die gitarre und deutsch

saturday i met katja again for speaking german. this time i went to geneva, and after we had a nice lunch, we walked over to the music store that sean recommended to me, and after sampling quite a few, and waffling quite a bit, i eventually talked myself into buying one. it was a lot of money (400 francs for the guitar + 100 for the case), but i'm telling myself (at least for the moment) that i think it's probably worth at least close to that, and that if i sell it for a fair percentage of that when i leave switzerland, it will just turn out to have been like renting it cheaply, or something. and, it was made in spain, which i think is cool (considering i think that's where they were originally invented, to say nothing of the fact that since i'm in europe, it'd be sorta silly to buy one from japan, or whatever). the ridiculously great part of the story is that i was so excited to have a new toy that i forgot my backpack in the store [rolls eyes]. katja went back today and picked it up for me, and will bring it to movienight tomorrow.

as it turned out, we didn't do a whole lot of speaking german, but we worked a few phrases in here and there. i'm learning slowly; the simple parts of the grammar are falling into place, but i still really need to find a way to bootstrap my vocabulary. if anyone has any secrets for accomplishing this, please let me know.

after the music store, we just kinda walked around for a while, and grabbed some gelato at a nice little place, even though it was drizzling (it's never too cold for ice cream!). then eventually i caught the train back to lausanne.

the risottofest with enno on thursday turned out rather well. apparently it was his "laundry day" (i guess most of the apartment buildings around here have this assinine system where each person only gets access to the machine for one day every three weeks or something ridiculous like that), so we relocated it to his house instead. made three different kinds: pumpkin, artichoke, and the one i cut out of the newspaper, which was with safran, a bunch of spices, and some flaming marsala, which was interesting. they all tasted good, and weren't even all that difficult to make. i'll have to start doing that from time to time, i think. he also suggested we might do something like that for one of the twin peaks nights at some point.

incidentally, we're going to be starting the twin peaks wednesdays back up this week. i don't think we'll jump immediately back into the series, but people will come over, i'll light up the bbbq, and maybe we'll pop in a movie or something. i'm hoping it will be fun. and speaking of television series, last week florence and xavier (my non-insane neighbors) went on their vacation to sicily, and i was going over periodically to take care of lulu the cat. anyway, they told me to feel free to borrow from their dvd collection while they were gone. so i let myself get sucked into watching the first season of "twenty-four." it was so over-dramatized that it's not even funny, and i'm still kinda kicking myself for how much i let it get me involved. it was an exciting trip, but in the end the experience was disturbingly like watching a science fiction film; it's great fun while it lasts, but then after it's over, you just kind feel dirty for having watched it, and moreso for having enjoyed it a little bit. anyway, about the cat, i really hate litterboxes. that is all.

yesterday, the sun came back, and i went running again. probably about 5km out, then a little rest, and 5km back. not much to speak of, in the big picture, i suppose, but baby steps in the right direction, right?

tonight, yannick and i are headed back to that yoga studio that we tried (and failed) to go to last week. i'm kinda looking forward to it. we'll see how it goes.

oh, and nidhi showed up today. she's a phd student from the robotics institute at cmu that's going to be spending about 4 months with us here at epfl. actually, she's taking over julien's old desk in my office. she seems pretty cool, but i don't know much about her yet.

sounds like i might go up flying with antoine tomorrow at around lunch time. no details yet.