March Already!

Am I the only one to feel as if we've only just been celebrating New Year's Eve? And look - it is already March! Of course, looking back at everything I did over the past two months and at all the things that have been happening around me and on a larger scale, the two months become entirely credible.

Let me start this month with a random collection of pictures I took during January and February; pictures that (in my opinion) do not merit their own post but which I did not want to delete without sharing them, either.

In January, we often had rather mixed weather. It was the mildest January I can remember. One afternoon, sleety rain was falling straight out of the sun - or so it seemed:

It lasted mere minutes, and afterwards, the light was exceptionally brilliant, as you can see from my kitchen window. Everything appeared to have sharper contours than usual.

Of course I was hoping for a rainbow - and there was one, but it was too pale to show up properly in a picture.

An outfit I favoured during that month (not for work, only for play) was my dear old Fuchsia dress:

(Yes, that's right, I have Hello Kitty bed sheets. They were a gift from my sister, if I remember correctly.)

February saw some beautiful sunrises. I must confess I rarely get to see a sunrise in summer, because I sleep until 7.00 on an average working day, but winter is a different story. 

Some February mornings, my kitchen was sunlit when I came in to have my morning coffee. Seeing this made for an even better start of the day!

A favourite business outfit during this month was my black knit dress. You can't see it in the picture, but it has a small knitted collar with black shiny "jet pearls" (of course they are fake) sewn on to it. At the office, I wear a tailored jacket over it; I'd soon get too chilly with short sleeves at this time of the year.

 
There is a lot lined up for me this month; for one thing, it'll be my birthday towards the end of the month, and the day after, I'll be travelling to Ulm (about 120 km from Ludwigsburg), to start the course for my certificate for Data Protection Officer. I've been working in this field for over a year now without a certificate, but since Germany is quite obsessed with official documents and regulations for each and every little thing, it will be better for our business when not only RJ has the official stamp on his job.

I have no idea how I am going to fare at the course - three times a full week, with each day being an entire day of lessons - after I have not been in a proper learning environment since my last day at Librarian School in 1988. Learning does not become easier with age, but I have two advantages: first, I really want to learn all the theory that is behind my actual work, and second, RJ has kindly lent me the study material he used when he took the same course some years ago, so that I won't arrive totally unprepared.