Hold me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me

After quite a hiatus, I'm working again. Blimey, does it feel good. As far as the ST is concerned, bloody awful and infuriating as well, but translating even a rather boring text such as the one I'm working on now makes me feel happy about my profession, about my education, about language, about myself. Can you honestly ask for more? Well, more work I suppose, but let's leave that issue be.

I downloaded the most recent version of Wordfast, too, and am now trying to learn how to use it properly. I've created a glossary with 55 entries so far (Do you know what "blasting with steel grain" is? Well, I do! Do you know what "CTO" stands for? I can tell you!). My TM for the current commission came close to exceeding the limit of 500 entries you get for free on the demo version of Wf, but luckily the segments stopped just short of 500 at 492 (I finished the first drafts of the three files today, so I know I won't be going overboard with the entries anymore). Wordfast makes me happy.

More good news. I'm in love with my Kindle. It has 42 free books dowloaded onto it and 2 books that I've purchased online. The first book I was ever to read on the thing was Gaiman's Stardust, and I deemed it worthy of such honour. Now I'm reading some Wells (see the Now Reading segment on the left), and I have Twain, Verne, Dickens, Dumas, Defoe, Wilde, Hardy and Shelley waiting for me, just to drop a few names. Never again will I need to drag along a pile of books when I go on holiday. I'll just grab by nifty e-reader and off I go. Yes, I still like how a real book feels in my hand, yes, I like the smell of old books and the sound of a page turning, but practically thinking, I do find Kindle great. Never again will countless books that I will read but once clutter by bookshelves. And never you mind that the Google-converted books make some annoying, albeit sometimes hilarious scanning mistakes, as in the sentence "They wore turbans too, and thereunder peered out their elfin feces at me" - I still like my handy device. Once I get a regular wireless internet connection in Finland, I think Kindle will even become my device of choice for reading all the blogs I subscribe to.

Which brings me to another matter, the matter of moving in to my new home. Still almost two months away, but I'm quite ready to start settling in. Lookie, I even took some pictures:

Come one, come all. Allez, entrez. Ich bin müde. Je vais dormir.