I am writing my last ever UB paper right now and while doing research about the author of the text I am discussing, I came across this little gem of a microrrelato [shortest story] by the same author, Augusto Monterroso - quite possibly the shortest shortest story in the world.

Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.
(When (s)he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.)

That’s the entire text. I love it!

Jennifer [who has quite the fabulous blog, by the way] posts her favorite Postsecrets of the week every Sunday, so thanks to her for pointing this out…

This was one of the Postsecrets this week …

And there was this one posted three weeks ago …

This is one of the reasons I love Postsecret - even though I wouldn’t have even realized it by myself.

I have been running again as of the past few weeks and I was thinking of getting a small mp3 player that can be clipped to my clothes to use for running - my roommate has this one and it is actually the small version of the one I already have. It is quite inexpensive, around €35 so it would not be a major investment, but it would allow me to run without a running belt. I would prefer the Sandisk Sansa Clip over an iPod Shuffle because it is cheaper while it is not much bigger, and most importantly it has a display so you can choose which song to listen to.

It comes in black, pink, red, and blue, and I think I will just get whichever one is cheapest. Right now the red one is cheapest but I will wait until I am in Germany to order it, and decide then. I will not get rid of my regular Sansa, as 2GB is really very little space for me [I always manage to fill the 6GB of the Sansa completely] but I might use it for daily commuting as well besides the running.

Now, back to that paper …

Classes ended here yesterday. I finished my paper in time to get 1.5 hours of sleep before my last class ever in Barcelona. I made it through class and back home went straight to bed and slept for a good seven hours. I do still have finals, but I only have two actual exams to take in class this semester and two more papers to write. I’ll be done for good on June 11th.

Tomorrow Aleks was supposed to come here but her passport ran out and her new one didn’t come in time so she won’t be able to. She is not a German citizen, so she does not have a national ID, and while she did get a confirmation that she is a permanent resident they told her it might be possible that they let her fly to Barcelona but that she could run into trouble here and not be able to fly back [and then have to take the train back which would be an ordeal], so she decided not to take that chance, and isn’t coming. Can’t blame her for that. It is a shame though, that she cannot come here and we won’t be able to hang out for another few weeks.

I have been thinking about what I’ll do regarding my living arrangements when I move back to Heidelberg. I have been really enjoying living so close to school here, and while I have no illusions that I will live as close in Heidelberg, I would really enjoy living a bit closer to school there [from my last apartment it took me 40 minutes]. I would also like to actually live in Heidelberg so I can ride my bike to get around and have the option of taking a moonliner home when I go out at night. And I really want to live completely by myself. Flora told me that Thomas is still living in the other room in the house I lived in in Heidelberg and seeing as he originally was going to stay just two weeks and has now been there a year, I doubt he is going to move out within the next four months. And I will not move back there, as long as he is still living there [we did not get along that well, and besides he smokes, and while he did go outside to smoke he'd smoke right by my window so the smell came in through my window], as much as I love my other neighbors. He is the one I’d have to deal with most on a daily basis as his room and mine share a bathroom, and no thanks. So I looked at the site of the dorms the university offers and I realized they also have apartments which I did not know about before. So I applied for one - I don’t know how good my chances are because I do not qualify for any cases of hardship [financially or otherwise] but we will see. It’d be good because it is a good location, cheap, and furnished [which my parents pretty much insist on]. If that doesn’t work out I’ll have to go apartment hunting sometime in August.

Again, complete topic change, but I have started running again. It is awful that I did not run the entire fall and winter, but I finally started again. I did have to start at week 2 of the couch to 5k program because I had lost whatever little endurance I had gained from the last time I did the program over the past 8 months. But this time I am really set on finishing the program. I am on week 3 now, and will finish that on Saturday. So far I have been sticking to running every other day [seven times in two weeks], and it’s been going well so far.

I also decided to eat completely [ovo-lacto-]vegetarian until I go back home. It is not really something I do to eat more healthily because I only eat very little meat [and then mostly lean meat like ham and poultry] anyway, but it is more of a challenge to myself to see if I can do it. I will still eat eggs and other milk products so I think I should be fine on the protein side. I’ll see how it goes - so far I’ve been good and stuck to it [for about a week now]. I have to watch out mostly when I eat out because I tend to forget about not eating meat [because I do love meat] and out of habit look at the choices with meat that they offer. Seeing as it is not a decision I made out of the conviciton that eating meat is bad or disgusting or whatever, I keep having to actively remind myself to stay disciplined.