Rainy Days and Mondays

I found this song in my work laptop a couple of days ago, fits perfectly when autumn is about to begin and we are having a bit of showers and cold wind:

Talkin' to myself and feelin' old
Sometimes I'd like to quit
Nothing ever seems to fit
Hangin' around
Nothing to do but frown
Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down.
What I've got they used to call the blues
Nothin' is really wrong
Feelin' like I don't belong
Walkin' around
Some kind of lonely clown
Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down.
Funny but it seems I always wind up here with you
Nice to know somebody loves me
Funny but it seems that it's the only thing to do
Run and find the one who loves me.
What I feel has come and gone before
No need to talk it out
We know what it's all about
Hangin' around
Nothing to do but frown
Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down.



I do not know anything about the singer however, I can even hardly remember how it found its way into my computer!



Photo: a view from a raindrop-covered window taken in June 2006

A glass castle...

I've always been in love with chrystal cupboards, imagining them enchanted castles all furnished with elegant and exquisite glass furniture and decorations. We also had glass animal figurines in the living room chrystal cupboards when I was small (we still have them, but with considerably broken limbs!) and I would always want to play there imagining the colour glass pigs and cocks and an elephant were princes and princesses in an enchanted glass castle. Grandma would tie the cupboard handles with an elastic ribbon so that I would not open them because to her it was not an appropriate place to play. But I still kept my love for glass cupboards. I can still stare in this old cupboard with heirloom tinted glasses and goblets for ages. I don't play there anymore but I wanted "to be there, in the glass kingdom", so I took a picture.

When I was in Vienna I visited an exhibition of royal glass and silver and other tableware - that was breathtaking: so many enchanting objects behind glass cases!

And one more...

that I doodled today on a stick note piece of paper... when I was tired and bored from what I have to do at work

From older drawings

I have found a couple of drawings I did about last autumn I think (ink on very bad checked notebook paper - but I love low quality paper - it's more inspiring!) - listening to A Story Girl audiobook. Winter does not exactly fit the season but let the poor hare be here.

Richard Armitage's birthday

I'd better not miss it here. Actually I have seen only North and South where he played one of my 3 main literary crushes - John Thornton (the other two being Captain Blood and - no surprize - Fitzwilliam Darcy from Pride and Predjudice) and did it very well. He was perfectly attractive and romantic and what not. When I watched an interview with him afterwards I was very pleasantly impressed at how intelligent he was and how respectfully he treated the novel as the main source for the BBC production and how he read it from cover to cover before starting to work at the role of John Thornton, and how his family was from the same background as John... and the other interviews I read online keep persuading me he's a very intelligent man, not without a sense of humour and treating his job really very thoughtfully. And he's respectful to his fans and sends very friendly messages to the Armitage Army site.

He starred as Claude Monet in the BBC Impressionists and that is something I am yearning to watch because Monet is one of my favourite painters ever and to see him acted by an actor who I really respect and admire is something not to miss... but something to wait apparently because the series has not yet been released here! Then another thing is that I wish there would be another version of a film based on the Captain Blood novel starring Richard. I think he could do perfectly for in the role: he suits very well in looks and is exactly capable of performing Peter Blood, an intelligent doctor who by twists of fate turns into a "noble" cold-blooded and fearless pirate, so sensible and level-headed on one hand, as so passionately in love with Isabella Bishop on the other... That would be perfect. It's a pity there isn't any more Pride and Prejudice version in production. Or they could have cast him as Captain Wentworth. Maybe, they do a new Emma in a couple of years? ;-)

All this thoughts make me want to write to him and ask for a signed card. Which I maybe will do as soon as I figure out how to get an International Reply Coupon for my addressed-back envelope. Well, he's intelligent and clever, and a man should be intelligent and clever first and foremost... sigh...

(Link for Armitage Army hidden in the post title)

Riddle No.3

What about this close-up?

Zauberhafte Wien - Vienna the beautiful. Teil2.2 - Part 2.2. Am Graben - Graben Street

The name of the street is Graben which literally means "a ditch", because there used to be a ditch here long ago in the Roman times. Then it was filled up with eath and became one of the trendiest places in Vienna, leading from Stefansplatz - St. Stephan's square - and Stefansdom - St. Stephan's cathedral - with further historical places, such as Kohlmarkt ("coal market") Street and then Hofburg - the winter recidence of Austrian emperors.

General view of the street, as leading to Stefansdom. I guess I went to that cafe several days later ;-)

Pestsaeule - plague column. It was built at the end of the 17th с to mark riddance of plague epidemic. You can find such constructions in all large and small Austrian cities and towns

Shop windows

Peterskirche - St. Peter Church is not to be missed as it is one of the finest and completest Baroque churches. It deserves a special post with interior photos ang a little description of an organ concert we visited on the second "discover- Vienna" day

Sparkasse - savings bank

The street with the view of plague column (it has a net over it to be protected from birds)

And this is also Graben - the left side if you walk from Stefansplatz to Kohlmark (photo taken a day later than the previous ones). Prachtvoll - nicht wahr? - I mean, they are glorious!

The next part is going to be about Peterskirche I guess

Riddle No.2

I decided to look through photos for some more "fragment" riddles, so here comes No.2 between Vienna posts. Looking forward to guesses!

Zauberhafte Wien - Teil 2.1 Vienna the beautiful, part 2.1 - Stephansdom

This is Stephansdom - St Stephan's Cathedral - the main cathedral of Vienna. Mozart was married here, here he and his wife Constance Weber christened two of their sons, and the font is still there (well, actually I have pictures from inside and it will be logical to put them up here even if I went inside only several days after).

Here:

The font

The ceiling and windows near the font part of the cathedral

Statue des heiligen Muttergottes. The legend says she is protector of all servants: once a servant girl was accused of stealing some jewellery from her mistress and came here to seek help. She praed hard and Helige maria made it so that the real culprit was found and the girl was free from all accusations.

A bit of stained glass. Not so detailed and fascinating as in Cologne, but also beautiful in a simplier way

This part of decoration goes back to middle ages, but I am not sure to name the date without looking it up.


And the general interior.

Photos taken not on the same day, I came here more than once:

1) just seen the exterior

2) went inside, but it was time of the mass

3) went inside with an audioguide and saw all the details slowly and carefully. Had a little incident: I asked the guy at the entrance for a ticket and audioguide in German, speaking German of ourse, and the reply was: "Wir haben Fuerungen in 20 verschiedenen Sprachen. Wollen Sie es vielleicht in einer anderen Sprache?" - "We have tours in 20 different languages. Maybe, you need some other language? "Nein", said I. And got my German audioguide which I understood perfectly. When I related this story to Isabella, my Austrian friend she said: "Das ist gemein - du sprichst super Deutsch" - "That's mean - you speak super German!". But still that hurt a little that time in the Cathedral- I have an accent after all. However, spending a succesful holiday there proves I was a competent user of German after all (and a happy one - the more I read and speak it, the more I love it, so eine shcoene Sprache! - it's a beautiful language whatever other people may think!)

The cathedral tiled roof in the evening sun

Zauberhafte Wien - Vienna the beautiful, Teil 1 - Part1

This was the official name of the tour. But the first sights were not exactly impressive as there was a big building site nearby (no photos of that, however!).

Kirche Maria am Segen. I later heard that it does not have many visitors now. Initially it was built for working class people living nearby, but later on there came quite a lot of non-Christian immigrants came to live in the district, so the church was not needed that much anymore. But the building is still impressive.

A kind of saturday Gothic youth parade at shopping street Mariahiferstrasse, taken especially for a "gothic" friend Zhenya, who gave up reading this long ago...

No more worthy fotos on the first (half)day

Summary what I and my new companiom did: went walking to Westbahnhof - West Train Station - then to Maria am Segen - then along some other street - trying to tune my mobile phone (but in vain) - then discovered Mariahilferstrasse (had been previously told that there was a shopping street called Mariahilferstrasse near the hotel) - went along - dropped into a couple of shops - I saw a bookshop (talia.at, German books in abundance!!!), bought there a couple of books (actually, 4) - went back - still could not tune the phone - went back to the station - bought a phone card - finally called home - lost myself in press&more(a stationbookhop which was perfectly good for me and it had an ENORMOUS choice of magazines - up to those for doll and teddy bear lovers and GeoWissen and similar had all the issues! and that a station shop) - made up my mind to see Hofburg the next day - read up a bit of the travel guide - felt dizzy and dropped to sleep. My only companion was a lady in her 50s from Moscow, with whom we later get on very well. Guess what: she's a language teacher at a Moscow Academy, so we have that language&cultureeducation background in common! She does not speak German, however, her major is French and she just kept gushing about her wonderful Paris trip last year :-)

A bit of a riddle

I'm posting a photo fragment. Can you guess what it is? (I'll share the whole photo later on). I'm refraining from adding one more tag, because it has the answer!

Cecily, who always poured balm

With her hair curled, no matter how her siblings and cousins tried to persuade her her sleek straight brown hair looked uncurled better. For some reasons I picture her in a cherry background. At first I wanted to make a cherry pattern on her print dress but then thought real cherry branches beside her would be better. I tried to make her sweet and simple and pretty and leave it to yourself to determine wether I achieved it. Now I'd better go to bed as it's quite late, but I could not stop until I finished this drawing. After loads of boring letters in the office (how tedious and useless my work seems!) I just needed some for my soul!

Back with Felicity

I'm back and back to my coloured pencils (I carried them with me to the Bulgarian vacation (Bulgaria is lovely by the way!) but somehow did not come up with any drawings at all - did come up with a translation of Materializing of Cecil from Further Chroinicles of Avonlea into Russian, so I can edit and type it soon - hopefully, I already owe 4 promised Chapters of Rainbow Valley translation at the Avonleaworld site (I promise to make it asap, girls and boys!) .Another story from FCoA I loved (I think it is my favourite) is Her Father's Daughter, about a daughter of a sailor, to read it at the sea was a special pleasure! Going to translate it as well (already begun in fact). Must transfer all my vacation photos to the computer tomorrow at last and choose some for the journal to share. The Vienna vacation story is going to have at least 10 chapters I guess... And the Bulgarian one is not going to be small either!

By the way, Paula, thanks for the present! Perfect for a little blond girl (though literally not very little, I am a child forever inside :-)). Must figure out how to put it somewhere here/ Indeed, I love getting presents and compliments even after Birthday passes, and as we are in the habit of going away for summer vacation presents and celebrations may last till September!

Have a look at my version of Felicity dressed up for some event, she reminds me of Eva from Durch Liebe Erloest here, a German film based on the book by the same name (quite a good film, even if the story seems quite trivial and a bit like Jane Eyre, Germans can make a gem of everything! And how perfectly they dub movies!)