Sunday 25 May 2008

Not too bad

As predicted, Friday felt like being called into work on a Saturday, Saturday felt like Sunday and Sunday didn't know what to do with itself. Such is a bank holiday Thursday.

Managed to get some things done - finally did a jewellery repair that I've had since Easter. I needed a few beads for it, so went to search for bead shops in Frankfurt without much hope - I'd searched before and found naught. But someone had posted a question about it a few days earlier on an 'answers' site and I got addresses for two places - the first of which had what I wanted (which was nothing special) and I also caved in and bought a kumihimo set and some carabiners with chains to weave onto. The second store was much larger and nicer, with a larger range of beads, and there too I was unable to resist buying something - in this case a set of 6 butterfly and dragonfly stamps and a set of blue/green ink pads. I know, I shouldn't. But I did.

The other thing I was on the lookout for was headphones. I found a real hi-fi shop, which predictably enough only stocked serious merchandise - 300 and 400 Euro Sennheiser headphones. The strange thing is that I can get both the headphones and the iAudio D2 much cheaper in the UK than here, even taking the strong Euro into account. But I can't seem to pay for them with my German bank card, so I'll have to see if I can get them delivered to a non-cardholder address (always a bit of a pain).

Otherwise, I finished the first section of the Social Science Readings translation, and read the central part we don't have to translate. I still have some way to go before I finish (due on June 13) but at least I've cracked the ice.

Went out to dinner last night with Z to the Thai place around the corner - cheap and cheerful (6 Euro main course) but tasty and just what we were looking for. He sent me one of his songs in production, and I am extremely impressed.

So, I'm now sitting surrounded by rattail (satin cord, in case you think it's something strange) and templates. I translated the kumihimo booklet online from German to English, and although not all of it made sense, I found a video that cleared up most things and actually making one piece has made a lot of the rest obvious. One bit I missed was that some threads have to be longer than others, so my 'finished item' has uneven straggly tails, but I quite like it anyway.

No comments: