covers of songs you've never heard of anyway

don't mind the title; it's not supposed to mean anything. just a random phrase that popped into my head and struck me as strangely clever for absolutely no reason at all.

harumph. not much happening. except of course the usual 'stare at the screen and tell yourself over and over that you have to make this code work, and soon, yet you feel zilcho in the motivation department, and still haven't figured out where to start.'

well, that's only partially true---we went ice skating on thursday, which was cool, except that the lady didn't believe that my student id was real and made me pay the full price (only three francs more, but still, it pissed me off). ice skating is fun, even if i'm completely incompetant and falling all over myself and everybody else for the entire time. markus likes to try to start a game of tag, which is kinda mean, since he is actually very very good on skates. eh, it's amusing.

saturday i finally managed to get to the hardware store and buy spackle (to fix the hole in the kitchen wall that's been there since i moved in) and a new floater apparatus for the toilet (which never completely shuts off, and has been running basically 24/7 since i moved in). no, obviously, i don't pay for the water. in fact, it's technically their responsibility to fix both of these things, but they never do, so i got fed up with it and did it myself.

patching the wall was pretty easy, and it looks better than it did, but it's not terribly pretty. probably i will try to clean it up and give it another try sometime if i get bored.

the toilet, on the other hand, was covered with algae on the inside, and was utterly disgusting. so i cleaned it out as best i could (at least it was just the tank, and not the bowl), and then tried to figure out how to get the old floater thingy out. after several minutes of not having any success whatsoever, i discovered an adjustment knob that allows you to regulate the height of the floater (which in this case was just a crappy piece of styrofoam on a stick). a little expirementation, and it actually shuts off now. amazing. and, of course, irritating as all hell, seeing as i've lived with the incessant sound of trickling water for the last 11 months, *and* paid 20 francs for a replacement part that i didn't even need. i should probably be able to return it, but that takes time and effort to get back to the store (which is not on any of the bus lines) and argue with them into taking it back... argh.

then i made a rum cake (yum!) to take to anne-elizabeth's birthday party. getting in the front door was a bit of a trick, since they weren't answering the bell. eventually someone else showed up who also wanted in and had a cell phone to call them with. the party was cool, and despite the fact that there was hardly any overlap in the people that were there this time versus last time, i managed to feel less awkward and actually talk with a fair amount of people, mostly in french. then, towards the end of the evening, i met leah, sylvain's fiancee, who is also american, and has only been here for a month or so. she basically went berserk when she heard my accent, and i spent the rest of the evening being her support group, which was cool, since she's a really neat person with a lot of fun stories to tell. i tried to relate some of the important lessons and lausanne trivia that i've gleaned over the past year, so hopefully she'll have a bit of an easier time because of it. incidentally, she also tried to do thanksgiving, and (even though this seems cruelly heartless) it was somewhat relieving to hear that someone else actually did have a real disaster on their hands; comparatively, i didn't do so bad after all... but it was a great night, and everyone loved the cake (earned me a repeat invitation), and i must have been there talking with people until about 3:30am. which meant the walk home kinda sucked (~45min), but i made it, and then immediately crashed. probably my body isn't meant to stay up late anymore; imust have used up my allotment of all-nighters in college. too bad they were all wasted on homework... sunday i woke up (around noon) with a splitting headache, despite the fact that i didn't drink anything at the party (unless one slice of my cake was a hell of a lot stronger than i thought it was, but i strongly doubt it).

i tried making almond roca, which (despite having done it numerous times before, just a long time ago) was another learning experience. to start with, naturally, i used a saucepan which wasn't quite big enough (take note: butter and sugar boiling over equals horrible awful sticky burnt mess). this was basically the cause of the second problem, which was that i apparently didn't cook it for quite long enough (i discovered on the fly that my candy thermometer maxed out at 100 degrees centigrade), and so it's a little chewier than it should be. but it still tastes good, even if the texture is screwed up. (come on, who doesn't like a mouthful of butter, sugar, and chocolate?)

talked with mom, dad, and carissa on the isight for a while.

i guess that's about it.

oh, but pleeeeeease will somebody leave me a comment and make me feel less pathetic for writing this stuff when it seems like nobody reads it? please? it's pretty much guaranteed to make my day. so, yeah. sorry for being an attention whore. but i need affirmation here. :)