Couple stories, couple pickies... :)

I still have a bitch of a cold (or is it pollen allergy all of a sudden??) and combined with my hardcore diet, it really leaves me feeling ridiculously weak. My nose looks like radish from all the blowing and my tunny aches from all the phlegm I've fed myself... blewch!! So I'm mostly just photographing stuff and drinking warm drinkie thingies ..

This is a sad dog love story: retriever flirts with a beagle; rottweiler resents that kind of behaviour and the retriever is left thinking, life makes no point without love ... :(

Next is the muffin story :D Self-explanatory :))

Then there is Barky falling asleep in my mum's lap story, also needing no explanation... :))

And a couple of more pickies. Little froggies, mum planting lettuce and tulips. Pretty, soft little things.

What a day. To start with, bits of kisses, bits of fighting, as per usual during these Nelken days. Since G is working afternoons our morning sex is slightly less nuts and we get to cuddle afterwards, which is when we usually start talking e.i., that’s when we usually start fighting. I get freaky nervous about the book as daylight breaks and he gets impatient with me being freaky nervous.

This is literally a ton of book. I’m not kidding. This is 500 kilos times two. It’s cooling off and waiting for transport. Next stop is the bookbinder’s, where it will stay until it looks like a book, dessed and compressed, but that’s in another city. Arrrgg.. Every time I can’t be there, I am worried something will go wrong. Something small and stupid. Something unnecessary. Today I nearly had a heart attack when my mum was checking out the cover and said Gutenberg is written with two Ts… After having spelled Nelken’s name wrong and Jane AustEn’s name wrong, I really really couldn’t deal with another duel with my darling typo ghoul.

 Aligning all the rollers.People who aren't in this craft don't get to see this stuff, but a printer's page is really quite a fascinating piece of codes and tiny pointers.

 ... Because this is what it looks like when the cover first starts coming out. It's practically 3D. 

 Super sticky paint. And I'm guessing not-even-funny-flammable. 

 Getting ready the proper paper. It's silly how much of it goes to waste before all is ready and once it's ready, it's like five minutes to have it done... I suppose that's the system of proportions - you write a book for years and then in days it stops being yours and it becomes other people's.

I can’t begin to describe how much I love prints. The sound, the smell, the thumping... Even when I’m not the customer and people tolerate my hopping around and asking questions, I am mesmerized by the press. I must have been one in the previous life. Or hope to be one someday. Or hope to have one someday :D And the guy handling it was so cool – shy and quiet in the daylight, but while working, he knew every single tiniest thing, turning screws, pushing buttons, applying paint, applying pressure, aligning cylinders, cutting the paper…

That was a good start of the second half of the morning. :))

After we got the sufficient safe number of the last bit – the cover - I would have had to walk to town again, but I checked the map and figured it’s just length to walk by just as nasty piece of road towards the General’s family farm, so I instead turned there and then took a tiny nap on the lawn where he was chopping large piece of wood apart. It was lovely, though I probably got plenty ticks.

Then we had lunch, mostly chicken and dandelion salad, both being on March diet, and drove to my parents’ place, where he went to work and I took the car to get gran from the looney bin. Fun times.

The traffic was a bitch, but that’s nothing compared to my dad’s car. See, the downside of coming from a well situated family (not aristocrats-wise, at least not like that, but more hard working and successful journalists) is that when you’re growing up, everything is as it should be. Lights shine, food feeds, water washes, toys are fun and people are polite. Cars run. As you grow up, the reality that sometimes life isn’t that easy, hits you. The car my dad has now, is battered and old. It’s not that he couldn’t buy a new one; it’s just that he’s so used to this one, another would be problematic to him – as this one is to the rest of us. Buffers are shot all to hell, pedals are odd, the engine makes a sound like a 5o year old race car long left in the rain and every few hundred meters, the power gives. You push the gas pedal and nothing happens. You have to turn the engine entirely off and restart in mid drive. We are all so used to this by now, it’s not even noticed. Though, if you’re the one driving it in rush hour, it can get a bit annoying at times.  

Grandma got home safe, shiny and perky and the centre of attention again, which will keep her happy for a day or two, before she decides she’s been dying from tumour or she’s going blind or she hasn’t eaten or slept in years or something. Frankly, she’s running out of terrible things that can go wrong in a human.

Lastly I returned the car and walked off-hill, taking some apples to the General along the way. He finishes around ten, so I usually take Barky to go and meet him, but I think tonight I’ve done my share of walking. I have worn my shoes to ruins. I can’t afford new ones, because I usually buy a lasting, expensive pair, but I then wear it out in two years. What can I say. I tend to walk a lot. 

We were supposed to have a girls’ day out today, but it luckily got moved to another date, because I would have probably keeled over. I’m off to Ljubljana tomorrow morning, meeting the editor for the Carlins.

 And here’s a pickie of a very small cow with very long white eyelashes :D Cushy farm animals FDW!

Really stupid nightmare this morning … O.o 

Yesterday Drej and I were wondering why the people in our home town library were so cold about our books – why they show no sign of celebrating the fact a few homies made it 8well, or will make it, in my case.)  It got us wondering if maybe people are jealous? Or something? Anyhoo, this resulted in me having a really stupid nightmare today. 

In the dream, I was in some shop where some guy was telling me it didn’t take me 15 minutes to edit a photo and he isn’t going to pay me the full fee, just half. The other customer, an old woman, came in with a large (A2) book, blue, with shabby covers. It was a book of photos by Tomo Jeseničnik, a fairly excellent landscape and suchlike photie. But because the book was old and worn (from a library), she proceeded to ripping off the spine into little bits until she had the book completely apart. I freaked out, appalled at seeing her do this and wanted to take the book from her. I demanded she gives me 50 euro se when we return the book into the library, they could fix the damage at a bookbinders’. She said the book was shabby anyways. And that I obviously have no sense of art. I couldn’t but grab her short hair and hiss into her face: never say I have no sense of art again.

We started walking down the main street, taking the damaged book back to the library with the 50 euro, by which time I was either alone or with Drej in tow and a phone rang. It was one of the clerks there, telling me they’ve heard of my behavior and are giving me an orange warning – one last before I get permanently banned from entering the library again. I tried to explain I was trying to save the book and he said he understands, but that just wouldn’t do. I panicked, offended, started thinking how I would leave of my own and how would I now borrow books – since this is the one time in my life that I actually can and am really looking forward to seeing my book on the shelf. I guess the General would have to go and take them out for me while I waited outside... Fuck. 

Then I woke up. What a weird feeling! And such worries I have O.o

Smash

One could watch all Smash just for Jack Davenport.

As much as I love what The Good Wife is doing for the layman insight on the shady world of lawyers, I like what Smash is doing for the world of drama behind show business. Not so much the sleeping around and wanting to adopt babies and kids smoking pot (come to think of it the entire Julia storyline could be left in some other show), and I am still not sure what Karen's boyfriend's political backstory has got to do with anything, ... but this is so neatly about not being about how good you are, but what's ultimatelly good for making money. I especially like the role of Ellis, the little snake. Nobody likes him, everyone knows he's a greedy little shithead, but he's gooood. He's cunning. He's on top. That's what seems to be appretiated in the heat of the moment.

Listening to this while I'm at it :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TYpy-24NdY

On books and food. And books about food.

Arrrgh. Mental note: don't flip through really pretty national food books while on a nasty diet. You'll never get the pages apart again, after all that drooling. Even if it’s a lot easier to eat just apples and drink just unsweetened tea six days a week, if you’re off the hormone meds. Though on the down side, I am now a lot less horny. I notice I haven’t had to clear my search history since Friday. 

Today I walked from one town to this one (okay, so it was the same length as the daily doggy walking routine, but the road was far less pleasant – asphalt and midday sun, not my fav combo), returning from the candidate printer. The General has negotiated a reasonable deal (not so much price-wise as payment-period wise) and I wanted to stand next to the guy when they start pushing out the first pages. I’m not saying the book is definitely in limbo, because a dozen things can still go wrong, first and last of all being the money, but it certainly is a rush to flip through the first raw, warm, moist, dirty pages and find embarrassing spelling mistakes you can no longer correct and think: FUUUUUCK?!!

That’ll teach me to provoke Nelken.

I have no idea what will happen in the next few days. Well, we are going to get ourselves in a lot more debt and hopefully a lot more motion and thus one step further away from normal people, who tend to listen to reason and quit as soon as it gets unpractical to be an author.  Of course it’s unpractical. It’s scary and pricey and you’re sweating and crying and fighting and line up ulcers and always, always think – this could have been done SO much better…

But you’re one step closer to the other bank. And I like the sound of that other bank.

Also some other interesting things I've found on-line while surfing,waiting for the raid group to form and we can kick Deathwing's possy's ass

There's some cool Scottish bridge that goes under my 'statics' lesson. I have very little problems with architecture as art form (I mean regarding me, regarding other architects I am very cautious), but I do come up lacking severely in terms of statics. Stability of my designs is questionable at best. That's why I build them all on clouds. It's why statics is my favourite part about physics. Also I really like the word 'torque'.
This is the Forth Bridge, a cantilever rail thing that captures the principle very well. I especially love how the engineers demonstrated the functionality of it :))

On the other hand, back on Facebook, I found some REAAAAALLLYY cute furniture. Like, seriously adorable. Make-me-want-to-get-very-rich-and-have-it-all cute. :D

Then I came across of this:

This is a direct respond to an older, quite famous pic of Knightley, Johansson and Ford :D You have to admit it's funny.

And a naked picture of supposedly Scarlett Johansson, which she took in her room on her phone. Do people really do that? Take naked pictures of themselves? ... Hm, I suppose they do. Although I think that Mrs. Johansson would probably have a better camera phone than that. ? No matter. What she does in the privacy of her lonely hotel room while she is forced away from her friend is nobody's entertainment but their and I prefer her dressed or at least almost dressed anyways :)

... and
I think this is rather cool. Coctails that start with looking really drinkable and refreshing :D











 And puppy wolves. How can you not love puppy wolves?

. Plus, for the end, I've been wondering.... should I (in case I have to do book openings some day) make my hair make look more like this?

 If I am ever thin and pretty, I will probably try to pull the Steampunk look for a while. I always wanted to, but it really doesn't work well on a chubby shy girl. Since I'm off my meds, i've lost six pounds in a week. So there's hope for me yet :D

ANTM 18......... AzMarie.

I KNOW watching ANTM 18 is not a testament to my taste in TV, but it's been such a pre-Game-of-Thrones dry spell I'm desperate. Although. Not that there's much of anything new about this show and it's not easy to watch for the better part (and is it just me or is the photography kind of really heart-not-really-into-it. When you see Nigel Barker take the camera in his hands and you think 'finally!', you know it's been a bad season.), but there are SOME highlights. The icily beautiful yet retarded Louise storming out, the tactless bitch (sorry, I know this business very easily degrades models, but when you come into someone house, eat their food, recieve their gifts, wear their clothes and bijou and are offered an easy meal ticket, you respect them. Or you quetly thank them and leave.
Okay, that's about that and then there's AzMarie. No idea what's up with that name, (am hoping Az stands for Azteca, which is one of my favorite names, though, what are the odds?) but this creature is a breath of fresh air into the industry and finally the androgyny are getting more spotlight. She plays the 'in-the-middle-of-all-crossing-lines' very well. She has gotten a lot more sad and withdrawn lately, but as result, her performance has peaked. Less flirting with the co-contestants, more flirting with the magazine covers. She certainly could be the next step in fashion, if she can pull this through...