The Life Pursuit

Has everyone heard this new Belle and Sebastian album? I just picked it up about an hour ago from my friendly neighborhood record man who used to have his shop in the same house where I used to live and where I used to pick up all of my packages that were delivered when I wasn't home, and it had me dancing in the kitchen while I was making my nachos for lunch. This is a rare occurence, especially on a dark snowy day like today. This music is like the sun! It will make you feel good. Apparently, it's sort of a follow-up to their last regular album, which was all about breakups, and is instructions on how to live your life further. I haven't quite gotten that out of it yet, but we'll see.

Speaking of the life pursuit, mine is going well, I guess. In between eating bon bons and playing around with my weblog on the internet, I go to work, which is pretty much like sitting around and eating bon bons and playing around, which isn't so bad. My new job, while frustrating during the first few weeks, was super this week! My different groups are working on linoleum printing, surrealistic collages, and nature collages with pen and ink details. Even the students I was told were difficult were really engaged when we were doing some practice exercises with pen and ink yesterday. And today I even learned something new as part of this whole thing: the English name for these particular types of pen: nib and holder. (Feder und Federhalter) All right!

In other news, I rewarded myself after dragging myself down to the inhabitant registration place this morning (here in Germany you have to register your address with the gov'ment so the man knows where to find you when you make trouble, as I often do). I went shopping! In addition to my new CD, which also came with a bonus DVD, I got 2 new hip shirts to suit my expanding form (you know what all those bon bons will do to a girl!), and went and wandered around the big art store, only to kick myself for buying some nibs and a fancy holder at the expensive art store yesterday. They are way cheaper at the big art store (49 cents compared to 1.60!!), and the big art store is much more entertaining. You can stumble around aisles of giant sketchbooks and every kind paint, ink and whatever else your heart could desire and drool without getting stared at by the hipster expensive art store workers. I behaved myself, though, and only got some holders for my art classes, just as I had planned. Somehow, we have an overabundance of nibs at school, but only 4 intact holders, and one that's missing its insides, so it doesn't work. So this should alleviate the complaints of my students that "God, this place gets so much money every year and you can't even have enough holders for all of us!" I wasn't aware of our lack of holders...I had found the supply of nibs and mistakenly thought "Where there are nibs, there are holders!" But there weren't. Another lesson learned.