Animals
100 Things That Make Me Happy [2/10]
11. A breeze.
It’s like Mother Nature gives you this small touch as if to draw your attention to what’s going on around you. A little touch to remind you that, no matter what, she’s always there.
12. Colourful things.
I’m a very visual person, and while I often really like black and white things, I need a touch of colour. My first instinct with black and white pieces is usually to go and colour it.
13. Silence.
Nothing better for introspection and just living in the now.
14. My dog.
This is a bittersweet one. Tessa was my first ‘real’ pet ( I had goldfish before) and I was completely hers (and she mine) from day one. She’s just such a happy go lucky dog, as soon as I come in, her tail starts wagging and she comes over for cuddles. However, I was fourteen when we got her, and now she is fourteen and her end of life is rapidly approaching. She has made it months beyond what I expected, but with each passing week it is clearer that she won’t be around much longer. This saddens me greatly, although I a, happy that she has had a good life, and that we will be there for her till the end.
15. Taking that perfect photo.
I love taking pictures. And many of them are quite good, and some are really bad, and some are so-so. But when that one perfect-to-me shot happens, it’s such a great feeling. I’ve been having it much more often lately since I bought my first DSLR (Nikon D3100). And then are the ones I take now done on automatic. Just wait until I’ve learned all about the manual settings 🙂
16. Scrapbooks/Photoalbums.
I love to make and look through photo albums and scrapbooks. To relive memories and see and appreciate the effort put into preserving them.
17. Ladybugs crawling on my hand.
I’m not a huge fan of bugs, but ladybugs are so precious. And it always feels special when they choose to come and sit on you and share their existence with you for a while.
18. Butterflies around my head.
Similar to the ladybugs, butterflies just flitting about from flower to flower around me makes me feel connected to nature.
19. Playing with wet squishy stuff (clay, that kiddy slime).
I can’t even explain this, I just love the feeling of sticking my hands in wet squishy stuff and wriggling them around and such.
20. Fuzzy things.
Animals, but also fuzzy plush toys and related things.
Some Random Photos, Just Because
January 2012: Monkey loves scritchies.
January 2012: I bought a laser pointer, Milo loves it (it’s between his front paws). Sadly, I seem to have misplaced it at the moment…
January 2012: Hello human!
January 2012: Went to Eva & Jarig’s for a game night with them and Ingrid. We played Scrabble.
January 2012: Because finding a more comfortable spot is so hard…
January 2012: New slippers, they look nice, and they’re warm. They were also dirt cheap so will probably not last very long.
February 2012: Milo was very interested in the key chain ducks that I keep on my World of Warcraft authenticator.
February 2012: I think this is the closest the two of them have been so far. Occasionally they get closer as they sit on the window sill together for a couple seconds or they walk past each other, but for a prolonged period of time, this is as close as it gets.
The Week in Review: 2012-02
I’m grateful for friends that know me well
I’m happy with my christmas presents 😀
I’m annoyed with Milo waking me up very early in the morning on the weekend, his voice is such that its hard to ignore
I learned purring cats on your back are fun, though
Another Beginning
So, here we are, a week into the new year. I don’t do resolutions, I know myself well enough to know that’s pointless. I have, however, decided to pick a theme. Basically an idea, or motivator of sorts, to keep in mind and use to guide my decisions this year. Theme for this year is Just Do It (to steal from Nike). This year the idea is to be more active in my pursuits, to take action to get where I want to be.
In that light, I’ve made some related decisions in what I want to do this year, both long term things that I want to start this year, as well as things I want to accomplish. Most of the stuff I can’t, or rather won’t, talk about just yet. But I hope to provide further updates soon.
I also have some stuff that I will talk about. First of that being this blog. It took way longer than expected to fix the image issue I was having. This was mostly my own problem because I let it lie for too long while it, in the end, turned out to be a relatively simple fix. After it got fixed I did one of the photo posts I said I would and then left it again. Putting pics together for the August photo post was annoying the crap out of me, so I just sorta stopped.
To prevent shit like that from making me stop blogging again, I’m not scheduling anything anymore. No more ‘I’m going to do this on a weekly basis’ or ‘every month I’m gonna…’ or even non-committal shit like ‘I plan to regularly…’ I’m not planning anything any more in regards to the blog. I still have a lot of things in my head that I wanna post, but I’m just gonna do whatever comes up, whenever I want to. There’s already enough shit in life that you have to do, I don’t want this blog to be one of those things. After all, I have this website to have fun with and to make a record of who I am and what I like. If it becomes a chore, it’ll loose all life it has.
Something else I think I haven’t mentioned here yet is Milo. Milo is my new cat, whom I got from the shelter on October 22. He’s a young boy of almost two (in March) and he’s almost the complete opposite of Monkey. He’s playful, and active and a bit of a talker. Monkey only makes a noise when he really wants to go outside and I don’t respond fast enough. Milo opens his mouth a lot more, and when he does the most adorable little shriek comes out. It’s almost like a friggin’ baby bird going meeeeep! The shelter named him Bo, which is stupid, so I renamed him. But, in keeping with tradition I kept (most of) his shelter name as part of his name.
So, without further ado, meet Milo Beauregard Gibbs:
Monkey and Milo are getting along pretty well. Milo wants to play with Monk but he’s not really into that. They do chase each other around (in mostly good fun), though. This usually starts with Milo approaching Monkey to sniff at him or invite him to play and then Monkey does this hissy fit kinda thing where he yowls a bit and waves his paw around. Milo the backs off a bit and seconds later they’ll be chasing each other around the house.
He also loves feather teasers, so much so, even, that the one I had is almost dead already. So I bought three new ones right away to get a bit of a supply. And today the laser pointer I ordered came in. Tried it on him, he went insane for it 😀
In comparison, Monkey ignored it and pointedly reminded me that he knows I’m the one controlling the toys so he’s not gonna waste his energy on that, thank you very much. (related sidenote: Monkey has very expressive eyes).
Tomorrow Milo gets to go outside for the first time since I got him. I kept him inside a little longer than I normally would because of New Year’s and the fireworks and such. I hope he likes it, he tends to still be a little skittish with loud noises or big/tall objects/people although he’s progressed heaps in that since he came. The first week he would hide under the bed every time I walked through the house. He still runs when he gets spooked, but now he almost right away comes back out from wherever he runs to, to check out what happened.
In short, he’s a cool cat 😀
Other stuff… eh… Work is going well I guess. I applied for a trainer/coach position within my department, got through the initial interview with flying colors and got to do an assessment. I felt pretty good about that, the tests were easy and the talk with the counselor about work and ambitions and what type of person I was went well too, at least I thought so. The role play situation went less well. Both because I hate role play situations, and because I found the set-up they had for it not relevant to what actually goes on at my job. All in all, I had a good feeling about it.
The result came in a week later, and I got a negative result. They thought I would not be suitable for the position because, in a nut shell, I ‘m not social enough, and that’s not fixable… Right. I was fuming for two days. There’s a core of truth in the report. Yes, I am an introvert, I told him so, but that does not mean I’m antisocial, it just means that interaction with people costs energy (versus giving me energy). I know this of myself so I take precautions. This is the reason I don’t work on Wednesdays so I have a day in the middle to recharge. Also, social interaction has been difficult for me in the past. I used to be more shy but this is something I’ve learned to overcome for a large part. Especially since I started working at my current job I’ve learned so much about interacting with people and have grown so much in that regard.
So, back to the report, I felt as if it were a snap shop of me three years ago, give or take. I discussed it with my supervisor and some other people later on, and they all were surprised by it. They saw the core of truth that was in there, but the extent of it…
Regardless of that, though, the assessment is final so it meant I was out of the application procedure. So I’m still doing what I did before, and that’s not a bad thing either. I love writing so the e-mail and letter thing is a good job for me to have. I’m doing a lot of letters these days, more so than e-mail, and I’m really enjoying that. However, I will be looking for opportunities to move forward or at least expand my skill set. For the moment still preferably within the same company.
I think this is more than long enough for a first blog of 2012. I hope to do a post to catch up on my booklist and 101 list. Booklist definitely because I failed my target so very much I think it might be the lowest in years. The 101 list… Meh, I think it needs revising first. I’m having second thoughts on a lot of the goals and I think the sheer amount of them, even keeping in mind the long time one has for it (1001 days) it might be too many things for a person with an attention span like mine.
June
June 2nd was my Dad’s birthday, he turned 68. The party was fun, a good time was had by all 🙂
Two days later I went for a walk at Lauwersoog with Eva, Nienke, Tessa (my dog) and Gregorius (Eva’s dog). It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, there was a gentle breeze, we enjoyed ourselves, the dogs had fun. Then it got even better when Nienke tossed Gregorius’ fetching toy into a very, very tall tree… Eva and I watched her toss sticks at it for a while trying to get it to fall down. Eventually I joined in the throwing of sticks which led to success a couple minutes later when I hit the branch the toy was stuck on and it came down.
The day after that, I went to Verhildersum with Mom to go check out the Fabric Day. We saw awesome crafts, there was this huuuuge quilt in different purple fabrics, and a guy who makes little tin statuettes of people in historical dress. There was also a lot of felt work, both in felting things (making objects while one is felting the wool), as well as making things from felt fabric.
June 15 I went out for dinner at Pappa Joe’s with Eva, Nienke, Ingrid & Mellien. It was tasty, and nice to hang out with the full group. We crossed the street for awesome ice cream afterwards.
I joined Archive of Our Own, a fan fiction archive. So far I find it a more pleasurable interface compared to fanfiction.net, where I used to post. That has been a number of years though, and in the years between I’ve not spent a lot of time either reading or writing fan fiction. I’m slowly getting back into it. I reposted some of the works I wrote years ago of which I still think they’re good on A3O. The rest needs a rewrite. I’ll keep the originals up on ff.net, that way I’ll have a history and can later compare between versions and responses.
And in minor things, I rearranged my living room, baby-sat the dog for a day while the parents were off on the yearly Sibling Day (where mom and her siblings, plus partners, go out for a day) and we had an awesome! thunderstorm.