Tuesday, 7 May 2002

So much to tell

I have never before neglected my site that long. So much has happened since Friday. I have used my computer only very little for the past few days and yesterday not at all. I still can't believe that I didn't even turn it on yesterday. That is a very, very rare event. Anyhow. Where to start?

On Friday I was trying hard to convince myself not to buy a GameCube. But the more I thought about it the more I wanted one. So I checked my bank account and it told me that I could afford to buy one. You guessed it: I gave in. On Saturday morning Michi and me got up extra early (10am) to go shopping. We left the house around 11 (so we had 5 hours to do all the shopping we wanted before the stores closed). The website of some electronics chain told us that they sold Pikmin as a release title. So first we headed to the nearest store of that chain. Turned out they had something confused there and didn't sell Pikmin yet after all.

So we headed south to the next electronics store which sold the Cube. But for 199 Euro. I had seen it in another store of the same chain for 179 Euro so again I didn't buy it. Went to a games and crafts store where we found two boardgames we had planned on buying anyhow (Trans America and Tyros). Also bought some stuff for a crafts project of mine. Then went north again (had to take a detour because they were repairing the train tracks on the way) to the store that sold the Cube for 179 Euro. Finally got a Cube, second controller, memory card and one game (Super Monkey Ball for 50 Euro, usually games are 60 Euro). Unfortunately they had run out of Rogue Squadron II so we went to yet another store where I found the game. Had to pay 60 Euro this time (dang!).

In the end the whole thing took us over 4 hours, 4 electronics stores and countless kilometers travelled by public transportation (home->north->south->middle->east->home). It's times like this that you realize how big Berlin really is...

The rest of Saturday we spent playing Cube games. Oh and at 11pm we went to see Panic Room (yes, yes, I finally kicked myself to do it) with our friend Moe. Well the film was not what I had expected at all. I mean I didn't get startled once. From what I have read about the movie I had thought that it would be very creepy. Well anyhow the movie was quite good. The ending would have needed something though. It was a little lame somehow. And some of the violence could have been a little less explicit. Not because I'm a sissy but because it just wouldn't have been necessary. But the opening credits where very, very cool (as promised) and the camera angles and movement were very cool also but sometimes a little too self-loving (was it really necessary to fly the camera through the coffee pot handle??).

Sunday I played more Cube. We also kicked ourselves to go running again. Yay. My muscles are still sore. But from now on I will keep at it. That I promised myself. Then more Cube. In the evening I wanted to do that crafts thingy I was talking about earlier but everything went wrong. I'll have to buy some new ingredients today and try it again :(

On Monday we got up early to go to the examination office at our uni to check back with them if the classes we took meet all the required constraints (we were pretty sure that they would but better double check). The conditions that have to be met are very complicated to say the least. Whenever we try to explain them to somebody they cringe in pain after five minutes and beg us to stop. That office is only open four days of the week and only for a couple of hours (in the early morning of course). We got there and only one guy seemed to work the other two ladies sat behind their counters doing ...something. At the front of the line we waited in was a student of architecture trying to bring order to the chaos of classes he took with the administration guy. We waited. And then waited some more. Meanwhile one of the ladies had begun to work again but the line in front of her counter was even longer. So we waited some more. Finally it was our turn but the guy told us that we would have to go to some other office with our request. Gaaaaaah!

We had to hurry then to get to our class in time (which was of course on the other side of the campus). During a short break we managed to go to that other office and the lady there was very nice and helped us even though her official consultation hours had already passed. It turns out everything is okay with the classes we took.

After school we met with our roommate Simon to drive to IKEA to buy a TV rack for all the video game systems we have. When we bought the Cube we had to remove the Dreamcast because there was simply not enough space to put everything. That had to be changed of course. Hence the IKEA trip. Simon wanted to buy a new CD rack because the one he had was not large enough to hold all his CDs (he's got hundreds...). It took us some time to decide on a rack but in the end I think we bought the right one. We also bought a small table that goes in front of the couch and a small stool to rest your legs on when you sit on the bean bag. We managed to fit everything in the car without having to leave trunk open.

While we were at IKEA I got a call that I could come and get my new glasses. So we drove home, unloaded Simon and the stuff we bought and then went to get my glasses. They still feel a little strange. But I guess that isn't suprising if you consider the fact that I have had my old ones for five years now...

We got home around 9pm and immediately started to assemble everything. The little stool was a bitch to assemble. The screws didn't seem to like spending the rest of their life holding that stool together. In the end I won but my hands hurt! While I fought with the stool Michi assembled the table and was amost done with the TV rack by the time I had finished the stool.

But the hardest part lay yet ahead of us. We had to somehow bring order to the mess of cables, video tapes and other junk in our TV corner. Disentangling the cables alone took half an hour. So we spent the next 2.5 hours cleaning all the mess and rearranging everything in the new rack. Now all the cables are neatly tied together and everything looks very nice. The Cube got the biggest compartment all for itself and it seems to like it there. We were finished by 1am and immediately headed for bed.

This morning I got a package from amazon containing the second novel in the series I'm reading. That was a real surprise as they originally told me it would take 1-2 weeks before they could ship it. Now it only took them 2 business days. Very cool.

  Posted by Edda at 13:28 CET