A Photo an Hour: 21 December 2019

The final photo and hour of last year was the day before we flew to England, so I never got a chance to write this post. I spent most of the day doing my pre-Christmas deep clean so this won’t be very exciting, but for the sake of completeness I wanted to write it anyway.

As always, Photo an Hour was hosted by Jane and Louisa.

9 a.m. Tea must be consumed before I even think about doing any cleaning!

10 a.m. Time for a shower.

11 a.m. Folding dry laundry.

12 noon. Time to wash the dishes.

1 p.m. A break for lunch and to read.

2 p.m. One bathroom cleaned, on to number 2!

3 p.m. Hoovering.

4 p.m. Changing the bedding in the spare room – I did ours the following morning before we left for the airport so it would be fresh for our return.

5 p.m. Of to take away some recycling.

6 p.m. I changed out of the clothes that smelled of cleaning agents and decided to paint my nails for a change.

7 p.m. Checking in for our flights the next day. My passport is slightly faded (and runs out in 2021).

8 p.m. Arriving at KLARA for our friend’s birthday celebration.

9 p.m. Feeding my face!

10 p.m. Drinking beer… not much left. I stopped taking photos after that and socialised. I think we got home at around 1 a.m.!

I will be posting my 2019 year in review soon, then I want to do a decade recap, but after that I will finally actually move on to this year (at least until it’s time to talk about what I read in December ;-)).

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Plans and potatoes…

Despite all my promises to get back to regular blogging, once again it’s been over a week since my last post. That pesky little thing called life has reared up its ugly head and got in the way again! So what have I been doing that’s kept me so busy?

~ Learning Spanish! Jan and I started another Spanish course recently (our third), so now that’s where we go on Monday evenings. Each lesson is an hour and a half and let me tell you it’s hard work! Hopefully it will be worth it in the end though!

~ Socialising! Last Saturday a friend of Jan’s who moved to Frankfurt was back in town for the day, so we met up with him and went to Stadtfest. Then in the evning we met up with friends for “Dirty Old Town”, the annual event in which all the pubs in Karlsruhe’s old town have live music all night. And on Wednesday our favourite Irish pub celebrated it’s 2nd anniversary, so of course we had to be there.

~ Cooking Sunday dinner! The meat was fried pork steaks, so it wasn’t a real Sunday roast, but my roast potatoes were absolutely perfect. Crunchy on the outside and lovely and soft in the middle. Luckily I made extra so I get to enjoy them again for lunch tomorrow. Mmmm.

~ Making plans! We’ve decided to go to Edinburgh for new year as we only got such a short time there (one afternoon!) during our trip around Great Britain this summer. And since we’ll be heading to the island anyway, it makes sense to spend Christmas there as well this year. So we’ve been looking at flights, trains and B&Bs and have finally come to a decision. We’ll be staying at my dad’s for 9 whole days! My little brother won’t know what’s hit him – he’s never seen me for that many days in one go!

Resolution Recap

It’s almost June already. How the heck did that happen? Surely it was only just January?
Anyway… since we are now nearing the sixth month of the year I thought it would be a good idea to dig out my new year’s resolutions and let you all know how I’m doing with them. Goodness knows why I though this was a good idea… perhaps I just like torturing myself?

Soo, resolution number 1 was to try and improve my relationship… to be a better girlfriend and try to make my boyfriend happy (God, remind me why I chose to make the hardest one number one?). I also said that I was going to give it a year, and if my relationship still wasn’t going anywhere I would leave – walk away and let Jan figure out exactly what it is he wants. Much as I would hate to do that, at the time it seemed like the most sensible solution.
Well… if this were a school report the verdict on that one would be “could try harder”. I have managed to be a little nicer… at least intermittently. And as long as I have access to the internet we seem to be arguing less. We’ve also managed to have the occasional talk about things without Jan either going silent or changing the subject and me either crying or shouting, neither of which has the desired effect. OK, so we’ve only managed that about twice, but that’s still two more times than zero. And I still have the rest of the year to work on this…

Number 2 was to become better at work. This mostly involved becoming more emotionally intelligent, less socially incompetent and a good project manager.
The least said on this one the better (mostly because I don’t like to say too much about work on here just in case). I do still have a job though, which is something. And I seem to have got better at pretending not to be utterly terrified when phoning customers. Now I suppose I just have to work on not being utterly terrified.

Number 3. Stop procrastinating. Don’t leave university assignments til the last minute. Actually do the reading that’s set for each week.
I have now actually handed in the assignments for my last two modules, so this one isn’t relevant any more (unless I fail text lingusitics, in which case it will become horribly relevant again soon). But with those two assignments I did exactly what I told myself I wasn’t going to do… left them til the last minute, rushed to buy some books in a complete panic and just about managed to get them finished in time for the hand in date. I think we can write that one off as a big fat FAIL! And next year is thesis time. I already have my suspicions about how that’s going to turn out…

The fourth and final resolution was to get out more and meet up with actual rela live people instead of socialising entirely through my blog and facebook.
I don’t think I really need to tell you how this one is going. I mean, you lot read my blog, right? How many times have you seen me mention a night out or a meeting with friends? My point exactly… (Although I did meet up with a friend on Friday night. She moved to the Netherlands 5 months ago and I hadn’t seen her since so of course I made the effort. And I went to the Maifest at my old student residence. But other than that not much socialising going on over here… especially since my flat became connected to the internet).

Well, that’s the lot. Now you tell me how you’ve been getting on with your resolutions. Only if you’ve failed miserably though… you wouldn’t want to depress me now, would you? 😉

In which I acquire a social life

I went to a party last night. Just a small celebration, about 15 people drinking beer and eating crisps. It was in my building, one floor above mine, so I didn’t even have far to walk home. J, the giy who’s party it was, had applied to a programme (Fulbright I think) that arranges student exchanges to the US. Yesterday he heard that he’s been accepted, meaning he’ll be given a stipend and sent off to study abroad for a year. I proofread his application for him (it had to be written in English) which is why I was invited to the party. Well, it was a reason. Hopefully not the only reason. So I got my much needed drink… plus several more. Jan and I didn’t get to bed til 4 o’clock this morning!

Then this afternoon I went to meet a friend for coffee. We went to a cafe called Zero. They do this amazing hot chocolate. Erakleon or something it’s called – sounds Greek but the menu claims it’s Italian. Anyway, it comes in random flavours like strawberry and lychee or white chocolate and hazelnut and it’s just incredible. It’s so thick that you can’t actually drink it. It has to be scooped up a bit at the time and eaten with a teaspoon. Heavenly! Really it’s not quite cold enough for such things yet (today was gorgeous – sunny and quite warm for the time of year) but I decided to treat myself anyway.

So I have actually managed to socialise two days in a row. And this is the third weekend that I’ve been invited to a party. I’d better watch out… at this rate I’m going to find myself turning into a person who has a life, and then when will I find the time to blog? 😉