Hello, everyone!
It was about time to report back that I'm still alive! The new house was and is a truckload of work! It's all so expensive - and of course there's way more broken than the estate agent said - that we don't have money to spare on builders. Friends, colleagues and family members helped us with the move, transport of new furniture and some initial renovations as much as they could, given the often long distance between us and them, but mostly it was just us two working here over the last months. We ripped out carpet and wallpapers, painted, did plaster work, laid over 140m2 new floors so far, scrubbed the house time and again, dug out dead plants and bushes, assembled furniture and the kitchen, mounted baseboards and lamps und came back from the DIY market with new material by foot and laden like pack mules at least 20 times. Everything we can do ourselves, we do ourselves. In the first month, we didn't even have a kitchen or real internet, and we had our first free afternoon in January. There was no time or mental energy for something creative or even a nice board game session - and for a long time no surface to do anything like that on. Now we take things slower, since all important rooms are usable and we can spread out the open tasks as we want. We are very thankful for the helpfulness of everyone - a big "Thank you!" goes to user MJKJ again, who showed up as a New Year angel and helped us during his holidays! I was very moved by that, thanks!
By now my computer sits on its new desk in the living room, which only needs some curtains sewn and pictures put up, and I can slowly, very slowly think about updates again. : )
Due to all the chaos I actually missed my websites' 20th anniversary now, and since we still need to redo the whole garden and have new windows put in for the whole house I won't be able to make good on that party. Very likely updates will be very sporadic until late winter, actually. Perhaps we can do a big party next year, who knows - although the 21 isn't a big number in Germany and we'd rather celebrate the 25. ;)
What kind of updates there will be I can't say. Often I still have medium to strong pain or numbness in my hand from working so much, so I never know how my fine motor skills are tomorrow. Can I crochet or paint? No idea! In the dollroom the lights and the surfaces for the outdoor sets are still missing, and some things went broken during the move and have to be repaired. The good camera battery is still missing and the scanner has to be repaired, to boot, since a lot of dirt sticks to the underside of the glass after the move now, which ruins the scan results. If we can't manage to take the glass out and clean it without breaking the device we'll have to strain our budget even further and buy a new one, after we already had to replace the printer, grr.
So in the meantime I have to concentrate on material that's already on my pc, and actually there are various pending older projects, not just for the Sims soap opera and board game reports, which you guys always miss out on because I can't translate them.
By now I have no clue anymore of what kind of stuff is sitting in the depths of my harddrives, so I guess we'll all be surprised by what will show up. :P