Tag: street

Everything · Pictures · Ralph and I · The Cats

Sunday, June 30, 2019

Natascha30 Comments

Sometimes, I can’t find a fitting title, so I just use the current date…

You might have heard about the heatwave in Europe? We did have a few really hot days, but it cooled down to normal levels again for this weekend. Though, the temperatures are rising again and according to the forecast, the coming week will be even hotter than the previous one.

With my ongoing quest to spoil the cats as much as possible, I wanted to create more shade for them on the balcony. So I ordered a cover for the railing, which will shade the floor of the balcony. I ordered this blue and white striped one, because I love things to be as colourful as possible.

Balcony - railing cover June 29, 2019

Of course, I could just mount a cover for the whole length of the balcony railing, but then the cats would not be able to see into the garden as easily. Therefore, I folded the cover in half and mounted it so the cats would still be able to look out on both ends easily. I left more uncovered on the right side, where the bird feeder is.

The mats I had previously used for shade were by now almost falling apart from taking them up and down constantly. With this balcony cover, I don’t have to worry about taking it down all the time, since it’s made for being outside. It’s working nicely and creates full shade.

Balcony June 29, 2019 2

The wooden privacy fence and the big blue umbrella together with the new cover make the balcony really comfortable and also more private, while still giving the cats enough unrestricted view to watch everything going on outside of the balcony.

Balcony June 29, 2019 3
The right end of the balcony, where the bird feeder is.

Then, while I was shopping yesterday morning, I discovered a mat that I knew would be great for the cats to lie on outside. It is quite long and makes it much softer and comfortable.

Balcony June 29, 2019 Murli and Samantha
Murli and Samantha

I still covered the mat with their blankies and they absolutely love it. They’re out on the balcony even more now!

Balcony June 29, 2019 Murli and Samantha 2
Murli and Samantha
Balcony June 29, 2019 Murli
Murli

The reason why we don’t really need an umbrella for the right side of our balcony is this very tall Sycamore tree. In the late afternoon, it will shade the whole balcony. Although there is a span of time where the right side is in full sun for a while, before the sun gets behind the tree, but it’s not too much of a problem.

Balcony - Sycamore tree June 29, 2019

Sweet little boy Sonic prefers to stay inside for the most part. He’s always been that way and usually only stays out on the balcony for a short time, unlike the two girls who stay out there for hours.

Sonic has his favourite spots and also loves to flop down wherever he feels like, even if he is totally blocking the way.

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The nights at the moment

With the hot summer days, people leave their windows open all night, including us. It is normally absolutely quiet in our block, which is really amazing considering how many apartments there are. I can leave the bedroom window wide open all night and there is just no noise and it’s wonderful!

Or it was… The lovely quiet night has been broken up by the screaming and moaning of a woman, every night for the last week.

Edit: I forgot to clarify… It’s not a woman in pain btw… She’s at it with a man and it’s totally obvious, so that there’s no mistaking what’s going on. Seriously, it’s so annoying! We heard a man moaning for a while as well the other night, that’s why I know it’s a woman with a man.

It sounds like it’s coming from the ground floor level of the building next to our building. She is really loud and it will go on ALL NIGHT. She will start at like 1 or 2 am and then keep going until it’s morning. She will stop for maybe 15 minutes in between and then start up again. Of course, it keeps waking us up. I had to close the window last night, because we needed sleep, even though I would really need the fresh air overnight when it’s hot like that. It prevents getting a migraine from stuffy air.

Here is a google maps screenshot of the part of our block where our building is. I concealed the street name with the flowers lol. It’s just safer that way I think since you never know who finds your public images and blog.

Anyway, here it is:

Google Maps screenshot of our block

The blue arrow points to our building and the area of our apartment. The red arrow points to where the moaning comes from. We can’t see the building like that from our point of view, so we can’t be sure which apartment it comes from exactly, but it’s definitely this building.

It’s just crazy! I’m certain it won’t be any different tonight either. I’m currently thinking about what to do if it does not stop. I’ve heard other people calling out to them to keep it down, but she does not seem to care at all.

Some people…

Otherwise, we all have been doing well! I’m currently looking forward to getting all my pain medicine for 18 days, starting the coming Friday. This means I don’t have to pick up my bottles every afternoon from the pharmacy. Maybe we can go up on the mountain near Graz on one of those days and take lots of photos and videos! I love doing things together with Ralph, we always have such a lovely time, no matter what we do.

Have a wonderful rest of your Sunday everyone! The cats are sending out purrs and paw hugs!

Everything · Pictures · The Cats

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Natascha24 Comments

It’s still been raining until yesterday, but at least today, the sun seems to try to come through. Another good thing is that the temperature went up a little bit, so it’s not feeling like fall anymore.

Samantha has been watching the street for a while now. Normally, the sun would be shining into this window all morning until midday, but she only got a little bit of sun when the sun was trying to come through for a few minutes. Though, watching the street is interesting either way.

2019 05 22 Samantha on the window
Samantha on the living room window

Thanks to the constant bad weather with it’s sudden changes, I’m having migraines almost every day. Today was no different when I woke up with yet another migraine. Thankfully though, the migraine was not severe. So I got up and took my Triptan medication for the migraine, made myself a cup of strong coffee and sat on the balcony for the fresh air. If I have a severe migraine, I go straight back to bed after taking the medicine, because I can’t bear anything else, but to lie still in the quiet darkness of the bedroom, with the window opened for fresh air.

With the cats on the balcony too, and the birds up and down from their feeder, it’s a great distraction until the medicine kicks in.

2019 05 22 Samantha and Murli
Murli and Samantha watching the birds

Sonic likes to sit just by the door inside when the weather isn’t good enough for his liking.

2019 05 22 Sonic and Samantha
Samantha and Sonic

Samantha jumped straight up on my chair while I took this picture ;-)

We were being watched as well, by a pigeon.

2019 05 22 Pigeon on the roof

We have about 3 pairs of pigeons come by every day, it’s always the same ones. And one of them likes to sit on our balcony for a bit, always on the same spot, which is a highlight for Murli, because she is fascinated by pigeons.

2019 05 22 Murli and pigeon
Murli

My migraine is gone thankfully, and I hope it will be a day without rain. It looks good so far!

Have a wonderful day everyone!

Everything · Pictures · Ralph and I · The Cats

February 23, 2018 – News from the registrar, snow and cat pics

Natascha9 Comments

Hello dear friends!
First off the good news! Yesterday, the registrar called and informed us that the certificate from the British embassy (German: Ehefähigkeitszeugnis), which verifies that Ralph is legally free to marry me, has been accepted by the Graz registrar office.

What a relief! As I wrote in my previous post, the registrar office told us back then, that the embassy certificate might not be accepted, which came as a total shock to us. The British embassy issues hundreds of these certificates every year in Austria, so we assumed it was a standard thing the Austrian registrar offices deal with often, especially in bigger cities like Graz, which is Austria’s 2nd biggest city.

Anyway, thankfully that worry is now gone, and we’re getting a bit closer to getting married. What remains now, is to get the last batch of bureaucracy sorted out, that they asked of us. We need to get Apostilles for all of Ralph’s English documents, as well as certified translations by a court-approved translator of the same documents. Once this is done, we will send the scans of it all off to the registrar, and then we can finally get married within a few business days.

I don’t really know how long it will take to get this done, but we really hope it won’t be long.

Now it finally seems within our reach. Let’s just hope that the last things can get done easily, without additional bureaucracy, to get the Apostilles that we need. 

In other news… It has been snowing a lot! I haven’t experienced such weather for over a decade or more. We had days with heavy snowfall since the start of the new year. But now, we’ll have snowfall for the next 2 weeks, and the temperatures will drop over the weekend to around -15°C / 5°F according to forecast. 

Here is what it looks like from our balcony, overlooking the backyard and garden.

February 20, 2018 8:23am
Snow in the garden, February 20, 2018
22.02.2018 17-33-57
Snow in the garden, February 22, 2018
22.02.2018 17-31-31
Snow February 22, 2018

Samantha and Sonic watch the snow fall from the windows, but they don’t feel like going out onto the balcony at all. Samantha ran out for a second, curious as to what that “white stuff” on the balcony is, but turned right back around once she realised the “white stuff” is wet and cold. 

Murli, on the other hand, does not care, and still likes to go out onto the balcony with us. Of course, Murli has thick and quite long fur, and Samantha has not got much to keep her warm. Sonic and Samantha are from southern Spain and not used to the cold.

07.02.2018 08-26
Murli does not care about getting snowed on. She wants to watch the birdies!

All three kitties are happy and feel at home. Murli is so much better with the others too and she continues to get better and more relaxed with having other cats around.

17 02 2018 1-38pm
Murli and Samantha
13 02 2018 9-13am
Sonic on the bed, and Murli on the window.

I am so happy to have my Murli girl here with me, in our home, within our little family. We all love our new apartment, our home in Graz. But we can’t wait to finally put just one family name on our door: Whillier. Natascha and Ralph Whillier. It will be such a happy day once we have our long-awaited wedding!

The other thing we can’t wait for is spring and summer! But for now, spring seems a bit far away. The following slideshow shows what it looks like at the moment. It’s the park near our home.

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Thank you all for reading and for your wonderful and supportive comments, it really made us feel better. I will keep you updated a lot more from now on, as to how things are going with our quest to get married.

As I’m about to go to sleep now, I wish you all a good night. Take care and keep warm!

20 02 2018 10-43am
Murli
20 02 2018 11-04pm
Samantha and Sonic
Everything · Pictures · Society and News · The Cats

June 17, 2017 Hey sweeties! Update about what was going on with us.

Natascha18 Comments

June 16 and 17, 2017 Important Update

Hey my dear furends! It was a couple of things. First I was just really busy, & then our internet was having problems. Connection would be there, then gone again. Yesterday it was gone completely. And I needed to safe my remaining data for my 2 mobile devices internet. It’s working normally again normally it seems.

The important/serious part of the update comes now
Wednesday night at 8pm, police were suddenly and quietly positioning themselves in my street & neighborhood. No sirens, nothing. Really quiet. No one knew what was up. They told all the people to leave the pubs and restaurants, and leave the area or go into their buildings. The street was eerie & quiet. There were many police cars & the special unit that usually always comes for more serious things was there too. They had the big guns out.

They closed off all the streets around us and put their own police vans and cars into the streets as additional barriers. After they had done all of that, I saw a policeman from the special unit walk with a second one through my street. One was carrying that special bag that gets put over things that are suspected to be explosives. Those bags are able to contain the blast and any shrapnel and things they put into those self made ones to hurt people even more. Then I knew something was wrong. But still, I thought maybe they just found a lone luggage standing around somewhere and people got worried about it and called the police. Things like that happen and of course they always have to assume it might really be dangerous. I really thought it must be something like that.

But the next day (Thursday) I heard that we had an actual terrorist b.mb threat, that was apparently prevented thanks to a person from the middle east, who heard about a plan for this somewhere and called police right away. This might have really prevented something from happening, because police were here so quickly. Maybe the extremists who had planned this thing, where prevented from doing anything thanks to police being here. The attack was apparently planned for around 10pm, but police had already been here at 8pm, after the person had called them about what he heard. It was supposed to be an attack right here in my street. There’s a big church right near me and we had an important Christian holiday. Maybe that’s why.

On Thursday police were there all day too and they were there during the night too apparently. They still had their police vans as a barrier in all streets leading to my neighborhood and my street. Only pedestrians were able to pass. It was also because they didn’t want someone attacking with a car. My church had a lot of people there due to the Christian holiday. Buildings like ours had their entrances protected by a police van right in front of the entrance, and a couple police men. So no suspicious people could get into the buildings & do something in them possibly. There was lots of police all around us. Really a lot! On Friday it seemed it was all back to normal for the most part. They are still patrolling more than they usually do, but life started to be lived again normally. There is an event on the other side of the river (Our building is next to the river) and I saw that they have put their police cars there as barriers again, to prevent anyone from trying to attack with a car again.

Unfortunately I had a migraine on Thursday, and I felt extremely exhausted, because I had to haul stuff with some friends. The last bits of my stuff that a friend had stored for me in their storage room they didn’t need. But they move out and so I had to get my stuff. And I still felt really really exhausted yesterday. So that’s why we weren’t here really.

I am so sorry my dear friends and furends. I really am. I thank you all for your sweet comments. I also thank you all really really so much, for always being so understanding towards my frequent migraines and being offline often because of that.

Murli & I love you all💕 Thanks for being such wonderful pals!

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Everything · Murli the cat · Pictures · Videos

April 27, 2017 Catching up

Natascha21 Comments

Yay! Today is the first day of me feeling normal and awake again. For the past two weeks, I had been ill again… Due to a bout of the shingles, which thankfully were not bad. I had chicken pox as a child, so since then I had that Virus in me. In the first days before anything became apparent, I had severe fatigue and I just didn’t feel right at all. Then at the end of the Easter weekend, the rash started, but just a very small area on the right side over my ribs. Went to the doctor right after the Easter weekend and got a Antiviral and pain meds prescribed. Thankfully the antiviral medicine was able to prevent it from actually breaking out fully, since the treatment was started early enough, and because it was a mild case.

The medicine made me very tired though. As long as I did something I was ok, but as soon as I would sit down and start to read or write, my eyes wanted to close. Many times over the last week, have I fallen asleep while sitting on the couch with my ipad… Hilarious!

I’m finally feeling fully awake again today. Hopefully I’ll have a good phase without migraines for a bit, because there’s so much I want to do and I’m looking forward to be able to catch up with all of your lovely blogs, as well as with all our furends on instagram and twitter ❤️️

Murli is doing purrfect! But she’d love to have more days with comfortable temperatures and sun puddles to nap in. Unfortunately, our weather here in Austria, and other parts of Europe, continue to have unusually cold weather. First there was the stormy and cold weather I wrote about. Then a few days with milder temperatures and a bit of sun followed. The Foehn wind was howling again on Tuesday and brought warm air from the south. The next day, the Foehn wind was gone, but the temperatures were falling again, which created more wind, just not Foehn wind. Today it’s grey, dark and rainy. The mountains are also getting snow again and it’s possible that we’ll get some of it as well.

But we will enjoy a cuddly and comfy weekend. Murli on my lap, and a coffee next to me, I’m not complaining at all. The only thing I worry about is how animal and plant life are coping with that kind of weather.

April 27, 2017 10:26am

Here is a video I took on Tuesday, as the Foehn Wind was howling through the door. Murli isn’t afraid of those things, as they’re happening all the time and she’s used to it all. But her little nose is sniffing into the air, as the air current brings all kinds of smells with it I’m sure😸

In the video, Murli is about to get her meal, and she knows of course. I was about to go into the kitchen, when I decided to film that howling of the wind. I’m kind of sure she’s thinking what I’m doing there filming the door, instead of getting her meal ready lol…

I also wanted to show you one of the trees that grow on the river bank, that had fallen during those stormy days after the Easter weekend. I came across that fallen tree on my way to a grocery store. There were many fallen trees more along the river banks. But I’m kind of sure that the trees that did fall due to the wind, were already weakened in some way. (You can click on the images to see them in a larger view)

I also found a left over Christmas tree 😂😹 I had to think of Siddhartha Henry’s LadyMum Sherri-Ellen of nylabluesmum.wordpress.com when I saw that Christmas tree, because we were talking about exactly this kind of thing shortly after Christmas and how people throw Christmas trees down the river banks and into rivers and all kinds of other places lol.

Hope you all are doing fine! Murli and I wish you all a pleasant Thursday!