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New Year’s Resolution

New Year's (01-01)I made one. Actually there were two, but #1 is to eat healthier which is something I am trying to do constantly – except around Christmas – so it doesn’t really count.

So my one and only New Year’s Resolution is to take at least one photo a day and upload them to flickr. To that purpose I made a set for those photos and so far I have been following through with a picture a day.

I am hoping that by the end of the year I’ll have 365 interesting fotos to look back on and I also hope that I will have learned a bit about photography through this project.

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Für alle Abspanngucker

Shrek III hat keinen Endgag. Keine Takeouts. Aber einen verdammt langen Abspann.

“Woooo ist das Baby?”

War ok für Sonntags abends. Laut Vorschau sollten wir öfters mal sneaken gehen denk ich.

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Lachen ist gesund

Deutschland mag Tom Cruise nicht? Lol.

Banning Tom Cruise – Featured on BuzzFeed

Germany hates Tom Cruise and bans him from making a movie. It’s not the first time Germany has discriminated against a religious minority. But for some reason, the idea of an entire country turning against Tom Cruise is just so much funnier than the Holocaust.

Kleine Anmerkung am Rande: von Sekten wie Scientology, die ihre Mitglieder verarschen und ihren Promiaushängeschildern halte ich auch nichts. Von daher finde ich es gut, dass er da nicht drehen darf, wobei ich mir – ohne genauer nachgeforscht zu haben – vorstellen könnte, dass das ganze auf gesetzlich wackligen Füssen stehen könnte. Ich kenne mich aber zu wenig aus um das zu wissen. Wer weiss welche Rechte anderer damit auch wieder beschnitten werden könnten, wenn man so einen Präzendenzfall schafft … ich hoffe mal sehr, dass wer auch immer es getan hat sich das gut überlegt hat.

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Manowar Concert

ManowarThis Saturday we went to see Manowar (and Holy Hell and Rhapsody) in Stuttgart. We were invited by guess-who and so got in as “guests” … I put up a few pictures, email me if you want a flickr guesst pass to the set. The concert was really a great experience.

Best Moments: the duett from Phantom of the Opera – the song which Manowar played with someone from the audience – when the Manowar singer forgot the text and started laughing (hysterically) on stage – the vikings and the fireworks … good times.

Manowar especially was (awfully) loud. They had warnings put up that the concert could hurt your ears. I did have ear plugs with me and so I was fine. I stood near the bass box for a while and well it felt “interesting” ….

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back home

Eilean Donan CastleMy cold lasted longer than anticipated and so I spent my days hoping we would not have to cancel our vacation. We are now back from our vacation to Lancaster – visiting friends – and Scotland. I have already uploaded a few pictures on flickr– more will follow shortly as I sort out the bad ones.

Just to refer back to my last post: still in Lancaster I shopped my first big souvenir: the works of Jane Austen in a nice little box, beautifully bound and just waiting for me there to pick them up.

I will – as soon as I have time – write more of the rest of our vacation.

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Cold & Indulgence

Thursday I experienced the first symptoms of what should become a full-blown cold within half a day. In the evening I tried everything from hot tea to a hot bath. To no avail, I felt quite terrible the next morning and decided it woud be better to go to the doctor. She looked at my throat said something about a virus infection and told me to stay in bed the next few days sounding more serious than I had previously thought the illness to be.

Our living room sofa is actually a bed-couch which can be used for visitors, so I guess it qualifies as lying in bed. I spent more or less three days on that couch drinking tea and indulging myself with watching “Happy-End”-movies. Emma twice, Pride & Prejudice twice – once even in English without subtitles – and Geisha twice. I also finished reading “Emma” in that time. So I guess it would be quite enough now – except that I already ordered “Sense and Sensibility” …

Ah don’t hit me …

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Cars

Wir sind gerade aus dem Kino heimgekommen. “Cars” – das neuste Werk von Pixar. Nachdem ich schon unendlich oft die Vorschau gesehen hatte, hatte ich eigentlich nicht gerade so die Motivation mir das “anzutun”. Wer will schon einen Film über ein Rennauto sehen? Ein rotes Rennauto, dass noch nicht mal ein Ferrari ist?

Aber wenn man halt sonst nix vorhat, geht man eben auch mit ins Kino wenn man den Film nicht unbedingt sehen will und die anderen waren ja auch mit mir in “Bandidas” (5/10).

Nach dem Film habe ich nun meine Meinung geändert (8/10)  und würde ihn mir fast nochmal anschauen, vor allem jetzt wo ich weiss wer die ganzen deutschen Sprecher sind. Args die ganze Zeit hatte ich das Gefühl “du kennst diese Stimme” … dummerweise wurde mir erst anschliessend erklärt wer das alles war. Vielleicht auch mal ein Film wo sich das Spiel lohnt … immerhin ist es sicherlich ein Rennspiel.

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Quiztime: Which character are you?

My result of the ASOIAF Quiz: I am Jon Snow.

Well it was a close call between Jon Snow, Sansa and Ned.

There’s another ASOIAF quiz “Which female character are you” and I ended up Sansa there, twice. Sansa is really not very likeable in the beginning, but like Jaime she becomes more interesting with every book. I am very curious where she will end up.
Today I had the following conversation with someone who just started reading “A Song of Ice and Fire”

“You scare me!”

“What did I do?”

“You said Jaime Lannister was cool!”

“No I didn’t, I said he was the most interesting character in the book, that’s a big difference.”

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All the lights are green

This morning on my way to work … I stopped at a local market stall where I often buy poultry and eggs to buy beautiful petite strawberries and an apple for lunch. The same tasty lunch I already had yesterday. So the man working there says:

“Only one apple?”
“Yes it’s for lunch, I only need one!”
“Oh for lunch, well I’ll give it to you for free then.”

What a nice gesture. I have no idea what the apple would have cost, not much anyway, but something like that makes me smile and enjoy the morning.

On the other hand me not being a car but driving a bike probably saved a young girl’s life this morning. I was going down a road mid-tempo, when I see 2 people between the parked cars who seemed to want to cross the street on their bikes. I hear the mother say: “Wait and look if there’s car!” I was coming up to them expecting the girl that had shown up with her little bike to stop at her mother’s word and didn’t really slow down. Except: she didn’t stop until she was right in the middle of the street looking at me with big eyes. Of course I stopped and nothing happened, only had I been in a car and the girl had reacted the same way she would probably be in the hospital right now. One might say: well she would have heard the car and not gone on. But her mother told her to stop and she didn’t hesitate a second and I would find that quite disturbing how carelessly she crossed the street. And the girl wasn’t that young probably 7 years old I’d guess.

I felt like in those movies or books where you know a person shouldn’t do something but you just know they will because it produces drama.

Apropos movies. We went to see the Schauburg sneak preview yesterday. The good thing was we met Patrick at the Wolfsbräu where we were before the movie drinking, eating and watching soccer. The bad thing was … well the movie. I didn’t like it. “Je ne suis là pour être aimé” is a French romantic movie the ‘spirit’ (irony! it was sorely lacking any spirit!) of which is captured perfectly in this quote “Much subtlety and humanity in a very downbeat minimalist framework”. Not my kind of movie. 5/10.

And the title? Well all the traffic lights were green this morning going to work.

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Good intentions

This photo shows how to make the best of good intentions. The good intention was to eat a healthy dinner consisting of fruit. I had asked Rolland to shop strawberries, a melon and a pineapple.On my way home I found the perspective of a fruit-dinner not quite as appealing as it had bin in the morning and I bought some ham to have with the melon and some ice cream for the straw berries. Complete with a bottle of nice red wine and a few episodes of Babylon 5 you couldn’t do better for a spring feast.

By the way I hate it when an episode ends with something like the death of an important character and you are sooo sure he must live and then you continue to watch another episode and he doesn’t turn up until the last few minutes and you still don’t know wether he lives to see another season.

Anyway so far I have enjoyed the first three seasons quite a bit. I love the story arc and I have found myself a good page to accompany this: http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/lurker.html