Avernus

*waves tiredly* So, uh, yeah, I'm kinda back. I was in Austria, and before that I was just lazy. And stressed. Don't forget stressed. If I'm going to be applying for graduate work next year then I have a little under a month to get my application form in. Which wouldn't be *too* bad, if I had any specific idea what I was going to do, and was capable of contacting any useful tutors. Unfortunately, ancient-history tutors don't appear to acknowledge email, and since I want to do ancient history, this is something of an issue. This is relevant both to deciding what I want to do, and to getting references. Essentially, I'm stressed. It's rather difficult *explaining* to anyone why this is stressing me so much, as most people's reactions seem to be 'you've got a month, that's loads of time'. It would be, if it was just me who had to do things. It's the fact that I have to rely on other people that's the problem. I feel a little like Avon just before the bank robbery went wrong. Meh.

Oh yes, and I went to Austria, in between bouts of stress. It has been generally agreed that any country which sells mugs of hot alcohol on the streets has to be a good thing. Standout features of the trip include: another trip to Schonbrunn for more Sisi worship (the degree to which the whole of Austria heroine-worships her is faintly disturbing); spending an evening in a bar in Vienna which did actually have the cheesiest 80s music I've ever heard (Lizzu, you'd have loved it); a trip on Graz's premiere tourist attraction, the Grottobahn (marionettes are always terrifying. These ones were especially so. Especially the giant bees with wobbly heads. I'm not entirely certain which fairy tale they were meant to be from. Um.); and the Expedition To Find Snow.

You'd think it wouldn't be so very difficult to find snow in Austria in December, but we seemed to have brought the nasty mild English weather with us, so snow was decidedly lacking. So Jo's lovely flatmates gave us a lift to a mountain. There was still not an enormous amount of snow, but quite enough for us to fall over stupidly in. It was especially amusing because the top layer of snow has melted then frozen, so it resembled nothing more than an ice-rink on a slope. Which was comic, to say the least. We eventually came to the conclusion that the easiest way to walk down aforementioned mountain was just sit down and slide the rest of the way, as you were likely to end up doing that at some point whether you wanted to or not. Particular comic mention should go to the Incident, wherein Jo decided it would be fun to throw a snowball over the heads of the dogs which her flatmate was walking, causing them to chase the snowball and drag poor Hannes halfway down the mountain in a sort of dog-powered ski freestyle sport.

I brought back Gluhwein sachets and lebkuchen too ^_^ That was nice.

(Does it amuse anyone else that between canonical Batman, JLA and Teen Titans, Batman and Robin must have to do one *hell* of a lot of commuting? Okay, maybe just me then. Also, I find it really upsetting that the ep of JLA I'm currently watching is a Batman-centric ep where the main side-character is called Jason, so Batman has to keep shouting 'Jason, look out!' and 'Jason, the door!' *but it doesn't mean anything* >_< Poor little Jay - edited out of continuity yet again >_< ...also, this Saturday is a Batman marathon on Toonami. Right, that'll be me setting the video recorder on longplay then...)

Now I'm going to go back to being stressed about application forms, if that's okay with everyone.