The Week in Review

The Week(s) in Review: 2012-12 & 2012-13

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I’m grateful for quiet times at work that allow me to take some extra days off here and there. Not just because yay-freedom, but also because I have a lot of in-my-head things going, what with the genderprocess and all. Some extra days to deal with stuff are nice.

I’m happy because I finally have a new appointment date for my genderteam intake. It will take place April 23rd. This time they actually managed to refer me to the shrink so this really is it: the start of my road to fully being who I am. It’s going to be a long journey, and it’s not going to be easy, but I’m more than ready to finally get this show on the road.

I’m also happy because the Postcrossing is taking off quite nicely. All but one of my cards have been received. The only one still in transit is one to a school class in the USA. I got my first five cards, they came from the USA, Canada, Germany, Austria and Poland. The cards can be seen on my Postcrossing profile. I requested new addresses yesterday, which I will pick (and write) cards for tomorrow.

Last Friday we went out with (almost) the whole e-mail squad from work. Nico and I put the thing together, and since it was meant as a getting to know each other better thing after the team expansion from early this year, we settled on bowling and food. The evening was a grand success, a lot of fun was had.

I learned I need a lot of warm up time before I throw proper balls, and that if I want to throw a strike, I first need to drop the ball behind me so it rolls back to the people on my team.

I discovered that it is actually possible for naturally (somewhat) touchy people to be like this in a fun, non-obnoxious, non-threatening way. Normally when people, for example, hang over my shoulder to ask me something, or randomly grab my arms, I have this knee-jerk reaction to pull back and get this ‘get the fuck away from me’ vibe. I’m glad to say I did not have this then. Yay, progress!

The Week in Review: 2012-10

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I’m grateful for the fairly quiet times at work that enabled me to take two extra days off so my one week off turned into a glorious week and a half.

I’m happy with my new tablet (a Qware pro 3, 10″). I ordered it online last week after I’d been to the Intertoys for the 7″ version for the third time and they still didn’t have it. This one was more expensive, but the added screen real estate makes it worth it. I spent the weekend loading it up with apps and am contemplating adding a custom rom to update it to Android 4 (it has 2.3 now). And, I’m blogging from the tablet now. Which is showing me one thing very clearly: I need to get a dictionary imported here somewhere because I spend way too much time correcting myself.

I was annoyed with the reflection essay I needed to write to finish the education track at work. I hate those sort of essays with a passion so when I finally sat down for it I spent two hours hatefully avoiding it and complaining about it ( 🙂 ) and then decided to go all the way in, over the top and all. So an hour later I had three pages with artfully inserted quotes and section headings and all that jazz.

I learned that I’d been playing my ukelele wrong (and slightly cheating here since this was actually yesterday and thus already week 11). Turns out I’d been counting my strings wrong. I started at the top (near my chest) with one and then went down, while in fact the top one is string four. So the c and d that play on the third string I was actually playing on the second. And the e, f and g that play on the second string I was playing on the third. No wonder the Frere Jacques sounded off. Got this fixed now so I’ll be spending this week getting the fingerings on the right strings under control, as well as practising the two beginner tunes on the next page: Frere Jacques and Mary Had a Little Lamb.

I discovered I still have some residual unresolved sort-of-jealous feelings about something (and yes being vague on purpose). I thought I worked through this, rationally I understand the choice, but feelings can be a bitch sometimes.

The Week in Review: 2012-09

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I’m grateful for the many supportive comments last week’s blog got, both here and on Facebook. I’m also grateful that the scratches Milo gave me were not that deep and are healing nicely (even though the itching is driving me nuts).

I’m happy my ukelele books arrived. I’ve decided to approach this learning how to play thing fairly seriously so I’m assigning myself two or three pages of the book per week so I have enough time to practice before I move on. This will hopefully prevent me from rushing through it and not really retaining any of the stuff I read or play. I’m also happy with the end-of-year review I got at work.

I’m slightly annoyed that it’s hiatus season for many of my favourite US TV shows (especially Glee), although it does give me a chance to catch up on others I’ve missed. (This is what you get when I have no proper things to be negative about 😀 )

I learned notes on the c and e string of the ukelele this week. Expect many ukelele related learnables in the coming weeks 😀

 

I’ve decided to add a fifth point to this thing to turn it into a bit more of a full fledged blog post since I don’t always blog in between, and as the (internet) saying goes: “Five things make a post.”

 

I discovered Postcrossing and DrawSomething. I knew Postcrossing, I looked into it a couple years ago, and was intrigued but then I forgot about it. This week I saw it come up in my news feed on Facebook and remembered again. So I decided to sign up for it, and I’ve requested my first five addresses. I’ll be getting cards and stamps this week so I can send then to Russia, Taiwan, Belarus, Germany and the US. I’m excited already about the cards I’ll be getting back.

DrawSomething is a game I downloaded on my iPhone tonight and even though I’ve played it for like ten minutes, I love it. I believe it can also be played on Facebook. The point of the game is to draw one of three words you’ve been given and then your opponent has to guess what it is you drew. After that, the roles reverse and you guess the opponents drawing.

The Week in Review: 2012-07

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I’m grateful for the 24Kitchen channel. I get so much inspiration from it, not just in recipes or more general foods or flavours that I wanna try, but also the places the chefs are or go to, the colours, the kitchens… I also learn a lot from it, both about cooking, and about the various cultures that the foods come from. It’s an awesome channel to just leave on as background.

I’m happy because I had roast chicken bits for dinner. I love chicken, and I love it even more when roasted, but as I mentioned last week, I’m not a very patient person in certain things. Cooking is one of those things. When I’m cooking, and especially meat, I want it to be done NOW! So I never really make roasted stuff because I don’t want to wait for it to cook gently, I tend to turn up the heat and burn parts of the meat. So, whenever Nienke announces she’s making roast chicken and would I like to join her? Hell to the yes!

I can’t really remember negative emotion this week. The patience that was troubling me last week is making way for a shaky sort of excitement. So I will just use this episode of NCIS that I was sort of watching as my annoyance. It doesn’t usually happen, but I switched channels. Hostage situations do this to me sometimes, I tend to be of the ‘just shoot the guy and get it over with’  kinda method. Especially when the bad guy is getting on my nerves…

I learned I some basic chess this week from Gert. We played two games and I even managed to beat him the second time around because he wasn’t paying (enough) attention allowing me to take his queen very early in the game and getting a head start this way.

 

The Week in Review: 2012-06

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I’m grateful for singing. Singing always makes me feel good (or better when I’m down). I might not be very good at it, but I enjoy it so I don’t care what anyone else thinks 🙂

I’m happy… well, see above 😀

Being patient is hard sometimes, that can make me feel frustrated.

I learned I really like making work instructions and messing about with excel files 😀

 

The Week in Review: 2012-05

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I’m grateful  for Dean and Sam and Castiel, they make me laugh and I enjoy their adventures in Supernatural very, very, very much. Especially Cas, he’s free to drop by here at anytime 😀

I’m sad we finished another season of Supernatural this week.

I’m happy there’s another (almost) two seasons to go before we’re caught up. Season 6 here we come!

I learned it’s very easy to loose track of time when you’re watching convention/interview video’s of the Supernatural boys together. LOL!

 

… I’m only slightly obsessed…

The Week in Review: 2012-04

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I’m grateful for dreams, especially if they’re realistic too (albeit on a longer time frame than I would want).

I’m happy with some of the newer TV shows I ‘discovered’ this week. Been having them in the wait list for a while but got around to properly watching it this week. Once Upon a Time is very good, Grimm is pretty good, The Secret Circle is so-so, and Switched at Birth is awesome!

I’m annoyed at the winter that decided to show up after all.

I learned it takes way too long for a shared bank account to become operational.