Fuck yeah birthday
So the past week has not been too great for me. My vacation started and immediately the next morning (saturday) I woke up with a sore throat. It's the middle of the hottest summer in ages and I got a sore throat. Maybe all my stress about work exploded into a sickness.
Anyway, it progressed to regular flu with fever and everything, and I've just been generally feeling like shit the whole week. Fever would go down, but sore throat and coughing crap up would remain.
My condition improved a lot by wednesday, so much so that on Thursday we took a trip with my parents and my aunt to Tampere to eat and chill out, like we do pretty much every year. I bought myself two CDs from a record store, both from Bonobo.
For those who've never heard Bonobo, here's All in Forms from Black Sands
Bonobo_All_In_Forms.mp3
It was a nice day, although all those hours in the car with the AC on weren't all that good to me, since I felt considerably worse in the evening.
So today, my birthday, did not start that great. I felt a lot better waking up than I did in the previous evening, but it was clear I was not healed up, and the very idea that I was sick my entire week off was really frustrating me.
Because my birthday is on the 16th and my brother's is on the 20th, we usually celebrate both on the same day together with the entire family. This year it would have been the responsibility of one of us to arrange things and get everyone together.
My brother is still in the middle of redoing their house and recovering from the exhausting move, so he'd said he wouldn't be celebrating his birthday this year. And because I'd been sick all week, and my appartment was a mess, I guess I wouldn't be inviting anyone over either. It was kinda bumming me, since this would be the first year we wouldn't have a birthday celebration together.
So I was feeling a little down, although getting happy birthday wishes by text message or on facebook was pretty nice. I decided to brave the heat outside and took a tram to visit this comic book store I've always wanted to visit, that only carries only finnish translated comics but with a huge collection of old and new. I ended up buying five albums of Valerian, and my collection is only missing a few now. Such a sweet store <3 So I got home and chilled out a while, getting around to washing the dishes and cleaning my toilet a little.
My mother calls me up to tell me her, my father, my other aunt and my nephew would be coming over to visit, and we could have coffee in the yard. The weather was absolutely perfect, all sunny, but lots of shade by the trees, and the wind kept things nicely cool. We had coffee and cake, and I got some presents, including a Canon Ixus 95 IS and all three hardcover books of Pertti Jarla's Fingerpori comic.
It was the most lovely friday I've had in ages. I was all down and here was my immediate family with nice treats and wonderful weather. So much love. I even won bids for two more old Valerian albums I'm missing, so hooray!
If you've never heard of Valerian, it's a long running french sci-fi comic that I've adored since I was kid. The first story was released in like -68 and they're still making new volumes.
The art and storytelling is just wonderful. Apparently it's not been published in the states hardly at all, but you can read http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/11...hread=35089167 for an idea what it looks like.
I met Jean-Claude Mézières and Pierre Christin way back in 1998 when they were in Finland for the Helsinki comic festival. Mézières drew me Laurelin on my copy of Hostages of Ultralum <3 <3 <3
Anyway, it progressed to regular flu with fever and everything, and I've just been generally feeling like shit the whole week. Fever would go down, but sore throat and coughing crap up would remain.
My condition improved a lot by wednesday, so much so that on Thursday we took a trip with my parents and my aunt to Tampere to eat and chill out, like we do pretty much every year. I bought myself two CDs from a record store, both from Bonobo.
For those who've never heard Bonobo, here's All in Forms from Black Sands
Bonobo_All_In_Forms.mp3
It was a nice day, although all those hours in the car with the AC on weren't all that good to me, since I felt considerably worse in the evening.
So today, my birthday, did not start that great. I felt a lot better waking up than I did in the previous evening, but it was clear I was not healed up, and the very idea that I was sick my entire week off was really frustrating me.
Because my birthday is on the 16th and my brother's is on the 20th, we usually celebrate both on the same day together with the entire family. This year it would have been the responsibility of one of us to arrange things and get everyone together.
My brother is still in the middle of redoing their house and recovering from the exhausting move, so he'd said he wouldn't be celebrating his birthday this year. And because I'd been sick all week, and my appartment was a mess, I guess I wouldn't be inviting anyone over either. It was kinda bumming me, since this would be the first year we wouldn't have a birthday celebration together.
So I was feeling a little down, although getting happy birthday wishes by text message or on facebook was pretty nice. I decided to brave the heat outside and took a tram to visit this comic book store I've always wanted to visit, that only carries only finnish translated comics but with a huge collection of old and new. I ended up buying five albums of Valerian, and my collection is only missing a few now. Such a sweet store <3 So I got home and chilled out a while, getting around to washing the dishes and cleaning my toilet a little.
My mother calls me up to tell me her, my father, my other aunt and my nephew would be coming over to visit, and we could have coffee in the yard. The weather was absolutely perfect, all sunny, but lots of shade by the trees, and the wind kept things nicely cool. We had coffee and cake, and I got some presents, including a Canon Ixus 95 IS and all three hardcover books of Pertti Jarla's Fingerpori comic.
It was the most lovely friday I've had in ages. I was all down and here was my immediate family with nice treats and wonderful weather. So much love. I even won bids for two more old Valerian albums I'm missing, so hooray!
If you've never heard of Valerian, it's a long running french sci-fi comic that I've adored since I was kid. The first story was released in like -68 and they're still making new volumes.
The art and storytelling is just wonderful. Apparently it's not been published in the states hardly at all, but you can read http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/11...hread=35089167 for an idea what it looks like.
I met Jean-Claude Mézières and Pierre Christin way back in 1998 when they were in Finland for the Helsinki comic festival. Mézières drew me Laurelin on my copy of Hostages of Ultralum <3 <3 <3