What's that funny yellow disk in the sky?

So I spent 4 years in France, in the area of Nice to be precise. Gee, I know, it must be rough! They actually paid me to live on the Cote d'Azur. Anyway, the sun shines there a lot. Yeah, it rains, but the winters are usually no colder than about 30-40 F, while I lived there it only snowed on me 3 times, and there's a lot of sunshine. Then I moved up here to the Rhine region. It rains here!

I remember the first time I went to Frankfurt as an adult (I was there in 1984 in a group of high-school exchange students), and noticed how green it is. Provence/Cote d'Azur is not green. Dusty green, yes, but Frankfurt is an intense, leafy, vibrant, bursting GREEN! And the same here where I live. Well, now I know why.

Anyway, it rained pretty much solid from at least 6 am yesterday through about noon today. But when we left the canteen this afternoon to go back to the office building, there was this funny disk in the sky, and it was bright outside. Was that the sun? Wow!

The harp still sits in her corner looked desolate and deserted, and my NaNoNonsense (NNN) still sits on the corner of my desk asking me to work on it. I'm still stuck at the same word count as I was the last time I was here.

I recently read Elizabeth George's book on writing; don't remember the title, but it was an extremely good book. Very frustrating to read at the same time, because I was reading it and finding a whole list of things I need to work on in my own writing. Argh! Characterization through spoken language (dialects, word usage, etc. What a great idea; all my characters speak alike.), location and research on locations, everything. Guess I ought to make that trip up to Ireland, since my NNN is set in an idealized, agrarian, fantasy society/landscape loosely based on Ireland and since I've never actually been there.

I bought the EG book in the bookstore in the Cologne trainstation, which has a relatively good selection of English-language books, although their range usually runs to thrillers, romances, and the usual science fiction/fantasy. I really wonder how many of this book they're going to sell.

Ta for now...

Currently hearing: Midnight on the Water, King's River Band, off a compilation CD. Not bad.
Currently reading: False Memory, Dean Koontz. A really interesting book. I've avoided his stuff for years because I thought he was in the same genre as Stephen King; since about a year ago I've learned the error of my ways. But False Memory is a real departure for him. Yeah, it's still pretty out there, but I don't remember from my first read any aliens, ghosts, or other extradimensional stuff.
Current cat activity: Sophie, chasing a catnip mouse around the front hall. Charl, sitting somewhere in a huff.