Day 1

The professor and I offed to Rakitna hill and later St. Ana above the infamous (actually very famous, popular and pleasant) marshes outside the Capital, but she saw a Bear warning board and panicked so much we nigh but ran back to the car park. In truth there is a very agreeable, mildly elevated and thus windier and cooler forest park with an instructional route through two dozen or so stops giving lessons on the flora, fauna and historic significance of the bottleneck location. St. Ana was found better suited for her taste and she napped in the sun as I chased plants. We drove pass one of our 'sunk fields' or 'soaked valleys' - something that oftentime happens after the heavy rain in these parts. Later that day a May 1st bonfire was lit, the smell of which could be sensed all over the town next morning. (We light the heck out of bonfires on the eve before May 1st.) I was so tired later - she left to visit her parents for a few days - that I dozed off at six p.m. and woke up at one in the morning. 

This is one happy squirrel. Just saying.  :D

Read the first half of Diamond's The World Until Yesterday (he's the other anthropologist, not as funny as Bryson but oftentimes more methodical and professorly.) and the last third of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never let me go, which is as fun as cancer. 

Both were a remarkably appropriate subject matter for smalltalk with a pregnant woman.

Days 2 and 3

The second day I packed Marki and offed to the city botanical garden - which is always opened from 7am and there's no fee. There's been some minor frost damage, but mostly it's just glorious trees (some from the first day they opened it, when Napoleon was still hot stuff around here) and flowerbeds of plants and grasses. I didn't shoot as many grasses as I could as it would make little sense to portray wild flowers in a controlled garden. But then the sun showed up - I was completely alone, because it was May 1st - it felt like I was completely alone in the entire city, and I made several more rounds until finally getting fatigued and returned home, photographing bridges and footbridges and watergates, but those were all shit.

 

The third day weather was similar: cloudy and windy until I walked out, then it got sunny and after a few hours as I returned indoors, cloudy and windy again. I searched all the paths on the castle hill and took photos of the city round and round...

Even the building that some genius though: you know what this medieval, white, classy and quaint city needs smack in the middle? A building that looks like a nuclear holocaust crematorium. 

But the castle is super pretty, as all castles are always super pretty and I love them all. Because they are pretty. 

And the pretty, very old part of town in its shadow...

I like this monument to Fabiani, a famous architect. One of those who weren't completely awful. 

Poverty is passing. Books are forever.

I tried hard, really hard to stay strong. G gave me some pocket money when I went to LJ and I WANTED to be a good girl and spend NONE of it and return it to him secretly, slipping it into his wallet, aware he needs it more than me. I really tried.

But of course I offed to the Big Bookstore and spent an hour looking around for a proper gift book for a nephew's big day. PLENTY of magnificent books, some so yummy I am glad to be poor, because I would have to hire a van to get them all home. Magnum's Contact Sheets is as of now at the top of my wish list...

I had EXACTLY 28 bucks in my pocket. And that's when I saw it. Right there. In the middle of the desk of travel books and planet monographies. Tiny. Cute. Adorable. I looked inside. It was perfect. Love at first sighting. Ideal for a gift even, but no, I don't gift such books, I keep them all. 

No. I can resist. We haven't money for books now, no matter how beautiful. No matter what price they ...

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???!! 27,11????? The EXACT amount I have?! What is this, Stephen King's Needful Things??!!

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I am weak.

If it's small, chubby, dressed in magenta you can see from a space station, with red hair and a camera, it's probably me:

Too young to be cynical, too cynical to be young :P

RIP, dear padi

Eh, my iPad died. I know it sounds as stupid as saying 'my phone died', but it's more like 'my car died', as I don't really have any means of just storming the first Apple store (do we even have an Apple store in these parts?) and buy a glimmering new one. That little thing has been with me from the start. I got it as kind of a wedding present from G or at least as a way to blog on my honeymoon and that was a better part of a decade ago. It was a hard working and very good little padi. we went everywhere together, we literally sailed all around Europe, it and I. I don't have a smart phone, not even a marginally cunning phone, so that was my way into Instagram and the like. It's why I'm going to slack a little bit until I give enough 5 dollar blow jobs to earn a new one. (That was a joke. Calm down. I'm just saying 5 bucks is 5 bucks.) 

And of course it died while I'm away for a few days and I now have to post this on someone else's comp (feels like driving someone else's car..) 

Though that part is okay. I've checked up on all my necessary youTubers and American Gods reviews while I write this, googled all the pressing questions like Hegel For Dummies and why are some sheep born black?.. and am making plans to just draw indoors (forgot my seal and stationary at home, so am watercoloring postcards to write to G) or go out alone and storm the botanical garden. It's a crappy excuse not to write, as I should be doing. Why don't I just travel with a giant typewriter like Hunter Thompson though a desert and edit photos AFTER they've come out? :)) Because of bullet journals, that's why. Newb.

Reading Diamond's The World Until Yesterday. It's an author a little better than Bryson, though not trying to be funny. Good stuff, tho, if you're into the basics.