Various "happy places" to which I have gone in the past week or so:

The Getty Center:Yes, there are some things LA does right. It's all high art and gardens and panoramic views (LA doesn't look so bad from high up in the hills) and pretty much my favorite architecture ever. If it wasn't so far away from everything, and if it weren't for all that pesky security, I would live there.

The Meadows, in Edinburgh, right around sunset:
(I couldn't find a picture of it at sunset, or during the festival, but you get the idea.)
The Meadows is an enormous quad-type-thing located between the city center and my former flat. I had to walk across it just about every day, and it always made me happy. You could see Arthur's Seat and Edinburgh University, and if it was a nice day there would be lots of people lounging about. During the festival around sunset there would be fire jugglers, not to mention the huge complex with the Ladyboys tent, the Moscow State Circus tent and a fun fair that played cheesy '80s music all the time.

Nevsky Prospect, in St. Petersburg, at night:
Nevsky Prospekt dominates St. Petersburg. At night--or when it gets dark, rather--the buildings, cathedrals and monuments lining the street light up and the city's strange blend of Russian onion domes, Western European grandeur, Soviet bombast and crass American capitalism suddenly somehow makes sense.

A small apartment somewhere just on the outskirts of central Pest:
This should be self explanatory. Hard to believe I took that picture three weeks ago--it feels like something that happened in another lifetime.

Just a few of the places I visit during moments like these, when I'm stressing out about getting my thesis draft done in the next week, finding a reader for the thesis outside the department, finishing the music part of my thesis, which may instead turn out to be the final project for my film music class, passing my orchestration class, convincing the Oldenborg staff to let us do the Russian Special Dinner skit in English instead of Russian (it's a bigger deal than it sounds, trust me), actually working on and performing in the Russian Special Dinner, dealing with that dinner, three jazz gigs and two choir concerts all in the space of about a week, designing and ordering the T-shirts for jazz band, figuring out what the hell I'm going to do if it turns out my internship place doesn't hire me (my boss said "probably," but the final decision has to wait until some guy who's on vacation comes back from vacation), figuring out what the hell I'm going to do if my internship place does hire me (I'll need to find an apartment, a car and another job...since if I get hired it'll probably only be for three days a week or so), and wondering when the loud party two floors above me will stop so I can get some sleep so I can spend all day tomorrow on my thesis.

Oh yes. Thank god for happy places.