Scribbled in a notebook during my stay in Kentucky:

There were times when I didn’t know what to believe in but now I see you and I remember all the facets of life; the music, the sex, that goddamned feeling of having been up way too late, the people all around, the casual beauty, the endless conversations and I forget the exhaustion of breathing in and out, constantly, forever.

Yet another Amazon package arrived today which was very unexpected since this one came from overseas and dilvery was estimated for March 22. Which, under any conditions, would be way too long a time to wait but I had kinda already made my peace with it and stuck to reading Gossip Girl novels which I had purchased from amazon.de and so they were here much quicker.

This is what lies before me now.

Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, Oprah’s Book Club Deluxe Edition. Heck yeah.

I had been thinking about buying it forever - ever since it’s been on Oprah’s Book Club, anyway - but then I noticed that my dad owned a few Ken Follett books and me and him reading the same books, that just couldn’t happen.

But then my host mom, Andrea, recommended the book to me and, really, more or less forced me to buy and read it. I love it when Andrea forces me to do stuff because it always always always turns out to be totally fantastic.

This book is so incredibly beautiful. I told my younger brother who was standing by, completely and utterly annoyed before I even said a word, just how gorgeous I find this book. I told him about a dozen times. But he’s in total denial. He just doesn’t see it. We may not be related by blood, after all.

We all know how addicted I am to pretty books - to their covers, the font type and font size, the way the paper used for the binding and for the pages feel between my fingertips, the way they smell, the way a new chapter’s heading is designed. I am obsessed and, quite frankly, plain crazy.

But this one, folks, this one’s A KEEPER. This book is so wonderful and sexy, I’m afraid that once I started reading, it will be all dog-eared and the back spine will be forever defaced by vertical scars. Don’t you hate it when that happens? I usually pay attention and try to be really careful because I cannot stand a row of books looking at me with their spines all cracked.

So, as I have said, something is seriously wrong with me and my relationship to books. But I guess that’s what happens when your parents have rows and rows of bookshelfs in their office with books who haven’t been treated as nicely and do now look as if they missed their Botox appointments.

I gotta go and look at this book some more and gently stroke over its pretty cover and drool over its soft, white coated pages. And then, if I do have enough time left before somebody beats me over the head with it, I may actually start to read it.

Carefully, peering between the pages, trying to read the words towards the center without cracking its spine.

Bruce Springteen’s I’m on fire makes me sad. I don’t know why. But I’m sick of feeling sad and depressed all the time so why the fuck won’t they stop playing it on the radio already?

The radio, though, made my day yesterday! In order to get accustomed to the Dutch language I listened to Sky Radio, the most famous Dutch radio station, all day Saturday while cleaning up my room which looks PERFECT now, by the way.

And since it’s Dutch, they don’t only have the friendliest, happiest, funniest radio hosts and the funnest Dutch commercials, they also offer a Windows Vista gadget to include into the Vista sidebar. How brilliant is that? I had never seen that on other radio stations’ websites, all you can usually get is some random webradio gadget from the official Vista website.

So I listened to Dutch radio all Saturday and then all Sunday with the little Sky Radio gadget in the sidebar and I could literally see myself living up the Dutch life in Maastricht. The gadget, by the way, is basically a play and a stop button and the playlist and that’s it. As soon as you boot Windows, it’s right there and you press play and it works right away, which NOBODY WOULD HAVE EVER EXPECTED BECAUSE THESE STREAMS NEVER WORK. And it’s light green which makes it even more perfect!

But then, this happened to the horizon:

Talk about HELL ON EARTH.

Was it scary? Well, you know… Just a tad.

Besides, I have always suspected that Aldoux Huxley was on to something when he said that this Earth is another planet’s hell.

And so, I was back to melancholic and depressed and wanted to listen to American radio stations. Kentucky radio stations, to be exact, those I had always listened to when I lived there: 98.1 The Bull, 104.5 The Cat, WKQQ, 103.9 Louisville Country, 98.9 Kiss FM Louisville and so on. I really just wanted to hear their jingles. It’s what I miss about American TV, too. It’s not so much the shows or the music because you can get that anywhere online, anyway. It’s the stuff in between; commercials, previews, news.

I guess I should be happy that I just finished my History pre-exam. It was set at three hours so it was manageable. Although, I’m not so sure that it went very well.

English AP is coming up this Wednesday. It’s set at five hours but I am really looking forward to it! Any task that includes writing in English ends up being relaxed and fun. And we were told that it’s going to be a text about utopian ideas and other than analysing it and all that stuff, we’re supposed to somehow relate it to Shakespeare. Which should be really interesting. Basically, you read through the text and write twelve pages of anything that comes to mind. As long as you know your English, thou art about as fucking free to do what you wish as it gets.