Apparently everyone’s stressed and/or depressed at the moment. Or at least too many people to call it a coincidence. Sadly enough I am both stressed and depressed, although I must admit that the second might be caused more or less directly from the first.

The second might also be caused by the weather here, which is driving me insane. I am not a weather person. I will not shout „Hey, what a beautiful day, let’s go out and enjoy the sun!“ Sometimes I even am slightly annoyed by sunshine, mostly when I want to sleep or watch TV. So most of the times I can just deal with whatever I have to deal with – weather-wise.

But after several days of complete greyness, occasionally joined by rain and always cold, sometimes windy I’ve had enough. No really, stop it already! I can deal with cloudy and rainy days just fine. But not a whole week of them. And especially not when I have to get up every morning and go to work and my beautiful shoes get soaked in mud. For once in my life I actually yearn for sunshine. I’m pining. I might even go as far as praying for sunshine.

Today though, was at least a bit better than those days before: When I waited for the bus at the train station I noticed that a) it isn’t that dark anymore when I come from work and b) there was a patch of blue sky amongst all the grey clouds.

As always, I have hope.

Every morning when I walk to the bus station I take my morning route. Every evening when I come back I take a different route, my evening route. Both times I’m convinced that the route I’m taking is the shortest way to get to my destination.
Which, I admit and am prefectly clear on, makes absolutely no sense, especially since the bus stops are practically facing each other.

I talked to my husband about it and he sees it the same way. When coming from the bus station he thinks my evening route is shorter, when walking to the bus station he would think my morning route is shorter.
Again: makes no sense. At all.

So I wanted some clarification and in my hour of most desperate need turned to the blurry images Google Earth provides for my city and measured all the different ways to get from three different bus stations and the train station trying out all the routes that made sense just to find that they are pretty much all the freaking same. There might be slight differences, but I had hoped to come up with a route that was significantly shorter, but nada. Nothing.

Which can only lead me to one reasonable explanation.: Our apartment is placed exactly on the center of the world. I always knew I lived in a special place.

How cool is Rob Thomas???
I’ll tell ya. On a scale from 1 to 10 with Joss Whedon floating high above with a never-to-be-beaten 194, Rob Thomas has just reached a very safe and totally deserved 11.

Because using the doomed „Lost“ numbers for Veronica’s fortune cookie paper?

That? Is damn cool.

Because it is such a hit, here’s another example of how good exactly we Germans are at singing.

Enjoy. And please don’t sue me.

(It seems not right to file this under „On Music“, but I do it anyway.)

Go check out Pandora by the Music Genome Project. A friend of my mother’s recommended it and I was very sceptical at first, but it works and it is great and so much better than I expected.
In short: I am thrilled!

I wouldn’t know about Paula Kelley if it weren’t for Pandora.

While talking to Ehle on AIM I managed to both cut and subtitle one of the more hilarious clips of the German Idol for her.
I still am amazed at my film-editing skills.

However, all this work shouldn’t be kept from all of you. It’s 30 MB for a one-minute clip, but I would say it’s worth it.

I mean, come on, I subtitled it and all by myself!

See for yourself.

Today I got this.

…and this.

I’m also waiting for this…

…and this.

Yesterday I ordered this…

…and this…

…and this…

…and this.

Do you think there’s something wrong with me?

Here’s an excerpt from Powell’s Books about this year’s Puddly Awards (which will end today, so if you haven’t voted yet, you don’t have much – if any – time left).
Can you help me figure out the books they are talking about?

So, was the best book you read last year an Oprah-recommended memoir about a recovering drug addict, or an Oprah-recommended, sixty-year-old novel about a severely dysfunctional Southern family? Did you savor the newest adventures of a young wizard, or the latest chronicles of a young wizard and his talking dragon? Was your favorite 2005 book about an Afghan boy who loves kites, or was it a reprint of a classic comic strip about a bald boy who gets tangled in kite-eating trees?

So, I know the first one is the recently scandal-scented „A Million Little Pieces“ by James Frey. The third one is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (you don’t really need the author here, do you?) and the fourth one must be „Eragon“ by Christopher Paolini.
The fifth sounds a lot like „The Kite Runner“ by someone whose name I don’t remember, but it’s a guess, so correct me if I’m wrong.

But I’m most interested in books two and six. They both sound strangely engaging… I mean kite-eating trees, who wouldn’t want to know more about that?

Can you help me?

I guess it’s spring, I didn’t know
It’s always seventy-five with no melting snow.

Does He Love You? – Rilo Kiley

This might be a first one. myepisodes.com had me fallen in love with it in under three seconds. It will manage my TV episode schedule for me. For free. And really easy.

It’s beautiful in a way only TV addicts can understand. I love it.

If you knew how much time I had to spend to update my freaking Excel sheet collecting the data from epguides.com, you’d probably be both terribly shocked and amazinlgy happy that if all works out I don’t have to do that anymore.

(This goes under „I Watch Too Much TV“, but I was tempted to add another category just for this one entry. Something along the lines of „I Really Really REALLY Watch Too Much TV“. And it would be for this entry and this entry only. It was indeed tempting.)