Snow is Gone and Back Again Linkdump

Winter is in full swing here in North Germany. On Friday night, the temperatures dropped to minus 9° Celsius, Saturday night we got heavy snowfalls, so heavy that the two little girls who live in the house across the road promptly used the chance to build a snowman with their Dad. But then the weather changed abruptly in the course of Sunday. By afternoon, the snowman was gone. Temperatures dropped again today and now the snow is back again as well. Photographic evidence may be found behind the cut.

And we’re supposed to get more snow in the next few days. I’m not quite sure how to feel about this, since I have several longer outings planned for the next few days and snow makes going out without absolute necessity problematic.

In other news, I’ve wasted way too much time lately trying to find replacement bulbs for my parents’ aging Christmas lights. As a side-effect I now know way more about Christmas lights and manufacturers of Christmas lights than I ever wanted to know. The problem is that my Dad brought the Christmas light set back from the US in 1978, so German replacement bulbs won’t fit. And American online stores either don’t do replacement bulbs or don’t ship to Germany or it’s impossible to figure out whether the bulbs will fit my parents’ set. Contacting customer service doesn’t help either. If they bother to answer at all, the answer is usually, “We did not manufacture this set and we don’t know if our bulbs will fit.”

If it were up to me, I’d simply give up and buy some of those nice and energy-saving LED light strings that are available now. But unfortunately, my parents insist on using the old lights, because “they’re still good.” Well, they are. Except for the fact that the bulbs are gradually burning out and we don’t have replacements.

And now for some links:

First of all, Irish German writer Ian Watson, the closest thing I have to a literary mentor, will be reading from KurzpassSpiel – Ich stehe zu meinem Sitzplatz, a collection of poetry and short prose pieces about football and particularly Werder Bremen, in the Stadtbibliothek Bremen, Am Wall, on Thursday, December 13, 2012, at seven PM.

Over at the Pegasus Pulp blog, I talk about spotting e-readers in the wild (well, sort of) at the local mall.

At Tor.com, Tansy Rayner Roberts has a great post why the argument that much epic and historical fantasy is sexist, since history happens to be sexist, does not hold up. The comments make it more than clear why we still need to have this discussion.

On a similar note, here is Scott Lynch’s fantastic response to a critic complaining that having a black middle aged mother as a pirate was “too much political correctness” for his taste. Found via Jay Lake.

Freelance editor and writer Harry DeWulf states that omniscient narration is the only kind of narration there is, every other POV is just a subtype of omniscient narration. It’s definitely an interesting theory, though I’m not sure I agree.

I almost forgot to mention that German actor Heinz Werner Kraehkamp died in late November aged only 63. Most people mainly remember Kraehkamp for his roles in the family sitcom Familie Hesselbach and the crime dramas Tatort and Soko, though the obituary also remembers his theatre work in Frankfurt. However, I will always remember Heinz Werner Kraehkamp for his appearance in the German version of Sesame Street back in the 1970s and for playing the chief of police in the excellent but short-lived crime drama Abschnitt 40 in the 2000s.

And now for the snowy pics:

Sunday morning snow with snowman building activities going on in the background.

A closer view of the two little girls across the road and their Dad building an ultimately doomed snowman.

Snowy meadow, tree and neighbour house.

View across the snow covered backgarden.

Tonight’s fresh cover of snow. That’s my car on the right, covered in snow, which means that I’ll have to brush it free come tomorrow.