Friday letters: bye bye March

This is the last Friday in March. Monday is the 31st and on Tuesday we enter April. The thought that the year is already a whole three months old makes me want to cry… how could I have done so little in three entire months?! Not cool! Oh well, at least I have a few things planned for this weekend. In the meantime, have some letters….

Dear Spring.  According to the weather forecast, you are set to return. Please hang around this time… I don’t want to have to wear my winter coat all through April again!

Dear scales. Since I had to move you to hoover, I can no longer trust anything you say. Curse you, uneven floors! How am I supposed to track my progress now? *sobs*

Dear boyfriend. I will probably be out when you get back from Turkey on Saturday night, but I’m looking forward to spending some time with you on Sunday!

Dear mam. Your Mother’s Day card will be late because I’m an idiot and didn’t leave myself enough time to stitch it and get it posted in time, but I hope you like it anyway (once it arrives…)

Dear Green Day. I read yesterday that your American Idiot album will be ten years old later this year. How is that possible?! I’m sure I only received it as a gift a year or two ago… (and yes, I was given it the year it came out).

Dear Easter. Why are you so late this year? I want my long weekend already!

That’s all from me for today. Happy Friday! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

*Note: I am entering this post for Kate’s Daily Diaries linkup. Technically, the idea is to write a post about what’s been going on with you over the past week, which I haven’t really done here, but if you read between the lines it sort of is about what’s happening right now soooo into the linkup it goes. To find out more about the linkup or join in yourself, click the button below.*

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Thoughts and stuff

I currently don’t have the energy to write a coherent blog post on a single topic, so instead here are some thoughts/musings and little snippets that I wanted to get out there but that aren’t long enough for a post of their very own. Yes, it’s another bullet point-y list. And no, I do not apologise 😉

• Yesterday I had to stop at the baker’s for breakfast because we’d run out of yoghurts. I bought something called a Crossy Donut, which I assume to be this particular cheap bakery’s take on the cronut. I can’t say I was impressed! Once I got past the sugar on the outside, all I could taste was grease, and by the time I’d eaten it all I actually felt a bit sick. Not the best way to start the day! I certainly won’t be subjecting myself to one of those again.
• What happens to nail files? I swear I must have bought at least 50 emery boards since we moved in to our flat, but when I need one there are never any to be found! I swear The Borrowers are real and one day I’m going to discover one living in a little house made of emery boards!
• I don’t understand how counting sheep is supposed to help with falling asleep. Picturing sheep I can sort of understand, as long as you picture them doing something monotonous, like streaming through a gate. Watch that for long enough and you’ll soon be hypnotised to sleep. But the minute I start trying to count sheep (or anything else for that matter), my brain switches back on and I’m more awake than before. Does this happen to anyone else or am I just weird?
• One of the flats in my building is occupied by some (I presume) first year students. I bumped into one of them by the mailboxes the other day and he said “Sie” to me (the formal version of “you”). I feel old!
• I forgot to put my hat on when I left for work yesterday, so of course it was the first time in months that I’d seen frost on the ground. Today I remembered said hat and it was back up to 6°C. *Sigh*
• I gave Jan his anniversary present last night, and no it wasn’t a tin of anything. 😉 I bought him tickets to see Pearl Jam in Vienna this June, so provided he doesn’t end up having a conference or anything that week I’ll be going back to Austria this year 😀 Also, thanks for the many congratulations. If you commented and I haven’t replied yet, I promise to get round to you soon.

That’s it for today. I have loads of work to do (again!), and it’s about time I got started.

How old?!

Yesterday, I saw this headline on the BBC News website: Coolio Performs Gangsta’s Paradise for Students.  Aww, how nice! I thought to myself (along with “Wow, Coo

Coolio, bac in the day… (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

lio! There’s a blast from the past!). I clicked on the article and smiled to mayself as I read about how he had taken the students to the supermarket before cooking a meal for them, but my smile faded when I got to this line: “The 50-year-old hip-hop star had been performing at Macs Bar in Preston when he met the students and offered to cook them a meal.”  Coolio is 50?? What? How? Okay, 50 isn’t actually all that old (my mother is 50 and I don’t see her as old), but in my mind, the stars of my childhood are frozen at the age they were then. It’s only when the facts are forcibly thrust in my face that I remember famous people are subject to the passing of time just as much as any of us. Gangsta’s Paradise came out in 18 years ago(!!) in 1995, so it’s logical that Coolio would be in his 50s by now, but still… I suddenly feel old!

Here are some other celebrities who are surprisingly old (well, surprising to me anyway…):

• Seth Green is 39 (born 8 February 1974) – But he’s Oz from Buffy. Oz can’t be coming up to 40!
• Ralph Macchio is 50 (born 4 November 1962) – The Karate Kid is turning 51 next month? What?!
• Sean Connery is 83 (born 25 August 1930) – Wait… Sean Connery is nearly as old as my grandma?!
• Cyndi Lauper is 60 (born 22 June 1953) – Girls Just Wanna Have Fun was like my childhood anthem. How can its singer by 60?!
• Robin Williams is 62 (born 21 July 1951) – Peter Pan is 62?!
• Steven Tyler is 65 (born 26 March 1948) – I know Aerosmith have been around for a while and it’s kind of logical that its members would be getting on a bit, but for some reason it never occurred to me that Steven Tyler would be in his late 60s by now!
• Mike Myers is 50 (born 25 May 1963) – Also, the first Austin Powers film came out 16 years ago!!
• Michael Caine is 80 (born 14 March 1933) – If you’d asked me to guess how old he is now, I would never have said 80!
• Mel Gibson is 57 (born 3 January 1956) – For some reason, I always picture Mel Gibson as young-ish (like in his 40s). I’m having trouble thinking of him as being only a couple of years from 60!
• Julie Andrews is 78 (born 1 October 1935) – Let’s all just take a miniute to get our heads around the fact that Mary Poppins is nearly 80! Does not compute…

OK, enough. I don’t want to depress myself 😉 But do feel free to add more in the comments.

Let’s try again…

I wonder if wordpress will actually let me post something today instead of deciding to eat my carefully thought out words. Only one way to find out I suppose…
Here’s an update on what’s happening in the world of Bev.

• I’ve been at the new job one month today. I’m loving it so far. Everyone is nice, there’s lots for me to do and I can actually make mistakes without worrying that I may be (metaphorically) hung, drawn and quartered for it. Not that I purposely go out of my way to make mistakes or anything… but you know what i mean…
• The one bad thing about work is all the commuting. An hour’s train journey means having to get up at a ridiculous hour of the morning, meaning by the time it gets to Wednesday I’m exhausted (of course, it doesn’t help that I have a boyfriend who is incapable of coming home at a sensible time, meaning we rarely get to sleep before midnight). And by the time I’ve sat on the train for an hour in the evening there isn’t exactly much time left for me to have a life outside work. All this will (hopefully) change now though. I’ve been paid, so for October I have a ticket for the fast train. My travel time is now reduced to 20 minutes each way, meaning I get an extra half hour in bed. Yippee!
• My brother started university last week. He also turns 19 on Friday. I now feel old! Also, I haven’t managed to get him a present yet. Ooops.
• I needed to take 20 photos after work today to complete my photo challenge for this month. I managed to take 5, leaving me with a grand total of 35. I think it’s fairly safe to say I’ve failed this month. maybe 50 photos was a little over ambitious…
• My grandparents are having a party next friday to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. After looking at what felt like a million airline’s websites, Jan and I have finally managed to book flights. We’re going via Amsterdam of all places. Why can’t somebody just start providing a direct flight from Southern Germany to Newcastle? It would make my life so much easier!
• Everyone seems to have gone baby mad at the moment! One of my dad’s cousins has just had a baby boy and I know 7 other people who are currently pregnant. 2 of those people are my dad’s cosuins. And another of his cousins is getting married in January.  My family just will not stop growing! It’s almost like we’re trying to take over the world…

OK, I think that’s everything. And even if it isn’t I need to stop now so I can go and sort out some food. Hopefully Jan won’t be too much longer… it’s 10 past nine now and lunch time was soooo long ago…

Time flies

This shall be my last post for a few days. Not that I’m going to a place without a computer, but the chances of me being able to get my hands on that computer are pretty much zero, so no more blogging til I return at the weekend.

I’m returning to the Motherland (England) for my brother’s 18th birthday. Righteen! I can’t believe it. This is my little brother we’re talking about here. The baby I helped to bath, the toddler whose first word was my name. I remember helping him with his reading, playing schools with him, giving him piggy backs around the park. When did my baby brother get all grown up? He’s doing his A-Levels this year and will be starting uni next September. My little baby brother off to university! I know they say time flies but this has gone just a little too fast for me. I feel old now (again!).

So the next few days are going to busy, busy, busy – starting tomorrow when I’m going to have to leave work 5 minutes early to catch two trams and a bus to the airport. I feel tired just thinking about it!
And now I have to clean out the bag for my luggage (it got grape juice splled in it – don’t ask!), find clean clothes and pack them and somewhere in between that I need to find time to cook tonight’s tea and tomorrow’s lunch. If I’m lucky I might even make it to bed before midnight!