![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberetthighlights included:
otherwise everything is still Migraine World Summit (though I have once again learned a useful thing today! neck pain can be a prodrome symptom!) and Special Interest.
lethargic_manI went to Sheer Hell the other day. But it's not what you might expect.
On a map from around 1850, to the southwest of the then village of Tempelhof (now deeply embedded in Berlin), one sees a pond labelled „die blanke Hölle“, or sheer Hell.
( View piccy )
Wondering what could lie behind that name, I asked ChatGPT (though as it turned out, I could have just gone to Wikipedia).
Turns out the pond was originally called Hel-Pfuhl or Hels-Pfuhl, referring to the Germanic goddess of the underworld.
According to legend, the pond formed an entrance to the underworld, the realm of the dead. On its wooded shores stood an altar of Hel, which a priest tended to. Twice a year Hel sent a black bull to the priest to plough the fields. The priest's successor, though, a Christian monk, ceased the offerings to Hel. The following spring, when the bull appeared, it did not plough the fields but devoured the monk.
Until the twentieth century the rumour remained in the unsettled and rugged area that the lake would claim victims every year. These rumours had a grain of truth to them, as several people did indeed drown in the apparently harmless waters.
To my surprise, given that the majority of fishponds on the map (frequently labelled Karpfen Pf[uhl] as you can see here) no longer exist, it turns out that „die blanke Hölle“ not only does still exist, but I've even been there! It's now called „Blanke Helle“ on Google Maps, reverting to the older vowel in the name, and is in the middle of Alboinplatz.* (There's no reference to its name at the actual site, though.)
( View piccy )
The reason it still exists is probably due to its geology. It is, I learned, a kettle hole (Toteisloch). Apparently, when bits of glacier break off, they are called dead ice. As the glacier flows past, dead ice can get surrounded with and eventually covered in sediment. This happened here during the Ice Ages, but when the ice subsequently melted, the ground over it subsided, leaving a pit which got filled with rainwater to form the pond.
Commemorating the legend concerning the site, sculptor Paul Mersmann the Elder was commissioned in 1931 to create a monument depicting the bull. By the time it was finished in 1934, the Nazis were in power; they didn't like it and threatened to tear it down. The dislike, however, was mutual: according to the sculptor's son there is, inside the bull, a capsule denouncing Hitler signed by various artists and sculptors.
( View piccy )
* Hardcore Tolkien fans may recognise the name of the king of the Lombards who brought them to (i.e. conquered) Lombardy, and a cognate of Old English Ælfwine (the English sailor who learned the stories that later became The Silmarillion on sailing to Tol Eressëa in The Book of Lost Tales), or in modern English, Alvin,† meaning "elf-friend", and therefore a reincarnation (?) of Elendil in the sadly abortive work The Lost Road.
† Has anyone reading this ever come across that name other than in the name of Alvin Stardust?
![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
mark posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceHappy Saturday!
I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!
If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.
fanfhttps://dotat.at/@/2026-03-14-eggs.html
A few weeks ago I was enjoying a couple of boiled eggs
(in the shell, with plenty of salt and pepper, and buttery fingers of toast to dunk into the runny yolk)
and pondering how fiddly it is to cut off one end of the shell after boiling compared to eating a poached egg. And I was annoyed because (I thought) I didn't know how to poach eggs.
( Read more... )
rmc28I hadn't been on the ice since last Saturday (Huskies and Women's Blues practices were all Varsity squads only, and Kodiaks practice got cancelled by the rink) but I made it to and through Warbirds practice tonight. It was so worth it. I also got my Varsity notebook from Women's Blues: every team member gets a notebook, and everyone writes a note in every teammate's notebook, and we read them before Varsity to inspire us. Mine was very sweet and I love the team very much for making me welcome.
I need to leave the house in 7.5 hours to get back to the rink for Varsity. I'm playing in alumni game 1, getting cleaned up during alumni game 2, and spending the rest of the day in the scorekeepers box with a rotating cast of some of my favourite people. The three non-alumni games will be livestreamed
I also had a little art session this evening before going to the rink, making signs for my Huskies teammates. The sign in Irish may well only be understood by the teammate who got me back into learning Irish this year - our class covered "how to cheer on your sports team" a couple weeks ago and I made careful notes - or maybe it will cause any lurking Gaeilgeoirí in the rink to make themselves known.
I think I'm wound down enough to sleep now.
ysabetwordsmith posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
gardening
kaberettIn apparent celebration of Migraine World Summit, I have spent this evening having an unscheduled migraine attack for no obvious reason. I disapprove. (Because I've been doing a lot of audiovisual processing, captions notwithstanding? Because I had my screen much brighter than usual for a while playing a colours game?* Because oven't?)
Nonetheless I have watched and made digital notes on all of 2026 Day 2, watched and made digital notes on 3/4 talks from 2025 Day 2 (which I missed at the time), and made physical notes for 2025 Day 1 and 1/4 of Day 2. I am... sort of catching up.
I am really enjoying my pens. I also find myself with the problem of wanting lots of different notebooks and, also, to keep everything in One Single Solitary Notebook, For Convenience...
* NB I am a rocks nerd. My colour discrimination is ludicrously good. I am sorry that that link is weird and competitive about my ridiculous score, but not sorry enough to provide you with the bare link.
mdehners posting in gardening
kaberettI currently have a bit of a special interest happening, right. So I spent a bit of today's therapy session talking about it, as one does, and then meandered around to one of my current Big Topics[1], and made it all the way through to the wrapping-up stage of proceedings!
... when My Favourite Metaphor About Therapy abruptly suggested itself to me and I had. A Moment.
Which is how I found myself explaining that, in a thematically appropriate coincidence, said favourite metaphor is "emotional heavy lifting, with trained spotter".
To which came the response: "... can I. borrow that."
And thus: A Good Grade In Therapy.
[1] social anxiety. it's the social anxiety.
kaberettVia divers alarums and excursions we have established that the oven seems to trip All The Electrics... when it hits A Certain Temperature. ( Read more... )
But. BUT. Today I SAW THE BAT for the first time this year (having been doing a questionable job of actually managing to watch for it at bat o'clock over the last several weeks); and my Special Interest In Moving My Body went surprisingly well; and A curled up on the sofa and did some more Reading About Special Interest with me; and I am actually doing alright.
liv“Free speech culture” has a natural tendency to discount the speech rights and interests of people who criticize speech.
network based at [Cambridge] University and backed by Thiel, which it said was using the issue of free speech to “normalise white nationalism on UK campuses”.Neither Putin nor Thiel has anyone's freedom at heart, and they're all too successful at distracting people with a toddler-like notion of "freedom" where you get to say the naughty words without being told off.
rmc28This is an 800 year old play based on events 2,500 years ago in China, the first Chinese play to be translated into any European language (about 300 years ago). The Royal Shakespeare Company commissioned James Fenton to adapt it for a production about 13 years ago, and a student theatre group are putting that adaptation on at the ADC in Cambridge this week.
I went to see it last night with Charles, and also Olivia, one of my friends from Womens Blues. (We then found two of my Huskies teammates in the audience so it became an accidental hockey social.) We saw a little first-night talk beforehand from the director and some of the actors, about why they chose this play and some of their favourite lines and aspects of the characters they play. The play itself was very good, very gripping, a revenge tragedy with a very high body count and an ending I didn't quite expect.
The kind of evening that makes me remember how much I like living in this weird little city in the fens.
(and, in further "wow I love living in walking distance of the ADC" news, here's what I'm hoping to get to between now and early May:
)
pauamma posting in dw_devkaberettBack at the beginning of January beadsbuttonslace wrote up some reflections on this book, which interested me enough that I put in a hold on my library's only digital copy, which was an audiobook, and then I managed to listen to it in under a week, and now I am subscribed to Johnston's newsletter (and reading its archives) and also trying to work out whether I want to buy a physical copy or a digital copy for my own library.
Which is to say: I liked it. A lot.
( Read more... )
And some final notes:
lethargic_manlnrIt's looking increasingly like a have a Frozen Shoulder. It's been getting more stiff and painful since around Christmas, my range of motion is decreasing, and neither physio nor Naproxen (from the GP last week) is making much difference. I am trying not to think too much about the fact this can take 2-3 *years* to resolve, and have now asked for a referral for a steroid injection, which I understand is the next phase of treatment. Though I may been to ring up and ask again. The webpage says to ring for urgent requests, or use the form. The form for non-urgent requests says after you've posted it that it can take up to 3 weeks to respond and if you need a response more quickly to ring. I think we have different ideas of urgent. (I'd class this as being non-urgent myself, but more urgent than 3 weeks given the Naproxen runs out tomorrow, and has no repeat option.)
https://www.cuh.nhs.uk/patient-information/frozen-shoulder/
Edit: Yup, I have a text message saying they'll review my form on 26th March - the Naproxen runs out on the 11th. Tried calling, and got the automated message which wants to know which of their practices I want to speak to, and then got stuck because I don't know! I'm based at Shelford, but the doctor I spoke to last week is based at Sawston.
Relieved edit: Called reception at Shelford, and they checked my notes, apparently Dr Hasan who will look at my form on 26th will probably ring to speak to me, but can do the steroid injection, so will probably arrange it then. And the receptionist will request some more Naproxen for the meantime. (Ring back in a couple of hours and ask how that's going). The SMS doesn't even specify which doctor it was! The receptionist even said she had it done and it was amazing :)
winterfirelight posting in gardeningkaberettReading. I confess I have tripped and fallen into a special interest and am therefore currently primarily working my way through the archives of She's A Beast. BUT.
Writing. Words continue to, very slowly, go up.
Listening. More Hidden Almanac. Very close to being caught up to the point I've theoretically listened to with A (some of which I wound up being asleep during)...
Playing. Inkulinati Exploders run on Master difficulty continues. We have now broken a quill (DEMONS :|) but we do continue to progress...
Another round (well, most of one) of The Little Orchard, this time with The Child deciding that we SHOULD turn the Bothersome Crows back over and put them back...
Cooking. New recipe! Meera Sodha's leek & chard martabak. Unlikely to make again but not sorry to have made.
Exploring. Adventures this week have included:
Observing. flowersss.
rmc2812 games into our 20-game season, Kodiaks 2 finally notched up a win! We beat Lee Valley Vampires 1-0 last night. That single goal was scored with about ten minutes to go, and it was a long ten minutes, and especially a long last minute on the bench after my final shift, waiting to see if we'd do it. I was literally crying in the post-game huddle and handshake line. This team, this team that we dragged into existence in the face of multiple obstacles, this amazing bunch of women. We won, we won, we won.
( Read more... )