Tonight is my birthday party (yes, then days late, but I wanted everyone to be there) – and my voice is gone, almost completely. I’ve been fighting a cold for weeks, but only in the last couple of days has it started to really affect me. I’m not feeling too bad, luckily, just a bit under the weather, but I definitely hope I’ll be able to talk with my guests tonight… I guess it’s lots of tea and cough drops until then. *crosses fingers*

So yesterday I turned 24. As is tradition, yesterday was family day — I’ll be celebrating with my friends tomorrow evening (drinks in town) and on the 15th (at my place).

It was altogether a wonderful day. I received so many birthday greetings, from on and offline friends as well as some relatives, it kept me smiling all day long. Also, spending time with my family like that was lovely — we went for lunch at my favorite Italian (after I spent some time shopping for clothes and a new DVD/VHS set with my brother), then had waffles and presents at home (I got the gorgeous leather jacket I’d wished for), and finally spent the evening watching ‘Before Sunrise’ and ‘Before Sunset’ (gorgeous, gorgeous movies!) and ordering Asian food.

Just… wonderful. I love how in my family we still go all out for our birthdays — it feels so good to be queen for one day! 🙂

I might post some of the other pictures I took last night at the Chinese restaurant and at the Münster later – for now let me just say that I had a wonderful time and hope all of you did, too!

Well, this is what’s on my mind these days… Naturally I also do other things, nice things like going to the spa with my dad or buying myself the King Arthur Director’s Cut, which was released today. But I’ve also donated some money to Glückskette and have been watching news and documentaries, trying to process the tragedy.

Next on my list is donating some more here – because if I can buy myself stuff, I certainly can give something to people who really really need it. Right now.

Image by Nancy Lorenz.

That’s so weird, as I usually wait as long as possible to do anything about my room… But today I already cleaned it for the holidays – and just now I rearranged my main bookshelf. It’s now really ugly, because I had to stack most books (do you have any idea how wrong that looks?) – but at least there’s now a semblance of order, with books sorted more or less by genre. I’d much rather sort them fiction/non-fiction and then by author, actually, but there’s just no way I’d find anything then, the way things are.

Got rid of about 12 or so books, which doesn’t really make any difference. I’m just hopeless when it comes to books – I love them so much, I can hardly bear to part with them, even if I don’t really read them… But at least I could dust the shelves. *g*

Now I’m quite beat and have a backache again. Think I’ll go do the shopping for the next couple of days now, just to get some fresh air into my dusty lungs…