10-minute-quarter-life-crisis™.

so i'm a year older, and all that has changed is that i now got one more thing to worry and feel bad about.

sitting at oskars yesterday morning with dirk, having (totally non vegan) breakfast, i got a 10-minute-quarter-life-crisis™.
26 suddenly seemed awfully close to "late twenties", like almost 30.
it just hit me that for years, i expected to live a different life at this age. like in melbourne, with a job, married, thinking about having kids. on some levels, i haven't totally dismissed these wishes. i want a life partner. i want to be done with uni. i want to lead the fullfilling life that i long for.
it's ridiculous to feel bad about not having all that yet. i got to be patient with myself: i'm getting there, if slowly. it's been a strange last few years, i should be patient with myself, encouraging, instead of ashamed for not having reached my goals yet. at least i am still trying.


a strange kind of sadness lingered on from that 10-minute-quarter-life-crisis™, for the entire day.
we did plenty of nice things yesterday, and i was painfully aware that it is a luxury to just dismiss everything that needs being done for half a day and go shopping for presents and to the movies. - but still.
with birthday money from the parents i bought myself the fancy salad spinner i have been needing for ages (no more swirling salad around in a dishtowel for me) and two cds, wilco's "a ghost is born" and eskobars "a thousand last chances". seriously good stuff. it was lovely to simply spend and hour at müller's cd department, as awful a place that is, just listening to new cds. i used to go cd shopping with evan a lot, and i miss that and being exposed to new music through him.
later, dirk shopped with me for his present to me: lingerie, fire-engine red. really good stuff, lacy and see through, yet totally un-trashy. never owned red lingerie before, and this stuff is seriously hot. also got a squaky, inflatable nemo from dirk. so good i got a man in my life who knows and encourages my silly side.
we had some birthday cake, too, and went out to see hoellentour, a documentary by oscar-winning film maker pepe danquart on the 2003 tour de france, in the late afternoon.

i had read all the rave reviews the docu had gotten all over the place. each and every one of those reviews is very much deserved. hoellentour is a fantastic piece of docu filimg that won't just appeal to tour de france junkies like me. it's got it all: great imagery and colouring, gentle observation of its subjects, fantastic music and timing. - and all that real life drama! that last time trial in the rain, when ullrich fell, could not have been "scripted" any better... life makes for the best stories, after all.

plus: i really really like erik zabel now.
i was always kinda indifferent towards him, admiring his achievements on the bike (most green jersey wins, most stage wins, consistent riding over years etc.) but not caring *that* much about him.
this film has totally changed my view of him: good grace, is he an adorable, lovely, funny man! he came across as a totally natural, hard working, extremely funny, loyal guy. no attitude whatsoever.
the 2003 tour must have been a humbling experience for zabel, crashing badly early on, no green jersey, losing sprints to petacci in the first half of the tour (before petacci, the loser, quit at the first molehill).
zabel surely shows a lot of his true self in this docu. it's so funny to observe his relationship with rolf aldag: they seem like a long married couple with appropriate loving bickering and well defined roles (who gets which bed, who has control over the remote). zabels happiness for aldag after winning the mountain jersey is totally genuine and loving. - one of the best moments of the docu, i'd say.
in contrast to that winokurov seems hard to grasp, floating around in the team doing his thing (like, almost win the tour), without really any attachements to anyone. maybe it's just the language barrier, who knows.
overall, it is amazing that pepe daquart got such intimate access to the entire telekom team. - and he definitely made the most out of it.
he shows more though, than just the workings inside a team. danqart portrays the strangeness of the tour in its entirety (think "caravane"!), the glorious scenery, the fans camping out in the alps and following the tour around, the historians who deem it the greatest sport event ever, the journalists, the little villages transformed for a day for the occasion.
the racing scenes feel like music videos with their electro-jazz soundtrack by till brönner and flowing camera movements and close ups of feet, legs, gear changes. the post race scenes are a stark contrast to that, totally quiet, zabel ponmdering the race or barely staying awake as legedary telekom physio "eule" massages his legs.
i'll definitely watch the movie again, buy it when it gets out. its a much better 2003 tdf souvenir than any video that just shows the race as you got to see it on the telly anyway. am now even hotter for this years' tour than i was already. didn't think that was actually possible.

in the evening, tina came over to watch the football with dirk and me. rigos and champagne were consumed and we screamed at the telly, but alas, germany lost and gets to come home. bummer. tina and dirk got along well, too, and that's good, because those two haven't gotten to know each other much yet.
i'll keep watching the euro though: at least england is still in, so i can keep wearing my "bored of the beckhams" shirt out. and well, there's sweden to watch, too, which are entertaining to look at because of extremely yummy freddie ljundberg. and portugal! figo! why not watch football for the men?

so yeah, the birthday is over, and some sadness still lingers on, and i have no real idea as to why.
there's therapy tomorrow, and i quite simply do not feel like turning up there with these unresolved issues (yeah, i know, "isn't that what therapy is supposed to be good for?"), because i don't feel like therapy at all right now. i don't want to deal with my issues, thank you very much, i got too much work to do right now. not that i have any illusions regarding those 200 something pages i should read before sunday afternoon.

off to ip now. i got to remind myself that it's thursday.

and thursday, i love law, right?
right.