American Rhapsody

Adobe Digital Editions, Linux, and DRMs: Updated again

Krazy Kitty — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 15:53:00 +0100

The most popular posts on that blog are, by far, those in which I gave detailed instruction on how to remove DRMs from Adobe Digital Editions Books, the first one in 2011 and the second in 2019.

I still own the same PocketBook Touch Lux 3 as in 2019, and the setup I described in 2019 is still working. However, the machine on which it works is aging, and having read Terence Eden's blog post, I was eager to try Grégory Soutadé's libgourou library which promises to convert .acsm files into .epub files without using ADE or wine, on the laptop I'm currently using the most.

And I'm glad to report that: it works!

So here are the details:

Installing libgourou

I first tried to use the AppImage, but couldn't figure it out and ended up old-school downloading the most recent tar.gz from the libgourou repository, which in my case was the 0.8.7 version.

In the desired repository

tar zxvf libgourou-v0.8.7.tar.gz # adapt to the version you've downloaded
cd libgourou

Then I compiled using make, which meant wading through a few error messages to figure out I needed to install missing libraries with

 sudo aptitude install libpugixml-dev libssl-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libzip-dev

(The README is pretty explicit on which external libraries are needed, so this did not come as a huge surprise.)

Then

 make PREFIX=<desired location>

Following directions, I then added my chosen path to LD_LIBRARY_PATH with

 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:<same desired location>

Now it's time to active your Adobe Profile:

 ./utils/adept_activate -u <username>

Your username (and the password that is then asked from you) are those of your AdobeID account.

Apparently, if this does not work, you can also provide your password through:

 ./utils/adept_activate -u <username> -p <password>

which might require changing your password so that it does not contain any special characters incompatible with this command.

Now all you need to convert an acsm to an epub is to run

 ./utils/acsmdownloader <stupid ADE file>.acsm

That is the only command of all that section you will need to repeat!

You can also use libgourou to grab the key that will be used by the DeDRM plugin:

 ./utils/acsmdownloader --export-private-key

Installing calibre

Following the official instructions I merely ran

 sudo -v && wget -nv -O- https://download.calibre-ebook.com/linux-installer.sh | sudo sh /dev/stdin

Installing the DeDRM plugin

Let's take a small break here to give heartfelt thanks to Apprentice Alf, Apprentice Harper, The Dark Reverser and i♥cabbages, who are among the few unsung heroes whose work make it possible for Linux users to remove DRMs from books we've legally purchased so that we can actually read them on the ebook reader we've also legally purchased for this exact intended purpose.

Now download the latest .zip version of DeDRM from its github repo (in my case, version 7.2.1).

Move it to its own special directory and unzip it there.

Then open Calibre (which you can do by running calibre from the command line, or from the start menu).

In the upper menu bar, you'll find a "Preferences" menu. Click on the tiny arrow at the far right of this bar to see all the possibilities. Click "Advanced", then "Plugins", then "Load plugin from file".

Pick DeDRM/DeDRM_plugin.zip.

Click "Customize plugin", then "Adobe Digital Editions ebooks", then "Import Existing Key Files". (If you need to find this plugin again, it will be under "File type plugins".)

Navigate to the .der key file previously created by acsmdownloader.

Now all you can add whatever epub you have created from an acsm file with acsmdownloader to Calibre, and it will be DRM free. All that without wine. Thank you, Grégory.

Adobe Digital Editions, Linux, and DRMs: Updated

Krazy Kitty — Sat, 11 May 2019 15:41:00 +0100

Updated 2025-07-13: You might really want to check out this updated version which uses libgourou instead of having to install ADE on wine.

Longtime readers may remember that I am quite stubborn about removing the DRMs of books I purchased for my own reading.

In fact, I have little choice: my current ebook reader is a PocketBook Touch Lux 3 that, crucially, is not linked to a specific bookstore (unless the same bought, say, from Decitre in France). I tend to buy ebooks from Kobo, because I like their selection and because, unlike the dreaded Amazon-Kindle binding, you're not limited to using their reader to read your ebooks.

Unfortunately, many of the ebooks they sell come with the dreaded Adobe Digital Edition (also known as ADE, which make it sounds nice and nonthreatening like my friend Adélaïde, but do not get lulled into a false sense of security) DRMs. Particularly dreaded of the Linux users, for ADE is only available for Windows or Mac.

All fine and dandy (provided you're not too bothered about the concept of DRMs) if you have an ADE-compatible device.

But not so much in my case.

So I need to somehow transform the .acsm files I purchase into DRM-free epubs.

And my old setup to do so suddenly started failing with a "#2038" network error that I was not able to fix. Which is when it became apparent that I had to seriously upgrade my suite of tools... And here's how I did it, on Linux Mint 18.3 (yeah, I should upgrade, but it's stable, okay?).

Installing Adobe Digital Editions 2.0

The first thing is to install Adobe Digital Editions 2.0. I owe many thanks to Pat David's post for that part.

First thing first, you need wine 3.0. Easy to acquire as wine-stable from your repository.

You'll also need winetricks and cabextract.

One nice thing about wine is that you can have multiple setups, each corresponding to a so-called "prefix", so you can mess around one setup without killing everything else. Following Pat's advice, I decided to use a prefix called ".adewine" (instead of the default ".wine") for the installation and use of ADE.

export WINEPREFIX=~/.adewine

Then you need to tell wine you want to work with a 32 bits Windows

WINEARCH=win32 winecfg

At this point, a setup window should open. Make sure to choose Windows XP here, as more recent versions of Windows won't let you install the .NET framework.

Add a few necessary packages:

winetricks -q corefonts
winetricks -q windowscodecs

If at this stage you encounter an error, follow Pat's advice again to fix it:

cd ~/.cache/winetricks/windowscodecs/
cabextract -d tmp wic_x86_enu.exe
cd tmp/
cp windowscodecs* ~/.adewine/drive_c/windows/system32/

You're now ready to install the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Full Package!

Here what worked from me diverged from what Pat did. I had to download dotnetfx35setup.exe from the Microsoft website and then run

wine  wine dotnetfx35setup.exe

(This took me two days to figure out, by the way.)

And now, to the installation of Adobe Digital Edition 2.0

All what's left to do is to download the Windows installer of ADE and run

wine ADE_2.0_Installer.exe

Phew!

You should now be able to run ADE, with a command such as

 wine ~/.adewine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Adobe/Adobe\ Digital\ Editions\ 2.0/DigitalEditions.exe

Now you should be able to drag and drop your .acsm file into ADE and double-click the ebook to open it.

If you navigate to

~/My\ Digital\ Editions

you'll see that a new epub file has appeared here: your book!

Unfortunately, at this stage, this epub file is still DRMed, and the book is still quite far from being readble on your ebook reader...

Time to move on to step 2: the wonderful tools of Apprentice Alf.

Installing the DeDRM tools

Apprentice Alf, Apprentice Harper, The Dark Reverser and i♥cabbages are a few of the heroes that make it possible to remove DRMs from books you've legally purchased so that you can actually read them on your ebook reader (which you have also legally purchased for the purpose of reading books rather than surfing the Internets looking for a solution to your obscure error messages). Thank you, folks. Heartily.

Your first step here is to download DeDRM_tools_6.6.3.zip.

Unzip this somewhere and navigate to DeDRM_calibre_plugin/.

To use these tools, you'll need Python2.7. On wine, of course. To install it, download the latest Windows X86 MSI and run

wine msiexec /i python-2.7.16.msi

Now download pycrypto-2.1.0.win32-py2.7.zip from Voidspace, unzip it, and run

wine pycrypto-2.1.0.win32-py2.7.exe

You are ready to extract the relevant scripts from the DeDRM calibre plugin!

 unzip DeDRM_plugin.zip
 cp inept*py ~/.adewine/drive_c/Python27/Tools/Scripts/.
 cp adobekey.py ~/.adewine/drive_c/Python27/Tools/Scripts/.

The adobekey.py script allows you to generate the magic key that will unlock your DRMs: run

wine explorer /desktop=name,1024x768 python.exe adobekey.py

and take good note of the message telling you that the key was successfully added to, in my case, adobekey_1.der.

You can now use ineptpdf.py to remove DRMs from your DRMed pdf files:

wine explorer /desktop=name,1024x768 python.exe ineptepdf.py

and ineptepub.py to remove DRMs from your DRMed epub files: wine explorer /desktop=name,1024x768 python.exe ineptepub.py

If you use calibre, which is a very nice tool to manage your library, you can now install the DeDRM calibre plugin as follows.

Open calibre.

In the upper menu bar, you'll find a "Preferences" menu. You might need to click on the tiny arrow at the far right of this bar to see all the possibilities.

Click "Plugins" then "Load plugin from file"

Pick DeDRM_calibre_plugin/DeDRM_plugin.zip.

Click "Configure plugin". If you need to find this plugin again, it will be under "File type plugins".

Click "Import Existing Key Files"

Navigate to the .der key previously generated.

And voilà^[1]!

Any DRMed epub, obtained under "My Digital Editions" after having opened an .acsm file with ADE, that you read in Calibre will be DeDRMed in calibre.

And now I can finally get on with my weekend.

Note

[1] No, not "viola". The viola is a wonderful instrument but "viola" is French for "raped", unlike "voilà" which is French for "here you go". Also, I've seen "raped carrots" (for "shredded carrots salad") way too often in the English version of the menus in French restaurant.

So many people turn me one way

Krazy Kitty — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 13:49:00 +0100

So many people turn me one way
So many people turn me to stay
Never time to have my mind meet up
Caught in a motion and I don't wanna stop.

The Whitest Boy Alive – Burning

To make a long and well-known story short, after months (years?) of taking on too much work on the name of not wasting an opportunity to do something interesting that matters, I flew back from a conference (one that happened over a week-end, and although I did not attend many talks this is probably quite telling) to find myself utterly unable to leave for the one I was supposed to head to the following morning.

I've had two weeks of leave, a few half-days of work, some vacation, and I am now slowly starting to work again before m Iore vacation. I have spent a lot of time cancelling things, not reading my email, and trying to figure shit out. In that spirit, I am collecting resources and pieces of advice I have gotten on how to manage your time as an academic, learn to say no to brilliant opportunities (and crap ones as well), and avoid burnout (possibly). Here they are, in a jumble, for me to reflect on and others to benefit from.

Understanding burnout

The signs of burnout, as a starting point.

Some authors differentiate burnout from the talent curse.

A rather long read on overwork in academia. Not unrelated, the concept of busy olympics, or Being tired is not a badge of honor.

Did you slow down enough? Sometimes you think you have slowed down, but it turns out you have not – this is a bit what happened to me: I had already started saying no to so many things! Well, not enough, lady.

There seems to be a connection between burnout and impostor syndrome: feeling incompetent, worrying about it, and compensating for it are tiring. Ah, and also, women suffer from both more than men.

While on medical leave

Give yourself time. Permission to rest. Time to consider your options.

Email: When on leave, have an automatic email response that says you're on leave and will not be able to respond soon. Many problems will vanish on their own. If you're afraid your duties aren't being taken care of properly, or of missing out on a cheering-up personal email, have some trusted person sift through your email for you. Stop reading your work email.

Don't be ashamed. There' s nothing to be ashamed of. It's a classic, really. The moment I thought the word "burnout", I had 4 other academics, people I deeply respect as scientists and friends, coming to my mind as friends I could turn towards because they have been through this as well.

If you can, find a therapist who is an expert on work stress. They will help you figure out things about how you work in the long run. (Note to self: a therapist who think it "telling" that I am an only child, tells me way too much information about another patient of hers, and gives me – unprompted at that – the same useless bullshit about disordered eating as any issue of Cosmopolitan from the early 2000s is not an appropriate therapist.)

I've been told meditation helps. I think coloring, crocheting, doing super simple crosswords, or any other thing that helps you focusing on what you are doing and letting go of other thoughts are similarly helpful. I've also been told of apps that guide your breathing (such as Kardia) and well, I figure there isn't much to loose in trying one of them – worse case, you'll have, what, breathed?

Imagining your ideal day or week might help you define reasonable goals and see a path towards reaching them.

Clearing out your schedule

Clearing out your schedule: When preparing to come back from leave, make a list of all your commitments, by chronological order. Mark those you absolutely want to do. Decline all others. Then think long and hard about whether you are absolutely sure you want to do the remaining ones. Be super selfish – are they important for you? Will they give you more energy, be uplifting? Or do you feel like a weight is lifting off your chest when you consider the possibility that this disappears from your todo list? Have a trusted person (or more), with a good idea of what every item entails, go through the list with you and ensure it looks reasonable.

Remember: Important and urgent are two different things.

Allow yourself to back out. The world won't end and no one will die if you back out of this one commitment. Classes can be canceled for one term. Keynotes can vanish from the conference schedule. Someone can replace you. Unless they're utter asshats, other faculty members will be happy to have a chat with your PhD students about their project. The paper can be submitted to another conference.

Read about how to back out gracefully from commitments you can no longer honor (see for example Maria Corleo or Fast Company).

Checkout the foolproof approach to saying no, and keep a list of a few sentences you can use to refuse invitations, such as "Thank you for thinking of me for this! I would love to do it, but my plate is full at the moment / I have a busy semester ahead."

Avoiding burnout or overcommitment

The "NO" committee is a group of 3 people who are close to you but not involved in your work and will help you evaluate any request for additional work. Without going that route, I suggest giving yourself time (a couple days at least) before saying yes. Do not say yes until you can list good reasons to accept. To figure out what a good reason is, imagine it's not you but a prone-to-overwork friend who is given this opportunity or request: would the reason convince you she should say yes?

Read Jo VanEvery on saying no. Keep the distinction between importance and emergency in mind, and take the time to define what is important.

List criteria to consider before accepting an invitation to give a talk or lecture / review a paper or an application / organize an event / contribute to a grant proposal. Mostly, what will I get out of it and how long will it take (including preparing slides, doing the paperwork for traveling, travel time, etc.)

Block time for personal research (reading, thinking, working out stuff, coding, running experiments) as well as self-care in your schedule. Treat this as any other set appointment that you cannot reschedule.

Have a Personal Inventory Day to re-evaluate your schedule, make doctor appointments, etc.

Sleep. Easier said than done, but if you need a reminder of why sleep is important, here's a Guardian article. Don't read it if you suffer from insomnia, because you do not need to feel guilty about not being able to sleep on top of everything else. Do tell your doctor you're not sleeping enough, though.

Avoiding the scourge that is email: No email before 12pm, or before you've done at least two things, or only at 10am and 4pm... Well, you get the idea: do not spend your day checking your email and reacting to any and every thing that comes your way. And no email at home / in the evening / at the weekend / when on vacation. Do you need to respond to all your email all the time? Read Melissa Fobos's Do you want to be known for your writing, or for your swift email responses?.

Have a single must-do item on your to-do list each day.

Refuse overwork.

Read about slow scholarship: Daniel Maccabe here; Raul Pacheco-Vega here or there; and even maybe For Slow Scholarship: A Feminist Politics of Resistance through Collective Action in the Neoliberal University by Alice Mountz et al. If you understand French, do spend 15 minutes listening to Laure Saint-Raymond on that topic (I do not entirely agree with her on quotas, but that is a different issue altogether).

On practicing self-care in academia: read psycgirl, the Academic Mental Health Collective, and Eric Anthony Grollman. Note that there are serious caveats about applying a thin layer of self-care on systemic problems, which Grace Cale and Mawiyah Patten have written about.

Late 2020 edit: You may want to read Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski's book Burnout, especially if you're a woman.

Deep-Fried Smelly Old Socks

Krazy Kitty — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 23:07:00 +0200

I have been invited to give a talk at a workshop in a scientific community that I don't know well (and that I would have described as only tangentially related to mine before discovering I knew two of the research groups that were present).

A number of things have irked me.

1. Someone thought that toilet brushes dripping in bleach were a good idea. My pants are ruined. They were my nice talk pants.

2. The wifi was terrible. Emails managed to arrive and leave but I couldn't even log into Twitter.

3. I was the only invited speaker to be a woman. Out of six.

4. The food was Majorly Unsavory and there were no vegetarian option. If I'm going to eat meat I'd like it to be tasty, thank you. Also vegetables aren't a swear word, you can put some in my plate. (Flageolet beans and mushrooms don't count as vegetables. Mushrooms aren't even plants, okay?)

5. One of the invited speakers ran 15 minutes overtime. At 1pm. When there was another speaker scheduled after him before lunch.

6. No one thought of providing water for the speakers. This one speaker forgot her own water bottle in her room and was mightily thirsty after her 40 minutes talk.

7. I was given a list of posters to rate at the poster session. No one asked me "Would you be so helpful as to rate a few posters for us?". No one said "It would be very nice if you could rate a few posters." No. I was just given a list of posters to rate.

8. Someone's doctoral work was apparently consisting entirely of a literature review. I am skeptical. Not of the value of the work, but of it qualifying as PhD material.

9. Someone's poster consisted in applying existing methods to existing data and not getting any results out of it. When I asked what was coming next, it looked like the student had never thought about that question before.

10. Someone's poster presented a new, complex method to analyze complex phenomena, as simulated through a complex simulation model. After ten minutes of discussion I gave up on explaining to the student why I thought it interesting to ask whether the complex method was performing as well as existing, simple method in simple cases (that are specific cases of the complex simulation model).

11. My hotel room smelled like someone deep fried something in it. Possibly smelly old socks.

12. Someone with Jewish name asked me if I was related to a researcher with the same last name as me (I am, and I am used to the question). Then said something weird about religion. What was I supposed to say, "Hi five, we're both Jewish, except not really, because my mom's goy"?

13. In case you were wondering, yes, young woman who say "She always complain about unwanted attentions. I don't get any attentions at all" do exist. I'm for erring on the side of compassion, and I do feel for her, but I also sort of wanted to, I don't know, slap her head into outer space.

14. The workshop booklet was printed in Comic Sans.

15. In one of the other invited talks, someone used a blanket statement about some methods I happen to know well that was so blatantly wrong my head snapped up and I laughed out loud.

16. Everything was in French, because it was A French Thing, even though some of the PhD students don't speak French (or not fluently). Then I overheard French PhD students complaining they find it hard to follow online courses because the one they're interested in are usually in English. Is this how we're preparing our future scientists?

17. I overheard people saying they didn't want anyone asking questions at their poster. THIS IS SCIENCE. Our purpose is to ask questions.

The Three Things Your Pub Toilets Need

Krazy Kitty — Thu, 14 May 2015 19:55:00 +0200

1. A variety of condom choices.

2. A dementia-related ad.

3. Carpet.

Science and Music, More Than Ever

Krazy Kitty — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 23:39:00 +0200

April means flowers blooming, days growing to a decent length, the sun shining and the fog of a depressing winter lifting at last. Massacres keep happening, migrants die by the hundreds on the wide Mediterranean sea, and French politics are getting maddeningly scary, but spring is in the air and in my steps. It's also in the steps of the World's Best Baby, who is starting to walk with these little gleeful toddler shouts that melt all your troubles away.

Music

I go to most excellent concerts.

I've seen Vladimir Ashkenazy conduct an orchestra of young musicians. I've heard the most beautiful Haydn. I've shivered hearing the song of a clarinet mix with the voice of a viola. I've savored comments from members of the audience, remarking afterwards on how beautiful an instrument the viola is (well, duh). I've marveled at Beethoven's violin sonatas, along with an audience who brought forth three encores and concluded with a well-deserved standing ovation.

Tomorrow I'll see the New York Philharmonic. The New York Philharmonic! All this thanks to a bunch of generous people from the Internet. I met three of them face-to-face for the first time a couple of weeks ago. They're even better in person.

I prepare concerts with my orchestra.

I make the time to practice and play my instrument more often, almost daily.

I hang out with people who make music as a pastime; I hang out with people who breathe music in every minute in their spare time; I hang out with people who make music for a living.

Science

Young people with much more impressive resumes than mine at the time I was completing my masters degree are applying to do their PhD with me, sometimes even being ready to forgo guaranteed funding to "give themselves the means to do what they really want" even though none of the funding plans we have for them is guaranteed. A professor I almost did my own PhD with now asks me to co-advise a PhD student with her.

Colleagues are letting me know how much they appreciate me, both as a scientist and as a person, through the regular application of blush-inducing compliments. Thankfully I recently noticed that it doesn't always show when I feel the heat rising to my cheeks, allowing me to appear to keep my cool.

I went to a very geeky one-day event, got my programming groove back on, and relished hearing people getting passionate about low-level architecture. Attending said event with a guy I used to study with more than ten years ago was the perfect icing on that nerdy cake. After that, I got to spend a very nice evening drinking too much wine with British guys who at some point actually argued about tweed. And plaid. And emacs vs vim, of course.

I do math and write code and think about genetics and I keep being amazed that people pay me to do so.

Music + Science (h/t)

I argue about jazz with my colleagues.

I make plans to play a concerto with a woman I first met over a shared interest for graph theory and statistics.

I wonder about the piano, viola, violin trios that I could play with two people with whom I'm equally likely to discuss convex optimization as German romantic composers.

And old friend writes me about music I made him discover years ago and smoothly transitions to HIV research in the following paragraph.

I go out to orchestra parties. There's sometimes food, often wine, and always laughter, singing, and math jokes. Occasionally there's also dancing and the opportunity to verify empirically the stereotype that bassoonists are good with their lips and tongue.

There's no better morning-after talk than music and science.

And traveling too (h/t)

A childhood friend slowly introduces me to the people he met in the fifteen years we haven't seen each other. Invariably, we talk about music, and science, and travels. (And, well, politics.)

I buy plane and train tickets. To other places in France, to the Netherlands, to Scotland, to Iceland.

And because you can never make everything fit in nicely design little boxes, one of my closest friends wrote a novel that looks like it's going to be published for real and I'm way too excited about this for my own good.

The Proposal

Krazy Kitty — Tue, 03 Feb 2015 21:35:00 +0100

It sometimes feels like most of my scientific career is made of "why the fuck did I accept to do this?" moments.

The only thing that changes is that now I know they're going to happen at the moment I agree.

This time was no exception. Five-year research plan, one point five million euros, nine percent chance of success, all on my own, deadline in a little under two months? Sign me in. Well a few people whose opinion in these matters I respect say I oughta try it so. Sure! Why not. Great opportunity. Will give me a first experience. Thinking about my five-year plan can't be a bad idea anyway. What, Christmas vacation? Oh well, who needs Christmas vacation anyway, as long as one can spare a couple days to hang out with family.

OK, the part where I got to think about science, check the literature, sit down and do the math for the one thing I've been telling people for months should probably work out... that was cool.

The part where I got to organize all these ideas in a plan, finally putting all those years of essay writing at school to use, that was kind of fun too.

The part where I started sending this plan out, feeling as exposed as if I had emailed around pictures of myself naked, and started receiving feedback about all the things it lacked? Not so much fun any more.

Settling on a final plan and starting to write was a bit better.

Sitting down with my project manager and feeling that he had all sorts of puzzling forms and requirements and templates and budgeting under control was nice.

Getting feedback on my first draft was better than expected. People didn't hate it outright. They even thought it was rather well written. And they liked the ideas. Well, some of them, at least. They gave constructive comments about the things that were unclear. Better yet, they gave converging constructive comments about the things that were unclear. They also gave constructive comments about adding a little spark to the thing. Well, a lot of spark, really. "Your reviewers are most likely to be male and ambitious," I was told. "Write more... R-like. Or K-like. Or J-like. Or F-like. Think of T! Imagine what he would write. Or, well, you don't lack examples of male, ambitious writing, do you?" No, no, I don't. And believe me it's all I can do not to grate my teeth and roll my eyes when I read that "this ambitious projects relies on two major breakthroughs of its PI". But that's the game, right? "You have to add some shine and sparkles. But not vulgar shine and sparkles" is another piece of excellent advice. Unfortunately, according to my Calvinist-agnostic upbringing, shine and sparkle are vulgar. (Unlike bright colors. Somehow we like bright colors in the family.)

So yeah, this last week of adding sparkle and shine, clarifying concepts and statements without making the document longer, constantly checking page length and counting characters? This weekend spent glaring at my laptop screen because I really, really, really didn't wanna although I hadta? The exchanges with the legal department, where you understand that there's an ocean of between you and them and that you'll never understand them and they'll never understand you and I'm not saying this because their English is terrible? The one time I had been staring at the screen long enough I felt like scratching my eyeballs out of their sockets but a figure started going in the bottom margin and someone told me I should take a break and I looked up and replied with tears in my voice that if I didn't fix the figure they were going to reject my proposal for not respecting the margin requirement and I couldn't possibly take a break until I had fixed it?

Those sucked.

But then... all of a sudden... I emailed my project manager. "Unless you notice any problem with it, I think this is my final version," I wrote.

And then I spent half an hour on Twitter and I went for my lunch meeting and then my afternoon meeting all the while checking my email to see whether there was any changes to make. And then I proofread the entire document again. And then I went to the submission platform to check we had put the correct version of every file in there.

And then the clock marked the hour of the submission deadline and my project manager confirmed the submission was final and there was no obvious problem with it and I turned my computer off.

Grant proposals don't have acknowledgement sections but if they did mine would have thanked

the ten people who proofread the document at various stages of its preparation;
the guy who let me have his own successful proposal to the same funding program as an example just because a friend of mine who used to be a colleague of him asked;
the guy who let me have his own successful proposal and his LaTeX template for it just because I asked on Facebook (and we've worked at the same institute although on very different topics);
the friend who gave me homemade cookie mix so that I had cookies this weekend, and who regularly checked whether I was still remembering to breathe;
the friend who answered my urgent text message about typographic rules (because typography matters, people);
the colleague who took me to lunch a couple weeks ago because I obviously needed to unwind;
the friends and colleagues and people of the Internet who made me feel warmer in this cold, dreary, sorrowful month of January 2015;
the two amazing little girls who made me forget everything else about the world while I was holding them;
my entire orchestra, even the obnoxious violinists, for those moments when I got to lose myself in music;
my mom's dog, for the adorable photos I received;
aspirin, acetaminophen, theobromine and Roquefort.

Thanks, y'all.

Especially Roquefort.

"So? How does it feel? Are you gonna get a beer?" asked the guy who had the day before canceled our plans to have a drink together after work to celebrate the submission.

"No... I don't think the alcohol will mix too well with excessive caffeine levels and lack of sleep.

I'm going to go home. Relax. Cook myself some spinach..."

Girlfriend knows how to have fun, y'all.

2014: A Year in Travels

Krazy Kitty — Wed, 31 Dec 2014 18:03:00 +0100

Winter.

Lens. From Greek antiques to Art Deco.

Amsterdam. A room full of girls on the top floor of a very narrow house. Rembrandt, Chagall and Constant. Canals shining under the sun. Hot mint.

Toulouse. So much rain. Giving a talk in my wet socks. Cake and tea. Books, books, books, so many books. The whirlwind of an evening from here to there, chatting freely with people I had just met, having fun. Breakfast in the sun.

Spring.

Germanland. A room that hasn't changed over the years. Work. Schubert on the piano. Aperol-Spritz on the main square. A long theater rehearsal. A party, me in my striped dress, stories, confessions, hugs, and love. Ice cream alongside the river. Feeling at home.

Southern France. I didn't know it, but this was to be the last time I saw my grandmother.

Germanland, again. More work. Feeling warm and loved as an old friend fusses around me, feeding me food, coffee, music and books. A ride on the river. An evening at the theater. Hugs.

Porto. Music, food, sunshine, a ride on the river, the decaying beauty of an old town, photos of that same town taken from behind windows. A crown of flowers on my head. Port. All of it in great company.

London. Canals, water, pubs, sunshine, Indian food with a Californian friend.

Cambridge. Beers near the water. The best little girl in the entire world. Photo shoots. Indian food with a lots of people I never met before and a few I've loved for what feels like forever. More sunshine, pubs and water.

Summer.

Southern France. Meeting the most fantastic puppy in the entire world. Swimming outside. Managing to neither melt nor burn in the sun. Thinking, fleetingly, about running away from it all and write absurd novels.

Picardie. Fires and shooting stars.

Stockholm. Science. Great science, awesome science, terrible science. Science in hallways, science at breakfast tables, science around beers, science in rooms where we sneaked in. Some of the best conversations around food and beer I've ever had. The fantastic Scandinavian light at sunset. Reindeer and sea lions. Telling stories.

Southern France. Two round trips in one week to see my grandmother die and bury her. A warm puppy licking the tears off my face. Hugging my cousin for the first time ever and wondering whether we'll ever let go.

Fall.

San Diego. Sunshine, water, good food and beers. And cool science and friends. I'm starting to see a theme here.

Tunisia. No Internet. No decisions to make. The Mediterranean, sunshine, desert sand, oases, palm trees, camels, Roman ruins, and dates. Probably what saved me from burning out.

Germanland. Curling up with my feet under myself, liters of tea, a few beers, theater, boardgames, and good friends wrapping me in their arms.

Southern France. Family, minus one. Mixing traditions from Provence, Morocco, and Germany. The sun on my face and a warm puppy on my belly.

You know, I could convince myself it was a good year.

That Blurry Fog

Krazy Kitty — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 18:03:00 +0200

How did it start? I couldn't say. Do these things ever have a clear way of starting? The first time I laid my eyes on him I didn't think much of it and that kept happening for quite a number of times, until... until... When did it start? During this week where we spent a lot of time just the two of us together, I suppose, although of course we'd set the ground before—how else would we have gotten to spend a lot of time just the two of us together?

I can't even say exactly what started. Something dancing on the edge of a friendship meant to last. Paying attention when his eyes are twinkling. My heart sometimes beating a bit faster when I see him. Being able to draw comfort from his presence only.

Small things, anyway. It's always small things. Nothing much, really, and so much at the same time.

The emails he writes when he doesn't really have anything to say.

The glances we exchange.

The things he sometimes says when I'm on my way out, as if looking for something, anything to keep me here a bit longer.

The long conversations we have, about politics, about science, about sociology, about music, about art, getting excited about the same things, without noticing how the hours go by. The banter, too, that's already led some people to wonder exactly how close we are.

How we're always up for some minor mischief together—exploring the roofs of a building; getting that extra beer when we should really be heading home; sneaking into places where we don't belong; playing pranks on each other.

The advice he asks for. The trust we've built. The way he picked up my wet umbrella once, casually, as if we'd spend half a lifetime carrying each other's stuff to the point where it had just become our stuff—that's reading quite a lot in a wet umbrella dripping on the floor of a dimly lit bar.

The words he picks. "Thanks" when saying goodbye, when there's nothing particular to thank me for. "I think of you a lot" for condolences. "Hey, you're here!" when, well, hey, I'm here, but most people didn't really care one way or the other.

How I almost call him by a nickname when I shouldn't.

The way he kisses my cheeks hello and bye—only if there's no one else around.

He's a great friend, and I'll never say enough how amazing this is already. Some people think I praise friendships because it's sadly all I have, being by now a stubbornly single lady. All I can say to that is, you haven't got the friends I have. So I'm grateful for that and I'm happy with him. The smiles he brings to my face are genuine and not based on the illusion of the possibility of something more to come, on a misguided hope that there is more to this than that; they're here because of what he brings me right now.

Hence I usually keep my mind on the now I already draw so much from, and my attitude casual. Nevertheless my feelings sometimes attempt incursions in that blurry fog that separate friendship from, dare I say it, love. Maybe he'll say something a bit controversial that I happen to agree with, and something inside me will do a little backflip. Or he'll exclaim "Yes! Totally! You get it!", and smile his warm smile, and there'll be a shine to his eyes that I may just be imagining to be a bit more. Or I'll catch myself noticing how beautiful his hands are, how I'd like to see them playing music, how delicately they move, the things they could...

I may start wondering.

Is this... does this mean... could it be....?

And while half my brain is letting that idea sink in and running wild with it, toying with the thought of moving one oh so small step closer to lean against his solid frame, wondering how his arms would feel closing around me, imagining what those hands could do in combination with this smile and those twinkly eyes... the other half keeps me anchored in a world where I've always been terrible at reading others and where there's little place for maybes and what ifs.

So I stop the Kopfkino, put on my sweetest smile, look him straight in the eyes, and ask, with just enough concern in my voice to convince myself I care: "And your wife? How is she?"

Reasons I cried today

Krazy Kitty — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 20:06:00 +0200

My back was still hurting when I woke up.
My back was hurting when I washed the dishes.
I miss Germany.
France celebrates its national day with a military parade. And fireworks and concerts and speeches. But mostly a military parade.
My back hurt.
Someone pushed me in the corridors of the metro even though I was limping my way through, feeling sorry for myself.
Someone wrote on Twitter that Germans don't understand sarcasm. I miss my sarcastic German friends and their dry humour.
I remembered that one time when my friend told me he was going to "leave science and become a lab administrator, or technician", and I enthusiastically told him this was great, that this wasn't leaving science at all, and that it made me happy to know he knew what he wanted to do after his PhD, and he told me I was the first person not to berate him for not wanting to become a professor.
My back hurt and no one gave a shit.
The war between Israel and Palestine.
I still miss Tel Aviv even though I'm glad not to be there now.
I can't configure Facebook to stop telling me about people's birthdays. It's written right here in the upper right corner, Facebook! I don't need an extra notification and I especially don't need to see all the meaningless messages other people left them. 12 people took 3.5 seconds each to type in "Happy Birthday!!" and 23 others only used one exclamation mark? Fascinating.
I need Facebook like a fish needs a bicycle but I don't know how else to keep up with quite a few people I enjoy keeping up with.
I'm tired and my. back. hurts.

Chronic (back) pain is emotionally exhausting, y'all.