What's with the bubbles, Mozart?

Surprisingly, I was NOT invited to George Clooney's 46th birthday party. I am a bit peeved about that. Well, George, I had more important things to do anyway. So I did. I took a bath, I read a book, I had a glass of wine, and I listened to Mozart's Requiem ... All at the same time. There! I bet you're jealous now, Mr. Clooney. Don't feel all that glamorous anymore now, do you?

No idea when it happened, but at some point in my life, that clichéd combination of a bathtub filled with hot water and bubbles, a book, wine, and music - plus a few candles if you REALLY wanna overdo it - has become the epitome of bliss. Well, one of them. There's more, of course. :) Is it just that I started getting old at the age of 20? Whatever it is, I do enjoy it..... Though, next time, George, you can light the candles. :)

When two X-Chromosomes attack

There are those times when that second X-Chromosome really does get me.... I've never been a girly-girl. Never been into pink, never played with Barbie or other dolls (I was into The Smurfs!), never watched soap operas. Hell, I never wore a dress from the time I was 9 until I turned 22. However, there comes a time when your gender catches up with you. I admit I do abuse the fact that I'm female from time to time: It is just too easy to manipulate guys into carrying your bags to the car or your new furniture up the stairs. I'm ashamed of myself sometimes... But then again.... it's not like I'm forcing the guys. :)

Well, so I'm female. I hate being thought of as a cliché. Still..... there are those days when I'm actually ACTING like a cliché.
Take today: I actually went on a cosmetics shopping rampage. I usually hate shopping. I only go when I know what I want. I go, I buy, I leave. Easy. Today, though, I only knew I NEEDED something.... pretty (it pains me to write stuff like that!). I went, I looked, I started the rampage, .... I spent lots more than I should have on stuff I didn't need. Now I have proven once again that commercials do work on me. Let's see whether all the cosmetics I bought will hold their promises. You'll see me on the cover of Glamour soon, Ladies and Gentlemen!

That is unless the next Werder Bremen soccer game throws me into a deep depression.... A girl can only take so much, ya know.

I'm too tired for all this excitement

It sounded like a cruel April Fools prank apart from the fact that it was published on April 2nd: On major news sites, I read that EMI will ditch the horrible copyprotection in music downloads they offer. Will that lead to other companies being pressured in doing so as well? I certainly hope so.

See, I am all for buying my music. Despite thinking that what I pay for a single song here is still overpriced, I will still pay. Major issues for me when it comes to musicdownloads are two things:

No complicated downloading/payment process
(hello, major international download portals; although it might be common in the US, credit cards are not ruling the market where I live (yet) .... So adapt to other markets by offering alternative ways to pay)

The possibility for me to play the music I purchased on whatever device I prefer ... maybe even on two, three or four different ones.
I hate having my choices limited to just one player and not being able to listen to legally purchased songs on a non-DRM player. Attempting to circumvent the copy-protection if only in order to use said player makes me a criminal. This whole strategy is counteracting the way our entertainment technology is developing. While the variety of devices to play media broadens every day, the media itself limits us again. Those who can afford it pay over and over for the same content. Those who cannot afford it .... well ....

In any way, I believe it when I see it, but I find this move by EMI exciting. Even though it's going to cost even more to download a song and even though Apple has its fingers in there once again (I somehow don't trust them anymore).... Looking forward to watching those developments. And I'm rambling again. Time to go to bed.

My Name is Ellen and I used to blog here

Yeah...uh.... I was abducted by aliens! Either that or I watched "Taken" one too many times. In any way: I think I lost 6 months!
Well, all you millions of readers: I am back on the planet!

While I was happily surfing from website to website, checking on all the latest news from Britney, Paris, and Lindsay, I was horrified to find an article about kids giving up social networks for lent. How horrible! No MySpace or Facebook..... Imagine having to give up all these places and being forced to ....oh .... talking to your friends in person. Or, worse, use a phone to talk to those not living in the same dorm. (I swear I know people who IM eachother while sitting on computers twenty feet apart.)

Honestly, in times when you have so many means to communicate, how tough is it to give up places such as MySpace for 40 days? Of course, I am not 16 anymore and I am not catholic, so I will never have to think of anything original to give up for lent. I just love watching people come up with all those cool things to give up. Me? I guess coffee and my weekend-glass-of-wine would be toughest. Blogging? Well, I just had six months of offtime. (the withdrawal symptoms eased after about 40 days.... Oh, wait! ... )

I guess I'll give up MySpace for the remainder of lent. Just as an act of solidarity with the poor kids. Just don't tell anyone that I never really have used my account there!

The shock of finding out that your cat is a moron

It is not that I have never suspected it in the past. It is not that there haven't been warnings throughout the years. This past Tuesday, however, I finally got my perfect proof: The cat we own - or rather the cat owning us - is a moron.

It was not easy to accept at first, but when the furball got stuck under the shoe cabinet (where he tried to kill a spider) and could not get his head out anymore, not even I could deny it any longer.

Does anyone have hints and tips on how to raise our cat's IQ? We have another cat in the neighborhood who is rather snobbish and seems to look down on poor dumb S all the time. I know S could kick Snob Cat's furry ass any old time, but I am afraid he'd get distracted during the ass-kicking and maybe embarrass himself. So I'd rather work on his IQ for a bit before I send S onto the feline battlefield.

I'd take any advice on improving furball-survival-skills, too. Who knows, next time he gets stuck I might be at work and then he'd have his head under the shoe cabinet for half the day. It would be nice if he could at least solve math problems while waiting....

Poetic Dreamer or Psychotic Freak?

I bought myself a new fountain pen.
Apart from the fact that some of you, my 5,000 imaginary readers, probably think it is weird to write with a fountain pen, this shouldn't worry anyone as is. However, the purchase marks the end of a long period of self-inflicted fountain pen withdrawal. I am hereby admitting another one of my increasingly disturbing abnormal behavior patterns: Other women collect shoes, perfume bottles, sexy young men ..... I feel an urge to buy fountain pens. For the past three years, I had managed to walk away from all the fountain pen displays in stationery stores. Not so today. I unfortunately suffered a relapse. A failure, that is what I am!

While everyone is thinking (and obviously worrying) about my abnormal behavior patterns: I took another one of those to new heights: Just when I thought I was about to defeat the addiction to switch my computer screen's wallpaper every other day, I made the ultimate switch by buying a new screen. It's a good thing I am not in the position (financially, that is) to do that every other day. It nevertheless disturbs me enough to blog about it.

On another note: I spent from Tuesday to Thursday Night being sick. Poor me! Thankfully, I have the best cat ever. He kept watch over me by sitting at the foot of my bed the whole time. Good cat! I'd write him a thank you note with my new fountain pen if only he could appreciate it.

Roommates from Hell and other Nightmares

Although I should dive right into my topic of nightmarish roommates, I will first have to report some progress concerning my recently described addiction to ever new desktop wallpaper. I still have the astronaut looking down on me whenever I do computer stuff. Thanks to Thomas, I am suffering from insomnia now as I'm trying to find out what the astronaut is thinking. Due to my lack of sleep, I also lack the energy to change my wallpaper. It's a vicious circle, I tell ya!

Now, some might not suspect it, I actually went to college for longer than I'd like to admit (call me Magistra Artium, please! ... I said "please"!). During that time, I did have a couple of roommates. Those I voluntarily shared apartments with were great. They are still very good friends of mine. However, there were two people, specifically, who still cause me nightmares. Why do some people just have to be psychopaths. And, more importantly, why do these people just love to annoy me?

I encountered the first nightmare when, in my third year, I moved back into a dorm. At my Alma Mater, that meant having your own room in a kind of small apartment, sharing bathroom and kitchen with between one and three others. That's alright. No problem there; except one of those people was a cleaning nazi. I called this particular roommate "The Goose". She simply looked just like a mean cartoon goose which probably caused some kind of trauma during my childhood and which therefore came back from my subconsciousness. The Goose studied to become an engineer working in constructions. She liked making plans. My guess is her major plan was to rule the world as a tyrant one day. Her start was ruling the inhabitants of what she counted as "her apartment". Therefore, she dictated a set of regulations that would make Mr. Clean pale. Every step of the cleaning procedure was described in detail. We weren't to simply remove dirt. No, it was more like purifying the apartment from the evilness that is dust and disorder. Step 3 was to clean the legs of the kitchen chairs, Step 6 was to Kill, kill, KILL!!! all germs.

Needless to say I got out of there after two semesters.

My last roommate in college was a Psych major. Unfortunately, she should have been a patient, too. M. was 23 years old and she obviously couldn't really get over the fact that her posters of horses and kittens allover the room scared most people. I don't think M. had any kind of social life at all. One day, she came into my room while I was studying for my finals. (she did that a lot: coming into my room with the plan to never leave again) After about 5 hours of "once, in Bandcamp..."-like stories (just not THE story, thankfully - I'd have jumped out my window at once), M. finally revealed to me that the only pleasure in her life was to read an article in her animal magazine before bed. ... ... I instantly feigned complete exhaustion, locked my room, called my friends to tell them to call the police in case I wouldn't show up in the morning, and slept on random park benches until the end of the semester.

Roommates can traumatize you for life. I still hyperventilate when I see a poster with kittens.