Lunch Break Papers

For fangedsekhmet, britishamerican and idahoswede:

( Shoes )

Got a couple of them done and uploaded onto Flickr.

Some were inspired by stories on deathless_pose, some are random collections. Or maybe not.
This is certainly something I'd like to do more of; it's a fascinating way of making images, and it's a lot of fun to play around with different objects and ideas.

Is this digital photography? In a way, I'd say yes, but completely different. If that makes any sense.

Anyway, feel free to take a look.

friends shaking hands,
originally uploaded by tysolna.

When I first got my digital camera, I made a lot of pictures, most of them rather, shall we say, experimental. Ok, let's call a spade a spade - they were crappy, and not really meant to be good; I was simply messing around with the camera. Don't we all?
Anyway, I rarely deleted pictures; after all, bytes don't cost money. And when I was asked to contribute to an "art contest" in an online community I frequent, I was only happy to do so. I sent in the picture you see here, which I actually quite like, not least of all because I know the owners of the hands.
And it won.
I have no idea why.

I'm a little teapot, hear me shout
here's my handle, here's my spout.

It is a meme if we all do it, isn't it? Inspired by dadi and idahoswede, here's my addition to the wonderful tea-meme.

I live in a country of mostly-coffee-drinkers, it seems. At least, I get the feeling when I check the local china shops and find mostly coffee pots and only the occasional teapot, which is then more often than not white with blue flowers. There's one shop here which specializes in high-quality high-priced things for the discerning customer - I mean, houseware, kitchenware, things used to decorate your house with, expensive toys, and the sort of knick-knacks you buy when you either collect them or have more money than you know what to do with or both. A sort of German nano-Harrods. Now there were teapots I could imagine buying! Such as a very nice Meissen set or two, and the Wedgewood they had wasn't bad either. One day, when I am rich and maybe famous, I shall go there and shop.

Luckily, there is eBay, and also shops here which specialize in tea and tea-making utensils, and I found nice things. Though I will hold off on buying them for the moment.
Meanwhile, I have appropriated my mum's old two-cup teapot, which was a present from me years ago when she complained that her colleagues at work were only ever drinking very strong coffee. She took it to work and was happy, so it was a good present. Since she's not working any more, the pot has been relaxing in a cupboard, but no longer!

( Tea for Me )

For athenais and everyone else who is interested in what the kitchen I am raving about actually looks like, a few pictures.
First, though, imagine a 13 year old, by now slightly off-white, not exactly expensive, chip-board with white plastic finish kitchen which was never supposed to last this long, where you had to be careful how far you'd open a drawer so it wouldn't come loose. And now, feast your eyes upon this!
( warning: biggish images follow )

All the drawers are metal and run on metal rails, the door handles are heavy, the wood is massive, there's a plastic border around the sink area so that no water can run behind it, and the colour scheme is called "Mariposa".
The room itself hasn't become bigger, but it seems to be nevertheless. What more does a body need?

And now I'm off to watch the opening ceremonies of the winter olympics.

For 40 kilometers around our city, the streets and motorways are gridlocked because of the snow and subsequent accidents, due to the electricity failures the trains aren't running correctly, trees are creaking and breaking under the weight of the snow, and there are funny noises coming from my roof and the windows.

But this white wet hazard has its beauty as well. Here are two pictures I took a few minutes ago standing outside our patio door, looking into the garden and freezing my nose off.

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How on earth I am going to be at the people's university tomorrow morning at nine to teach the HTML class I don't know.

I've had lunch in the University eating place today (Mensa? Canteen? Commons? Refectory? So many names for one and the same thing). I've not eaten there for a long time, but today I was there at the right time, and hungry, so I had half a plate of vegetarian Curry with lots of vegetables and Tofu (soy bean curd?).
I soon realized I probably have a food allergy, because I haven't felt this sick for exactly the same time that I haven't eaten at the Mensa. Whatever it is they put in their food, it disagrees vehemently with my stomach. So instead of the planned afternoon in the library, I was forced to head home a lot sooner than I had expected. It will be some time until I eat anything there again, with the possible exception of salads.

The cat's currently on my writing desk, hunting the mouse pointer and making a mess of my typing. I'm going to shoo him off by taking a picture, he doesn't really like the flash. And here's the culprit himself, taken two minutes ago at time of writing:

He's now lying on my bed, looking innocently asleep.

Work on the PhD is progressing, even though it is as usual not going as fast as I would like on the one hand, and on the other hand not going fast enough because I am always letting myself be distracted, or rather, distracting myself.

Finally, a strange thing happened to me last night. I was watching LotR:FotR again, first disc, with the commentary by the actors, and then the writing team, relaxing and doing my knitting, when all of a sudden I realized that I was actually fast asleep with my eyes open while still knitting. It is not the first time I have fallen asleep watching TV, but this time it felt as if most of my brain was asleep, while a tiny part was awake, keeping my eyes open and moving my hands, counting the rows so I could add stitches as required. Now, if I could only write in my sleep as well...

In pictures, as in other things, I like both the big view and the details, each in it's own time. So, here's a big view of the street I live in, taken in the evening, hence the funky light, and a detail from the roof of one building in our city I like to visit a lot.

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