... 'cause there's always interesting stuff on the screen.

Ok, depends on what you call 'interesting'. Today's assignment is an accident report by the Thames Valley Police, involving lorries (not trucks) and carriageways (not lanes). Now what exactly is the probability of two vehicles both driven by Austrians colliding on the M1 Motorway outside Milton Keynes in the UK? What has gotten me temporarily stumped is that the Brits have what they call a 'standard collision report booklet', and I've no idea what to call it in German yet. 'Booklet'? Like a sort of brochure? Doesn't work. Accident reports filed by drivers are simply a single sheet of paper here... Guess I'll have to be a bit inventive.

Yesterday's Big Adventure included an appointment with my doc outside Vienna in the country, followed by a short visit with my parents in the neighbouring village (British spelling creeping in already). I brought my dad a German manual I had found on the net, for one of his antique twin-lense reflex middle format cameras, a Chinese Seagull. He also showed me his most recent acquisition, a Yashica 124G, and told me about this photgraphy workshop he went to, as the only analogue guy among digitalistas. He doesn't want to turn into a collector though. He took his first middle format (6 x 6 cm) using a cheap old Lubitel (Russian copy of a prewar Leica model) and a Czech Flexarette but now wants to stick to the Seagull and the Yashica which are thought to be the best affordable alternatives to the legendary Hasselblads by many amateurs dabbling in that particular format.

Anyway, it's weird how well I get along with my dad now. I used to despise him for being a nervous wimp when I was a teenager until major depression hit me. Then I despised him even more because I blamed him for passing on his problems on to me, genetically or otherwise. We're doing ok now. Recently I've begun to detect the slight manic streak in his personality, listen to his stories, pay much more attention to his history of varied (psychosomatic?) ilnesses, trying to understand both him and myself even better.

So what's it gonna be today? Procrastination or productivity? There are two other assignments on my plate, one of which I dread because it's from German to English, General Terms and Conditions for a small company specializing in steel finishings. The other one is way cool though: brochures for Italian motorbikes, i.e. Vespa & Moto Guzzi. Marketing copy gives you much more leeway than legal stuff. You take a text with all those rich English adjectives (English is much more colourful than German in this respect) and try to condense it into the clipped style many journalists love so much hereabouts. Or try some other style entirely. Translating can teach you a lot about writing, or how language and verbal expression work.

But now it's back to that accident report again. Forms aren't very lucrative because you spend lots of time fiddling with differing formatting styles and charts or trying to decypher handwriting while getting paid by the line (or word, depends). Typically, there isn't much 'meat' in those texts, so you spend hours on those things & get paid peanuts. Give me a fat boring sales agreement any day... Alright, I'm not complaining. I make enough to get by.

No class to teach at the dojo tonight so it will be a proper workout, not just bossing people around. Yes, and somebody please do the dishes, clean the kitchen floor, dust the furniture, go grocery shopping, cook me lunch, etc., etc., etc. Housekeeping is still something I'm more or less unable to do.