The sun shines on Benelux

Opening the weekend was this year's Christmas party. That was a nice time but I think some of my co-workers drank more than they meant to and said some things they didn't mean to; it seems to be some sort of outlet for them and they'd really been looking forward to it. Interesting. Highlight of the evening: friend of the vp's husband gave a good college try at getting into my pants, which he opened, upon a colleague asking him what his profession was, by eyeing me and murmuring 'I'm a wildcat tamer.' Nice. Ten years ago it might have worked. A few hours later, spent a sleepy, headachey Saturday hanging out, baking, getting through a sewing pile I've accumulated over the past five years, and making a pair of these. Obviously now I can't wait for my period to start, which is an emotion I haven't experienced since those now very long-ago days of fucking wildly inappropriate people.

Yesterday we went to Amsterdam to see the Fledermaus. Gosh. Bit of a psychological headfucker, isn't it? I had only known things like the Laughing Song and whatnot before, and in general terms that it was a tale of revenge. But goodness gracious, what a nasty little tale. What the fuck is wrong with Austrians anyways? But it was lovely from first to last; the staging was just magnificent - no heat-lamp funeral pyres or Don Giovanni-having-indigestion type shit there - and the performances all very good.

And by the grace of God, Amsterdam was sunny. All day. Amsterdam must be one of the loveliest cities in the world when it's sunny. I sometimes think I'd never leave Benelux if the weather was only about a million times better. So it was a lovely trip.

Read Robinson Crusoe in the train, having exchanged my defective copy from a London Waterstone's at the Brussels Waterstone's without any issue at all. Apparently the Oxford Press has developed a pattern of occasionally fucking up page order at moments of high dramatic tension. Fuckers. I enjoyed it in the normal sense of enjoying any book with lists of comforting possessions and tales of adventure and gunplay, but I was surprised at the layers of irony, social commentary, sodomy, and at how Robinson Crusoe had his moments of being rather an asshole. Friday was quite sympathetic. Lots to think about there in terms of noble savages, and ignoble savages, and grasping towards some sort of moral relativism, and such like.

Anyways. That was the weekend. It was good and now it's over. Fuck.