Sex and gender are topics that come up again and again in history, in archaeology... and in the blogosphere as well as in geekdom. There's a 19th century gender concept hidden in many, many pictures (including "snapshots" of some historical scenes rendered by artists for exhibitions and textbooks), and it's more than easy to fall into traps regarding pre-fixed gender concepts that still sit deep in our society.

I thought that we were, maybe, slowly moving away from all that. I hoped it, at least.

And then I stumbled across the pens. Pens, my friends, that are not normal pens, no. Not even normal biros. They are... "For Her Ball Point Pens". Yes, really. (Also available in the Big River Store, now with many more product reviews than when Regretsy first posted about the pens. If you have some time, go read them - they are hilarious.)

Can you believe it? Pens. For Her. Because females... yes, they are not supposed to use male pens. Imagine! Men's pens! Women! I can totally understand if someone has issues with bulky, thick pens. I have issues with bulky, thick pens, and I don't like to use them, but that's not because I am female, or because I have really small hands, but because I am a left-handed person. And this means I grip a pen very close to the tip for writing, and fine motor control for the specific motions of a left-handed person writing is much easier when the pen is slim.

I will now go on with my work, using the unisex laptop, unisex phone and non-gender-marked ballpoint pen. Life's butch.

If you are somewhere in the western bit of Germany (or can get there for the weekend) and don't have something to do yet, you can go to a tourney. A proper one, not one of the stuntmen and cascadeur thingies, but a honest-to-goodness sporting event tourney, including a melée with several knights on horseback.

During this weekend (starting tomorrow), there will be a reprise of the Grand Tourney of Sankt Wendel. The original tourney was held in honour of the emperor's visit, and the modern one is held for the 500 year anniversary of the tourney. There is a bunch of hardcore jousters and it's promised they will have the proper gear: reconstructed armour, reconstructed saddles, specially trained horses, all the works. I'm no jousting person which explains why I have not heard about it, but it seems to be all over the jousting blogosphere and internets.

I'd love to go there, but I have learned about it a little late, and it's on the other end of the country (which yes, for US citizens, would seem to be like next door, but here, it isn't). Should you be able to get there... well... how about a few pics or a youtube video for those of us less lucky?

I had a truly wonderful weekend - a little bicycle ride for a visit to family, relaxed evenings, having lovely cake with friends and planning our summer holiday trip together, and finally having a nice meal (which included eating this year's harvest of red and white currants).

And now my brain is absolutely free of blog-worthy archaeological or textile-related things. It's summer, and I blame the slack season for slack in my brain as well.

So I will at least share with you my favourite way of eating red currants, which is also a very easy dessert: pluck red currants, wash and de-stalk them, and put them into the bottom of a bowl with a little sugar so they are not incredibly sour (only very sour). Prepare vanilla custard (Vanillepudding) and pour the hot pudding over the currants. Let it cool a little - can be eaten still warm or cold. That's it - a summery dessert that reminds me of my childhood and is something of a comfort food for me.

And next year, I hope our currant bushes will carry enough berries for at least two preparations of this dessert!

This is the 700th post in my blog!

I started the blog in December 2008 - now I have a hard time to believe that I actually kept doing this, Monday to Friday, for more than three years. (And I'm even more surprised that I managed to remember that today would be post 700 - and not forget all about it, as I tend to do on blogiversaries.)

This means I've blogged for, realistically counted, about 3.5 years now (even though the calendar says it's the fifth year that the blog is running) - since I started in December and it's May now. This means about 200 posts per year, easily explained by the amount of weekends, conferences and other away-times like long weekends.
The blog has 151 followers (thanks, guys!) and Feed Stats say it's 306 subscribers on average who get it per RSS feed (thanks, folks!). And in the year 2011, the blog saw more than 36 000 page loads!

I'm still enjoying my blogging life very much, and I'm happy to see that so many people like my blog. Thank you all for reading!

I'm more in the mood for another Saturday or Sunday than a Monday, but I guess it can't be helped. It was a really nice weekend, though - we did a lot of grocery shopping and baking on Saturday and a little cooking on Sunday morning, and then spent time with a heap of friends eating and drinking and having fun.

Since Thursday, we also own a cat - or perhaps I should say, as usual, a cat has determined that we will be her staff now. She was found and brought to an animal shelter, and she's still getting used to her new life and surroundings, and we are getting used to our new flatmate... but she's a sweet and gentle cat, a little shy to try new things, and totally addicted to getting petted by humans. Any humans.

(And yes, I know that the Law of the Intarwebz requires me to post cat photos soon. Because I wrote about a cat living with us. They will follow.)

I have a stack of things to read, I have to pack and prepare for a visit to a friend on the weekend, there's an almost finished presentation that I need to go through a few more times and wrap up, and I have dentist appointment in an hour.

In other news, our garden looks much different - not only due to spring now finally coming and doing stuff to the plants, but also because we ripped out an old evergreen hedge which will be replaced by something not-evergreen, not as wide and not as dense as the old one, to let a little more light and a feeling of a larger space live in our garden. A few of our friends came on Saturday to help us with this, and together we managed to remove all the hedge plants - a little more than 25 metres of hedge, so we could all feel we had done some work in the evening.

Unfortunately, the hedge is not the only thing that will not see the next spring - the little rosemary plant we bought last year has not survived the winter with its quite extreme temperatures. I'm a little sad, but I hope this is the only freeze death in the garden - there are a few other plants which are not yet getting back into the action, so it will stay interesting on that front.

To even out these losses, the offset bulbs of all the tulips I replanted last autumn (to give them a little more space) seem to happily live and grow in their various new spots now. And the first three sunflower seedlings have finally broken through the soil in my nursery pots. Plus we now have a red currant plant. I grew up with several red currant plants in our garden, and strawberries and raspberries and cherries, and while I can live without a cherry tree if necessary (and buy cherries at the market) I really miss the other three when I do not have them in the garden.  So things are looking up now, currant-wise. Hooray!

There has been no more snow for quite a few days, and it was quite warm - at least compared to when it was really cold this winter, since we had temperatures of down to -18° C then.

Now it's much balmier, with a little bit of sunshine and positive degrees of temperature for most of the time. The snowdrops are in bloom, and the first three crocuses are also flowering already. A few of the tulips had already started to push out a leaf or two back in November, and those leaves are now a good bit frost-bitten, but the rest of the tulips are only starting to push through now - and it seems that my parting of the bulbclusters and replanting them as individuals last autumn paid off, at least I can now see gazillions of tulip tips everywhere.

All this means it's time to tidy up the garden and fix a few things there. Which is going to make a welcome opportunity for good-weather breaks during the next days - I have a presentation to prepare, one article to fix and expand, and one article to write, so escaping to the outdoors for a little time (because that sprawl of thyme in the flowerbeds has to be thrown out!) is really nice.