I feel like I've been here before.

It's my birthday. There's things I could say but every birthday I've had since I've started this blog I've written about me being in my almost to mid 30s, musing on being a relatively advanced age without having achieved any of those markers of being a grownup so.. that again. It's much the same again so it's a bit of an anti-climax to make a point of being the big three five this year and I might as well stick to the traditional it's my birthday.. yay.. drink.

And post my obligatory themed self portrait.

I was going for a "mature" classic old hollywood sorta feel, but ended up with me, doing a look.. it's got to do.

We got snow

A bit early.. maybe it means we'll get more this year. In somewhat related news, I also got new shoes, ideal for winter.

I just wish it described me somehow..

Word o the day today is Lucullan which is described as rich; magnificent and luxurious.. ie..

When literary groups meet in Paris, they also tend to eat and during the
November rite of book awards, luncheons may reach a Lucullan level.-- Jeanne
Molli, Paris Links Pleasures Of Table and the Mind, New York Times, November 18,
1958

Obviously only sellouts win those awards..

I prefer the description of Lucullen which I got when I scrolled over it on the Yahoo page.. profusely extravagant.. words that I would never think to put together, indeed words that I don't use individually all that often.. but I think it works as an expressive description. Better than lucullen really.. even assuming anyone knows what it means.

Burp

It's really great having this boyfriend guy around. Not only is he gorgeous, wonderful company, has a cute kitty and makes great lasagne, but he encourages me to do stuff. I mean, I never used to do stuff, and yesterday we had this holiday here.. I dunno something about ending communism or whatever.. but anyway people who have proper jobs got the day off (ie him) so we decided to use the opportunity to go and explore a bit more of this fine country we live in. We went to Plzen which is famous for not much except beer, but beer's good enough for us so off we went.

It was fun, we saw the brewery, got to go to "The Pub", not just as pub, but "The" pub, for which I felt honoured, we got to pour our own beer, or in my case foam, but I'm easily amused so I enjoyed the novelty. And other stuff but that's already been written about so I'll leave it.

Highlight of the day..

I was in a public bathroom earlier on, I'd just finished with the primary purpose of entering such a place, had washed my hands, ripped out some paper to dry them and wished to throw it in the appropriate recepticle, but it happened to be right underneath the bag of the girl using the sink next to me, who had been there applying makeup since before I walked in.

I stood there with the used paper in my hand for somewhere between 30 seconds and 10 minutes.. (hard to tell when you're standing there doing nothing) and she just stood there, doing her makeup, not moving herself or her bag a bit, either not knowing or caring that someone was standing there waiting only for her to move slightly.

Honestly.. people!

If that isn't enough they gave me the wrong address, they said 38 Narodni and it was 28 Narodni, so I'd walked around the block a bit before going in, and they were running late anwyway. The purpose of being there isn't important, just another casting for the film school, I did a pretty good job of playing a stalker-ish woman saying goodbye in the morning to some bloke she'd had a rendevouz with, but it doesn't matter, because none of these people ever need a 30 something ordinary looking woman who speaks English with an ambiguous accent and I won't get a role anyway.

I had drinks afterwards with some people who I hadn't seen for a while, and was solicited to read a script of a random person sitting near us to give my opinion. So I gave it, don't know if I helped.

That's about all.

What day is it today?

I'm going to pretend it's Thursday, whatever the day is (like anyone knows/remembers or cares about the reference).

Caption this.

So I was wrong.

I was in the post office again yesterday, lots of people in there so I had to wait again. I'm waiting.. waiting.. watching numbers etc and ticket number 113 comes up. So much for that. Guess it was just a coincidence.

And that concludes my triskaidekaphobia trilogy. I'll have to think of something else to write about. Might be a while.

Something you didn't know about me.

I know you don't know this because I haven't told anyone, on the blog or otherwise. Now, before you get all excited, it's not that interesting, I just haven't told anyone because it's too pointless to ever mention. It relates somewhat to my last post, about that number. I have a thing with the number 13. I'm not superstitious, I don't really believe the hoopla, but nevertheless I have a thing.

It's simple, I try to avoid the number. Mostly it's when I'm sitting at the computer, I try to skip from (substitute 2 for any hour) 2:11 or 2:12 to 2:14 or later. Sometimes I time it so that's the time I get up to make a coffee or I just try to avert my eyes from the time. But that's not all, ever since it occurred to me to notice that :47 is 13 minutes before the hour, I need to avoid minute 47 as well. I avoid the number 87 too, in situations it may come up, for similar reasons. I don't understand why, like I said I'm not triskaidekaphobic. I may have trained myself to be aesthetically displeased with the looks of those numbers, but I see things that aren't pretty all the time, and it hardly explains why I'd go out of my way to avoid them.

Yes, I am blushing. Just as much for actually bothering to write this down as if anyone cares to read it in the slightest, as I am about how stupid my "thing" is.

I would guess it's a mild kind of OCD, one that doesn't affect my ability to go about my normal business, and perhaps everyone has some, if not similar, equally pointless habits that they have no reason to ever tell anyone, so maybe you're all thinking.. "oh that's nothing, everyone does stuff like that!"

Then again maybe you're laughing your asses off at me.

The only other sorta OCD thing I do is fix up beermats whenever I go to a pub, I have to arrange them all facing the same way and the same way up. However I'm not embarrassed about this one, in fact, I rather suspect myself of making a big production of doing it in front of people so they can see how fabulously quirky I am. I could be mistaken though.

Other than that I think I'm normal.

The things you notice while you're waiting..

I was in the post office earlier to pick up something. I went in, got my number, made myself comfortable and observed the numbers that were coming up. I had 365 and after a couple of new ones showed up there was 360..

so.. it slowly goes up.. 361, 362 in between all the other lines which go through much more quickly.. of course, when 512 comes up. It was up to about 363.. so I sat, watching the numbers.. and the next one up is 514!

Then mine came up and I did my business.. but I wonder.. was it deliberate.. do they not have tickets with that number for a reason..

hmmm..

Well that was quick.

he "that" that I am referring to is a certain person getting their ass literally whipped in a certain recent Presidential election...

ok, literal is perhaps not the right word..

carrying on, I knew about it right away at about 5am.. I was awake, not up but not sleeping due to nursing a headache from staying up almost that late and drinking. I got a call from someone who was still up and drinking and watching the election saying he already had enough seats for a win.. so good on him. The "him" I'm referring to being Barack Obama, future President of the United
States.

And yeah, I know I was anything but quick on this, having stayed up late (but not that late) last night, and drinking, and nursing a hangover pretty much the whole day. I'm mostly better now, and just wanted to add to what I'm sure is a chorus of yay Obama out there.

Happy November

It's a big day for the US and by extension the world.. as that's the way it goes.. being that big "election" thing going on. Now, I am not going to at this late stage go on about it at length, seeing as I'm not American, I don't really do that.. and I'm not really good at that analysis politicky sort of thingamy stuff. I'm just going to say that hopefully that Obama wins because.. well, lots of reasons, he's pretty good, and the other mob, between them, have run a pretty horrid, insulting campaign, believe that women's "health" is something to be put in quotation marks, belong to churches that believe in witches, and think that redistribution of wealth.. even when talking of taxing very wealthy people a tiny bit more, is somehow a universally bad thing. Amongst other things I could add if I'd have been paying attention more.

In short they're a couple of wankers.. but on to something more important.

There are new blogs out there! And ones that have been around for ages but are new to me.

The “Blog” of “Unnecessary”
Quotation Marks

Apostrophe
Abuse

Literally, a Web Log

lowercase L

In case it's not bleedin' obvious, these blogs are all dedicated to punctuation related dorkism... so if that's what you're into..

I of course leave the best to last. For the dorkiest, the coolest, the most magnificent.. read Erikland, it's about stuff. Run by a charming gentleman who lives here in Prague, with me actually :) and he rocks.

Halloween...

was fun.

The last one is from the actual night, the others are some "art" with a theme.