Amruniel's Ramblings

Right, a few days late, but here's the next instalment of my monthly review! Yay!

( Read more... )


And that's it for this month! Thanks for reading, guys!

As many, if not all of you know by now, I'm super bad at keeping up with this journal. The last time I posted on here before today? Nearly a year ago? Goddamnit!

But since I want to be better (and I really like the idea of keeping a somewhat regular account of what I'm up to -apart from my Instagram - come, check out what's going on @amruniel ;) ), I have come up with the idea of starting to write monthly reviews/recounts of what I was up to, what I did, dreamed of, loved, hated, you name it. Let's see if I can at least commit to one effing entry per month.

This can't be too hard to do, can it? CAN IT??!!

Anyway, let's see what July of 2019 had in store for me!

( The Good, the Bad, and the ... Lazy?! )

So... apparently THIS happens when you put a ginger out into the sun... 🤣🤣🤣🤣😅🤷💪

A post shared by @ amruniel on Jun 14, 2019 at 10:53am PDT

...oopsie?! Though that actually happened in June)

Podcasts:
I have to admit I have never understood the appeal of podcasts. I always thought that listening to other people talking about whatever was just about as much a waste of time as listening to audiobooks was - in other words, it was time I would rather use for actually reading something. (I'm a little book-snob, I know. Nothing beats ink on paper. And I still stand by that, even though my stance on podcasts has changed dramatically.)

Life has its funny, mysterious turns, and so it happened that the habit of listening to BBC radio online that I formed last fall and winter (first in order to help improve my British accent for the pronunciation class I had to do, later also because I really really enjoyed some programs) got me looking up the first podcast I ever listened to - a cricket podcast of all things! That story also happened in June:

 

 

 

 

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I am from Austria. My knowledge of cricket is roughly this: it's played with bats and a ball, and said ball sometimes gets up close and personal with a piece of sandpaper if the Australians are involved (yeah, this made international news). Oh, and thanks to Harry Potter fanfiction I'm also aware that there's a thing called the Ashes (don't ask 🤷🤣) So, why have I been bingeing on a cricket podcast of all things lately? Because two weeks ago I heard @felixwhite and @greg_james on 5live Drive while climbing and their excitement about some catch made me laugh so much that I fell off the boulder. I checked out their first live show, laughed even more, found their podcast and have become addicted in a matter of minutes. As of today I'm all caught up, and while I still have next to no clue about how cricket is actually played (but can throw around words like mankading and two-paced pitch like a pro) and even the hugely entertaining @matthoran1010 knows more about the game than me, I can by now say with real authority that @jimmya9 is not only super entertaining, extremely likeable, and has a great sense of humour (and knows his shredders and printers!) but also proves that I just love listening to Northern Bastards™️ (apparently it's not just @sean_bean_official -interesting 🤔). Apart from that, the podcast has taught me that people look at you strangely when you walk around with a face-splitting grin; scoot away from you on public transport when you start snorting with laughter about something they can't hear; and just cannot deal with it when you literally become the embodiment of 🤣 when Mattchin gets on a roll with Spankers and Dirty Balls. In the last couple of weeks I have gained a new catch phrase (which nobody around me understands or reacts to correctly), have been cursed (or blessed) with a whole army of theme tunes stuck in my head (We like to... CRUSIC!), have learned A LOT about the sad trials of Jos Buttler, and know one thing for sure: I'll tune in the next time, even if it's a bit spicy, that is! 🌶️ If you haven't listened to this podcast (and I know you haven't!) give it a try - until then, GO WELL!

A post shared by @ amruniel on Jun 15, 2019 at 1:43pm PDT

Ever since then I have listened to a few other podcasts, some of which I completely and madly fell in love with:

• My Dad Wrote A Porno: If you, like me, have ever giggled about cringe-worthy sex-scenes in fanfics where you just KNEW the author had never actually seen another human being naked, let alone had sex, then this podcast is for you. I swear, I laughed until I cried. I snorted drinks all over the place. I literally (and loudly) groaned "uuuuuh nooooooo!" at some particularly dubious wording/descriptions - while out in public. And I had a BLAST! I can't wait until season 5 starts in September!
• Cut Through Nutrition: A superb look at all things nutrition and the fallacies of non-nutritionists trying to explain their views by using nutritional studies and data. It's a super interesting topic, and while it is mainly targeted at medical professionals, the two super likeable presenters talk about everything in a way that makes it easy to follow for us laypeople, and in a way that educates while being super interesting.
• The Adam Buxton Podcast: If long, rambly conversations that cover everything from common man-flu to death are your thing, Adam's podcast is just the right listen for you! I love, love, love it (and couldn't be happier that I still have over 60 episodes to go until I'm caught up!)

Climbing: As I have mentioned in my "Tailenders" Instagram post, the first time I hear Greg James and Felix White enthuse about cricket I fell of the boulder wall because they made me laugh so much. Clever people (like you, dear reader ;D) might extrapolate from that, that I started to go climbing again. And they would be right! I do it a lot less frequent than I used to, about once a week roughly, but I'm really enjoying it again. And what's more, I kind of start to really like bouldering.... Which is... a story for next month, I think :D 


So, this is it... my first monthly review. Let's see if I can make this a habit........... (if not, you can always reach me over on Instagram... or via PM/DM here or there... or via mail for those of you who have my email... or.... pretty much everywhere except here it seems... oopsieeeeeee!)     

In a stunning turn of events, you all find myself still alive and kicking ;)

I know, it must have seemed as if the earth has opened up and swallowed me up without any warning, and for that I'm really sorry. I want to apologize particularly to those of you who worried about me, sent me PMs, etc.! Mea culpa!

For those of you happy to know I'm still here and not interested in anything more, I'd suggest to stop reading here now and go on to do something you'd rather do :)


For everyone else - here's a (short and inadequate) explanation:

As you might remember, my last post was on June 20th, where I (probably drunk on some celebratory birthday bubbly) stated I was hopeful to manage to keep on writing halfway regularly despite the exam looming...
...well, no.
Turned out, there was WAY more material to study than I had anticipated. As in TONS more. That woman drove me crazy over the course of the semester, but she really, really hit rock bottom in my favours during those last 10 days of June.
So, I more or less spent the remainder of the month non-stop studying, with the occasional break for food or sleep.
I somehow managed to actually got summing up the material done the night before the exam, with less than 24 hours of "real" study time on my hands. Despite that, the exam went rather well after all (having the first look at the questions my the prof went up a notch in my favours again, let me tell you ;) ).

Riding on a high after having finished the semester FINALLY, I actually did fire up the computer shortly before midnight on the 30th and created a cabin at CampNaNo for me. I really was all psyched up about tackling another month of writing and possibly even get the whole fic as close to finished as possible.

Fast forward to the next day and I found myself in the situation to really, really, really have no energy left to do anything, least of all to make myself turn on the computer and tackle Day 1 of CampNaNo. I, for the first time in months and months, couldn't make myself even THINK about the fic. I was too tired, too wrung out.

If I have learned any lesson those past years, then to listen to my body and my mind when they tell me it's too much. So, for once, I did the sensible thing and decided to give myself the weekend off and start tackling the writing a couple days late.

On Monday, I honestly didn't feel much better about writing. I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea to go back to the story and wrestle the scene I was writing into something I actually liked. I had no inclination, no impetus, and frankly no energy to sit down and struggle through something I wasn't feeling at the moment, just for the sake of hitting some arbitrary word-goal I had self-imposed on myself.
And truth to be told, it wasn't just the writing - it was the very simple act of switching on the computer that seemed like too much of an effort for me.

I was tired, unhappy, unmotivated and altogether in no mood to even browse the internet, let alone engage with people or do something productive.

I promised myself to get back to it the next day on a daily basis, but each and every new day I lacked the motivation to do anything. It just felt RIGHT to not be writing for the moment. To not be posting stuff or reading posts or browse or just generally kill time in front of the screen.

Then Himself told me he would go on a week-long climbing tip with a friend of our the next week, and I found myself in the funny situation of life imitating art big time. In the fic, I have two OCs that are based on exactly those two people leaving for a climbing vacation... and now the real them actually did the same.
A sign, right?
So, I was pretty adamant about me using the time alone to make up for lost writing-time and hammer out a couple thousand words each day.

That was, until I actually found myself alone and all my good plans going down the drain due to immense demotivation and the bad timing that led to me discovering a new YouTube channel I got obsessed with. A channel that has been in existence for 11 years, so you can guess how many videos there are for me to catch up on....

So, another week went by with me NOT firing up the computer.

Then, Himself was back again, and with him a couple of things we had to attend, a few outings we wanted to do, and a handful of evenings spent doing nothing at all, just enjoying the summer, the rest of the month passed as well, hardly noticed by me.

And now, it's August and I am... back, but not back?
I certainly needed the time off the computer and away from my story, and while it completely threw my intended schedule off, the interruption also freed me from said schedule, giving me enough peace of mind to be okay with the fic possibly not being finished during the summer, and possibly even not finished before the next "real" NaNoWriMo.

So, my plan for now is to enjoy (and survive) the current heat wave, and try to get some writing done here and there with no set schedule or fixed word-goals for the moment until I get back into the flow or hit a part of the story that forces me to keep on writing and regularly at that.

I will, however, try to set aside an evening or two each week to work my way through the waiting posts and comments that have accumulated over the past months.
In short, I'll be here and yet not here for the foreseeable future, and as usual I'll keep you updated on any writing that gets done around here :)

I hope you're all having a lovely, wonderful and relaxing summer!
*hugs*

I have been out of sight (though hopefully not out of mind) these last days.
It turned out that the exam I'll be taking on Thursday requires a LOT more studying than I anticipated.... (of course it did... it always does *rolls eyes at herself*)

Anyway, I actually wanted to spend this evening giving my brain a break and get some writing done, but alas, I opted to go climbing instead this afternoon, so I'm stuck with doing this instead tonight:



And yes - if I had known that I would have to torment my poor self with geography, I sure as fuck wouldn't have signed up for that exam... Damn!

So, if anyone of you has a handy trick how I'll be able to wrap my head around locating the individual states on the map of the US, please do share! (As it stands, I feel reasonable confident that I might be able to locate Texas, California and possibly Florida... which really doesn't help my confidence about passing the test at all...........)

Anyway, I wanted to say I'm more or less alive still, I'm thinking about you and I'll be back catching up with you on Thursday (hopefully) or Friday (at the very latest)!

*hugs you all*

I planned on starting February off the way I intend to go on - by writing/getting back into the habit of writing on a (near) daily basis.

Well - nope.

I spent the last three hours or so catching up on posts and comments waiting for me, and despite not even reading the fics still waiting for me, the clock somehow jumped to 2:30 a.m. which is WAY too late to start writing - even for me.

Damn!

So, change of plans - I'll get back to being a good girl TOMORROW! (hopefully...)
Keep your fingers crossed, yes?

Today, I didn't do ANY studying. At all.
I feel like the biggest idiot on this planet for wasting valuable time by not really doing anything all day long. *sigh*
Time's flying by and I decide to do fuck all... how dumb can one person be?!

And despite doing nothing really important all day long I didn't even manage to write either. What a wasted day.
I'm really angry at myself at the moment :/

(On the plus side, I managed to reply to all comments/posts waiting for me. So that's something at least...)

Anyway - the worst thing: by doing no studying today I made sure to have to put in extra hours tomorrow, which is such a fucking bad timing since it's Himself's birthday :(
So I'm not only a bad student, but also a bad girlfriend. Yay. Way to go, you genius!

Gnaaaah!

(And to top it off, I'm hungry, which really doesn't help my mood at all! *growls*)

*gasps* I can't believe the month's already over! I will really miss this!
Which leads us to my final entry.

29 - The Little Things

Some years ago my linguistics professor told us to "count your blessings, every evening!" - he, of course, followed this advice up with "and say your vowels", but that's not what stuck with me :)

Anyway - for quite some time these previous years I couldn't see any blessings in my life. I couldn't see past the pain and the anxiety, and I most of all couldn't see anything good happening around/to me.
Thankfully, this darkness has passed and I've gradually been able to notice the little things, the wonderful -sometimes magical- moments that life throws at each of us randomly, once more.

I still remember the day I got up and suddenly had a song stuck in my head. I know, this sounds like something really bad or at least very annoying, but for me it suddenly brought home a fact about me I had never noticed before: when I'm feeling good, there is always music flittering around in my head. And for quite some time before that day, this music had been missing without me noticing. While I've been dealing with my depression and my anxiety, I've constantly had things running through my head - things about what could happen, what could go wrong, what I did do wrong, etc., but never something even remotely uplifting or happy.
And then this one morning I got up and these thoughts were replaced by a silly song that hopped around in my brain and suddenly I could look out of the window and be happy that the sun was shining. I suddenly looked up and things seemed to be a bit brighter, a bit more friendly, a bit more welcoming.

Since that day, I cherish those annoying songs or part of songs getting stuck in my head. I now know that getting up with music on my mind means that I'm doing well. And if the song stuck in my head keeps me from falling asleep for a bit at night - no problem, I've had a good day mentally, and that's what matters.

These last months, nearly years, I have been able to notice the little things, the joy and beauty that can be found in the smallest things - and I've tried to consciously see them, to look for them and -what's more- be thankful for them. In a way, I finally listened to my beloved professor and started to count my blessings. And surprisingly enough, there are quite a few of them, even on the bad days.

Sometimes it's a beautiful sunset/sunrise, sometimes it's feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin, sometimes it's a squirrel crossing my way, and sometimes it's the people I meet.

Typing this, I remembered an incident when I was in London nearly 8 years ago. We were doing the most touristy things possible and after a visit to the Tower of London, we simply HAD to see the Tower Bridge. I remember being dead tired on my feet after days spent walking around the city and nights of very little sleep. When we were ready to go up to the walkway there was a nice elder gentleman checking our tickets and - I still remember it as if it happened yesterday - when he gave me the ticket back, he smiled at me and told me to "have fun, sweetie". I'm sure he's said the same to hundreds or thousands of people, but this nice gesture lifted my spirits and stayed with me over the years. It's been the first time ever a stranger has called me anything nicer than "miss" and while it surely was nothing more than an empty phrase, it really made my day then.

It's the little things, the things that are often completely meaningless to others, that brighten our days, that spark our passions and that make us happy.

This Fandom Fest made me take a look at the many things that I have and which I love. It's been a real joy to take the time to think about things that are oftentimes overlooked or just so "normal" that I don't notice them any longer. I've had great fun doing this, and I'm thankful I decided commit myself to this reflection.

And before I post my last entry, I want to thank everybody who actually read me posts ;) - yes, that's you, silvan_lady and gattodoro! *hugs*

27 - Films

I love films - always have, always will.
I started studying Theatre-, Film- and Media-Studies first and foremost because of the "film"-part. I've always liked theatre and quickly learned to love certain aspects of my theatre studies for their own sake. And media is so much part of our lives that it's hard not to be interested in them. But my first love has always been the movies.

I used to dream of a career in the film business. I've always seen myself as a kind of Peter Jackson of Austria ;) Not because I thought I could ever be as good as he is, but because I loved (and still love) the fact that he is director, writer and producer all in one. It's like the holy grail of making movies.
I actually worked in a film company for a few months and had a great time there. Sadly, the producer who took me under his wings turned out to be a bit of a backstabbing asshole, so my stint there was cut short even before we finished the first project I've been co-working on. It was a hard job, it sometimes brought me to my physical and mental limits, but it's been an experience I wouldn't want to miss for anything in the world.
Maybe one day when I'm doing better mentally I'll try to get back into the business. The good thing about film is that you're never too old to do it ;)

Anyway - very unsurprisingly my most favourite movies ever are the Lord of the Rings films. They are just perfect. In every way. Every time I watch them (and I watch them regularly *grins*) I'm deeply in awe by the genius work of PJ. Sadly, the Hobbit movies never even came close. I'd have loved to love them just as much, but it shouldn't have been, it seems.

Below the cut you'll find a bunch of other films I love!

( Films ahead! )

25 - Tolkien

Obviously, I'm a huge Tolkien-geek. I've read LotR for the first time in early January 2003 - some weeks after I've been dragged to watch "Two Towers" in cinema, where I didn't understand ANYTHING about the story, couldn't distinguish between the Hobbits at all (until I've read the books I thought there were just 2 short guys with curly hair in the movie *snorts*), and fell asleep bored halfway through. The only thing I noticed: a sexy as hell rugged guy wielding a sword, and a very beautiful blonde guy who had quite some skills with a bow.
Anyway - after reading devouring all three books in slightly more than 48 hours, I've been hooked and things have just become more and more intense during the years to come :)

I've re-read LotR completely at least once every year since, and have selectively read parts of it again and again more often. These books never get boring.

And of course I've read quite a lot by Tolkien and about Tolkien ever since. He's just such an incredible writer and linguist all around. I'm always on the lookout for a new book by/about Tolkien and, fortunately, there's quite a steady stream of new things to discover.

Well, and then there are the films... There is so much additional literature to be had there. There is so much merch I love to bits and pieces. It's a dream for any film-student, let me tell you! ;)

There are quite a lot of scientific texts about both the movies as well as the books, which is another aspect about this fandom I love.

Anyway - while scrolling through the pics on my phone yesterday, I noticed that I snapped part of my Tolkien-collection for a friend of mine the last time I went through my books (I'm still trying to figure out a system to organize them... *sigh*). So I'll give you a glimpse into my craziness below the cut ;)

( Books and Magazines! )

23 - Summer

I LOVE summer. Not just the time of year, but especially the temperature!

I'm a perpetually freezing person. I constantly battle cold hands, and more annoying: cold feet. And once my feet are cold there's no way of staying warm for the rest of my body. It's a nightmare. (And probably will sometime in a married future be the reason for divorce :D - I'm constantly shoving my poor frozen toes onto any available warm body part in reach... Himself has been known to shriek like a girl in the middle of the night after the first contact with my frosty limbs ;) )

I feel okay-ish in a temperature range between 20 and 25° Celsius. Anything below 24 means long sleeves, but I usually am okay with the world as long as temperatures stay above 20.
From 25 to 30° I'm good. Not perfect, but happy enough.
Things get great once the thermometer hits 30° Celsius. That's where I feel alive, and happy, and perfectly content with wearing tops or sleeveless dresses.

I know, almost everybody suffers in this kind of weather, but for me it's simply perfect! I don't think I could have been any happier with the heatwave 2015 :) All around me people were groaning and complaining and I was perfectly content and all was right with the world :)

So yeah, summer! Love! Happiness! Perfection!

( Clickety-click for summer pics )

Since we're living right outside Vienna and therefore right next to the Danube there's also another side of summer we encounter pretty frequently: flooding.
We usually have one or two cases of high water during a normal summer. Most often it's nothing more than a few flooded basements in those houses built right next to the river. But every few years there are real high floods, and in 2013 we've had what the clever meteorologists termed a hundred-year flood (never mind that the last one of this size before the 2013 one was in 2002 *shrugs*).
Frankly? It's so amazing - any single time! Himself and I have been known to drive down to the river to go "flood watching" in the middle of the night when the water levels rise above their "usual" high water levels.
And -of course- we're on the scene when the flooding gets really bad - yes, we're weird like that ;) But then - we're certainly not the only ones! It's a sight to be seen!

( Pics of the 2013 flood ahead )

Despite the somewhat regular "bad" sides, summer is definitely my favourite season!
I just hope it'll be hot again soon! ;)