it's good to have friends

probably those of you reading this (i.e. a subset of my friends) will find it incredibly insensitive or offensive of me to say, but there are times when i'll just be walking down the street thinking, "wow, i have friends!" and it's still such a stupefying proposition to me that feel giddy because of it. i mean, when i think about it, i know i've always had friends, and some really rather great ones at that, but i don't think i ever quite got used to the idea, and it still amazes me somehow. believe it or not, in this case it's not even a self-deprecatory thing. okay, maybe at a subconscious level the sense of wonder i'm describing might stem from my low opinion of myself, but the sensation i'm talking about now is really a very good one.

anyway, all that being said, i felt that way walking home this evening, after spending most of the afternoon with danny (short for daniella, a german girl i know from one of my french classes last year). we randomly ran into each other in the city, and decided to hang around with each other for a while, and it was really fun. eventually we took a volleyball down to vidy where there are a bunch of beach courts set up, and even got a couple of other people to play against us. luckily, they weren't excellent players (they only beat us 21-10, instead of a total shutout, like it would have been with most of the other people we saw playing) so it was a nice match. they had enough blunders/screwups that i felt a little less bad about them having to play with me, who was constantly hitting the ball into the adjoining courts. but yeah, they were cool; their names were carlos and dehlia (no clue how to spell that). i think i like volleyball. maybe if i find a way to practice a bit, it will be a little less embarassing to go places like that and ask random people to play with me.

went all over the city this morning trying to find capacitors to replace the blown-up ones on my motherboard so my computer will work again. and of course i failed. i think i might have located two stores which, in principle, should have had what i needed, but naturally were closed on saturdays, or for the months of july and august, or something equally inconvenient. maybe monday, i guess.

i had also talked myself into buying a big swiss flag, because it was on sale, and i thought it would be cool. but of course, i went to the store where the ad was from, and asked about it, only to be told, "no, that's only for the *big* stores." aparently all the 'big' stores are outside the city limits, and require a car making a special trip, which i find to be utterly ridiculous. so, no flag for me. :(

oh, yeah, on the subject of ludicrously located stores; yesterday i finally got fed up with the fact that my office is bordering on unbearable (building made almost entirely of glass = huge fucking greenhouse), and made a field trip / pilgramage to the media markt to buy a fan. i did eventually make it there and back, but i'm coming to the conclusion that there just isn't a good, correct, or graceful way to make that trip. i got less 'lost' than the other times, but it's not close to anything (certainly not a bus stop), and the directions on their website for taking the bus to get there (where 'there' is about 1km from the store, even by their estimation) are partially imprecise, and partially just plain wrong. they didn't even give the name of the stop they were talking about; they said, "take the number 32 bus until you get to mcdonalds." which wouldn't have been so bad, except that the mcdonalds they were referring to isn't on the route of line 32, it's on line 35... color me exasperated. it turned into like a two hour ordeal by the time i got back. i'm trying to decide whether this is turning into a personal challenge (to go there without getting lost or wasting huge amounts of time, just once), or if i should just give in and resign myself to the fact that it simply can't be done. you know, like violating conservation of energy, or something along those lines.

while there, i also bought a little pair of battery operated speakers, since the night before we had another bbq on the lake, and celine was commenting that we really needed music. i offered her my ipod, but she said she thought that would be a little anti-social. i must be adapting to switzerland, at least a little, because despite the fact that they were nearly twice the price i think they should have been, i bought them anyway. which is not to say that it didn't pain me to do so, but a year ago, i really think i would have just left the store without them.

what pissed me off, though, is that even there, where i thought things might be more reasonable, the cheapest blank dvd+r were still over $1.50 each! and that's when you're buying a spindle of 25 of them (the spindles of 50 don't even exist here). i might have considered buying them even so, except that i noticed that these were only 4x!!! i can't handle this! at costco in june, i bought a spindle of 50 16x discs for $20. if i didn't know better, i'd say i should start importing them and selling them on the black market. ha. a black market for affordable computer supplies. that's hilarious. and it's sad because it's [mostly] true.

but yeah, my office is equipt with an expensive fan now, which probably just means that we won't have any more scorching weather (kinda like "it never rains when you bring the umbrella"), but quite frankly, so long as i'm not staring at the wall from 2:30-4:00 like a catatonic autistic because my brain has completely melted into a pool of jell-o like substance, i'm not sure that i really care.