I’m tired tonight and not feeling too well and the storm that started up this afternoon has given me one hell of a headache.
The storm was odd from the beginning. It began brewing this afternoon, during my afternoon class. My classroom is on the first floor and just happens to be facing the direction of the storm, so we could see a grey wall of clouds coming up. A boy got frightened, because he thought it was a tornado. I calmly told him that we didn’t get any tornadoes in our part of the world (not entirely true, we do, but they’re extremely rare) and that it was just the thunderstorm announced by the weather service that very morning. I can sympathize with the kid, though, because the oncoming storm really did look scary from the window of our classroom. It has been extremely dry here in North Germany for the past two months and the wind was picking up loose soil from the fields across the road and turning the air into a reddish-brown haze. I eventually sent the kids home ten minutes early, because some of them were there by bike and I didn’t like the idea of them having to bike home in a thunderstorm – strong winds are usually bad enough. Besides, the reddish haze of the “sandstorm” was unpleasant enough to drive through in a car. I don’t want to think about riding a bike through that.
Now for some good news: A suspect has been fingered in the wave of infections with a rare and dangerous e.coli strain known as EHEC. The likely suspect are organic cucumbers from Spain, though warnings against eating raw lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes remain in force. The tomatoes I bought at the supermarket on Monday have been given a stay of execution for now – I was actually planning to throw them away today – but I won’t be eating them until the all clear has been given. Lettuce isn’t a problem, though, since all lettuce I’ve eaten these past few weeks comes from my parents’ garden.
And now have some links:
At the CNN website of all places, Eloisa James talks about sex scenes in historical romances and whether they should (and do) match current attitudes towards sex or imagined attitudes of the past.
Nick Mamatas has a nice post about the many advantages of the writing life at Suvudu.
At the Book View Café, there is a summary of a Nebula weekend panel on e-publishing as well as some useful links.
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