Drat you, Betsy, for being someone I can’t refuse a lot. Certainly not a blog post, in any case.
She gave me a “Gorgeous Award” for reasons that are best left unexplored lest they do not stand up to scrutiny. As a grateful acceptant, I am to list six things relating to myself that are generally unknown, and mention six blogs or bloggers I consider gorgeous.
I will hijack the ceremony and also use it as a thank-you for some of my best friends in the blogosphere, as I leave behind this blog and this pseudonym.
Six little-known things about me:
1. I have very feminine arm veins.
2-6. As I laid in my bed last night and watched the clock turn to 00:00, signalling that I have spent a quarter-century on this here planet, it was tempting to be depressed by the fact that I have 10 euros and 14 cents in my bank account, live with my dad, and am still entirely without my degree (my degree, MINE). But there are ten people in this world who know me through and through – with warts, dirty laundry, crises in academics, faith, and family, my laziness, my excuses, and all, and still think I’m an okay person. This is a mind-boggling high number.
I have tried, and failed, to write down what these people mean to me. It took me four hours, and this is what I came up with: they’re my greatest inspiration, because I love them, not because they love me. And they’re my greatest support, because they love me, not because I love them. Also, “love” utterly fails as a word. Come on.
All other things about me are irrelevant.
Now, six gorgeous ladies I loved blogging with:
1. Anima
2. Vicky
3. Puella, now sadly blogless
4. Mrs. Powell (I can’t not call her Mrs., she’s a mum)
5. Little Flowers
6. Rosamundi
And six gorgeous blogs that make me squeal whenever they update:
1. Practical Ethics
2. Laatste dag
3. Finslippy
4. Ask Sr. Mary Martha
5. Backreaction
6. Morning Coffee Physics
This, I hope, will give you enough to read now that this blog has come to an end! “Notio bonum, visa olum” means something like “it seemed like a good idea back then”. That, it certainly did. Now, it seems like a good idea to stop!
This blog has gone on (permanent) hiatus. Thanks for the ride :)
(I will defend my research work on December 7th, complete my last exam in physics on February 17th, and from February-July follow a semester program in history and philosophy of science at a different university.)
Now if you will excuse me, I have to review the difference between Aristotle’s and Plato’s handling of the problem of change.
The roofless swimming pool opened! And since I don’t live 30km away anymore, I can resume the tradition from my pre-university days and go swimming at 7AM.
I decided to ignore that it was 8°C and softly raining (it wouldn’t make me much wetter, and only marginally colder).
Then, just when I was feeling particularly heroic on the edge of the pool, I dived in and found out…
…that last year’s restoration project included heating.
I might almost forgive them for taking away the diving tower.
Scratch the “almost”, they also added heated showers.
So I feel less heroic, but I also won’t be freezing cold until lunch. Things even out.
At multos annos!
Dude.
I just deleted a HUGE post full of pre-teen angst (wasn’t pretty). I knew I still had issues, but… dude.
Short story: I’m in a mixed adult choir, we’re going to do a women-only Mass, singing pieces I used to sing as a cathedral girl chorister, back in primary and early secondary school.
Then, I was an alto (or at least our silly conductor had decided I was), all the popular girls were sopranos, and I was bullied.
Now, I’m a first soprano, and since most of the choir members act like adults most of the time (I’m the youngest), I’m not bullied.
Since we’re singing with women from both of our conductor’s choirs stuff like “who sings what” is handled by e-mail. I haven’t had a letter telling me which voice I am singing in a project in over a decade. Not since the time when I came home crying after every single rehearsal. Not since the popularity pecking order was represented in the choir composition.
And now there’s an e-mail which looks exactly like all those pieces of paper, only not addressed to my mum and sans Cathedral letterhead. And it says “In two-way split, D 1, Venite 1, R 1, M 2, … In three-way split: D S1, Venite S1, M S2, E S2, J A, I A…”
Which means rubbish. It doesn’t mean anything. You’re born with a certain voice, it’s not related to musical ability, and the rarest voices are real contraltos (most altos in amateur choirs are lazy sopranos). I got over most of my childhood traumas when I ran into the girl who used to be queen of the school at Aldi. I don’t know what she thought was worse, meeting me at The Supermarket That Shall Not Be Named or that I’d gone from fat to skinny and she went the other way around. And I’ve been a first soprano for seven years.
But dude. I’m with the cool girls, and I can prove it. Nine-year-old Venite can go to sleep with a tiny smile. It’s almost as good as someone noticing she gets put in the semi-chorus every time they can’t get their act straight.
Physics and running, two of my crushes. Combined. Only not the physics most people think of (the “every step you run puts three times your body weight on your feet”-scary kind) but the version one of my professors loves, the “if it never rained in Amsterdam, how thick would the layer of dog poo on the sidewalk be after a month”-kind!
Mission: to prove two things wrong:
1. My sister’s very vocal opinion that I’m a health freak
2. My overachieving brain’s idea that giving up food things for Lent is the thing to do in BMI-under-19-land.
So after singing Evensong I didn’t cycle south from the train station but north, to the Very Big Supermarket (American and French people can laugh loudly now), where I was to browse every isle for sumptuous, high-calorie foods.
The only thing holding me back was the size of my backpack. My backpack is not so gargantuan that it has its own postal code. (Actually it has several, some of which German.) So I felt ready.
Only the chocolate section was headed by pile upon pile of Easter candy, which I refuse to even look at before Easter. Skip that. Heathens!
Then I got face-to-face with my most recent craving… ready-made vlaflip. This is a Dutch dessert made with the Dutch version of custard (vla), yoghurt and red fruit syrup (every other combination is Not Real and should be taken out and shot).
I am actually quite embarrassed about this craving, as vlaflip is about as easy to make from first principles as a peanut butter sandwich when you have peanut butter, bread, and a knife on hand. The entire idea of a ready-made version is a horrible example of the abyss in which modern capitalism is plunging our country. Apart from that, I prefer not to buy anything ready-made if at all possible, because home-made is more than usually better and also fun.
Yet I prefer the recent invention of vlaflip from a carton. Please don’t tell my mum.
I looked at it, in the dairy section, and imagined it looking back. I saw the yellow of the vla, the white of the yoghurt, and the red of the syrup emblazoned across the carton.
I saw the red again.
I remembered physics boy #2’s description of my reaction to food colorants (“van zo’n hapje gaat Venitje helemaal uit haar dakje”), thought about doing that to my father as he tried to recuperate out after playing in the Dutch Open Bridge quarterfinals, and decided not to buy it.
In the end, my supermarket raid gave me assorted fruits and vegetables (of the fresh, canned, and frozen kinds), two packets of organic brown rice and a carton of organic yoghurt. Full-fat yoghurt, mind. With 280 metres of running more calories per bowl than the 0% version. See? Not a health freak.
As I walked out of the store I revelled in my non-freakness. And the carrot I was munching on tasted great, too.
I believe I haven’t gushed over my bike yet this month.
I LOVE MY BIKE!
In other news, the Dutch word for “butternut” appears to be “butternut”. I’m still calling it “boternoot”. And it’s fun to make dairy- and nut-free meals with it.
Also, I think that the city council should give me this apartment for free.
If you happened by my blog in the last couple of hours, you could see that my life is so uninteresting, it takes me an entire week to come up with Friday’s Seven Quick Takes :)
I still can’t report on the mustard soup that will be mentioned in Friday’s post, because it’s simmering at the moment. But I have learned that, even though the recipe doesn’t explicitly call for it, it is a good idea to take the smeerkaas out of the tub before adding it to the soup (although my method did ensure that it came out easily, half-melted as it was).
In other news I think it is still advisable for me to stay away from blogs, comboxes, and everything Web 2.0 since The World and I have some differences of opinion, currently focussing on good people dying, good knees inflaming, and bad detergent washing my clothes and bed linens (in short, I am a red-blotched, fat-kneed raging monster right now, to the infinite amusement of my family*).
So here’s a pretty picture.
*Seriously, they’re singing improvised songs on “skins with red rashes and blue satin sashes”.
