Blog 4.0

A week ago, my husband and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary... by being sick with a cold together. In sickness and in health and all that, I guess. It feels kind of wild to me that we've already been married for that long. I think the fact that about half of that time was spent at home with restrictions to going out due to the pandemic kind of warped our perception of time a bit. Altogether, we've been a couple for more than ten years now. And I'm pleased to say that I'm still excited to see him in the evenings. I remember in my twenties I was a bit worried for a while that something was wrong with me, because all my romantic relationships, regardless of how earnestly I felt about them, would eventually fizzle out around the three-year mark. I was wondering whether I was just incapable of maintaining interest in a relationship for longer than that. But no, it turns out I just hadn't met the right guy yet... or reached the right age myself. Because I defini...

I saw this show get mentioned in a few places and was intrigued by the art style I saw in the screenshots. On investigating a bit more, I learned that it contained a lot of swearing, cartoon violence and was generally very hyper, none of which are usually things I particularly like. But then I heard that it was also a musical , with two proper songs per episode? Finally, I came across a review that basically spoiled the entire plot, but weirdly that only made me want to watch it more, as it sounded really cool and I wanted to see how it all played out in the show. And oh my god, I absolutely loved it! So much that I immediately had to watch it a second time after finishing. Plus I've been listening to a bunch of the songs pretty much on repeat since then, particularly Hell Is Forever , Stayed Gone , Respectless and Hell's Greatest Dad . Seriously, how did I not find out about this any earlier, considering the pilot's been around for years? It also cracks me up that I ended...

A new meeting appears on my work calendar, called "short business announcement", hosted by the CEO and with everybody invited. These always make me uneasy, because while the CEO is a nice guy, big business announcements are rarely good news for the little people. They almost always bring change, and change often means redundancies. Then again, it really is a short meeting, only fifteen minutes. If it was something that big, it would be longer. I try to think of what else it could be. There's a certain contradiction in it being short (and therefore seemingly not that important) and yet it also requiring the CEO to speak to the whole business. Maybe someone important is leaving or changing roles and there'll be a little speech about it? Seems unlikely that it would be the CEO himself, announcing his own impending departure. My mind wanders to the next most important and senior person I can think of, our department manager, and I briefly recoil in horror at the thought o...

Late in the evening, my husband decides to open a Christmas card we found on our doorstep that day. He suggests that the handwriting looks like that of his best friend, who was best man at our wedding five years ago. As he pulls the card out of its envelope, it reveals a cutesy drawing of a cat and the words "Meowy Christmas" - oh yes, that's definitely from him (he has a cat and is quite a cat lover). When my husband opens the card, it starts playing a song... several slightly out of tune voices singing a Christmas carol, but every word is "meow" . We spend several minutes laughing as it gets louder and louder and more voices join the chorus. Eventually, it finishes and starts over. He folds the card and puts it back down, but... it doesn't stop. Slight panic sets in as we try to figure out what's wrong. Did we not close it properly? Is there a tab you need to pull to make it stop? Is it just broken? As the loud meowing continues, my husband declares th...

 I put up a shelf for the first time yesterday and I'm ridiculously proud of myself. I've never been what you'd call a "handy" person, and I wasn't encouraged to be one either as anything to do with power tools and the like was considered "men's work" in my family. When I moved out, I always lived in rented accommodation and wanted to avoid making any permanent modifications to the property. While we're still renting right now, we've also lived in the same flat for almost a decade and the letting agency basically doesn't give a damn, so we figured we shouldn't let that prevent us from doing minor things like putting nails in the walls. The inspiration for the shelf came from a plant that I brought over from Austria as a sapling in April this year and which has been growing like crazy here in England. I used to keep it on the windowsill, but it's just become so big that it was spilling everywhere. A small shelf on the kitchen w...

Just taking some notes on a few more shows that I watched on Netflix. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power A friend made me watch the first three seasons of this show a few years ago when I was visiting her. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, but of course I then went back home, which meant no more Netflix. It made sense to now rewatch what I'd seen before and then find out how the story wrapped up. I'd say the animation is only mid-tier, but the music is great and it's a lovely story overall - primarily aimed at a young audience for sure with how cheerful and full of rainbows it is, but still not without depth either. For example it probably has the biggest raising of stakes I've ever seen in a kid's show, going from "just fighting some bad guys here in this fantasy land" to dealing with a galactic emperor looking to wipe out whole civilizations in the space of only a few episodes. Catra's characterisation in particular was surprisingly deep, sho...

I got an email this morning, notifying me that the website sms.at will be shutting down at the end of the year. The title stated that it was "the end of an era" (in German) and that certainly seemed apt. My profile on sms.at was one of the very first online accounts I ever created, all the way back in October 2001. That's 22 years ago now, when I had only just turned 18! I used the site both to send free text messages (something that seems very quaint now in the age of many "unlimited texts" plans, but back then it was useful) and for its free webmail. I had my "official" email account provided by my ISP, and the sms.at webmail for more frivolous purposes such as registering for random websites. I can't say I'm surprised that they're shutting down; to be honest I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did, considering they didn't seem to have much of a business model. I also effectively stopped using the site several years ago, as ...

It was good to visit my Mum for a week. After the whole scare with the cardiac arrhythmia (which is still not resolved, just temporarily on hold), I was worried that I'd find her much worse than when I had last seen her in April, but she didn't seem that different. She had just developed a sudden fear of stairs and hills, as she said that any sort of climb made her feel incredibly exhausted and unwell. Though we did go up one steep road together eventually, and she realised it wasn't actually that bad when it wasn't 30+ degrees out (no duh). I also got to visit the garden one more time and it was very bittersweet. I picked up a couple of keepsakes, but it was weird to think that I likely won't see the place again. I could definitely understand why my mother made her decision though, because seeing her and seeing even the comparatively tiny amount of work that was still to do in late September, such as picking up fallen pears, raking leaves etc., it was still clear...

Today my mother and I went to the local shopping centre to run some errands. First we visited a shop for her landline and cable provider, as I was interested in adding internet to her package, with an eye on me coming to visit more often in the future. I was hopeful that this would be easy, as she was sent a brand-new modem only the other week, which does have wi-fi capacity and everything; it's just not unlocked. First the guy told us that he couldn't just "add" internet, we would have to be changed to a whole new bundle deal. Fine, I thought. And no, we couldn't keep the current modem, in fact we'd need two new boxes installed. With an activation fee. And a monthly rent. And my Mum would need a new landline number. That's where I kind of went "come on", because I couldn't believe that simply amending an existing contract would require a new landline number. The guy called up some higher-level support, chatted with them for about ten minute...

I flew back to Austria yesterday to spend a few days with my mother. It was mostly an uneventful journey, which is kind of what you want when flying, but when we descended to land, something pretty amazing to me personally happened. I always like looking out the window at that point to see all the little houses and trees, and to slowly watch them get bigger, but I'm bad at orientating myself, so I usually can't tell what exactly I'm seeing. However, this time the plane approached the airport in a straight line from northwest to southeast, on a beautiful day with blue skies, and just as the sun was starting to set. Everything was casting stark shadows and for the first time ever, I could clearly see all of Vienna from the sky, recognising what I was looking at and spotting landmarks everywhere. It was like seeing a perfect 3D map of the place. I didn't know what to look at first, I just kept staring as the plane passed by and before the city itself disappeared from view...