I absolutely refuse to make her waste footprint even larger by opening not one can every second or third day, but three or four tiny cans each day to feed her. (Since we cut down on our meat intake when cooking, she's probably also the household member with the highest meat consumption per week.)

So in the end, we've changed to raw food that we mix ourselves... and she seems much better on that, though there are sometimes slight discrepancies between how we think it should be appreciated and eaten (it's made with love, and exactly to suit her needs) and what she thinks (ah, well, today... I will declare this as meh, and barely edible).

Which means I'll finish the day's things to do, and then I will make the shopping list, and then it's off to get her meat...

It's a holiday here today, so you're getting this stream from a webcam watching ospreys instead of a proper blog post: 

A long, long time ago, I stumbled across EscapePod - the weekly science fiction podcast. I don't remember exactly how, or why, but listening to the episodes became a wonderful way to keep me entertained during long hours of textile work, or long hours of driving in the car. I managed to listen my way all through the whole back catalogue, and there were very, very few episodes that I didn't like.

So at one point, liking it so much, I got myself listed in the Escape Artist narrator database... thinking that I might, at some point, get sent a nice story for EscapePod, and read it, and that would be very cool.

Well. I did get narration requests - but not from the 'Pod, but from Cast of Wonders. And apparently it wasn't completely horrible, because I did get more (very occasionally, but that's totally fine with me - it does take a chunk of time to do the recordings and the primary editing). The most recent one has come out in May, and if you're curious, you can listen to it here.

EXAR has its annual conference on October 5 - October 8 this year, and it takes place in Lauresham/Lorsch. The central topic of the conference is: "Experimental archaeology in science and education 2023". 

Registration and CfP for the conference are now open, and you can register via their website. (I haven't been able to attend for a number of years now due to timing conflicts, but the conference used to have a lot of German contributions, and last year's conference programme lists exclusively German titles for the contributions. So the conference probably makes you happier if you have good enough German language skills.)

Let me show you a very helpful cat: 

What I wanted to do is try and see how that piece of cloth folds up into something that might be used as headwear.

What I ended up doing for a bit was petting the cat, who instantly appeared when I put the fabric on the floor, sat down and started to groom herself. Because that's what you do. Right?

(I did get to try out stuff a while later, when she decided that there's other places more worthy of her being there...)

And with this, I wish you a nice weekend and (if you have it) a nice bank holiday on Monday!  

Things I did today? Had coffee. (Obviously.) Got blood drawn for a check-up of hormone levels (we will see if there's some adjustment needed, or if things have become stable inside the "good values" area). Served the cat more food. Sorted through the things I used at the demonstration last Sunday, to tidy them up and make life easier when the next demo starts.

Looked through some books for research purposes. Had lunch and more coffee. Repaired my phone (the bottom module was broken, so it was only charging very, very, veeeeeery slowly). Found out I also have to replace the SD-Card (it has digested some pictures, it's not supposed to do that). 

Admired the first flower of my passionfruit plant:

I doubt that there will be actual fruit coming from this, as it's the only one for now - there's a second bud on the plant, but it is still closed.

Then there was some organisatorial stuff for the next European Textile Forum. Since our long-time trusty catering company does not exist anymore, gettting the group fed has turned out to be a little tricky, so I'm still looking for a good successor to Frau Schröder (who was fonder of canned pineapple than I am, but that was never a real problem). There was also some work done on the CfP (which is due out soon, very soon).  

And now? Some emails to take care of - and then we're having a public holiday on Monday, it being Pentecost, so I'm already looking forward to a long weekend...