Happy New Year!

Well, the first week of 2007 is almost over. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to keep my blog more up to date, so this will be the first of many more entries this year than last. This Christmas I had two weeks vacation, which was really great. I enjoyed time to be with friends, get some much needed work done around the apartment, and also put together some VCDs of last year’s vacation for my family back home. For a look at some of the photos, surf on over to my Webshots photo albums. I got lots of books for Christmas. Right now I’m reading Astronomy Today (thanxxx, Dad!), and Gödel, Einstein und die Folgen: Vermächtnis einer ungewöhnlichen Freundschaft (A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein in German translation). I also spent some time migrating and revamping my website. What used to be www.aslan4u.info is now http://www.aslan4all.de/. Stop by and have a look!

Recently I started keeping a dream diary. Though I don’t believe in any set pattern of dream symbolism that applies to everyone (such as Freudian interpretation), writing down my dreams helps me take a look at what issues I may be dealing with deep down in my subconscious. It’s interesting to note recurring themes and consider what they might mean for me. Keeping this diary has also had the reciprocal effect of intensifying my dream experiences. I have dreamed about everything from walking in an open field in the warm sunshine, feeling the breeze, smelling the grass and hearing the birds chirping, to having a philosophical discussion on eugenics or attending a conference on social and ecological issues. Now I go to bed curious about what I will dream next! Maybe I’ll post some of them sometime, in a generalized form.

Something else I have purposed is to make more time for my hobbies. Recently Susanne (a work colleague) and I drove to Holzmaden (near Stuttgart) to see the small but famous Hauff Museum of the Prehistoric World with its exquisite preparations of local fossil finds. This year we’re planning to go to the Bürgermeister-Müller-Museum in Solnhofen and the Natural History & Mammoth Museum in Siegsdorf, and possibly even to the Senckenberg Museum near Frankfurt, if we get the chance. She loves paleontology like I do, and she has the great advantage of having a car ;-). I also want to spend more time at the planetarium and go to more evening lectures at the Volkshochschule (something like a community college). Next week there’s one on the Big Bang that I’m really looking forward to! Well, my tummy’s telling me it’s time for lunch, and my to-do list is telling me it’s time to get moving, so I’ll close for now.

Have a great week!

Ciao, Renee