life without a plot

In rather less important news, but I'm so pleased I've got to show it off, I lost almost all my hair at the hairdresser's on Friday. I don't think it's been this short since I have hair, but I've never been happier with a haircut. Should have done this years ago.

( crappy webcam pictures )

 

Four hours of Tai Chi yesterday, a hiking tour planned for tomorrow's day off, so I'm going to be lazy today, catch up wit lj, maybe try to get some kind of basic structure into my death in RTD-vers meta thingy, and determinedly ignore that what I really should be doing is job hunting.

~*~*~

It's probably a vein hope, but I really wish she'd play somewhere in the not-too-remote vicinity some time, because that's the closest I've come to a fanish crush in years... (♥)

(BTW, in case this is of any interest to anyone on the other side of the pond: Today she's playing in San Francisco, on the 16^th in Toronto, and on the 20^th in New York.)

This is just a snippet of... speculation, really, not even meta, that isn't going to fit anywhere else (that would be the 'anywhere else', I'm not sure I'll ever manage to actually write...) about MD:End of the Road, which at the first viewing struck me as anti-climatic and somewhat non-sequitur-ish after the brilliant Immortal Sins. However, on rewatching I started to think about some of the (potential) implications of the episode.

(And while I'm at it, it really is a shame that Angelo wasn't used beyond that one episode. The character is such a lucky combination of script and actor, he comes alive within fifteen minutes in ways the new main characters never really manage to over the entire run of the show. If there ever should be a novel featuring him, I'd almost be tempted to break my rule about tie-in media. Well, almost.)


( TW:MD episode 7 and CoE )

(Tue - Sat) Five songs by Сплин/Splean, picked at random: Молоко и мёд (Milk and Honey), Терпсихора (Terpsichore), Романс (Pomace), Тебе это снится (You're Dreaming This), and Совсем другой (Completely Different).


( music & lyrics )

Also stumbled across a DW Rose vid using Совсем другой (Completely Different) which fits the lyrics amazingly well... (Lyrics under the cut above the video.)

*sigh* I almost regret reading the ASoIaF books after the end of S1, because watching the show certainly was more fun when it didn't have the feel of the books on fast forward, plus the sadly inevitable not-quite-how-I-imagined-it effect. (There's also the fact that I started to read them because I wanted to know how the story would go on, and a couple of thousand pages later I'm stuck in much the same position, and probably will be for the next decade(s?), along with everyone else... Damn it.)

( So, bookverse wise... )

 

(Fri./Sat.) Grazhdanskaya Oborona, whom I stumbled across on YouTube recently; Вечная весна (Eternal Spring) and Далеко бежит дорога (The road runs a long way)

(Note, just in case that is relevant: The first song is somewhat NSFW if work includes Russian speakers. The video might also be a bit disturbing.)

( music & lyrics )

Meh. I was going to take tomorrow, Fri and next Tue. off and drive to Salzburg this evening, but the weather forecast for the weekend is so thoroughly unappealing (persistent rain, possibly snow, cold) that I decided to postpone the trip until the May 1st weekend, because driving 600 km only to sit at home and read a book seems a rather pointless waste of time and energy. Spring has to stay for longer than a fleeting visit some time, right? Right?! On Sunday's walk (Kritzendorf to Purkersdorf, but you can hardly call it a hiking tour if you're never higher up than 500m...) I was wearing a t-shirt, sweatshirt, zipped-up parka, hat and gloves, and was seriously considering zipping on the parka's hood a couple of times. Icy wind, snow (though not much), and all that can be said for that walk is that it kept me on my feet for about 7 hrs. and presumably burned off some calories in the process.

( navel-gazing... )



A few pictures from a decidedly un-Easterly Easter Sunday...

( & a few more... )

A few pictures from last weekend's hiking tours. They're nothing much (the photos, that is; the hiking tours were fantastic) since they were all taken in a bit of a rush, because right now I'm more interested in exercise than photography, and giving yourself a pretext for stopping every few minutes isn't exactly conductive to achieving a greater level of fitness, but maybe they manage to capture the mood at least a little bit. Sunday's tour was on the Hohe Wand (for personal reference: Waldegg - Waldegger Haus - Kleine Kanzel - Sky Walk - Packles - Grünbach, almost 9 hrs.) The week before temperatures had dropped again, so when I started out from Waldegg there was snow almost right down to the train-station, and if it hadn't taken me already 90 mins. to get there, I'd probably have been discouraged and turned back. As it is, I'm glad it had, and I didn't, because it was absolutely gorgeous, especially when the sun was out, although also wintery and forbidding with an icy wind and occasional snowfall when it wasn't. I was walking through snow almost constantly until I came to the sun-exposed, slightly lower south-western edge of the mountain in the afternoon, but since it was only a few centimetres of new snow on dry ground, it wasn't icy or slippery, just rather picturesque...

( more... )

Monday morning I had a dentist appointment, which wasn't the best of ideas in my currently, shall we say, a bit emotionally volatile state, because even a routine check-up and the suggestion of dental hygiene in the near future was enough to almost trip me into a panic attack, but after lunch and having calmed down a bit I decided to go for a quick hike after all, took the train to Bad Vöslau and went up to the Eisernes Tor. Sunny and warm enough for nothing but a t-shirt at least on my way up, trees in gardens were already blossoming, and looking out from the train window the landscape had taken on a green hue. Further up it was still pretty brown and bare, although also dotted with primroses, Leberblümchen, pink/purple erica shrubs and other early flowers, and if you looked closer, buds were beginning to open, too. Came down to the train-station in Baden at dusk, tired and a bit sore, but more balanced than I've felt in a while, and something of that has thankfully stuck during the week...

(It was also rather gratifying to note that despite not doing very much during winter, for the first time I really noticed an effect of all that walking and hiking, with less stopping and having to catch my breath on steep climbs... Definitely looking forward to Rax and Schneeberg this summer.)

( more... )

*sigh* So much for well-intentioned resolutions, I should have known better... Three songs by Zemfira (Хочешь?/Do You Want?, Прогулка/Walk and Небо Лондона/London Sky) to make up for Sunday and Monday, when I was busy with/too tired to post after lengthy hiking tours.

( videos & lyrics )

 

I give up. It's been almost two months since my last post, I've been trying to write an entry for weeks now, but without success. The problem isn't even so much that it feels like I've lost the mental focus and clarity to put my thoughts into words (although that, too); rather there simply are no thoughts that seem worth writing down.

Nothing much happened in the greater scheme of things; I'm not dead (obviously); Russian was all right, if stressful, and I didn't learn as much as I wanted to, because I simply didn't have the energy. Mostly I'm trying to finally get rid of the winter depression that I still seem to be stuck with/in. There were good days, hiking tours, sunshine and warmth, short sleeves, and my first Greek salad of the year, getting a couple of (minor) things done that needed doing. But every time things seem to look a little brighter for a day or two, I fall back again into lethargy, constant tiredness (I don't think I've ever in my adult life been to bed before midnight that often), crying, job worries/anxiety, complete hopelessness and apathy. Mostly, I just want to be able to feel enthusiastic about something again. Anything, really.

Since I can't seem to be able to put together a coherent entry, I'll just post a few pictures from my hiking tour two weeks ago. The first part (from Pottenstein to the Hoher Mandling) was the same as last November, where I took all those picturesque fog pictures, so it was interesting both to actually see where I was going, and to see the change of seasons. Everything was still very bare and wintery, but with a touch of spring; pale yellow primroses and violet Leberblümchen poking through the pale brown of last year's leaves, sometimes right in the middle of the path, and further up I came across large patches of Christmas roses, which made me happy, because I thought I'd missed them again this year. When we were children, we were always picking Christmas roses on our Suday walks in early spring, but I haven't seen any in the wild (there's a flower shop on my way to work that had potted ones standing outside) for, quite literally, decades. Lizards sunning themselves and scuttling away when I walked past, and a couple of early butterflies.

(I've had Anna Karenina on my iPod recently, and while I still don't much like the religious framework and basic anti-intellectualism of the ending, I sometimes think Lewin/Tolstoy maybe was right re. thinking about the meaning of life vs. just living it...)

( & more )