Wintersports.

Okay, I admit it, it does look pretty.
We had our friend over again, last weekend, with his little daughter, and he gave me his awesome camera to fire away.

Which I did.

You know, we live pretty close to those awesome hills, where we love to sit in the summer to read or get tan or collect beetles or blow on baldes of grass, right? 
Those hills are kind of a small wintersports paradise for our region, and people from all over town come over to ride their sleighs as soon as it starts snowing.

I took a great bunch of pictures of the snow-enthusiastic boys, and when I felt like I had shot enough, I was glad to take leave the guys and their sleighs alone...

 ...and take all the freezing kids home, for a cup of hot, spiced juice, some cake, and a nice story.

Btw, love how Mehmet´s growing his hair!

Oh, but that´s not all!
Last night, I spent, voluntarily, freezing my feet off at some icescating track.
You know curling?

 I´m not talking about curling hair, abut about that stuff where you throw a strangely shaped object over the ice to place it in a marked area. Yeah. That super, super boring stuff you always switch off when it comes on TV during Olympia, and still, that´s how we spent last night, cheering and clapping.
How did that happen?
Two days ago, my friend called me to tell me that she participates in some kind of curling competion. She´d never done that before, never showed any interest in that stuff before and...

 ..her team won our town´s championship yesterday.

We even had fireworks.

Or, you know, they had. I´m not sure. I didn´t play, but they gave me a vest and made me part of the team, and strangers hugged me and I hugged strangers, and it was the cutest thing to see my friend so happy. It was, surprisingly, very lovely, though I´m not yet tempted to play myself. I´ll stick to weightlifting :)

Other than being sporty?

• I´m incredibly unprepared for Christmas, and I don´t care. I hardly put up any decorations, I don´t even have a tree yet (though, that´s not uncommon in Germany), and I´ve got around 50% of the presents ready. Somehow, it´ll all work out - I´m the master of last minute :) I did, however, bake cookies. I always, always bake cookies, no matter what.

• I´m writing, lots. (hmmm... how is that linked to the point above? Dunno)

• I´ll be, of course, reading in the library today. And giving out cookies.

• I´m extremely thrilled to have a ticket for a seat, second row, at a reading of my beloved Elizabeth George. She´s one of my alltime favourite authors, coming to Cologne in March, and I´ve worshipped her for 10 solid years now, and my daughters love her, and the last time she came to Cologne, she came on the day the twins were born, so I´m really, really excited to finally see her - and I hope she´ll sign some books for us! :)

• I´m also kind of bouncy and giggly because Cassandra Clare announced she´ll publish "The Bane Chronicles",and we need that. We need some bedtime stories about a witty, gay warlock with a great sense for fashion, because we´re slowly running out of stuff to read - though, we´ve just started "Daughter of Smoke and Bone", and parrallel, the "Divergent" series. We´ll see how those one go. 

And if you really made it all the way down here, then you deserve a musical treat!
Tune up the volume and get your feet ready to tap!