Thursday through Monday

Fairytales FTW

After the traume of Anna Karenina, I've spent my wee holiday at my parent's reading trash to give me my confidence back.  Haha.  Though, today, I was very pleased to start and finish Beauty and the Beast.  Now, most people my age will remember the Disney film version, which - I have to say - is a bit of better story.  

What did make my day though, was that Beauty and the Beast took about five full minutes to read.  Literally.  I hadn't been aware the original tale was more of the fairy- than the classic- variety, but I'm not complaining.  I earned a tick with minimum effort expended.  Hurrah!

I've plenty photo's to show you too, but not time to upload them just now (we're off to a gig tonight) so you can get them in a separate post.  Aren't you lucky?  Meanwhile, I've new classics downloaded to my Kindle app, only £17 left on my credit card (hello, imminent tick once I get paid) and I'm halfway through Season 2 of 24.  

Not quite at my 25% target for being almost a quarter of the way through the year (only at 23.5%), but I blame that on Anna.  If she wasn't such an awful read I'd be much further ahead.  I'm bracing myself though... there's Ulysses to get through yet...

I hate you Anna Karenina

Finally.  Finally.  Finally!  I have finished Anna Karenina and I am angry.  I am angry at you Anna Karenina and Tolstoy!  I have wasted nearly a month of my life reading that stupid, stupid book.  Up until now, I've always prided myself on "reading anything, if it stands still long enough".  From now, I will have to stop describing myself that way.  I will never read that damn book ever again, or anything else by Tolstoy.  I don't care if it's a Russian classic, I hated it.  

And by the way, Anna's a moany pain in the ass and I don't like her.  She ruined my day by being such a rubbish book.

So there.

Sometimes, it's a case of wait and see

Last time, I told you I was having a stressful week.  I was!  I was waiting for the outcome of my applications to a postgraduate course.  I found out the outcome on Thursday.

It's not cut and dried yet, but it's an interview.  It's going to be one heck of an experience, that's for sure!  That's what all the studying has been for recently and what I'm continuing to study for.  As my usual custom of disguising hard work, I'm using lots of pretty colours to make it a little less scary.

I'm continuing to work on some of the bigger projects too.  My training for the marathon is in full swing and we were up on the Lomond Hills yesterday.  Like the sheep?

I'm nearly finished Anna Karenina (80% complete!), have ploughed through season one of 24 in a week (six more to go...), have done of my six months of journalling at least three times a week, am level 66 (of 85) on my character and completed on of my two sewing projects.  This is a present for my lovely creative friend, who will hopefully receive this before too long!

So, I'm getting there.  I should really be throwing in some smaller projects to bring the numbers up, but can't really ignore the big ones or they'll pile up.  I'm keeping at it!  Updates soon.  :-)

Anxiety Week

At the moment, I'm living in a very stressful week.  So, all you're getting today is photos.  Hope you can understand.

I found this on the camera on Monday.  I took other pictures, but this is my gorgeous man so I wanted to put him up!  Also, he doesn't have a huge arm, he was just holding the camera.  (Though his guns are rather impressive).

 This is a progress shot of my sewing project. 

My blog's reached over 800 views!

In the mean time, I'm looking for back up plans.

Where do you come from?

We spent a weekend at my parents, and it's been nice to have a break.  I certainly needed some time away from home to relax and collect myself.  This week coming up is going to be a stressful one.  I'll hear about the outcome of my application for the doctorate course in Clinical Psychology.  By post.  At some point.  Argh.

Anyway.  This weekend we had inteded to take my parents out for a meal, but because we were going for a short time, it didn't really work out.  We did have a very nice time though and it was good to catch up with them.  I was also able to score off a good thing - Learn about the family tree from mum.

My mum's traced back our ancestors quite far, but I hadn't realised quite how far back we had traced it.  Right now, I'm the ninth traced generation of our family - we have the tree right back to the 1700's!  Isn't that cool?  I also learned some awesome stuff about my family.  For instance, the furthest back ancestors my mum's traced on her side of the family are (she thinks) Jacobites; they have a daughter called Jacobina and all the children have very Jacobian names.  The furthest back on my dad's side there is a Hahter in the family, which is a German name and (she thinks) related to a famous musician.  I also found out that I'm directly descended from Prince (?) Donald, the leader of the Donald clan.  We know this because some of our blood relatives have had genetic testing and found that out.

I've wanted to learn about family tree for ages, and it's so cool to see this history right in front of you that you can trace back where you come from.  Each person has their own wee tree too.  So, now, I'm hoping to do Will's family tree.  Since he didn't get the chance to meet all of his grandparents, it's quite exciting for him to see where he came from too.  Then, one day, we'll be able to join our trees together!

So.  Family ancestry aside, here are my two photo's from this weekend.  (Sensing a theme, anyone?)  I also learned to knit this weekend, so that may well be my photo tomorrow!

It's been a while!

I know it's been a while since I posted, but I guess that's a good thing because you get four photo's today!

Let's start with Tuesday.  I've been doing a lot of work at home learning about stats and all sorts of things in preparation for an interview I (might) get.  That might sound a bit optimistic, but if I do get an interview, I need to prepare so much that I wouldn't manage unless I started now.  So, I'm pre-empting it, but even if I don't get an interview, knowing about stats is very useful.

By Wednesday, I'd produced lots of notes!  I get laughed at for how I keep notes.  I use colours for different things - red for a reference or directions for SPSS, blue for a new term, green for a key point and orange for a quote.  So yes, I'm a little OCD about my notes.  It helps me though, and I like having pretty notes.

Thursday, I went for a little wonder to capture my photo - dragon!

And today, I took a picture of the place I went for an interview.  Isn't it a fabulous building?  I think it's pretty fantastic.  I haven't heard about the job.  I'm not holding out much, but we'll see.

Spotty Bag

I am exhausted.  Proper exhausted like I've not been in ages.  This is what happens when you stay up till 1am trying to read more of Anna Karenina.  I swear, once I have finished that book I am going to have to give myself a medal.  According to my Kindle app, I'm only 32% through it.  For real?  I feel like I've been reading it for years.  I think I'm probably lacking the intellectual capability to make proper sense of it, but at the moment I get that the characters are interlinked but I'm really not getting much of a bigger picture.  The plot unfolds at a snail's pace.  It's not intentional, but it truly sends me to sleep.  Normally, I read at night, but when I try to read this I'm asleep after - at most - a chapter.  I must persevere!  I need to get more books and films in this month to reach 25% completion, which would mean I was on target for the month.  At the moment, I'm sitting at 22.4%.

Anyway.  I haven't done anything today.  Apart from work, of course.  And I am tired.  So take your photo of spotty bag and be happy.

And who wouldn't be happy looking at that bag?  It's so pretty.

I've set myself an 18 week challenge to get bikini ready (in other, unrelated news) which is going to help me towards my weight loss goals but also towards marathon training so go me.  I'm too tired to give that an exclamation mark.  *yawn*  I'm also level 65 on my character (20 to go...), will be cashing in the penny pot some time soon and we're taking my parents out for dinner this weekend.  I'm telling you, Tesco vouchers are the bomb.  Hopefully, then, I'll make 25% this month.  Maybe I'll even beat it!  (There you go, an exclamation mark.  Ha.)

Because cousins are awesome

Now, as you might have noticed, not too many people read this blog.  But the people who read it count for lots; one of whom is my awesome cousin, Amy.  Not only did she notice I had more than a few things to tick off still, she bought me birthday presents for tasks I still had to do!  How wonderful is that?

This is one of the gifts she gave me - a watch on a necklace.  I've worn it every day, and I think I can tick off Start wearing a watch!  Thanks!

This is a slightly blurry picture of it, but it looked cool and reminded me of a snitch so I put it on too.

My MoonWalk training started for proper today (see item: Do a marathon).  It went well and because I decided to do some shopping after I added a couple of extra miles to my target - go me!  I had an M&S voucher from ages ago, so I decided to get myself a new bag.  Now, bags are something I have lots of, but at the moment I need to carry a lot to and from work and I don't like to use my handbag - that's for social stuff really - and my backpack is torn to bits, so I got a new, spotty one.

Leelu (the cat with three toes) loves bags.  I turned my back for a second and she was lying on it already!  So I quickly put it back in it's plastic carrier until I was ready to pack it.  So, Leelu sat on that instead.

Yesterday, a sad thing happened.  My childhood pet cat got put down.  He was diabetic and not well at all so it was the right thing to do, but sad.  I wanted to put up a picture of him but I don't have one - my mum has them all.  But, nevertheless, I will miss and remember him well.  He was awesome.

I have two pictures to show you yesterday and today.  One's a nice view, one's a pretty flower.  You don't need me to elaborate on that, right?

I'm also - as I write this - watching Momento, another film off my list and another tick for me.  Good, huh?

I Heart Kinect

Sunday's picture uploaded fine this time, not sure what was wrong with it before.  This isn't just a random colour.  This is the sky.  And I took a picture of it precisely because it was that colour.

As for Tuesday's picture, well, my favouritest new toy ever!  I bought my Kinect, ticking off Buy something expensive (hurray for the first tick of March) and had a lot of fun trying it out.  Here it is all shiny and new...

Today's been a work day, so you get a boring picture today.

I'd really like to give you something witty or insightful, but I just don't have it in me today.  I'm working on so many long-haul tasks at the moment and am so ridiculously broke there's no way I'll be doing anything that costs money this month so it's a difficult time to be enthusiastic about the project - there's still so much to do!  But, I think if I can get over this hurdle, I'll be doing ok.