Nearly midnight, I'm getting warmed up to do the travel agency posters... I've finally managed to turn in enough runecloth to gain exalted reputation with TB and Silvermon (almost) and have moved onto Undercities's reign. It is so odd to be back in my beloved Brill.. All those nutcracking Qs for levels 6 and 8, the dangerous ghosts, the rots, the mills overrun... I began here so many times.. Even if I wasn't an undead, which I usually wasn't but it has been my first ever starting place and it has stayed my home in my heart for ever. Ah, Brill...

I notice how few children actually survived - are there any orphans like there are in Ogri or Shattrah? Following Arthas 14o times through Stratholme, observing how he did his best to stop his homeland from soccumbing to the plague spreading, in his own rather ludacris way, while mages ripped out Dalaran and how the east was lost to become plaguelands. Playing a human you can see how lovely the world was before the sourge washed over like a tidal wave. Now there's just the dark air of death and the undead roaming about their daily business.

Ah, well. So much for lore and the fun times... I'm off to work and this continues tomorrow...

             Feels kind of strange, staying up till morning, sleeping late into the noon... Feels so bohemic! ;O

Haha, I just noticed the big half-building has brush growing on its roof...

Watching CSI until 4am (and actually getting some work done! Who would have figured!) seemed to have worked! The morning stoream* was a full blown horror movie! There were exploded horses with their bones raining down on us, intended as shrapnel; there were school-teachers sniper shot and slightly slow school-children on a field trip, sharing whipped cream with cinnamon and dry fig bits - the camera capture of which in the finish narrates something bad went down indeed. A small, ugly serial killer closing in, a local bus full of nurse student, a male nurse seemingly involved with me during all this commotion.. I was out to save the day, but in all this I was pretty much like Willem Defoe's character, chasing Uncle Eddie in Anamorph - losing myself in the process. Everything was dark, ominous, clastrophobic, a constant sense of not knowing where to run to, because you could never be certain what you're running from... In one scene, when the class of slow kids with me leading them and the teachers and nurses and investigating/security cops behind us, and the serial killer round the corner and starts advancing on us, my instinct is to run away screaming, dragging the kid along - not get the gun and aim steadily to take his screwey head off. In the end there was a bird's overflight view of roofs and pools and streets sorrounding the showdown building, where most of everyone is lying down, if not dead than injured and paramedics are trying to help.

On everiday bulletin, Piček is in the kitchen, battling the ferocious beast called the dishwashing, my article hasn't been put into this issue of Gea and the travel agency guy called me to say he needs the work finished. There might be hope for my this-month' bills yet :p

*Stoream is a dream that's almost as consistent as a movie. Story + dream. Get?

 

 

 

 

 

From the window. Snowing again like some Goddess housewife tore her shopping bag and baking soda s seeping through..

Piček is back to working nights, due to a coleague getting a daughter (aw, man, I used to like that word and then Sean Bean completely ruined it for me...) and since that screws up my whole system, I'm gonna try paining by night while I wait for him to come home.. Ugh. Getting my brain back is like peeling old greasy bandages off a mummy. Deviant Art is trying too hard and try as I might, I cannot bring myself to work on the travel agency poster - even though that is going to be my only money this month and I am (present continuous) financially screwed. I forbode Piček to let me give up after my mandate is through. Of all the feelings, I cannot allow the sense of pointlessness take over. I am build for art. Come on - I saw such a good pic of Sep (boy, did that one provide for a layered orgasm) and felt SO alive.. I feel tiny in a terrible forest.. But I have to be a young Granny Weatherwax of art, otherwise no money karma for me :p

Morbid

Ow, for the love of all that's pancakey, I swore I won't cry this year and lasted FOUR days! I am such a fountain. And it was supposed to be funny: we were goofing around again and Piček said I have to let him go to bed (he is working night AGAiN :S), so I kind of took his arm and led him. He made a dumb face and walked like a moron and for a split second I saw him as he would be if he was brain damaged: nothing left of his wit and courage, just the trusting love he has for me. And on came the waterworks.. Of course he had to go and say 'if it ver comes as far, you have to promise to help me go', which I generally would, but not in his case. I am too fucking selfish. I would keep him in any form next to me until ten seconds to my own checkout.

In every event, doesn't matter if it's a new day or a date or party or just drawing in my room, playing Warcraft or going to bed, in every event my favorite part is Piček coming towards me and the least favorite, him walking away.

January pickies

The greenery

A Brill kitty...

The old king.

This being potencially last thing you ever see - cornered by a gorilla and a midget, I wonder if it crosses your mind how lucky you are the hose they're holding to your nose is actually an old cellar key..

And the gold in 'golden' retriever :)

Holiday food

Last days of New Year's holidays. Real work 2010 start tomorrow. It's been sublime. In terms of cushiness. Oh, man. There is no f**ing way to lose weight around here. Seriously. Dieting is like swimming upstream a rapid with a freight boat tied to one foot. If I wasn't holding myself back so drastically, I'd gain 11 pounds.

On the New Year's eve, we went to Piček's family's place. His sister made a late diner for the lot and this is what we had:

- štruklji (it's a cottage cheese roll in gummy dough boiled in salty water, wrapped in cloth (then removed)), some with boiling butter poured over bread specks, others put into a glass pot, covered in cream with cheese, extra baked.

- With that we had thin slices of pork meat in their own sauce, cooked with onions and spices, served with rings of pine apple

- Cooked vegetables; two salads; rice cooked in spicy water and other creams.

- For desert there was the chocolate moussé with squeezed orange juice and 'princesses' - the vanilla cream and whipped cream between two halves of a puffy baked dough and powder sugar on top.

We were so full that our "chasing for the fireworks spot" was more a tranquillized pinball action in slow motion. (There was fog lifting and rising so ourselves and some other people in cars had to drive up and down between the city and the castle in various stages to avoid it. It was fun, but we were stoned on food :D)

The next day we went to my parents' for lunch and had 'raklet'. This is an indoor electrical grill plate in two stories. On the first one you put thin small slices of meat (optional - in our case we had pork) and grill them, quickly. You push slices of bread between them and around, so they get crunchy and tasty with the tiny drops fat left behind. Then you take minute frying pans from the lower story and place few onion rings on each and a slice of the almost-done meat and smear cream with cheese crumbs in it and baked that until it turns yellow.

           There were also mum's 'filled eggs', beef tartar, butter, thin rings of various hams and sausages, cheeses, various dippings and tiraminu and sour cherries and whipped cream cake for desert.

To give our poor tummies a break, I made tortillas and yesterday we had soup and pancakes. I am taming the new frying pans and have gotten it down almost to perfection, although of course they can never be as good as gran's ancient pan of twisted black iron. Point is, you have to make them flat and large and thin for the soup, as they then have to be cut into noodles, but for desert I mix them further to make the raw dough foamy and I fry them thick and puffy. Trick is to make them just right - soft and juicy inside, crusty outside and just well enough done, otherwise some people who cannot stop until they've eaten 4o (I make them pizza-sized, approx. 2 -3 mm thin) could get tummy aches.

Today Mags was making his Ribbe again - for the entire family. Even those who are not really into meat, came. This is the problem with Mag's Ribbe, his roast pork ribs with the crunchy yet delicious upper crust chess-board.. You cannot not eat them. And once you start, you cannot get enough. We licked the plates afterwards. There wasn't even leftover left for the dogs or the cats. They are seriously so good that once you've had the, when you're in your dying bed and you look back on your life, you can safely say that when times were different, when you were young and wild, you've had Maggie's Ribbe. And die a prosperous man.

Snow is falling like a cloud  gone powdery. No real shape, just water that's turned to ice in mid air - in vaaaast numbers. It began in the morming and is still falling. Very dry snow. Graupels. Impossible to shape into a ball and no point in skidding down a slope in - you would end up covered in it like it was the marbles of styrofoam.