Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Hey everyone, sorry for being quiet over the holidays. Hope you all enjoyed yours and were able to re-energise for the new year.

I really enjoyed mine. I was in Canada for two weeks at the bf's family. We met up with lots of his friends and family and also managed to squeeze in some lazy time. We did absolutely nothing touristy or note-worthy. All family and friends visits. A little party for New Year's Eve, some shopping (I love Old Navy), got me some jeans, sweatpants and a nice top. And by nice I mean comfy. Actually both of us bought so many clothes that we had to stuff some into our hand luggage as our suitcase was too heavy. Ups.

Flight home started very interesting. We left the gate. And about ten minutes later had an announcement that we would pull back to the gate to let off a sick passenger. Turns out he was sitting just five rows ahead of us. After he left one of the flight attendants cleaned up after him. I kid you not, she removed about six to seven of those little brown paper bags. Felt very sorry for the two people sitting next to him. The bf is now very worried that it was the noro virus and we will be sick too. Fingers crossed that he just had a bad stomach. 

But now we are back home and back to work tomorrow. Sigh. Wish holidays could last forever!!!!

Welcome 2012!

(I wanted to post this a couple of days ago, but for some reason I couldn't upload the video. So now I created my own youtube channel just to share this with you. Sorry, took me a bit to figure out how to work it.)

I spent New Year's Eve at home drinking mojitos and baileys. Good stuff. I tried to find a decent TV show looking at the highlights of 2011, but to my disappointment I couldn't find one. So we settled on the music channels. Did some drunken dancing, played some card games and at midnight we headed out on the balcony to watch the fireworks.

All the excitement was recorded on my new camera. The quality is actually not that good. I guess it was just too dark. Please, please ignore my horrible voice. I hate having to listen to my own voice.

The big fireworks on the left are at the London Eye. The lights you sometimes see that almost look static in the sky are floating lanterns. I thought they were pretty cool. Two of them came dangerously close to our house. I think there was almost too much wind for them, but they were pretty!

Now enjoy!

Bye bye 2011

The last few days have been quite uneventful. We met up with the bf's dad and stepmom a few times. Usually to eat. They didn't really want to visit any tourist things (lots of them were closed anyway). So instead we had a lot of good food. Not complaining there. Time at home I mainly spend reading and watching movies. Great and relaxing.

So today it's the last day of the year and I think it's time to look at last year's resolutions and see how I've done:

1. Drop ten kilos by the end of the year (preferably not gain any back over Christmas). Surprise surprise this happened! Well, not the last bit. I dropped 12 kilos, but gained 3 back during the holidays. But I am back on healthy eating tomorrow so not worried at all.
2. Read at least one book a month for pleasure (doesn't count if it's for study). Easy peasy.
3. Regularly update Goodreads.Done!
4. Get a haircut at least twice a year (yeah, that's a LOT for me) and make it short.  Done two by May! But none since. Bad me! Might get a cut in January.
5. Try to eat at least one piece of fruit a day. This has not happened since I switched to a diet back in October that avoids fruit. But I eat loads of fresh vegetables.
6. Go one week without carbohydrates (bf swears on this so let's try it out). I never did a whole week, but basically do six days of it and then an indulgence day on number 7.
7. Go out for drinks to a new place at least once a month. I think I managed this. Was not really counting though.
8. Go to at least six new and exciting dinner places during the year. I thought I would totally fail on this, but since the bf's dad took us out three times this week I managed! LOL.
9. Go out at least twice a month and ignore work/study for those nights. I meet people from uni about twice a month for drinks/bookclub. So to my own surprise I managed to do this.
10. Go running once a week. FAIL!
11. Have a detox day once a month. Fail. Though I feel with the diet I switched to it's really unnecessary. Though what I did do I stocked up on bath bombs, so now will try to have a nice relaxing bath about once a month.
12. Cook at least two times a week.Bf complains I didn't do it, but I think I tried hard. Though I do make him cook more than me. He's just better at it.
13. Go to the movies at least six times. Win, Win (May), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, 50/50, Breaking Dawn. Two missing. Darn.
14. Watch at least four Studio Ghibli movies that I haven't seen yet. My Neighbour Totoro, Grave of the Fireflies. I recorded some on our new TV. Now just need to watch them. But yeah, FAIL!
15. Use up all the tea in the kitchen before buying any new ones (except my daily dose of green tea. Cannot live without that. But all the 'fun' ones have to go before stocking up again). Fail, I tossed all the ones out when we moved that I knew I wouldn't be drinking anymore.
16. Go through the whole wardrobe and throw out what I haven't worn for a year or doesn't fit/isn't comfy/looks horrible. Yes! But I kept some things, maybe will have to do it again... Did it again while moving. Tossed out so many clothes mainly due to no storage to keep them. Am very proud of myself.
17. Buy one pair of shoes that looks good with skirts. And maybe buy a new pencil skirt. I bought some new sandals, which look really nice with skirts. And now also some heels for the winter. Still hard to walk in but at least they look decent.
18. Smile when somebody wants to take a photograph of me (instead of yelling at them). Yeah, this worked out good for me. Bf complains I don't let him take pictures of me. Which is not true. I don't have any images of him because he keeps hiding from the camera...
19. Buy a wrist watch. Done! See here...
20. Reply to messages within three days. No delays allowed. Yes, waiting three months is too long. Sigh, I am still very bad at this. Though got a bit better.
21. Go on chat/messenger programmes at least twice a week to stay in touch with friends. Still not big at going on messenger. I even turned off the facebook one.
22. Start an address book and update it regularly.Fail. Though I still would like to do it. I did find my old one. But it's not up-to-date.
23. Do not just get any job when graduating. It has to be a publishing job. Done, done, done!!!
24. Put away money once I got a job for a trip to Japan. Working on it. We want to book in a few weeks. I got enough for the flight, now need to save for the money I will need there.
25. Do the Japanese homework every week for term 2 and 3 and study for half an hour a week on top of the homework. Let's not talk about this...
26. Finish Japanese for Busy People I and work through half of Japanese for Busy People II. I had high hopes for this to do it in between uni and job starting. But then I started work before I even finished uni, so yeah, that didn't happen....

So there are many things I haven't quite accomplished what I set out to do. But on others things I think I have done rather well. I want to do some New Years resolutions for 2012. Need to have a think about what I want to achieve next year and what to concentrate on and then I will put it up.

 

Until then... Everyone have a great start to 2012! It can only get better...

It's a new year

New Year's Eve was pretty unspectacular. Bf had to work (I fortunately didn't have to go to my placement) but came home quite early, around 3. So I headed out to grab some food. I also wanted to get out because I was getting cabin fever. Had been sitting at home for the last three days waiting for a delivery that never arrived. Still hasn't.

Bf wanted mashed potatoes and sausages for dinner. Not very festive, but then again we weren't in a festive mood. When I came back from store bf was on PSN busy downloading games. So we had a pretty relaxed evening playing Tetris and Risque against each other, watching a bit of TV and drinking champagne and Guinness mixed with Champagne. It's called something Velvet. Can't remember now. Nothing exciting, but it was nice to spend some time together. We went to bed at 4am. So I guess we actually did have lots of fun because neither of us wanted to go to sleep.

The next day we slept in, had a nice breakfast and were lazy the whole day. Initially bf wanted to go up early and shopping, but that didn't happen. We went on Sunday instead. Was fun, I browsed through some clothing stores, HMV and drug stores. Only bought some socks and panties though. Have to watch the budget and I really don't NEED any new clothes. Plus there is no space in the wardrobe. Need to throw out some older clothes. But I hate doing that. Not good at getting rid of things. Though I have been going through my sock/underwear/tights shelve and threw out quite a few things.

Now it's time to study. Urgh, hate studying. The bad thing is I got my grades from the essays and I did really well. And since that is 50% of the grade I'm not too bothered with the exams. I don't care if I do well or not as long as I pass and I feel I know enough to pass... so meh, not bothered about studying. But don't tell the bf. He'll get really worried otherwise.

Will do more cleaning today. Hate doing it all on one day. So today I think I will clean up the desk (which should take forever) and either kitchen or bathroom (anything to avoid studying). Hoping that when I start bf will feel obliged to join in and clean the other room (yes, isn't it great to have a studio flat, not that much cleaning to do).

I'm still not happy with the looks of the blog. So yes, expect another change. Sorry, I tried to do the seasonal thing, but now I just wanna switch it up a bit... I will leave you with some photos of our shopping trip to Angel.

Note the subtitle: Only one year left til the world ends according to John Cusack.

Pics look a bit bleak. It was a really sunny day when we set out but when I took the pictures it was getting overcast.

New Year, new Post

Happy New Year everyone!

Hope you all spent your holidays with family and loved ones. I am back from Canada where I spent Christmas with my bf family. We had a good time. Stayed most of the two weeks in Toronto and the last few days in its suburbs. It was freezing cold and we had snow. I enjoyed that so much. Really like a good cold winter. One of the first things I did was buy a proper winter jacket. I think it's for skiing. Very warm and cosy! Love it.

I didn't do that many exciting things. There are basically no photos. All we did was hang out and meet friends and family. Had a lot of good food. Went to a basketball game. I really enjoyed that. We were in the last row, but still had an amazing view. I am always very impressed by the technology and 'show' level at North American sporting events. Half of the time spent there (about three hours) was actually not any game play going on but some sort of entertainment. Don't get me wrong. I like that. I am not such a big sport fan, so the entertainment in between is one of my favorite parts of the games. I was a little bit disappointed in the end. There is a pizza company that sponsors a slice of pizza for every person if the teams scores 100 points or more. With about 20 seconds left the score was up for 98 and Toronto was leading. So instead of going for it and getting us all pizza they opted for the save ending and just kept the ball in possession for the last seconds. Didn't even go for it and threw it at the end. Grrr. Was a bit mad. Ah well, I survived without free pizza. But still, would have been nice. You have to give back to the fans!

Another nice thing I enjoyed was the swimming pool with whirlpool that was in the apartment complex where we stayed. Especially the whirlpool was great at the end of a cold cold day. ;-)

The flight back did not start out too well. It was a couple of days after the Detroit incident and they tightened up security. Shouldn't have affected us since we didn't fly via the States, but I had the distinct impression that there was not enough staff to handle us because they were all busy trying to get people into the States. I think we stood in line for one and a half hours for check-in. They only had half the counters open. Crazy. Well, made it to the plane on time. We were even lucky because there was a duty-free right across from our gate. So at least be could pick up some ice wine and cookies. Ice wine was delicious. Had it for New Years Eve. Very sweet and thick. Like a dessert wine. Yum.

Anyway, back home now. Loved to come back. Made me realise how much I like it here. Home sweet home. Hope you all enjoyed your holidays and are ready to start the new year!