How I Became A Hockey Fan

I’m in Munich over the weekend, watching the German national hockey team compete in the Deutschland-Cup tournament. Hockey is of course ice hockey, for any German reader who might be wondering. But as it’s the only kind of hockey that matters to me, I’ll stick with the english distinctiion between hockey and field hockey.

Why Trains Are My Favourite Means of Transportation…

One part of the assignment for the “Enviromental Education” course, which I completed last week, was to point out in which way children and teenager are raised as destined (car) drivers. I don’t want to bore you with my scholarly thoughts on that, but working on it made me once again realize that my upbringing in that regard was obviously rather unusual. My parents weren’t environmental activists who condemned all kinds of motorized transportation or anything. But as long as I can remember, in our family the car was just an ordinary means of transportation. Not some status symbol, not some sanctuary, not something to spend a lot of thought about. Just a means to get from A to B. My mom for instance never had a driver’s license. My dad would never have considered “cleaning and polishing the car” a overly important weekend activity.

One Reason Why I’ll Never Be P.O.T.U.S.

Last Sunday I finally found the time to start my regular visits to “The West Wing” again and once I started it was really difficult to stay away. And now it’s difficult to not make this post a long one, gushing about the guys on the show and the stories and everything. I’ll do that in a post later, I promise. I’ve watched episode 6.09 and 6.10 last night, in which Bartlet suffers through a severe MS attack. Of course I watched the events unfold with slight unease, because a) I’m hypercritical when it comes to MS portrayed on TV shows / movies and b) I usually try to not think about what could happen to me one day. It ’s not that I’m really want to be oblivious and ignorant, because I do know the facts and I know what could happen. But most of my MS attacks have been comparatively mild, so I’m trying to keep that in mind and I hope that my life with this disease will be compartively normal. And believe (or at least try to) that I won’t suffer from severe attacks in the future, when I haven’t suffered from severe attacks in the past. Maybe that wishful thinking. I’m sure, part of it IS wishful thinking. But it’s that wishful thinking that is keeping me sane. Because I usually am a glass-half-empty person and worry too much and anticipate the worst. If I did that with the MS, I would have gone crazy a long time ago.

Hairdresser of (random or true?) choice

During a break at work this morning I started to put together some thoughts for the post I’m planning to do on Friday. I’ll be away for the weekend and will have to leave at 5.40 AM, so Friday (and Saturday) posts definitely have to be written beforehand. The Friday post is already getting quite long and somehow got a totally different spend than I actually intended it to have ;-) I’ll most probably will still post it on Friday anyway.

Today’s post has to be shorter though, so I’m asking  another question (for anyone willing to answer): Do you have a regular hairdresser or do you visit various hair salons and don’t care who is cutting your hair? And if so, why?

What To Expect For NaBloPoMo…

First day (well actually it’s day 3, but it’s day 1 after I officially signed up) and I don’t have any idea what to write about. Although that’s not quite true. I have several ideas what to write about, but it’s 9.30 PM and my brain is too tired to write an interesting blog post. And I’m determined to not write uninteresting blog posts during the NaBloPoMo. Even though if something is interesting or not might be debatable in any case. But at least I want to think that the post I’m writing is somewhat interesting. Not much interesting on my mind tonight though.

Throughout the day I thought about possible topics to cover in the next few weeks and maybe I should start this with just listing some of these ideas. There will be posts about

• TV shows (of course *g*)
• why trains are my favourite means of travel
• Indian Summer
• why I love watching hockey
• books (at least one – “The Book Thief” which I’m currently reading)

and a lot more stuff, I hope. The “Why” posts I actually plan to write this week, so I hope I’ll really get around to do it. Right now I’ll be preparing for the TV Show post though. Well, not really. But I’ll be visiting the White House for an episode or two now.

NaBloPoMo – November 2009

Ever since I read about NaNoWriMo a few years ago, I thought I’d have to participate some day. I don’t know if I ever will though. Not this year, that’s for sure, because I’ve been so busy writing that grad school assignment over the last few weeks, that I’m not inclined to start another long project right away. A few days ago in some blogs in my blog list, I read about taking part in the NaBloPoMo instead and I thought about giving that a try and revive the kind of neglected blog of mine. But then I thought about the couple of days of which I already know I’ll be offline and not able to post and discarded the idea of blogging every day during the months of November. Until LJ reminded me that there is such a thing as pre-scheduled blog posts. Why didn’t I think of that myself? I’m not sure I know my blog hosting services well enough to pull that off, but I’m willing to try. Luckily I already posted yesterday on November 1st, so here I go… (I probably would have posted that today anyway :-) )

Grey’s Anatomy 6.07 – “Give Peace A Chance”

I was done with the school assignment earlier than expected. I think it turned out ok, at least I hope it did. I had such a hard time writing it, even decided to willingly fail it once (in May), so now I’m just glad it’s over. Sent off to be graded and hopefully I’ve done ok. I know somebody probably could have done it better, but that somebody isn’t me ;-) The next assignment is already lined up and I should start reading the course work for the third class I signed up for a while ago. (The up- and downsides of flexible distance edcuation *g*). But not tonight.Tonight will be “Me Time” and it starts with writing my Grey’s review. It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, but I absolutely, totally, freaking loved that episode. I loved the good stuff so so much, that I could easily overlook the bad stuff. Which I still start this review with… :-)

Project365, 155 – 161 (Week 23)

Last night’s Grey’s Anatomy totally rocked! Thank God, finally an episode I thoroughly enjoyed, even though the Mercy Westers got on my nerves. But Derek totally rocked and I squeed so much during the bedroom scene. That even made up for the presence of the Mercy Westers. I’ll have to refrain from writing a long review until I’ve finished writing my termpaper this weekend. Which I should get back to now. But first, the project365 photos of last week…

2009-10-23: my trollbeads bracelet

Project365, 148 – 154 (Week 22)

I already see myself spending the whole weekend (day AND night) working on the termpaper, because I just don’t get a real grip on it at the moment. I should be, because it’s due next Monday, but still… I feel so out of it today, so my day off (for supervising technicians who didn’t show up!) wasn’t the most productive. Termpaper-wise at least. On top of it I feel like I’m getting a cold or something. I just feel off… Blah!

Here are last week’s (well actually even farther in the past, Friday to Friday) project365 photos…

2009-10-16: “Bob, the builder” left his mark

Miscellaneous on October 25th, 2009

I actually wanted to post that entry even yesterday, but I somehow never got around to do it. When I got home Friday night I realized that I hadn’t posted that my mom was discharged already on Friday and back home again. I should have posted that right away, but I was so busy throughout the day. She was supposed to be discharged on Saturday (or even later), so on Friday morning it took some phonecalls and organization to have one of my brothers pick her up, but it worked and she was home before 11 AM.
I spent most of the day over at her place to catch up and be there if she needed me to take care of some stuff. It was also Bro3’s birthday, so there was cake :-) The rest of the day I spent working on my termpaper for a while and writing my Grey’s review, before I had to get ready for the very low-key birthday celebrations at Bro3’s favourite pub. We had a great time and I drank much more alcohol than usual, because Bro3 was paying. It’s true that it’s really risky, if you don’t have to pay for your own drinks, because you loose count. At least I did and even though I didn’t really drink that much or anything stronger than a “Radler” (a traditional German beer/soda mix), I was kind of drunk when I left. And we had a really great time. I just hated that my clothes and my hair smelled like I had spent the night sleeping in an ashtray. Why do I have to live in the only country without a effective smoking ban ?