What the Wicked Witch of the West must have felt like

Okay, so I don't exactly know what the Wicked Witch of the West must have felt like when she melted. She melted because of water, I'm about to melt from all that heat. I furthermore will melt with grace as opposed to embarrassing myself by screaming, "I'm melting, ... melting!" If there's one thing you'd want to avoid while melting, it's drawing attention to yourself. Someone should have told that Wicked Witch about etiquette. I'm sure Miss Manners has mentioned the rules on correct melting behavior. Oh well....

I've been trying to find ways to stay cool at the moment. As this country is trying not to have constant blackouts, A/C is hardly to be found in private homes. So I'm left with sticking my head in the freezer for minutes at a time. I have also tried sleeping on a pillow I'd stuck in the freezer before. Unfortunately, this genius idea only sounded great for about two minutes during which the pillow adjusted to the sizzling temperature in my bedroom.

The better part of today saw me dogsitting in addition to trying not to melt. Smart dog slept spread out on our tiled kitchen floor. I wonder whether it would look funny if I took my frozen pillow and camped out in the kitchen tonight .... and maybe for the next few days. What I am sure of is that the sun is after me: I swear, when I was walking the dog today, a voice from the skies whispered, "I'll get you, my Pretty, and your little dog, too!"

Provincial Terrorism

Imagine you live in a relatively small town close to the Baltic Sea! Suddenly, people start seeing Men in Black sneaking around. You discover that all the manholes in town are welded shut (and, no, there's not been an alligator sighting or something equally "Lake Placid"-like ). Two weeks into all those strange events, the town is divided into zones. To make it easier on those "visual" people, the zones are called "red" and "yellow". The Red Zone is pretty much the whole town center and nobody but a chosen 1,000 people (that's a 5th of my imaginary readers!!!) is allowed in. Too bad you are not among the chosen ones (probably because of that stick of chewing gum you stole when you were 8). Even worse that you actually live in the first street off Town Square. You're happy it's actually summer and two or three nights under a bridge surely build character.
Every business in the Red Zone: cafes, restaurants, law practices, doctor's offices, stores ... I said "every business", right? So every business can pretty much close down for two days. All this happens: your whole town is shut down. An Alien Invasion? Kind of. ... Please welcome the President of the United States of America, George W. Bush, to Stralsund, Germany! .... And they wonder why nobody in town (but the Kempinski Hotel who housed half of the United States, it seems) was happy.... (it does explain the naming of the "zones", however. Big words needed to be avoided!) Well, we know International Terrorism is everywhere .... and if Bin Laden has lived in a cave somewhere between Afghanistan and Pakistan for years, there's always the chance he's moved into the sewer system of Stralsund now.

Underwear in Black-Red-Gold

It's hot! Too hot to do anything but drink cold beer and watch soccer - which I'm pretty content with.
You can currently see something here in Germany which you usually don't see much: the national colors. They even sell underwear in black, red and gold. And no, I don't own a pair!
I still pretend to be a skilled soccer player. I wonder how many people I've been able to convince with my incredible "playing injured" trick. Pretty sure the call to the German Women National Team will come soon. They wouldn't wanna miss out on that kind of chance.

Off to see the next Germany game now... I am bit scared!

Superhero in training

I have recently contemplated giving up the job hunt and becoming a Superhero instead. This is in honor of the coming release of Superman Returns ('though I'm still trying to decide whether the movie should generally be despised by me as it can never be the REAL Superman. - it's sad, but I am THAT shallow!).

In order to join the ranks of Spiderman and the rest of the spandex-wearing elite, I will need some training. As everyone now knows, I am currently busy with my soccer practice. This forces me to keep my superhero training units light. As a warm-up, I today performed my very first heroic deed: I brought two tall cappuccinos for my co-workers. You may not see the heroic value in this; not at first glance, at least. You will, however, see it clearly once you hear that I transported those cappuccinos on my scooter! I furthermore did not wear spandex, but plain jeans (and my helmet, of course!). This, my friends, is what separates me from the common old Superhero you know from your Marvel comics and the classic cartoon series. This is what makes me a contemporary superhero....

Tomorrow is the day to move this one step further. My deed then will be even tougher on myself and most probably on those who have to deal with my new superhero-ness: I will get up at 6 am again. God help us all!

What's 11 meters in feet?

I have a confession to make. Many of my 5,000 imaginary readers will probably not want to be friends with me anymore. Some may not even want to talk to me anymore, others will probably assure me they'll be there for me again once I've come to my senses...

It is not easy to admit it, but I am a soccer (Football - for you British English aficionados) fan. I am female, I have an advanced degree .... and I love soccer! Somewhat non-cliche. What's even worse: I suck at playing it myself. It is, admittedly, highly entertaining for others seeing me "play": Usually, what spectators will see is me starting to run after the ball, maybe getting it once, losing it while desperately looking for a teammate to pass the ball, then fainting from exhaustion halfway across the field. How can they RUN that far? It's nothing short of amazing to me.

Even if I weren't a soccer fan, I wouldn't stand a chance here at the moment. We have a couple of days to go before the World Cup 2006 starts. And it will be right here in Germany! That's the good part. Now for the annoying stuff:

They even have sausages shaped like soccer balls! Everybody is trying to make money in that big bad marketing machine. You should see our supermarkets! It's almost funny. Who buys all that stuff? Alright, so I bought the soccer-shaped Nutella jar. But it was because it's almost a Kilo Nutella! See, it's actually a GOOD thing!

Obviously not that good - from the legal aspect - were the vibrators named after popular soccer players. They had to be ... er ... pulled off the market after said players protested the use of their names. Probably a good idea; What if the German team suffers a premature ..... exit and is literally kicked out of the World Cup after the first round? Wouldn't be good advertising for a vibrator not to be able to finish it, eh?

Oh well, so here I am, dragging my friends and my soccerball to the park every weekend, desperately trying to manage running across the field ONCE without needing a respirator afterwards. The World Cup starts in 10 days and I'll need to be in shape by then. Or something....

I'll be watching the games on Big Screens allover town. That way, I can see the really important thing: all those nicely displayed soccerplayer butts ..... er.... ya know! Whatever, I'm off to eat Nutella.

About time, Google!

Can you survive another geek post? Suit yourself!

I hadn't really checked my blogroll for a couple of days. Catching up now that the withdrawal symptoms are getting far too severe. So now that I read all my favorite blogs, I find that Google seems to finally have managed Google Maps for Europe. I am impressed!

See, the thing about Google is that it seems to be releasing all those cool things one after the other. It's all geek stuff. Most people probably wouldn't be excited about it. I am, though. (I have the distinct feeling this abnormal behavior was caused by early exposure to a Commodore 64) I am, however, not impressed with Google's way of never doing stuff properly. Oh, they have chat in Googlemail now, they even finally decided that a delete button is actually a good thing to have even though your e-mail provider offers almost 3 Gigs of space. Buuuuut, chat only works when you have your account set to US-English. I love that! It doesn't even work in UK-English. I realize it must be very tough to translate it from US- to British English. Very difficult, indeed! Same thing with the "Delete" Button. How many months does one need to tranlate the word "delete" into a different language? How come the German Google Mail version just now got their own "delete" button?

My guess is that the American Google Geeks are just a bit too enthusiastic about creating new stuff while the translators probably even have a social life or something equally disgusting.

Talking about social life: I think I OD'ed on that over the weekend. I need sleep now....


(EDIT: Wow, Google Talk for Gmail was just made available for lots of "foreign" languages! ... "Foreign" meaning "not American English". That impressed me immensely again. Suddenly having the chat set to make sounds was rather inconvenient - having to scramble turning it off at work and all. ;) )

Error Messages

I hate error messages.... My phone gives me a "Battery almost empty" (how nice to warn me before it's completely empty!). My computer - when booted into Windows - still likes to give me the "illegal operation" error message and the cat meows in an alarming way when he thinks he needs help catching that spider on the wall. Error messages are everywhere! I do feel a bit paranoid today. The "Error Messages are trying to kill me!" paranoia got worse today when my boss came by to tell me he needed customized error messages on our business website. . .I am still not sure whether he considered my screaming and locking myself in the bathroom an overreaction.

Oh Morpheus....

I haven't slept properly for at least a week. The weekend is near, there might be hope for me. Nothing exciting going on right now. If I'm going all geek on you now, the lack of excitement is to blame for it. Suit yourself!

Today at work, they finally found out that I suck when it comes to Vector graphics and related software. Not that I really would need it for the job - as I'm mostly doing all the writing, not much layout. I keep telling everyone how I just don't get Corel Draw at ALL. Everyone but ... my boss. So, after he was done with a half hour rant about whatever his problem with some layout thing was ... I told him I didn't understand a word in the past ...say ... 28 minutes. In the end, I admitted my lack of vital knowledge in the area of said software. Sadist he is, he suddenly comes up with all kinds of layout stuff he needs me to do. How I wish I never said anything. I used to tell people I couldn't make coffee (until I finally started drinking it myself) to avoid having to make it. I should have stayed with that kind of thinking

More geek stuff: This is my first post from a Linux Operating System. How exciting, I know! Still using Windows 2000 Pro next to my Ubuntu Linux. Using Win2K for most of the graphics/ music/ video editing stuff, but Ubuntu might well become the mainly used Operating System on my computer. If they call me a geek already, I might as well really go for it. :)

Going to bed now. I heard there's a law that says to be in bed by 2 am or you'll be eaten by a pack of squirrels. Sounds plausible ... there's a park nearby!

*Sigh*

Everybody's got the right to rant, right? You do .... and I do. So I guess that's settled. I'm sure there's plenty of material for a mudfight - judging from all that rain coming down here right now. The mud might also have a deodorizing effect, which could help me fight that B.O. and become more popular... But I think mudfights are against our constitution. So... Nah! (or blah!)

Other than that, I am far too tired to start another rant. I could complain about a lot of things today ... The weather, for example!

I've been looking for a new job. Well, a real job, for a change... Full time and permanent. Now that I have my M.A., I can go for Gold, can't I? ...
Meanwhile, back in my current job, I've been spending the last few days knee-deep in php code. How did that happen?

My computer studies teacher from Highschool would NEVER believe it. Yours Truly used to sit in his classes not knowing jack about coding. He made us program a winter landscape with snowmen and falling snow which was then supposed to stay on the ground. When my Turbo Pascal program finally ran, the three snowballs making up the snowman were all in different places. The little triangle meant to be the carrot-nose was stuck somewhere in the upper left corner of the "landscape" and the snow came up from the ground - then sticking allover the screen. Abstract art, anyone? Within about ten minutes, the screen was white from all that "snow".

Yeah, I was special! I tried making it look like all that was done on purpose, but it didn't work. In the end, I used all my "Wild Cards" (you could choose three out of about 40 classes and pretty much "delete" them) on computer studies classes.

Anyway, I wonder whether the boss would still make me do coding work beside the PR stuff if he talked to my teacher. Hmmm....

I'm supposed to be off to party now. But I'm tired. Maybe I'm just getting old!

Gimme Seven!

Before I start blogging about anything else, I will finally have to comply with that tag I got from Ashley. She's lucky it was her birthday when she tagged me. ;) Soooo, here's my very lame list:

7 things to do before I die:

1. Jump off the 10 meter diving board. Given that I don't even dare climbing up the 3 meter board anymore, this will take a lifetime to achieve
2. Travel to Africa
3. Re-learn Russian
4. Win an Oscar (I don't know what I'd win it for, but I wanna use that Thank You Speech I've practiced since I was 10)
5. Buy a car for my mom just because I CAN
6. Write to Valentina Tereshkova and tell her she was my heroine when I was a kid (see the difference between people growing up in communist countries and others ;) )
7. Go on a loooong trip with my sister - anywhere in the world

7 Things I Cannot Do:

1. Stay still (I am NOT a copycat. ;) Staying still is impossible for me)
2. Stay silent for a day- or even half a day... ... ... okay, an hour!)
3. Not be sarcastic (I soooo tried)
4. Tell people to shut the f*** up, already (I think it, but I never get myself to say it)
5. Climb up the 10 meter diving board
6. Eat slimy stuff
7. Become a Vegetarian (tried that one, too - no way!)

7 things I say most often:

1. Damn! (in English!)
2. Fucking Hell! (in English!)
3. Arschkuh (it's a made up word ... literally means "ass cow")
4. Übelst (don't think I translate all that stuff)
5. Maybe ..... NO!
6. Come baaaaaaack! (from Titanic It's a running gag at work.)
7. Scully!!!! (when I yell at the cat - which happens a LOT!)

7 books I love:

1. The Secret History
2. Catch 22
3. Catcher in the Rye
4. Faust I (I really do love that book!)
5. all the Harry Potter books
6. most Paul Auster books
7. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
There's so many more. I think finding just 7 books I hate would be easier

7 movies I can watch over and over again:

1. Airplane! ("Hospital? What is it?" "Oh, it's this big building...")
2. Life of Brian (the only movie ever that is better in its dubbed German version)
3. Ferris Bueller's Day off
4. Breakfast Club (pretty much all the Brat Pack stuff)
5. Field of Dreams (Corn fields were never this intriguing before)
6. Bridget Jones' Diary (my sister and I hold whole conversations in movie quotes)
7. Three to Tango ("Don't make me make you my prison bitch!")
8. Spaceballs - oh, wait... that was number 8, right? er....
Again, there's lots more....

Alright.... I don't have that many people to tag.... So two will have to do:
Clare and Claud, you're TAGGED!

Paging Noah!

I shouldn't even blog. I have no right to blog. I should be sitting huddled into a corner with a book about communication theories in my hand. Rebellious as I am, however, I am not! Not sure what or who I'm rebelling against as I am actually the one who will be screwed if I decide against reading my books, but I guess a short flashback into my teenage years is in order. Hell, I'm such a rebel! I feel this deep urge to go and find a mosh pit right now....

After months of heavy snow it is now officially five minutes to Doomsday. Someone should start collecting the wood for an ark. I was really hoping for some sun, but reality caught up with me in a very cruel way. It's been raining heavily ever since last night. That's about 30 hours now. 30 hours of heavy rain.

Oh well, sun is overrated. Who cares that even my cat is starting to become suicidal? Nature's going crazy anyway. What is this story about the furry blond lobster? Is that the Paris Hilton among the crustacean? God help us all! (I hope Jewish people will not start burning our embassy now, because I spelled out G_d. 'Cause I keep seeing comments in other blogs cautioning people not to speak their mind as "we've seen what can happen")

Oh, I also feel I have to mention that Ashley snuck up on me and tagged me. As it was her birthday recently (Happy belated Birthday, Girl!), I will have to honor the tag. But I won't have the time until next week. Soooo, patience, grasshoppers!

Finally, Ashley, here's your b-day gift! You'll have to thank Clare for the nightmares you'll have. I only enhanced the pic a bit. ;)

If you are the guy in this picture.... *dramatic pause* Write to Clare. She's waiting!

The Wheels on the Bus go Round and Round...

... Alright, I just had a flashback to my au pair days. I guess I will sing myself to sleep for the next three weeks.

So, Busses... Busses are those funny things I had to take to get to work every morning for a whole ten days recently. Has anyone ever noticed how a bus is like a micro-society (I think I made that up)?

First day taking the bus: Keeping your eyes on the floor. Shyly saying "Good Morning" and "One, please" and "Thank you" to the bus driver who's silently taking your money and printing out your ticket. Then taking the first available seat (only later realizing it was the one reserved for the handicapped and feeling bad about it for the next 12 years), not looking at the other passengers, but feeling their eyes burning holes in your back. Of course, they are all talking about you and sometimes also write essays about your behavior which are then reviewed by some secret panel.
The third day bringing far more confidence for you. Having the seatplan and all the off-limit seats learned by heart. Being able to ask the busdriver an actual question (just don't mention the fact that he didn't shave properly!). Smiling at fellow passengers is actually resulting in them smiling back from time to time.
Knowing the busdriver's first name and shouting a "Good Morning" with half the bus shouting back is a sure sign that Day 5 is all it's supposed to be. And then there's Day 8 starting off with asking your fellow passengers' questions about Life, the Universe and ... uh.... Everything and them knowing about that bad rash you suffered from when you were 8 1/2.
What's there to say about Day 10? Someone new is getting on the bus, sitting down in the reserved seat. You proceed staring holes in their back as it is indeed outrageous to sit in those seats. Then it's going ahead with essay-writing, not before having a good old discussion about the whole issue with all the other passengers. You're getting all curious what the secret panel will say about that.

Day 11? Well, you sit in your newly repaired car and curse the bus in front of you which is crawling along at a snail's pace and keeping you from arriving at work in time.

Happy Black Tuesday, Everyone!

If I have to listen to one more overly sweet lovestory today, I will rip my ears off! (would that actually prevent me from hearing those stories? I don't think it would. Oh cruel human anatomy!) They had the supposedly cutest lovestories on the radio all day today. It was the radiostation that's on at work! Where I cannot flee it! A horrible feeling of doom kept on rising inside me during the whole 8 hours. I like to think of myself as a survivor: Someone who just made it out alive...

One lovestory would have been fine, but why do they have to over-do everything? Why why why?

Anyway.... I have nothing against Valentine's Day! Nope! Just don't force it on me!

Do You Hear What I Hear?

I have the distinct feeling that nobody but me can hear this distant sound of a hammer hitting an anvil. It must be in my head and my guess at the cause of it might also be pretty accurate: Red Wine! When will I grow up and stop drinking as much red wine as I did last night? At least I friggin' deserve the headache I got. Shall I be proud of it and thereby make it into something positive?

I am currently very very unhappy about my citizenship. I am part of an increasingly evil group of Westerners who allow insensitive and insulting cartoons to be published in their newspapers. Moreover, we don't scream for those evil journalists to have their hands hacked off. It's outrageous! But that is not why I'm unhappy about belonging to the evil part of the world. What really makes me sad is that we don't have civilized flag-burning parties and - this is even worse - we aren't allowed to just go and randomly burn buildings. Really, it makes me want to pout and stomp my foot and burn my passport. There's nothing more civilized and sensitive than spending a Saturday night out socializing by the warmth of a burning embassy. And we are denied this simple pleasure! I'm all for a revolution! And a bloody one this time, please! I've had one peaceful revolution in my life and it was boring. I think I'll now go and see how many reasons for being insulted I can find in my Peanuts cartoons. Charles M Schultz, I'm onto you!

Creative Chaos

I'm drowning in absolute chaos (Absolute Vodka would be much more appreciated right now)! Work is crazy. I sometimes do yearn for my own office with an actual door in it. ... And then it dawns on me that working in chaos and noise is preferable to not working at all. Oh well....

I need to be creative 8 hours a day right now. The pressure! While I'm responsible for all the writing, I'm surrounded by those visual people working with me in the Creative Pool. The radio is on full blast - which doesn't bother me at all. Hey, I already mentioned how educational it is, right? From time to time, however, there's a day like today: People keep calling, ordering stuff to be designed and printed in the next - oh - two hours! Everyone keeps having to switch computers ("Oh, I need to use InDesign. My computer won't start it. Let me have the Mac for a sec, will ya?"), I am constantly forced to forward files from one computer to the next, my boss is running around like a maniac (He has his own office, dammit! Why does he have to keep visiting us?), the plotter is making weird noises and keeps eating huge chunks of film, and I keep getting calls from the printing workshop to help out with some screen printing. Why I haven't attempted to put my head in the laser printer (Geek Suicide!) is beyond me.

In all this chaos, I am expected to write all the website content and today I was also to write a press release.
"Oh," I hear you say, "first semester PR class. How easy!"
NOT! It took me hours to write one damn page. I'm a disgrace! It's a good thing I only have an inkjet printer at home. If I owned a laser printer.....

Get Outta My Head!

Here's proof that listening to the radio at work can be very educational: I learned something new today. There is also a high possibility that I forgot I am a woman who can multitask while I was gaining this very helpful piece of quizshow knowledge, but that is beside the point. Here's what's important: When I'm in one of those huge payout quiz shows next time (which we all know will happen as soon as those TV people realize how very attractive I would be on TV) and the host asks,

"Well, Ellen R Ashard, would you please explain to us why instrumental pieces are less likely to be stuck in your head than any music with lyrics?"

I will look up to the heavens - pretending to thank a higher being for such an easy question (you wanna appeal to the conservative crowd, too, ya know! Who knows when I have to go through immigrations at an US-airport next time). Then I will calmly say,

"But of course, [insert host's first name here], the problem with lyrics is that your brain can visualize them. That means it'll try to repeat and complete a song you've just stopped listening to (in many a case by smashing the radio in tiny little pieces, because you just. could. not. take it. anymore!) The best solution often seems to be a rusty nail driven right into your brain. Instrumental pieces are less likely to be stuck in your head, because they obviously lack lyrics."

See how much you can learn just by listening to the radio? Aren't you glad I don't watch the Discovery Channel at work?

You fully deserve to ask out loud that question which has been bothering you once more: WTF is her point? There truly is one! I myself have suffered from my overactive brain's attempts to happily sing one and the same song for about 5 Million hours straight over the weekend: Winter Wonderland!

Now that you've read all this hoping for an actual point to this, you deserve a reward. Here's two reasons for me liking the place I come from:

My kingdom for some caffeine!

Up until I was 24, I preferred tea to coffee. Sure, during my aupair year, what my hostfamily (and many other Americans) called coffee helped me survive the hours around noon when the baby was sleeping, but I wasn't supposed to sleep. Then I started college and suddenly tea was en vogue again. Along came the cigarettes. Nicotine and caffeine don't really play nicely together in this body of mine. Toward the end of that good old time in college, when my Master's Thesis was looming, Nicotine started playing a supporting role again. As was tea. Well, tea started to be more like an extra - if you wanna stay in movie terminology.

Coffee is now my religion (Nicotine has long gone bye-bye)! In my later semesters it already played a role if I had to survive early classes (which would be classes starting around 10 am). It was some kind of professor/students bonding ritual. Everyone met at the coffee shop, barely able to grunt at each other (an acceptable morning greeting within the academia), bought a coffee-to-go and walked to class together in silence. After the first 5 to 10 sips, the world was a happier place and so was class. The Latte Macchiato guy and the Cappuccino girl could happily co-exist. If that isn't an ideal world, I don't know what is.

So coffee got big. Huge, in fact. See, I'm a night owl. I work best at night when everything around me is quiet and when there's just crap on TV. Procrastination is much harder then. My neighbors would throw a fit if I started cleaning the bathroom at 3 am. That means I'll get some work done. It also means I wrote my entire Master's Thesis at night. I did my research in the afternoon. I started writing around 8 pm and I went to bed around 7 am. The thesis wasn't a masterpiece, I admit. BUT .... it would have been worse without that daily - or rather nightly - dosage of caffeine.

As I was saying; While coffee began sneaking into my life as soon as I went off into the big world - living 4000 Miles away from Mommy's cocoa, it turned into a necessity with the research nightmare that was my thesis.

The Master's Thesis was finished a while ago, the grades are in, the exams were written ... what stays is my caffeine addiction and the coffee stains allover the carpet around my computer. I can't make myself getting rid of that rug. Is it bad that I feel an emotional attachment to coffee stains?

Well, - and this is for Ashley, one of my two non-imaginary readers, who also seems to like coffee (although at a much earlier age than I did :) ) - I found the perfect gifts for people like us: You can actually buy stuff with a caffeine molecule on it. I want this! If anyone ever needs a gift for me: Buy This! If I have to use my subliminal affirmation skills on this blog - so be it! I want one of those caffeine molecule things! And don't call me a geek!

Ferris Bueller - You're My Hero!

I've been hyperventilating all day. Ever since I found out that there's a Special Edition Ferris Bueller's Day Off DVD out, actually.

And here's the historical background: Soon after the Wall came down, we got an old VCR. Anyone remember Betamax, the video format which lost the battle with VHS? This VCR still used Beta tapes. It came with a couple of movies - one of which was Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I loved it! I was 11 years old and I just loved this movie. It should probably have been the first clue for my Mom that her child would turn into a serious movie-holic and unbearable movie-watching companion. She never watched the movie that played part in her daughter's tumble towards Media Studies. She had no idea!

Now, I won't be able to function properly until I get my hands on a Ferris Bueller's Day Off Special Edition DVD.... Wonder whether they sell them here.

Oh, and Clare, there's not a chance in hell I will ever post pics of my cat. He has a No Picture Clause in his contract! Damn Diva!

Back on the Nautilus - Let Me Go, Jules!

Alright, so I admit that I've always been a bookworm and a geek. Not my fault that my dad had all these shelves full of books I didn't fully understand but still loved to read. Jules Verne's books were among them. However, although I did read most of the "classics" by that French guy, I never actually enjoyed them as much as other people did. Don't know why. I just never understood the appeal of the Nautilus...

Fast Forward 17 years: I think I have a fatal addiction to Jules Verne novels. Having an advanced degree in American Studies didn't actually get me closer to loving the works of French authors. Neither did Communications or Theatre Arts. All those years in college never gave me a chance to read many novels by authors of nationalities other than US-American, Canadian or maybe British: Hell, I hardly got to read novels in my native language. I'm still not reading enough stuff like that. But I'm re-reading all my Jules Verne novels. Not in French, mind you! (I'd like to, but I will not pretend I'd understand enough of it) I do read the German translation. And here's the mystery of all this:

I actually enjoy 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and all the other geeky works.

Why, Jules, why?
What I'm wondering: Am I just getting old as I now seem to get the appeal of it all or am I having a relapse of pre-teen adventure-loving escapism? I'm confused!

Working, Booze, and Afternoon Naps

I have to get up in 5 hours. Today was my first day of work in the new year. I was not even capable of making myself coffee in the morning. Zombies do not drink coffee! (I have never seen any zombie film in which the undeads' first urge was to go and make coffee)

The boss gave us alcohol at work! I am not sure whether he thinks that makes us more productive, but it seems to be a normal thing on the first work day of the year. I know that tradition from college. Only that it was the last day of the year then ... And maybe also all days of the last months. But let's not talk about that!

Coming home from work, I really needed a nap. Am I the only one who considers 180 minutes to be "about half an hour"?

The cat slept on my back the whole time only to scratch me when I got up. I am considering boot camp for that pet.