andthatswhoiam - personal edition, part 1

Another post full of pics from the wonderful blog http://andthatswhoiam.tumblr.com/ - as I just read, it seems it won't be continued any longer. But the pictures are all still up, so take a look if you like.

Anyway, here come some of my favourites of those that apply to me:

(I'd like to add that my hands don't look that white - I'm not a vampire!)

So maybe you now know me a little better :-)
More to follow soon!

TV update - I've had enough of bloody shows

I've just updated my "current TV faves" box on the right side.

True Blood and Dexter have disappeared from it, although they are still airing here in Germany. I just couldn't take them anymore. I guess the fact that I find the opening credits of both shows disgusting should have given me a clue that the shows wouldn't be quite my cup of tea.

I'm not a big fan of vampires (as I've said before), but I liked the novel True Blood is based on (or rather, the first part of the series of books). The first season was good, at least parts of it, but since the storylines with the crazy lady Maryann and the girl Bill was forced to "create", I don't really like it very much anymore. I also don't like that Bill bites Sookie when they have sex. To see their relationship develop in the first season was more interesting (or romantic, I guess).

I also found it very hard to watch when LaFayette and others were held captive (in chains) in the basement of Fangtasia. Or being ripped to pieces by the blonde vampire (who I don't find half as hot as everybody else, it seems).

Then I missed one episode by accident (I taped it, but there was no repeat later at night as the weeks before). I could have watched it online from some site that offers streams, but as it wasn't fun anymore to watch it at all, I stopped.

With Dexter it was similar. Part of the problem there was that I seem to have missed half of season 2 - at least I couldn't remember big parts of the recap shown at the beginning of the season 3 premiere. So I watched the first 2 or 3 eps, but then I lost interest. I think there was a particular scene or storyline that killed it for me, but I can't remember what it was now. Rita being pregnant? Don't know. Also, the show is on very late so I always have to tape it and I sometimes forgot it so I decided to stop watching altogether. I still think it's not a bad show. Just a lot of blood and guts and torture.

Instead, I watch Royal Pains now. It started airing 5 weeks ago and I enjoy it. I've always liked Mark Feuerstein ever since he was a guest star in Once And Again. And the Hamptons are definitely beautiful to look at. So I guess I prefer medical dramedy or whatever you want to call it to dark, violent, bloody vampire/serial killer dramas.

True Blood TV-Start heute

Heute startet in Deutschland True Blood, eine "Vampirserie für Erwachsene", wie ich es mal nennen möchte. Also eher nix für Teenies, die auf die Twilight Romane und Filme stehen. Als ich von der Serie gehört habe, hab ich mir den ersten Roman der Buchreihe gekauft, auf dem die Fernsehserie basiert: Dead until Dark - a Sookie Stackhouse novel von Charlaine Harris. Hat mir gut gefallen.

Dann habe ich mir ein paar Folgen der Serie im Original angesehen. Diese Serie von "Six Feet Under"-Macher Alan Ball ist viel düsterer als das Buch. Den Vorspann finde ich geradezu verstörend. Der starke Südstaatenakzent der Figuren war für mich teilweise schwer verständlich. Aber die beiden Hauptdarsteller Anna Paquin und Stephen Moyer bzw. ihre Figuren sind sympathisch und die Handlung ist interessant und spannend. An mehr erinnere ich mich im Moment ehrlich gesagt nicht - ist schon ca. 1 Jahr her. Bin aber auf jeden Fall gespannt, wie das Ganze auf Deutsch ist und wer die Synchronstimmen sind. Das könnte ich sicher vorab schon rausfinden, aber ich lass mich lieber überraschen bzw. versuche dann während des Schauens die Sprecher zu erkennen.


Ausstrahlungstermin: ab heute ca. 22 Uhr auf RTL 2 in Doppelfolgen, Wdh. später in der Nacht.

Und jetzt überlege ich, ob ich zu der Serie nicht schon mal was geschrieben hab hier im Blog. Hm. Muss ich dann mal nachsehen.

General update

I've updated the list of what I'm watching. A couple of seasons ended in the past 2 weeks. Desperate Housewives will be back in January. When there will be new episodes of Chuck and Cold Case, I have no idea. But I've read that 2 shows that premiered this fall in the US will start airing here in January (Wednesdays on Pro7 after Desperate Housewieves): Vampire Diaries from The WB and HawthoRNe from TNT. I'm not that much into vampires (even though the rest of the female world seems to be in love with Edward Cullen/Robert Pattinson from the Twilight book/movie series), but I'm always curious about new TV shows so I'll give it a try. HawthorRNE stars Michael Vartan, who was Vaughn in one of my all-time favourite shows Alias, so how could I not watch?!

What else: my best friend and her boyfriend are now completely obsessed with playing FarmVille on Facebook and I guess I am to blame. I still play, too, but I'm getting a bit annoyed with the game because it's so time-consuming and always puts pressure on you to do stuff every 5 minutes. So I guess I prefer casual games like Biotronic which you can play for 5 minutes and you don't have to come back to check if your cranberries are fully grown or your cows need to be milked or whatever.

Speaking of Facebook: my boss has decided we should keep private and business stuff separate on social media networks, but I'm not sure how I'm supposed to do that or why. I only have 6 people as friends on Facebook who qualify as clients and they are not really decision-makers at their radio stations so I don't see what harm it does if they see a funny video clip I share or a status update from me. I think what my boss wants to avoid is that we come across as unprofessional like some people who post silly pictures every 5 minutes which makes you wonder if they ever work. I try to stay away from Facebook during working hours anyway so that won't happen. My co-workers seem to disagree with my boss as well cos they said it could improve your relationship with clients if you get to know them better by interacting with them on Facebook. So we'll see how that debate continues.

Other stuff at the office: we're moving in a week from Monday and I'm very nervous. The new building is only about a mile from the one we're in now. But there's still a lot of stuff to pack and to organize. I hope my colleagues/superiors won't leave me all alone on moving day cos they want to work from home and not be bothered with the chaos. I can just see them coming in later to complain that the furniture is not in the right place. Argh. Well, I don't want to be too negative about it. I'll just have to tell myself that everything will work out fine ... *sigh*

The past weeks have been exhausting cos I've basically been working 50 hours a week which is no fun at all. And my skin is worse than ever. I have psoriasis and it's back with a vengeance itching like hell literally from head to toe. And now I'm not even sure if it is psoriasis. My boss keeps saying I should try homoepathy, but I'm not convinced. For now I just hope it'll go away soon and put lotion on the affected areas. Great. I also need to get a couple of wisdom teeth out. I've been putting that off for years. I really need to start looking after myself better. That'll be my first new year's resolution: make doctors' appointments. I love it already. Not. Argh.

What else: my sister is getting married next May to a guy from Milan, Italy. I like him a lot. My family met his family last weekend. His parents seem nice, too.

Ha. Now you know everything that's going on, more or less.

More vampire stuff

I've started reading the first book of the Twilight series that I mentioned recently and I love it. It's got 500 pages and I'm already on page 420 or something like that (even though I wasn't home most nights this week). I'm reading it in German, but I think I'll have to get it in the English original for myself soon.

Vampires

While I'm still in the middle of reading the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon (takes me twice as long as it normally would cos I read every volume in English first and then again in German), a co-worker told me about another series of novels she loves very much: the so-called Twilight saga by Stephenie Meyer. I think there are 3 parts available so far. The protagonist is a vampire. Hm. She said she wasn't too keen on that when she heard about it from a friend but now she can't put the books down. Like her, I'm not into vampires, but a good love story is always something I enjoy so I might borrow the first novel from her and see what it's like.

Speaking of vampires, I've started watching Moonlight now (or in other words, it has started airing in Germany now). That's a TV drama series about vampires. There's only 1 season cos it didn't get picked up but I'll watch it anyway while it lasts. I like the actor in the main part, Alex O'Loughlin. Don't think I've seen him before, but he's cute. I was looking forward to seeing Jason Dohring from Veronica Mars again in that show, but unfortunately he hasn't been doing much in the first 3 episodes.