Playing Wordit is still high on my List of Things to Do When There's No Work.
Like all games of its kind, i.e. word puzzles, this one, too, sometimes makes the player wish there were words like "skidoplan" or "vurse".
Or "fune", for that matter -- only I was sure I'd read it somewhere, even though it's not an English word. Imagine therefore my delighted surprise when I decided to re-read "Guards! Guards!" by PTerry and found the sentence (I think it's Brother Watchtower or Brother Plasterer speaking) "A cousin of mine once kicked a swamp dragon, and it got him by the funes*", the * annotation clarifying that funes are "a type of geranium".
*giggles* I just love his way of tweaking our expectations and playing with language.

The shoulder still isn't quite ok.
What I ought to do is go to the doctor and get myself signed off work for a week or so -- desk work is the reason why the problem is persisting, so a week off work would probably have a very beneficial effect. And not just on my shoulder.
Given the right incentive, i.e. nothing to do and being treated like an idiot, I might just do it. Just not right now, because both Irene and Gerald are absent, which shouldn't be bothering me in the least, but it seems that I have some shred of work ethics left. Not much, mind you.
In case it doesn't get better or flares up again after the 11th, though, the Embassy can kiss me goodbye for a few days.

Speaking of which, I'm going to enquire re. the possibility of a sabbatical. Up till now, I'd been under the impression that this was an option for civil servants only on a provincial or municipal level, but during a chat with Gerald we had a look at the relevant laws, and lo and behold, they don't seem to contain any such restrictions.
Our Austrian version of the sabbatical is so appealing, because we have to work four years, full time, at 80% of our salary, and then don't work during the fifth, also being paid 80%, i.e. it's not unpaid leave.
This might be just the thing to cheer me up, even though I'm not going to get my hopes up: due to budget cuts and less public spending, it will be difficult to replace people who're on sabbatical, and the possibility of replacing them is one of the preconditions for authorizing a sabbatical.
Still, I'm going to get more information. Who knows, I might be lucky.

Inasmuch as a visit to the gynaecologist can be termed a success, yesterday's visit was a success. The guy is in his mid-fifties and inspires confidence. He's thorough and down-to-earth. So I'm very glad to have found him.
There was a rather hilarious moment when he told me, while doing the ultasound, that my ovaries are nearly depleted, in the tones of someone carefully impairing very bad news. He obviously didn't expect me to perk up and say, "Really? Oh that's great! I can't wait to finally get rid of all this!"
He also took a blood sample for a hormone test, and reassured me that my fatter-than-usual tummy is very, very probably due to hormone changes. Which is good because, as soon as the results are there, he can get me started on whatever it is I need to take. Probably oestrogen. 

In other news, the shoulder is much better. Snezana will be arriving in little more than an hour, and even though I expect today's massage to be rather more on the painful side, I'm looking foward to feeling much better afterwards.
That's it folks -- not going to write more, because Cornelius is sitting on my lap, making typing very uncomfortable, the selfish little beast. No regard at all for his Mother Goddess's well-being...

It wasn't all bad, mind you, because I successfully de-grumped myself on Friday -- being grumpy on a Friday evening would spoil part of the hard-earned weekend, and we can't have that, can we?
I even got rid of the pain in my right shoulder and arm, or so I thought...
The problem is, whenever I'm sitting for longer than an hour or so in the same position, without being able to change position, get up or stretch for a bit, the muscles and tendons around the right shoulder blade form something like a very painful knot, and the pain radiates down the whole right arm. That's exactly what happened during the various meetings I had to attend last week -- as if platitudes spouted by politicians wouldn't have been enough to cause extreme discomfort -- and so the pain flared up on Friday/Saturday, but was almost gone by Sunday evening.
On Monday morning, i.e. yesterday, I woke up and could barely move. Since it was a public holiday I didn't have to call in sick, but that thought wasn't as comforting as it probably ought to be for a good little civil servant.
I took painkillers and slapped a heating plaster on the hurting spot, and then I took more painkillers -- the pain was promptly dulled, but I spent the day in a kind of drugged haze (not in a nice way), made more unpleasant by feelings of nausea and stomach ache. In spite of the stomach protection pills I'd taken.
Dragged myself to work today, because Irene is on holiday. Otherwise I would just have stayed home.
Stomach is better, pain has lessened considerably, but I'm still feeling quite tired and worn-out.
Will get a massage tomorrow, though, which means both blissful pain relief and a late, lazy morning at home.
No tennis at least till the weekend. Bummer. But I'll go to the gym today -- no exercise for arms and/or upper body, but getting thoroughly warmed through does usually help.

Oh, and today I'm going to see tennis!Elena's gynaecologist -- I had booked an appointment about two weeks ago with another (female) one, but left the waiting room in a fit of pique: I'd been waiting for more than half an hour, while they let in people who'd arrived later than I, and when they let in a young man, telling me he "was the husband of a very important patient", I simply walked out.
So I hope there will be a hormone test in the near future, and then we'll see whether hormones are the reason for the increase of stomach volume. If they aren't, the only reason I can think of is a food intolerance (because I've already done the thyroid test, and that's ok). The one thing I'm sure about it that it isn't fat gained through eating or drinking more/differently -- these last two weeks, I've been eating less, plus separating carbohydrates and proteins (which is a sure-fire way for me to lose weight immediately) and exercising a lot. So it has to be something else, and I hope to find out sooner rather than later.

Bugger, I'm in a bad mood today. This rarely happens -- despite some initial grumpiness my usual sunny self gets the upper hand quite quickly on most days, but today is obviously not such a day.
Well this, too, will pass. Eventually. And I've got sufficient self-control not to bite people's heads off without reason. So let's hope nobody gives me a reason...
The mood is probably due to, among other things, lengthy exposure to the Ambassador, because the Speaker of the Austrian parliament is here for a three-day visit, and I have to tag along to the meetings and take notes.
You know how it is with such things. The first time it's interesting, and sometime around the third it becomes routine, plus there's no fun to be had at all -- unlike the Good Old Times with beloved!former boss. Not to mention that politicians' talk is annoying at the best of times, but if you have to listen more or less closely -- there might be some interesting tidbit, you never know -- it quickly becomes unbearable. Add to that the embarrassment (and why the hell am *I* feeling embarrassed?????) caused by the august Speaker's horrendous English. Not to mention that already shallow phrases become a lot more shallow if simplified due to lack of vocabulary.
They're leaving today, though, and I only have to endure two more meetings.
At least I was able to excuse myself from all lunches and dinners except one. So that's something to rejoice about.
*snarls*

OTOH, it's Friday, and it's going to be a long weekend -- Pentecost.
This means a shorter working week next week, and Klaus will be arriving on Friday (staying till Monday), so... Yeah. Mood still not improving. It's a good thing I'll be either playing tennis or going to the gym today after work -- if the bad mood persisits, I'll at least be able to sweat it out. Exercise always helps.

On Friday, after a thorough sightseeing walk through Ohrid, we drove -- or rather, were being driven -- to the monastery of Sveti Naum, in the close vicinity of which there are the 47 (or 77?) springs feeding lake Ohrid.
 They're mostly underground springs which have formed a small, very irregularly shaped lake, depth varying between 50cm and 3m. I was a bit reluctant to do the boat tour of this small lake, but soooo happy I did it. The pictures don't really do it justice, both because I took them with my cell phone and because my photographing skills are less than abysmal, but I managed to capture at least a fraction of the silent, translucent beauty of the place.
There are water plants growing on the bottom, which give the impression of gliding across a shimmering meadow.
It's totally magical, and I'll be going back there at least once.

Comments will be answered shortly -- so far I haven't had the time and/or opportunity.

Friend Lois arrived very late last Wednesday and left very early on Sunday; picspam will be posted soon. I still can't believe how lucky we were re. the weather -- it was bad only on Thursday, but not too horrible, and Friday and Saturday were perfect. We went to Ohrid on Friday -- unmitigated success.
Since I had to get up at 4 a.m. on Sunday to make him coffee before he left, couldn't go back to sleep and played tennis from 9-11 all the same, the rest of Sunday was spent in a kind of tired haze. Since I had taken yesterday off work, however, I was able to get some much-needed R&R and am fine today.

*waves*

You tell me.
Yesterday was Ursula's 50th birthday. Since it was a "school night", she decided just to have dinner with a few friends, i.e. Stefanie, Irene and yours truly, plus another Austrian of the female persuasion aged around 30.
For the record, I have to state that I don't like said Austrian female, because I think she's stupid and provincial (not in a good way) and as plain -- in every respect -- as rice boiled without salt.
But it was Ursula's birthday, so who am I to complain.

Abovementioned female. whom we shall call M, didn't exactly convince me that I'd been wrong in thinking she was a bit stupid.

Dialogue sample:
M: ...and I think that Development Aid is just so arrogant and patronizing, like telling people that we know better.
Everybody: Mmm-hmmmm
M: Of course, this Austrian project targeting tourism schools was brilliant, because we really know a thing or two about tourism.
Me: so basically it was all about us barging in and telling people that we know better, right?
M: Uh... 

OK. So far, so good.

The dinner was a rather impromptu affair, and I didn't have time to get a present for Ursula, so I decided to pay for the dinner. Which is what I did, and after the "Oh no, you really mustn't" everybody was happy.
Until M piped up, "Erm, could I have a look at the bill, please?"
Me: o_O WTF?????
M:I'd really like to know how much these steaks cost, so as to determine whether we (i.e. she and husband) can afford to come back to this place sometime and have some,

I reacted most admirably, if I say so myself. I raised an eyebrow (the right one I think), looked at her and said, "I'm afraid not. it's just not the done thing, you know."

WTF???? She could have had a look at the menu or asked a waiter for heaven's sake.
I just think that, if you're being invited, you neither ask about how much it costs, nor nor do you want to see the bill, for whichever reason. The "I want to see whether we can afford it" was the icing on the cake, though.

Even though the fact that the "Eisheiligen" (i.e. Saints of Ice, or Freezing Saints) have arrived exactly on time is vaguely comforting, since obviously the climate hasn't yet been affected so badly that they don't come anymore, their short but merciless reign is quite unpleasant. It's been pouring down since yesterday morning, and the temperature has dropped by almost 15°. *brrrr* Due to the very warm weather we'd been enjoying for the last three weeks, however, and of course due to bad insulation, my building has warmed up sufficiently to keep the rooms at 23°. Which is nice, because I really don't feel like heating by a/c.
Weather ought to improve starting tomorrow night or the day after tomorrow, though, if the forecast is correct that is. I sincerely hope that it is, because my friend Lois will be arriving late tomorrow night, and since he's not my boyfriend but just my friend, and hence three days of uninterrupted shagging are not an option, three days of rain wouldn't be overly welcome. We're planning to go to Ohrid on Friday, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it'll really be mostly sunny if slightly on the cool side.

Tried to call my mother last night at the usual time (slightly after 8 p.m.) at the hospital, but the phone was switched off. I find it difficult to fight a feeling of discomfort -- maybe she was just tired or didn't want to disturb her roommate. I really wouldn't want to find out she got worse or, heaven forbid, died, and nobody told me. Even though, if you look at it from a rational point of view, it wouldn't make much of a difference: if she dies, she's dead, whether I know it or not, and as my knowing about it wouldn't change anything, it really doesn't matter. Still, when it's about your own mother, 100% pure rational thinking may be a bit difficult to achieve.
I'm going to try again in a few minutes, and then we'll see.

ETA: She's fine, was just tired yesterday and switched off her phone.
Even better -- egoistically speaking -- due to not being under the same roof as my father at the moment, she actually sounds like my mum.
She'll probably be released tomorrow or the day after; the appointment for the intervention re. her spine doesn't have to be changed, which is a blessing.

How can two days plus one evening go by so fast? It's unjust, that's what it is.
All things considered it was a good weekend, though.
Saturday was unseasonably hot, and I didn't feel too well when I got up -- mainly because ze critters woke me up after less than six hours of sleep -- and so I decided to do the Bad Thing for once and not go to the gym.
Stayed home, had coffee and chat with Slavica (as almost every weekend she had to look after Alexandra's two cats), then decided to do the Even Worse Thing, had breakfast and crawled back into bed.
Considering that in the early afternoon I went to visit Gerald-cum-family for barbecue, having a substantial breakfast wasn't such a bad idea. Two boiled eggs and two slices of whole-grain bread with cheese were still sufficiently present at 1.30 pm to form a solid foundation for the following alcohol intake, especially since we didn't start eating before 4.
Gerald made shashlik in a fantastic marinade, and we had salad and chips, and Maya (Gerald's daughter, now eight months old and too cute to be true) let me hold her and play with her and didn't even cry. Kati, Gerald's wife, took photos, so I hope I'll be posting picspam soon.
Kati still can't drink alcohol because she's breast-feeding. Gerald, OTOH, can drink, and so can I. We were slightly bemused when, around 8, we discovered that we'd emptied a whole bottle of vodka between the two of us. Add to that the four beers I had, and you may be surprised that I wasn't blindingly drunk when I got home -- then again, lots of food and a total of about eight hours go some way towards explaining that -- but you certainly won't be surprised at how shitty I was feeling all of yesterday.
It wasn't a traditional hangover, due to the blessed absence of a headache, but I was feeling mildly nauseous and more than a little shaky.
I played tennis (the full two hours! I'm a hero!!) all the same, because I hate to let Elena down at the last minute, and because I knew it would make me feel better. The first 45 minutes were pure torture, but after that I felt much better.
The rest of the cool and blustery day was spent at home eating soup, cuddling critters and watching documentaries on tv.

In the evening I called my mother to see how she was doing; the source of the constant pain in her legs has finally been located: after the spine surgery she had a few years ago, the scar tissue has been growing abnormally and is now putting pressure on the nerves. This can be more or less easily remedied by injecting some kind of softener (for lack of a correct expression) right into the scar tissue, and the intervention had been planned for May 25. In the meantime the doctor also prescribed new pain meds, and I wanted to ask her whether they were better than the last ones, which she stopped taking because of the unpleasant side effects.
Imagine my surprise when she told me she was at the hospital -- at first I thought the doctor had had a cancellation and given her an earlier appointment. No such good news, though. She was -- and will be for the next three or four days -- at the hospital, because she had intestinal occlusion. Again. Fortunately this time they didn't need to do surgery but managed to open the blockage by giving strong laxatives; she has to stay a few more days, though, because if the blockage is removed non-surgically, there's always a risk it might happen again.
*sighs*
If things continue this way, I guess she won't be around much longer.
Well, at least she made it without surgery this time, and her life ought to improve a lot once the scar tissue thing is done.

Last night I watched "Whores' Glory", a documentary triptych made by an Austrian director about the lives of prostitutes in Thailand, Bangladesh and Mexico, which Gerald had lent me. If you have a possibility to watch it and aren't easily squicked, watch it. It's disturbing -- for me the Mexican part was the most disturbing, probably because I understand Spanish (subtitles are kind of an additinal barrier) and because both sides, i.e. the "clients", too, got their say -- but excellent. It's hard not to think of our feminist struggles as totally futile, when you see the way women are treated in those parts of the world. Of course they aren't futile; we just started earlier and, in most cases, from a less desperate situation. It's just... when you see the testimony of this not-so-young-and-fresh-anymore prostitute in Bangladesh (and don't even get me started on *how* young the young ones are...) and she says that she doesn't get many clients anymore and doesn't have the necessary money to "employ" a few young ones herself, so she'll get kicked out of her hovel sooner rather than later and probably starve to death... The discussion on the wording of the Austrian national anthem ("Heimat bist Du großer Söhne" -- "you are homeland to great sons"), and ensuing insertion of "daughters" as well into the text -- it *does*seem even more ridiculous than before.

I'm going to have another mini-holiday -- my friend Lois will be coming to visit next Wednesday (very late so Wednesday doesn't count) and leave very early on Sunday, so I took Friday and Monday (18th and 21st) off work. Thursday is a public holiday anyway.

Survived pilates yesterday in spite of still-persisiting slight intoxication, but only because it was a very humane lesson with more stretching than actual exercise.

Tennis today, and Gerald will be coming, too, if only for the first hour. It's fun playing with him, because he's a good player and makes me run more; pregnant!Elena can't chase after every ball now, and it's the so-called desperation shots (term coined by me for those returns you just barely manage, and which are therefore extremely difficult to get for your opponent)
that really test a player's abilities. So yay!!! for tennis today.

And after that, WEEKEND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!