schneefink

I normally don't read online newspapers, and I'm not yet good or patient enough to try the Russian papers. But today I was bored enough checked. Apparently there's a crazy person driving around in my home town shooting people with an air rifle. O.O

(Not in our district, fortunately. I wonder what the tabloid headlines look like?)

The current corruption scandals are almost too many to list them all and certainly too many to keep track of, which kind of says everything necessary about Austrian politics. Personally I love this song, which lists scandals to "We didn't start the fire." It will make no sense to people not familiar with Austrian politics, but I think it's hilarious. And the "list of inspirations" in the google docs file is very sad.

Also there's currently a "Slash Film Festival". Horror movies were not what I first thought of.

*collapses in an exhausted heap*

The last four days I participated in a scavenger hunt. It was organized by students from the Technical University. In teams of eight people (at most) we had to look for 202 items, some of which were a live coachmen with goulash, a 1,5 meter hobbyhorse made from paper maché, a raw whole chicken egg in an undamaged bottle with a bottleneck of no more than two centimetres (nobody got that one), an Eiffel tower made out of specific fruits, a Julian Assange action figure, all team members with French nails and ball clothes, pedobear, lots of stuff from companies that no longer exist, and more items that were ridiculously difficult to get, many of which I can't translate properly or that wouldn't make sense without context. Oh, and there were also "find that person" games in Vienna. Time was important. My legs are sore.

Most of the team didn't know each other in advance, so we met an hour earlier in a nearby café. We exchanged anecdotes - meaning that I kept pestering those who'd participated before how they'd acquired the things on the old lists - and then our team leader opened his bag and pulled out a Star Trek phaser. "Just in case," he said. Okay, I said to myself, obviously he's more of a nerd than I'd thought.

Item 173 on the list: a LARP weapon. Whooo-hoo! So he knew what he was doing after all. ;-)

We had a lot of fun, but it was exhausting. We, or at least I, overdid it on the first days and didn't have any energy left today, but everyone implicitly agreed to stop being overly ambitious and in the end it was fine. 16th out of 28, not bad. And the first few teams had approximately 170 of 200 items; they must be crazy.

Sadly, we forgot to take many photographs. Maybe next year.


Tomorrow is "open motion" at debate club. This means that the motion will be vague (eg. "TH totally would", which became the orgy debate at the last party), but the first speaker has more liberties: he can specify time, location, and universe. So for example tomorrow we could have a debate "This house, as the Galactic Senate, would dissolve the Jedi Order" or "THW dissolve Slytherin" or "TH, as the orcs in LotR after Sauron's defeat, would demand asylum in Gondor" or things like that. (Suggestions welcome ^^)

This promises to be so much fun! I hope I get to debate.


More randomness: LB is reading Dresden Files now. xD I am, apparently, reading Homestuck. I don't know how that happened. My genficathon fic is coming along slowly (had to take a break because of the scavenger hunt), but I'm still hoping to get it done in time.

Mood swings are good when I go from sad and weird to accomplished and proud of myself. I finished that stupid paper (at least my part of it), and yesterday for the first time ever I did everything on my to-do-list! I even went to a museum. I´d forgotten how great Ernst Jandl is, and if I didn´t have to pack I´d post a few of his poems. Later.

I´m missing about a day of sleep, but that´s nothing unusual.

And I bought books! I wanted to buy "The Broken Kingdoms" for the train journey, but the bookshop didn´t have it, so I had to compromise. I´m a bit picky when it comes to books I actually buy instead of books to read; I ended up buying "Heaven´s Net is Wide", because I already have the four other Otori books even though prequels are less exciting, and "The Dark Volume" because the first one was good (even if the ending was a let-down) and I wanted something with a female protagonist. (I thought about buying Dresden Files - id-pinging books, yay! - but I think they´re better read as a whole series and it´s rather long by now.) And then I decided I´d earned it and pre-ordered The Broken Kingdom anyway. Books!

(I also have fifty One Piece volumes in my room that a friend loaned to me. It´s a miracle I finished that paper at all, really.)

Off to my grandparents´ and hopefully skiing!

Merry Christmas!
to all who celebrate, and relaxing holidays to everyone.

Also cookies. We have so many cookies left over this year, I don´t know how we´re going to eat them all. Probably by forcing them on all our friends. It doesn´t count as forcing if they´re good cookies, right?

We´re going skiing until New Year´s Eve! :D

I probably won´t have internet during that time, but that´s marginally less scary than that I felt the inexplicable urge to announce it here so nobody wonders why I don´t answer emails. It´s just for one week! I guess that´s part of being an internet addict?

I´m also scared my sore throat will get worse and I won´t be able to ski. That´s a nightmare. I will get better! Bad enough that I couldn´t sing properly during Mass today.

More random things:
I ate so much tomato salmon soup at our friends´ today I can hardly move.
I finished crocheting elbow protectors for my brother (pretty blue wool) and he recognized immediately what they were for (for playing chess. He also got napkins and pens for his math urges and an alarm clock for violin practice. I labelled it "Survival Kit." Luckily, we have the same sense of humor.)
I got two cookbooks for Christmas - I wonder if that´s a hint? ^^ And also lots of other stuff, wow.
I still haven´t sent all Christmas cards. Fail. But I sent over 50%...
No snow, but we might get some in the next few days.
After Christmas Eve I spent an hour cleaning up my room. wtf. It looks really nice now.
I have so much to study over the holidays that I can´t think about it otherwise I´ll go crazy. One step at a time. Why are all the statistics lecture notes so useless?
I now have an appointment for the application interview for the МГУ. The interview will be in Russian. Scary! I haven´t spoken any Russian for almost a year.
I read a lot of sga_santa fic, and by "a lot" I mean all of them. Except maybe one or two. Argh. Why? Some of them were good, many weren´t. I will not read un-recced Yuletide fic! ...until the January exams are over.
This year I wrote enough fic to warrant a "what I wrote this year"-writeup! At least I think so. This makes me happy, but I won´t have the time until January.

This entry is getting longer and longer because I don´t want to shut off the laptop for the last time in a week (probably.) I am now feeling slightly stupid and will hopefully go to bed.

I hope you´re all having a good time :)

I´m trying out Structured Procrastination - I don´t know who linked to it, but thanks. I´m not sure if it works yet, but at least it made me organize my (too long) to-do-list (somwhat.)

Random things happening in my life:

- My brain is constantly switching between "I´ll never get this stuff done oh my God how am I supposed to do this I need a timeturner I´m DOOMED" and "It´s not so bad, really, and look at all the things I´ve already done! I can do this!"
The former comes much more naturally.

- Related, we had a lecture about "Appreciative Inquiry" on Friday. The conditions that make me get stuff done: stress, being responsible and afraid of letting people down, no internet access. Hmm.

- Group work at university is very educational. Mostly it teaches me how to deal with different levels of in-/competence. For example in group W I quickly snagged a topic I can write about with minimal interference from the others, group S works together perfectly but none of them can spell and in group P I became the undisputed leader by being the only one even remotely prepared.

- Once upon a time I thought that university students, especially those who are already past the two entry semesters, are interested and committed and hard-working and also possess at least basic intelligence. I also thought university professors are all very smart and know what they are talking about. Ahahahaha.

- I am making new friends! Or at least I´m making a lot of acquaintances with the potential to become friends, both at university and in my new choir, and I also meet old friends more often. This is amazing. I feel like I was stuck in solitary space during the last year.

- Choir! :D

- I may be, potentially, possibly, be writing something. Or not, I only have 300 words, but I really really want to write this. It´ll be a challenge, though.

- I´ll apply for a exchange semester in Moscow! Mostly so I don´t forget my Russian, but it would be a wonderful adventure.

- I went to see the new Harry Potter yesterday. ( Not really a spoiler, but just in case )

- Why is it that fitness centers never have the prices on their websites? I need it for this stupid paper!

- We have a design for this year´s Christmas cards! They´ll look great. (If I remember) I´ll put up a post asking who wants one when I know if we actually have cards to spare - we are notoriously bad at estimating how many we´ll need.

- Christmas markets! This summer in Krakow was the first time I bought jewelry for myself - before that I only ever got stuff as presents. I now have two new long colorful necklaces (one wood and one with feutre balls I´m constantly playing with) and a pair of small blue earrings. Pretty.

So how are you doing?