for tomboy_typist

1. ASOIAF: Your top five pairings. Gushing is a bonus.
Sandor/Sansa : hit me hard from reading the book. It's an interesting mix of creepy and sweet and a great execution of the classic Beauty & Beast archetype. I remember when I first finished read CoK I went back to re-read all their chapters together ;)
Jaime/Brienne: they're so adorable and snarky together! Also love the reverse Beauty&Beast and the way it works on several layers (the honour as well as their appearance).
Theon/Jon: probably my favourite crack hatesex pairing for ASOIAF. Besides the hot hatesex appeal, it's an interesting pairing to explore their respective daddy issues and feeling of not!belonguing (which is exactly why they hate each others so much ^^)
Jaime/Loras: Well that scene where Jaime is all "Loras is minime!" and they are all cocky and snarky at each others is pretty awesome, thus pairing created. Yummy.
Cersei/Sansa: soooo messed up, but an excellent pairing to explore mindfuck and fairytale archetypes.

2. Do you write at all in French? If so, is there a difference in what you write/how you write it? Speaking of which, is French your first language?
Well, I'm capable of writing in French, and it is my first language, but I seldom write fiction in it, at least not for a long time. I never wrote any fanfic in French (though my first Buffy fanfics got translated back in the days).
I think there' a difference in how we wrote any languages because of the inherent differences between languages lol so yes. They have their own rhythm, sonorities, structures, so of course it influences how we write. I find writing in English helps me not feeling like it "sounds false" when I write fanfiction.

3. If you could change just one thing about the world, what would it be? Discuss.
I'd like to make people more aware about issues of racism, sexism, homophobia etc. not just the way they seem obvious, but the way they seep in everywhere unconsciously.

4. Dancing with the Wolves or Singing in the Rain? Why one and not the other?
Errr, one's a racist overly long movie with Kevin Costner and the other is a charming and fun musical. I think I'll take Singing in the Rain!!

5. Just very randomly, your opinions on Tolkien? I don't remember whether or not you're involved at all with that fandom etc etc.
I'm not in the fandom, though I read Lord of the Rings many times when I was younger. I don't have any particular opinion (especially since I haven't read it in a loooong time). He's a good writer with a lot of qualities, but neither do I think he's the best ever; I find accusations of manicheism etc. levelled at his writing are very unfair since his work was much more nuanced and his characterisation contained many grey areas. Anyway if you wanna know, my favourite part of the book was the return to the shire, my favourite character Faramir, and my favourite pairings Legolas/Gimli, Merry/Pippin, Faramir/Eowyn; and I had a big soft spot for all the almost-mostly-evil characters like Saroumane, Gollum, Grima & Orcs who captured Merry & Pippy #1 & 2. I never liked Gandalf.
I liked the movies but mostly for opposite reasons to what I liked in the books.

I have a new layout! etrangere etrangere etrangere

I had gotten soooo tired of the previous one! (almost one year of it).

Also I need a Friend Only banner now that my journal is basically semi friend only, might as well make it official. I never use to save FO banners!! I thought maybe this one, but it might just scare people away XDDD

stolen from tomboy_typist



... and for my writing journal:


o_o you are so right my writing journal.

Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann

Humanity lives (pretty miserably) underground in small villages, the existence of the surface being reduced to a myth. Only Kamina, a teenager with more attitude than brain insist it exists and repeatedly tries to reach it. One day, Simon the digger, Kamina's best friend and younger brother figure, finds a weird machine shaped like a human head; later on, a redhead girl with a big gun falls from a hole in the ceiling; quickly followed by an aggressive mecha and they fight it using Simon's new-found mini-mecha... and soon reach the surface. Sadly the surface is populated by beastmen piloting mechas who will hunt down and kill any humans who dare to live on it.



TTGL doesn't do a whole lot of thing, but what it does, it does very, very well. TTGL is a reconstruction of the mecha genre, with a lot of homage to old shows and lot of things working on trope, literally, (tropes like the Rule of Cool and Hot Bloodedness, especially) and whole fucking lot of EPIC AWESOME. Also a lot of silly. And a lot of things so silly they cross the line twice and go back into AWESOME. It would be an understatement to call TTGL over the top. TTGL is flying far, far over over the top. Even the sky isn't the limit for TTGL, for it knows no limits (or common sense). It will frequently make you OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK THEY DIDN'T? THEY DID! This is made particularly winningly entertaining by the utter lack of shame and amused self-consciousness the storytelling shows.

Stylistically, the art is aggressively shounen and very dynamic, frequently sketchy and with some notable daring art-shift to suit narrative moods. There's pretty much always something racing, bouncing, drilling, popping or exploding on screen. Fanservice is also endemic, with most of cast - including male characters - wearing stripperific outfits. As a machine in creating enthusiasm, TTGL is a thing of beauty, helped along by an earwormy soundtrack ("row row fight the power") and many judiciously repeated catchphrases. In a way its a bit scary how good this show is at creating rabid enthusiasm amongst its fans. It's just... very, very catchy. Like a virus.

In pacing, TTGL also pushes beyond all limits, with a virtually absent status quo. Events don't just happen, they rush in rapid succession of topping over previous events; yet still in a way that is easy to follow and distillates the mood perfectly. This does have the bad effect of having a bunch of secondary character who have very little development besides showing up and being named, although TTGL rests very knowingly on tropes to be confident the audience still knows what those characters are about.

Those aside, most characters are very endearing and sympathetic. Simon's character journey is very well told and I found him much more interesting than your average shounen lead, not due to originality but simply to the quality of the storytelling. Kamina is... pretty much indescribables, but very hard not to love. Yoko and Nia, the female leads, are both pretty awesome and likeable. Relationships between those four (and the few other regular secondary characters) are also pretty rich and compelling (also frequently very, very slashy).

Thematically, TTGL mostly works around the idea of the importance of self-confidence, guts and actually trying things and not letting yourself stopped by anything; a theme it pursues relentlessly with the use of the "Spiral" motif, which is embedded (and drilling) everywhere in the series from art to narrative to theme to the show's very structure (also drilling). If you want a show to cheer you up and motivates you, you could do worse. It also addresses shallowly themes of idealism vs pragmatism and in the third arc (my favourite ^_^) also perhaps without fairness enough to make it work fully.

Gender dynamics wise, TTGL is... not very good. Asides from copious amount of male fanservice and the existence of a couple of very cool female protagonists, it relies way too much on putting those female characters in weakened or dangerous situation for the express purpose of making male characters look cool, especially by the ending. Otherwise, there's one flamingly gay character whose campiness is played for laugh, although he's portrayed as very awesome and competent.

In conclusion, an extremely fun and entertaining show, thanks to clever and bold storytelling and stylistic mastery, especially if your taste runs to AWESOME and over the top.

For archiving purpose...

In the Beginning: Themes of Season Four: Or how there were a lot of good ideas to begin with that weren't too well executed
Etrangere - June 11 2002

Thanks to Lady Starlight and Wise Woman for correcting the translation mistakes and general copy editing.

I remember having read an explanation of the name of the Initiative based on the irony to apply such a word to people that didn't know much but who simply followed orders. I propose another one: Initiative comes from initiare, the Latin for "to begin." That word of beginning is the one that starts a well known book and gave its name, in the Hebraic tradition, to the first chapter of this book, Bereshith, or in English, Genesis. A Season Big Bad isn't named Adam by coincidence.

( cut for length, spoilers for Buffy S4 )

Now to decide if it's worth archiving my old Buffy/Spike shipping essay given how much the pairing makes me wince nowadays XDD

Enough with the procrastination ^_^

Le Chevalier d'Eon

( cut for length & pic )

Kemonozume

( cut for length & pic )

At RPG.net there are frequently Where I Watch [fill in blank name of series/movies/stories] threads about someone recaping a series as they go at it, which is often very fun. There's a guy named Shadowjack doing this with Sailor Moon and it's been a thread of EPIC AWESOMENESS so far (he's just finished S1). Okay I'm not sure of his characterisation of Rei as Latina because she fits the hot headed stereotype, but that aside, it's awesome. Now this is noticeable to me because I never even watched Sailormoon (much, I mean, I caught an episode or 2 on TV when I was 13, of course, but I pretty much hated it) yet it actually sort made me want to watch it O_O. A fact that beyond surprises me. Anyway even more awesome than the WIW thread itself is the recap cartoon of his recap Shadowjack has been doing. Judge for yourself:
(a_white_rain, you want to look at this especially. You'll know why when you reach it ^^)



( cut for length, width and lots of pics )

You can find the WIW thread here and its sequel there.

Oh, and bonus pic, for something completely different:

This fanfilm is made of win:

Back home safely (if frustrated by the fact I wasn't able to watch You can (not) advance due to a technical fuck up that made it so I couldn't watch the ending if I wanted to watch my train back. Grrrrr.) Had fun overall. Tired.

I'm off to that French SFF convention I always go to that time of the year, see you next monday <3

thank you tomboy_typist ^^

You post a "Top Five" topic, list, category, whatever, in my comments section (ie; "Five Times Littlefinger Lost An Argument" or "Five times Robing Goodfellow Didn't Bring Up His Sex Life"). Then, I'll post answer-drabbles to all your Top 5 ideas, according to me. Serious or fun! Feel free to post as many lists as you want, I'll use the ones that inspire me.

(you know there's a bunch of request I never fulfilled in previous years, and I still feel awfully guilty about them so 1/ no promises on this one 2/ my formal apologies to the people whose request I never wrote)

Back when I first finished watching Utena and joined the utena usenet group, I wrote a short essay on some of the themes in Utena. Anyway at some point I decided I wanted to repost such things on my journal so I searched back for it, but when I reread it it looked all horribly vague and badly written, so I ended up rewriting it entirely and it thus became much, much longer. Some of the stuff on this essay are of the painfully obvious variety, and some are me reaching a bit. It's definitely written for an audience of people who have watched the series and is quite spoilery. Anyway I hope you guys will like it. If someone feels like correcting my bad English, I won't resent it and will be quite thankful instead.


Utena's Revolution or la Fin de l'Ancien Régime Romantique

One of SKU's most fascinating feminist critique is the study of the role of power and inequity in human relationships – especially but not only romance between me and women – and the harms it cause to people. Some of it is explored through the core political concept of Princehood and Revolution.

( tl, dr on SKU )

I'm gonna be fast because I read most of those books ages ago

Rusalka by CJ Cherryh
Russian flavoured fantasy: a cynical party boy / dilettante must flee the city when he's accused of sorcery when the husband of the wife he was seeing dies suddenly; and enrols the help of a young hotel stable boy who has a reputation of ill luck and fears being a sorcerer himself. Out in the forest, they encounter quite a bit of sorcery.
There's some great ideas and flavours to the story, and I liked the characters' dynamics. I thought the pacing and plotting overall was much weaker though. Anyway, if you like Cherryh's other fantasy story - especially Forterss series, you'll probably like this one.

The Sharing Knife: Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold
Fawn, Dag and Fawn's brother go on a boat trip.
This volume has more plot than the previous ones, and as a result I rather liked it more. I also liked the setting, the use of the river, and the new characters of this book (especially the female boat captain who had a name which I forgot). On the other hand, I still don't like Fawn and Dag all that much and consider this series one of Bujold's weakest, so you know...

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
When his family gets murdered, and toddler escapes to a cemetery and gets adopted by the ghosts who live there, as well as the resident Undead. Each chapter cover a different stage of his childhood as he grows up.
Very nice story about growing up, transformations and the relationship to death. Great writing, pacing and characterisation.

The Book of Atrix Wolfe by Patricia McKillip
Many years ago, on a battlefield at the gate of Pelucir, something horrible rode in and spread death because of the magic of the great wizard Atrix Wolfe, although nobody knows it and he has been hiding since, and the ghosts of the event still haunt the area. Nowadays, the young prince of Pelucir is studying magic when he finds a strange book written by Atrix Wolfe.
This is a gorgeous, wonderful, subtle and awesome book and you should read it.

The Two Pearls of Wisdom by Alison Goodman
In a chinese flavoured fantasy world, Eon is, despite a lame leg, a candidate for the position of Dragoneye, one of the 12 people channelling the powers of the Dragons of the Chinese Zodiac in order to ensure prosperity and good weather to the empire. Eon is also a girl in disguise, a secret which would cost her direly if it was discovered. But when the ceremony when the dragon of the year, the Rat one, chooses which candidate will connect with him, nothing happens as Eon and her master had foreseen.
A pretty good story, with nice plotting and solid characterisation. I really liked Eon as well as one of the main secondary character, Dela, a transwoman and Emperor's favourite, and who is pretty kickass. The book ends on a cliffhanger for a second volume which is not yet out.

Night Shift by Lilith Saintcrow
Boring by-the-number paranormal romance. I think that was the last chance I was giving to this genre.

The Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
Third volume after Night Watch and Day Watch, this is probably the best of the series so far, with all three stories of the volume being very solid and well tied with one another. Excellent plotting full of twist, tying threads in unexpected ways, and many interesting ideas as well as many interesting characters, both old and new. One of the things I love about this series is how the writer sets up a very manicheist world in theories, then keeps on playing with the concept of Light and Dark thus defined in ways that bring a whole lot of greys and ambiguities until they are near undistinguishable.

Jhegaala by Steven Brust
Vlad Taltos walks into an Easterner village, trying to find out about the background of hi mother's family. The villagers eye him warily. Then the bodies and mysteries start piling up. Poor Vlad Taltos.
A very good Taltos story in the style of Taltos stories. I was missing the sarcasm, it had been too long.

House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones
Tied to the Howl & Sophie stories, but not really a sequel. Young book-loving overprotected girl is charged with looking after the house of her distantly related Great Wizard of an uncle. Hijinks ensue.
Not my favourite Diana Wynne Jones story by a lot. Not really bad either, but the beginning was fairly slow and I kinda got annoyed at all the awkwardness, but not a bad story overall.

stolen from queenofthorn

Tell me:
1. Your favorite userpic of mine
2. Which one you wish I'd delete immediately
3. Which one you think needs explaining
4. The userpic that makes you laugh
5. Two userpics that you think should mate
6. The one you think is the most beautiful
7. The one you think has the best cropping
8. An icon that you think I should use more

My lj pics

Someone's making a documentary movie out of the whole whitewashing Avatar the last airbender controversies. Which, to me, looks like an awesome idea:

http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi1733100057/

When I was 10 years old, I watched Coppola's Dracula, which convinced me of two things: #1 Winona Ryder was fucking hot; #2 antagonistic love stories with reincarnation and a bit of eros/thanatos aesthetics were really fun. Like, really, really fun.

When I was 12 year old, I watched Interview with the Vampire, which convinced me of two things: #1 Brad Pitt was fucking hot; #2 vampires were okay. I mean, immortal life and powers to do whatever you want? Sounds neat.

So it was the early 90's, and I was primed to love vampire stories.

Fast forward to the night of Halloween 1998; after a couple of false starts I have managed what have been one of my goal for the last two years : find a role-playing game club which I could join and play with. The game? Vampire:the Masquerade. They explain the premise of the game, and the setting of the chronicles (Los Angeles, and one of player is The Prince of the setting) and help me make a character (a Toreador street artist - you can laugh, they did - neonate) in between a whole lot leering and sexist jokes. Upon a few minutes into the game we were stuck into a gunfight and I was realising that #1 all other characters were rather powerful, I was not #2 This was apparently a game about amoral superheroes in trenchcoat fighting with katanas and shotguns who happened to live by night even though they had explained it to me as a gothic punk game of personal horror. During the next couple of years which I spend a this rpg club, playing a wide selection of games, Vampires was without question the most popular and frequent game - whether I wanted it or not. I made a ridiculous amount of characters for it (my default archetype became the Gangrels with anarch leanings, mostly cuz of the claws ♥); and soon came to utterly loathe Vampire the Masquerade. It wasn't just the whole superheroes by night thing. I had loved Highlanders the TV shows when I was 14, I could deal with katanas, and a few years later I would love Buffy the Vampire Slayer, including the vampires. VtM was a game which concept appeared to be about a bunch of immortal people who are so fucking bored than instead of enjoying their powers and immortality to enjoy stuff from the world, they would waste their time and energy in endless meaningless and frequently mind-numbingly boring power struggles, with a result of crushing hierarchy being out to bore to death or outright your average new vampire and their player. About as fun as dealing with my university administration. And sadly, my loathing for VtM soon became a disgust for vampires in general

But wait a minuted, in between 94 and 98, I spent the years of life where I was reading the most fucking ratio of books a weak, a period of my life where I was pilfering the SFF shelves of the local public library to fill my absence of social life. There were no few vampire book in those shelves. Between Ann Rice, Poppy Z Brite, King's Salem's Lot and classics like Carmilla. Honestly I forgot most of them. Actually that's my point : the majority of them were utterly forgettable. Derivative variation on the theme. Sure, the conceit of vampires appeal from a baseline aspect to my kinks and are a powerful fantasy. But could they be interesting in the face of the near parodic triteness of the thread bone cliché that they most often were? Not really. Vampires qua vampires do not do it for me. Oh, but give me vampires with a twist? Give me vampires reinvented with imagination and flair? Then I'll love it.

My favourite vampire novels : Tim Powers' Stress of her Regard, where vampires are half stone half reptile creatures which inspire poets and artists while feeding of their vitality. CS Friedman's Season of Madness, which mixes vampire with aliens invasion of earth and symbiotic energy vampires on a medition on change and memory. CS Friedman's, again, Coldfire Trilogy, in a gothic fantasy SF blender exploring sacrifices and a vampire that prefer to feed on fear. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust with a visual feast mixing gothic to cyberpunk and western aesthetics.

Yet most of the time when I read about the new cool vampiric story in town (or the new uncool one which everyone loves to hate) screaming for my attention they always seem to fall back to the same old boring tropes. Bo~ring. So most of the time when I'm sold something as vampires, I won't even give it two seconds of my attention. I already gave Charlaine Harris a chance, must I really try the TV Show? Even if everyone tells me it's better than the books, exactly what does it have of new and original to bring to the vampire show? And why does Bill always look so constipaded on pictures?

Okay, but sometimes, you get lucky. Like Setona Mizushiro's Black Rose Alice, in which she appears to be trying to out Yuki Kaori Yuki Kaori, and in the two volumes of her manga I've read so far, actually comes close. Vampires as parasitic plants that seed into people. Dual personalities in a same bodies. Feeding by using insects and arachnids. Sex as death. Brilliant. Why is it so fucking hard to get that sort of stuff?

I leave with you with a fun AMV :p

In order of 'liked it most' to 'liked it least', no spoilers unless marked & whiteouted.

Aoi Hana

( Read more... )

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

( Read more... )

Spice & Wolf S2

( Read more... )

Taishou Yakyuu Musume aka Taishou Era Baseball Girls

( Read more... )

Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom

( Read more... )

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi S2

( Read more... )


That's all for this batch. Will review Bakemonogatori (if i feel up to it because I have some very mixed feelings about this one) and Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood when they are actually finished.

Shana Tova! Best wishes for the new year to everyone ♥

Mushishi



In early 20th century Japan, but in rural areas where the time period isn't quite obvious, Ginko is a wandering Mushi-Shi, a man whose job is to deal with the creatures known as Mushi when they trouble the lives of people. What are Mushi? Invisible to most people but those who are sensitive to them, they are very much like supernatural faeries or ghosts, yet they are also described in very organic terms, as part of the natural world rather than part of the supernatural world. Mushi are also frequently just phenomenon, and few Mushi show intent and personhood in a way understandable to humans, and those few that do are still very alien, and come across as very differently than creatures from a yokai story. Yet they are forms of life, not beings either good or evil, just life that seeks to live its own life, and the ways they cross human beings' path is never simple, and never entirely good or bad.

Adapted from a seinen manga series, Mushishi is a thoroughly episodic anime, working on cases basis each time. In 26 episodes, only one character asides from Ginko is seen several times. Despite this, it manages some of the best characterisation and most beautiful storytelling I've ever seen. Seriously, this anime is sublime, utterly captivating in its melancholy atmosphere, quietly understated yet poignant, beautiful in its animation and gorgeous in its detailed natural landscapes. Each story makes splendid use of the 20-so minutes of an episode to be told fully, with a beginning, a middle, an end and often an epilogue, at a serene, deliberate pacing, yet with a storytelling alchemy and a fullness of conclusion that leaves you under its charm long after it's ended. Each story develops its characters with nuance, subtlety and a unique character design that let them be fully realised.

Thematically, Mushishi is also very strong and mature. Most mushi play as a metaphor for something of nature - not only nature as the wilderness, but also nature as the natural laws that affect human beings, from the things we use to survive and prosper like agriculture to the thing that plague us irremediably like diseases and aging. Some mushi are wonderfully beautiful. Some mushi are terrifying and horrible. Some mushi are useful. Some mushi extremely harmful to humans. Many mushi are both, to some extent. The solving of cases isn't ever a given, and frequently quite difficult. (Some of the episodes aren't about cases, as such). Most of the times, it's a matter of how you can live along, live with the problems caused by the mushi, or live without. A lot of stories have bitter-sweet endings. Several of them have sad endings. Some only end many years after the case. Some are up in the air.

I especially love how the anime focus on very ordinary people. That are several very varied range of mostly rural work and crafts underlain by the story, and there's something very refreshing in that kind of focus, and in the variety of ways people made their life, as well as the naturalistic treatment to storytelling.

Ginko himself is an interesting lead. He's not quite the cypher that the Medicine seller is in Mononoke, for example, he's got his own personality as a sardonic man who has his own ethical ideas about things yet is fairly cynical about people. Yet he's not at the forefront of most of the stories (there are several stories in which he appears very little) and is a rather quiet man. There's a handful of episodes dedicated to developing his character and his backstory, but not much. Of course, Mushishi is a great example of the less is more kind of storytelling.

In conclusion, this is easily one of the best anime I've ever seen. Watch it.

I've just finished watching Mushishi. After having tried to stretch it to max by watching an episode only now and then in order to lengthen the pleasure as long as possible. Now I'm sad.

I think I'm more of a racing through something when I like it, but there are exceptions when I prefer to watch/read it slowly. Of course the nature of the work influences that, the pacing may be more suited to waiting and pondering between episodes. But generally speaking, I prefer to have the whole of something before my eyes before starting, and I prefer to go through it quickly. For example there are few manga I read as soon as the scanlations go up because I'd rather wait for a whole volume before reading it, otherwise I feel like the story is in shattered pieces. When I really anticipate something, too, I'd rather wait to be in the proper mood, and right moment to properly concentrate on it. What do you guys think? When you like a story, do you prefer to race through to get to the end, or to slow down and savour it?

curtana & skyclearblue have teamed up to create a series of drawings & verse for ASOIAF à la Edward Gorey. As you might imagine it is made of PURE AWESOME.
Check it out!

A Very Gorey ASOIAFabet

First two fanvid recs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLqUPwErz8Q&feature=player_embedded
for Ponyo which is very cute and funny.

And a Buffy vid: Bachelorette by obsessive24 on Bjork's song which is an awesome summary of the feminist thematics of the series and a mesmerizing vid.

---

On the awesome westerosorting community, in the newly created westerostamping subcom, I was stamped as

& !
Fun stuff! I adore Sandor, of course, and Sarella's been a great character for the little we've seen of her so far, so I can't say I was displeased by the result ^^ Other votes I received were Arya Stark, Brynden Tully, Tyrion Lannister, and Aemon Targaryen.
Join the comm to get stamped as well, the stamping applications are AWESOME. (srsly)

So anyway, casting news for the HBO ASOIAF series are starting to really come now, and I've been pretty happy so far. Most actors picked actually fit my mental image of the characters (which was rarely the case in fans' casting lists I had seen so far XD), and I'm impressed by how much most them seem to be good actors. I'm pretty happy about the guy they have for Jaime and the guy that's almost certainly for Sandor (a bit too old, though, but the guy's hot in just the right way and, yum Scottish accents ♥) Latest news is that Lena Heady appears to be (not quite official but almost certain) cast as Cersei, which LOL. Not to long ago, misstopia had picked Lena for Catelyn in the design of the stamp for westerostamping, and I was very fond of the idea, I'm sure she would have made a great Cat. So it's awfully ironical to see her picked for Cersei XDDDD of course given my love for her performance in SCC, I'm far from disappointed although I've got a hard time envisioning her as Cersei just yet (she's so... not blond. She's certainly hot enough though).
I kinda wonder how that works with the recent rumour of a SCC continuation I've seen the other day...

Am home safely. Tired. Will post later.

I'm leaving tomorrow for Israel for ten days, a cousin's wedding and vacations on the program, and today I'll be off to my parents'. So have a good two weeks and see you ♥