…for decorating and other things related to the end-of-year holidays. I put up the winter trees. One on the small metal table and one in the corner. And, as is customary, I put an angel at the top 😀 The tree on the small table also houses the prezzies and the coffee table has its own little winter forest.
Today, Mom and I also wrote the holiday cards.
 
 
Yesterday was Kim’s birthday, so Nienke and I went over for cake, the giving of pretty gifts, mutual merriment and cat-shaped entertainment.
Lola
Also, earlier this week, I bought a typewriter! It’s an Olivetti Lettera, so I named it Oliver 🙂
Oliver
I forgot if I mentioned this on here, but the Webcare department at work has job openings. They’re looking to drastically increase their size, so I applied for that. And Monday I got an e-mail from their manager asking if I could make it to the selection meeting on Tuesday. Of course! So Tuesday I went. It was 50/50 useful. They started by telling a bit about what Webcare does and who they were (the managers). Then there was a language test, which makes sense. It was a piece of cake, considering I’m currently in the emailteam. After, you had to pair up with your neighbour, chat for a few minnutes and then introduce the neighbour to the rest of the assembly. This was a rather ridiculous excercise. Â The whole thing took about two hours. I’ll hear if I’m through for an interview in two weeks.
Today mom stopped by for tea and brought my package (which gets deliverd to the Parents cause they’re home more often). Added to the letter paper that arrived yesterday, I’m all set for reading and writing. The letter paper and the notepads come from Zartbesaitet, a lovely German shop with all kinds of paper products in this and related designs. The books (Where’d You Go Bernadette, Sorcery & Cecelia and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society) are what we’re reading in the LEP book club. I plan to start in Where’d You Go Bernadette tomorrow as I have the day off.
Managed to skip going to the gym for the entire week, bad me. On Monday I skipped because I realised I didn’t really like the one half of the class I was going to, and to just do the other half isn’t long enough. Plus the instructor always manages to guilt trip me into staying for that second half anyway and I don’t like that. Tuesday I skipped because there’s too much time between getting home from work and going to the gym. By the time I have to go get ready, I’ve settled in and really don’t want to go anymore. Today I slept in and missed Pilates, which is a shame because I do like it.
Wednesday I went over to Gert to, couple months late, exchange birthday prezzies. I got him the NL variant of Ticket to Ride and he got me Machiavelli. We played Ticket to Ride a couple times and then watched some Doctor Who and Attack on Titan. I’d never seen that before but I really like it. Was also nice to just hang out and chat and stuff. Usually we go to the movies and then there’s less catching up time 😀
At work the buzz is that the workflow they took is coming back in week 8, so yay!
Yesterday and today I played a lot of Warcraft. Decided to try out my solo abilities on Cataclysm Dungeons. I face roll Burning Crusade stuff, but never really tried soloing Wrath instances since I was guilded back then and did all that with them. Managed to do Stonecore, Voretx Pinnacle, Blackrock Caverns and Grim Batol, all on normal. It wasn’t face roll easy, but it was very well doable. I wonder once I get some more Timeless Isle pieces, if I can try my hand at heroic versions. I need that to finally get my Ramkahen rep to exalted. I want my camel 😀
I also finished Cycle of Hatred earlier this week, good book.
And, I finally managed to write three letters to some people in my pen pal group, yay me. I’ll be mailing them out tomorrow, together with the traveling notebook.
I love many things. And my favourite things change often. However, have here a few of my enduring favourite things, and a few current favourite things (that might end up being enduring favourites 😀 )
Books
There is nothing material that I love more than books. Books are my friends, my escape, my dreams, my refuge, my calm in the storm and my storm in the calm. Without books, I cannot be.
Words
Not actually material, but words are what shapes my world. I love many other forms of expression, colours, music, but words are my preferred form and through them, I am.
Texture
I’m a very tactile person. I always have this need to touch things, to experience them, and in that, few things delight me more than all the different textures of the world. I marvel how two things that are basically the same, can feel so different. How my one cat has a more coarse feeling fur and the other feels silky smooth. How minor things can completely change how something feels. One stroke of paint on a canvas can feel completely different, even though made with the same brush and the same paint. But the paint may be slightly thicker, or it might be in a slightly different direction.
Postcards
On to slightly more mundane things. I love postcards. Both to keep and look at, or frame and hang, and to send to people. They’re the perfect size to let someone know you’re thinking of them, and in choosing which card to send, you give thought to the person and who they are. I always try my best to find cards that really fit a person. I have a small pile of cards that I particularly love. Once moved, I will be able to hang these so I can look at them more
Hoodies
I love to take my bigger hoodie and put it on, especially when it’s slightly colder, and to just let myself disappear in it. Hoodies are warm, and comfortable and protective. They’re the embodiment of hugs.
Cheesecake
This is the pinnacle of deliciousness 🙂
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.
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.
The cat seems to be doing better already. Not that I noticed much difference with the spot on his leg yet, however his fur seems softer and shinier already. That’s probably the antibiotics kicking in. He also seems to mess with the spot less (licking it and stuff) so I guess the anti-itch pills are working. We have to come back for a checkup next Wednesday so we’ll see what the vet says. I’m guessing we’ll have to continue the salve treatment for a while longer because the spot is not becoming smaller very quickly.
I’ve been messing with voice recognition software since last night, so far it’s okay. Dictating is a bit troublesome, mostly because I’m not quite sure what I want to write as I dictate. For example as I write this, there’s a lot of pauses in my dictating and that doesn’t help the software very much. But as I learn, the software will learn, so we’ll get along, eventually 😀
It does make a fair amount of errors still, but as I dictate more and it gets used to my voice and my pronunciation (it transcribed that as Comanche nation…) then the errors should lessen. Of course my current setup doesn’t really help very much with the dictating since I’m not wearing a headset but am using the built-in microphone that laptop has. So it’s not always ideally positioned in regards to my mouth.
I’m hoping that as we move along, I can use this to do actual writing with. Fiction writing I mean. Mostly because when I get dialogue in my head, it feels stilted to type that up sentence by sentence. My head runs ahead of the writing then, and it gets impatient. So I’m hoping the more natural feel of just being able to say the dialogue and having it transcribed automatically will make writing easier.
Plans for today include teaching Nienke the basics of using Paint Phop Pro and probably scrapping some more myself.
I have taken some lovely me time for the past week or two and, to repeat myself, it was lovely. I do apologise to various online friends whom I haven’t spoken to in that time. I’ve not forgotten you and I will get back on the talking grid soon, I promise.
I’ve come to a few realisations about various things, one of which I can’t really get into until I’ve posted somewhere else (which I’ll do tomorrow).
I’ve realised that I like the freedom it brings if I’m not glued to the computer for most parts of the day. Before this my usual routine was to get up in the morning, turn on the pc and check e-mail and various small games that I loosely play and then the computer would remain on for the biggest part of the day (if I didn’t have to go anywhere and such) and that would mostly lead to me hanging in front of my screen just browsing about and not really accomplishing anything. I’d have occasional bouts of creative energy in which I would scrapbook or write a bit but 90 percent of my computer time consisted out of mindless surfing around.
No more. I’m taking advantage of the summer to get my computer use back to a more regular level so I can actually use it to work on mostly and play a bit instead of it sucking me in like a black hole.
I’ve also realised that just plainly turning the thing off is very relaxing so I’ll be doing that a bit more as well.
Another thing is photography. I’ve been creative in many ways (writing, painting, graphics work) for a long time and photography has always been a particular pleasure of mine. Since I got a new camera in May, which is much better in quality and options than my previous one, I have started taking more and more photos and some really good ones as well. So I want to take advantage of the summer with its long days and sunny weather (I hope) to really get some photography done and see if I can expand that, even if only remotely, from snapshots, good photos and the odd great one to good photos and more great ones. 🙂
This was my reasoning behind turning my main website into a photo blog and opening this one for the odd blog post. I’m not most regular of bloggers anyway 🙂 Now, as for the photography, I have a few ideas for shoots and series I want to do in the next few weeks of which I’ll be posting some or maybe all of them on the site. So if you’re curious, by all means, drop by.
Yet another thing is that I realised I’ve really missed writing. I love writing, creating stories, worlds, people and I haven’t done it all that often lately and it’s getting to me. So I’m actively getting back in touch with my inner storyteller. And on that note I’m calling it a day and signing off here to go to bed.
Oh and finally, I want to try and pay some more attention to my health and body. I could do with some weight loss so that’s a thing I definitely want to incorporate in my daily existence. I’ve been going swimming regularly the past few months and I really like it. I’m not much of a sports person but some more exercise won’t hurt so I plan to ride my bicycle some more and maybe even walk a bit (I seriously dislike walking, mostly related to the fact that I’m not very good at it)
I saw the most amazing earthshine Tuesday evening as I was walking from Bagpipe practice to the bus stop.
The attic is finally done. My dad and I went to get the carpet today and he laid it this afternoon. I moved my bed upstairs afterwards and put some other things in their place that were already stored in the attic awaiting the finishing touches to the room.
I’ll photograph and post when all my stuff is in there.
I also sent in my entry for the Unleash Award for Spring 2007, which is a Dutch story writing competition organised twice a year. Categories are fantasy/scifi and horror/suspense. This edition has a wordcount of 3000 maximum while the Autumn edition has a 6000 word maximum. I hope to finish another story before the deadline (March 30th) in the horror/suspense category but that is more difficult as I have not written in that genre before. The story I entered is a fantasy one and I really like it and am very satisfied with it. I hope I end high, obviously, but any place higher than the last ten or so will be good. So far, there have been 20 stories or so entered in each category but many send theirs in last minute so it’s a good harvest this year 🙂