Claudia’s Grading, I’m Blogging

I’ve already been reminded by at least a few people over the last few weeks that I haven’t been blogging quite as much as I used to. (It’s actually quite nice to know I actually have readers). And so, whoever is actually reading will notice I’ve been doing some catching up over this last day or 2… and I have so much more catching up to do. I certainly need at least a brief note about the First of May, one of the largest, most outrageous city-sponsored (well, at least they agree to pay for the clean-up) parties I’ve ever seen. And I do have to finish a couple of posts that I started and just never got around to finishing, like the one about the American Idol song competition song I wrote. And Claudia has put in repeated requests for my various experiences dealing with the hardships of the strike and biking to class, to lessons, to the sing-a-longs, in the week of the single most stormingest weather I remember all winter (yes, despite what I said in my previous post, there was actually one week of intense, torrential downpouring, which coincided perfectly with the BVG transit strike), and I still have hopes that I might get around to something more in depth about the weekend in London, and then hopefully I come to just a short bit about Schlachtensee with Natali (not that I don’t have plenty to write about Natali, just not that much about Schlachtensee, which is a really beautiful lake, but just a lake all the same), and the new Deutschkurs, and then maybe even some general thoughts about the German language… I’ll see.

But, at the moment I’m gonna take a short break from blogging in the past, to enjoy blogging in the now. Not that anything particularly interesting is going on at the moment, just hanging in the living room typing while Claudia is hard at work grading away on that neverending stack of student papers (of which she has less than 6 of 21 left to go at this point, Yay Claudia!, and yes, I stand by my choice of the word “neverending” for a variety of reasons which aren’t important right now), and so a typical night at the Claudia-Kenny Wohnung (apartment), although usually I’m doing German homework instead of blogging.

And this is some of my favorite time here, relaxing, sharing a bottle of wine with Claudia as we both tend to our business, taking breaks occassionally to eat, drink, be merry, and then back to it, whatever “it” happens to be on a given night. So, unlike most of my other event-related posts, this one’s in homage to the joyfully mundane… and to Claudia.

Incidentally one of my problems documenting the Claudia story is that she hardly ever lets me take pictures (granted I generally like to take them at the most inopportune times (well, inopportune for Claudia anyway. For me they are quite opportune.) ). But I’ve been more active with the camera lately, after realizing that I had been here many months already and had so few pictures (and incidentally, another problem which will be more and more readily apparent the more photos I upload, is that Claudia’s camera, the one I use, takes really crappy pictures which come out completely blurred more than half the time. No idea why. But I’ve compensated for that a bit by using it to take video).

So when Claudia went to the bathroom tonight, I thought it might be a good idea to go grab the camera to have ready later while she was doing her grading thing and document this most typical of evening activities. Only it occurred to me that, once she became aware of my presence with the camera she might object. So naturally, I pointed the camera at the bathroom door to at least get one good shot of her coming out…

…and there I waited, very quietly, patiently, listening for the door handle to move, finger on the trigger… but what about that delay from the time I press the button till the time the picture actually shoots? a good second and well long enough for her to react and blur tings up real good… or… perhaps I could switch to video mode…
and that’s just what I did. And here is the result.

(note: give the links a good minute or 2 to load. I don’t understand why they should take so long but it seems they do.)

And what’s that? More Claudia you say? I agree. So here’s a little bonus video I took while demonstrating to Claudia the video function on her own camera: Is it on?

And finally here’s a few shots of die Lehrerin (the teacher) in her natural habitat:

“Stupid, stupid students… points deducted here for being stupid… some more here… stupid”

“Hi, I love grading. I have such wonderful students.”