i haven't seen much tennis the first week of wimbledon, but i have been able to catch a few matches the past couple of days. earlier today we saw federer win in three sets against karlovic. right now we're watching hewitt v roddick. oh and we're having strawberries & cream. but we're not following wimbledon's other tradition of champagne or pimm's. i believe i've had pimm's once, a long long time ago. i don't actually remember if i liked it very much.

a support update
since friday last i have I1 in the web-UI category.
note to self:
compile some sort of Support timeline. it doesn't need to be public, or even online (but why not). in your own time..

( here's some music.. )

( xxl )

i was lucky enough to get this one shot. i couldn't get closer & the bird took off right after i had taken this photo. had to look up how he or she is called in the english speaking world: a heron, apparently.

yesterday someone asked how it was going with my plan to watch the first ten star trek movies. well, i haven't even started yet. pretty hectic times at the office this week. i'll make some time for it soon. it's not like i need to watch them all on one day.

a guide to recognizing your saints is programmed tonight. i like downey in most things i've seen him in, which doesn't include this one yet.

have a good weekend, y'all..

today is the last day of the three-day visit of the dalai lama to this country. while criticized for this decision by the dutch parliament, our prime minister jan peter balkenende has declined to meet the religious leader to avoid harming dutch-chinese relations. of course, money makes the world go round, but that doesn't make balkenende's bowing to chinese pressure any less predictable. it all depends on how far you are willing to go if you don't want to jeopardise your country's economic interests..
it mostly sounds rather childish to me, and even back in elementary school i never believed in the 'if you want to be friends with me, you can't be friends with her'..


i watched the new star trek movie last week with a bunch of people.
(if you haven't seen it yet, you should probably read no further..)
i think it was really good. we do have to get used to the fact that most star trek stuff that we've previously seen, belongs to a different reality. this may have been just what star trek needed. you can't let guys like shatner or even nimoy come back forever, and i think this is quite a believable way to introduce new actors playing the roles of old characters. and additionally, this alternate reality thing opens up all sorts of possibilities for new story lines..

the big, clearly noticeable lettering on the phone thingy in the car that kirk as a kid is driving, tells us it's a nokia. i guess this is what one would call product placement? oh and uhura ordering three budweiser classics.. haha what was that all about?

tomorrow i'm finally going to see star trek. it took this long because there's going to be five of us, so some planning was needed. this is going to be the first star trek movie that i'll see in a theatre. i've only watched three on tv/dvd: the search for spock, the voyage home & nemesis.

i do like the idea of watching the preceding ten star trek movies. someone on my friends list did this last week (i can't tell you who, because the entries were friends only). i know a number of these movies are rated poorly, but i just want to do this. i have decent copies of most of them. i even have 'the director's edition' of the first one. i'm not sure what the difference with the regular edition is, but the quality is excellent, which makes it all the more unfortunate that it's apparently one of the most boring ones. i only need to get 2 & 6 & then the fun can commence..

this week i've been listening a lot to everything that happens will happen today by brian eno & david byrne. the album was released last year, and i have no idea why i only discovered it recently..
if you like to have a listen, you can stream all the tracks here.

the pattern on these little notebooks.. i'm wondering if it actually has a name. does anyone know?


support (since we last spoke)
i earned I1 in the userpics category.
i broke through the 1000 points barrier. yes, it took me long enough. mostly because i went on hiatus a couple of times for various reasons. not that i've ever been one of the most active support volunteers..

the best things in life are free

is that so?
if you agree, name one.
also mention one thing that you wish was free, but isn't..

yes, i know i haven't updated this journal in over a month. however, that's not the only thing that i had to put on the back burner for a while. most of you might know about these disappearing acts of mine by now. believe me, they're not always planned and the length of time never is.. just doing a little bit of this & that now. starting slowly, not rushing things. whatever i can or like to fit in..
let's confine this little list here to LiveJournal stuff:
support
i don't have that many privs left. not that i ever had a lot. of course i want the old ones back, but i would also like to acquire some new ones. i sent in a review request with a bunch of old links and some priv playing stuff a while back. i should get that one back any day now. also, about a week ago i answered my first ever Support request in german, and apparently the only mistake i made was not capitalise one word..
schools
i got kicked off the schools team. it's a requirement to respond regularly to the lj_schools activity posts. i'm back on the team now, but i guess i will always have a bit of a problem with this system..
lj_nederlands
not much at all has been happening here. i cleaned the place up a bit, but there's still room for improvement. and it will always be hard to find new translators..

well, there was. quite a bit, actually, for such a relatively small cut. friday evening i cut the inside of my left hand on a broken glass while washing up. for some reason the entire bottom fell out. saskia took a picture to illustrate this phenomenon, but not before she put a donald duck (don't ask) band-aid on my hand..

i'd rather not do things at all, than do them half-assed. that goes for silly stuff like best-of lists for the past year (for example the best albums of 2008, which was mentioned back in november but never actually happened & it's too late for it now) but it also applies to the more serious things in life. on the other hand, i need to learn to stop trying so hard sometimes..

& thanks, things are better.
i'm taking it easy, resting whenever possible. this is my second 32 hour working week. for now this is perfect.

tomorrow is film friday. saskia and i are going to a (semi-) matinée showing of burn after reading. in the evening we'll watch the reader at a friend's house. i don't want to wait until that one comes out in theatres.

the world's still here and so am i. the past three days have been hell. i don't want to talk about it much. not right now. first i need to figure some things out for myself a bit more. let's call it an episode and leave it at that for now, okay? today has been decidedly better than yesterday though. my appetite is slowly coming back and i'm reading a little (yourcenar).

i sincerely hope your weekend was better, my friends..

a couple of people posted the video from my previous entry in their own journal and even linked to it in obama-related communities that i'm not a member of myself. thank you guys. i do indeed think that it deserves a wider audience.

i was too busy last sunday to watch the obama inaugural celebration. i've been searching for it online, though i must admit not very hard.. then i read somewhere that you could see the concert online at the HBO site, but as expected, that service is not available outside the US.

most of the videos of the concert that people embedded in their journals and blogs no longer work. i can understand that HBO doesn't want parts of their broadcast posted to youtube, but what i'm hearing now is that they also want to take down people's own footage. does anyone know if they have the right to do so? surely, one would be allowed to bring one's camera to a public place, a public event? what also strikes me as rather odd, is that HBO was chosen to air this programme. doesn't this severely limit the number of people able to watch?

i think this is sweet. it says a lot, if not all..
this was on dutch television last night. don't worry, it's in english..

it never occurred to me that there really is a casimir pulaski day. i suppose i assumed sufjan stevens just made it up. however, i discovered today that there is also a song by the band big black called kasimir s. pulaski day. the only thing both songs have in common though, might be that neither of them is really about the guy..

it is a regional united states holiday celebrated on the first monday of march to commemorate casimir pulaski, a revolutionary war cavalry officer. apparently illinois is the only state to officially recognize casimir pulaski day. i guess that means you get the day off from school there? :)

casimir pulaski day from sufjan stevens' illinois album
a demo of the song by sufjan, which has some lyrical differences
kasimir s. pulaski day by big black

happy
someone apparently ordered snow for my birthday yesterday, which was very nice. however, it would have been even nicer if it had actually kept on snowing during the day. due to quite a bit of work (which will most likely continue at least the next couple of days) we kept the 'party' short, sweet & sober. saskia & i and one or two friends should go out and do something fun sometime soon. we really should.

oh hey this is some of the cool stuff i got for my birthday:
elaine dundy's the dud avocado
hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world by haruki murakami
the first season of californication on dvd
animal crossing: let's go to the city for the wii


sad
it appears that the news has started spreading beyond the realm of lj support now, but for those who haven't heard yet:
SUP laid off about half of its US-based LiveJournal staff. a few days' notice and no severance; that's outrageous! big big hugs, not just to those i consider friends, but to all who lost their job. i don't really want to talk about it anymore right now. i was already sad and angry after reading a very emotional email from a dear friend. she is originally from lebanon and the email is basically a rant about israel's violence against the palestinians. she knows i'm here for her anytime she needs to pour her heart out. i really think she should make some of her writings public though. i should try to convince her that there are still a few sensible people left on this earth who don't think criticizing israel equals anti-semitism..

yesterday someone on tv noted that while there may be thousands of christmas songs, there are hardly any songs that celebrate the new year. i totally agree. i mean, obviously there's abba's happy new year.. but other than that? u2's new year's day, you would think, but i don't believe there's much celebration in there. please let me know if you can think of any other ones..

last night we stayed up until 2:30 or there abouts, i think. it was a relatively calm & peaceful start of the new year. of course there were fireworks, but it never got as loud as in previous years. in #lj_support it also stayed awfully quiet. understandably, people are away from their computer most of the time, but i had expected just a little more talk in there.

luckily i'm not ill like apparently many others are or have been. the only problem is that i'm ooohh sooooooo tired. & while for most people the festivities are over now for quite some time, i have only a few days before my birthday..

hugs & kisses to you all & have a beautiful new year!