Postcrossing

Muscles I Never Knew I Had

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I’ve been doing Postcrossing for about a year or so now, and I love sending cards all over the world and receiving cards from all over, too. But what I don’t like is that you don’t really build any connections with people. I send a card to Person A, and get one back from Person B. This made me send less cards than I used to, because I got worn out with it. But then I read the (then) most recent blogpost on the Postcrossing website and they were talking about the League of Extraordinary Penpals. It intrigued me, and I took a  look at the website, and I signed up immediately, and was given access to the Facebook group almost directly as well.

That was about three weeks ago. In those three weeks I’ve sent out about fifteen or so postcards and six letters; realised there’s way more muscles in my hand than I thought before; and received a letter and about five postcards. I’m enjoying myself immensely writing messages and letters, finding pretty papers, decorating the stationery and envelopes and waiting at the mailbox for mail. I was already way into getting craft materials, and this only made it worse. I’ve bought many stickers, lots of washi tape (which I basically just discovered, it is awesome), stationery, pretty paper and so on, and so on. I’m currently contemplating whether to be lazy and just buy an envelope mold to make my own envelopes, or make one from cardboard…

Here’s the batch of letters and cards that I sent out yesterday, I can’t wait until they reach the folks they’re going to.

MailboxFood

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!

6391 Words

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I love how something as little as a week, week-and-a-half, off from work can restore your balance. I’m not particularly motivated (yet) to get back to work on Monday, but I’m sure that’ll come once I arrive back in the pit 😀

In the meantime, I’ve had a relaxing week. Monday I hung out with Eva, did some shopping. Eva needed a radio for the baby’s room so I took the opportunity to buy a new SD card for my camera. Afterwards we stopped for some groceries and some browsing at the Wibra. I’m a sucker for cheap/discount stores so I ended up with a bag of easter/spring inspired items to decorate the house with while I wait for spring proper to arrive.

Using the new items with the stuff from last year led me to this:

Tuesday I hung out at the Parents’ place. It had been a week and a half or so since I’d seen them, and as I usually see them at least once a week, it was overdue. It was a quiet afternoon, which is nice.

Friday evening Eva, Ingrid and Mellien came over to see me and Nienke and we went out for pancakes at the pancake restaurant in town. It was gloriously delicious (I had a ham/cheese/pineapple pancake) and we had a lot of fun talking. Afterward we went back to Nienke’s place to play Just Dance 3 on the Wii. Even Eva, despite being 37 weeks along, did a dance. The rest of us all went twice, and then we decided to do a quick round of Glee Karaoke before the other three had to go again.

Today I had lunch at the Parents’ again before returning home and finding Nienke cutting up all the trees in her yard. I didn’t really have anything better to do, and I love playing with the tree cutter so I gladly assisted her with this. Nienke’s upper arms thanked me 😀

We cut huge amounts from the conifer near her bedroom window, so to make it all fit, we had to push down on the cuttings to create more space. And to allow the lid to close…

Today I also found my very first Postcrossing card on the doormat, it came from Poland. Earlier in the week I got a message from the website that my first sent card was received. Score is now 1 for 1 and there’s four more from me underway to far away places 🙂

 

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.