So, I finally have the time to post for my blog and I don’t. Figures.
It’s late in the evening and I’m tired and ready to go to bed, so this post is mainly for letting whoever reads this blog know that I have NOT abandoned this blog. I’m still here. This blog is still maintained and taken good care of.

By the way I’ve proven myself to be a quite good housewife during the week that I was at home and Pi had his English course in Cologne and some other appointments in the evening. I even tried several new dishes from my cooking magazine.
Today it was toast with sauerkraut, apple and cheese. Very tasty, no meat but (I suppose) not really fat free.

I also didn’t watch as much TV as I thought I would which was partly because the last days turned out to be really sunny and our living room faces south and we only have white linen curtains that look really nice but are no good in keeping out the sunshine when you want to watch TV during the day.
I also continued to play Spellforce, but again not as much as I thought I would.

I’m so proud I didn’t fall into lazy mood right away. In fact I think I was pretty active. Not overly active, but still.

Tomorrow we are going to go to Bonn to meet possible future tenants for Pi’s apartment. If we’re lucky we will find someone who actually bothers to PAY THE RENT. Yeah. People can be really annoying. Don’t ask me about it. I finally managed to hate a person with all my heart’s passion before I met them (that is, I will tomorrow and I have to really pull myself together then).

So, I promise to write more soon. I had so many things I wanted to say during this week, but right now I really can’t think of anything.

Current mood: Really content. And tired.
Listening to: Nothing.

I am watching a retro show on a music channel featuring various video clips of the year 1994 and I just wanted to say that I’m honestly happy that the nineties are over.
Gee, did I really think those songs were cool?
And GEE, who came up with that ridiculous idea that East 17 was a sexy boygroup?
Because they’re not.

Gross.

I’m not even totally kidding. I had no expectations of Darmstadt at all, for me it was just a name of a city south of Cologne and I was surprised how beautiful and interesting it was, or at least those parts of Darmstadt that Anke and Berndt showed us. I’m still amazed.

Anyway, it is early in the morning and I don’t have to go to work. For three weeks. Yay! Pi has another English course in Cologne, so I have all the mornings alone this week. I originally wanted to go back to bed once he’d left but somehow I ended up at my computer and now I’m posting those wonderful pictures of Darmstadt that we (mostly I) took. We had my parent’s camera with us so we could take 129 pictures. Mine only saves up to 40 pictures or so.

So, before I have to decide what I’m gonna do to seize the morning or if I’m going back to bed where I can read and then fall back asleep, here are the first Darmstadt impressions:

Hundertwasser

Street in Darmstadt

Anke, Berndt and Jamie

Coming up next: Our new Murphy experience, people who own stuff, things you should not tell your girlfriend and more…

Current mood: Still exhausted. I was so tired yesterday I fell asleep watching ‚The Score‘ and it was before 11 pm.
Listening to: Nothing yet.

I’m leaving the office in about 20 minutes and we’re going to Darmstadt. This is like the furthest I’ve been away in the last four years or so. Pity me, please. (Only that it’s completely my fault, since my priorities are ‚Stuff First, Voyages Second‘.)

So no time for a long post and no promise for another one until Sunday evening at the earliest. And I guess I’m too tired then.

We’re taking our camera (or more my parent’s camera) so there might be pictures here next week and you all get to see impressions of the world’s most amazing town. Not. Excited anyway. Especially since I get to take an ICE to get there. Yay! Fast train, gooooooo!

Current mood: Excited.
Listening to: Streets Have No Name by (or sung by, since it’s a U2 cover) Vanessa Carlton.

Movies and TV shows I haven’t seen (and don’t intent to do so)

Schindler’s List
I haven’t seen Schindler’s List. I know it’s supposed to be a great movie and is listed in every ‚100-Top-Movies-Of-All-Time‘-Lists I have read so far, but I haven’t seen it.
The really strange thing is that I don’t even think I want to see it. I have not the slightest interest in seeing it. And I honestly have no idea where that strange non-interest in that particular movie comes from.
I even think that I would like that movie. I suppose it’s a great movie. I bet it would make me cry. Yet, if it would be on television tonight I would most likely watch something else.

Indiana Jones movies
I have seen zero Indy movies. None. Not one. Zero. Somehow they always slipped by my TV schedule and before I realized there were Indiana Joney movies they all disappeared to cable TV and until May I was the last person in this country without cable or satellite. Yeah, I was a caveman.
I fear I’m too old now to start watching Indiana Jones movies. I get the feeling that they are the kind of movies you watch for the first time when you’re about ten and then they somehow manage to become a part of your childhood nostalgia, which is the perfect excuse for watching a movie over and over again. Too late for me though.

Blade Runner
I don’t even know what that movie is about. Maybe this is part of the reason why I don’t know why I should watch it. How could I want to see a movie when I have no clue what it is about. This is what I know about Blade Runner:
1) Science Fiction movie
2) Harrison Ford
And since neither one of those things is my ultimate turn-on I haven’t gotten around to watching Blade Runner yet.
Wanna know a sick thing? We have that movie on DVD. At home. And I still haven’t seen it.

MacGyver
What???
I don’t know what’s worse… the fact that I haven’t seen a single episode of MacGyver or the fact that I still think I should have watched it just so I knew what it is like and wouldn’t feel so dumb whenever someone mentions MacGyver. Just as I’m writing I search the internet and have now, at the age of 24, officially seen how MacGyver looked like for the first time. I’m so far behind.
It’s that guy that can build a power plant with just a wire, an old shoe and some moldy cheese sandwich, isn’t he?

Any Start Trek series /movie besides TNG
This is mostly because somewhen in the early nineties all Star Trek series and movies were broadcasted by SAT1, another station that I couldn’t receive. So, I have no Star Trek knowledge that extends the basic TNG knowledge. I have seen the very first episode of Star Trek: TNG though. You know the one with the giant jellyfish that somehow were turned into cities and then the crew rescued the jellyfish and in the end two jellyfish-turtledoves flew into space, tentacle in tentacle and if I’m not completely mistaken, they waved goodbye to the crew with another tentacle. Yeah. I was only a teenager and willing to absorb and believe everything on TV but even I realized that this was crap.

TV shows I would absolutely buy if they came out on DVD

Note to readers: I know. Don’t ask.

Rags to Riches
I would like to believe that this one goes without saying. I’m afraid it doesn’t. I was eight.

Earth 2
Should go without saying. Really. Loved that show. Only I hated Uly from episode one. Bad spoiled kid. Poor True.

Maybes…
Blossom
Yeah, tragically enough. I would consider buying Blossom season sets on DVD. I still love the opening credits.

To be continued.

Current mood: Mixed in the sense that I don’t feel really happy and I don’t feel really bad.
Listening to: Worn Me Down by Rachael Yamagata.

This is a close apporiximation of the conversation Andreas and I had yesterday about the work situation around Karneval next year.

Me: So, where’s the logic here? We have the day off on Monday and they’re serving lunch and on Thursday we don’t have a day off and they don’t serve lunch? They could just say ‚You’re not allowed to come on Thursday. Stay home. There’s nothing here to see.‘

Andreas: I’m planning to take that day off anyway, so.

Me: Yeah, but the good thing is, they can’t force you to take the day off. So you could just come and have the whole building for yourself and do whatever you want.

Andreas: Yeah, but the thing is that that’s the day of the parade in Mönchengladbach, so all the streets are blocked. So there are no busses going home and my parents can’t pick me up from the station either.

Me: Yeah, only that…

Andreas: …what?

Me: That’s in February. You don’t live with your parents in February anymore. You’re moving out. You can walk to your apartment from the station then.

Andreas: I knew there was something.

—

Yeah, get used to the thought that you’re MOVING OUT! In three weeks. And that from a guy that talks about moving out for more than a year now. It’s finally happening.

And, yes, that was a real tenancy agreement that you signed.

This is just another thing where I can display very strange behaviour. It’s one thing that I hardly ever go to the movies because there’s hardly ever any movie playing that I’m not willing to wait to see until it’s out on DVD and I can get it and watch it on my couch at home. But apart from that there’s one way to completely piss me off a movie that does always, always work.

Keep telling me how great it is. Just keep telling me that I must go see this movie, because it’s so fucking incredibly great.

(That goes for people I know personally and all kinds of magazines, TV shows and so on.)

And you know what? If you do that, you hereby reduce the chances that I will really go see that movie (and my interest in that particular movie) to a minimum.

It helps if the movie you are constantly advising me to go see is French. That’s just the cherry on the cake in the quest of making me not want to see any movie.
I’m not a cinema-racist, I even like French movies, I watch French movies, I have French movies. A lot of them. Before I turned 18 I must have seen about 10 Truffaut movies, at least 2 Rohmer movies and several other French movies and liked them.
But thing is that nearly every movie I avoided because everyone kept telling me it was so great I had to see it was French. Or Italian. They make nice movies, yes. I loved ‚Jules & Jim‘ and I always cry during the whole last 15 minutes of ‚Cinema Paradiso‘, but all in all, neither the French nor the Italians make better movies than the rest of the world.

So, this is why haven’t seen ‚8 Femmes‘ up to now, because everybody including my father who NEVER goes to the cinema kept telling me how great a movie it was and that I absolutely must see it. They were practically attempting to drag me into a cinema and chain me to a seat.
This is also part of the reason why I had no interest whatsoever in going to see ‚Good-Bye Lenin‘ when it was playing in the cinemas. Because it was so high-praised and every damn magazine told me I had to see it. Well, I saw it (only a lot later and and on VCD). That movie, honestly, was melancholic and triste right on its way to plain boring. What was that fuzz about? Who told me that movie was a comedy? Because I didn’t laugh. Not once. I didn’t even smirk.
I’m not saying that it was a completely bad movie, it just wasn’t what everyone promised me it would be.
And ‚Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain‘? Nice movie. Very artsy. Lot of nice ideas. Really sweet adorable actress, whose haircut looks so nice on her that you run the risk of having your hair cut like this. Yeah. NOT the greatest movie in the world.

If you have a movie that you saw and loved and you think that I would like it as well, go ahead and say so. Tell me what it is about and why you liked it so much (without telling me spoilers… give me spoilers, you’re dead!) and I might even consider seeing it. I need and read reviews. I’m not deaf to recommendations.
Just don’t tell me what I have to do! Don’t act like this is the only movie worth seeing in the whole wide world! Don’t give me the feeling that not being that interested in this particular movie and therefore deciding not to see it makes me an incredibly dumb, ignorant and foolish person! Let me make my decisions. Because I’m old enough already. And I have seen movies. French ones, too.

So, if there’s a movie playing that you have seen and that left you speechless, tell me about. But be careful how you tell me. Because if I get the feeling that not taking the advice and not going to see it is close to being considered as a capital crime…?

Yeah.
I won’t go.

Are we the only people in this world who own things? It’s like every time I am at somebody’s place for the first time I get the feeling that we must be very strange people because we actually have things at home. Like books. Or CDs. Or, you know, movies on video or DVD. A lot of them. And other people apparently don’t.

Take books for example. We have three IKEA Billy bookcases sized 60×202 cm, two sized 80×202 cm and one sized 60×106 cm stacked with books. And I don’t even talk about the books that Pi has stored in various boxes in his room or the ones that both of us still have in other people’s basements somewhere. And I’m buying new ones all the time.
I take the risk of seeming overly self-convinced and close to arrogant to add that we have books in three languages, four if you count the one Dutch book I ordered while I was high on hubris (I must have been high on something, because there’s no way I’m gonna finish this book EVER), five if you count the three or so comic books in Finnish I got from ebay and eight if you count the Japanese and Norwegian language course I bought and the Spanish beginner’s short stories I bought because I thought that Spanish was so like French that I would be able to read them. Yeah. Did I tell you about the Dutch book? Right. See, when I say that languages are my hobby? I mean it.
Bottom line is: we own books. A lot of them. And we’re book lovers, so they are well treated and look great in their IKEA home.

So, where are the books at other people’s places? Do they hide them? I just realized that other people might go to the library and get their books from there, a thing that I haven’t done in years. One reason is that I like to get amazon packages. Another reason is that most of the books I want to have are too new to get at the library and since I want them in English if possible, the chances for me to get them are not that good. So, the library sounds like a good idea in theory but doesn’t work for me at all. And that from a girl that once declared the local library her second home. I even got to advise other people on what to read because I was there every damn day. I was like part of the staff for at least one summer. But I guess those were the times before amazon and the joys of online shopping and before my aversion against reading books originally written in English in German. (I don’t, just for the record, read books by German authors in the English translation. I’m not that crazy.)

Okay, but even if they go to the library, they should have some books, shouldn’t they? And by some I mean a number of books great enough to fill at least one bookcase. Is that too hard? Because that’s approximately the amount of books I owned when I was 14.

I’m not saying that I think those people are stupid and don’t read, I’m just curious. Where are their books?

And don’t make me start about CDs. I admit that both Pi and I are music geeks and have an inordinant number of CDs. I haven’t counted mine lately, but I think I must own about 400 CDs and I’m very proud to say that only a real small number of those are burnt CDs. Pi says he owns about 1000 CDs and that’s likely to be possible since his collection needs about twice the space for storing, so that number sounds accurate. I can’t talk for Pi here, but with few exceptions I can honestly assure you that I have listened to each CD I own. I can’t afford to buy CDs and not listen to them at the moment anyway.

Yes, I am a whole album girl. If I hear a song I really like, I need the whole album. I have a well developed distaste for singles. I don’t get them. What are they for, why should I spend money on them? I hope I’m not pissing somebody off when I say that in my opinion singles are for teenagers (who don’t know better) and losers (who will never know better).
Experience showed me that on any given album the song that was taken from the album as a single (and therefor most likely the one that made me buy that album) is one of my least favorites in the end. There are exceptions, but few. That’s one reason why I want to get the whole thing. Another reason why in spite of all our money problems I still can’t help buying CDs every now and then is I just like owning it (like, you know, I like owning books). The booklet, the CD, the whole package. I want it.

Other people obviously don’t. It’s not as bad as with books, but on the other hand, I consider music and the blessings of a good CD collection even more valuable to my inner peace than literature.

Maybe my priorities are screwed up. Here I am, bitching about the fact that I haven’t had a decent vacation (like in going away) in nearly five years and at the same time I consider about ten different things I could order on amazon right now (such as Spellforce Add-On: Breath of Winter and Shadow of the Phoenix, Sex and the City Season 6, Petra Haden’s (and Bill Frisell’s) new CD, Winnie-the-Pooh in Latin, several books on linguistics,…)

I guess my main problem is that I like to own things. Not in that sick sense that I want to just have randomly chosen items, but that I like to get something I’m interested in and keep it. I’m not a renting person. I don’t like to rent. I loved the library when I was younger, but not so much now, I’ve never been a member of any video rental shop. I want to watch a movie any time I want. I don’t want to feel hurried to watch a movie just because if I don’t tonight I will have to pay more tomorrow. I like the books I read standing in my bookcase as my trophies of accomplished literature efforts.

I’m not oversensitive with my stuff. My CDs tend to fly around outside their cases, I don’t mind friends and relatives borrowing anything even for a long time and as long as they don’t break anything I don’t really care how they treat my things. It’s just books and discs. But I like them to be mine.

Basically, Pi and I are media guys. Our whole apartment is filled with media. I also have about 15 or more computer games and we have a medium sized collection of boardgames. Sometimes it seems to me that we are interested in way too many things already. I can’t keep up with what I want to read, watch, listen to at all. It’s the crux of being interested in many things that the average 24-hour day is too short for all the things you would like to do. It’s even frustrating at times, like ‚What? It’s 2 am already? But I wanted to at least finish this level… and then I wanted to read some more in my book! And see the latest episode of Joan of Arcadia!‘

And this is why I can’t understand how people get along without the number of books, CDs, movies and stuff that I would consider average. I love to come to a place the first time and browse the bookshelves and CD-racks, look for the DVDs and maybe even borrow the one or other because I want to read or see that, too. That hardly ever happens. It’s always other people borrowing things from us.

Yeah, because we are stupid enough to keep buying stuff.

Current mood: Getting headaches. Maybe that’s my punishment for being so self-absorbed and arrogant.
Listening to: Nothing.

I’m at work but ready to leave. Got here a little bit late today, since Pi has a three-day English course in Cologne this week and we took the train together. Anyway, I didn’t get much done today, but made some efforts in maintaining social contacts here. Meaning: I met Kerstin at the coffee bar and she asked how my exams went and we talked a little. Later I went up to the floor she works and we talked some more about my exams and how we both think that Fachinformatiker (what I do) are in no way less trained than MaTAs (what she did), only they are, but that’s not a result of the traning itself, but the way the training is organized in this very company. Nobody pays any attention to us, while all the MaTAs get everything to prepare them for their job. Do I sound bitter? Yeah, well, I am. That’s the bitterness that I grew during the last 2 1/2 years and I don’t plan to let it go.
She also told me I should go talk to a project manager I worked for for some time and see if she can help me get a job here for at least some time. So I went up the floor where she works, but it seemed that she was busy so I left without being noticed. I plan to go back up there, both to see Kerstin and the maybe-helpful-project-manager, this week.

Not much more happening here and I’m not very motivated right now. Pi has his English course three days this week and then another one the whole next week, which is kind of nice, because I have the week off next week, so I have a lot of me-time. I realize that it sounds a little bit cruel to be happy to be alone when you chose to live with someone. It’s not like that! Definitely not! It’s just that back when I was 16 and older I was so independent and I used to do everything alone. There was a time when I went to the movies at least once a week, most of the times alone. Back then I always imagined myself living alone in my twenties and it turned out really different, so it’s like with that week off and the mornings and early afternoons all to myself I get a little bit of pure me-time and I can do all the stupid things I want to do without anybody judging me for it. It’s just a week anyway.

I still owe you my story about my personal Murphy’s Law experience. That will come soon. Anyway, the morning of my exams my mother told me she thinks about paying for a little vacation for Pi and me. She was thinking about something like the Canaries, but I told her that I’m not the beach-relax-type. If I would choose where to go for the first vacation I have had in years it would be some interesting city. The three top choices right now are: Lissabon, Barcelona and Helsinki (don’t ask, I have my reasons for every one). I’m not really interested in Italy (I’ve been there twice and I don’t feel the urgent need to go there very soon again), I have been in Paris and London, so I’d like to see something new.
Hey, Reykjavik would be cool (no pun intended).

Current mood: I’m gone here soon. And the prospect of three weeks off very soon makes me incredibly happy.
Listening to: Afterglow by Vanessa Carlton (I’m getting a little bit obssessive, don’t you think?)

Here’s something I wrote yesterday but the internet connection was a mess and so I wasn’t able to post it.

It’s really late, but I’m going to at least write a short post about what happened today.
As I said we went to Cologne where we first spent some time at a bookstore. I have to get a new book for next weekend. I can’t possibly make a 2-and-more hour train ride without anything to read besides the good but difficult Vanity Fair. I’m thinking ‚Our Lady of the Forest‘ might be next, but I’m not sure yet.
Then we walked all the way to the little boardgame-shop near Barbarossaplatz, which really wasn’t so far away, only it was really cold. Strange weather here again, it’s incredibly misty all the time and it makes the world seem a little strange and unreal. I was marvelling over the strange dark blue sky early in the evening. We spent a lot of time there pondering over which game we would purchase if any. After quite some time just hanging around, picking games and looking at them, sometimes opening the boxes to look inside we finally decided to let the people there help us. We watched a guy from the shop explaining a game to another guy from the shop. Obviously they have this ’system‘ where they explain games to each other, in case a customer wants to know something about it. If I ever go to university again and it will be in Cologne and I need some extra money, I would love to have a job there. Definitely. The game itself sounded very cool, still a bit weird. Short summary: You have to at first place as many of your people in Pompeji as you can and once the volcano erupts you have to get them out as soon as possible. It’s definitely on our wish list now.
So I had this guy explain ‚Jambo‘ to me and also asked to hear short ratings of other games I’ve been wanting to buy, but we finally decided on Jambo, which is a nice light two-player-game. We played it already and although it has a lot of luck it seems to have enough strategy as well to be fun and not stupid.
After that we walked to a small mexican fast-food place and had burrito wraps. Mine was something with chicken and a supposedly creole sauce. I can’t really tell if it was creole because I never actually had something with creole in it, but it was tasty and I won’t complain.

We then took the train back home where I had my father get us from the station and take us to their place. Pi and I had decided that we wouldn’t go to Jörg’s birthday, but would come by my parents for an hour or so and have the evening just for us. I would have loved to go to that party later, but definitely not today. I am so stressed out at the moment that I can’t think of something better than just a weekend with no social obligations. I plan to call Jörg (if I can find out his number) and tell him we’re sorry and maybe make some plans for some other time.
Anyway, it was nice that we went to my parents for the late afternoon. Later my grandparents came and then Renilda, Vera and Herlinde arrived. We had some early dinner and talked and basically had a nice time. I told my grandmother there was a tv-documentary on December 24th about Christmas in a special region in Lithuania (Memelland) which is where she comes from and I think she was really happy that I told her. Also I promised Renilda to make a list of books I would recommend. She has this monthly book-club meeting with a few other women where they talk about a book they have read and she thinks I might have some recommendations for her, so one of the next times she can suggest a book. I definitely recommend The Time-Traveler’s Wife, but I don’t know what else I could recommend. Not because I don’t know some books I think are amazing, but because I think my taste of books is kind of strange. There’s ‚Set This House In Order‘ which I think is great, but the multiple personality thing and the really weird setting isn’t everybody’s thing I guess. I also think that ‚Life of Pi‘ was great, but that also has a really strange story, so I’m not sure if that’s a good recommendation for a women’s book-club. I will browse my bookshelves some more and make a list.
(By the way: Jamie, they already read ‚The Lovely Bones‘, so I can’t recommend that.)
At 7:30 pm we had my mother drive us to the supermarket. We got something to eat for tomorrow and then headed home. I was so tired by then I thought I was going to fall asleep immediately, though of course I didn’t.Here’s a short summary of the few things we did then:Cleaned the apartment a little and put the groceries where they belong.Played our first game of Jambo and liked it. Pi won, as usual, but it was really close.Watched a little bit of TV and now Pi is still in the living room and I am writing.That’s it.

I want to run tomorrow and I would like to do it when it’s not dark, so we can actually run in some forest which according to the map is really close and might provide good running possibilities. I hope I (or we) can bring myself to it.

Current mood: Tired and exhausted but still happy since I didn’t waste my day today. I alwas get a good feeling when I can look back on a day and actually say that I did something.
Listening to: She Floats by Vanessa Carlton (which has a really strange instrumental/choir part and I’m not sure yet what to make of it)