washing mashine & guinea pigs

Hi there,
Luckily I´ve almost completely recovered from my cold and am now ready to face the cruel world again ;).
I´ve recently ordered a new washing mashine at "Quelle" after my old one regularly blew the fuse.
Yesterday I was called, after hours of waiting, by the conveyance firm that their drivers couldn´t find me !
After over a year of living here I found that quite amazing - am I really untracable without directions?
Does that mean I can hide from the world and its not-so-nice people and use my beloved and comfy hidey-hole in the back of beyond (meaning the german province) to disappear?
This rather comforting thougths were soon destroyed by the insight that all mail-order companies (even Hermes, the *** !) have so far managed to uncover my place of residence.

Anyway, today two different drivers managed to find my apartment, delivered the new mashine and took the old one with them.
Hurra - I´m back within the civilised world!
I have to say that a washing mashine ist BY FAR the mashine I missed the most during my stays at places without electricity and running water (Thailand GibbonRehabProject, Greece STRS- now Archelon).
The inventor of this ingenious device should be honored by mankind (especially women I´d guess) and I´ll probably build a nice shrine for him soon.

I salute the two guys who had to haul the heavy machines up and down my narrow staircase!

Off topic: "Leo" says that "to schlep" is a valid verb in (american) english!?
That can only be a joke, can it?
Or can I safely add it to the collection of Kindergarten, Blitzkrieg and Uber (for lack of Ü-Pünktchen ) ?

As I´m a photo-addict, this is my newly aquired marvel:

Beside it you´ll find the guinea pig enclosure which is inhabited by two long-haired and rather shy males:

I curse the egocentric and addlebrained breeders who have created these poor animals with their ridiculous hippie hairstyle which wouldn´t even allow them to walk normally, if left alone.

My two guys regularly have to suffer from barber-sessions - whis is a pain in the a** for all of us, but at least gives them the freedom to move about like their non-disabled conspecifics .

Here´s Streifenschwein, Rotschwein is hiding behind:

I got both of them from Pixels Park after they and a lot of other piglets were rescued after they hab been abandoned by their so-called-breeder.

Sandra Menke is doing a wonderful job in rescuing cavies, caring for them, rehoming them and educating their future owners in guinea-pig-care!
Most people do underestimate these very social animals.

I wouldn´t have the nerve to do her "job", especially after she takes in lots of animals in her private home, and I think she deserves all the support she can get.

And I am not an unquestioning supporter as I´ve seen many of animal-welfare-activities gone horribly wrong.

So, if you´ve got money to spare or a place for some lovely new piggies visit her site.
On second thoughts : Do so anyway, it is highly recommended due to the excellent illustrations.

Breakfast :)

Sick

Damn...I´m sick.
It´s just a common (though particularly) bad cold with headaches, coughing, a bit of fever and the like. But it´s really getting onto my nerves.
Tonight I took some pills to get fit for the animal shelter cause I was getting cabin fever - and yes, you´re right, that probably wasn´t such a good idea.
At the moment I feel dizzy and it´s 0.33 so the only way to whine is to use this blog ;).

Tomorrow noon there´ll be another dog training with the shelter dogs and I hope I´ll be fit enough to take Bobby along. I´d like to get another opinion on this weird canine ;).
Today he´s been alright, he only tried to bite once...
I´m not sure wether or not he´s a "fear-biter" - he sometimes appears to be.
Tomorrow night, well actually tonight, my family (my brother and his wife and my parents) are goingt to the cabaret as "Volker Pispers" ist doing a show in Münster:
http://www.volkerpispers.de/
I really hope I can go, not so much because of the programm but because I want to spend some time with my family.

There´s a quote from the guy which I like:
"Der Volksmund sagt: Religion ist Opium für das Volk.
Das ist irreführend. Opium ist eine bewußtseinserweiternde Droge."

A rough translation would be:
" It ist said that Religion is Opium for the people.
This is misleading as opium is a mind-expanding drug"

Cheerio, Anne

Ferrets galore

I spent the weekend at the house of friends who have recently expanded their menagerie by three gorgeous ferrets.
I was keen to meet the new arrivals, especially after the shelter has also taken in two mustelids.

On saturday morning we went shopping and for the rest of the weekend we kept busy by tinkering stuff for the pets.
The ferrets have got a whole room to themselves, so one could indulge in modifying a whole rack and their scratching post. My friende Daniela created a huge and cosy hammock for which I envy the spoiled martens.
To my surprise, and in contrast to the mustelids which I´ve met at university (amongst them european and american minks, pine martens, beech martens,Siberian weasel,stoats and others) at the zoo and at the "Otterzentrum Hamkensbüttel", their three ferrets seemed to be neither eager to climb nor to be adept at it.
Instead they loved tunnels in every form and shape, so the drainage tubes gained instant appoval and were a huge success with the little hobgoblins.
It probably shouldn´t really have come as a suprise, when one thinks of their natural habitat and their earthes (whats the correct plural for earth???). But even looking at the pipesystem we installed, gives me claustrobobic attacks.
Another example why empathizing with another species can be hard work :) - and in my opinion also one of the reasons why direct interactions with a species, in a non-scientific way, may give one an intuitive understanding of their needs and behavior.









The rat cage was also in Need of refurbishment:

This evening at the shelter has been quite eventful, unfortunately.
I met with Claudia, a friend, and when took "our" dogs Lukas and Jack for a walk we found a small wooden cage with two small ferrets at the shelter-entrance.
Hurra...more animals...

Anyway, after the walk we returned to the shelter and while Jack was waiting in the car boot for a minute (I wanted to swith the leash) he seemed to have a "bout" and suddendly an without a warning started biting.
He got my thumb and it´s only a bruise but we were shocked.
Afterwards he acted strangely, too, he seemed to be afraid and remained tense until he was back in the kennel.
To be honest, I haven´t got any idea what I did wrong...for the 1 hour walk we were perfectly at ease with each other.
Poor dog...who knows...

"My" shelter dogs

My favorite pastime at the moment is to walk dogs at the local animal shelter in Lingen (see link above).
At the moment I´ve got two of them, a german hunt terrier called Jack and a mongrel called Bobby.
They´re both pretty small, which took some getting used to after german shepards, a Fila Brasileiro, a german shorthaired pointer and some other, rather large breeds on the other end of the leash.

But, as Mark Twain said: "“It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.”!

Speaking of quotes, I´m rather into them and you´ll probably have to suffer from my addicition a lot, if you´re bored enough to keep reading this blog
So be warned.
If you share this fad though, take a look at "think exist" - I just love the site! I also took the aforementioned quote from there ;).

Anyway, back to Jack and Bobby, the two men in my life :).
They´re much prettier than I am, so I´ll add photos:


Off topic: I´m listening to "dead ringers" a the moment and especially the George Bush and Alan Rickman (don´t get me wrong, I adore him as the Sherrif of Nottingham and Snape ;)) imitations are hilarious.
Switch it on to check if´we share a similar sense of humor.

Speaking of which, another thing I´ll probably better admit right at the start: I´m "anglophilic" beyond remedy, there´s nothing I can do about it, sorry.

Here we go...

So, I´ve finally decided to get my own blog after the rest of the world is already fed up with them and is looking for new toys :).

Just in case you only happen to stumble by, by one oft those freak surfing-accidents on the internet: please excuse my english as I´m not a native speaker!

I´ve decided to stick to the english language though as I´m afraid I´munlearning it at the moment.
To those people out there with the same problem: I strongly recommend BBC radio , especially BBC 7 if you´re into comedy and such stuff.
Digital radio is so much more fun than trying to learn a language by the book...
If you happen to be german :Leo is an excellent online dictionary.
I´ve youre browsing with Mozilla (like I do) you can also add it to your personal search engines.

I will be happy about any comments on this blog -if you stick to the rulesof a civilized society :).
So, no flaming, no trolling, no swearing please.