hmpf | Entries tagged with friends

No, not a 'real' one yet - let's not get ahead of ourselves here. ;-) Just a weird little part-time job, doing unspecified office help stuff that, oddly, for the most part seems to consist of putting women's fitness equipment up on ebay, for now. :D

Also, it's in the back of beyond, more than an hour away from where I live.

With no lunch opportunities whatsoever anywhere near. I am ridiculously worried about how to feed myself there. I know it's ridiculous, I'll probably survive just fine on sandwiches. I can still cook occasionally in the evenings, I suppose, if I really want to have something more than sandwiches on a given day.

For the next week and a half, before my internship starts, it'll be more or less full-time - though I've begged off one day this week to do some urgent stuff that needs to be taken care of before the internship, and another to work at the other job, the "Mini-English" one (which I'm probably going to have to quit when the internship starts, because there's just no way I can combine two part-time jobs *and* an internship - none of these are on the weekend. I hope I'll get paid for the Mini-English job despite this rather short duration of my work relationship with those people... I'm kind of worried, though, because I'm not sure I even have a proper work contract with them - there was some confusion there.)

Strangely, the thing that worries me most, next to "how am I going to get food???" and "dammit, there goes my attempt at catching up with friends before the internship starts", is "frell, and I was *just* beginning to get back into making jewellery!"

I'm weird.

Current Mood: weird

So, I was ranting about my M.A. thesis, i.e. my inability to narrow down the topic to something manageable, to a friend at librarything last week. Mostly I complained about not having anybody knowledgeable in things fantastic around that I could talk to, because I'm at a point in the process where I desperately need to *talk* about the project with someone who knows a bit about dealing with fantastic literature on an academic level.

Saturday night I got a reply to that rant, from a total stranger, who told me that on Sunday, a group of Ph.D. students who are all doing theses on sf/fantasy-related topics would meet in a small town about an hour north of where I live. I spent most of the night trying to find a way to get there... At nine in the morning, I called my oldest friend, E., and asked her if she could take me there - she has a car, you see, and the earliest train I could have caught would have had me arriving much too late.

She said yes, and so I made it to the meeting, albeit still a bit late - but not too late to make some contacts. Plus, they put me on their mailing list, which means I have a place to ask questions now. (I'm also supposed to give a talk about my project at the next meeting, which is in three months. Uhm. - Those folks were pretty good at roping you in immediately. *g*)

The internet is amazing.

So is E.

I've slept somewhat easier, the last couple of nights.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: PJ Harvey: Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea

- Dexter: I want to read an AU fic in which... hmm, how to write about this in a non-spoilery way? ... ah yes. I want to read a fic in which Dexter follows through on what he said in 2.11 to Doakes he was considering, and what Doakes was encouraging him to do. And I want Doakes to be there, and the two of them to (continue to) develop this strange almost-but-not-quite buddy relationship. Yes. I know. Deeply AU. But I so want to read that. (Did I mention I loved Dexter and Doakes to bits in season 2? *Almost* in a slashy way, even.)

- There are cat cafés in Japan. I need to move to Japan, clearly.

- Fennel is good. I didn't know that.

- A huge percentage of press articles about comics really do have titles like "Pow! Bang! Zap! Comics [grow up/go online/aren't just for kids anymore/get Japanese competition/aren't just for boys anymore/...]"

- Recent discussions about the DVD release of the latest Highlander movie on the one big HL list I'm still lurking on have demonstrated to me again that HL can be an extremely strange fandom. The fandom, including the list, was pretty unanimous in its hatred of the movie. Yet now everybody seems to be eager to buy the DVD. WTF, people? Stop buying crap that you recognise as crap, or the producers of said crap will *never* stop producing it!

I mean, I realise it's none of my business what other people do with their money. But, still. *shakes head*

- Since I mentioned cats above: Proof that the laws of nature only apply to cats in a very loose sense: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn9HgEPxO0M

- Actually tried restarting my social life, these past few days, meeting with a couple of friends and with my old jewellery making 'mentor'.

- My meeting with one of these friends showed me that I can only watch LoM series 2 in the company of extremely patient (and thoroughly spoiled) people, because I tend to rant at the screen now.

- I'm sick as a dog.

Current Mood: exhausted

- one of my most neglected friends; one of those I feel too ashamed by now to contact, even, and quite possibly do not deserve to call friend anymore - is no longer unpublished:

Go on, buy her book!

The least I can do is usher some people her way!

She writes darkly beautiful, highly 'artificial' (in the sense of 'something made, something in which every word, every letter, every mark of punctuation has been placed with the utmost deliberation), often cryptic poetry. Happy stuff it is not - but good. Really good. She's also a great photographer.

Oh, and she writes in German, of course, so I should probably do this rec post in German, really. (She said and continued in English.)

I don't know the book yet - only just ordered it - but I know enough of her poetry and her work in general to give this my recommendation, even unseen. If you know German at native speaker level, like poetry that doesn't make things easy for you, and appreciate black-and-white photography: buy this book.

ETA: You can see and read some of her work here.

Current Mood: excited

First things first: Peter Wingfield is almost as sexy as Methos is, and what's more, he moves in a way that no normal, mortal human being should have a right to move. It's a bit scary, truth be told. And sexy. Did I mention sexy?

I'm such a fangirl. Sheesh.

Well. I'm back. Britain was great, and not just because it would totally kick Australia's ass in a bare-chested knife fight (*waves to

beccatoria*). This time, strangely, I did not feel like a tourist anymore. Which was nice, in a weird way.

Totally panicked on the plane, though. Need to find alternative method of travel. Seriously.

Con report of sorts coming later. (Also: Worldcon report, what I remember of it. If I can manage. It really has been far too long!)

Regrets: Not managing to see

jazzymegster,

elliejane,

aminspace,

torn_eledhwen and a bunch of other people - I definitely need to stay longer, the next time.

But I did get to meet

fleta,

beccadg,

elbatsnud,

beebee852001,

tiniago,

ommadon and of course

beccatoria, so that was nice. Love you all. :-)

Now I'm very busy fixing some computer bugs and then trying to get caught up on all kinds of fannish duties - catching up on lj, beta reading, translating It's Walky, reading my mailing lists and doing moderator's duty at sf-community.de... it'll be a busy couple of days, I reckon, before I can go back to doing something for uni.

Also, I want to meet some offline friends in the next few days; that has a very high priority. There's people here in my hometown I haven't seen in 14 months, and that's just not right in a proper friendship.

So, that's the Quick Hmpf Update for now. More later.

Current Mood: busy

Spent New Year's Eve online, chatting to

ankae, good friend of mine (truth be told, possibly rather something like my long lost twin sister - she even shares nearly the same birthday!), much missed since she moved literally halfway around the globe about two years ago. (Two years already? Yeah, I think so.) Was glad to discover she still has *some* geek tendencies. (The issue we kind of dance around when meeting/talking again after a long time: "... say, you still a geek?" Our very own Gretchenfrage. Always afraid the other might 'grow out of it', thus proving that *we're* just stuck in some sort of eternal adolescence, after all.) Just before midnight

nager and Anduranova also popped up online, and I chatted with all three for a while, feeling oddly connected for all the distance (present, past and future; physical and other).

It was a good New Year's Eve, strange as it may sound.

And today I found out that my oldest online contact, a lovely woman by the name of Jean who copied the Methos eps for me, way back when I had just entered Highlander fandom, died recently. I lost contact with her after a few mails and letters at the time - I was still very uncertain about the whole fandom thing, and about online life and a lot of things, and painfully shy to boot. Now I regret I didn't keep in touch. I made her a bit of jewellery in return for her tapes. Strange to imagine that it may now be owned by some relative who probably doesn't know its history.

Rest in peace, Jean. Thank you for showing me the kindness of fandom.

Much love to everyone else out there, as well. Have a good 2006. Don't die, okay?

Current Mood: weird
Current Music: Kate Bush