3 (Three).

First, for the sake of continuity, I have to tie up the loose threads of the Snow!-Post. It turned out it was all a hoax (initiated by the road salt industry, we believe) - the great big snow never came, and therefore I unfortunately could not witness Vienna being buried under 15 feet of pure white snow. Or even 1. Colour me disappointed!

Second, I'm taking a leaf out of dot's book (not literally, of course, I know how much she values her books) posting lists of things that make me happy. These lists, they are very good in a count-your-blessings sort of way. I am actually of the opinion that blessings work quite well, even if uncounted, as long as they still have time and space to spead out and do their thing. Sometimes, though, in all the stress and the pressure of everyday life, they get squished between dead-lines and waiting-lines, and sometimes remain unnoticed for weeks. This must not happen.
Here are three happifying facts that I saved from oblivion this week.

1. The library of the Department of Art History on campus, or more specifically its Kompaktus. This is the downstairs area where they keep books and journals in rolling shelves. Whenever I go there, I feel like I'm burrowing inside and tunnelling through a huge accumulation of knowledge, to retrieve single pieces that I can then carry upstairs to the light. I don't quite know why the rolling shelves fascinate me so, but perhaps to a certain extent it's that feeling of adventure (you never know when you're going to get squeezed to death between the shelves) and the fact that the mechanism and the movement are a bit like something from an Indiana Jones film.

2. New Yarn!

I've got new (soft, warm, lovely, colourful) yarn to knit with and needles to go with it - 8 mm thick. Heaven!

3. Ambience-Skyping. It's when you call somebody on skype but not to actually have a conversation, but just to share each others background noises, while each is busy doing work, reading, ect. Mostly it would turn out really boring, but in case you miss someone in particular, it does help to reduce loneliness in times of much-to-do. Even if in our case, it always holds a certain risk of metamorphosing into songbird like whistling-dialogues or choruses of other animal noises, it increases the quality of studious evenings alone considerably.