12 of 12 August

I can't believe I haven't updated my blog in 4 weeks... Well, at least I remembered that today is the 12th. lol For more information, see Chad's blog.

Here we go. August 12th, 2007 in the life of Christin. I spent half of it in Magdeburg, at my parents', then drove back to Dresden in the early afternoon.

1) 08:07
Waking up...

2) 10:30
Me, playing on my wonderful piano...

3) 10:32
The piece I practiced. A "Song Without Words" by Mendolssohn-Bartholdy.

4) 14:32
Yay! Bio diesel is 5 cents cheaper than regular diesel.

5) 14:33
The bio diesel pump doesn't look too good. Regular diesel it shall be then...

6) 14:52
Waiting... It took the train five minutes to appear. *grumble*

7) 15:50
Halfway between Magdeburg and Dresden. Yay!

8) 22:40
On my way back from the birthday party. I'm trying to hurry, but the car in front of me is going terribly slow. *grumbleagain*

9) 22:50
Still on my way back from the party. I'm waiting at a red light and this guy is staring at me from my left. lol

10) 23:15
Back home. Checking the consultation-hours of one of my professors.

11) 23:45
A couple of things to unpack...

12) 23:59
The 12th is almost over. Time to turn another page in my Yann Arthus-Bertrand calendar book.

Bonus pic: light.
This is a sunset shot through the holes in my balcony balustrade.

Stay tuned for next month's 12 of 12. It's on my birthday!

12 of 12 July

It's time for a new 12 of 12. It seems like only a week has passed since the last one. 12 of 12 was created by Chad Darnell. See his blog for further information.

This is my July 12th, 2007:

1) 07:45

It's the 12th! Picture-taking-day!

2) 08:30

Gathering the books I want to (have to) return today.

3) 08:45
My bandaged left foot. I sprained my ankle last Thursday. It's much better now, but I have to wear the bandage for a couple more weeks.

4) 09:10
On my way to class. This is the library of my university.

5) 11:10
A lovely flower I came across on my way back from the last seminar of this semester, which also was the last seminar of my studies!

6) 16:15
Just about to finish work. Yay!

7) 18:30
A couple of minutes of leisure reading. :) And while I'm reading my magazine, I try to not to feel guilty, because...

8) 18:45

...this dreadful pile of literature for my written exam on August 10th is staring at me from my left side. I'm halfway through...

9) 23:15
I'm going to be in Berlin next week, so the plants need an extra dose of water to survive without me. This is my little lemon tree.

10) 23:30
Packing some clothes for next week.

11) 23:58
Ready for bed, the sheets look very warm and welcoming. *tired*

12) 23:59
Filling a glass with water to put on my night stand, just in case thirst strikes during the night. And to bed I go... Well, after I post this of course.

I haven't thought of a bonus pic for "HOT" yet, but I might add one later on.

Genesis!

Genesis are on tour again! My parents and I went to the Berlin concert (July 3rd, Berlin Olympic Stadium) of their "Turn It On Again"-Tour and it was absolutely fantastic! They played for 2.5 hours, without a pause and presented some of their best and most famous songs, as well as wonderful interludes, drum solos and an all-around wonderful sound. Phil Collins even tried to speak some German. lol It was a wonderful experience. *inheaven*


For more information about the tour, or Genesis in general, go to http://www.genesis-music.com.

I needed a distraction...

from reading about constitutional jurisdictions in Europe, so I did the Super IQ Test on www.tickle.com. This is my result:




You're a Intuitive Investigator!


The Super IQ Test

Brought to you by Tickle


Apparently, my Super IQ is 147. And I'll be more than happy if it actually helps me through all of my exams. lol

A little film meme...

1. Name a movie that you have seen more than 10 times:

The Great Race (1965)


2. Name a movie that you've seen multiple times in the theater:

The Matrix. (The second time in a Matrix I/II double-feature and the third time in a Matrix I/II/III triple-feature... It got worse with each movie.)


3. Name an actor who would make you more inclined to see a movie:

Harrison Ford. And George Clooney. Can't think of an actress right now...


4. Name an actor who would make you less likely to see a movie:

Leslie Nielsen. I don't like him at all.


5. Name a movie that you can quote from:

Life of Brian


6. Name a movie musical that you know all the lyrics to all the songs:

Chicago and Moulin Rouge


7. Name a movie that you have been known to sing along with:

Chicago and Moulin Rouge. lol


8. Name a movie that you would recommend everyone see:

There are a couple...

• The Great Race
• Moulin Rouge
• Serendipity
• Before Sunrise / Before Sunset
• Philadelphia
• Something's Gotta Give
  

9. Name a movie that you own:

Casino Royale is the last one I bought.


10. Name an actor who launched his/her entertainment career in another medium but who has surprised you with his/her acting chops:

I can't think of one. An actor who recently surprised me with another talent though is Hugh Grant. His singing performance in Music and Lyrics was quite remarkable.


11. Have you ever seen a movie in a drive-in?

Nope.


12. Ever made out in a movie?

No.


13. Name a movie that you keep meaning to see but just haven't gotten around to it:

Ocean's 11, 12 and now 13.


14. Ever walked out of a movie?

No, but I can't say that I wasn't close a couple of times.


15. Name a movie that made you cry in the theater:

It's not rare that I cry in the theater. lol *blush* The Lake House was the last movie that made me cry in the theater.


16. Popcorn?

Not anymore.


17. How often do you go to the movies (as opposed to renting them or watching them at home)?

There are times when I go quite often, but there are also times when I don't see the inside of a cinema for 4 or 5 months. Right now it's once or twice a month.


18. What's the last movie you saw in the theater?

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.


19. What's your favorite/preferred genre of movie?

I like (romantic) comedies, a little sci-fi and fantasy and political dramas. I'm not a fan of horror or thriller.


20. What's the first movie you remember seeing in the theater?

The Lion King in 1995. (or was it 1994?)


21. What movie do you wish you had never seen?

Matrix: Revolutions.


22. What is the weirdest movie you enjoyed?

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.


23. What is the scariest movie you've seen?

The first time I saw it I found The Sixth Sense very scary...


24. What is the funniest movie you've seen?

A German film called Traumschiff Surprise: Periode 1. And Something's Gotta Give is also very funny.

12 of 12 June

Time for another 12 of 12. And today I almost forgot about it... Thank you, Maik, for the reminder! :) That's the reason why there are no morning or afternoon pictures this time. lol Once again, thank you to Chad for the wonderful idea!

Here we go...

1) 18:49

Chaos on my desk - multi-tasking with two computers and heaps of paperwork.


2) 18:55

A hastily prepared dinner, tastes better than it looks. lol My stomach had been growling for a couple of hours. I didn't have lunch and spent 4 hours at the library today, both things that make you pretty hungry. Crisp bread with Nutella - yummy...


3) 19:10

27.4°C in my apartment. :o


4) 19:11

The two pieces for Saturday's choir concert in my hometown. I had to practice them today since I haven't had too many rehearsals for this project and both works are pretty contemporary, thus a little difficult to sing and memorize...


5) 19:20

On my way to choir practice. (Not the same choir as mentioned in 4)...)


6) 19:21

Dresden's main train station.


7) 19:23

The spire of one of Dresden's famous churches.

8) 21:24

Some green in the middle of the street. The one tree in the middle struck me as odd since it's practically leaf-less...

9) 19:25

Almost there...


10) 21:45

After choir rehearsal. Apparently, for some of us, including our conductor, singing for two hours wasn't exhausting enough. lol

11) 22:50

On my way home - temporarily halted...


12) 23:07

Back home from the choir rehearsal I'm watching the last few minutes of tonight's episode of Grey's Anatomy (3.11) on German TV.

13) Bonus pic: Secret

Shh, don't tell...

Let me introduce you to...

Bert!

Bert is my new (and first) MacBook, who joined Einstein (my not so old Fujitsu Siemes desktop) on Friday. He's replacing Lila, my old Sony Vaio notebook.

I sometimes have the impression that computers, or more generally technology, and I don't get along very well. Lila started out wonderfully and I enjoyed working with her for the first year or so. Then she started freezing on me, sometimes even blue-screening. That was shortly before Service Pack 2 for Windows XP came out. I installed it and Lila started to behave again. Then I went to France for a year where I had to write lots of essays and other assignments. That's when Lila started to misbehave again. She constantly froze on me and when I had to restart an essay 6 (!) times - not even telling Word to save my document every 2 minutes helped - and ended up in tears, I knew things couldn't continue like this. So I got Einstein. Einstein has been very dependable, except that he is very, very noisy. But I've heard from several people with Fujitsu Siemens computers that they're having the same problem. He's mostly doing his work, but in times when you have to work at the computer for a couple of hours, the noise can become very annoying and even deafening.

Meanwhile, Lila had been converted to Linux and has been working nicely ever since. But since she is pretty old (I got her in 2002), heavy and the battery has a durability of approximately 10 minutes, I can't take her anywhere. And that comes in the way of researching and writing in the library (well, not in the narrow sense of the word, but since many of the books I'll need in order to prepare my finals and probably my thesis cannot be borrowed from the library I'll need to read and write on the spot). Which means that I had to buy a new laptop. And since more and more friends of mine are getting MacBooks or iMacs and are extremely satisfied with these (and other) Apple prducts, I decided to opt for a MacBook myself.

Now I have Bert, and he appears to be working excellently. And he's white and beautiful, quiet and slim, and Mac OS X is very easy to get used to. Let's hope that this time I have a couple of years until I need to start worrying about him... My dad will be taking over custody for Lila.

Being happy with Bert does not mean though that I don't have any more technological problems. My PDA (a HP iPAQ Pocket PC) decided not to read my SD cards anymore, which means that I can't listen to music or use my mobile navigation system. I'll try and contact HP later this week to ask them if this is a problem that I can fix myself, or if I'll have to send my poor little PDA (which, come to think of it, I never named...) to HP...

Yep...technology and I really aren't best friends...

Seriously?

I'm not a TV junkie... Okay, maybe I am...just a little. But I have to say that, right now, I hate myself for being a TV show fan, because every spring (or whenever it is that a TV show goes on hiatus) I go through the same ordeal:

1) *boom* A huge thing happens in one of the TV shows I like. It could be a person dying (or looking as if), a bomb exploding, someone claiming to love someone and waiting for a reaction, a sentence starting with "I never told you, but...", a person flying to a planet far, far away, someone reading something he or she should have never read, a marriage proposal, and other such wonderful things.

2) *silence* Seconds, minutes, hours passing by...

3) *zoom into a face* Mostly of utter shock, or indecisiveness.

4) *fade out* Sometimes followed by "to be continued..."

Or, to say it short, a cliffhanger.

Most of the TV shows I liked or loved at one point in my short life have brought the art of cliffhangers to perfection: Alias, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lois and Clark - The New Adventures of Superman, Gilmore Girls, Emergency Room, Charmed, and most recently Grey's Anatomy, just to name a few. They all have left me with summers of speculation, anticipation and impatience. In addition to that, some of these shows love(d) to leave you hanging with a cliffhanger from one episode to the next one. Those cliffhangers I can deal with, because it only takes six days before I know how they turn out. Season cliffhangers? Yep, not my strength.

Take for example Alias, episode 22 of season 4: "Before the Flood"... After having saved the world from ending, Sydney and Vaughn (the two main characters) are driving towards the beach. They seem happy since Sydney had agreed to marry Vaughn shortly before the world was supposedly ending. A happy song is filling the inner sanctum of the car.

Sydney: "Vaughn, what are you telling me?"
Vaughn: "Well, for starters, my name isn't Michael Vaughn."
The camera turns to the right and we see a car coming towards us, crashing right into the side of the car.
Fade Out.

Huh.

I know, it's just fictional, a TV show, nothing serious, not the main focus in life, blablabla.. I know that speech, I've given it to myself countless times. But when I watched that scene, my heart stopped for what felt like minutes. A TV show that can do that (without physically endangering its viewers) has to be a great show, I acknowledge that. And I know that cliffhangers are supposed to keep viewers interested in the show. Well, all I can say is: success!

Alias is finished, we all know how it ended. Grey's Anatomy and other shows will be back next season...

Now I have to wait until September to find out what will happen... I'm glad I have lots of more serious things that will keep my occupied all summer: trying to graduate from university, music, family and other stuff. Or: a real life... (it's a miracle I actually have one...)

One good thing about cliffhangers: All the speculations and theories about Alias brought me to an internet forum where I've made many, many friends. Thank you, cliffhangers. :)

The end.

*Fade Out*

12 of 12

Another 12 of 12! And it's a Saturday, which means that I actually had something interesting to do! To see what everyone else's day looked like, see Chad's blog.

1) 02:30

These boots were made for dancing... Just came home from a night of Dixieland at a club. Fabulous!


2) 11:00
Waking up...


3) 11.30
An apple-cinnamon muffin for breakfast...

4) 14:45
Done washing and drying my hair. It takes 45 minutes of blow-drying to make it look this good...

5) 15:45

Enjoying some self-cooked rhubarb. Yummy! I love its typical mixture of sweet and sour.

6) 16:30

Ready to go, everything I need is packed up in my new purse, which I bought 2 weeks ago.

7) around 17:25

It's the annual Dixieland Festival in Dresden - the biggest Dixieland/Jazz festival in Europe! There are Jazz and Dixieland Bands in every club and every corner of the city. Thousands of Dixieland fans are crowding the inner city...

8) around 17:30

...and that's what will be left of them at the end of the day...

9) 17:50

Going with the flow of the crowd. Target: the building on the right side of the picture.

10) around 18:15

Listening to The Dixie Ramblers from Belgium. I already heard them at the club I went to last night with a friend and they were really great! So I was more than happy when I read that they'd be playing today outside a building that is only a mere 100 feet away from the building I was supposed to be in later on.

11) around 18:30

I liked the reflection in the mirrored windows of the building.

12) 18:55

From Dixieland to Bach - after listening to the Dixieland Band I went around the corner to "my" church. We had a rehearsal at 7 pm for our 8 pm concert.


13) Bonus pic: Dreamscapes
I took this picture in March 2006, on a choir trip to Japan.

The latest addition...

...to my puzzle collection. It's a pretty famous German comic strip by an equally famous German comedian. The line in the bubble says "The egg is hard!", which - in itself - isn't all that funny, but in the context of the cartoon it belongs to it's one of the funniest lines ever delivered by a comic creature. lol

I already have a new puzzle project piled up, and it's going to be even more difficult than this one...