Long, Long Days

Okay, this past weekend was absolutely crushingly fun and tiring. It kicked off nicely with the movie-and-talking night with the visit from the two friends I mentioned in my previous blog post. We watched a movie I got on the advice of a British friend: A Tale of Two Sisters (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365376/). It's a 2003 South-Korean movie, and we all thought it was very interesting. It's psychological horror, and it's one of those movies which don't easily give up the secrets behind what in the world is happening and why. I think I got it, though, as did Pieter who was watching as well.

Both friends arrived here at around 8 PM and stayed until near 1 AM. I thought it was pretty fun. The guy reminded me somewhat of Trevor, which is never a bad impression :) We three spent a few hours just talking about a variety of subjects, including how they found out about me. Apparently they both saw my last appearance on Omroep Flevoland completely by accident while zapping about and kept watching. Being new to Almere and not having many friends there they apparently decided to contact me. Just shows how useful the media can be to me, I guess.

Getting to sleep that night took a while as a branch from a tree outside was scratching against the window and keeping me from sleeping so I had to migrate to the music room. I had to sleep on a quite thin mattress, so with only a few hours to go until I had to get up I somewhat drifted in and out of sleep. Count one for sleep deprivation.

On Saturday Pieter and I went to that retro gaming gathering, the video can be found at http://commodore-gg.hobby.nl/ as well as a collection of photos. See how many times you can see me on them and get a free kiss :p

It was pretty fun. To summarize in short: geeks and nerds galore, and slightly weird people are often the most fun to talk with. At the end of the day I had a sore throat from all the talking I did with dozens of people. I played on a variety of old systems, including Duck Hunt on the NES (first time, nearly perfect score, Zapper gun trigger digs into your finger, ergonomics and the 80s don't mix well), various games on the Commodore 64, and Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast. I held an Atari Lynx 'handheld' which was big enough to crush small pets with and played a bit of Pong as well.

I helped a girl who was visiting the gathering with her brother to play some Salamander (shoot-'em'-up) on the MSX and we talked a bit afterwards during which I learned that she's a psychology student and when we noticed the film crew who had just arrived I mentioned having been on TV before and I ended up giving her my website's address when she expressed an interest in my story. By the end of the day I was completely crushed. Fun, but very tiring.

That night I took a sleeping pill, which helped a lot in getting a decent amount of sleeping. The offending tree branch was located and sacked.

Sunday was amusement park day and turned out to be somewhat dull, mostly due to the amusement park itself. We went with the usual group of people. As Pieter put it, it's a fun park to dump your children in for the day, but it's not aimed at adults. After a ride in the rollercoaster (kinda fun), and another ride which involved all of us getting somewhat wet, we went to the swimming pool (Tikibad).

I'm still sore with a few bumps on my right shoulder and hip where I got a bit too intimate with some of the slides. It was kind of fun, especially the two rides where you sit on an inner tube and slide down through pitch darkness. Less fun were the parts where I began to hyperventilate for a bit and the part where I collapsed into myself and didn't get out of it until this morning when I soaked Pieter's shirt with tears again.

Perhaps Sunday's trip was a bit too much, I feel so very tired and am having trouble staying happy, and that trip sure didn't help by putting me in line for a lot of confrontations with my own body and with the happiness of others. At any rate I'm glad I can do absolutely nothing but work this week.

I just got an email from a woman via my site's contact form. She claimed that she had just read the article on me in the Grazia. I haven't heard anything about the article getting published already in the Grazia from the journalist, however, so I just sent her an email on it. It would be awesome if it is published already, though :)

Update: the article got published, trying to figure out which number of the Grazia it is in (probably the one currently for sale), but I'll get 3 copies sent to me. I'll scan and translate the article as soon as I get it.


Maya