Home alone
Stefan is in Sweden yesterday and today, doing some kind of presentation for a project his company is doing together with a bunch of other organizations. He's in Lelea (sp?), which is at the northern end of Sweden. Essentially, his flight from Vienna to Stockholm was just as long as the flight from Stockholm to Lelea. Seems like an awful long way to go just to get a 7 slide PP presentation. Especially ironic because the project involves recycling and reducing the use of fossil fuels in the blast furnace. Maybe flying across Europe for one 30 minute presentation isn't the best way to kick off a project of this nature. But I'm obviously no businessman.
Since Stefan was away, I spent yesterday evening happily lazing around. I watched the latest episode of House (I don't watch much TV these days, but I am borderline obsessed with this show) on ninjavideo (they show House on regular TV too, but it's in German with crappy voices, plus a season behind). I got caught up on some emails. I got caught up on some forums. I made a nice dinner (spaghetti alia olio e peperoncino, but it was too salty) for myself. Relaxed, basically. It was nice.
This evening I have to meet with the folks at Berlitz regarding a few lessons I'm doing for them. I haven't worked for them since I quit last December, but they are desperate, and it's only a few evenings, and I'm hoping to wrangle an invitation to their Christmas party. There's a Christmas party here, too, at my company, but you have to pay for it. That's right. For the pleasure of my colleagues' company, I'm supposed to pay €21 for the buffet plus whatever I have to drink. Not that I dislike my colleagues. I've gone for beers with some of the translators. But the rest are just colleagues. Why on earth would I pay to go out with them?? I thought the point of a Christmas party was for the company to express its appreciation for its employees by treating them to something nice. This company can be really really stingy at times.
God, my stomach muscles are killing me from Pilates on Tuesday. I went for a run on Monday, as well. I don't get sore from running, anymore, but I can definitely feel a bit of weakness when I do something the next day. So that probably compounded the Pilates torture.