Stuff to read, stuff to drink.

It's extremely hot around here - too hot for the season, actually, both Bamberg and Erlangen scored new heat records for June yesterday. And today? We're in for another very hot day, so very soon I will close all the doors and windows to keep as much of the morning cool inside and leave the heat outside.

The heat is one of the reasons we did not do much during the long weekend - and I think everybody was happy that yesterday was a public holiday, it was certainly much too hot to work. It's warm enough to have switched from drinking tea, mostly, to my favourite summer drink, based on something I had in a pub once that they called "thai lemonade". The original consisted of mostly water with fresh ginger, fresh lemongrass, mint leaves and lime juice, with some sugar to round off the taste. I'm unfortunately lacking proper fresh lemongrass and I usually skip the sugar, but if you are looking for a refreshing summer drink - just get those ingredients, throw them into a carafe, fill with cold water and let it stand for a bit. If you prefer mint with other tastes, some sprigs of mint and a small handful of crushed raspberries will also give a nice flavour to a 2-litre carafe of water. (Probably works with strawberries too, but I don't have the self-control at this time of year to put them into a water jug... I eat them. All.)


And if you are looking for something to read along with your drink, I have recently been waylaid by some articles at phys.org. They have stuff about sheep genome. And horse gaits. Plus a plethora of other interesting articles.

If you'd rather read something older, you can head over to the British Library website - the Simeon manuscript has been digitised.