MysticShadowcat's Thoughts

( Warning! Long(ish) rant ahead! )

Current Mood: blah

I never thought this would happen, but it did. My long lost muse made a quick appearance and a little bit of Torchwood humour written for theantigwenallies Easter Contest is the result.
The fic can be found on the Anti Gwen Alliance, FanFiction.net or on A Teaspoon and an Open Mind.

Current Mood: happy

So, first ABI exam is over. It went ok (I hope). I do think I wrote too little, but there just wasn't anything else to say. Well, we'll say how it went in... June, I think :-S.
I came home and I was knackered. Still had to do some maths though, after all the exam is tomorrow. I gave up eventually, I just couldn't concentrate. So I've been trying to relax a bit most of the afternoon. Watched the Torchwood episode that was on on Tuesday (Adrift), which was way too much Gwen for my taste, but there was a bit of Jack/Ianto action in it as well, which is cool, and Rhys got fed up and yelled at Gwen, which was also cool. Go Rhys! Also watched some Sarah Jane and will hopefully be able to watch the second half later. Yep, lots of telly today :D.
Anyway, almost an hour ago I switched on my computer to check my emails and stuff and my firewall kindly notified me that there's a new update available. I thought, well, why not, I've got a couple of minutes, so why not update. BIG MISTAKE! The update was installed, the computer rebooted, I started Outlook, Opera, MSN, trillian and Skype. And had to find that only trillian and Skype got internet access. All of them were checked in the firewall program control, but only trillian and Skype got through. I tried Firefox, which didn't work either. I tried deleting the entries, restarting the programs, restarting the firewall and different combination of those three. Suddenly, and I have no idea what happened, both Firefox and Opera got me on my starting page, which is thudgame.com, again. I thought, yay, it works and tried Outlook and MSN. Nothing. Still no connection. I tried aMSN and got nothing there either. So I thought "Go to hell, I just won't use you for today. I'll have time to deal with you on the weekend." and tried to check some other websites. Nothing. I could access thudgame.com, but not google, LJ, xkcd and all the rest. I'm still knackered, so I can't really be bothered to yell at my computer, let alone go through the whole firewall installing and configuring business again. I'd just like to know why I can't seem to just update my firewall without hours of work afterwards.
Memo to myself: Don't update that firewall again. Just don't. Unless you have a lot of time (and nerves) to spare.

Current Mood: knackered

Nightwish was awesome! Great show, fantastic songs. No idea how people could complain about Anette's voice, it's great. I liked her version of Dead Boy's Poem a lot more than Tarja's. And her performance on stage is definitely a lot better than Tarja's. They also played 7 Days to the Wolves (1st song, causing me to win my bet), Nemo, The Escapist, The Islander and Wish I Had an Angel (and loads more of course). So yay, great night.
Supporting Acts were Indica and Pain (luckily in that order, so the worst bit was over soon). Sorry to all Indica fans out there, but I just don't like their music. It hurts my ears. It really does. I couldn't help but flinch whenever their singer hit one of the higher notes. Pain was a lot better and not nearly as painful :-P. Not entirely my cup of tea, either, but still good.

On another note, this is a memo to myself: Don't tell anyone your computer is working fine. Not. Ever. Again. It is bound to hear of it and stop working just to annoy you. For almost a week now it kept freezing the programs I tried to start, getting worse by the day. Yesterday even multiple restarts and use of the Task Manager couldn't get anything to run. Tried repairing Windows with the Windows CD today. Now it doesn't start up at all, giving me a Blue Screen of Death whenever I try loading Windows. Which means I'm stuck on Linux for now, without my bookmarks and calendar etc. :( Stoopid computer. Stoopid windoze.
Also, Linux does not seem to be willing to read my floppy disk, where I put this journal entry, written on my laptop running Windows 3.11 while my computer was running the Windows installation/repair thing, so I had to type it again from scratch :(
edit: I was wrong. I can't access the floppy while it's in the drive. Now that I took it out, I can and all the files are there, but obviously I can't open them....

Current Mood: post-Nightwish high

So Cambridge went ok. I think. It wasn't easy, but doable. Unfortunately there was this stupid old bitch in our room who did only seem to believe that she was the exception to the rules, but also felt disturbed by almost every single movement in the room. During the second part of the exam, the writing, I got a really bad cough attack and could hardly breathe, let alone drink something to make it better for about a minute. The only one except for me who seemed to be distracted by that was her, of course, and in the break she went to the supervisor and complained about my coughing. Thanks very much, that's just what I needed. So the supervisor put me in a small room all on my own for the rest of the exam. He wasn't impolite about it (of course not, he was British) and I didn't mind much, because it did feel better to know that I didn't distract anyone else any more, but still. Then, in the next break, she came to ask me if I was better. What does she expect? That my cough disappears from one minute to the next because I was put in a different room? I felt like telling her that yes, it did, because it was only an allergic reaction to her. Bitch... And if that wasn't enough I also had to stay longer than the rest because they only had two CDs for the listening and I was in a third room. Which meant that my class mates who took the exam with me had to wait 45 minutes until my listening was done. Pity that I'll never know if she passed. I doubt she did, she didn't seem to be coping well :).
Well, now there's only the Abi left in two weeks. Scary....

P.S.: Going to a Nightwish concert on Friday!!! Whoooooooot!!!!

Current Mood: tired

So once again I wandered off and left this thing dead for, ummmm, almost half a year. Fail.

Just to mention it, My Fair Lady was an enormous success. For at least 2 of the 5 performances, there were more people than we could actually fit into the "theater". And we were asked to perform again in January, which we did (and which I wasn't exactly happy about because I wanted it to be over and done with and the performance wasn't at our school so we had to relocate and rearrange everything). Still, it was all great and I am now officially free. Believe me, my life has been much more relaxing since I'm not in the Drama Group any more. So I had 5(?) good years with a fair bit of fun to go with the stress and irritation (caused, mainly, by our director). I learned for life (like for example never to join any kind of Drama Group ever again). And now it's time to move on. Which I will do now by saying

3, no, actually, 2. I haven't mentioned it on here yet (I know, big surprise there....), but I really got into Doctor Who over the last (almost) year. I don't know how I could possibly have missed that before (probably because up to a year ago there has never been a single episode of it on German telly), because it is one of the most funniest, entertaining and at the same time deepest TV show in the universe. Or at least I think so. We got the 2005 series DVD box last Easter and by now have watched all 4 of the new Doctor Who series at least twice and are now watching Torchwood series 1 for the second and series 2 and the first series of Sarah Jane Adventures for the first time. And I have to admit I am addicted. We got BBC around New Year and I have been watching so much more telly since then.

Today in two weeks time I will be sitting the first written exam of my Abitur, which is German, followed by Maths on Friday, English on Monday and Ethical Studies on Wednesday. Which means I probably should be studying right now. But I've never been one to start studying long before the exam and I had to find that I can't really change that habit now. But I am re-reading those stoopid novels for German and I've also been doing some Maths. Yay me.

And then there is the fact that tomorrow I will be sitting the speaking part of my Cambridge exam. Officially that little bit of paper is called Cambridge Certificate of Advanced English (CAE for short and Cambridge in Rattyspeak) and it's sole purpose is to prove that I am capable of communicating using the English language. It consists of a speaking and a written part, the latter in turn consisting of Listening, Writing (letters, articles, essays and such), English in Use (aka guessing the right words to go in one hell of a lot of gaps), Reading and possibly something else, which I forgot. The written part will take place on Saturday and take literally the whole day (starts at 8am, finishes at 4pm or something like that). We have been "preparing" for it for over a year now and I'll be really glad when it's finally over. What I am not so happy about is the fact that right now I'm suffering from a cold straight from hell (one of the upper levels, I admit, but still). My voice has been close to failing for two days now. I've never had that before, I've never been hoarse. Not once in my life. But trust my luck that it'll happen tomorrow and I'll only be able to croak. Either way, all I'm really worried about is having a black out and not being able to put together a single coherent sentence. Happens to me occasionally, especially when I'm on the phone. I'm also a bit worried that I won't be able to meet my own expectations, which are all the way up there on the moon. Well, we'll see how it goes.

Well, that's it for now, can't think of anything else to say. I bet there's loads and not all of it as boring as this what's-been-going-on-in-my-life stuff. But my brain's really not at it's best right now. I think I might try to post a bit more stuff in general, but I won't even try to promise anything. Probably wouldn't be able to keep it anyway.

So byebye for now!
Ratty

Current Mood: sick

...or Why Microsoft makes my day (not) :-S

I'm currently working on a computer for my dad. He's got to move to the other end of the country because of his job and wants a computer to surf the internet once he's got a flat. So we/I put one together from pieces of old computers. It's not highend, but it's enough for the simple stuff he wants it to.
After 3 days of changing power supply units and the motherboard (both were broken and the second power suply lacked one connector), the computer is finally working. So while I'm writing this I'm installing the vital stuff. Obviously, I started (after Windows, of course) with the graphics drivers. Unfortunately, they require .Net Framework 2.0 or higher to be installed. Since the motherboard (probably even the series) has a crappy on-board LAN and my dad was pretty sure he'd thrown out the old LAN cards, the computer wasn't connected to the internet and I had to download everything on my computer and transfer it to the "new " one via USB stick.
So, plug out, plug in, download, plug out, plug in. I started the exe. And what did it tell me (after restarting the computer)? It needs Microsoft installer 3.1.
Plug out, plug in, download, plug out, plug in. Microsoft Installer didn't take long to update and soon enough I was ready to install .Net Framework. Except... it seems Microsoft decided not to pack everything into the downloaded .exe and needed to download the remaining 73MB. Which left me with one big problem: I had no internet on that computer.
So basically you can say: No internet -> no .Net Framework (at least not the latest version) -> no graphics drivers (and a lot of other stuff) -> no properly functional computer. Thank you, Microsoft.
I can understand it if people want to make the exe smaller by downloading some of the stuff during the installation process. I'm perfectly fine with it when it's an internet related application, like my firewall. If I don't have internet, I don't need a firewall. But the .Net Framework is not directly internet related. A lot of programs, at least some computer games and obviously even the ATI Catalyst driver need it. Not every computer has access to internet, but even those without may need .NET Framework, so I think it pretty bad style to make the installation rely on internet access. Just my humble opinion.

(The problem is solved for me, by the way. I found one of the LAN cards that my dad supposedly threw out.)

Current Mood: annoyed

I used to love reading and spent a good deal of my free time doing so. I still love it, but lack of books turned into lack of time and then into lack of motivation and by now I hardly read anything that is not school related. With two exceptions: (Fan)Fiction on the internet that can easily be read while doing other stuff at the same time (while it is no problem for me to chat or listen to music (or both) while reading something on the internet, a book demands all of my attention and that is something I am not very willing to give to anything at all at the moment) and holidays. During my holidays, when I have whole days of nothing really to do I tend to start catching up with all that I didn't do the past months. Which is mostly books and maybe some gaming.
In April or May I got a book for an essay for my ethics class. After some three months of force-reading I had managed about 100 pages. I have now, after a couple days of holidays, read most of the remaining 260 pages and am planning to finnish tomorrow or the day after.
After figuring out that I read what I had to read faster if I allowed myself to read something I wanted to read after every chapter or so of said ethics book instead of forcing myself to wait until I had finished the whole book, I spent the last two days also reading Game Night by Jonny Nexus (good book if you know anything about role playing games/dungeons&dragons) and have now moved on to The World According to Clarkson, which a friend from NZ has sent me.
There is one thing that really annoys me though. No matter how good the writing style and plot/topic are, when the author assumes that the reader has the same level of knowledge as they do, the best book can be spoiled. This, unfortunately, is something the author of said ethics book (The Decent Society by Avishai Margalit) does all the time. If I wanted to understand everything he said in that book, I would have to read about every piece of literature (poetry excluded) and every philosophical essay out there and probably study history. In addition I would need to know all them pretty words that originate from latin or ancient greek and, in my opinion, should be banned for being hard to remember, hard to tell apart and because most people have no idea what they mean anyway. Of course, I would also need an immense knowledge of all political happenings of the past decades, as well as understand politics itself and know a lot about philosophy and philosophers. It makes me feel like a failure at times, to be honest. My philosophy knowledge seems to meet his standard and I have not had many problems there. Since most of his history references concern WWII and Nazi Germany and only last semester the probably best history teacher at out school took care of us gathering detailed knowledge of that topic, history isn't exactly the problem, either. No, the real problem is the literature and the words. At least every second page I encounter a new book or word (or both) that, in the worst case, I have never heard of and, in the best case, have heard of, but know nothing about. Makes me wonder how I am supposed to write 10 pages worth of text about why organisations supporting disabled people refer to Mr Margalit...
Mr Clarkson, author of a column in the Sunday Times, on the other hand merely expects me to have a certain knowledge of political happenings during the past decades and British radio and telly. Neither of which I have of course, but since that book is not subject of a 10 pages essay I don't care as much.

Current Mood: ill

I don't know if you know Kafka, but he was a German author and is a compulsory part of the Abitur. The widespread opinion among students is that he is not great. There are, however, worse things on the curriculum. There are also less confusing things.
One of my German class' discussion about Kafka somehow ended with our teacher saying that in order to fully understand it, we need to go and have a pizza. Which we did yesterday.
Up to now I still don't have a clue why eating pizza helps with understanding Kafka. What I do know is that the situation at the restaurant was very "Kafkaesk" (=Kafka-like).
When we arrived there we got told that, due to some misunderstanding, our table had been reserved for 12 instead of 7pm. There were no more free tables in the whole restaurant, let alone for 16 people. The owner/staff made a exception though and let us sit on the terrace despite the bad weather. If we promised to stay outside even if it started to rain, since there was no space for us inside. We agreed and put the tables under the sunshades. Of course, not long after we got our drinks it started to rain. Luckily we stayed dry until eventually the waitress came and asked us to come inside because enough people had left already for us to fit in. The night was a lot of fun and all in all definitely something to remember...

Current Mood: soooo tired

Some years ago, the Department of Education of this part of Germany passed a law, that every student has to give one presentation a year, the so called GFS. I have no idea how that translates into English, so I won't even try. Anyway, a GFS counts just like an exam. You can choose the subject you want to give it in and, to a certain extend, also the topic. The point of the whole thing is that students learn to present themselves and a topic. All in all, not a bad thing.
Only problem: For me, the only really bad thing at school is standing in front of a room full of people and talking about something. Exams? No problem, never been nervous because of them. But presentations? They scare the shit out of me.
Tomorrow I have to give the first of the three GFS one has to do at some point during Year 12 and the first semester of Year 13. Yep, you read right. Three. As you can imagine, I'm not happy about that at all.
The GFS is in Chemistry. Not because I wanted to, but because I failed this semester's Chem exam and need to balance that. Not that much would happen if I didn't, but 2 of 15 points just doesn't feel great (anything below 5 is failed, 0 means you're in big trouble, because if you've got a 0 in your report, you failed the year).
My topic is soap. I didn't choose that one, either, but it's not too bad. The real problem is that, while other people easily manage to fill two hours with their GFS, I can hardly fill the minimum time. I don't know what exactly the minimum time for my Year is, but I do know that I'm not filling it. Because my GFS takes, including a small film, about 16 minutes. 15 minutes was what I had to have in Year 10 (and possibly also 11). If I'm lucky I'm only missing 4 minutes, which I could manage by talking extra slow, at least if people ask some questions in between. Maybe I should ask some mates to ask every question they can think of...
I'm hoping, no, praying that it won't be all too bad and that my teacher won't mind it being very, very short. Because I think if he doesn't then it won't even be all too bad. The presentation itself (PowerPoint) is looking pretty good with many graphics and little text, just like our teacher likes to make them himself. So yeah, things aren't looking all black for me, only very dark grey....

Current Mood: scared
Current Music: Runrig, amongst others

The Scotland pictures are now up and can be seen here.

Current Mood: still tired
Current Music: Nightwish - Stargazers

I just returned home from 10 days in Scotland. It was my first time there, but I have been to England a couple of times before. Yet every time I'm amazed about just how nice the people are. Where Germans would just be neutral or even grumpy, the Scots and the English are friendly and polite and enjoy answering your questions. I remembered that when I visited the Charlottenburg in Berlin with a friend, one of the staff there told her off about not really lifting her feet when walking. I can understand that it's not good for the old floor, but he was extremely rude. In the UK, none of the people working in all those historic places would ever do that. It makes me feel ashamed of my country/the people here and also myself.
Despite all, or maybe especially because of that, I loved Scotland. The weather was surprisingly good. It was a bit chilly a lot of the time, especially with the wind, but we didn't have a drop of rain, only some clouds and sunshine. The landscape was most beautiful. Wild, changing every couple of miles, with rocks, hills, streams, waterfalls, forests... Thanks to our sat nav we took roads we would never have found otherwise. Most of them were very narrow, with passing places every now and then because there was no way two cars could drive next to each other. Getting from one point to the next probably took us a bit longer this way, but we saw so much more of the country than we would have otherwise.
We arrived in Edinburgh last Tuesday, spent that night in Pitlochry, then went on to some place near Aberdeen, spent two nights there. Then one at Loch Ness, two near Skye, one at Loch Lomond and two in Edinburgh.
I liked the B&B in Pitlochry very much, but unfortunately I'm not allowed to return, because when the cook told us he shot the haggis for breakfast fresh every morning I said that it wasn't even Haggis Hunt Season :(.
Skye was wonderful, probably the nicest bit of the trip and definitely the best B&B. On our first morning there, our host gave us a private bagpipe concert and he also lent us some cds for the day. If/when I return to Scotland, I will definitely try to go back there.
Of course, my mum and I sang Loch Lomond on the bonny bonny banks of Loch Lomond. Not too well, at least from my side, but there were no other people around, so who cares ;-).
I think I have also developed a bit of a fetish for men in kilts. I still don't know what it worn underneath though...
All in all it was a fantastic, but very tiring holiday. I was sad to leave, but I'm also glad to be back so I can get some rest before I go back to school.
One question came up on our final evening though (and because it was on the final one I couldn't try and find out :( ). In New Zealand, Ketchup is called tomato sauce, just like the stuff you put on pasta. This has caused quite a bit of confusion. I know of one English guy who bought tomato sauce for his spaghetti and ended up with Ketchup. Now, what would happen if a Kiwi (or anyone else for that matter) would ask for tomato sauce with his chips in a British pub? My mum and I have come to the conclusion that the waiter would probably be quite puzzled. But would he ask or would he know what the person wants and get Ketchup or would he get (pasta) tomato sauce? We both agree that in Germany he would just get a puzzled look and tomato sauce.

Well, that was it for now. I will upload some pictures tomorrow or on Saturday. I might also add the odd shorter post with stuff that I forgot now ;-)

Current Mood: tired

Yep, that's me. Official danger to society since 20 past 4ish today. That's when the examiner handed me my driving license. I'm so relieved! I wasn't actually nervous, only a wee bitty scared of failing, but not the actual test. The examiner picked a pretty easy route though, so I didn't have to go through any all too complicated situations (phew). Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), I'm not allowed to drive without my parents until I'm 18. Which is still a while to go. The good thing about it is that I will be able to get experience with someone who knows how to drive on my side. The bad thing is that I'm no more independent than I was before. But ohwell, I guess I will survive that half a year, too ;-)

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Petrouchka by Stravinsky

Last year's Drama Group season was a rather unspectacular, Irish play. The audience liked it, which, to be honest, did surprise me a bit. This year, however, our director chose a huge project, since it's the last season of a good deal of the group, including our "assistant director" (who has sort of mutated into the secret director in the past 2 years), the stage designer and propman (me) and most of our best actors. The play in question is My Fair Lady. And yes, we're doing the musical version. For this project we needed, of course:
- an ensemble for the music
- singing lessons for at least the main singers
- costumes
- props
- several stage designs
- a lot of engagement by everybody
- and more than ever a license to be able to advertise properly and get the money we spent on above points back in
Only, as usual, nothing is working the way it was planned.
It took us months to figure out who was responsible for the license. We started in Germany and, after a couple of tries in the UK and US, ended up in Germany again (I think - I lost track of it long time ago). Now, those people seriously want 2500€ for that license. I could understand why if we were a more or less professional theater who would perform it over a couple of months. But we're not. We're a group of less than 20 students, who rehearse the play for some 8 months and then perform it 4 nights. We don't even have 2500€. After a lot of arguing the actors (present) overruled the director and we decided to try and get the money from sponsors, which is looking good so far. Still, it's a hell of a lot of money and a damn impertinence to ask that much from us.
I'm not sure if we have an ensemble yet. Last week we didn't. The deadline set was last Monday though, so chances are that most of it is set. It took a long time though, we had hoped that they would have started practicing by now.
Same goes for singing lessons. I think the first people should have had their first lesson by now, but last week it was still a chaos. Unfortunately, the ensemble depends on those singing lessons, because they need to know how high or low the songs have to be.
The costumes. While only partly my job this year, this has caused me and everybody else involved a lot of worries. We bought some costumes for I think 500€ all together, fabric for some more for a bit over 100€ and still didn't have nearly all of them, only the more fancy ones. The past years everybody would just wear whatever they got that was more or less fitting the play. We can't do that this year. The play is just too big, too demanding. So today, our assistant director and me went to some second hand 1€ sale and looked through the stuff there. We ended up with 12.6kg (27.8lb) of costumes, covering most of the minor characters. And the wonderful ladies there even donated the stuff! I'm so grateful, that took a huge load of my mind.
The props are probably the "construction site" where least has been done yet, but also the one that worries me least. I've always been able to get the stuff without too much effort and money. Still, the list seems longer and more difficult than ever before.
The stage is a bit of a bugger this time though. We've got a new stage in a new place, only it doesn't exist yet. We will need movable walls with doors and stairs. None of that exists yet. We will need to change the design of the walls and everything that is on stage. We have scenes in three different indoor and three outdoor places. Just the thought of how quickly and well organized the changes have to be drives me insane. Because nothing ever works quickly, let alone well organized, with that Drama Group.
The engagement is there. At least from the actors. Our director is already planning the play for 2010. All he does is tell us off for not organizing things well enough and complain about how incredibly busy he is, especially now that he has to teach 28 hours a week (we all have at least 30), and how little he sleeps.
All in all, I'll be glad when this is over. And I'm glad that I'm one of this big bunch who are leaving after this year. Because when we're gone, there will only be one person left who really does something for the group and that's the finances.

Current Mood: worried/annoyed

Once again Windows got on my nerves and I changed to Linux. This time my distribution of choice is Ubuntu 7.10 and oh am I happy with it. I love the warm colours and the simple, but nice design that leave me unable to get really annoyed when something does not work the way it should. Not even the several new installs I had to make because I kept messing something up (preferably the graphic drivers) could stop me from always ending up with it again. Windows always freezing up did encourage me, of course. And yesterday, while desperately trying to get Ubuntu to let me access my stuff on the other partitions I noticed something that was another large plus for Linux. Where Windows would have said plain "Authentication failed" Linux actually added "Sorry". I seriously stopped and stared at the screen for a moment. "Sorry". Never before had an OS or any other computer program apologized because I had entered a wrong console command. I am now more determined than ever to stay with Ubuntu and get used to it.

Current Mood: surprised

These last weeks we did Kant in school and there was something bothering me. There's usually something bothering me with philosophers since their philosophies are never flawless, but this time the thing bothering me most was just a word. Well, two words. A priori. It means independent from experience. Before experience. Pure reasoning, not influenced by experience. According to Kant the last bit of the sentence "The boy hit his head on the wall, because it's solid" is not necessary, since the fact that it's solid is included in the word "wall". The boy doesn't need to hit his head on the wall to know that it's solid. It's a priori. But why do we know that a wall is solid without hitting our head? I think that someone, a long time ago, figured out that this thing is solid and thus it became part of the definition of the word wall. But that would mean someone once had to make the experience that it hurts to hit your head on a wall, so we can learn this without making the experience again. So for us a wall may be a priori solid, but solid is not a priori part of the word wall. To know this, we either have to experience or learn it. But isn't learning also experience? Maybe not first hand, but second or third hand? Indirect experience? If that is true then there is no such thing as a priori for us humans. There is the "thing in itself" (noumenon), but since our senses aren't enough to grasp it and our view of the world is again influenced by experience, we can't even be able to imagine something a priori.

Current Mood: thoughtful

... may you get lots of prezzies and have some wonderful days.
and, as my sorta present for you (though mainly because i forgot), here are the hogswatch pictures

Current Mood: festive
Current Music: Biomechanic man - Lordi

i know it's been ages since my last post. sorry. actually, a lot of stuff has happened, and i really wanted to post, but i either forgot or was too busy or just suddenly didn't feel like it anymore. ok, so, where to start...

about a month ago my drama group performed again. it was awesome, there were so many people and they really liked it. this season we are doing my fair lady as musical. i'm excited already.

i started dancing again. i always enjoyed it and now that i have a good partner more than ever. still not completely used to the high-heeled dancing shoes though. but i guess that's only a matter of time and it's getting less painful every week.

then there was hogswatch. i wasn't intending to go there until lee called me and told me that i really have to come and everybody will be there and it'll be so cool. so i started looking for flights, found something, got my parents to allow it and (together with my mother) went to england two weeks ago. it was absolutely fantastic!!!! so many mad people in one place!! and all extremely nice. the weekend was over way too soon, but i'm already planning to go to the next discworld event.

school life has been pretty busy, too and i started tutoring a year 6. next week my christmas holidays start and my friend from new zealand will come and visit. really looking forward to that :)

Current Mood: happy

school started again about 3 and a half weeks ago. It was ok, my timetable is acceptable, actually I'm quite pleased. For me school starts at 9.30 every day except for Friday. That means that I also have school till 5 every day except Monday (and Thursday, but with Drama Group it's 5 again). But I'm ok with that. As long as I don't have to get up early. My teachers are mostly ok, there are none I can really complain about. Other than that, life was ok, too. My computer mucked about a bit. Linux doesn't work properly, so I went back to Windows. It crashes less often. Still does though. My computer started to just switch off and reboot without a reason or error message. Plus my DVD drive broke. It was all bearable though. With a bit of cursing. Now it's a lot of cursing, because today my dad and I had a motorbike accident. It wasn't too bad. The other car has a dent, some scratches and a broken light, the motorbike has a small dent and i think something at the footboard. My leg got caught between the bike and the car though. It's not broken, only a bit squashed with some bruises. It's pretty painful, but I can walk (or rather, limp) at the speed of a three-legged, rheumatic turtle. What's really annoying me is that it doesn't look nearly as bad as it feels, actually it doesn't look bad at all. I guess I'll be fine again pretty soon though.

Current Mood: pissed
Current Music: Sleeping Sun - Nightwish

Title: The scones strike back
Fandom: Discworld
Genre: Humour
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Nothing mine...
Summary: Magical accidents happen in the Unseen University every day. And sometimes they have interesting outcomes.
A/N: I wrote this story about a year ago as original fiction. But whatever I did I couldn't stop myself from making the world it was set in a bad copy of Discworld. So now I decided to rewrite it as a FanFiction. Sorry for any stupid expressions, faulty grammar etc, that always happens to me when a story is originally in German.

And I edited the Discworld FF "Education for the Watch". Nothing major, just some re-wording in the Epilogue. Actually not even really worth mentioning. Don't ask why I did it anyway.

Current Mood: normal

No, I'm not advertising skype. But it just saved my life. Why? Long story.
Today my computer did the last step to all the mucking around in the last couple of weeks. It died. Rebooting only got me the line "Error in booting operating system". So I reinstalled Windows. Then the horror. Gone. Everything. Well, everything on Drive C. Which means all my settings, my Oblivion saved games (months worth of playing), MSN, Skype, Java.... My internet connection. Thankfully this is restored, my desktop at least looks like it used to, only without all the icons. The start menu is empty because it only takes programmes installed after windows. Office, or at least Outlook, doesn't work anymore. MSN, after installing it again, at least works more or less. I still had the setup file on my pc from a couple of days ago. Skype was missing, so I had to download it first. The first thing I saw on the website was what I believe to be the motto: "Skype. Take a deep breath". And believe it or not, it worked. It made me smile. I now feel a lot less like taking an axe and smashing my computer. Thank you, Skype. Well, after that I went to get Java again. That's now working, too. Or at least almost. Not on Opera, but at least on FireFox. I can live with that until I find the problem with Opera. Getting Outlook to work has priority though. And restore most of my settings. Though actually I might not even do that, because I'm really rather fed up with Windows and currently playing with the thought of getting Linux. It's said to work much better. Am also going to keep Windows though, for the games...

Current Mood: pissed

Or rather days. It all started on Wednesday, when my parents left for a week of hiking, leaving me with three houses and three cats to take care off, one of them sick.
The first day was pretty ok, I managed to get my little tomcat who hadn't really been eating or drinking for some days to drink quite a lot and I also managed to cook proper dinner (supper, tea, whatever you want to call it). Well, not that what I made was much of a challenge. The bacon looked rather odd, I have to admit, but at least it tasted good. I spent a good deal of my day "tuning" my computer. For example I changed browser and am quite happy now.
I slept in the living room, because otherwise none of the three cats would get any food before 10 or 11 and that's cruel. My tomcat slept on the sofa with me. At around 2.30 he sat down next to my head. He didn't make a noise or touch me. Just stared at me. And I woke up. I don't know why he did it. Maybe he just wanted to show me that he's eating again. Which of course makes me happy, but did he have to wake me up for that? And even more, did he have to wake me up again at 4, to show me again?
Anyway, first thing my other cat did after having breakfast was explore the new environment (i.e. the unfolded living room bed which is usually the sofa). This included the gap between mattress and sofa backrest. It took me quite a while to get her to come out again. First thing I did after that was close the gap with a blanket and a pillow.
Again I worked on my computer a bit. And again I had to cook in the evening. This time it didn't work quite as well. First I forgot pepper and salt on my meat. Then I noticed that despite it's crispy look it was still almost raw. Surprisingly it still tasted really good.
That night my tomcat left me alone, but when I came back from feeding my neighbour's cat, my cat decided to keep me awake by walking over my head.
My computer is bitchier than ever (well, not quite, but still). Outlook refused to work without long "Find/repair error" something and when it did I didn't seem to have any emails. Eventually I decided that this was a bit hard to believe and checked online. And indeed, I had three. They ended up in the Spam folder and it didn't send a alert mail like it's supposed to. Grrr. Plus, logging in on live Thud doesn't work properly either, nor do I get the right images when playing. Strangely it works perfectly fine with the same browser on my mum's laptop.
I won't even talk about cooking tonight. Just this much: I didn't remember the recipe. I think I probably forgot half the ingredients. But it still tasted nice.
And when I went onto LiveJournal to write this it was suddenly in German. I don't want it in German!! I want it in English!!!! I tried and tried, but whatever I did, it kept switching back to German. Eventually I found out that my browser was set to German and so switched all the websites (where you have a choice) to German, too. With a lot of concentration I managed to set it to English and not Chinese.
The bright side of life? I'm still alive.

Current Mood: exhausted, annoyed

What a day!! I had a dentists appointment at 5 and on my way there I went to the post office to ask how much letter to NZ are and buy some stamps. I had to queue for about 6 minutes, just to get told that it's twice as expensive as from NZ to Germany and I have to go to the post office to post the letters. I then had to run, because I had like 1.5 minutes left to my appointment. I still made it in time. But then I had to sit in the waiting room for full 22 minutes!!!!!
When the dentist finally got working she was doing whatever she was doing to prepare the new sealings so much that I thought I soon wouldn't have any tooth left there. It hurt so much that she had to give me an anesthetic injection and I absolutely hate needles. Plus, some of the anesthetic stuff dropped from the syringe, so that now not only my lower lip, cheek and chin are numb but also my tounge. This makes talking rather difficult (and right then Lee had to call - at least I had gotten rid of the lisp by then ;-) ). Anyway, now I'm not allowed to eat for a couple of hours (at dinner time) and technically not even drink, but hey, they can't just make me not drink anything for hours! I'm pretty pissed off, especially because I have to go back next week, because they only managed to seal two of four teeth. Grrr!

Current Mood: pissed off

ok, i admit, i'm not really serious. of course, there is no snow. it's summer, after all. but the last couple of weeks it was cold. and rainy. and stormy. and generally nasty. i'd say we had between 15 and 18°C, so not summerish at all. then, when i left for school yesterday morning i had to take off my jumper. it was really warm. and it stayed warm. this noon we had 29.4°C in the shade. right now it's 29.7. and in the sun it's much hotter. so yay, summer has finally come!!! :)

i'm pretty sure there was something else i wanted to write in here, but i forgot what. i need holidays. yesterday i realized that my last holidays were 12 weeks ago. that's 3 months. quarter a year. and i still got 1 1/2 weeks of school left O.O

Current Mood: needs a break

Today there was the last performance of my school's German Drama Group and I got talked into helping with the drink sale in the break. On Wednesday I got a little yellow note saying when the performances are, but, of course, the next eveing I already couldn't find it anymore. So I had to rely on my mum's word that the performance started at 7.30. At 6.00 my mum called me down, telling me that my teacher had just called and asked where I was, because the performance had started half an hour ago. Oops. Good that I live next to the school. So I ran there and set up everything and then watched the play. Of course I had missed the first half an hour, so it took me a while to get what was going on. It was really good though. And after the play, while tidying up, I found the little yellow note in the pocket of my trousers...

Current Mood: forgetful

The second part of the flight wasn't really much better than the first. When we arrived in Germany we surprisingly didn't have to fill out a single form. Very relaxing.
It was good to see my family again, but I miss the people and everything in New Zealand.
I reckon I was slightly jetlaged. I wasn't tired at all and went to bed at around 2 at night. On Sunday on the other hand I was tired like hell.
On Monday I was back to normal, but didn't go to school yet. I waited with that till Tuesday. Didn't really like it.
I think by now I'm slowly getting used to everything again, but it still all feels a bit strange.
Well, this is the end of my New Zealand blog. From now on I'll post the old randomness aswell as story updates again.

Title: Torn apart
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Genre: None in particular
Rating: General
Disclaimer: They don't belong to me and I think it's better that way... you wouldn't like to see the outcome if I owned them and not Tolkien.
Summary: Frodo is about to go to the Havens and suddenly he’s not sure anymore...
State: Complete
A/N: Some stories are really good or creative. Some are both. This one is probably neither and the title is way too dramatic for it. But it's true. Well, not true as in true, but these are real feelings that I felt less than a week ago. And as you shouldn't bottle feelings up, I wrote this, so please bear with me.
For Adrianne.

For the story, go here

Current Mood: confused

Saying farewell was really really hard. And sad. But I didn't have a choice.
The first half of the trip back to Germany was pretty tiring because I couln't sleep very much and couldn't watch movies either. I was glad when we finally landed in Seoul. We stayed here overnight. It took us forever to get out of the airport building, mainly because we didn't know where to go, but also because we had to fill out heaps of stupid forms. I'm surprised that I don't know my passport number by heart yet.
The hotel was pretty cool, it was a 4 star. The beds were huge and I slept really well, but not very long.
We spent about 1 hour at breakfast eating as much as we could. It was really yummy and there was heaps of different stuff and we didn't know when we'd get something to eat again and what.
After breakfast we went back to our room and watched some Chinese MTV before we had to go to the airport.