![[adognamedfish header]](/images/site/header.jpg "a dog named fish")
We're currently pondering the question wether we should get up at 7:30 tomorrow (well today actually) to go see the start of Berlin Marathon. Apparently it's a pretty overwhelming experience when 40,000 people run past you like a herd of stampeding quadrupeds. Michi was there last year when I was in America and he says it was pretty cool. I'm also thinking that this would be a pretty neat photo-taking opportunity.
M is currently making us a nice big Gin & Tonic with the Bombay Saphire we bought recently. We hope this will make us sleepy enough that we can go to bed between 2 and 3 today and get up at 9 tomorrow and then work all day. Yay. sigh
We put a big calendar up on our wall today where we marked the due date of our theses (thesises? what is the plural of thesis?) and important milestones on the way. October is going to be SO stressful. Oh. My. God. I have to do one chapter per week starting Monday. Maybe I should really follow Steve’s advice and hook me up with some non-stop caffeine IV for the next five weeks.
That calendar is really making me nervous. I can see it out of the corner of my eye when I sit at my computer (which I do all day currently. Which is why my back problems reappeared recently).
I’m sure everybody has to go through this when writing a thesis. But it’s the first time for me so I hope my bitching will be excused.
type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type..
pause to bang head on table
type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type.. type..
Need something to brighten your day? Try out the Cyborger. It will tell you what your name would stand for if you were a cyborg. I for example would be a:
Oh and have a look at this google search. The result isn’t all that surprising :)
It's raining and raining and raining. It's also election day. When I got back from the voting booth I was soaked. So the guys I voted for better win. They owe me that.
Yesterday night, shortly before bed time, I installed the Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom demo I had downloaded and just wanted to check it out. Unfortunately the next time I glanced at my watch it was 6:00 in the morning. Damn addictive gameplay. The game is a city building game. The setting is ancient China. There's really nothing special about the game. It's just that you can't stop...
Today I really tested a cashier's temper at my supermarket. First the Nutella jar got entered twice and he had to ask his colleague at the next line to call for the cancel key because he didn't have a microphone himself. Then the toilet paper wasn't in the system and he had to ask his colleague again to ask for the price. Then the system insisted the box of plums were 100 Euro instead of 1.39. It was all pretty funny.
But I think what really did him in was when I returned 5 minutes later because I had forgotten to get my parking ticket marked as customer so I wouldn't have to pay for the parking...
:)
I'm back. And I think it'll stay that way for a while now. I've been traveling a lot recently. Had fun with the family on the weekend though.
On Sunday I woke up and my right foot hurt when I put my weight on it. It felt really strange. I decided to join my mom and her sisters for a walk in the countryside on the outskirts of Koblenz in hopes that this would make the pain go away. After two quite painful hours it did get better and almost stopped hurting alltogether. But yesterday evening it started to hurt again and still hurts today. *sigh* If it doesn't get better soon I guess I should see a doctor about it. But I hate doing that. You waste so much time waiting in waiting-rooms.
My cousin gave me 20 odd non-German Euro coins from his collection. He has a complete set from almost every country by now. Even one from Monaco, which is roughly worth 170 Euro. He gave me his duplicates. None from Monaco but there's a 1 Euro coin from Italy which I've been desperately wanting to get :)
Yesterday when we were about to leave for Berlin the exhaust pipe decided to disconnect again. We were lucky to find a mechanic who was willing to weld it back on although he was about to go home when we arrived.
Lots of stuff went wrong yesterday. I bought a very cool pair of Converse Chucks. Now that isn't a bad thing in itself. Problem is, I bought the wrong size. And don't ask me how that happened.
Today we took the train to the far south eastern corner of Berlin to raid the Humboldt University computer science library. They have a much better assortment of books than my uni's library. Only problem is that it takes close to an hour to get there.
I managed to find a birthday present for my mom. I hope she'll like it. And as the day was so beautiful Michi and I decided to stay at Potsdamer Platz for a while and feed the fishies. There's this pond with hundreds of fishies in there, some of them huge. It's fun to see them fight about the cookie crumbs with the ducks :) The ducks and sparrows even ate from my hand. Ducks were reluctant at first but when they saw the sparrows got all the yummy cookies they decided to be brave too and took the food from my hand. Yay!
Off now to visit my mom and dad.
I almost lost my mobile phone in the cinema yesterday. My brain was still trying to process the movie I had just seen (K-PAX, good thought-provoking movie with a great score. Honestly the music alone is almost worth seeing this film) when I walked out of the cinema. I didn't look back to check wether I had forgotten something which I usually do (not losing stuff but checking wether I have) . Then suddenly a guy behind us told his friends that he had found a phone. I reached for the pocket that was supposed to contain my mobile and it was gone. The guy needed a little persuasion that this really was my phone and I wasn't trying to steal it. But in the end he believed me and I was actually glad that he was reluctant to just give it away to the next best person. Thank goodness he found it!
One thing's for sure: I will never again wear this particular pair of pants to the cinema again.
I feel guilty for not updating my site very often at the moment. It's just that there's nothing to tell, really. All I do each day is get up, try to avoid work for a while and then do thesis stuff. It sucks a lot. Especially as we still have this great weather.
My roommates are out of town at the moment but the flat is crowded nevertheless. My brother is staying here with a friend of his for a couple of days. I wish I could show them around but I don't have time for this at the moment. They have a lonely planet guide though so I guess they'll be okay.
It's my mom's birthday today. I'll be visting her on the weekend and I still don't have a present because I didn't even have time to think about it...
*sigh*
Sorry. I'm a little depressed at the moment.
Unexpectedly I was without internet since last thursday. I was having fun at a LAN party at this cute little castle organized by some friends of mine. I had expected to have internet access but this time they didn't provide that. I had planned to create a little castle lan blog but now that I think about it I probably wouldn't have had time for this anyhow. We played Ork, a German Pbem (and one of the best Pbems I know), live. So I spent my days and nights making turns for this game and not having much time for anything else. It was actually pretty exhausting. But fun because you could immediately see other players' reactions to stuff you did...
I got my first Euro coin from Portugal this morning. And it's in pretty good shape also. I have waited for one of those for 8 months now. Wheee!
The Chaos Computer Club will have a new light installation, a follow-up to Blinkenlights, up and running soon. It's more advanced than the original Blinkenlights also. They can do greyscale now. Wheee! Only problem is: it's not in Berlin but in Paris. Doh!
Today's Megatokyo strip is great. I fear the exact same thing will happen to me with my cordless mouse at the LAN party I'm attenting next weekend :)
I'm sorry. No seasandfun-report-with-pics today either. I spent the whole day (10:00-20:00h) on a sailboat with a couple of friends. I got up at 8:00 this morning (on a SUNDAY!!!) for this. It was great fun even though the wind wasn't really on our side. It came in gusts instead of just blowing constantly. It would've been neat to be able to go faster from time to time but that didn't ruin our day at all. What bugged me more was my wet backside (the boat had a little leak which allowed just enough water in that my butt was pretty soaked, and most of all COLD, by the time we got back.
Somehow I ended up being responsible for the whatever-the-english-name-for-the-little-triangular-sail-you-have-in-addition-to-the-main-sail-is which involved a lot of pulling of ropes whenever we made a turn or sailed close to the wind. All of this happened quite often so I ended up pulling at those ropes almost all the time. It was fun and I got quite good at it after a while (one of the guys who sailed with us thought I had sailed before because I handled those ropes so "expertly" ;) I haven't sailed before though. I must be a natural :). But now my hands are sore. Next time I'll wear gloves.
I also still have this phantom feeling of still being on a sailboat. It gets worse when I close my eyes. It's a good feeling but it makes it a little hard to concentrate on other stuff. This is why I'll be going to bed now and sail some more in my mind :)
![[Archive Link]](/images/site/permalink.gif "Archive Link")
![[Comments Link]](/images/site/comments.gif "Comments")