Looking forward…

Routine has got me firmly back in its clutches and I am not liking it at all! Any benefits I may have gained from the long weekend and trip to Konstanz  were instantly erased by several small jobs due the next day plus a badly written larger job that required me to do an hour of overtime from home in the evening. OK, an hour doesn’t sound like much… but when you already get up at 6 a.m. (wellll, alright… ten past), the last thing you want to do on arriving home is get back to work… But instead of dwelling on how tired I am and how awful working for 8 hours every single day is (I absolutely love my job, but something about the idea of spending 8 hours in an office every single week day for the next 40-ish years is just soul destroying!), I’ve decided to look forward to all the fun plans I have for this summer. Positive mental attitude, right?

June

On Tuesday, we are going to see a charity concert in Durlach starring our quiz master’s band, who will be accompanying (among others) Fish from Marillion (remember them from the 80s?), and Fools Garden, who became world famous with their song Lemon Tree but are actually from Pforzheim – just down the road from Karlsruhe!

In a mere 17 days, Jan and I are heading to Vienna. Last time we were there, it was New Year and freezing (we went into the butterfly house purely to warm up!), so I’m hoping for good weather this time! We’re actually going there to see Pear Jam perform on the Wednesday night (a gift from me to Jan for our 10th anniversary of being in a relationship), but personally I’m mostly looking forward to the Austrian food 😉 Hopefully this time I will finally manage to try Marillenknödel! This will also be my June trip for the Take 12 Trips challenge.

July

I love hosting visitors, but it so rarely happens. After my sister and her boyfriend came two years ago for the Formula 1, I insisted that now it’s my brother’s turn to visit… and he finally is, at the end of July! He’s actually been to Karlsruhe before, with my mum, but that was 6 years ago (when he was 17), and they were only here for two days. This time he can legally drink (well, he could have had beer or wine last time, but he doesn’t like either) and we have more time. I’m looking forward to showing him more of the local area.

August

Well, it’s my birthday month, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be working so that’s not too exciting.
BUT… I will be spending the last week of August in Taiwan! Jan is presenting a paper at a conference there from 18-22 August, so he decided to take a week’s holiday and hang around to actually see some of the place. Since he warned me far enough in advance this time, I was actually able to save some holiday so that I can go too. Jan will be going over a week before me for the conference, and I can’t say I’m particularly looking forward to taking two long flights on my own (or the four-hour layover in Dubai for that matter!). But hey, I get to go to Taiwan! (And also cross “visit a new continent” off my 35 before 35 list.) We’re currently looking into where exactly we want to go while we’re over there (the tour will obviously start and end in Taipei because, well, that’s where we’re flying from/to), so if you have any tips please send them my way!

And that’s it. OK, officially it’s not autumn unti the autumnal equinox (23 September in 2013), but September to me is an autumn month. And besides, I don’t have any plans past August yet so I couldn’t include September in the list even if I wanted to 😉

What do you have planned for the summer?

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Maybe I AM a cliché after all…

A few years ago I joined a group on Facebook called “British Forces Brats”. Somebody has posted one of those “You know you are…. when” lists on there. I’m sure you all know the type… “You know you’re a student when”, “You know you’re German when”, “You know you’re a child of the 80s when”… that kind of thing. This particular list was “You know you’re a forces brat when…”. I thought the list was pretty accurate until I got to an item that read something like “You get restless if you have to live in the same place for more a few years”. Naaah, I thought. That one’s not me. I’ve been in Karlsruhe for a while now and I’m not thinking of moving any time soon. If anything, I’m glad not to have to pack everything up again for a while! I was forgetting though, that despite living in the same town for a while (5 and a half years now – the longest I’ve lived in any place in one stretch ever is six years!), at that point I had just started my fourth job since moving back here in 2006. I’ve now been in that job for 2 and a half years, and although I still love it, recently getting up at 6 a.m. to get ready for the day has been getting harder. I’ve actually got into the habit of setting my alarm for about 20 minutes before I need to get up because it takes that many snoozes for me to drag myself out of bed! Here we go again, I think as I’m leaving the house each day. Same old same old. I wish I could do something new for a change! (It doesn’t help that most of my translations are for the same 3 or 4 customers and mostly involve the same technical or IT-related topics – the interesting stuff which involves some degree of creativity tends to go to my colleague, who is a better translator than me – at least in terms of style and the number of mistakes made). Maybe it isn’t living in one place for a while that causes forces brats to get so restless, but seeing or doing the same thing day in, day out for weeks, months or even years. Most people need a break from routine once in a while, but perhaps it’s more extreme in those who are used to only being in one place for 5 years at the most. In which case, I guess that item on the list does apply to me after all…

No rest for the wicked…

I swear I’ve used that as a blog title before, but I can’t be bothered to go back and check now, so if I have you’ll just have to put up with my lack of imagination.
Anyway… I am sooo glad it’s Friday! I’ve been tired, tired, tired all week – despite the fact that I had Monday off and only had to go to work for 4 days. What I would really like to do now is curl up and go to sleep for about 15 hours, but there is too much to do. Plus we haven’t even eaten yet, and I hate going to bed hungry. The boyfriend – who is supposed to be ill – is presumably still at work. Or at least he’s not here and I don’t know where else he should be. Yesterday (which also happened to be his birthday) he actually stayed home. Not in bed though, despite me telling him that was where he belonged! Instead he worked from home. Today he insisted that he had to go in at least in the afternoon because a student was coming in, but wouldn’t stay too long. I’m not sure what time he went in, but it’s now 8:30 pm so if he actually did go in the afternoon then he’s been there at least 5 hours, even if he didn’t go til late afternoon! As far as I’m concerned that’s almost a full working day. So much for not long! I meanwhile have been at work for the required 8 hours, done some shopping, tidied the living room and washed most of the dishes. As soon as I’ve finished writing this I’ll have to go back and do the rest, otherwise it will be impossible for me to cook tea. Both frying pans are currently dirty (world’s worst housewife strikes again!) and I need one for what I’m planning to cook. And so it goes on. Tomorrow, the first day of my so-called “weekend” will be spent doing washing, hoovering, scrubbing the shower and attempting to sort out the spare bedroom, which I promised to do weeks ago. The deal was Jan would put shelves up and I would sort out all my crafting and cross stitch stuff and make the room fit to be seen. The shelves have been up since before Christmas, so at least he kept his part of the bargain! If I actually manage to get all that done tomorrow I might actually get a chance to relax on Sunday before getting back to the old 6 am wake up calls on Monday. It’s true what they say… a woman’s work really is never done!

A day in the life of Bev

Beep beep. Morning? Still the middle of the night. Time to get up! Five more minutes please. Beep beep. Still dark outside. Beep beep. Shower. Clothes. Breakfast. Brush teeth. Time to go. Brrr, freezing! Tram. Work. Lunch break! Work. 5:15, home time. Dark again already. Tram. Buy food. Finally home! Computer… e-mail, blogs, facebook. Dinner time. Cook. Eat. Dishes. Computer. Study? Procrastinate. Getting late, time for bed. Pyjamas. Brush teeth. Read? Yeah! Lights out. Toss and turn. Can’t sleep. Too hot… too cold… thirsty… can’t get comfortable. Where’s my boyfriend? Tick, tock, tick, tock. Still can’t sleep! Midnight. 1am. Sleeeeep.
Beep beep. Beep beep. Beep beep. Morning?…

Losing track of time

When you get into a routine it’s so easy to lose track of where you are in the month. I know whether it’s Monday or Thursday or Saturday, I can tell you exactly how many days it is til the next weekend, or how much time has passed since the last one, but ask me the date and I’ll have to look it up. So I was slightly shocked to realise that today is 22nd July. It’s my mum’s birthday in 4 days and I haven’t bought her a present. If I buy one now I’m not even sure it will make it to England in time. Crap! She’ll just have to pick it up when she comes to see me a week on Saturday. I’ll tell her I couldn’t afford the delivery costs 😉