A.M. Offenwanger's Blog, page 53

Holiday Slide Show, Part 2

Okay, the second slide holder is in. Lights off, here we go (chick-chook):

Palaces aren’t the only buildings that were dripping with gilding and marble in the Baroque. This is the Abbey Church of Fürstenfeld, outside of Munich, which was one of the strongholds of the Counter Reformation. They pulled out all the stops to convince the people that the Catholic church was worth sticking with. Speaking of pulling out all the stops, we got to hear an organ concert here – it was fantastic.

Yes, that...

Holiday Slide Show, Part 1

I’ve been trying to think of witty things to say about this trip which Steve and I just got back from. Erudite things, informative ones – but I can’t really come up with anything. So I think I’ll just show you a few pictures, and you can decide yourself what you think of it all.

Imagine yourself in my living room, the blinds drawn, a slide projector set up, and the painting of the West Coast taken off its hook so I can project my pictures against its spot on the white wall. (That, dear childr...

Flying a Holding Pattern

Yes, we got back from Germany. Yes, I’m going to tell you all about it when I get my photos downloaded and organised. However, Real Life is happening again with a vengeance and demanding my attention, so I hope you’ll forgive me when I leave you hanging for just a bit longer.

Meanwhile, to tide you over, here’s a picture of an Air Canada plane taking off from the Calgary airport.

Life, the Universe, and Returning From Travels. I promise I’ll talk to you soon!

Filed under: life Tagged: airplane...

I’m Leaving On a Jet Plane…

…for a couple weeks’ worth of visit to the Fatherland. Checking in with you from the airport, waiting for the first leg of the flight.

Here’s Steve, yesterday, waiting in the bag for me to stop fussing with such unnecessary things as which clothes to take, and get on with packing him up already.

Posting might be somewhat intermittent in the next bit, but we’ll try to keep you updated.

Life, the Universe, and Travels. See you later!

Filed under: life Tagged: airport, Steve, travel

Excuses

We interrupt our spate of regular blog postings for these messages, uh, reasons, uh, excuses – that’s it, excuses:

calendula oil

tomatoes

peaches

an early stage of zucchini salsa

Life, the Universe, and Harvest Season. See you on the other side.

Filed under: life Tagged: canning, excuses, food, herbs, peaches, salsa, tomatoes

Perspective

I was all upset this morning about having my walk ruined. The person who owns the property at the end of the road, where the pavement ends, completely blocked off access to the forest road where I like to go to the lookout. I think there’s new owners on that property; the previous owners put a big gate across the road to stop vehicles, but still allowed locals to skirt around the edge of the gate so they could go for a walk. This morning, there are bars nailed across the side of the gate. No...

Ocean Soul

I’m an ocean soul. At least once a year, I need to get myself down to the sea and stick my feet into the water. Yes, I live by a lake (several, in fact), and yes, it’s incredibly beautiful and I’m fully appreciative of that fact. But there is something about the ocean that lakes don’t have to offer – something about the salt water, the tang of sea air in the wind, the raucous screech of the seagulls, the tides rolling in and out over shells and sea weed and little tide pools, the driftwood lo...

Guest Post: Baby Groot Interviews A.M. Offenwanger

amo:

I did a guest post! Baby Groot, who is Kate M. Colby’s writing mascot, interviewed me. Honest, he did! Ask Steve, he was there.

Originally posted on Kate M. Colby :

I’ve never done a guest post before. Is that kind of like being a guest speaker, where you get bottles of water and an honorarium? What, no honorarium? Drat. Water bottles, at least? Oh, thank you, Baby Groot. [Takes a sip] So how do we go about this?

You’ll ask me some questions, and I’ll waffle on from there? Sure, no probl...

Medieval Marriage, or, I Thought I Just Made That Up

The things you find out…

I was watching a really cool BBC documentary yesterday called Medieval Lives: Birth, Marriage, Death. Specifically, this one was episode 2, “A Good Marriage” (at the moment you can watch it here, although it might not stay up forever. Canadians can also stream it off Knowledge Network, which is what I did). And I learned something really interesting: up until the 12th Century in Europe, all it took to get married was for two people to make a commitment to each other....

The Old Villa

I just ran across this quite interesting article and video: a mini-documentary on abandoned houses in Europe (filmed in pursuit of a book trailer for the filmmaker’s new book).

And it brought up a memory.

When I was a teen, we lived in a Bavarian mountain village, right across the street from a house just like this – a small country villa with gables and ivy, yellow-stuccoed with a red tile roof, on a large property completely overgrown with trees. It used to be the weekend country house of...