So... where was I? Oh, yes. I remember now.

November 2008:
Things returned mostly to normal. Hosted a few couchsurfers, jammed a bit, dnd'd a bit, worked a bit. Kind of a bitsy month.

December 2008:
Ah yes, December. There was the iLogs winter event to speak of. Same deal as every year (every year being third time running). Arrive Thursday evening, get completely shit-faced until around 4am, stumble to the hotel and rise early Friday morning completely unable to function (or even look half-way functional), ignore a few hours of blabbering and company goals and wait for morning tea. This year it was chicken. I don't remember what the project presentations were about, but I remember that morning tea was chicken. It was good, too though last year's pizza was much better for recovering from a hangover. Then there's a few hours where you can go back to the hotel and sleep for a bit, followed by bowling and then the main event in the brewery across the road. We ate, we drank, we got drunk, we had deep philosophical conversations to the background of blaring music which would be forgoten the next day. There were speeches. There was dancing. There were many feeble attempts on the brewer's daughter/barstaff. Glasses were broken. Vomit of unknown origin was discreetly deposited behind the buffet and just as discreetly cleaned up by the aforementioned daughter. Drunken workmates were found asleep on the toilet, pants around ankles and unresponsive to door-knocking, speech, shaking, toilet-flushing or having water poured over their heads. Yes it was, as I shall put it, the fulfillment of the Austrian dream.

New years 2008 was spent in a small region in switzerland called Obersaxen. Some friends of Alex and Claudia had rented a batch and wanted some more people to fill the remaining spaces, so we answered the call. We were there all told for three days (two nights, over new years eve). The whole place was covered in snow, so ski lifts were operating. It was the first time during the whole winter that I'd actually made it to the snow (as opposed to vise versa, which was the case for most of the winter). I didn't really have the drive to go skiing though, so I joined Moni and walked around the tracks in the area. We hired a sled for a stretch and experienced the dangers of sledding first hand. Great fun. The rest of the time was spent eating and playing games. Bang! was quite cool if you ever get a chance, and there was this weird german one called Killer Bunny or something where you try to grow rabbits and kill off your opponents. It made no sense, as the winner was more ore less determined randomly based on which cards you picked up, and the main part of the game was more of a mildly entertaining distraction. I got in some penguin-style belly-sliding goodness too. Great fun.

And that's 2008.

January 2009:
Another 'bitsy' month. A bit of this and that. Highlight was having wisdom tooth pulled. It was voluntary/preventative, and I only have one of them. Took a full ten minutes of twisting and wrenching, but it was nothing like my previous ordeal, and it came out clean. I got to keep the tooth too. :) That reminds me, the dentist who did my root canal sent me another bill last month for another 50 franks. I have no idea what for, but I paid it just to shut him up. It had a lot of little details on the bill like "First 5 minutes" and "Last 5 minutes"... I guess he must have forgotten those on the original quote, huh?

Febuary 2009:
I have announced my resignation. Yes, I've had enough. Januray and Feburary were entirely dominated by support. Bugfixing if we were lucky. Unfortunately providing third-level technical support for an application that nobody from our firm had ever had anything to do with, it didn't rate very high on my 'impressed' score. I spoke to my boss about my work dissatisfaction, but nothing was (able to be) changed. My incessant complaining about my work situation had evidently bothered Alex enough to mention that his work was hiring. I updated my resume (with the gracious help and encouragement of Moni) and sent it in. It took around a week to complete the two job interviews, and had a confirmed job around the first week of Feburary. I relayed the news to my boss, got him to sign under the dotted line, and it was all done. The new job starts in June.

March 2009:
Bitsy. Everything and nothing. A lot of dnd it seems. One of our Changeling gamers Zahid announced his departure and threw an 'Abscheids Apero' (farewell party). Was cool.

April 2009:
Spring! As soon as the weather started showing signs of becoming warmer, everything exploded into spring mode. Even I was jumping around like a spring lamb. That winter had been the longest, coldest, unrelenting, depressing winter I've ever experienced. The snow seems to have started in October, and just didn't melt. Well it melted enough to become ice and then refreeze. And if it actually started to disappear, new snow would replace it just in time to destroy the hope that had begun to grow in your heart. No I did not like that winter. Right now I am sitting on my balcony with the shade cloth deployed, and liking it very much. I check how my basil and parsley seedlings are going every morning, and have just noticed that my lilly is sprouting again. Hooray for spring!

The great part I have noticed about changing jobs, is it gives you the reason to blow all your holidays. The only hard part is deciding what to do with it all. Well for a start, Moni and I went to Barcelona for a week. I'd been adamant that I wanted to try couchsurfing, however I was blind to the fact that it was easter weekend, and also that Barcelona is a popular destination over easter. That meant I had no chance for couchsurfing, so we arrived in BCN with no accomodation booked and spent most of the first day looking for a place to stay. We did find a place in the end, but it was out in the suburbs and it had rained on us.

The next morning we headed into the centre and found ourselves a youth hostel until after the easter rush. We checked out some restaurants (one was bloody fantastic, I have to say), ate a lot of tapas, bought some t-shirts, and visited the regular tourist stops one might expect to avoid if one lived there. My experiences there lead me to believe that Barcelona has two main cultural inspirations. Soccer, and a fellow named Antoni Gaudí. Soccer is a well known sport where two teams of gentlemen attempt to put the same ball into well guarded nets, using only their feet. Fantastic stuff. Gaudí was an architect who designed a lot of stuff in Barcelona, and finished some of it. His masterpeice was Sagrada Familia, a church which is still being built. They're still building it because it has to be built using donated money, which they don't have much of. As tourists they let us donate 11 euros each to go in and see what they'd finished so far. We thought we would go to the roof, and were helpfully informed once we were inside that you have to donate a further 2 euro to take the lift. That, and that using the stairs is just plain illegal. I staged an altitude strike right then and there.

On Tuesday night we had our first success with couchsurfing, and a couple volunteered to host us. I was astonished at how much effort they put into us, and a little embarrassed. Normally I do something with my guests like cook a meal or go for a beer, but Miquel and Eva really took us under their wings and showed us around. We had lunch together at a restaurant in the country somewhere, then we were driven to the hills and we went for a walk. On Wednesday evening we went to the beach, and were driven around 100km north to Girona for dinner. It is also old with a castle-like inner city, but is out of the way of tourists so has retained its charm. At points, Barcelona felt like an amusement park in comparison.


Thursday we bid our farewells and took the train into Barcelona. We had lunch in a park in a sunshower. Moni did a rushed fly-by of some of the shops along a street called Diagonal (because it is), and we headed the airport, spread our wings and flew home.