It feels like I haven't written a proper post in
ages, that the last time I did, dinosaurs were fighting off hoards of ninjas whilst crashing into tiny little wooden cottages filled with scared French peasants. Which is a shame, because there's actually quite a bit I ought to recount. (It's also a shame about the peasants and their little yet charming huts.) I have yet, for example, to give an account of my Christmas swag or wax poetical about my
Time for Something Biblical proof copy, but seeing as that requires photographs that, yes, have already been taken, to be downloaded and uploaded and all that, those particular topics will have to remain unexplored. For now.
Instead, let me tell you about my German class, for example. It's the usual mix of young and middle-aged people, of about nine girls and two boys and if anyone gives me any gripe about saying
girls and
boys then you're reading the wrong blog. One of the guys (there, happy?) has albinism, which is absolutely fascinating.
I guess the most surprising thing about his condition - can we call recessive genetic mutations "conditions"? - is how red his skin is, all over. Like he's permanently blushing
a lot. His eyes are also really neat (
a bit like this, blue with red streaks) and, apparently, really not so good. While I knew - especially from
Threshold by
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greygirlbeast - that albino eyes are particularly sensitive to light, I wasn't as aware of the
eyesight problems linked to the mutation. The guy in my class has some serious lenses for far-seeing and others for reading, which he amps up with an extra hand-held lens. He sits next to me in class, which means we've partnered a few times for the conversation practices and he seems nice, although we haven't really chatted. I keep being struck not by his albinism but by his glasses, which make his eyes look
huge, and it's taking me a while to get used to the effect.
Curiously, there's also another girl my class with what must be a very high prescription because they give a strong magnifying effect to her eyes, which makes my brain itch in the "something's slightly different here and I can't stop noticing" sense.
On Monday, we had a substitute teacher - rumoured to be Brazilian, of all things - because our teacher was off wrangling unicorns or something, I don't know. It a bit sad that I much preferred the substitute to our regular teacher, isn't it?
( Read more... )Let me also tell you about my dreams, because they're still being strangely nice to me.
( Read more... )I've been getting through January's Haitus of Death weeks - including the "We're back! We're gone again!" horrors that various shows did - by listening to podcasts. Today I listened to
MonsterTalk, which is MADE OF SCIENCE and therefore awesome (and geckos). I'm really looking forward to the current episode, though.
It's about ninjas, guys. Ninjas. And they
Ask a Ninja.
I've also been playing catch-up on all those movies I've been meaning to watch and have had staring at me with puppy eyes Sam Winchester would be proud of. My boss gave me - or rather, regifted, because his wife already had one, but hey, gift horse of
awesome - an agenda, and since it's only got wee tiny lines and sticks in four days per page, I've been using it to be ridiculous obsessive and organized and listmaking, by which I mean jotting down every book, podcast, episode and movie I read, listen to or watch. Last week, for example, included the Podfic
Beautiful Disaster by thenyxie, which was really good and long and used music breaks to glorious effect (and because damn, do you need breaks after a couple hours of listening). My only complaint is that there really was too much porn - hours and
hours of it. Don't get me wrong, it was well-written, smutty, and full of characterization, but the characters went at it like rabbits on E.
My other literary foray included the audiobook of
The Metamorphosis. Let me put it this way: if TV Tropes had a posterchild for
It Got Worse,
The Metamorphosis would be it. Ye gods! but things just kept on getting worse for poor Gregor.
At the moment, I'm listening to
The Trial, on
seschat's recommendation. Not much happens, really, although I guess that's the whole point. For the most part it's interesting in an absurd sort of way, although I think K. is a complete jerk. I have just gotten through a pretty dull patch involving Titorelli, the court painter, and what felt like hours and hours of a lecture on court process. Let me tell you, when you're scanning document after document and need something to distract you, that is not it.
I also went to the cinema twice - well, once was the French Institute - for
Gainsbourg: Vie Heroique (WIN) and
The King's Speech (WIN). Not in the cinema, I've watched
The Girl Who Played With Fire(which was so
rivetting - and I say with with all the sarcasm in the world - that I started knitting whilst watching it just to get
through it). "Thriller" my half-finished wristwramer.
Splice, which was decent enough although I kept wanting to shout at the screen all the ways that they were doing science and scientists wrong, and I was very much amused that it remembered in the last twenty minutes that it was supposed to be a horror movie and not a science fiction one meant to comment on scientific advantages.
Oh, and I finally watched
Twilight. With
RiffTrax, of course, which made it
hilarious.
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