Today was Julia’s High School graduation. She was valedictorian of her class of 70 graduates from Middle College High School, so she got to do a speech at graduation. Her class got almost 1.5 million in scholarship money for college! We’re super proud of her!! In August, she will start studying at American University in […]
Last Saturday, we had dinner with our neighbors and then we lit a bonfire and had some more drinks. For dinner Laura had made a nice, Togo-inspired stew out of two of their roosters. The roosters had become a bit of problem in their chicken coop; the Rhode Island Red was very tasty while the […]
Happy Birthday, Madison Saint! A couple of days ago was Madison’s 7th birthday. Hard to believe Wally and Cleo have lived with us for 5 years this summer! Laura clipped all three horses a couple of weeks ago, so right now they look really slick. Check it out … Cleo turns 14 in June And […]
Yeah. That’s funny. That’s BMW’s idea of an April Fools joke (in 2011). An M3 pickup “Ute” style with a 420Hp V8. In 2013, Top Gear sent their Aussie correspondent to Bavaria to test drive this joke. He had a good laugh! And a bit of a scare, too.
This is Blackjack, our black miniature Holland Lop. He’s not really the Easter Bunny, but over Easter weekend, he did enjoy his first outdoor run of the year. I built a small fence around his rabbit hutch and when we’re on the deck or in the back yard, the little guy gets to stretch his […]
This Sunday morning was chilly at 25F (-4C). We really hope this was the last frost for the season! With temperatures now regularly reaching the 60s and 70s, it does feel like spring around here. But last night, we put the blankets on the horses one more time and filled the bucket with warm water. […]
Fascinating video footage of our sun. On July 19, 2012, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory’s AIA instrument captured these images of an eruption on the sun’s surface over the course of 22 hours. Faszinierende Aufnahmen einer Sonneneruption vom 19. July 2012. Über 22 Stunden hat NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory’s AIA instrument diese Aufnahmen im Ultravioletbereich des […]
What a pretty spring day! The daffodils are blooming and it’s 82°F/28°C and sunny. Only 10 days after we had a 20°F/-7°C morning and less than 3 weeks after the 2015 Snowpocalypse, it’s finally springtime! I’ll take it! Und auf einmal war Frühling! die Narzissen blühen und es ist 28°C warm und sonnig. Noch vor […]
Today is Pi-day here in the US: with the month/day/year format today’s date looks like this: 3/14/15 Heute is Pi-Tag in the USA, denn mit dem komischem Datumsformat hier – Monat/Tag/Jahr – sieht das Datum heute aus wie die Kreiszahl Pi: 3/14/15 Interesting discussion of the history of Pi on Reddit. Pi on Wikipedia Die […]
Thursday morning we woke up to 6 inches (15cm) of snow. Around here, that pretty much shuts down everything. Power went out at around 4AM and water stopped shortly after. No school or work, of course. We were stuck at home all day, keeping the house warm with a fire in the fire place and […]
With all the crazy weather last week, I almost forgot that Wednesday night, the Mercedes passed 310,686 miles, which is equal to 500,000 KM. Nice milestone for this 24-yar-old car.
Whoah! This weather is crazy! Look at the graph below (from Wunderground) and you can see how temperatures here went from a low of 5°F on Friday morning at 7AM to a high of 57°F on Sunday 1PM. That’s a 52 degree temperature change in 54 hours! DEUTSCH: So ein verrücktes Wetter! And dem Diagramm […]
Our weather station showed an outside temperature of 5.6°F /14.7°C this morning right before I went outside to feed the animals.
Snow, snow, snow … we have had several snow/ice storms over the last couple of days. School has been out for 2 days and the weather forecast is predicting an arctic chill down to 0F for the next couple of days. That does not seem to bother Sassy and Snoopy, though. This is their first […]
Timelapse of the sun / Zeitrafferaufname der Sonne
Over the last few months, my 1991 300D ran pretty badly. At first, I was able to get the engine’s power back to acceptable levels by fixing various leaks in the vacuum system, especially in the lines that control the turbo waste-gate. Without the turbo, I could start at the bottom of a small hill […]
During the month of January, I took some time of from my beloved beer and explored a variety of flavors of tea. The best place for buying tea around here is A Southern Season – a swanky gourmet food store in Chapel Hill. They sell 2oz and 4oz bags of their loose-leaf tea blends and […]
This afternoon we went to see the famous viol player Jordi Savall play his 300-year-old, 7-string bass viol at Durham’s Baldwin Auditorium. Savall is the world’s most accomplished viol player of our age. Before him, these instruments and their music had been all but forgotten. Since 1965, when Savall discovered the viola da gamba, he […]
I am happy to report that for the fifth year running, I successfully completed the Great Beer Quest and acquired my allotment of the Special Release bottles of Sexual Chocolate Stout. Once again, we froze our butts off in 20-degree temperatures camping out on the sidewalk in front of Foothills brewery in Winston Salem, NC. […]
Interesting publication by the Population Reference Bureau. According to their estimates 6.5 percent of all humans who lived in the last 50,000 years were alive in 2011! Wie viele Menschen haben jemals gelebt? Die Wissenschaftler des Population Reference Bureau schätzen daß in den letzten 50 Tausend Jahren 108 Milliarden Menschen gelebt haben. Das bedeutet daß […]
