"Someone" thought it would be fun to tag me although she knows how much I disapprove of memes. But oh well...here we go:


Use the first letter of your name to answer each question. They have to be real words! You cant use the same word more than once and you cant use your name to answer either the Man/Woman Name questions. Have fun!!

1. Your Name: Kristina
2. A four letter word: Kite
3. A man's name: Kal
4. A woman's name: Kennedy
5. A profession: ugh.. Knight in shining armor? ...or King?
6. A color: Kiwi Green
7. Something you can wear: Knickers ;P
9. A food: Ketchup with Fries ;)
10. A flower: Kenzo Flower
11. A place: Kanada Kiribati
12. An excuse to be late: Kid threw up in the car and I had to clean the mess first
13. Something you yell: Kick it like Beckham!
14. A movies title: King Lear
15. Something you can drink: Kir Royale
16. A music band: Keane ♥
17. An animal: Kangaroo
18. The name of a street: Knotty Pine St.
19. A cars brand: Kia
20. A song title: kind of magic


And since I'm actually updating my journal, I should use this opportunity to pimp a new community for my fellow
graphic makers and House fans :D

1. Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper on their LJ or Dreamweaver.
2. Write five sentences about why you're using that one.
3. No changing it first.


What a sneaky meme! I averted my eyes the first three times it showed up on my f-list but there was simply no escaping so I surrendered. About the wallpaper:

It's nothing special, just some pics I liked put together. As you can see, I never finished it because I forgot to save the right psd file. Up until now, I've just never been in a mood to work on it.
I like bright colors as a background and this light blue seemed fitting. It also has two different layers if you look closely, there are some pics tone on tone underneath the colorful pics on top.

I got tagged by mia_bell27 and brookes_leaves and although I usually ignore memes and things like this, I actually liked that one because it reveals a lot of interesting facts, views and opinions.

So here we go: the countdown meme

( 10...9...8... )

Only 5? Then I'd rather not go at all. These are the movies I'd want to take with me at the vey least:



I wouldn't even make it till Friday with 5 books, so I'll take the following with me:


The Houellebecq one is for amusement purposes only, a book that makes you roll your eyes every 5 minutes while you mutter: "these crazy French".
As for the rest, "Das Wüten der ganzen Welt" is probably my favorite book ever and I'm a big fan of Maarten't Haart too and read evey single book he wrote. The same goes for Paul Auster, Philip Roth and Carlos Ruiz Zafon.

So we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies

- excerpt from King Lear by William Shakespeare

I always think of these lines when I'm confronted with someone whose actions anger or hurt me whether it's because of their betrayal, hate or discrimination.

A gilded butterfly can not fly - it is just as much a prisoner of their own narrow-mindedness, bigotry and limited view of life, love and the world in general.
And those they try to take down will be more free than these insignificant, superficially beautiful insects flittering around aimlessly.

Valentine's Day: love it or hate it? View 500 Answers

None of the above, I'm pretty much indifferent to Valentine's Day. While I like the idea behind it, I don't care for the superficial gestures, the pressure and expectations and the scheduled, forced romance.
But maybe I just feel that way because I'm the most unromantic person in the world who always dated the poem writing, flower and candy buying type of guy that makes you want to get on the next plane and leave the country.

Anyway, happy Valentine's Day to those who are in love and happy Single Awareness Day for everyone else!

I am such a trend-follower sometimes. When everyone started blogging, I did too. And when everyone on my f-list had their own graphics journal, I got one too. I even had a Swedish flag in my window during the soccer championships (with a matching jersey, of course). It's probably just a matter of time until all my userpics get "aretha'd".

And yesterday I joined postcrossing because everyone else already had and it sounded like a lot of fun. So, now I'm writing postcards to complete strangers from Finland, Russia, the Netherlands and the rest of the world.



........................................

Example 2 for me being a trend-follower:writer's block

If you could have any job in the world, what would it be? View 501 Answers

If I had the choice, I'd probably be a writer for my favorite TV show. But I don't have the talent so I would be okay with being part of the production team which is something I could actually be with my college degree.

Happy Birthday, Fuzz! I hope you have a wonderful day with all your loved ones. We haven't been friends that long but I got to know you as a very kind, creative and open-hearted person and I wish you all the best.
I don't have the talent to write you such an awesome birthday fic like thecon12 did but I made you a birthday banner and hope you like it.

I don't know if it's this city or me but as soon as I set a foot on the street I can be sure that someone's stopping me to ask for directions, to carry a bag for them or just my number.
And today it was kind of all of the above. I've been lying in the grass in a park near my apartment for maybe ten minutes when a girl about my age appears in my view and asks me where I bought my jeans. I thought she was joking because I was wearing a really old and much too wide one with grass stains everywhere. Apparently, my ass looks hot in that jeans. Well, that was strange.

A few minutes later a guy takes a seat next to me, asks if I speak English and tells me with a French accent he's been watching me for the last 30 minutes. I thought monosyllabic was the way to go and answered with a skeptic "huh". He then told me he's from Kenia and that his name was Sam. So I said I'm Britney. Close enough to my real name, I thought.
We talked a while with him doing all the talking and me being evasive. Unfortunately, he was bad at reading between the lines and kept going on and on and on. He first insulted my English, calling it hard and cold, and then asked what I'm still doing in this city, why I'm not packing my stuff and live in London for a week and in New York the next. I said it's because I hate flying. That shut him up for a minute until the "convincing me to go on a date with him" part of our conversation started. Ten more minutes of silence from my side and he finally left with a "see you tomorrow". I never agreed to meet him again.

And then there was Marie. A little girl, maybe 5 years old who -according to her Nanny- never speaks with strangers but thought I should be the exception. I'm not bad with kids but I don't feel really comfortable around them either and this little girl was looking at me with her big blue eyes, expecting me to entertain her. I made her little figures of chestnuts until I was "saved" by the ice cream man.

So yeah, that was my day in the park. Nothing special, really.

I haven't posted in a while. About 9 months to be exact. And this is probably the most random and most absurd entry ever so I apologize in advance, but this really amused me.

A certain user on my f-list *cough* gsrlove *cough* has the habit to delete her entries 5 minutes after she posted them and I was about to reply to one of these yesterday (the one with the cats) but by the time I pressed "send comment", it was already gone and I got this error 404 page. Exept it wasn't the usual error message. It showed "Frank" instead, reading newspaper and asking for privacy. And there were more of them when I refreshed, some are really cute. Have they always been there and I just never payed attention or are they new?





( here are the other ones )

I can't believe that it just started snowing. That's really early, even for Munich. And it's not like it's been very cold the last days, only yesterday I was still wearing a skirt and a t-shirt and now it's freezing outside. Since I'm a winter person (I know, technically it's still autumn) I'm really excited right now. And with the Alps only half an hour away...

I guess you shouldn't be surprised that when you share a floor with college students, it can get loud and kind of messy from time to time. But I think what happened during the last 6 months is far from what you expect.

First, I had to live next door to a young couple whose relationship was really extreme - in every aspect. During the day they would fight and scream and destroy most of their furniture and every night at 2 am they had reconciliation-sex. And I have no idea how they did it but each time my whole bed and wall vibrated although there was a whole room and at least 10 metres between their bed and mine. Afterwards they had a shower. Both. Separate. So when they were finally asleep it was about 4 am. Fortunately, they moved out. I assume they broke up since the fighting outweighed the sex during the last weeks.
The next student who moved in set the apartment on fire and nearly killed us both. I haven't seen him ever since. Maybe he's in jail.
Which leads me to Patrick, a really cute guy, I thought, when I first met him. Well, he's not. He has some kind of anger-control issues and drinks so much that we had to break into his apartment several times to see if he's still alive. Yesterday, he got himself a guitar. Needless to say he doesn't know how to play. Today, I've heard him sing for hours so he was either taking a very long shower or he thinks he's a singer now too. I can't wait to see what comes next. Maybe he has his own band this evening. I may have to go on vacation then.

Making icons is serious business. Really. It's hard work and all about fame, competition and comments. OK, maybe it's not. For most of us, it's just a lot of fun. But you still want them to look nice, right?

But after reading more than 200 entries of iconrants I'm a little insecure since I seem to be guilty of a lot of "icon-crimes".
I mean, did you know that:

• you should under no circumstances use text brushes - ever
• Scriptina and Comic Sans make your eyes bleed
• you shouldn't even think about using that ugly bird
• radial blur is a no-go
• the blue exclusion layer should be banned

So I made a check-list of every icon-crime you can commit. If you answer with "yes" to more than 3 of these points, your icon either really sucks or you are a genius making everything look good. According to the "experts".

• Radioactively blinding skin and hair [ ]
• Fucked-up aspect ratio [ ]
• Blurry, un-touched-up bases [ ]
• Overlarge, clumsy, boring font [ ]
• Boring, poorly-placed text [ ]
• Red blob of doom [ ]
• Over-compression marks [ ]
• Awful cropping [ ]
• AntiAlias seems to come and go [ ]
• Circular flares and scribbly outlines [ ]
• Bionic blue eyes [ ]
• Over-saturating [ ]
• Sharpening the base a zillion times [ ]
• Punctuation marks as decoration [ ]
• Spelling mistakes [ ]

I found this meme at my twoday-blog and thought it would be fun to bring it over. It's about the things you associate with the given words and phrases:

life is...not about the amount of breaths you take
to die means...to leave it all behind
people can...surprise you sometimes
the most important thing in life is...to try
the past is...what defines who you are
future means...uncertainty and anticipation
time is...something floating
love...doesn't conquer all
luck is...something you need from time to time
feelings are...dangerous sometimes
conflicts mean...that there's something worth fighting for
hope is...a very dangerous thing to lose
to be able to believe is...what makes the impossible things possible
dreams are...there to come true
changes mean... new chances
I'm afraid of...many irrational things
courage means...to know that you can fail but to try it anyway
the hardest thing is...to not be able to do something
losing means...to accept that someone else is better
to win...doesn't always mean that you're the best
loss is...painful
pain is...inevitable
working means...doing something useful
money means...security and independence
strength is...to ask for help sometimes
imagination... is something a lot of people lose when they grow up
creativity is...to make the most out of nothing

Yeah, I was there. My radio station picked me to be the lucky one since I lived there for some months once and more important, no one else wanted to drive 9 hours to stand in the rain.

I didn't expect much but it was even worse than I imagined and my ears are still bleeding. Ever heard Enrique Iglesias singing live? The whole audience was praying for a power failure.
After his second song I really needed to recover so I went Backstage and stayed there the rest of the evening to watch the concert in London which was so much better. I mean, have a look at the line up in Hamburg, there wasn't much to miss:



Yeah, not so impressiv. I wonder if they even showed parts of it in other countries. Maybe Shakira, Snoop Dogg and Mando Diao but I wouldn't be suprised if they didn't . And I won't even mention the half empty stadium which was embarrassing too. Live Earth Hamburg - what a disaster.