Published Sunday September 5th, 2004

Wow.. It's almost been a full week, if not a full week since i last even wrote anything. A rather active week it has been. Heh, so much, i'm kind of glad i write down quick little notes to help remind me.. Yeh.

Well then, Saturday August 28th i got up at 1230 and had lunch with my grandparents. After lunch i spent around 90 minutes on the computer. In the afternoon my grandma and i went up to the Jakobs, my aunt, uncle and cousins. We spent perhaps an hour there. I walked around their garden and took photographs of flowers and such. They all turned out like crap, i thought. This, or i just had higher expectations for them, or my standards are too high. In the evening, after dinner i worked some on a new layout for this site after having an idea for a layout. I hung about some on the Internet and then spent some more time into the evening working on the layout. Watched some various media video files (music videos, south park episodes, family guy episodes, etc) and then went to bed.




Conceptual marco.luethy.net v4 layout as of Saturday.





I got up at around noon on Sunday August 29, and again ate lunch with grandparents. So much eating.. I feel like I'm eating all the time, yet i lost weight.. Ey? My metabolism is funny. I was 60kg when i left the states, i was 59kg a month ago, and now I'm between 57kg and 58kg. Fascinating and detailed stuff, i know. (60kg ~= 130lbs) After taking a shower and sitting on the computer/Internet, at around 1600 i went over to Sommer's; My other grandparents, cousins, aunt and uncle. I took some photographs and then there was a brief thunderstorm and down-pour of rain. After this, everything was wet.. Droplets of water on plants and such. With my camera in hand i made sure not to miss the opportunity (as though it rarely rained..) This was a lot of fun.. Took a lot of photographs of flowers. I'm obsessed with flowers. They're fun! ..and pretty! ..and wonderful to photograph up close! Heh, indeed!

I ate dinner with with uncle, aunt and cousins. This always turns out to be pretty interesting or entertaining. Everyone was there.. My four cousins Mirjam, Damaris, Deborah and Naemi, Deborah and Naemi's boy friends Matthias and Andreas, and then of course Irene and Fritz, my aunt and uncle. There was a lot of talking, a lot of laughing and joking and so forth. I did a lot of listening, musing to myself, and making various observations. Heh, i'm a better speaker than listener anyway. I found it to be quite enjoyable, and my comfort level was through the roof. I said perhaps 20 words through the course of dinner, if not less. My uncle and his various comments with frequent similarity to things my mom might say.. Heh, amusing, in any case. When i went to the bathroom, as i was washing my hands i found nine toothbrushes in two cups by the sink, two in one cup, and the rest in the other.

I left at around 2230-2300 when everyone went to bed to get up in the morning for school and various such destinations i went and took some night shots. Full moon was a bit overwhelming in the photos, so not much from those will ever be seen by anyone.. It'll just turn into stock photography laying around on my hard disk for years and years until the disk either fails and i have no back up, or i run out of space and do a little clean up. *shrug* This is how these things work.

Monday August 30th i woke up with an idea. My idea was to put a think piece of white paper behind a flower i'm photographing to remove the background. This way i could take a shot of the flower at f2.8 and then i could put the paper behind the flower removing any background and take a photo at f22 and get a nice sharp crisp image of the entire flower. Later i could combine the two photos together and have a lovely sharp flower with a blurred background. This was my idea, anyway. It works, but i didn't turn out using it in this exact fashion. After lunch, some time on the Internet, i walked down into town, used someones wireless network and sent some email. I then went to some paper and art supply store and bought a rather large piece of relatively think paper. I then went to Sommer's again where i was invited for dinner again my my aunt. I took photos of flowers and such, yet again.. This time with the white paper behind it. They were interested, and i showed them some of my work and cheap little tricks concerned with image manipulation. Dinner was interesting, yet again.. At around 2200 i left again.

Tuesday August 31 was a bit slower. I worked on the photos i had taken the day before into the afternoon. At around 1600 my grandma and I went to the "Dahlienshow" or a display of a whole, whole bunch of various flowers of the same family or species, or whatever. I took a gigabyte of photos. Woot. I have yet to work on them or really even look at them.. When we returned, we had dinner and i continued to work on my flower photographs. Later in the evening i started uploading the photos to deviantart.com, and then extremely high quality tiff files for print's of the photos. I was up until around 0300 before finally going to bed.

Wednesday was spent all day on the computer working on this sites new layout and getting it to work properly in Internet *POS*Explorer*POS*, cleaning up this website's directories a bit, and so forth. I went to bed pretty late again after searching for a song and artist who's name i didn't know, or know any names of any of the artist's songs. Was pretty easy to find, and after 2 hours i had downloaded 200mb worth of mp3's. Whooo Illegalities! Come and get me RIAA! Oh.. wait.. i'm in Switzerland. I finally found the artist and song i was seeking: Nightwish - Nemo. Howrah. Also came across some other artists i didn't know about, too. Got to sleeping at around 0400.






Firefox: What conceptual marco.luethy.net v4 layour should look like as of Wednesday. Explorer: Explorer being difficult.


Heh.. hooray for not censoring things: Blank and Jones - Mind Of The Wonderful - Music video. Hoorah for Rammstein and Hoooorah for steaming german music television.



Thursday came and at around 1400 my cousin Reto showed up. Him, my grandma, and I chatted a bit, and then he and i left. As we were driving, going to go play billiards we picked up some hitch-hiker who had had one too many joints. We gave him a ride into Langnau where we were heading. We dropped him off at the train station in Langnau. Reto and I then went to some old factory building which had been turned into a bar. There was no one there because it was in the middle of the day and most people were working. Reto had vacation. We played Billiards for quite some time. I lost every time. I would have won once, but i put the stupid black ball into a hole different than what i said. Blah.

We left and drove to Burgdorf where we went shopping for food for dinner and such. We drove to his apartment, a really nice apartment i was rather jealous of. I can't wait till i have my own apartment.. Heh.. Reto and a friend of his rent the apartment. Reto cooked dinner for us, we ate, and talked some. It was rather good. Into the evening we just played computer games. While chatting online, during playing games i heard from various family members that Daniela had been in a car accident. Someone drove into the back of her, which pushed her into a car in front of her totaling both back and front car's except for the good old Toyota Tundra Daniela was in. It was the only car able to drive away. Ha ha. I love that truck. Heh, Daniela was okay, probably just a bit shaken up.

At around 0400 we finally went to bed. I slept on their couch which had a fold out bed that was pretty comfortable. After killing and smashing a few mosquito's sucking my blood, i fell fast asleep until around 1300, Friday. Reto had also woken up around this time. We ate breakfast, i sent some email and then we left.

We headed to Mediamarkt, a store quite similar to Best Buy in the United States. By the time we had left Reto's apartment and got to Mediamarkt it was around 1500. I bought a very mixed, and entertaining plethora of CD's. Let's like them all! I bought three CD's from the two bands i discovered Wednesday evening: Nightwish - Century Child, Nightwish - Once, and Within Temptation - Mother Earth. Also bought Avril Lavigne - Under My Skin, York - Peace and Mich Gerber - Tales Of The Wind. .. The first two are Metal, the one after that is Gothic. Avril Lavigne.. generally pop-rock. York - Peace I found in the Dance/Techno section, and Tales Of The Wind i found in the "Swiss-Interpret" section. Whatever that section may mean, its an intersting blend of violins, classical compositions, drum and bass, and pop-vocals by Jael from Lunik (who i have all CD's from.) Heh.. So funny.. yes, this is why its funny: Metal (with violins and pan flutes, Indian chanting and female opera-esque vocals-ha ha ha), Gothic (see previous parenthesis), Pop/Rock (female vocals), Chillout (come on! techno/dance section!), Unclassified (nice vocals by Jael from Lunik). Ha ha ha ha. Yes! Splendid! My musical tastes are all over the place, but not without a trend.

After leaving Mediamarkt we went to some store named Pick Pay or something of the sort where i bought a bottle of Passoa, some Passion fruit 20% alcohol drink that tastes really good and is good mixed with various other things like orange juice, or ice tea, etc. We then drove back to Wasen. I said goodbye and the usually thank's routine and he then left. I listened to my newly purchased CD's into the evening until it was time for dinner. I listened some more to my music, whistled, and was happy and in a good and content mood. I started typing this, and then my grandma came and asked me if i had heard about the hostage/terrorist thing in Beslan where 1000+ people were taken hostage, and 200+ people killed.. And then my good jolly happy mood was no more, but turned into feelings of nothing or nothingness. My typical feelings in such cases. I turned on CNN and found that they were yapping about the presidency race and had to wait a bit before they said anything about the school siege. Heh..






My great grandma. Mother of my Dad's Mother. These photos are from my grandma's brother, Bruno Vogel.





Again..





Once more..




Heh.. I hate it when everything one says in response to others during interactions turns out to sound aggressive and as though you were in a terribly bad, upset or annoyed mood. Something in one's throat or, somehow one was preoccupied and half-decided to give a response, turning out to be a miserable failure for a response. heh.. Maybe no one has any clue what I'm talking about.

On TV here, in the morning and later afternoon on some channels they have footage of just a camera recording from an areal view of wherever a helicopter with a mounted camera is flying through. Occasionally they zoom in on people on their balconies, or in a community swimming pool and all the while they have chillout/elevator/lounge music playing as well as the audio from the camera's surroundings. I think that's kind of cool.. I love just watching it as the helicopter flies me through the various cities and valleys and so forth.

Wow.. music is distracting.. I started typing this at around 2130 and now its already 15 past midnight. Heh..

Well then.. On Thursday i finally achieved a whistling comfort level high enough so that i can just full out start whistling my brains out, tire my lips, and make my lungs gasp for air. Ah, yes! Yes!!! You have no idea how happy this makes me. Whistling is so very important to me and my happiness. Music makes me generally happy and content. When i whistle to my music i feel ever better. Finally being comfortable enough to just whistle is a great feeling and makes me much more happy then i already was. When I'm tired, a little depressed, or sad, i simply have to find the correct music for mood-improvement and start listening, and then whistling to it and all is already a whole lot better. Heh..

Whenever i get caught up describing or explaining something to someone, or talking for a prolonged time i feel a sort of remote dizziness, a sort of fogged or blurred vision on the edge of my eyes sight. A sort of limited view. I think whenever i talk, or say more then a few sentences i sense this limited view of my surroundings. When i try to recall, or remember back to what was around me at a point in time where i was speaking a lot, i really can't see anything in my mind. But moments after i stopped talking, i can. Heh.. So, when i talk i see of my surroundings, i seem to be less observational, and when i don't speak i see much more of my surroundings and am much more observational. Perhaps this is why i'm more of a quiet person? I like seeing my surroundings clearly? Heh.. Is this a typical human thing. When talking less seeing and seeing with less talking? Sounds like it would be.. Kind of makes sense. More thinking to talking than seeing while talking, and when not talking/speaking then you have more thought to see things.. H'm.. Okay.

It's kind of amusing how i feel quite different when i'm with someone older than i am, but not old enough to be my parents or grandparents. I felt this way when i was hanging out with my cousin Reto who is almost 24. When i'm hanging out with people my age or people younger than me, i feel normal, fine, like myself for the most part. When i was with Reto i felt smaller, younger, somewhat, or perhaps, somehow insignificant, or dumber. All quite different, but.. Eh.. I dunno, this one is a hard one to explain so i'll leave it at that..

When i see my grandpa happy, and he smiles, and his smile and eyes and everything about his focused straight at me, and he is happy, content and has a smile on his face i feel like melting. His smile, in some way cute, soft, gentle and kind, yet very big because he's a big person kills me every time i see it. Not in a bad way, though.. It makes me really happy to see his smile like that.. It has even more of an impact when he has is false-teeth out and you see nothing but lips when he smiles. That is, no teeth. I just melt when i see it.. Heh..

Hrm.. Well, i think i've said all that i had to say. I suppose that i shall go to bed soonish, then.. thusly ending this entry now.