Happy Dude-Got-Nailed-To-A-Cross-And-Returned-As-A-Zombie-Day Easter,

In the last post I counted the weeks between that post on the previous one. Well, I’m not gonna do that now.

We moved. January was hyper-busy, due to a shit landlord of the old flat who overthrew all our plans for a smooth and easy transition. Instead of handing all our unwanted stuff over to the new tenant for a decent compensation, the landlord declared a rent-stop for the flat and we were left with a metric shitload of things to get rid off. We struggled but managed in the end.

The moving day itself went super-well, thanks to the many helpers without whom this achievement would not have been possible. It payed off to have helped all the other moving parties in the past. We hurled tons of boxes and furniture down 4 flights of stairs and up another two. We filled the basement of our new place to the brim and stacked the boxes neatly in the living room. Finally we were done and we finally moved completely into our new home.

Obviously the work wasn’t over then. Since the end of January I spent every weekend either at Ikea, Bauhaus and furniture stores or in the house setting up the furniture. That is the main reason, why I did not post anything: nothing really happened. We got cupboards, a couch, I installed all the network gear necessary and we did minor work in the garden.

At work I jumped between smaller and bigger presentations, my first real results and a workshop about electronic lab books, where I was an invited speaker. An interesting experience, certainly, but it also added to the workload. I developed a lovely little headache that is always with me, and for a couple of weeks now it rises and falls, but never completely leaves me. It’s a clingy little thing.

I did not really take any interesting photos lately, my camera had more pictures of plants and furniture to sell than anything else. I put the few okay ones interspersed in this post. I hope that soon I’ll be back up photographing stuff and people, I really miss the creative work.

Speaking of productiveness: I finished two things that I’m a bit proud of. The first thing is a guest post in Sarah Shailes‘ blog „Plant Scientist“ where I talk about the chloroplast and why it is an interesting organelle. It was a welcome experience to write that post, and thanks to Sarah I believe it turned out pretty decent. And who knows, maybe soon I’ll use that experience for something of my own.

The second thing is way more hands on. I managed to clean out a room in the basement and build a workbench from scratch in there, thanks to my birthday gift: a cordless circular saw. We bought some 20 meters of wood and I cut it to size and constructed a rather sturdy work bench. I’ll soon put a little time lapse of the process, once I can clear out some technical difficulties in the production.

So what’s going to happen now?

I will certainly work a lot, I am in an intense phase of my Phd, but it hopefully will yield some good results in the end. I want to use my newly acquired workshop to build some furniture pieces for our new apartment. I will create more. The last year was determined by the house that needed a ton of attention, and now the workload there will reduce and I hope to have some time to think about different things.

Like the garden. Over Easter Tegan and Iman came over to help with removing some tree stumps and in general clearing up the garden. Iman was not even stopped by the fact that it was his birthday and soon we prepared a decent patch that was shrub-free.

Today we added a bed after we removed 400 tons of roots from the soil. Soon there will be tomatoes. And salads. And what not. Doro has the overview.

Well, until then.