Off to Trip Advisor to find myself a cute and affordable home for a few nights, and then to plan what to see! And how to get there. I plan to give myself the full Empress Elizabeth treatment, taking advantage of travelling alone. Oh, and Sacher Torte. Coffee houses. What else?

And because I never travel anywhere I don’t know at least one Tweep, I’m looking forward to meet a whole bunch of them this time. Woop-woop!

Thankfully, the meeting went very very well, we still get praise from every direction a week later. All the effort, long workdays and sleepless nights were worth it. And now I don’t have to think about it until fall comes rolling around, whee!

Coming out of the post-meeting haze, I realised that there’s a little white bike standing in my living room. It dawned on me that, yes, it is indeed mine, and yes, it needs fenders and new brakes and maybe even new tires, if I actually want to ride it. And I only have two work days next week, thanks to a public holiday and vacation days – perfect to put a little work into the Sursee. So I ordered the hammered fenders I was lusting after all the time and new pedals on that retro bike outfitter site Sella Berolinum. The new brakes and tires came from a seller on the big bad behemoth starting with an A. I needed the tires because the ones on the bike right now are too wide for the fenders. D’uh. On the other hand, I have no idea how old they are and if they might crumble to dust under me while riding around.

I’m looking forward to get my hands all greasy again!

I know that my work conditions are extremely privileged. There are much more women than men working there1 in general, and almost all leading positions are women too. And even at university two of my three subjects had way more girl than boy students – but that’s sort of normal in the Humanities. I haven’t encountered the infamous glass wall yet. So my daily life doesn’t put me into situations where I could experience discrimination first hand. Lucky me, eh?

And then there is that fake girl geek thing making the rounds on the Intertubes. Which made me think very hard about a) Am I actually a geek? (I am most definitely a girl, thank you very much) and b) How goddamn insecure is the reportedly stronger sex about itself?
I probably am a geek, if you put the very shallow definition of “Watches Star Trek / Star Wars / Doctor Who / any other SF/fantasy show” “Reads comics” “Wears glasses” to work. But I won’t but that sticker on my chest anymore, because I have a variety of interests besides consuming media, most notably creating my own stuff, taking bikes appart and raising my indoor jungle.

Objectification. The thing that broke my writing mojo this week. Because I’m unsure if it really is a bad thing. I also think we’re a race of objectifying assholes no matter the sex or gender. I don’t see much difference in quality between the guy cast of any show taking their shirts off so that the girl audience can swoon over their abs or seeing the girl cast in skin tight clothing/ butts and boobs pose so that the guy audience can swoon over their assets. And it’s the girls who then proceed to post lengthy board posts or really bad fan fiction on the intertubes, while the boys… I’ll leave that to your imagination. *wink* Sexy sells, and that’s an undeniable fact. It’s boring and unimaginative, but it sells.

Thing is, I could probably garner lots of readers if I would stress the fact even more that my male protagonist over at the Petticoats in Space is a gorgeous piece of hunky glory, or if I would turn my heroine into a sexy walking triple x movie. But I’m not so desperate (yet), that I would only focus on their outer shell. I want all of my cast to be human beings, with problems and hidden secrets and desires., that the readers cares about. Don’t know how good I’m at portraying that, but I hope I will get there someday.

And now I stop rambling incoherent stuff, but I had to get that out of my system. Stay awesome, because I bet you are, no matter your gender.

At the beginning of the year, with being on vacation and having ample alone time in the evenings as the man was working the late shift, getting writing done during the week wasn’t so much of a problem. But I let it slip, and now it’s rather difficult to get into my writing mode after work. Especially when there’s a brand new DVD set with all the Addam’s Family episodes waiting… ahem. Being tired is also an excuse.

I prefer to write while being alone. It’s possible with the man in the room, but it works better when I’m alone. Having a brain that hasn’t been turned into something that feels like pink candyfloss at the dayjob in eight grinding hours is also very much preferred. Coming next week I decided to try and get up an hour earlier – to have undisturbed time with a fresh brain. I’m not really sleeping after 5am anyway, so why not get up and use the time? That would leave me the Saturday to edit the story and schedule it for publishing Sunday morning, I won’t feel bad in the evenings because I’m not writing and maybe there will also be time left to do some cleaning. Sunday would be free for spending undisturbed and guiltfree time with my loved one. I’m excited to see how this plan works out and how my inner weaker self will try talking me into staying in bed.

I admit, getting up an hour earlier that one has to, for a project that’s not paying in neither money nor attention, sounds stupid. But I’m so so so happy to have found the confidence in my voice again, that I want to give it my best me. Even if that means to be bright eyed and bushy tailed at 5 o’clock in the morning.1

I was wearing wooly tights, my trusty bike pants, a vest, a cotton longsleeve, a cashmere pullover (christmas present from my mom), my soft shell jacket and my Golden Gate Bridge coloured windbreaker. Oh, and legwarmers, but those more for fashion reasons, because Doc Martens and skinny legwear look rather silly without some inbetween element. The trick is to prevent overheating from stuffy clothing. You get incredibly warm on a bike really fast. The first few meters albeit are more like this: “Ooooooh my lord, what was I thiiiiiinkiiiing? I’m freeeeeeezing!”
Thin, breathable layers are the Number One trick when it comes to staying warm on a bike. Second trick is a jacket that is 100% windproof. Cold is not so much an enemy than wind is. I finally invested in one of those cotton tubes from Buff to keep my head warm under the helmet, and this is sooo much nicer that having icicle ears.

I don’t mind having an icecold chin, but always rub some cream on my cheeks and lips to prevent cold damage to my skin. You might want to get one of those special scarves that carve over your nose or a balaclava if you are more sensible to cold. Regular scarves work too, but can give you the feeling of wearing a neck brace.

But even if I’m not cold, I’m looking foward to temperatures on the other side of the Zero.

So, anyway, Twitter archives. Oh sweet baby Jesus… I’m on Twitter since its humble beginnings, and although I don’t tweet as much as others do, I have like 26k tweets under my belt. That’s a lot to read, I tell ya. And I learned a thing or two about myself. For example, I have now a neat track on the multitude of ways I like to accidentally hurt myself. Hot glue is just one way of many.
I also can now experience the pains of finishing university all over again. And all the self-doubt afterwards. Which promptly sent me into an episode of feeling like the greatest academic failure, until I reminded myself that a) I don’t work as a scholar and b) I do indeed have a job that supports me and is mostly fun.

Thankfully, the Twitter archive is not only good for going through old pain. I made great friends there, and it was nice to reread some of the conversations. Or check when exactly the first tweet exchange happened. Or rediscover cool stuff that you linked to 3 years ago.

Some tidbits:
- the person I tweeted most with is @bexxi
- @Duncrow and I found each other via @chiloe who sadly isn’t tweeting anymore
- my first @-reply was to @Kisa‘s old account
- there are some with whom I had constantly close contact with for years, like @nome_home, @marv_p and @rabbitroodle – and then there were bouts of contact with others that now I don’t follow anymore, sometimes I didn’t even know anymore who they were! That was freaky…

Do you have access to your old tweets? What did you find out? Or would you rather not know?

I think the only person I know who rather has me with short hair, is my mom. Everybody else raves about it, wants to touch it and is flabbergasted when they see it flying freely in all its glory. Girls, if you want to have men literally spinning on their heels, forget plunging necklines and mini skirts. Long hair, down to your waists. And I can’t even blame those guys honking, craning their heads and almost running into lamp posts… long hair is awesome. I always turn around too when I see a beautiful mane.

Truth to be told, I rarely have my hair down and open. It loves getting tangled and knotty and so I rather keep it in a braid or updo and out of harm’s way. This is also why I think long hair is way easier to care for than short hair. You put it up and away and forget about it for the rest of your day. No daily washing and styling required. And you can have a different look every day. There are a gazillion of braids and buns that will garner you as much attention as lose hair will.

And yes, it takes an eternity to get long. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it on the way down. I think I had the most fun with it updo wise when it was around midback. And I probably would cut it back to that length if it wouldn’t mean a way too short braid.

I’m missing my bike sorely. To my delight the weather forecast for next week shows temperatures in the double digits on the plus side – hooray! And it’s not getting dark so soon anymore, so riding my bike to work might be very very possible. No more standing around freezing, no more having to listen to that chick that is on the phone every blasted morning, speaking to her (I think) boyfriend about the most mundane things ever. Like for example that she cooked chicken the night before and now her coat smells like chicken. No more having to leave the office two minutes too early because the bus leaves earlier.

So unlike last year when I had to talk myself into actually taking the bike, now it’s more like iwanttotakethebikegoawayyoustupidwinteromgbbq!!! On Thursday I was so fed up with the bus being late 1 that I decided to walk the remaining 2 km home. I probably wasn’t faster, but warmer. And I got to walk part of my commute, which was nice.

Sorry for the rambling post, I actually planned to write about different types of valves, but didn’t get around to take the pictures. Buh. Bad blogger.

GZ6H3Y8YR66C (This is a Technoratic claim token… because claiming blogs is a serious thing)

Shockingly, I never watched Star Trek. Well, I caught one or two episodes of Voyager, and the BFF dragged me once into one of the movies, which I didn’t really understood, because a) my English wasn’t so good at that time, being still a teenager and in school, and b) I had never seen anything Next Generation related before. I enjoyed it anyways, because how can a girl not enjoy the wonderful sight of Commander Riker?

It’s quite impossible to navigate the Ocean of Popculture without coming across Star Trek, as it’s as omnipresent as Star Wars. And I finally want to “get” it. We’re now close to finishing the first season, and I really really like it. Not only because of Riker, I asure you. I sometimes miss the crazyness of Doctor Who, but yeah, I like it. And I hope that that makes the man and the BFF happy, as it is a thing they both liked very much when we where still in our teens.

I’m not a science fiction geek. Mostly because of the fictional science that is inevitably shoved down your throat while you read/watch it. Fantasy never does this1. To my great relief, the science part is not so important in TNG as I had feared. In fact, I’m infuriated because I’m not told how the Enterprise engine works, or how many people are actually on board of that ship, and what they are doing there. Guess I have to dive down that rabbithole that is Memory Alpha and aquire some knowledge of the background stuff.

So, thank you Doctor Who for turning me into somebody who watches series, and thank you most important people in my life for planting the Star Trek seed ages ago so that I now want to watch all of it. Because I very much see myself watching the Classics, Voyager and Deep Space Nine too. It’s going to be a Starfleet year.