Promotion

I actually have every intention of doing a proper post at some time in the semi-near future (tomorrow, perhaps), but in the meanwhile, let's all enjoy the fact that I just got an email that addressed me as "Sir". This email wasn't even spam! It was from a hotel, confirming a booking that I made, and I specified for them at the time of booking that my title is Ms (or possibly Mme. I think they only gave me french options).

Sir. At least it's a promotion from Mr.

Unusual

Unusual things I did today:
Had porridge for breakfast. For the first time in years, and it was super. I had it with sliced banana, milk, sugar, a smidge of nutmeg and some chopped almonds. Yum.

Had a pleasant post-lunch rendezvous with people from french (class) and had a surprisingly lovely time. Not because they are normally not nice people to spend time with (far from it), but because I am normally so packed full of french-rage that everything associated with it annoys me. We're on holidays for a week, though, and this was lovely.

Bought a magazine about philosophy. In french (as in the magazine is in french). Look at my non-rage!

Blergh?

Reto just came back from Coop (supermarket) with a surprise for me - a seasonal orange and pumpkin (!!) flavoured yoghurt. And it was surprisingly non-disgusting. Huh.

Pigs Might Fly

Today a couple of friends of ours came and visited us, and we took them on the tour of the town and discovered a charming cafe that somehow I've never noticed before (in a chocolate factory, no less. How come I didn't know there was a chocolate factory here with a lovely cafe and cheap chocolate for sale?), and we had an excellent lunch (with booze, which is always nice, drinking in the daytime), and we walked all over the place and made silly conversation and it was all really lovely and charming and stuff, but ..

.. the high point of the day was still, without a shadow of a doubt, the bit where a helicopter carrying a life-sized sculpture of a giraffe flew over the town. I can't begin to tell you how sad I am that I didn't have my camera with me.

Moron

What's the etiquette about dakking strangers?

Not that I want to sound like a whiny old enemy-of-the-youngsters or anything, but today I saw a dude at the train station who was wearing his pants practically around his knees (in this manner, although admittedly not quite so low. That "knees" comment was an exaggeration:
). Which, as I explain for my mother who may well read this, is the fashion in some circles. And much as it may be a stupid way to dress, I'm hardly going to go around getting all huffy about it and carrying on about young people today, but this guy at the station, his pants were actually falling down a bit with every step he took.


Had I been a totally different person, I would have dakked him. It would have been a sensible thing to do, and it would have made a good point. Reto doesn't agree.

Stupid Heating

Our heating is stoopid.

When we got back from Norway (just after it had turned FREEZING here, although as it turned out that only lasted for a moment and now it's high-teens or so every day), we found that our heaters had been turned on. I don't really know what's considered normal in this country, but in our flat our heaters aren't really under our control. You can turn them up or down but never entirely off, and so our flat is always heated in the months officially dubbed "cold". You wouldn't think I would have a problem with that, what with my constant whining about being perma-freezing and having numb fingers (which I home-diagnose as Raynaud's disease, by the way) and so on, but as it turns out I do.

It's not cold at the moment, we don't need heaters, and as it turns out my problem isn't that I'm always cold but that I have no powers of homeostasis. When it's cold, I'm cold (and I get colder and colder and never warm up), and when it's hot, I'm hot (and I get hotter and hotter and never cool down. I like to put my feet under the cold tap before I go to bed in summer because otherwise my feet feel like they're burning).

It's too hot in our flat. I'm sleeping really badly and having a lot of idiotic nightmares (which happens when I'm too hot). I'm drinking about 8 tons of water a day and still feeling dehydrated. And I totally disapprove of me getting around in a tshirt (and jeans) in the middle of autumn.

Then again, it's still better than being cold.

Karaoke Kwestions

If you found yourself in the unlikely situation of knowing you were going to have to do some drunken karaoke in a few weeks, and HAVING TO CHOOSE THE SONGS IN ADVANCE (which I put in capitals because IT'S SUCH A STUPID WAY TO DO IT), what songs would you choose? Bearing in mind that you're probably a fairly atrocious singer and have no desire to hog the limelight. Oh, and also the songlist seems to be really England-heavy, ie. full of bands and songs you've never heard of.

At this stage, ABBA and show tunes (from Annie Get Your Gun, because I'm still in the As) are looking like the best options.

UPDATE: No, the song list seems to have EVERY SONG KNOWN TO MANKIND, including Hats Off To Larry (which I always said would be my karaoke song because I was always sure it would never be on any karaoke song list. I'm pretty sure I stole that idea from my sister, actually, song and all), and songs from the musical episode of Buffy. Huh.

Moléson

We spent a charming weekend in Moléson, which is a town/mountain about an hour from here (on bus/train/bus, or bus/bus, anyway. If you drove yourself it would probably only be half that, but then again, if you drove yourself you might have got caught in the big stupid traffic jam on the way home and spent ages being annoyed. Our bus driver knew better, though, so we didn't miss our next bus and we could spend our time being tired instead of annoyed) with little to recommend it other than mini golf (closed), some sort of bobsled/luge thing (closed), a fromagerie (closed) and a bunch of nature (not closed). Oh, and free accommodation, of course, because we went with a friend who has a flat there.

We didn't do a whole lot. We walked up some mountains and down some mountains

not those ones

we did walk up here though

We looked at parapenters taking off.

We went in a funicular (or something) and a big scary cable car.

We ate a lot of fondue (no photos of that, unfortunately, nor of the sad, sad ending where no one could manage to scrape the delicious burnt cheese off the bottom of the pot. I don't know why it happened, but my theory is that it had something to do with the fact that the caquelon was made of metal instead of ceramic). Also no photos of us watching "Benissimo" which is some crappy Swiss lottery type TV show that's apparently on every 6 weeks or so, and is hosted by this Beni dude who seems to be the Daryl Sommers of Swiss (german) telly. Reto and Cécile seemed to think that making me watch Benissimo would make me more Swiss, but really ... if that's what being Swiss is about, then I don't think I'm interested. I did enjoy the fondue though, which I suppose is a step in the right direction. Or at least in a direction.

One of the most civilised things about Switz: on top of every mountain, there's a restaurant.

Anyway, all in all we had a charming weekend that felt like it was miles from everywhere (certainly miles from home) but was actually still in the same canton.

Happy Birthday Kristie!

But where's the cat? And why do I never do real posts any more? Have a super day!

Happy Birthday Sarah!

I hope you have a super day! And not only because I'm going to be there for a significant proportion of it!

Yay! Boo!

Hurray, it's over! And also, boo, it's over! The film fest, that is, and although it's not actually true, because the fest doesn't finish until Sunday and I still have one flick to see tomorrow, it feels like it is.

I've seen 16 or so movies. I've spent about 25 hours on the train travelling between Fribourg and Zurich (including last Friday night when something stupid went wrong with the train signalling or something and I spent 3 hours on the train instead of 1.5 getting home again, grr). I've spent a lot of time embracing the awfulness of being a refugee or hoping to be recognised as one, of being stalked by psychopaths in the dwindling hours of life on earth, of being in flailing relationships, of having mentally unstable family members, of being in comas, of being a Dutch teenager stuck between cultures (that one was really crappy), of being a Norwegian train driver (there was no awfulness in that one. It was charmingly bizarro and pleasantly familiar, what with having spent so much time on Norwegian trains lately), of being kinda nutso and prone to bursting inappropriately into song, of getting too involved with other people's lives of crime, and now I'm looking forward to getting back to the non-horror of my life.

Which sadly means getting back into all-day french lessons and becoming paranoid about this stoopid exam thing I've signed myself up for. Sigh.

I miss the film fest.

Happy Imminent Unemployment, Deonie!

Happy temporary unemployment to Deonie!

obviously this cat has recently resigned

By which I really mean "happy last day at work!". Although it's actually tomorrow that's her last day at work, but in my defence, 1) it's already tomorrow where she is, and 2) by the time I get a chance to post this post tomorrow my-time, it probably won't be tomorrow her-time any more.

Happy leaving! Happy post-job holidaying!