Lightning, Soldering, and Native Speaking

Lately we've been having my favourite kind of weather (except for snow that falls in large flakes): wind, impressive grey clouds, thunder, lightning, and big, silvery rain. This evening it has cleared away so that the waxing crescent or gibbous moon (I'm not so well up on the terminology) is shining down on me out of a clear though dusk-tinged, blue southern sky.

Today I woke up after 4 p.m. I've been sleeping twelve to fourteen hours per night(/day) again lately. This schedule doesn't bother me as much as it often does, firstly because it doesn't leave me too groggy, and secondly because it's far better to dream about domes and skyscrapers and being a princess (at times I am like a four-year-old), etc., than to be awake and bored. It's only irritating that my sleeping life is presently much more exciting — thanks to the volcanic eruptions, assassinations, and so on and so forth — than its waking counterpart.

I played the piano for a while, and aside from playing the customary impromptus and Brahms waltzes, explored Beethoven's bagatelles (my piano teacher taught me the first, and Ge. plays one of the later ones) and Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21, in C major. Then I took up my "singing" again (today it was the first three verses of "Das Wandern" and Händel's Largo from Xerxes), wavering on and off key, but not doing so badly considering the late lack of practice.

Intermittently I went to the corner room to watch Papa constructing a circuit board for a work-related gadget. It involved soldering, which is one of my favourite things to watch, because of the resin's scent, the exciting sense of danger instilled by the heat of the soldering iron, and the gleaming peaks and globes of the melted lead/tin alloy. Papa used to have a shrunken, dry-as-a-bone sponge to wipe the lead on, but he probably threw it out before we moved back to Germany; now he uses a thick folded tissue, which has not caught flame once, much (I'll admit) to my surprise.

Anyway, temporarily I don't have many projects going on. I wrote two poems maybe three days ago, but consider them middling and not particularly unique; on the story front I abandoned one tale after realizing that it was meandering further and further from reality; and though I have vaguely thought of going to the Scilly Islands or Sark or the US there are no travels in prospective. Every now and then I try to learn a modicum of Spanish, with a corresponding modicum of success. Then I think about doing volunteer work in homeless shelters or with immigrants or something of the sort, only to remember that I have no useful experience or expertise.

I haven't applied for new jobs, either, and have (somewhat randomly) wondered if I should write that I speak "some" French so as not to seem overqualified for things. It is, by the way, annoying to know that speaking three languages accent-free is apparently of no use whatsoever, due to the tyrannous ubiquity of the "native speaker" requirement. (It is true, though, that my French is not nearly as good as it could/should be.) But perhaps I could acquire a heavy French-Canadian accent and native-speak that, hehehe!