lol omg, I love Donovan.

DRIVIN' IN M'CAR CAR, DRIVIN IN MUH CAR
ENGINE GOES BBRRRMM BRRRRM
ENGINE GOES BRRRRM BRRRRM

lol Donovan, you are so lame and yet so amazing.

I'm visiting home right now (which is also why Donovan is playing and not MJ, but I love Donovan so it's all good) and having a really great time! The weather is really amazing, which is doubly convenient at the moment because my parents' house HAS A GARDEN. I love our house in Leiden, but it is sorely lacking in the garden department.







PARADISE.

I took a walk with my dad in the morning (predictably we spent half of the time we were out in a bookstore, lmao) and had a really great lunch in the garden, and I've just been chillin' out here since. IT IS SO GREAT, I'm finally getting into the proper summer spirit now that my exam is over and I don't have to worry about studying anymore.



MY LUNCH INCLUDED A FRUIT TART, DID YOURS? (I hope it did!)

lol I love how my dad spoils me when I come home. ♥ When he knows that I'm coming to visit there's usually a slice of cake or something waiting for me when I arrive, and he'll buy all kinds of amazing stuff like fancy cheese and sliced mortadella and raisin and nut bread from the organic store nearby, and then be like "oh they're yours, don't forget to take them back with you!" And he's always so happy to see me again, it makes me want to visit every other day, lol. Basically I love visiting home! It's a shame my mum isn't here now, but she is chillin with her buddhists so at least she's having a good time too.

I'll be visiting my aunt's later and having dinner with her so all in all today is an A+ summery family day. I APPROVE OF TODAY SO HARD.

Also also random topic change, my dad just showed me this video:



and not only do I LOVE IT FOREVER, I also love how there's a chorus of screaming girls in the background! If it had been the Beatles or whatever there would have been a million close-ups of the screaming crazy girls in the video, but apparently when girls screamed for a girl band the camera people were all "... let's just pretend this never happened. Zoom in on the tame fans, ZOOM IN ON THE TAME FANS!" lmao.

Okay I think that will be all from me for today, lol. I just wanted to be all YAY on the internet for a minute because I've been kind of peeved over having to stay home all summer and now I am no longer peeved! I thought that was worth documenting, haha.

FRESHLY SQUEEZED ORANGE JUICE IS THE MOST DELICIOUS THING IN THE UNIVERSE AS WE KNOW IT.

I just wanted to share that important piece of factual information with y'all.

Also I think the stuffy heat around these parts is getting to me - I've made like a million Karl Lagerfeld macros (no really) for a Karl fanboy friend to ~motivate~ him to study, and I put them in a folder called iKarly. I don't even. SOMEONE TAKE ME AWAY FROM THIS GROSS SWELTERING PLACE SO PERHAPS I CAN FIND MY BRAIN AGAINNN

Also my MJ-is-a-GQ-motherfucker post is going to be ENORMOUS, just so you guys know. I can't decide between all his awesome outfits, THERE WERE SO MANY D:

And lastly, for your consideration: yesterday, my housemate attempted murder on me by going "imagine if Stephen Fry just went 'SHAMOOONE!' one day. Everybody in the world would die of lol." I BELIEVE THIS TO BE TRUE. But I want it to happen!




IMAGINE.


brb sweltering some more, damn weather. I blame this entire post on heatstroke, or like suffocation or some shit. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE OKAY BYE

See that right there? That is why I love summer. Well also the warm weather and the sunlight and the holidays and all, but mostly I really really really love summer fruit. NOM NOM NOM

So anyway, I was initially going to write an enormous long distraught post about how I must be an insane person because I had somehow managed to completly vanish my only hairbrush, in a room that's not even 20 square meters nor particularly full of storage units, but then it turned out that I was not insane after all and one of my housemates had snuck into my room when I was out and borrowed it. Once more I turn out to be less weird than I thought! (Seriously though, I am chaotic and disorganised in every other way imaginable, but I NEVER lose stuff. I was distraught. IT TOTALLY MERITED A POST OKAY.)

I concede, though, that there is also stuff going on that might be slightly more interesting than a lost hairbrush: my brother gets his final exam results tomorrow! I'm pretty convinced that he's passed and will thus be graduating high school in two weeks (fna'sdlg augh how is my baby brother suddenly this oooold!), but it's still one of those nervous moments that has the entire family on edge, because they're his final exam results and HE IS ALL GROWED UP. :'( The good news, though, is that he'll be going to Leiden for his university studies just like me, so I will be able to occasionally knock on his door and sternly inquire if he's had anything to eat besides pizza in the past month.

Also, I uploaded a bunch of music for jahrhundert and I figured some of you guys might be interested too! They're all songs by Kurt Weill, many of which I may have posted before at some point, but since I love them an unreasonable amount and Kurt Weill is amazing and also my hero, I am posting them again anyway and you will just have to deal. They are all sung by Lotte Lenya because she is the only one who gets to sing Kurt Weill songs in my opinion. Also I want to be her when I grow up, and I'm only okay with not marrying her because a) she is dead and b) she and Kurt Weill were married and it was adorable and they are my historical OTP forever.


LOOK AT THESE AWESOME BITCHES, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO BE THEM.

So yes, the songs:

Threepenny Opera
Die Moritat von Mackie Messer
Barbara-Song
Seeräuber-Jenny

Happy End
Introduction (Hosiannah)
Bilbao-Song
Matrosen-Tango
Der Song von Mandelay
Das Lied von der harten Nuss
Die Ballade von der Höllenlili

I hope some of you will take (and hopefully also like) them so I can feel like I am doing right by my OTP :') And also seriously, if you do not like Lotte Lenya I may have to stop considering you a person. BEST LADY EVER.

Hokay, back to my cherries and civil law summaries I go!

Today I finally had another ADIML day, the first one in almost exactly a year! I did it together with Renée - today was Lee Pace's birthday, which we decided was an A+ reason to wear pretty dresses and matching aprons and bake pies and watch a lot of Pushing Daisies and other Lee Pace related stuff. IT WAS PRETTY FUCKING AWESOME. Proper post to follow, I just wanted to uh, say this I guess because it was fun and also an ADIML! Yay \o/

Also the pies we made? PRETTY FUCKING GLORIOUS. Four berry pie and pear pie with gruyère baked into the crust YES PLZ

Hi internet! Just checking in to mention that I am not in fact dead. Um. I've been dealing with random bouts of "LOL YOUR SCHEDULE MAKES TOO MUCH SENSE, WE'LL FIX THAT FOR YOU" courtesy of the law faculty, studying, generally flailing about all the things I should be doing but have no time for and trying to maintain a social life. It, uh, has actually been a little more difficult than it may sound. This is probably due to the fact that last year's schedule allowed me to sleep until at least noon, and now suddenly I have to be up at eight every morning even though I am incapable of falling asleep before 3 AM. My body is not taking this very well, so I'm constantly feeling either hyper or ready to collapse, and my hair keeps getting greasy WAY before it should. Also I'm always either way too warm or freezing. lol, menopausal.

BUT:
# I saw The World/Inferno Friendship Society two weeks ago, and holy crap do I want to marry them and have their children. Even though they would be drug babies. I DO NOT CARE, ILU W/IFS. Photos I most definitely did not take (I was too busy dancing) to follow when I have calmed the fuck down and found some spare time!
# I saw Factory Girl (which.. ahahahaha oh my god why) with electricwitch, who I also met up with yesterday to eat leopard print cake (YES IT EXISTS, and it was glorious) in honour of Marc Bolan's death day.
# I finally got to see the new first years who joined my student society this year!
# This happened by way of an event called the DKKT (which stands for something like "dispute room pub crawl"), in which groups of first years visit all the disputes over the course of two evenings, each dispute being stationed in the room of one of their members. The first years get to spend half an hour with every dispute, getting free drinks, figuring out what the dispute stands for and getting to know its members (and vice versa). So basically I got drunk with my dispute mates AND got to meet the new kids AND didn't have to budge, so this was good.
# I just got back from post-DKKT lunch with two dispute mates, which was SO GOOD, if a bit on the expensive side for someone who has told herself repeatedly to stop spending money. Whatever, I NEEDED THAT LUNCH.
# I've been procrastinating (though far less than usual!) by watching lots of pre-code films and er, Midsomer Murders still.

Er, probably I have done more than that but I can't really remember right now D: it's 5:45 PM and I'm pretty much ready to go to bed, haha. Oh body, why?

Well. Gotta say I'm glad I went to the beach on Tuesday, because it's been pissing down with rain for two days now >:( what the hell, weather gods?

I spent Friday, the last mostly rainfree day, with Jirina (my nan), which was great as usual. We went to a flea/antiques market here in Den Haag, which turned out to be about five times smaller than advertised and also full of rubbish. I did find one thing worth buying though, and I kind of want to marry it because it is amazing. It's an old notebook, which someone used as a Marlene Dietrich scrapbook, probably from about the 60s onwards. The last clippings are from the mid-seventies, but the notebook itself looks like it's older than that. It smells heavily of pipe tobacco and is full from cover to cover, with not only press clippings but also actual photos. It is, in short, the coolest thing in the WORLD.

So, have some photos of it!


The cover.

( And some of the rest! )

After the flea market, we had lunch on a garden terrace somewhere and went to see the The Hague Sculpture outdoors exhibit thing, which had some nice things but was mostly kind of boring. After that, we had dinner somewhere nice and went back home. All in all, I think we spent more time sitting around chatting at the restaurant and on the terrace than we spent walking around! Either way, it was awesome.

Also, I'd promised to post the recipe for the strawberry crumble I made a few days ago, so here you go:

( OM NOM NOM )

Lol, it appears that my father heartily approves of my baking experiments. The moment I got downstairs for my breakfast this morning he came at me, waving excitedly with the newspaper, going "LOOK IT HAS A RECIPE FOR STRAWBERRY CRUMBLE AND IT SOUNDS RLY GOOD, YOU SHOULD MAKE THAT. WILL YOU MAKE IT? I'LL GO GET STRAWBERRIES!" So I made it. It was AMAZING. If anyone's interested, I'll post the recipe here. It's very easy to make!

I think I will be doing a lot more baking this summer, especially since I have recently discovered FoodGawker, which features horrible stuff like this:





I think that by the end of summer I will have to have someone roll me from place to place like Violet Beauregard. D:

Also, I went to the dentist today and he said that I should have my wisdom teeth pulled before they start wreaking ~havoc~ in my mouth somehow or other. NO NO NO NO DO NOT WANT! Halp D:

So between the strawberry-banana and blueberry muffins I baked yesterday (A+++ would bake again) and the fact that today was warm enough to cycle through 6 km worth of dunes (shut up I enjoy this) to plonk down on a beach somewhere with friends, life is not exactly unpleasant just now. To be fair, I should probably also tell you that I now have a headache and a pretty spectacularly sunburned face, but.. eh. Still not having that bad of a time!

I have also finally figured out what I'll be doing this summer, travel-wise! I'll be in Antwerp from the 11th-13th of this month, spend six nights in Paris from the 23rd onwards, and after that six nights in Berlin. This is, you know. Uh. PRETTY AWESOME.

Anyway, I was raiding my computer for picspam material involving:
a) ladies wearing cool trousers
b) ladies wearing outfits that you can only see the top of, but which I still think would look A+ when paired with trousers
c) crossdressing women in outfits that I would never wear because they are tuxedos but which are still fabulous

BUT THEN, I found out that I don't have nearly as many of the abovementioned as I thought! Dramatic! Shocking! etc! So I was thinking: I post the ones I have, and then you guys help me out by maybe possibly commenting with the ones YOU have, so that I can save them and use them as inspiration when the time comes for me to actually wear trousers. Halp pls?

( Eerr something witty about trousers goes here. )

No, seriously, Lotte Lenya is fucking awesome. Between my fangirling of her and Peter Lorre, I'm really starting to wish I'd paid more attention in German class. I can understand it all just fine, but I can't actually say much that makes any sense :( tragic! My French has been slipping too. This sucks and must also be remedied!

In other news, still writing stupid essays. The one I'm trying to stay awake for just now is about whether or not it is possible for men to be victims of domestic abuse. Yes, that is actually my research question. Ooooh, I hate when I don't get to pick my own research question because that means I end up with dumb shit like this. And of course I still have to come out sounding vaguely academic, so just "IN WHAT POSSIBLE UNIVERSE COULD THE ANSWER BE NO? JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE HELL" is not a viable essay content option. And for added good times, I also get to give a presentation on the question on Wednesday, as well as host a discussion on the topic! Uuugh why don't they at least give us something decent to work with?

And lastly, I have a possibly vaguely weird question for you guys: What do you have for breakfast, normally? And what do you have when you feel like having a more fancy breakfast? I've been eating the same thing for breakfast for a really long time now, and I'm getting kind of bored with it. So I'm going to see if I can't nick a good idea from one of you, and try that for a bit!

Classes have started again, boo. Just started my last new course for the year, Criminology, which is interesting if INTENSELY depressing. This week's theme was honour killings, next week's will be sexual violence. And of course everyone in the group keeps casually shifting just a liiittle bit more blame onto the female victims. Fun!

Anyway, I still had a good week. I went to the huge monthly flea market in Amsterdam with Jirina, who bought me two dresses and this lovely print:



It's so cute!

Mum and Ruben got back from Crete yesterday, where they had an amazing time of which I am jealous. We're going out to a Greek restaurant tonight to celebrate mum and dad's wedding anniversary, which happened somewhere during Crete. I.. don't even know what Greek food is like actually. I've heard it is very much with the slabs of meat, which I'm not the biggest fan of. I hope they have something I like!

OH AND, the weather has been amazing. Amazing! I've been out and about in a short-sleeved top without a coat for two days now! This is exceptional in NL, where last summer we had.. two days total, I think, of warm weather.

I don't think this post makes any sense, but I'm so tired! I'm really not used to getting up early anymore because most of my classes this year have been at 1pm or 3pm, so I've been getting used to falling asleep very late and waking up late. Having to drag myself out of bed at nine this morning was depressing. My life, so hard!

Went to Manon's again today, and she cut my hair, thank God.



It was getting way too long and I looked like a twat for about a week, because it got so long at the back that it curled upwards at the edges. Also I am pedobait, courtesy of Laura's hairband.

That charming goldfish is one of my Paraphernalia necklaces, which I wore for the first time today and which is now damaged forever. :(

Helpful tip for those of you who have Paraphernalia necklaces: DO NOT LET ANY MOISTURE GET ON THEM. EVER. Seriously, one drop of water fell on mine and there is now a huge blotch on it because it made the ink run. :( And right on the fish's face, too, so now it has a wonky eye and a runny fin, which is rather a waste obviously!

I'm considering getting transparent nail polish to cover my necklaces with, although that would make them shiny which would kind of ruin the effect.. but dammit, I don't want them to be that vulnerable! I don't drive a car, so my daily chances of being out when it rains aren't exactly negligible and I don't want my necklaces ruined! Does anyone have any ideas as to What Can Be Done? To make a necklace like this non-shiny but still waterproof, I mean?

Completely unrelated fun fact: I ate tamarind for the first time today. Despite looking like an alien life form after being peeled open, it tastes quite good!

So I've been kinda bad about updating the past few days. This is because I've been having fun! Which is good. I stayed the night at my cousin's on Friday, because I was too lazy to take the train back in the evening when we were all going to the same birthday party on Saturday anyway. Lidewij, a second cousin of mine, turned 9 and it involved my entire family eating too much in the garden and laughing a lot. Before the party, though, I managed to spend pretty much all of the money I had left on clothes D: D: D: my cousin was all "OMG I HAVE SEEN SO MANY AMAZING THINGS IN THE SHOPS HERE THAT YOU WOULD LOVE, COME SEE THEM" and she was right and so I bought them. And now I'm broke.

But I do have an awesome red belted raincoat!



It has no hood, but who cares about it being functional. It is RED and BELTED. And shiny!
This particular photo (which is otherwise not so flattering, but I had to show off the coat! :( ) is from Sunday, when I baked brownies and went to consume them and other baked goods and a gallon of tea at the botanical gardens in Leiden with some friends. More photos which are non-sucky forthcoming, since they weren't taken on my camera and as such I don't have them now. They also involve the rest of my raincoat, so that someday soon you will all see how amazing it truly is!

Also also, somewhere in between all this the tape of Crack-Up that bleedheartblues sent me arrived, and I watched it and loved it and squeed a lot. Yay! It is now at my uncle's house, waiting to be transferred to DVD so I can rip it and send her an .avi of the film in return.

Yesterday I just sort of hung about in my pyjamas being tired, but also got some work in on the skirt. It almost looks wearable now! I still need to attach the waistband to the inside of the skirt and decide what length I want it to be and hem it, but then it's done! Only my mum and brother left for Crete for a week today (aaah envy) so I'm on my own for that. And I've never hemmed a skirt before! I might go back to my cousin's somewhere this week and ask her to help me with it, that way I'll be done sooner.

Today I went to see Cocorosie! They played at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, with the Concertgebouw orchestra, who also played a few classical pieces (by Ligeti, Ives, Menotti, Pärt and Bartók) in between and omg, it was awesome.



MARRY ME COCOROSIE ILY.

And now it's very late at night, so I'll stop sounding insane and go to bed!

Awesome things: (1) I'm at my cousin's house right now, drinking gallons of tea and getting fat on all manner of, you know, fattening things, and (2) a friend of hers, a professional seamstress(!), has agreed to fix my dress for me, for free! I can come pick it up the next time I'm over here, which will probably be in a week or two. My cousin and her seamstress friend are pretty much made of win ♥

Also, (3) I PASSED MY EXAM. More win! I feel that this is a good excuse for the tea and fattening things.

Oh my god, I found somewhere you can buy an Anne Boleyn necklace.
It's nerdiness and vaguely creepy merchandising and pretty jewelry all rolled into one! Waaaaant.

My parents just got back home from France! I missed them so I'm glad they're back. They brought me a box of these:


OM NOM NOM
I really have to watch myself or I'll have eaten them all before I go to bed tonight. :x

And now I'm really going to start studying, because my penal law exam is on Monday and it is going to eat me alive. Halp :(

Aah, been busy this week! The good kind of busy, though, where I hang out with awesome people a lot and pretend that I don't have a huge exam on april 21st.

I had dinner with Sophia in Leiden on Wednesday, which was a lot of fun! I hadn't seen her since around New Year's, so we had a lot of catching up to do. The weather was nice, too, so we were able to have a drink on the terrace here without freezing!

On Thursday I just went home straight after class because I was falling over with fatigue, I hadn't slept well I think. I'm always tired lately, though. Eh.

On Friday I had dinner with Neel and Laetitia. Laetitia moved from Delft to Amsterdam recently, so we ate at her new place. It is GORGEOUS and insane and beautiful and huge and I want to live there! When the three of us have dinner, the two who aren't hosting the dinner bring the wine and dessert, and since I really felt like baking and Neel was broke, I got to do dessert this time. I made this, because I wanted to make something without chocolate for a change. It turned out amazing!

Yesterday was the SSR gala ball and all the pre-gala activities with the wieven. We had drinks by the sea, went bowling in our gala outfits (Liza and I were a team, we lost enormously but she threw a strike at the end so our honour was saved!) and then had dinner on the Pier. They had like two main course options that weren't Big Slab Of Meat With Some Sauce Or Other, so I went for pasta. I hate big slabs of meat, excepting chicken but they didn't have that! Boo.

The gala was fun at first, there was a band playing all the usual danceable hit songs people want to hear, and the drinks were all free because they're included in the ticket price. So while the band was there I mostly just danced with a bunch of my dispute mates, and RAN INTO MY OLD LATIN TEACHER who apparently knew someone in the band, wtf wtf wtf. Most awkward moment in ages, I'm pretty sure. He looked so painfully out of place! After the band stopped, some DJ took over who only played intensely boring music, so I just hung around and talked to people, and put away more free drinks. I'm pretty sure I drank an enormous amount, but somehow I stayed completely sober! I left around 3 to catch a train back, along with a whole bunch of others. Our train was 10 minutes late, but that was made up for entirely by one of the passengers on the train who had a battery-powered keyboard with him and on request played a whole bunch of songs for us to howl along to.

Tomorrow I have an interview for a commission I want to do at SSR, but I have no idea what I want to say. :( So, er, if you had to organise the week that is one enormous party because it is your student society's birthday, and it had to have an overall theme that could be divided into different subthemes for Monday through Friday with corresponding activities, what would you do? Halp!
After that, Ruben and I are going over to our aunt's for dinner. I think she might be a little worried about us being home alone, haha! We're doing fine, though. The house is clean even! I honestly didn't think that would happen.

So I may have found a room in Leiden. Which, um. OMFG AHGDJSDHFG. PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE YES.

We don't have a dorm system in Leiden, so if you want a room you'll be renting one from people who own a bunch of houses they've transformed to accomodate as many students as possible. Sadly, in order to get a room in any house in Leiden, the other students living there have to like you, so you're basically constantly applying and interviewing for a room the same way you would for a job. Except it's slightly worse, because it is COMPLETELY unclear what people are looking for in their new housemate and you can be rejected based on the most trivial weird things, and it just sucks all-round. Most people have to do this A LOT before they find a room, and even then they usually find a room through an acquaintance already living in that house.

BUT. A colleague of my father's is moving here from a few hours away, and also looking for a place to live. She found a room for rent in Leiden, dead center, right next to this church, which is actually where I sit my exams, and only a minute away (literally) from the law faculty. The house the room is in doesn't work with the interviewing system, because the people living there are either graduating or already working, so they decided to just let their acquaintances know about the vacant room and wait. My dad's colleague was the very first person to get her name on the interest list because she knew a girl who used to live in that house. She's decided not to take it, and she's trying to get the house owner to give me the room over the one other girl who's considering it, because that girl already lives in Leiden and I don't. My dad's colleague has sent an email to the house owner saying that she would like to come view the room and bring me along, and that one of us will rent the room either way. Hopefully this will make the house owner kind of consider us as sharing the top spot on the list, as opposed to her being first, the other girl being second and me being third.

I don't know if this explanation made any sense, but. OMG. If I get this room, I will die. Best location ever and NO INTERVIEWING (which I have been doing for a while now, without success). OMG OMG I WANT IT OMG D: The house owner will probably contact me tonight or tomorrow and I'm eating myself up over here because I am SO NERVOUS. AAGH. HALP D:

In other, less stressful news:

• All of us first years at the wieven are getting our official dispute shirts tonight! I'm so excited! We're all ~grown up~ dispute members now.


• I got a haircut! It's pretty spectacular as it's very very short in the back and actually just short in general, shorter than I'd imagined it would be. Will post photos later so you all can gaze upon my ugly mug once more. Hooray!


• I have bought some absolutely amazing clothes and shoes recently. Sadly this also means that I have no money left.. but I have pretty clothes!


• I baked banana nut bread last week! It was amazing and I've pretty much caught baking fever now. Any good recipes you want to share? :D

Hee, work is awesome sometimes.
I was completely ready to call in sick this morning, until I decided that hanging around the house in my pyjamas pretending to study was really not preferable to making money and that if other people could get up at the arsecrack of dawn just after Christmas then so could I. (I'm so brave you guys!)

Turns out that nearly everyone here is out of office and nearly all the clients are out of reasons to call, so I don't have to be afraid to put music on in case it annoys callers. And even though I'm only here about once every millennium and have to introduce myself to the lawyers all over again every time, the secretaries and the computer guy have been steadfastly burying me under mountains of cake and tea all day because it was ordered for someone's birthday and somebody's gotta look out for the girl who can't leave her desk to grab herself a treat. And so it was that I came to be eating cake at 10 a.m., and again for lunch. OM NOM NOM.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas (or other seasonally appropriate holiday)! I was going to make a LOL YAY MERRY XMAS GUISE post before, but.. I was too busy hanging around near the christmas tree, where my computer was not, so I forgot. And then it was already Christmas and I was too busy stuffing my face and planting my parents on the sofa to watch MTV until All I Want For Christmas Is You came on, because they'd never heard it (what!!)
I'm still too afraid of my dad's SRS BSNS opinion of music to put on T-REXMAS Christmas Bop, though. At least Mariah Carey can distract him with boobs.

All right, back to work. Only 3,5 more hours! And then I will have made, er. I don't know. A certain amount of money. FUCK YEAH!

Hahahaa, oh god.

Am at work now and it's one of our lawyers' birthday. One of the receptionists had ordered him a cake about a week ago, and then when she left on holiday the other receptionist, having been told that the cake had been ordered, promptly forgot and ordered more cake. So now we have.. A LOT OF CAKE. 90 bucks worth of cake. Oh man.