Iva’s personal site - Squirrelism.net

Happy New Year…with a slight delay, as I had no time to post before;)

I spent the New Year’s Eve quietly with mom and dad, eating štanglice [can't explain], some prosciuto, cheese and olives on toothpicks and Dr. Oetker vanilla pudding with raspberry sauce. I was almost feeling like an old friend of mine died, because somehow, I learned to love 2006, even after some of the most painful experiences in my life so far. Maybe because I really loved the last two months? Either way, she’s gone to heaven now and I hope she’s beating the s**t out of 2004, the year that will never be forgiven in my mind, for many many reasons. All my problems date from 2004 and 2005 and 2006 didn’t manage to solve them all, either though I was really trying hard.

The New Year’s day was a stereotype one, apart from the fact that I woke up at five in the morning again. I was looking at the break of dawn from the bathroom window, and then I remembered there was a Tom & Jerry marathon on Boomerang. So, yes, I spent the most of the day watching that and updating Invisible Movement for the first time in 2007. I re-published the whole Albany and East Rutherford special and the Vienna special finally saw the light of the day.

Speaking of Vienna, I also watched the traditional New Year’s concert with mom, but this time it was slightly different, as mom was like: “Did you see this place? Did you see that place?” every ten seconds. I told her that I did see Belvedere, but that I did not see Schönbrünen. In the end, she concluded that I should go back to Vienna and do more sightseeing, preferably during the warmer part of the year, so I could experience Prater at its best and see the royal gardens. What’s with my connections to that city, anyway? Mom and dad made me in Vienna and I left my heart in Vienna, that’s for sure. Every single mention of Vienna gets out another moment from my mind and makes it more memorable. Hearing Radetsky Marsch at the end of the concert reminded me of how my friend Roberta said that one of her biggest dreams is to be at the New Year’s concert someday and how we both concluded that Radetsky Marsch is one of the greatest musical pieces on Earth. All cool people love classical music;)

Even with all this on my mind, I still can’t help remembering those New Year days we were spending at Zorana’s place, with her family and Jasna’s family; eating leftover food from the party we’d always been having there the night before. Us kids were eating on the floor, Zorana’s mom, Mila, was always trying to make us stuff we loved to eat…mostly dough-based snacks and cookies. And we were playing…one of our most common games was a roleplay of a family which was experiencing paranormal stuff. Despite the fact that I was the youngest of all three of us, I was the mother. Jasna was my son, Viki (not really a normal name for a boy) and Zorana was my daughter, Nina. Sometimes we were playing a game where we’d be running an orphanage and dolls were the kids. They all had names, last names and a history file. And when we were not in a mood for anything that special, we were playing with our Lego Fabuland sets. I seriously miss those days and it’s sad to see that Zoka & Jaca don’t miss them. So, yes, Jasna met a random dude in her grandmother’s hometown early this year, got pregnant in March, got married in July, had a baby named AFTER ME in November and she didn’t even freakin’ call me over. I want to go and see the baby, it’s a traditional thing. At least Jasna was actually replying to my texts after her mother gave me the number. I called Zorana twice, she told me that she’s not one of those people who arrange meeting up someone and then never meet up with them; but unfortunately she did that! I deleted both Zorana and Jasna’s numbers from my mobile phone, I am bitter and angry and I wonder how they can forget everything we’d been through as if we had not been best friends for eight years? I just don’t understand them and I am really disappointed with all my friends from the past. Many of the present as well, for that matter. I think it’s my biggest disappointment at the moment and it goes on and on and on…

I’d like to talk about something else as well, but I can’t be bothered as I’m sick with the certain girl sending her friends to bother me, as if it wasn’t enough that she was breathing behind my cyber neck for about 7-8 months last year. Seriously, get a life, sign up to some course, attend university, make money of your own and leave me alone. As for the most recent political issue, won’t discuss it either, as I don’t want eye for eye and tooth for tooth power-liking and death-admiring people to stab me when I explain all of my reasons for absolutely being against death penalty, regardless of who’s the person in question. So…yay for 2007, OK?

I’m so slow these days. And this weekend I got so bored. I almost got in a fight with my online friends because of the obvious differences. I respect the so-called majority and their holidays, I really do…but at the same time, they should respect me as well.

So, here’s a link for you to learn something about Eastern Orthodox Church, Great Schism, Julian calendar and Christmas on 07th January, and one to learn about Serbian Orthodox Church. In short…if you really want to wish me a merry Christmas, do it on 07th January, not 25th December! Don’t toss your habits into my face because I would not toss mine into yours.

The solar part of the revised Julian calendar was accepted by only some Orthodox churches. Those that did accept it, with hope for improved dialogue and negotiations with the Western denominations, were the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, the Orthodox Churches of Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Poland, Bulgaria (the last in 1963), and the Orthodox Church in America (although some OCA parishes are permitted to use the Julian calendar). Thus these churches celebrate the Nativity on the same day that Western Christians do, 25 December Gregorian until 2800. The Orthodox Churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Macedonia, Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and the Greek Old Calendarists continue to use the Julian calendar for their fixed dates, thus they celebrate the Nativity on 25 December Julian (which is 7 January Gregorian until 2100).

At the same time, merry Christmas to all of you who do celebrate it today, with the tree, enormous gifts and rich dinners and other stuff that’s common for western Christianity. Hope you guys had a good time.

Commenters: READ THIS before you leave me a dumb two word reply.

Pretty much four week left until the best day of my life. Unless I fail again, which would be who knows which time. And no, I’m not talking about the Latin exam, despite the entry’s title…that one will take place in January or February. This is something far more important than bellum gerrere, it’s, well tempus fugit.

I did a stupid thing on Sunday. My Portugese friend living in UK logged in onto MSN with the name Damn Fireworks! and, knowing how to pronounce the name of the holiday, but suddenly unable to spell it properly, I asked her if it was the “Gay Fox” day. I meant to write Guy Fawkles…but I failed miserably.

As for the things from the previous entry, which I actually didn’t finish, all of them continued to happen. In the case of the thing from the first paragraph, that’s more than good, as it’s wonderful to meet new people who make you smile, make witty jokes and actually listen to what you’re talking about…however, in the case of that other thing, it’s horror. Invisible Movement got suspended. First some idiots and/or robots spammed my mailing list. I moved it to Feedblitz, but 2 days later weird things started happening again and it turned out that my site was using 55% of the server’s CPU. I have no idea what was going on. And I had no way to pay for some other hosting, as I don’t have a credit/debit card and, even if I did, everything I saved for the past couple of months is being saved for my university fee and the thing that might or might not happen this time in December. A friend suggested that I should take donations for the site; another friend agreed to accept the PayPal donations. And, well, I think the problem will be solved by the end of the week. I miss Invisible Movement, I need to work on it, there are show reviews, videos and pics I need to post, this world needs as much John Frusciante as possible!

As of now, my other websites and my friends’ sites that I host are staying on this reseller account.

Other than this mess, November has been good so far. On 1st November, Mira (whose website is currently down, so I’m not linking it) and I went out to do weird stuff, in order, to, well, celebrate 1st November…my bird Gigi’s 3rd birthday and something people like Mira and some others are obviously celebrating :p It was fun. We went to Lush and I tested a fresh face mask, then we were walking down the main street with, as we said, “ignorant and self-loving posture”, then we went to McDonald’s. Later that day, I read on some forum that there were people who were REALLY celebrating that day…like, for serious. I think that’s whacked, to be honest.

Two days later, us Lush Serbia forum members had our little November gathering…which eventually turned to be the big November gathering as there were 11 of us. For those who ever want to come to Belgrade, the dream cup at Cofee Dream is to die for! Whipped cream, yellow cream, fresh cherries, icecream, fruit juice, white and black chocolate crispies…you know you want it

This is not an entry you’ll get to read on the most of other people’s blogs on the last day of October, so I’m reeeeally sorry that I don’ fit into the cliché.

14 days ago someone sort of…slapped me in the face, in a good way. We met earlier this year and I instantly liked them for many reasons: enormous intelligence, knowing at what point people’s discussions turn from interesting to tasteless and their slight resemblance to my childhood best friend, as if they were a version 2.0 of that person (who is, by the way, not really nice, as we spoke a couple of weeks ago, talked about seeing each other and she’s not even returning text messages now! So NOT nice and so not sincere…). That evening, when I came home from a small gathering we both went to, I sat down and cried. I wondered if I was really becoming so strange that even people who don’t know me that well can notice it. And, at the same time, I couldn’t believe that someone was so nice to me, as I almost always have the bad luck of running into egoists, agony aunts, fake moralists and…you know, all those idiots. And, somehow, after that day, I did a huge amount of work, I didn’t sleep for more than 10-12 hours per night (and that’s a big step forward for me) and I didn’t cry one single time. It’s a nice feeling. And I wish we could be friends. I must be silly with the “will you be my friend” attitude, but ummm…sometimes it works. It would really be nice. Either way, I’m thankful to them for giving me a stress-free second half of October 2006.

However, some others have done all they could, probably because they’re dumb. Basically, someone descrambled the URLs to the new and very popular video clips on Invisible Movement and found the exact path to the .wmv files on the server. And what happened next? A bunch of “lol im so dumb how r u lol” MySpace kids have started using those videos on their freakin’ profile pages, among falling skulls, bright green lines, so all of their 6556566 friends out of them they know 2 could see them. Isn’t that cute? I am looking for the best way to protect my files so this never happens again. I’m also considering switching that domain to Dreamhost or some similar provider which does offer a lot, but is reliable enough at the same time.
Seriously, how does one deal with idiots? Any ideas? Experience from people running big sites would surely help.

Last week, I was pretty quiet…why? The last week of October is the week of the famous anual book fair here. It’s the second largest book fair in Europe afer the one in Frankfurt, if I’m correct….

The answer: safer than the most of the European capitals, but not as safe as I thought.

The story starts on Tuesday; when a tram on my favourite line, which I ride on, like 10 times a week or so, de-railed in a street which was actually rebuilt earlier this year and where all the rails and motors were replaced. Of course, after thinking I could’ve been there and after realising that nobody was seriously hurt; I moved on.

However, today it continued. Three fires, two of them a couple of hundred metres from where I live, at the edges of the city centre.

Just when I thought it was over, I read that tomorrow we’re not allowed to go to the biggest park/fortress in the city, as destruction of an unexploded mine from World War II will take place.

This is odd.