Only the good ones die in summer

 The last few days have been pretty chaotic.

On Friday I decided to join my family at my parents´place as long as we had planned some pre-birthday celebrations together. This is a comparatively new tradition among my relatives as a consequence of the eventual distance between us (we don´t live in the same city anymore). Basically, we meet for having a delicious lunch or dinner together, chatting and enjoying of some extra time close.

 Next weekend I´ll be turning twenty-nine (no worries, you will read enough about the party through the following days), and in this occasion it meant a glorious lunch composed by lobster and Spanish wine, lots of mint mojitos and many beautiful gifts. What else do you need?

However, the fast rythm of these days is a little too much for me.

I am a shy and quiet person, so I felt really lucky when I could go back to my relaxing holiday routine.

Probably I sound like a peevish girl, but I do need disconnecting during the summer break.

Otherwise, I would probably get overloaded.

As soon as I could come back to my city I just left my stuff behind and went for a walk outside, this wonderful place is full of lonely gardens and parks where you can virtually disappear.

 All I need to feel good is a book and the company of The Gentle One.

I am sure many of you understand what I am talking about.




Now I can say my batteries are charged again, so I´ll be able to enjoy the company of my friends at the birthday roaring twenties event on Saturday.

I´ll be back with a good review soon!

Oh, I almost forgot!

Just in case you are wondering what am I wearing in this post (sorry, I never remember about it):

Dress: Stradivarius.

Shrug: New Look.

Stocking: Pamela Mann.

Shoes: Gift from a friend.

Necklance: My sister´s donation.

A Midsummer Night´s Dream

Greetings to you all, dears. 

I hope you are having the most wonderful of the summers. In my case, this period is being a very relaxing one after a good quantity of crazy months. At the beginning of the summer I began working in a new teaching assistant position, but now I got my vacational break and can really enjoy of some (well-deserved) spare time.

And what does free time mean to me? 

Oh, that´s a good question: First of all, means unlimited time for reading and writing; yes, just for the mere pleasure of doing it. I´ve told you too many times I am a bookworm and yes, I am even proud of it. So I am spending great and mad quantities of time with Lovecraft, Lumley, Prize etc. Of course, some of those reading will be handy in the future for my bibliography but right now I am just enjoying. 

I also found time enough to liberate some of my creative power beyond literature and study. I´ve been making some ornaments myself, such as necklances, brooches and ribbons. You can see a couple of examples above. The pendant was made using one of my spinal bone earrings, which were far too big and heavy for me. The ribbon is just a little piece of velvet, a cameo and one hair pin. Easy, isn´t it? I always enjoy by recycling old useless materials that I have at home.

I am spending some quality time with friends and The Gentle One.

In the last few weeks we went out for outdoors walk frequently. It´s nice to feel the fresh air on your skin, even if you are not a big fan of summer baking temperatures. I tend to develop a huge allergy because of the pollen but in the last times I just discovered many natural remedies against it, as the tea flowers in the picture. I have to thank my friend Morgan for that, she was the one to teach me how to use herbal remedies as a medicine instead of dozens of pills.

Oh, and of course we finally went to watch Prometheus together.

I have a couple of things to say about it: 

The visual level (photography and artistic conception) is great. Giger does its job masterfully. However, the film falls apart towards the second half. There are times of little or no credibility, and a total lack of connection and coherence. The first half is quite acceptable, with moments of genuine and classic science fiction, but the desenlace quite goes forced and "commercial" with moments taken from any action movie. As for the actors, the interpretation of "David" is wonderful and does not detract some of his predecessors in the original series. "Shaw" is admissible the most of the time, but falls frequently over-acting and compunction. Overall I give it a six and a half.

Anyway, darlings, I hope you do have a great summer break full of  special moments.

Life is just a bowl of cherries

Welcome back, dear readers. 

First of all I want to wish a happy Midsummer to everyone! I had the most wonderful one with friends and better half and a really memorable weekend after my recent academic nightmare.

I´ve been away from the blogosphere for one month now and, although I really missed it a lot, I did have no time for procrastination at all. As I had planned, semester exams consumed my entire life: I had books to read, essays to write and notes to memorize. Not funny indeed. My last test took place on Wednesday evening and since then I fell in a strange kind of clinic coma. I wanted needed some sleep. Finally I came back from the grave on Saturday, just in time for Midsummer celebrations. The Gentle One is a really empathic person and did his best to make me feel reborn. We met many friends of us in the afternoon, had dinner together and hanged around to drink lots of tasty cocktails by the midnight fires. So nice to let stress going away!

But exams were not my only source of concerns. I formalized my pre-registration for the literary research work next year. To understand the whole thing, I´ll explain the process quickly. Applicants are supposed to contact a tutor and to present informally a personal project for next semester, then they get a position for their project. I fulfilled every step and when the list with the positions was published. Somebody had replaced me on my project! Apparently, a classmate who was spending a year abroad did not learn about the burocratic process and just chose my project without making any consultation to the department head or the tutor who, by the way, knew nothing about this girl abroad. I had spent one month and a half preparing my project so you can imagine how dissapointed I was! I had to talk to the tutor again and she gently fixed it all but for three days I lived in hell. The girl apologized and evidently she did not do it on purpose but I was under a lot of stress and this did not help. My project is very important to me because it will let me to improve my academic file notably, which means that I´ll have the chance to get a teaching position grant the following year. Of course, I am in the project again and I´ll be spending my summer working in the bibliography. So everybody is happy now.

This week my holiday goes on at my parents´place, it will be good to get relaxed by the sea for a while.

Have you any fantastic plans for summer at the moment?

They say colours are more brilliant just before the storm.

We have enjoyed a long public holiday in the north of Spain this week, which means that The Gentle One and I have enjoyed some welcome extra time together from Wednesday evening. I had some schoolwork to do but on Thursday I decided that enough is enough and indulged myself with a joyful day outdoors.

My overseas sister and I share the habit of taking pictures of complete days as a funny way to keep in touch, so I thought this was a good opportunity to show a day in my life not only with her, but also with other bloggers out there. I hope you like my Friday, May 18 th.

The weather is not very reliable these days, so I don´t give too much credit to climatological predictions. It was said that rain would last the whole day but when I woke up in the morning sun started shining. The Gentle One and I decided don´t make haste and observe the weather evolution while having a little brunch (it was too late for a proper breakfast). Happily, the morning became really sunny at the end. As a result, I had a little shower, managed with make up and wild hair and finally, three kiwis, two homemade cinnamon and apple muffins, a dozen strawberries and a cup of tea later we left home. Just in case I was hungry again I kept an Italian bun on my bag (as you will have deduced, my biorythm is really fast).

We live pretty far from the city center and felt more like walking into the old town as we were in a bohemian mood. 

Althought at first it remained a little cloudy, eventually it got warmer. When we finally reached the city, the temperature was delightful and could admire flowers and plants in all their glory. The old town was busy as long as this particular party is really popular around. The lively atmosphere was an unexpected pleasure. In the last few weeks I have started feeling too isolated as a consequence of all the pressure and bad stress just before the semester exams. To break this kind of unhealthy routine is always very welcome.

After all this exercise something cool and sweet was compulsory, so we stopped for an ice-cream.

No need to tell about the ice cream´s benefits, right?

 Many stores place Spring stuff outdoors as a way of encouranging the Season. My city is really pretty with all the flowers in the balconies and people having tea in the charming coffee shops. If you like romantic and bohemian places such as Venice, Florence or Prague, then Compostela is a must seen. I´ll try to make a proper post about my city as soon as I have time enough! 

Unfortunately, the weather started getting a little annoying again about half-past six or so. This Spring is being really funny, indeed, and you can get wet easily if you don´t pay attention, so we decided looking for a nice refuge in a tea room. We found a truly good one is a narrow street while walking around. The owner bakes all the pies and cakes by herself and she serves a supreme vanilla tea in milk among other delights.

 We don´t have any chain coffee shops like Starbucks in here (which makes me glad, I am not a chain store person), and in general coffee is good everywhere but I have to say that this place was spectacular. I´ll go back soon, I am sure.

Even the ginger cookies were homemade.

While coming back home we made a stop in the library to rent some good films to watch later. There´s nothing like a movies session in a cold night. The chosen ones were Sunset Boulevard, The House of Mirth and Io, Don Iovanni.

I felt really exhausted and heavy because of all the treats during the afternoon, so I was in the capital need of having something light and healthy for supper. I must admit that my better half is a cooking angel, so he made a wonderful salad while I was playing with the cats.

 

The sweetheart in the picture is Wendy. I also tried to take a good one of Prim, but she is not that sociable.

After eating the super-tasty salad, we watched a movie and at the end of it I was falling asleep, so 

That´s All, Folks!

I really enjoyed making this post and I´d be happy to see more like that out there.

Have you ever thought about making a day in your life in pictures?

Tokyo syndrome

The last five weeks have been an aquatic nightmare. It´s been rainning tirelessly for almost forty days and today, suddenly, it simply stopped. I can hardly believe it, when I first opened the windows the sun light even blinded me for a second. But it´s so nice to feel the warm on your skin again! It sounds like Spring is finally here. One can see flowers in bloom all around although I won´t be able to enjoy the season properly because of my awful semester exams. A hard time is around the corner for me but I´ll speak about that another day.

Somehow, the calm weather made me cheer up and I decided to make something different from studying grammar today. I read a non-compulsory book out of my seminars reading schedule (naughty me) and decided to go out for a little walk. My sister sent me a gorgeous lolita dress from Japan a couple of weeks ago and I hadn´t had the opportunity to wear it. Today´s attempt was just a little outdoors excursion to get some groceries from the corner´s shop but I am going to the movies on Saturday with some friends and my little sister, so there will be a new ocassion. I don´t normally put this attention towards new clothes but I am sure my charming sister living overseas would probably kill me if I do not show her how the dress fits me ;)
I didn´t really expect I was so comfortable in lolita style but I think it´s a really good choice for my body shape, even showing far much legs than I normally like to.

Just in case you´re wondering why the pictures are so strange, I must say it was my first experience with the automatic shooter. I hope to improve my skills with this little new technique, I am sure it´s not a big deal but I have to get used to it. If you have any advice to give in relation to this I´ll be glad to hear it. I am not specially good with new gadgets.


I am not very sure about the whole outfit, but I think my high heel bordello shoes match the dress pretty well.  I am also considering to add my ribcage earrings from Restyle. What do you think?

So tell me, have you tried something different or new from your regular style recently?

Do you know, I always thought unicorns were fabulous monsters, too?

These days I have enjoyed an unexpected break from daily duties. My Friday classes were canceled, so International Worker´s Day holidays let me free until next Wednesday. Well, certainly I am not fully exempt from schoolwork at the moment (semester´s exams are around the corner again) but at least I have some extra time for writing essays. 

On Thursday evening I visited my parents´place. It was really nice because I could study harder with no better halves around to get me distracted all the time. Besides, I met many friends once my work was done: two of my long-term darlings came back from Japan after visiting my sister (http://petitsuisseinformativo.wordpress.com) and we had a great time talking about their adventures. Moreover, I was given many charming presents that deserve their own post.

Though there are no pictures from last Thursday meeting, I have many others from a little assembly with my secondary school friends a short time ago. There´s something nice about meeting old friends, right?

Another good thing about this weekend is that I almost nailed down the details about my academic research work next year. It sounds like I am finally working on North American horror fiction in the first half of the XX century (specifically the work of H.P. Lovecraft and its circle). I am really excited about this as long as it is going to be my first serious experience as a literary researcher at university.

 Of course, I also spent some quality time with my mother and my youngest sister. She is twelve years old now and I can say she is following the personal footprint of the family, which means she is becoming a little nerd. I am very proud of her! On Saturday she made me drive her into the local human evolution event and she had lots of fun learning about Neanderthalis and Homo Antecessor. She aldo made me promise to take her to the premiere of Dark Shadows in Spain. She is a sweetheart, isn´t she?

Finally we went for some shopping together, and it was full of funny suprises. We found a little treassure to combine with the customized shoes my friend Morgan gave me for my birthday (above).

In general, we had a great weekend.

So tell me, have you done recent findings of any type?

 

How to stop being a Goth

This weekend a friend of mine let me know about a blogger who, some time ago, made a post about how to leave the gothic scene. The polemical entry was called "Style advice for gothic girls in rehab". It was published about one year ago but you can read it in the original website (http://acapulco70.com/consejos-de-estilo-para-goticas-en-rehabilitacion/). It is written in Spanish, so if you cannot read this language I am sure you´ll find many traslators online.

I read the post several times and dedicated some time to find out what made me feel exactly and why.

I felt deeply dissapointed by its general undertones, but also because of the sarcasm and little sensivity of the author. As a consequence, in this occasion I´ll be trying to explain in which points I think the writer is wrong and how her review is, from my perspective, offensive and poorly built. 

First of all, the introduction or approach is pretty belligerent by itself. I´m going to do my best for translating. After a couple of lines about common style mistakes during youth, it is said:

 "A goth girl who wants to change realizes that there is nothing as sad as a woman in her thirties striving to wear a vinyl corset and interacting with teens like the most natural thing in the whole world".

  Why do I think this is disrespectful? Obviously, there is nothing nice about saying that a person (independently of his/her preferences, tendencies and manners) is ridiculous just because his/her lifestyle is non-conventional. Out of this, I do not feel myself identified in this first description: I am nearly thirty years old and my friends share, generally, my age. I am a young adult and I have healthy relationships with classmates and colleagues at work. In relation to the "vynil corset", well, it is not my cup of tea but I don´t think wearing PVC makes you less than human. After reading the introduction one can start appreciating a certain kind of prejudice in the whole thing. Let´s move on.

The author goes on to describe what makes a gothic closet unmanageable.

On the one hand, she explains that every goth´s wardrobe is composed just by black items in a wide variety of clothes more or less ruined by the usage. Well, I think is pretty naive to take this for granted, isn´t it? Personally I (as many of other gothic ladies out there) like to wear a rich variety of colours, those includying purple, crimson, moss green, scarlet etc, and I do not wear old stuff outdoors. Old clothes are used at home if they´re cozy or just removed for making room to new things.

On the other hand, this person insists in the goth "tasteless" pointing that we all use ruined stocking and sexshop accesoires (?). As a solution, she suggests to classify our clothes in two different categories: Halloween products and garbage. 

 Then, she proposes to us getting all the fashion magazines we can find and/or checking an alternative post in her blog where we can read a list of fashionable basics, this way we´ll find style guidance. Everything here lacks of sense. First of all, this person is convinced that gothic style is based in cheap costumes. I checked her list about basic items for women and, as I thought, it was full of things that I own myself. What leads this lady to think that we (poor little creatures) do not have a pencil skirt or a couple of boots with cords if they are almost a daily basic for many our outfits? Besides, we are supposed to wear just current new fashionable stuff chosen by other people (the workers of Vogue, Harper´s etc) who do not consider our tastes or personality.

After all, the reader suggests to erase all our pictures from the internet, all our music from shelves and PC, and all our contacts from Social Nets (we can add her, she says, to start new and normal relationships). Moreover, we MUST stop talking to our friends. Delicious. 

Several people left comments in her blog but she was pretty rude with them, even when many tried to make constructive critics. 

I am not against changes. 

Many of my long term friends left the scene long time ago and I kept having a good relation with them because I love them as they are.

 The real sad thing about this post is that she defends that all those radical changes in our lifes have to be done because we are not normal. We are not what is desirable and, as a consequence, we do not have a real place in society. Society keeps the right to tell eveybody how to behave and this, my friends, is dangerous. Cultural studies and philosophy call this attitude alienation.

Risen from the Dead

The picture, the artist and the model.

Portrait by J. Carou

Hello, dears, how are you doing? I hope everything is fine.
As you may have noticed, I´ve been away from the blogosphere for a couple of months. This was not a decission, but an urgent necessity as long as my life went mad. After Christmas I started working hard for my semester exams which were really difficult. My current subjects were all about grammar and history, so never ending studying seasons became compulsory. I began spending five or six hours on the library in a daily basis. No time for books, movies, walks and of course no time for blogging. However, I ´m glad to say I got brilliant qualifications in this occasion, so effort was worth it.

                                                                                

The artist and I.

March came and my semester tests went away but I had to go back to my reading schedule for literature classes. Besides, I started looking for a new job because, sadly, my boss isn´t able to hire me anymore (damn you, financial crisis!).
My Easter holidays were not completely relaxing either (in Spain spring break is a little earlier), but at least I found little time for myself. I am even able to steal some minutes from day and recovering my blog at once. Besides this, on Thursday The Gentle One and I visited the art exhibition of a friend. We hadn´t seen her work before I am glad to say she´s a real artist. The whole collection was formed by hyperrealistic portraits. It was simply amazing.

                                                                                

My friend Elisa

Many of our pals went to the exhibition as well, so we had a great time chatting, drinking and tasting the lovely vegetarian snacks made by the place owners. It was really nice to break up the routine. So, tell me: what have you done to escape from the routine lately? What special plans do you have for holidays?

The girls just wanna have fun

Yule around the corner

I cannot believe it but It´s been a year since I returned from UK.
Sometimes I still have a strange feeling when I look around and realize that I am not walking by the Thames side anymore. Long walks through the hills have been replaced by the constant view of old inclined towers and narrow stone streets.

However, the same mist hangs in the air.

Yule is just around the corner, so I cannot feel sad anymore.

Sadness is replaced immediately by a pleasant sense of familiarity when Christmas arrives and I can meet my loved ones. Unluckily, I am not meeting all of them. I will be specially missing my sister, who is not able to come to Spain from Japan this year (miss you, darling). Thanks to the providency (and the wonders of modern technologies) we´ll be chatting on Christmas day via Skype.

Anyway, despite this I feel happy about the last days of the year.
I do appreciate the opportunity of having a delicious dinner with family, drop my youngest sister to ice skating by her very first time, drinking hot chocolate with my parents and enjoying the most of the holidays with The Gentle One.

The first Spanish edition of The Hobbit rescued from a vintage store for my little sister.

Many people do not feel comfortable with the radical commercial mood of Christmas nowadays.
I can see their point: we do not need to spend hundreds of euros just to demonstrate our love. I think we don´t need every single thing we see in the mall to be happy though society tries to convince to us we do. For me, personal details are more accurate and I prefer to find one perfect gift rather than a mountain of impersonal stuff.
This year I got just a few things but very special. I bought the first Spanish edition of
The Hobbit for my youngest sister (she is just eleven years old and is discovering the pleasure of reading) in a vintage store. Then, I chose a wonderful artisan paper on a beautiful violet color to replace the old fashioned covers as long as they were a little damaged. I also bought a pair of Sweet Lolita inspired leggins for her and a pair of funny strawberry earrings. She does not have earholes but she´s dying for.

I became a big fan of Whittard of Chelsea this winter.



I had two or three good ideas for my parents but not too much to spend (charming writers graduating have small salaries as teachers), so I spoke to my other lovely sister and she decided to help with the presents (thank you once again, darling). So we could finally get something gorgeous for our parents. They are fond of staying home in the weekends and spending long hours having hot drinks and never ending conversations, so what more accurate than a luxury selection of teas and chocolates?
Normally they prefer the kind of gifts they can share with the others (being generous as they are), which converted this idea in the perfect one. Besides, they are chocoholics!

Big variety of treats for a chocoholic couple.

In the last weeks I also found the perfect gifts for my fiancée but I am not posting pictures or a description here at the moment. He is a little gossip, so he will be probably checking this place for some information. Sorry, dear, you are not lucky today ;)

Yummy, I am sure!

Extraordinary, this year we are not celebrating Christmas at our parents, but they are coming home. I am really fond of spending these very special days in my city. The medieval town will be beautiful with all the lights. Actually, I am dying for holidays. I have not enjoyed too much in the last weeks and I do not have spare time at all. To break up with the routine, I attended a Lolitas´ meeting on Saturday and met lots of nice people. I will be giving more details as soon as I get some pics. Stay tuned!

Tales from a Bookworm

 

This is how a wormbook looks on a Friday evening.

The last past weeks have been a madness.
Stuck on a metaphorical pillory of duties those including seminars, job, essays, private classes and a brand new little bussiness of my own, it has been kind of hard to find spare time for little pleasures. Sadly, this means no time for blogging at all. Modern times demand an unrealistic efficiency from everyone.

However, sometimes one have to stop and breath.
In my case, there is a huge breed of things I use to indulge myself. No eccentricities neccesarily but just small treats. From a luxury capuccino with floating marshmallows to a single walk under the autumn trees, everything may help to relax. One of my favourite things in the whole world consists on spending evenings in a library just for pleasure. On Friday night I had to go to the public library to pick one of the novels I previously booked for my American literature classes. So I decided to transform commitment into a chance to enjoy.

It´s kind of fascinating the way in which these places have changed in the last ten years.
As a curious child and a remarkably antisocial teen, I got used to see the same kind of people consulting books day by day. They were mainly retired people, undergraduates or just solitary kids like me. Nevertheless, the net grew up and computers were introduced even in the most conservative book stores. As a consequence, you can find hordes of teens checking their emails every Friday night nowadays. Little coffee shops have been even installed, offering a smart variety of sandwiches, tea and other refreshments to have while you´re reading your favourite novel. Funny thing this new and modern world.

Anyway, I exploited the opportunity and met my fiancé there.
Being another paper-eater, we simply toured the three level floor building snooping the shelves. What a delight! I like to learn the new material everytime and - oh, man!- in this occasion the horror department was full of shinning trasures. Somebody asked for the beautiful ( and expensive) gothic editions from the Spanish publishing house of Valdemar. And there they were! The complete works of H.P. Lovecraft on that very desirable edition. A chip on my shoulder. Actually, I do not have spare time to read random books now. I have a stressing reading schedule because of my classes at university, so I won´t be able to make it until Christmas.
I simply was a modelic school girl and picked my copy of The House of the Seven Gables by N. Hawthorne. Yes, Hawthorne is a genious and I know it but sometimes you are not happy reading the works that other people chose for you.

At the end of the day, The Gentle One and I got home carrying our paper provisions. And yes, I must confess he was happier than me about that.

 

Fuzzy and lovely reader looking for new treasures