Aileen

Here we are at @WillyFredHaus@social.servus.at
@freebliss@post.lurk.org and I look forward to welcoming lots of curious people.

It has been a really rough week, so I stayed in bed reading until after noon. Finally I had to get up to recharge the notebook I use as an ebook reader, but Hester has been complaining vigorously and keeps trying to lead me back to the bedroom. She may have a point.
#caturday

It always amuses me when people find it so hard to believe that I have no academic title that they end up inventing one for me. In fact I have no title, no academic credentials, no formal qualifications for anything at all. I have just had the pleasure of working for many years with many wonderful people who do.

Since it already complicated enough to coordinate a monthly family video chat across five time zones, it really doesn't help when the time changes on different weekends in different time zones and everybody is trying to guess what time everybody else thinks it is.

But since my 12yo grand-niece joined us and started experimenting, now even the technophobe uncles know how to change their background in BBB.

Really lovely chat with my English sister-in-law this evening, but trying to do family tech support via video chat can be so confusing.
I set up a BBB channel specifically for intercontinental family chats more than two years ago, but I still have to send the link every time. When I asked my sister-in-law why she still hadn't bookmarked it, she asked me how to make a bookmark.
But at least she remembers now that when I send her the link again, she doesn't need to put it into Google, but into the address bar, which she now knows exists. Today we practiced again the difference between a search engine and a browser, and we will simply continue practicing things like this for as long as it takes.

One of the things I love about the Kostnix Laden in @WillyFredHaus@social.servus.at is when things are brought in and then find exactly the right person who needs exactly that thing.
Last week someone brought in a large basket, and questioned whether they should leave it, because it was slightly frayed at the bottom. Last Friday a young woman found it and was so enchanted that she asked three times whether she could really just take it home with her.
Then someone brought in a clock and assured me that it works, they just no longer have room for it in their new flat. I took it upstairs with me and put in a new battery and it started ticking - this is exactly the clock I have been looking for.

https://kulturkarte.servus.at/event/kostnixladen-6

In two days I will be the same age that my father was when he died. This has evoked so many associations that I needed to try to capture at least some of them in a blog post: https://livingwithplanb.derieg.com/2026/03/stories-that-numbers-tell/

Am I really the only person in the world who finds the sound of a clock ticking in the background soothing?

Since we talked about what they are reading (and how much they enjoy reading), I want to try again to find a way to get books to my sister's grandchildren in the US (@celesteh@hachyderm.io, I will probably come back to your kind offer).

But I just realized that I am missing something. If the 10yo is reading at an 8th grade level, and the 12yo says she can certainly read YA books , can someone in or from the US give me an idea of what age levels I am looking for?