headaches, parents, and a tiger cub

about time i caught up, i know.

went to see a film last monday - jim jarmusch's "broken flowers" with *aaaaahhh!* the great, the wonderful, the unique bill murray (whom, btw, i want for my birthday. he can just sit and stare if he likes, nobody does that better than him anyway!). i liked the film. a nice surprise that there are two holly golightly songs on the soundtrack!

another surprise was my parents announcing they'd be in vienna on the weekend. we never thought we'd see them here again! that meant that some more serious house-cleaning was necessary, and before the weekend too. my mother's standards are ... well, slightly different from mine. ;)

an unpleasant thing was the headache i woke up with on tuesday - it did not go away until friday!! argh. still, i managed to solve a few sudoku, finish the jigsaw puzzle (much quicker than i thought i'd be), and stay in the poem-a-day challenge. i did miss out on the trivia night though. nobody cracked the jackpot though, so that's okay. another try tonight.

saw gudrun and simon on thursday - simon having lots of fun in the park, he giggled a lot!

my parents arrived on friday, but my brother picked them up at the station. we went out for japanese food that evening - sepp and me, my brother markus and his girlfriend claudia, and my mom and dad. the food's always nice at akakiko! :) my parents stayed at my flat, so we took them back home before going over to sepp's. the weather was perfect all weekend - just delightful. almost as warm as summer, sunny, blue skies ...

saturday morning mom and dad went off to the first district, then we spent the afternoon in laxenburg, just south of vienna, meeting up with markus & claudia too. they have a castle that looks totally disney but is genuinely old, a lake and a huge park. we went for walks, had ice-creams, and cruised the little lake on a boat as well.



afterwards, we spent a few nice hours at a heurigen in guntramsdorf. nice wine, yummy food (pumpkin, delicious!). my brother got lovely presents for his recent 30th birthday, so he was extra-happy. back in vienna, we showed mom & dad more than half of our holiday pics until we all got soooooo tired we could have fallen asleep there in front of the screen.



sunday we visited schönbrunn zoo. i was impressed how skillful the elephants are - now i like them even more. little mongu whom we had seen three weeks after she was born, is now over two years old!



the primates look so depressed - they lost a few of them to some illness last year, and the remaining ones seem to have changed completely. but there's the cutest tiger cub - only 3 months old. so sweet! the funniest thing was when he tried to get down from places he'd climbed - he was very, very careful, prodding things, testing whether they were safe and could be trusted, peeking over the rim. so cute. still - already very impressive paws!



after a snack back at my place, i dropped mom & dad off at the station, and off they were back to spittal. a weekend really isn't very long.

this week i am doing prep work, i have a few appointments, meetings, etc, but i will talk about those next time i remember this blog of mine. *L*

today's song: static on the radio, jim white & aimee mann. i could listen to that one song for hours. brilliant.