Nonsense weekend

I had last weekend off again, but wasted most of the time and got very little done. The original plan (and the reason for my Saturday off) had been to attend short karate course, but after my return to work last week my knee started to bother me so much again that I decided against the course. So instead I had one more free weekend to use for whatever I wanted. What I did? Well, it included two days of concerts (Thursday and Saturday), one bottle of a new favorite red wine (both cheap and ecologic!), some catching up with an old friend (former room-mate actually, from the small commune I lived in before the separation) and some drawing. I'm trying graphite again, and it's going surprisingly well. I was especially surprised to find a slightly more expressive style, compared to my more recent drawing... Interesting.

So all in all a good weekend, even though I had been more happy if I had also got something (anything!) sensible done. Something like finishing essays, cleaning my flat, looking for that lost, longer version of my thesis... I seriously hardly even took out the trash. Or then maybe I just need to learn to relax and enjoy things without guilt tripping...

Tomorrow I'm going to try working again and hope for the best. If my knee can't take it I'll simply have to contact my doctor again and see what to do about it. But still hoping I won't have to do that.

weekend update

I've now enjoyed one more weekend off, but plan to try and return to work this week, depending on how it feels tomorrow. My knee has been much better these last couple of days, but I'll still have to be careful - I don't want to make anything (much) worse before next weekend, when I plan to carefully attend a two-day course in Kuusankoski.

I've done some drawing this weekend, a couple of small self portraits and an experiment with red wine... I had a bottle of cheap red wine that didn't taste too good, so I decided to see what it would look like as "paint". Just did some shading on a drawing, but I think I'll have to try that again, the wine sometimes reacted quite unexpectedly with/on the paper... But I'll have to return to that later.

Tonight I'll try training again, and see what works. We're changing the program on the lower grade side (that I teach), so next week on we'll be doing kicks for a while. Will be fun, as long as I can do it myself too!

Weekend update

 I'm OK, just haven't taken the time to write for a while. I have two awesome weekends behind me, and a busy week in between these. The course in Tallinn was great, very inspiring and lots of hard work - like it should be.

This weekend was spent at Kåren, where the rock organization RÅA gave their annual two-day festival, featuring 2 x 8 different temporary cover bands. This year shows by the likes of Metallica, The Who, Manowar, Megadeth, Motörhead and Bruce Springsteen, just to mention a few. I had a great time and was quite impressed with  most of the bands. Brought my friend Mr Camera around this time and had some fun with him/it. Still have lots to learn about using it though, and taking pictures during concerts is particularly hard (and often a waste of good concert time). But there were some good pictures among them, just have to sort through them all.

Suffered a bit of a hangover today - seems I can hardly stand any alcohol anymore - but managed to cure it with the help of my  Simple Hangover Soup: very salty (vegetable) stock + frozen veggie mix + chilli powder + garlic. It works!

And tomorrow it's Monday again. Wasn't it Monday just the other day? I'm growing suspicious about these constantly recurring Mondays...

Listening to: Graveyard

The things you find

Last night I decided it was time to clean out the drain under my tub.

Nevermind the dirt. Move along people - nothing to see here...

The only way to do this is through a small opening in the tiles (behind the metal lid in the picture. This turned out to be the best hiding place EVER for a little cat - this is why miss cat is in the picture). For some reason, this time I stretched my arm in to also feel around under the tub, only to find a hard object that said "klonk!"...

Chateau du Bathroom

...and turned out to be an age-old, empty bottle of Bordeaux! Cork still inside.

"Taatusti alkuperäistä Bordeaux-viiniä/ Garanterat äkta Bordeaux"

I wonder how old it could be, and what made it end up under the tub. (student hiding his drinking habit from conservative parents?)

Also, I'm considering writing a message to put in the bottle before returning it to its home under my tub. You know, just in case someone else was to find it years from now.

Show me how to live

I guess I forgot about how life changes like these don't go by without some reinventing of yourself. Some patching and mending. Sometimes I doubt everything I am. Luckily not for long. It's still scary, though. I miss my old friends from back home. Wish I wouldn't have to visit the Olde Hellhole to see them. One day I just realised that there's no one left here who knows me from before I came to Turku.
I made an important decision late last night: I will try to keep my alcohol intake to an absolute minimum this spring. It doesn't mean I can't or would refuse to party, just that I'll try to cut down on the booze when doing so. I still love beer, I just don't miss the person I obviously tend to turn into when I'm drunk.

I still don't have internet in the "new" apartment but I'll try to learn to cope with writing my posts here at university. I've missed blogging. Can't think of anything more to write now. Just that I'm very confused about most things. I'll just post now. OK.

Short update

I still haven't gotten to fixing myself up with internet at the new apartment, never had I guessed it would take this long. so here I am spending a late evening at university again. There is of corse a good side to this too, as I will for example do less unnecesary surfing around when I'm finally connected. Also, I've spent more time actually doing things at home. Or so I imagine. Sometimes I do wonder if I'm just using more time on daydreaming instead...

This last weekend I decided to spend only at home, only doing things I like. (Ok. Cheated a bit and did the dishes too - I bloody had to. No space left in the kitchen.) But I also spent more time than... I don't know when, drawing while drinkiung ridiculously expensive whine. (One of the Good Bottles I got for my 30th birthday).

On Saturday afternoon I actually left the apartment, to attend the wedding of a good friens and his fiancé. It was a beautiful small wedding and a nice get-together with friends afterwards. I'm glad I got the chance to attend it!

Now back to updating the CV. That's what I'm pretending to do here, while also (obviously) blogging... I wish I had something new nd cool to ad to my CV every time I need to use it for something, that would make it so much more fun to work on it. Oh well. It has to be done.

Quote of the Day

"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but the very least you need is a beer."

-Frank Zappa

Sunday afternoon ramblings

As if it wasn't already enough, I now seem to have caught a cold or flu... No runny nose or sore throat, but a slight fever that just won't go away ad a a strangeness in my lunges... Tired and freezing all the time. I think I'll try to get this pace cleaned today, it should be enough to keep me warm but at the same time not to intellectually challenging.

At least I got some new ideas for my collages last night - I've already made drastic changes to two of them! I also started some new collections of materials for a couple of them. So that feels really interested right now. I'm just lacking the energy to actually conduct that much... So I'm saving that for later. I really should post pictures of the process at some point. Usually I tend to wait until a work is finished before I even think of documenting it, but sometimes, especially if I've made some more drastic change to a piece I'm reminded of what a good idea it might have been to actually document the process too...

I broke my sober month last night. I had planned to stay sober for just over one month, or until December 11th - next weekend. But I was tired and in a bad mood and had added a bunch of other bad excuses to that, and just decided to pour myself a whiskey. No, I do not regret it and yes, it did taste like heaven!