Beehives. That's what the mystery objects were. Beehives. Never in a million years would I have guessed.

(And if you think it's creepy to have the bees go in and out of their "house" through a human mouth, I totally agree with you. :D )

(Sorry I left you waiting until you probably forgot about it; I wasn't trying to prolong the suspense, I just got caught up in other stuff.)

The puzzle remains uncracked. :D Although someone is on to something in the DW comments...

(To be fair, I showed the photos to my Czech colleagues, some of whom had visited the museum before, and they were utterly baffled too. And if I hadn't seen the explanation in English next to them, I wouldn't have guessed in a hundred years.)

Below are a few pics from Olomouc, trying to showcase why I liked it that much, because I didn't put any explanations in the full gallery. It's not a matter of individual monuments, or the gathering of them all, but rather that each and every house I looked at had something going for it, some statue or head or painting or somesuch. And there was the coziness of the small square, and the intriguing modern fontain, the one I took most pics of, the Fountain of Arion.

( I tried to restrain myself, but it's still rather bandwidth-chewing )

This one gets a preview before sending you off to the larger gallery, because I have a riddle for you. :D

The riddle is visual, so you'll have to peek inside. ;)

( a few large photos )

I'm too lazy to make a preview post, but for those interested in travel pics, I have a gallery of photos from the Czech city Olomouc.

It's really pretty, and it's being marketed as second to Prague. Not having seen Prague, I can't tell how good that comparison is, but I know I wasn't bored for a second, and I left still not having seen all I wanted to!

ETA: More Czech photos:

- Radhost Mountain trip

Yes, that's quite a lot of fog for such few photos. I know. I was there. I think the mountain had been holding its breath for my arrival and unleashed several years' worth of fog. I haven't seen fog such dense in decades.

When I wanted to take a photo of the local ancient Czech god Radegast I could see the fog rolling even thicker in, which made the coworkers declare that I had angered the god by saying he looked Japanese. (But seriously, he does!)

- Roznov pod Radhostem (there are several other Roznovs in the Czech Republic, but only one is "under Radhost", which is what its name means): small city, big park, lots of rain. :D

Hey all. I'm back from my Czech trip (well, been back since Sunday night), slightly overwhelmed/buzzing and readjusting.

Saturday and Sunday I've been on my own, visiting the old and picturesque city of Olomouc and the Wallachian Open-air Museum. It only rained a little in Olomouc, but it made up by raining all the time in the open air museum.

Olomouc is really a lovely city, at least the historical center part, chock-full of artful fountains and buildings. Some urban decay too, I've collected a fair sampling.

The Engrish bit came in the tourist guide - obtained for free from the tourist information point:

"Church of Saint Michael
Tower, prayer room, peace garden open to the public." (em. mine)

Hm, I thought, peace garden? Sounds kind of Zen-Buddhist. Monasteries often have gardens, but they're not named "peace gardens", I thought. (Now, if you know German, you're already laughing, but you see, my German isn't quite what it was.)

The light dawned the next day, when I was talking to a lady in the museum's church and asked her if the cemetery headstones were authentic (they are) and she used German to reply to my English.

The German word for cemetery is Friedhof - Frieden = peace, Hof = courtyard. So that's about that for that "peace garden"...

The concert was great. :D

(It helped that this year I didn't feel sick, so I could enjoy it to the fullest - context: I have blurry memories of the 2006 one, because the heat was too much and I was blearily watching from a chair somewhere in the worst parts of the open air arena.)

The atmosphere was good, and people singing along with the band, the band looking like they enjoyed themselves.

Highlights:

• Brian Molko smoking on the stage. He commented at length on this, how great he felt having this freedom. While I disagree with the jab at the UK "taking away more and more of their freedoms" - dude, it's about other people's freedom not to choke on your smoke, get a sense of perspective! - I'm glad that he had fun and felt good and relaxed on stage - the concert certainly benefited from this. :)

"Let's kill our lungs together" - happily joined by the great numbers of smokers in the audience.

"You know what? I think I'm going to have another cigarette."

• At some point, a big white thing flew, like the white dove of peace, from the public towards the stage. The bra, for that's what the mystery bird was, landed neatly at the foot of the drum ensemble, and was picked up by a staff member and carried off-stage. The guy (a burly man dressed in black) picked it up like you would a dead rat, with two fingers by the tail. Brian didn't even seem to notice it.

• ETA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI3jh-DmAmk

Brian introducing the band during his second on-stage cigarette. I'm currently attempting to upload the video to Youtube - "Molko made me get a YT account!" is the new "aliens made me do it" - but the transcript goes something like this:

"There's a saying that behind every great man stands a great woman. Today we prove the cliche correct - on violin and keyboards, Miss Fiona Bryce!"

He then introduces three more people normally enough, and then he gets to Stefan.

"Ladies and gentlemen, my partner in crime for fifteen years, the queen of Sweden, Mr. Stefan Olsdal!"

Cue crowd cheers.

And now it's Stefan's turn:

"And if there's a queen, a queen needs a king. Unless another queen will do. This is my drama queen, Mr. Brian Molko, the one and only!"

Crowd goes wild. :D

I need a DIY icon (or an IKEA icon, but I don't want to advertise for them), so sweaty!Sam will have to do. :D

At the end of the day, my conclusion is that given a strict choice, I'd rather assemble furniture with a group of computer engineers than a group of hard workers. Gather enough geeks and they're going to have enough force to go around for the heavy-lifting parts. In the other direction... not so much.

But at the end of the day (which was long and all I ate were some cherries and rice, argh) between me and my father we managed to figure out the complex parts before the workers tried to brute-force-assemble them, and channeled their force for the greater good, but it was very tiring.

Suzy had been walking all over the place, sniffing the new cupboards, supervising the procedures and occasionally claiming some attention.

Zorro had been hiding behind the fridge for the entire time.

Pr0n Battle VIII - Bigger, Longer and Uncut entry - read the rules, hunt for prompts, wriiite me ficlets!

The maximum comment length on Dreamwidth is much bigger, so that's why the battle is run over there this time (and probably in the future.)

You don't have to have a DW account, you can log in with an OpenID and comment! For more methods just read the entry. ;)

Gah. Crappity and buggeration. The only good thing about today is the weather. You know the kind of day when your cream-coloured coat falls to the ground, and in attempting to retrieve you drop the bag with the food, which is in casseroles and spills out? That kind of day, only slightly worse.

About the only thing that has worked out so far this whole week was that yesterday I got my hands on my three From Eroica with Love volumes (comprising the story Seven Days in September) ordered from a local shop. (Which means yay! I don't have to embarrass my father with ordering "cartoons" from Amazon anymore, or the coworker that would transport them!)

The shop lives online and in the apartment of the owner, and I chose to pick them up at the "store" rather than wait for the post. It was cheaper, but I also wanted to meet the people behind the business - for some reason I was sure it would be a woman, but no, it was a guy. (Well, there were two other people in the apartment, guy and girl, no idea if they're co-owners or just tolerate their brother/cousin/whatever running the business in the apartment. :D)

***

And I've just found a crispy half-worm in my fish casserole. Oh, for... (You know how you can sometimes try and convince yourself that you're seeing things, and maybe it's something else? But worms have such distinctive characteristics that you can only go - "Nope, sorry, worm." Eurrgh.)

For the fusion theme:

Prompt was Heroes, Hiro/Ando, Doctor Who (Hiro is the Doctor) (G, vaguely crack-y, not that this is a deterrent in this journal :D).

Joyeux Anniversaire, castalie! May there be Jensen and Jared jumping out of a giant cake! Truly giant, if it has to contain both Js... :D

There are these two songs: "You Are A Shining Light" (Ash, recently covered by Annie Lennox if you prefer her voice) and "Battle for the Sun" (Placebo). They're a bit of polar opposites, and yet they both could fit the Winchesters in recent times.

And there's also "For What It's Worth" (also Placebo). Is Placebo's new album going to be dedicated to the Winchester family drama, I wonder? :D Not that I'd object.

Too bad I can't vid. :/ *looks hopefully and inspiringly around*

Following popular demand and support (== two of you replied ;D ) I've gone ahead and created sam_castiel.

Eep! My first fannish endeavour of this kind. Here's hoping it: 1) doesn't remain empty and unloved - hint: joooiin, you know you wanna joinnn! 2) doesn't somehow end up generating woe and wank (of the bad kind; angst and, you know, the other kind of wank are welcome... :D)

Joooin: sam_castiel! If you need DW invites, I still have two!

In an attempt to unblock my writerly whatsit I stalked the comment_fic prompts and wrote this crack-ish thingy:

Supernatural/Stargate: SG-1, Dean/Teal'c, Magic Fingers
Got quarters? (Dean, Teal'c, Sam; PG-13 for language)

There's no Sam/Castiel community on Dreamwidth. Should I remedy this and create one, in the hopes that if you build it they'll come to it? Or will it remain empty and sad (since I want to read it, but I don't have any written myself)?

*fret, fret*

And do I even want to run a community? Given my track record with impulsedriven and torvalds_daily (although the fail for the latter is fairly shared with direaliete :P)...

OTOH, I sort of want it to exist, so that the few and rare fans who share my taste wouldn't feel all alone and disorganised...

To start small: would any of you join it, if I started it?

(And if you're reading this on LJ and don't have a Dreamwidth account, would you join it with OpenID? Or feel a wee bit more compelled to get a DW account to join it? *g*)

I know I have some fannish challenge runners on my list, so this is for you!

The AoOO wants to develop a design for Collections and Challenges, and for this our designer needs a lot of real life use cases. (Fannish life = real life, for this purpose. ;) )

So give us your challenge rules! Give us your collection needs! Give us your use cases, your wishes and your fannish dreams for a better challenge process! :D

The places where we collect scenarios are here:

OTW news on LiveJournal
OTW news on DreamWidth
OTW blog post

Sunday I managed to extract myself from the usual "nowhere to go, no one to go with" inertia and went by myself to a film festival.

I saw Home, a Swiss film about a family living in the middle of nowhere, next to a disaffected highway. Their lives are predictably thrown off-kilter when the highway is suddenly finished and opened. (Therefore I spent all the duration being worried for the family cat, but thankfully the film managed to avoid the cliche of the horribly killed pet.)

And a few rows in front of me (in the middle of a sea of women - we seem to be the majority of festival film-goers) I saw Duncan MacLeod and Methos, looking rather youthful. Looks like Methos has persuaded Duncan to disguise himself with glasses too, but in return Duncan has let his hair grow looong again. ;D

I still have three Dreamwidth invites. Or has the mad dash cooled off already? (Or maybe you're all paying for your accounts... *g*)

ETA: codes gone!

I left the cats to their own devices in my room, while I was reading in the living room.

I came back to find the browser in full-screen mode, with the wiki page I'd been reading switched to printing mode.

(Zooey, it was your Archive News wiki page. I think my cats may be interested! :D Does the OTW have anything to say about feline volunteers? *cough*)

Boring meetings bring out the worst in me: namely, the graphic artist. (If there's anything I do worse than singing, it's drawing, and my singing is ear-wiltingly dreadful.)

With this promising introduction... my stick figures, let me show you them!

( no one's going to write me that Klaus/Shep fic anyway, so... )

( stick!Klaus/stick!Dorian )

( and for the special SF feature... Cylons! )

I'd apologise to all involved, but at this hour I've no shame left... :D

Mm, earthquakes. This one, fresh off the presses.

It didn't feel too intense, objectively speaking: I've been through earthquakes when I could actually feel the shaking, this one was more rattling-like. But... you know. There's always that uneasy feeling when you can't trust the very ground you're on.

(The cats were more alarmed by the rattling noises than about the fact that, as felines, they were supposed to feel the trembling of the whole building. Suzy's tail hair stood up for minutes, but they were both sleeping again in a few more minutes.)