Maru's Mun Journal

At this very moment, I am busy with

• readying two magazine web sites for going live this afternoon
• writing a for-pay article along the lines of 'Maths is cool yay', tying that sentiment mostly to the success of 'Numb3rs'
• watching the second-to-last episode of 'Doctor Who'
• threading two giants reading intellectual books in Milliways
• drinking tea and eating the last bit of leftover asparagus quiche
• squeeing at my sleeping cats
• oh, and posting to my mun journal **grins**

and all that finely threaded and alternating, doing a bit of this, then a bit of that, then a bit of that thing over there...

My voice is completely gone. My cats are quite astonished because I don't talk to them, skritching them wordlessly behind the ears instead.

The first human who call me on the phone despite my having told them about it by email, whether to just ask a short question or (heh!) ask me how I am will be awarded a special price for spectacularly lacking logic.

**is waiting**

I shall announce the result here when I have one.-

I spent the first of two days of mandatory vacation (due to Mardi Gras, which is celebrated here) being lazy like a languid leopard -- sleeping in, reading the newest atevi book and providing entertainment for my cats.

I thought of a work email I might send, but didn't.  I was distracted by the terrible scrapes Cajeiri gets himself into in that book, and by how silly Lucifer got from being deliriously happy about olive ciabatta; and when I remembered, it was too late.

Never mind, tomorrow is another day. But today was utterly relaxing.

wiebke and cracicotus  have arrived this morning.



Here you see Wiebke showing a video of her cats Luckie and Harry to Lucifer, on her iPad. As yet, my cats haven't learned to use the iPad, but she has cat apps on it, and we are working on it.-

Today, there were even more billboards advertising the start of 'Mad Men' in German television. My whole train station is full of Joan in backlit glass cases!



The one with Don and Rachel (yay Rachel!) says 'Behind each successful woman, there is a man leering at her ass', and the one with Joan says, 'In the leading role, the role of women [in society]', which sounds less starchy in German than in translation.



Here is the first slogan again, on a large outdoor billboard, done with Peggy and Pete, and this



this is the best I could get of the larger version with Joan on it.

My copy of 'Paragenesis' arrived yesterday! Now I have the book with my short story in on paper, to touch and carry around! Here it's lying face-down on one of the little outside tables of my favourite Italian café, where I was enjoying one of the last few nice days of the year while reading up on what everybody else wrote for it.



Today, my order from Evans arrived as well! I had to get Falk the Metropolitan to take some pics of me wearing it at once, as I can't possibly wait with posting about it on my tumblr until the Nazgul is back from the Fake Plastic Trees. Today she was in Muscat, haggling over the price of daggers...



Autumn arrived as well, so here you see my cats, cuddled up in my wonderful dark purple fleece blanket, being comfy and cosy. I have been mean to them by buying a little bottle of catnip scent oil with which I made them go doolally earlier. Anything can be turned into instant catnippy kitty lovedoll now!

Also, a discful of recent Bollywood music as MP3 arrived as well. I was at the Indian shop this afternoon, getting more chai spices, and when I took out my earphones to ask the bloke behind the counter about some Bollywood movies, I realised that my life contained entirely too much Medieval Scottish Heavy Metal Bagpipe Folk Rock, and not enough Bollywood, so I hastened to remedy that!

What did not arrive was episode 4.10 of 'Mad Men' on surfthechannel.com. They didn't even make an entry for it. I am worried...

The two serious appointments/things to go to this month (apart from my vacation, of course!) all had to happen on the same day.

Today.

First, I went to a course about an email marketing tool for my slavery, with three of my co-slaves. That was tedious but kind of important, and took seven hours.

Then, I met the Nazgul to go to her library where there was an event with the illustrator Shaun Tan, whose exhibition we'd seen when the Little Lady was there. Poor bloke came all the way from Australia and was sitting jet-lagged in the front row and then first got treated to an half-hour introductory lesson of which he didn't understand a single friggin' word. I found that really rude of the organisers.

And then, during his talk, when he had this picture from 'The Arrival' up in his presentation,



my cell phone went off with a horrible ringtone of alarms and howling panic, because my mum had a question. Normally, my cell phone never rings, but she was very insistent tonight. Everybody totally jumped out of their skins, as if those people-sucking giants were actually attacking.

I was very sorry, and said so at the little book-signing afterwards. He drew me the white shark-tadpole critter into my own copy of the book, which I bought especially to get it signed. Now, despite having been such a nuisance, I have my own shark-tadpole critter, which is very cute. Will scan or take picture later, but now I'm just too tired to do anything at all except poke everything once and then go to bed. This is the shark-tadpole critter; you will agree it is very cute in a surrealistic way?

The TV news just told me that Warren Beatty was going to challenge Arnold Schwarzenegger for governorship of California.

WTF people of CA?!? Do you sometimes vote for candidates that have not starred in movies? What was that with that skinny ex B Western star a few years ago?

ETA: And somehow, this plot feels horribly familiar, just substitute brother for sister. And it has Shirley MacLaine as well...