Beth Winter

Firm resolutions about writing a proper travelogue have fled in the face of work and a crippling headache that kept me in bed for most of Saturday and Sunday. I'm hoping a slew of pictures and captions will do instead :) In this part, the first days in Vienna and the Opera House.

( No making fun of my crooked photos, plzkthx )

Coming up next: Viennese churches, or why I need an image stabiliser on my camera.

I do love mushroom-gathering, and due to weather conditions I didn't get to do it much this year at the lakeside. I jumped at an invitation to do so in the forests near Warsaw, and while our haul wasn't too impressive - we got there a little too late in the day - I got a lot of photos of the inedible mushrooms people left behind :)

( 7 mushrooms and 1 dog )

Last night there was a big midsummer festival at the riverside. Lou Bega I don't care about much, but the fireworks were done by the guys who did the Torino Olympics pyrotechnics, and they were appropriately spectacular.

( 5 examples, largish )

And no, this isn't computer-generated - all with pyrotechnics :D

A brief clip of what it looked like in action.

( Yesterday in words )

( Yesterday in pictures )

I didn't get any decent photos of myself and K, but at Inna Strona there's a shot of us from the back as we watch the cops do their job. Note my princess Leia hairdo :D

Eeep! Happy birthday, applegnat! Many happy returns, and please don't mind my idiocy, because that's twice now that I've meant to do birthday posts for the whole day only to go to sleep without posting them.

Here, look. Even Herbert's laughing at me.

( Then again, he laughs easily... )

Frst of all, I spent 3 hours at the hairdresser's yesterday, getting new highlights done. Way more mocha, with a hint of titian, and here's hoping the darker colour holds this time. Before, I had the hair in the icon - cinnamon/copper depending on lighting.

( Now it looks like this )

Recommendation the first: A few weeks ago, guede_mazaka posted a random snippet of an extremely dark Harry torturing Lucius, the first thing I've seen her write for HP ever. I (and others) pleaded and begged until she wrote a little bit more. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Black Road - Epic, amazing, terribly dark and yet making so much sense in the way that perfect tragedy does. Harry is dead, but he's back, with a contract with Lucifer and an agenda that terrifies even the most seasoned Death Eaters. Lucius features prominently, so does Draco, Snape, Sirius, a heartbreaking Remus, and a host of other characters damaged by the war, but still so much themselves. If you only read one Harry Potter fic this year, let it be this one.

Recommendation the second: alighiera finally posted that Coldfire thing! *squees* Probably won't make much sense unless you've read the books, though.

Recommendation the third: fyrie did it again. More Tanz/Buffy fic, this time without brain-breaking vampire domination (don't worry, the next part makes up for it), but with an utterly adorable semi-original character whom I've had the honour of naming. (I also picked VK's last name in that one. Canon has him as Alfred, but Johannes fits him much better, don't you think?)

Too bad I'm not active on the NaNo forums this time, because I just made a sig-ready avatar/doll of Kirill. It's not perfect - no frilly shirts, alas...



In other news, the parade was something of a dud - almost an hour late, barely ten minutes long, no marching skills to speak of, and a motorcycle broke down. But hey, pretty horsies ♥

( 6 photos under cut )

All Hallows, or All Saints: the Cemetary Day, the day of remembrance. This is the first year that I'm both able and equipped to document it digitally.

( 11 photos )

In other news:

3,445 / 50,000 (6.9%)

Got the camera cable, and a rather decent SF novel, off M. Therefore, photos.

( Lestat the Cat )

More about Lestat tomorrow, since his story's fairly worksafe. Let's just say there are some people I am going to kick if I ever meet them. Hard.

This is long overdue: an exhibition of what a cute cat Tonio is:

( kitty terror, in 7 pictures )