Mind you go easy on those mind-altering drugs, kids!

And then, out of the grey, something pops up to brighten up even your dullest, darkest day...

Approach at own risk.

Think rainy day meets cabin fever meets PMS meets an overdose of family meets an underdose of friends meets homesickness for Ireland meets longing for a holiday (anywhere by the sea really) meets chronic skintness meets white-hot jealousy for everyone else going on holiday.
Yep, that sums it up nicely.

500 (or so) days of summer.

So you wake up on a glorious Sunday morning (well, noon rather) to sun rays warming your feet, swifts screeching, church bells ringing and as you're blinking and wiping your eyes you think: "Ah, well!"
You get up, take an iced coffee from your fridge, take a sip, open your window...
...And creepy, ugly guy across the street is watching hardcore porn again.

Ah...well.


Totally unrelated:
Why it was a wise decision to leave my bike at the institute during that thunderstorm the other day, take the tram to the station instead and not cycle through the alley and park my bike in its usual place, which is this:

Ah, summer, gotta love it!

Speaking of which... That movie... It was one of those films where I saw the trailer and fell in love with it. I was 100% sure that it was going to be one of my favourite films of all times once I'd watched it. So sure that when I happened upon the DVD in a shop the other day, I had to buy it straight away. (Yes, I'm weird that way. I am familiar with the concept of video rental, theoretically, but certain films... I need them on my shelf, available at all times. Just my rodent hoarding mentality I guess.)
So, I watched it. And it's great. No, really, it is. I love it. Will definitely watch it again. Sometime. It's everything the trailer promised. Does exactly what it says on the tin. It's just...
It is exactly like the trailer. Just longer.
And the incurable romantic inside me was shouting at the screen for a last-minute happy twist to the story... But again, that's just me being weird that way. It's the old battle between wanting to watch good films, but at the same time wanting nothing too realistic because, let's face it, I can (and do) have sordid reality right under my nose every day anyway.
The makers of the film are probably laughing their heads off right now, because it seems after all to be made exactly for people like me. Dead-on.
So I better watch it again.
Or... here's a crazy thought: join the other people out there in that...thingy...reality.

I'm a huge fan.

Obviously, it's too hot for anything much.
Like working.
Let alone coherent thinking.
In lieu thereof (ha, always wanted to use that in a sentence!), random, fleeting pictures are rotating inside my brain, like the flickering blades of my newly acquired fan:
Practicing the piano for the recital on Wednesday while trying to ignore the sweat drops running down my temples and my back...
Ice cubes clinking in pint-sized glasses of passion fruit spritzers...
"Windows thrown wide in the hope of tempting in a non-existent breeze..." (that's actually a quote from Harry Potter 5)
Sending our pupils home at 11.30am every day because of the heat (way over 40°C in some classrooms)...
The wonderful, wondrously cool air-conditioned air inside the supermarket...
...And the wall of hot air you seem to walk into when you eventually have to leave it again...
Football and popsicles and more football and more popsicles and more piano practicing...
The droning of my fan that, after only 9 days, seems to be complaining of excessive labour when all I seem to get out of it is the same old hot air, only slightly stirred - I might as well sit in front of my hair-dryer...
Meeting friends and sitting under sunshades and trees outside "our" Italian restaurant, deliberating which pasta dish it is to be today - until the waitress arrives and we order, invariably, what we always have...

Yeah, so altogether I guess it's not too bad.
If only there wasn't that gnawing knowledge down below that I really should get down to cramming for those end-of-term exams in music theory...
But really, it's impossible. I mean, see above.

Right, time for another cold shower!