the only excuse for not blogging for so long is the weather and all the activities related to it. however, i have made several attempts in the past days to blog, but somehow i could not get the animated gif i wanted to share with the audience to an acceptable filesize (yes, there are still visitors using dial-up…), which was driving me crazy. now you guys wonder what the planned content was, and i will not fail to report my sheer exitement about a stunning afternoon at krefeld’s horse-racing circuit. don’t get me wrong, i still like horses best when smoked, sliced and on my sandwich -or at least from a secure distance-; but seeing these powerful animals flexing their muscles as they race for victory with sharp eyes and flying hair is truly an impressive scene. although we pretended to inspect the horses before the race (mainly by imitating the viewes and analytical talk the people next to us held), we didn’t place any bets. that was due to the fact that of the three horses i judged as either ‚cripple‘, ‚tired‘ or ‚weak‘, two were among the top three and the other ranked fifth. so, when it comes to judging horses, next time i stick to my taste ;) — back home in hessen we had high-percentage sit-ins with my cousin (i haven’t seen her for at least 5 years) and my uncle. the next day, we made the first big move in my grandma’s house. my father had arranged for a huge van we filled up with equally old and heavy furniture, which was supposed to be my sister’s and my stake of the heritage. dividing up heritage-stuff in an empty house is a pretty shitty thing for all being involved, i can tell you. — today, alice and i booked our rental car for our holidays in crete. after having checked several rental companies, we were left with holiday autos and sunny cars, both offering almost the same price and conditions. as we found, it’s of crucial importance to select a rental company offering unlimited insurance coverage, especially referring to our irish outback action when we were lucky to have the extra insurance waiver. i just hope that everything works out as planned, since i tried to change our flights today. i must say, i was a little surprised when i checked the travel voucher with the tickets and all, as i had to find the flight’s duration to be almost 5 hours! gee, in five hours you can almost get to jo-burg. now, since we booked a direct flight from d?sseldorf earliest in the morning, i had to find that our flight stops at frankfurt, meaning that i could have boarded in frankfurt at a way more pleasant time due to an unmentioned change in the flight schedule. now, i am very curious how the travel-agency will handle my complaint and whether the airline is able and willing to change the booking to, all other variables being equal, frankfurt. — since my last blog, i have made a step towards movabletype: i bought webspace with all-inkl.com! so, i will surprise the interested visitor on www.traumdieb.com (which is still empty as i am writing this) with my first tryouts in mt shortly. i haven’t made up my mind yet how i will go on with this domain here, but my blog will definitely move to traumdieb.com. i am simply too much pissed by blogger and haloscan. new designs are already in the pipeline, but need thematic round-up, so to say. also, my photopages will have some decent rennovation (and an update, of course) as soon as i get accquainted with php and sql. besides, for those being interested in the dialect of my home village, i have put lots of work into mein-burgsolms.de lately, so check it out if you like. stay awake!