Wow! That sucks. I just wrote a real long post telling you all about Tuesday morning and accidentally erased everything. Is there no recovery function here? The irony is that I just tried to copy everything, so that I could at least restore it if anything bad happened while I was writing. It just backfired in a really screwed-up way.
You know what?
I’m officially offended. That’s not fair. It just isn’t. It wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t already written so much.

Are you there, life? Well, thanks for just gently kicking me in the stomach when I most needed it.

Anyway, next try. The funny thing is that the title of this post fits even better now. Not that it makes it any better. I’m just saying.

At the moment, I’m at work. Right until Tuesday evening I thought I wouldn’t be back here until next Monday, but apparently I couldn’t have been wronger (I don’t care whether this word exists or not). So I am back here and I’m already bored. There’s nothing to do and the little I could do I don’t want to do right now. But I’m already doing overtime. This blog will probably blossom in a way you haven’t seen before. I have so much time at hand when I’m at work, it’s unbelievable. I can’t believe I actually get money for this. On the other hand, I really don’t get a lot of money, so no wonder my motivation sunk to a new low-point again. (Remember I started this blog because I was bored at work.)

I originally planned to tell you all about Tuesday morning and how I became a firm believer in Murphy’s Law, but I’m not doing that now. I did it. It was a desaster. It was erased.
So, I will tell you about that tomorrow or whenever I am willing to go back there, but not now.

Now I will write about all the lovely little things that helped making my day not a complete disappointment. I’m actually talking about work here. To be honest, I’m not really talking about work but about this company and more this building. Work hasn’t gotten any better.
I got up today at 5 am. No typo. I actually managed to get up and not hit the snooze button twenty times before I was willing to drag myself out of the bed. I am very proud of myself. This also means that when I leave here at 4 pm (as I plan to do) I will have done approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes overtime. I have to work overtime these next two weeks, so I can take an additional day off and make my holiday complete (starting at December 13th and I’m not coming back until January).
I took the train at 5:43 am and arrived at work at 6:37 am. I know the exact time, because I can see it when I ‚check in‘ with my company card. Andreas arrived about one minute later, by the way, but he already left which is why I can write here in peace without him hanging around my desk all the time. He doesn’t know that I have a blog and I’m not sure if I want him to know, especially since he appears frequently on this blog. Whatever.

What I did today:
1. Filled out the form for taking my holiday in December. I have 12 days of holiday left to take so with the extra day I want to take off I get the whole last three weeks of December. Yay! I can’t wait.

2. Got my new company ID card, which looks pretty much like the old one (the picture is nearly 2 1/2 years old, I don’t even look like that girl on the card anymore – well, I actually do, only with shorter hair) but is way cooler due to some technical improvements, which I’m not going to try to explain to you, because I didn’t understand them at all. Just know that it is cooler.

3. Was bored. A lot.

4. Went to see and distract the MaTA-trainees who are working on their programming project for their finals this week. I’m neither telling you what MaTA stands for, nor am I going to try to translate it or describe it. When they are done with their training they will be a little bit like us only they actually learned something during their training and their training is a lot more expensive than ours. And the company loves them for no particular reason. They just love them. Which is why they get all the good courses and we have to beg to get some crappy ones. Anyway, two of the four MaTAs are really nice and the other two are not. To give you names, Anika and Philipp are the nice ones and Stefan and Anett are those that we don’t like that much. Only we call them Stefanett, because they are more like one person with two bodies. I have never before seen two people who constantly agree with each other on everything like those two do.

5. Had lunch, wholewheat pasta with vegetable sauce and a little salad. I ate really healthy today. Proud again. Patting my back.

6. Ranted about the exams. I actually did that before lunch, so now you know that this isn’t really a chronological account of what happened today.

7. Marveled about the lovely new things here.

8. Was bored some more.

That basically covers it.

So, I would like to write about those lovely new things now, but I don’t think I have a lot of time left. I will just get to the very best right now.

We have an all new ‚coffee bar‘ here in the company. Yay! I’m not even a big coffee-drinker, but this is just great and bound to suck all the money from my pocket. Today I had a latte machiatto with vanilla syrup and a café au lait with caramel syrup. I’m so happy. I will most probably have at least two coffees a day now. Which isn’t really that healthy but I also don’t really care.

Got to go now. I just got a text message from Natascha. She gave me some scented candles for my birthday which were just great and I need more now. But apparently she got them from a store with changing offers, so I don’t know if I can get some more. Damnit.

Anyways, I need to pack my things now and leave or I won’t catch my train.

Current mood: Caffeinated.
Listening to: I’ll Find A Way by Rachael Yamagata.

I know that now!
What happened today that convinced me of the absolute correctness of Murphy’s Law, I will write about that later when I am even more relaxed than I am right now.
Everything is over, the tests went fine as far as I can tell. I don’t think that I did excellent, but I guess that overall I did good and for now that’s fine with me. Ask me again when I get the results and see if I am ranting then.
By the way, I will not get the results until… well, a really long time from now. They weren’t even bothering to tell us when we could expect the results, they were just like ‚Don’t call us to ask. Just… don’t.‘

So I just called our new favorite pizza delivery service. According to Pi they have the very best pizza and according to me they make very good salads and the best pasta in Leverkusen (the pasta still doesn’t top my favorite two pasta dishes made by two different delivery services back in Bonn, but it is really good).

Today we’re having:
Pizza Bolognese (although they write it Bollognese, but that’s either a typo or simple ignorance) for Pi
Salad Nizza for me (Oil-Vinegar-Dressing)
Tiramisu for both of us

If you want the same, just call the number below!

Best Pizza in the World (Order Here)

PS: Jamie, thanks for the cheering me up. From what I can tell so far, it helped!

Current mood: Happy. HAPPY! And a little bit hysterical. That goes with the demise of the stress. Naturally. And Happy.
Listening to: Nothing right now.

I have only very little time, because I just recently realized how much I don’t know and probably should, so I’m really busy today. I learned all new things about networks, routers, switches, gateways, TCP/IP and stuff and I can honestly say that I have absoultely no idea what it all is about. I’m more trying to remember the disadvantages and advantages of all those things when compared to others, because it’s likely that there will be questions like that.

I still have some work to do, but I decided to set a time limit and just stop at some point this evening and try not to think about it too much. Which won’t work, but it sounds like a nice plan.

So, you can all wish me luck for tomorrow.
Or, if you’re not willing to do that you can wish me one million dollars. I won’t hesitate to take the money and fail the test, but since I don’t think that’s an option, just wish me luck. I can definitely need it.

Current mood: A strange mixture of all kinds of different feelings. Anxious, scared, excited, even kind of happy.
Listening to: Nothing. (Are you kidding me?)

Another short post. I’ve been trying to study for the last 1 1/2 hours or so, but I couldn’t really concentrate, mostly because my hatred for the IHK grew with every minute I spent doing one of the old final exams. The tasks and questions are so damn stupid. They are either too easy or they are just wishy-washy, so that you have no clue what it is they want you to do or they are too difficult, and that mostly in the sense that there are a lot of things that I have never heard of before neither at work nor at school. In my opinion that means that I will probably never need to know. Or, in the not so likely case that I will, I consider myself smart enough to type in that particular word into the google search box and get the information I need. I hate the IHK. Hate ‚em. All.

By the way, can I somehow use footnotes using this system? Because that would be really, really cool. Just saying.

So for the moment I stopped studying and I think I will watch some TV now befpre returning to my books and papers later this evening. I was so tired when I came home, but we had to first fo to the post office and then to the small computer shop up on Kölner StraÃ?e (which most probably means nothing at all to you, but for the sake of detailed description, there it is) because as far as Pi can tell, what is broken in my father’s computer is the controller. The main problem is that the computer doesn’t recognize any of the hard disc drives anymore and they were connected with a RAID system. My computer actually did recognize them, but couldn’t access any data, so we figured that the discs themselves most likely are not broken, which is good news so far, but that something must be wrong with the connection between the two HDDs. So, to make boring computer stuff that even I have no clue about short, Pi is trying to get a new controller and we hope and keep our fingers crossed that the controller really is the problem , because if it’s not, we have to find something else to blame for the breakdown.

Where was I… Yes, I was tired and we had to do a lot of things before I could actually get home. Pi said something about me being quite exhausted and getting used to it lately and he’s right. I tend to lie down and just fall asleep and then sleep really long those last days, but as I said, I was really tired. So I made myself comfy on the couch, watched about 45 minutes of ‚Sarah Kuttner – Die Show‘ and then fell asleep. The first time I woke after just 20 minutes or so and I really should have gotten up then, but of course I didn’t, because I was oh-so-comfy wrapped in the blanket, so I fell asleep again and this time I slept for one whole hour. So, you thought your life was boring? Ha! I bet you know better now.

What else is there to write? I finally got my monthly cooking magazine…

awkward silence

You… don’t look at me that way.

more awkward silence

I said: Don’t. Look. At. Me. That. Way.
Really.

Confession #1: I get a cooking magazine. Once a month.
Confession #2: I subscribed to it.
Confession #3: I’m really very proud of it.
Confession #4: I get all excited when I know a new one is coming. I’m starting to talk about it approximately 5 to 7 days before I get it.

Okay, now that I finally got that out, can I please continue. My new cooking magazine is great. I particularly fell in love with two of the cakes, a panna-cotta-thing with gingerbread-flavour and stewed oranges, filled orange-crêpes, some sauerkraut-toasts with apples, and some very nice ideas for a Christmas menu. And I finally have an idea what I could give my mother for Christmas. They have a recipe for cinnamon-liqueur in there and that’s just what I think my mother would like.
Andreas fell in love with all the cakes. But it’s not like that I didn’t expect that.

If I get my scanner to work, which at the time is not the case, I might scan some pictures, so you can see all those great meals, desserts and whatever I am talking about. I’m so thrilled! I love my cooking magazine.

I think I really wrote enough now. This entry is longer than I expected it to be. So I’ll save writing about the strange weather we had here today later.

Current mood: Since the weekend is near, very fine.
Listening to: Me typing, Pi playing the piano.

Warning: Short post. I’m really tired, but there will be more today when I feel a little more relaxed and motivated.

I just thought that once my finals are over (at least the written part) I will reward myself for that – even if I screw up, at least I did it and it will be over.
So, I thought, it will be either some books (I am thinking about ‚The Time-Traveler’s Wife‘ and ‚Remember Me‘ (by Christopher Pike – I think ‚Remember Me‘ is supposed to be a children’s book but I liked what I read about it, so it’s on my wish list) or a new board game (most likely ‚Jamba‘ one of the new games of the two-player series of Kosmos games).
Or, most probably, both.

I’m both scared of Tuesday and eagerly awaiting it. I can’t wait to get this over with. The waiting’s always the hardest. I can’t stand it any longer.

Current mood: Tired, exhausted, those other adjectives that mean about the same.
Listening to: nothing.

Here’s the thing. You don’t really want to know how it went at school, because I would get pissed thinking about it, but…

I came home pretty early and went to the post office to get my package from Canada (yay! Alias!) and there was this guy with his little daughter (the daughter really is just a part of the description here and has nothing to do with the actual story) and obviously he wanted to fill out a form for some money transaction and was in urgent need of a pen. You would think that a post office with an integrated bank counter would have enough pens flying around for customers to fill out forms, but I know now that they don’t. Anyway, I offered him my pen to fill out his form, so here’s my good deed for today. I don’t consider it so much a good deed but just the abilitiy for a sensitive observation of what people around you are doing and being nice enough in the right situation. Whatever.
So, after that I went to the supermarket to get a little something to eat and I just had two things when I stood in line and the woman whose turn it was next noticed that I only had very little and let me pay first. I just thought ‚Well, being just nice from time to time really pays off.‘ It so seemed like cause and effect that I really don’t want to label it as common coincidence.

So, I’m in a pretty good mood, because I was nice to someone and in return someone was nice to me. Way to start a day (only my day didn’t actually start then).

And I can’t open my package now, because Andreas told me there is a spoiler right on the box’s cover and now I’m scared and have to watch the last four episodes of season 1 before I can even take a look at my newly arrived Alias-DVDs. Great. Thanks a lot, Andreas.

Current mood: see above
Listening to: Single by Natasha Bedingfield (I really like ‚These Words‘)

Just a short post before I will return to the living room and watch something on TV I will NOT TELL YOU ABOUT. Because it’s embarassing and stupid and I’m too intelligent to even consider it, but it’s guilty pleasure at its best and I can’t resist. If you really want to know just scan tonight’s TV guide and you will have absolutely no problems finding out. If you want to go that far, do it. Otherwise, just know that I’m not proud of myself.

Okay, so what I wanted to do in the short time left is to make a list of all the things I want to write about so that I have something to cling to whenever I feel blog-lost.
So here it goes:

• The wedding – it was one big day with a lot happening which probably is why I couldn’t bring myself to write about it yet. It was just a lot. But hey, I already showed you pictures!
• Boardgames – yeah, well. It might be interesting though, at least I will try to make it interesting.
• Maybe, but it might already be too late for that, but I might write about what little I would like to share with the world about the U.S. election. On the other hand I try to be very careful with political issues, since I made the experience that they are usually very hard to discuss via the internet for several reasons.
• My job/training. Although I like to forget about it once I’m home. Still, it might be nice for those few of you who actually read my blog to know what it is I’m doing and ranting about so eagerly.

So far that’s it. Although I guess there’s more that I just forgot.

News for today: My father’s computer is broken, my cousin’s most likely to go abroad for a year (when did they grow up, they used to be so young), and Katharina, a 12-year-old girl we know watched ‚Ring‘ which her 16-year-old brother borrowed from me and is scared to be alone anywhere near a television now. I am really truly sorry for her. I am 24 and that movie creeped me out completely (YES, I was afraid of my television and I’m willing to admit it) so I don’t even want to think about how it must have affected her.

Current mood: Running, speeding to the living room. Guilty pleasure time.
Listening to: The sound of me typing and Pi calling to remind to come. Now.

Welcome to the first Weekly Freezer, my blog’s first column, which at least might be a real novelty in that it is the first column that is bound to suck from its very start. Nonetheless I present to you today’s freezer complete with a detailed description of everything that was in it by the time the picture was taken.

The freezer today

There’s really little ice cream left and just one piece of chicken, because I needed the other ones for a yummy asian meal. The plum cake was Pi’s idea, not mine. I tend to want to really bake a cake when I want some, which is once a year or so. I’m really old-fashioned that way.
And the ice-cubes… Well there have to be ice-cubes in the freezer, otherwise I would be really sad and a little bit grumpy.
Tune back in next Monday for an all new Weekly Freezer.

Current mood: Well, wasn’t that fun?
Listening to: Little Joe by Katell Keineg (I’ve said it before)

Not so much, anyway.
I got to read a little bit in my books and actually take notes, but all in all that would sum up to about one hour of studying compared to a lot more doing unimportant stuff. Well, at least I guess something is happening. Maybe because the exams are on the 23rd November and I can’t wait that long to get started anymore. I’m promising all of you (and mostly myself) right here, right now that after writing this post I’m going to learn some more. Big promise. Huge.

So, I’ll keep it short for tonight, which is going to be easy since there wasn’t much happening today.

We had a nice breakfast, which we don’t have too often, with everything starting with my all favorite ’nougat-creme‘ which must contain about 1 million calories a glass and is pure sweetness (and not metaphorically speaking) and ending with three sorts of cheese.
Apart from that the big thing was watching Joan of Arcadia and bawling my eyes out. I won’t tell you why, because I’m spoiler-allergic and don’t want to ruin anything for anyone. It was just not fair. Why do they make me like characters that much, when they are planning to do that?!? Shutting up now.
I also realized that I’m never gonna make the 50,000 words for the NaNoWriMo, but I’m keeping that blog for the time being, because I think that maybe I’m gonna work on it nevertheless. Only not any time too soon.

In the afternoon Pi and I went for a walk. It was around 4 pm when we passed by the new sushi restaurant (which I still can’t believe exists here… this town is so not-sushi) which made both our eyes glow, but it doesn’t open until 5:30 pm so we were way too early. So we just walked around and then back home. But I hope we will go have sushi there somewhen soon. We have to, especially since I don’t want the place to be closed.

I originally planned to do a ‚News from the Freezer‘ column thing every week on Sunday, but I haven’t been able to take a photograph yet, so there most probably will be nothing today. Maybe the whole thing is a stupid idea, but I want to try it and we’ll see whether it will be boring after two weeks or whether I will be able to actually make it a little bit funny at the least. It’s worth a shot.

That’s it for today. I will now keep my promise and go right to my books.

Current mood: Feeling a headache coming (never good), all in all content.
Listening to: On Yer Way by Katell Keineg (another great song by one of my favorite songwriters)

Why, for heaven’s sake, can’t I pull myself together and actually do something useful? Another perfectly wasted day and I just know I have things to do. The only thing I accomplished today was catching up on Charmed a little more. Strange enough the two episodes I watched were actually pretty good, especially since I’m not so satisfied with the sixth season so far. Anyway.

Yesterday Mücke came to visit us and stay over night. He and Pi wanted to do some computer stuff, mainly using Mücke’s computer to burn some backups on DVD. Since we don’t have a DVD burner Pi was happy to use Mücke’s computer and organize his data a little. But somehow we wouldn’t stop talking over dinner, so we talked for like six hours or so, then tried to watch ‚The Salton Sea‘, but both Mücke and I fell asleep somewhere in the first half, so Pi stopped the movie and we all went to bed around 2 am or something like that. We had about 3 1/2 bottles of wine, so we were all pretty drunk. But it was both really interesting and fun.

So today the boys finally got to do whatever they wanted to and I spent most of morning and early afternoon on the couch.
Then my mother called and said she wanted to come over and bring us fruit cake. Again. No, she’s not baking fruit cake every single day, but – apperently – a lot these days. When she came, Pi and Mücke had just went off to town (don’t ask me what for, cause I don’t really remember). She wanted to go see my grandfather then, so she asked me if I wanted to come to, since I haven’t seen my grandfather for like three to six months (yes, shame on me, I KNOW!) and after a long search for Pi’s keys (he had taken mine, of course) I came with her. I was a little bit shocked (although I was prepared) how much weight my grandfather lost during those last months. Then again, he’s 93, and I consider him to be pretty ‚fit‘ for his age. I mean you can still talk with him, and as far as I know he’s in no great pain, despite of all the little problems his age brings with it. So my mother made him lunch and we stayed there for what I would guess was about half an hour. He even told me to say hello to Pi, which I always consider very sweet. Then we went to a second hand store to look for new used shoes for me, but it was closed already, so we just went to get some turkish ‚fast food‘ (Döner and Lahmacun) for my Dad and the three of us at home.
All in all it was really nice to spend a little time with my mother. I had planned to call my parents all week ( I figured that one week after the US election would be long enough), but somehow I always forgot.

What else? I can’t believe it’s Saturday. I’m pretty overwhelmed by the idea that the weekend isn’t over yet and I have another complete day free. Somehow my feeling for time got all wuzzy. I also have a free day on Thursday and Monday. Please, let me be able to actually seize these days! I’m so sick of my laziness lately, yet I can’t bring myself to do something halfway useful. This has to stop!

Okay, that’s it for today. Oh, I think I’m going to tell Pi about this blog. I haven’t told him so far, because I thought I might want this to be all for myself (and the world apparently), but I think he knows something is going on and I don’t want him to get confused about it in any way. I figured it would be just fair and it would save me all the strangeness of keeping a secret from the very man I want to share a life with. Any thoughts on that?

Current mood: A little bit tired, all in all really balanced.
Listening to: Quiet by Rachael Yamagata (love the girl)