(no subject)

Quick summary of, er, since I last updated. (Funny how every time I make a big dramatic post about OMGjournalingblock&self-hatred, updating suddenly becomes easier...)

Around All Saints Day I took a couple of days off for a four days trip to Salzburg, where I took a lot of walks as well as a lot of photographs, and felt, if not exactly happy, at least mostly relaxed and content and a bit more like breathing freely.



( a few more pictures )

Also watched S5 finishing my B5 marathon and I cried through the best part Sleeping In Light from the moment Susan gets Sheridan's letter, which must be a new record. One might think I'd have become a bit desensitised by the third or fourth time, but apparently I'm getting even more sentimental in my old age. ::sigh::

Surprisingly enough I found I liked - the telepath[s of the very glossy hair, and does it come with the gene?]-arc aside - S5 best of all, maybe because it's the most grittily realistic. Maybe I've become too old and cynical, or maybe it's the spirit of the time and we've all become harder and more disillusioned, but at times throughout the earlier seasons I caught myself thinking that this would never work out, people are just never that idealistic, self-less and heroic and not the least bit corrupted by the power the wield. (And I guess MJS must have been aware of that potential problem, or he wouldn't have gone to such lengths to establish Sheridan and Delenn's personal integrity, not to mention Sheridan's personal memento mori.)

The character I most identify with is still Garibaldi, Sinclair can be surprisingly, dare I say it, hot on occasion, and somehow Ivanonva doesn't live up to the memories I have from when I watched the show on tv.



( reading: Naomi Novik: Empire Of Ivory, Perihan Maǧden: Two Girls, Clive Barker, Mister B. Gone )

Since then, work, procrastinating (as usual), two birthday cakes (cheesecake for B. and M. at work, apple cake for my father), a bit of a lingering cold, more work with books arriving at the last possible moment or later, skipped Spanish class & belly dancing class this week because I was too tired and sick, with a sudden pain in my back/right hip to add to the general miserableness, snow, cold, heat in my apartment not working when I tried to turn it on Saturday (repair guy comes tomorrow), being wrapped in blankets with a hot water bottle as a result, starting to watch the Hornblower DVDs I bought a while back, and while it's a bit like O'Brian light, the boy is ridculously pretty as well as heroic, and it's fairly enjoyable to watch...

(no subject)

Hm, also, the new John Barrowman CD? Is a bit sweeter and schmoopier than is my general taste in music, even if that has been careering wildly & schizophrenically between NIN and John Barrowman for the last year, and even if I've always had a fondness for pop and kitsch. It's not that I dislike it, but I suspect either being in a really romantic, heart-broken or maudlin mood would help appreciating it; or maybe at least being slightly drunk.

And maybe the songs - not those specific ones even, but the type of song, the general mood, remind me of the few parties that I attended as a teenager and never had anyone to dance with when they put on the slow songs.

Bottom line, perpetually single and mostly asexual or just plain messed-up me just isn't romantic enough for this kind of music.

It really struck me this summer when I was reading Doktor Schiwago (loved the book; beautiful, absolutely stunning language, but the part that touched me least was the romance between Schiwago and Lara) that I don't understand love at all. It's an alien country and the people inhabiting it a different species. Or, more likely, I'm the alien.




Er. Back to what I was saying, sweeter than I usually like, but Time After Time is beautiful and the stripped-down version of Heaven made me shiver the first couple of times I listened to it.

Weekend In New England I do like, as well as Please Remember Me, and Feeling Good is a really nice break musically as well as thematically. Being Alive I've simply heard too often already.

The rest is okay, I guess, but doesn't do all that much for me. On the whole, I'm getting more emotion from the musicals-CDs than from the these pop covers...


And as much as I fangirl him, I wish he'd push his boundaries a bit further musically, which I don't really feel he's doing here; the next CD would profit from a bit more variety and a bit of an edge, IMO. And a song-selection not determined by a pre-Christmas release date.