Cold: 1 Christoph: 0

So turns out the reason why I slept so much over the weekend wasn't just to relax but mainly because my body was going for a narrow escape from a cold. Looking at the score board above you can see who won...

I didn't feel too well on Saturday evening and worse on Sunday morning. Not bad enough to cancel my coffee-meeting but I did skip the Michael Clayton show. Today when getting up I felt quite crappy but since that's my default mood every morning I didn't really realize how exhausted I was until I got to work. After half-a-day's work (which was surprinsingly productive I might add) I decided to call it a day since I was getting worse by the minute.

Now, after an afternoon spent sleeping, I don't feel any better, actually a tad worse. So now I'm off to watch a movie or, God forbid, some actual TV before I head back to bed... Ah, and yes, the title of today's to-do post-it will have to be renamed from Monday to Tuesday.

Going for a quiet weekend

For once I actually seem to manage to spend a (relatively) quiet weekend. The first one in two or three months I may add. My Friday started very late, past 3 p.m., and it was with delight that I woke up and realized that I had slept for almost 12 hours. All thanks to having the very smart idea of turning off my alarm-clock before I went to bed, also something which I haven't done since late May or so. It's not often that I wake up with a smile on my face but that was one of those rare occassions.

Friday evening was again spent in the city, where I had also gone out the night before, and it again turned into an excellent and very relaxing session. While Thurday's discussions with a close friend where pretty much focused on OLPC related matters on Friday we randomely meet three guys from Bosnia who live in Austria since the mid-90s. Initially we chit-chatted about pool and other Irish Pub matters before turning to politics, the upcoming elections and Austrian attitudes and policies towards foreigners. It was a very insightful discussion to say the very least.

Saturday started a little earlier then Friday but I dedicated most of my afternoon watching 4 episodes of a TV series I'm currently hooked on. Then I visited my grandmother for dinner which was, as always, excellent. Now I've been watching some Two and A Half Men while trying to decide what to do with my night. And you know what, watching 5 of the 22min-episodes really took care of that question. ;-)

Tomorrow I will be focused on catching up with the many e-mails that have been accumulating in my inbox over the past 3 or 4 days. Then I'll head for coffee with another close friend before potentially hitting a showing of Michael Clayton. Plus I hope to get some reading done, the stack of books, newspapers and magazines next to my bed is growing taller by the day.

All in all definitely a very quiet and relaxing weekend. Looking at my schedule it might well be the last one for quite some time. Next weekend I'm heading to Klagenfurt, in the south of Austria, for a house-warming party. The weekend after I'll be in Vienna. Then it looks like I'm going to Brno the first weekend in September. Followed by a potential trip to Croatia and a visit of a friend close to Graz (also in the south) on the weekends thereafter. And you know what, then I have exactly one weekend left before university starts so something tells me that I'll be quite busy. So I better enjoy this weekend while it lasts...

Aliens in America

While I do take pride in the fact that I haven't really spent (aka wasted) any significant amount of time with regular television these past few years I have a habit of getting hooked on television series. It all started with a long-term addiction to Friends (still the best TV series ever made IMHO), which continued (to a lesser degree) with its spin-off Joey. Once I moved to Vienna I started watching That 70's Show again, I had loved watching it while I lived in Peru from 2000 to 2001. The next thing that hit me was Six Feet Under which I absolutely loved for its weird setting. Afterwards I think I went back to Friends, I've always had a weak spot for them and by now I've probably seen most episodes 3 or 4 times.

Sometime in early 2005 I discovered Scrubs and have been hooked on them ever since. At the moment I'm close to finishing the second run through all the episodes. And of course I'm very happy that the 7th season just started airing 2 weeks ago as that means a fresh episode for me each Friday.

Ah, and I nearly forgot about my secret love for Futurama, easily the best comic series ever produced. Apart from being incredibly funny Futurama brought us some of the best quotes ever:

"Bite my shiny metal ass" (the one and only Bender)

"Good news everyone..." (the professor)

"Tell my wife I said 'hello'" (the leader of the Democratic Order Of Planets)

Anyway, what I really wanted to write about today is that I may have found a new candidate to make it to my list of "must-see TV series":

Aliens in America (official website / Wikipedia entry)

The basic story is that an American family decides to host an exchange student because the mother hopes that this will help her 16-year old son Justin be more popular in high-school. Imagine their surprise when they pick up Raja, a 16-year-old Pakistani Muslim!

I've only seen the pilot so far but I'm really liking it and can't wait to see more episodes (though that probably won't happen before the weekend). The cultural context the whole story is set in is definitely very interesting and it's great to see a TV series that doesn't involve cops, terrorists, the president, politicians, etc. I'd definitely have to say that this is probably one of the more daring TV series and it will be very interesting to see how it all works out. If that sounds appealing then I'd definitely recommend you to give Aliens in America a shot!