I decided to change the design of my blog. I’m currently working on it, and the best I can say is that most of it works.

I couldn’t get haloscan to work yet, but everything will be fine real soon.

Hope you like the new world.

Update: I’m done for today. Everything is working, so I’ll work on the details tomorrow.

I just don’t know what to make of this.

When I came back from work the boyfriend met with me and we went to eat turkish fast food and did some grocery shopping afterwards. We had four items: milk, some instant pasta thing and two bottles of beer.

I then had to go through the following dialogue with the nice lady at the cashier:

She: Can I see your ID, please?

Me: Excuse me?

She: Your ID, please?

Me: My ID?

She: Yes.

Me: Because of what? The beers?

She: Yes, can I see it?

Me: I’m (fuckin‘) 24! (I didn’t say fucking, but the tone pretty much included it.)

She: Yeah, I need to see it.

Me (showing the ID): Please go on.

She: We have to these days, you know.

Me: I understand. It’s okay.

It really isn’t.
For some reason I feel offended because she wanted to see my ID. I’m 24, for crying out loud. I can officially drink beer for more than six years now. I’m an adult. I’m a real long way from non-drinking age.

Now honestly, do I look like I could be under 18?
I took that picture about 10 minutes ago, so it shows pretty much what the nice lady at the grocery shop saw. It’s not a great picture, but that’s how I look right now.

Yes, I’m officially grown up.

For some reason, the boyfriend was even more pissed than I was. I mean, I tried to take the whole ‚looking-younger-than-you-are‘ as a compliment, but I’m not old enough for that yet. At all.

Apart from that, the beers weren’t even for me. They’re for the boyfriend only. I don’t even like beer.

I could drink it, though and it’d be fucking legal.

According to four mails I just got from dvdsoon.com my Wonderfalls DVDs have been shipped. According to my account on their website it’s still in packaging.
I’m a little confused about the fact that they send me four emails with the same content, so I’m not really sure what to make of it.

What I know is that I really want the DVDs to arrive here as soon as possible.

So, I choose to believe that the emails are right and my account is wrong.

Caitlin asked: My next getting to know you question was going to be about the meeting and falling in love of pi.

Let’s make a long story short: University. Trip. Paris.

You want more? Okay, you shall get more…

I met the boyfriend the first time shortly after I started studying in fall 1999. That reminds me: Did I ever tell you what far-from-reality subjects I chose at university? I guess not. When I started I was a student at the departments for musicology, American language and literature and folklore studies.
Yeah.
When I quit I was a student at the departments for musicology, art history and sociology.
No wonder I never went for a degree.

The boyfriend was a student at the department for musicology (among others), so guess where we met.

Although I remember I liked him from the start and he says he did so, too, he prefers to start telling our story with the small and totally unimportant incident where I bitched at him.
Only I didn’t really bitch at him. Okay, maybe I did, but I didn’t mean to.

Additionally to being a student there he worked at the department for musicology. He was doing a weekend workshop for one of the classes I went to and one day when the class was over he asked me if I would like to come to the workshop on Saturday.

My response was: ‚Yeah, like I’m going to spend two hours in the train on a Saturday just for that workshop.‘

Maybe I bitched a little.

Nevertheless we seemed to like each other. Looking back I would even say that I was unnaturally attracted to him despite being in a relationship with someone who lived on the other side of the ocean.

Then came Paris. It was a student’s weekend trip to the City of Love in late January 2000. I told the boyfriend that I would be going and he said he was thinking of going, too, but didn’t know if he could make it.

When I was waiting outside the department on Friday afternoon I was – again unnaturally – happy to see that he indeed had decided to come to Paris.

From the moment we got into the car we were pretty much inseparable. I don’t really know why or how, but we were. We took turns in driving (only I didn’t drive) and the moment it was his turn to drive it was clear that I would be the front-seat passenger.

As for the trip, it was pretty much one of the best trips I ever had. Pure fun, great people and the unnatural tension going on between the boyfriend and me, it was just amazing.
The boyfriend and I, of course, were inseperable during the whole trip. Whenever the group splitted, we weren’t. We saw Montmartre, went up the Tour Eiffel and to a big flea market in the north. Somehow our sticking together despite even knowing each other was never questioned.

Saturday evening was weird. We roamed through the streets drinking wine like stupid teenagers and I drank too much. As in way too much. Pretty much the last thing I remember is sitting in some café with the video to Paul Simon’s Concert in the Park playing soundless in the background. See, Paul Simon I remember. I even know what concert it was. I can’t really tell you, though, if it was really soundless, because my senses were pretty blurry already. Everything that happened between that and the moment the boyfriend brought me back to the youth hostel where I could puke heartily into the sink I know from what the boyfriend told me. I have snippets of memories, but they’re not really nice and they’re all pretty confusing.

But what could be a better sign of love than cleaning up the toilet in a restaurant after someone you hardly know has lost most of last week’s meals in it?

(Needless to say, the last two paragraphs are not necessarily the parts of the story I am particularly proud of.)

While I was still in the bathroom, he had climbed up the ladder to my bed and when I came out I did so, too, and we ended up hugging and kissing.

Paris, after all, is the City of Love. It worked for us.

When we got back it got a little bit complicated. We were both in a relationship with someone else and we both had to figure out what we were going to do. All the time between January and May it was unclear what was going to happen with us, but in the end, we both ended what was before and have been together (and pretty much inseperable) ever since.

Unlike other couples we don’t have a date. You could take the Paris trip as our date, but since it took us some time to finally decide what we were going to do, we weren’t a ‚real couple‘ until early summer.

But, do you really need a date? I think not.
The love makes up for all.

Question answered?

Time for some dream analyzing. If the following isn’t enough for you, you can go check out Sarcomical’s dream and analyze hers, too.

But mine first:

The night before last night I dreamt I was at the Cologne main station with the boyfriend. I was coming from work and we wanted to get home. For some reason he was already on a train and I was still hanging around the station.

(Side note: I notice that about 99% of what happens in my dreams doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense. Why did he take the train without me? I have no idea. It was not a subject to discuss in my dream.)

So I looked at a clock and it was nearly 1 am. So I tried to figure out at what time approximately I would be home if I took the next train and I thought something like: ‚Well, I would be home around 2 am… I have to get up at 6 am, so that gives me about 4 hours of sleep. Ah, what the heck, I’m just going back to work and stay there over night.‘

Yeah, that’s what I did in my dream. I went back to work to stay over night. What the fuck was wrong with my dream-me? One of my bosses was still there (just for the record, it’s still in the middle of the night), but was getting ready to leave and asked me if I planned on leaving with him, too. I thought everything through again and then thought something like: ‚At least I could sleep in my own bed with the boyfriend. Ah, what the heck, I’ll just go home.‘

But then somehow Andreas was there, too and he told me that he planned to stay over night as well. So at least I wouldn’t be alone. He also said that he wanted to get Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream, so that he would have something to do.

That’s pretty much the end of my dream. There are other things I remember, but they’re really blurry, so I won’t bother to try to put them down in words. It would only get confusing.

I’m still strangely irritated by that dream. After all, I kind of like those dreams, because despite confusing me a lot they’re also somewhat funny.

Now, go ahead and analyze me!

Thought No. 1
So we know that ants are these little animals. They’re ants.
And elope is something like running away.

What’s an antelope then?

An eloping ant?
Something eloping because of an ant? Because it’s what? Scared?

Either way, if you know an ant and you want it to run away, because it’s in danger or something, you can still shout: ‚Ant, elope!‘

Only I don’t know the chances for that to happen.

Thought No. 2
Does Tim Burton know that there are other male actors besides Johnny Depp?
Because I’m starting to doubt it.

My seven years of French are finally paying off.

He’s gone.
Gone gone gone.

Not gone as in ‚met with us, gave us the money he still owes us and promised to be a better person from now on‘, more as in ‚gave the keys to the janitor and took off‘.
He left us no money. Jerk. Now we have to track him down and consult a lawyer. Not necessarily in that order, but both has to be done.

Still and most important, he’s gone.

Okay, first I was the last one to figure out trackback. Only that I haven’t even figured it out yet. I’d say that I’m just to lazy to read the instructions, but that doesn’t change the fact that the one time I tried it I couldn’t make it work.

Still blaming it on the laziness though.

Now I wonder again. I’ve found several blog entries where bloggers talked about the search terms other people used that led those people to their blogs. Willful Exposé did it, DeAnn did it and now I see Robin did it, too. How the hell do you get that kind of information?

Is there a special site on the web that does it for you? Is it a special feature that some blogware offers? Do I have to subscribe to something? Where do I find it?

How does it work?

The worst think is that I actually work in the IT industry, so somehow I think that if anyone then I should know. But I don’t. So please tell me, because I think you do and I don’t want to die stupid.

Current mood: Feeling stupid. Not my favorite feeling.
Listening to: So Simple by Alicia Keys

Coroner – Six Feet Under (What? I am a TV geek.)
Mystify – Making it even harder.
Corroborate – And easier.
Misinterpret – Happens every so often, expecially when you’re me.
Humorless – Sucks.
Calculus – Math. I loved math.
Eye for an eye – Oh come on, that’s like ancient.
CPR – Can’t do it, so don’t try to die when I’m around.
Stitched – Ouch.
Facility – Making it easier again.

Again, you can take part and have a lot of fun… just click here.

Willful Exposé asked: Here’s a question: How many times have you been to America and where? As Caitlin said, you’ve probably been here quite a bit because your English is excellent.

I’ve been to America three times. You could say four times, because one time was really two times interrupted by a three week return to Germany, but I think of it as three times.

The first time I was in America was when I was 13 or so. We stayed in California for three weeks. It was my, my mom and another family with two little kids. One of the little kids actually was the friend who rented the DVDs on Saturday. Back then he was a toddler and I was a teenager, now I would most likely refer to him as a friend. Time surely changes a lot of things.

We started the trip in San Francisco and then went south stopping at Monterey, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and Carlsbad. Then we went back north taking a route that took us to Yosemite and Seqouia national parks (in the reverse order, I think) and back to San Francisco. Of all the places we went to I liked San Francisco and Monterey best. Although the steep streets and occasional tremblings were really something you have to get used to.

I think when we went there I had about 2 1/2 years of English at school. I understood a lot, but certainly not everything. There was this one incident where I thought that ‚I beg your pardon‘ meant ‚I noticed your perfume‘. Don’t ask. It makes kind of sense when you know the circumstance, but I admit it sounds pretty stupid.

I didn’t come back until June 1999. That was shortly after I finished high school. There was a friend of my aunt who needed someone to help her with her kids over the summer and my aunt asked me and I said yes. What do you think I said. Of course I said yes. That’s how I got to spend three months in Hoboken, New Jersey. When people here ask me I usually say that I was in New York. That way they get an idea where I was. It’s not even that much of an exaggeration. From where I lived it was about a 15-minute bus ride to Port Authority, Manhattan. After all, I was in New York.

I came back in February 2000 for a few days. It’s a very complicated story involving a relationship with someone I met there in summer and me meeting the boyfriend one month earlier and falling in love. It’s not a memory I usually like to talk about, so most people I met afterwards don’t even know I was in a relationship with an American for half a year. My stay was originally planned to last for a whole six weeks, but I rescheduled my flight and came back home after nine days.

That’s it.

I also spent a total of about three weeks in England. One was a school exchange and the other one a trip with the choir. I always went to South England and all I can say is that South England, especially the New Forest is just plain beautiful. I would always return there.

Of course I’d also always return to America, especially New York City, which I consider the most amazing place I’ve ever been to. Maybe it was also the fact that I was short out of high school, but I never felt as free and relaxed as I felt when I was in New York City. I loved walking along the streets and I was just happy.

As for my language skills, that’s another topic totally worth writing about, but right now I will leave it.

Question answered?