those were the days…

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I finally got access to my Twitter archive, after waiting for what felt like ages. I’m a firm believer that early adopters should get the new stuff before everybody else does, but apparently things don’t work that way. We only get our accounts hacked.

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?

this long hair thing

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Some summers ago. I was sitting in the tram, staring out of the window, deep in thought, when I felt something tugging at my braid. A little baby girl had climbed upon the seat next to me, and was fascinated by my braid. Sure, I could have made a fuss about why her mom had let her invade other people’s privacy, but… she was cute. She loved my braid. And babys don’t have any concept of privacy and that you can’t simply grab a braid. Forgiven.
I wasn’t so nice to those two teenage boys who wanted to steal my hairstick.

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.

back to biking

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The bus service went from tolerably well to downright crap since they adjusted the timetables back in December. Or maybe it’s just the combination of my imagination and really bad weather. But I have the feeling that I’m standing around at bus stops for ages until one shows up.

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)

make it so

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As those of you who follow me on Twitter know, I got the love of my life the Star Trek Next Generation for Christmas. Like, the whole series. Now, I wouldn’t get anyone living with me such a thing if I wouldn’t want to watch it myself, as that would be a pretty stupid thing to do.

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.