dream? nightmare, more like!

I'm sure it will only be a matter of time until my 2.5 faithful readers want me to pay them for their service. I've realised that I might be the perfect embodiment of a sad "seasonal bore", someone who tortures perfectly nice and unsuspecting people with trite stories about Christmas baking for weeks on end before smoothly morphing into a monster who zealously loads up photos from frozen lakes and ice-rinks all across Austria. Sad. Does it come with age, I wonder?

Now. After this brief self-flaggelating break...here we go again.

Last night, the Pampered Princess and I decided to grace the (allegedly) new-and-improved ice-rink in front of Vienna's city hall. Austria's answer to the rink in front of the Rockefeller Center is called "Wiener Eistraum" (Viennese ice-dream). It might indeed be a dream for those who are raking in the hefty entrance-fees (EUR 5 for adults) but last night it was a nightmare for skaters who actually wanted to skate, as in: expecting there to be enough space for occasionally moving your legs. I was convinced some hooligan juvenile skater would crash into me/slice off my gloved fingers/ram an elbow into my eye-socket any second. It was about as relaxed and pleasant as swimming in a murky crocodile-infested pond. Make that very hungry crocodiles. The photos are actually very misleading as it doesn't look all that overcrowded at all plus you can't see the horribly rough and dull ice. I guess the icy nightmare won't see me again this season.

After 40 minutes or so, the PP and I gave our tickets to two girls and went back to her place palace for some tea and two Krapfen each.

Warning - more skating trivia coming up soon as I'm going to Neusiedler See again with colleagues on Sunday...

PS: I'm not joking you, it's 16:40 now and the crazy colleague I share a room with is asleep at/on her desk. She's snoring. Very loudly. Earlier today she asked me "**-chan, is my costume [sic!]strange today? People have been giving me strange looks" Erm, today? Every day, more like. FCN can vouch for the accuracy: she's wearing a harlequin-style marquee-size tartan-patterned monstrosity of a dress over leggings which have three (!) very visible holes in the left leg. Underneath the navy leggings (I didn't know such things even still existed) she is wearing what I call "prosthesis-coloured" beige tights.

Lunch-break purchases: I didn't have a date today so I decided to go to Interio to redeem my birthday gift (a boring black faux-leather frame I gave to a colleague) and 10 % discount voucher (I have their store-card). The sale was still on and so I bought an orange fleece blanket for snuggling up on the sofa with and a blue towel. On my way back to Coma HQ I briefly toyed with the idea of buying a French Connection t-shirt (50% off!) but then in an almost superhuman effort reasoned that I don't actually need FCUK-shirt-with-funny-print-that-you-can-only-wear-on-weekends-anyway number 15 or so. Must come with age too, these sudden flashes of reason and sensibility.