Always on my miiiind… VACATION.

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So things have been hectic lately. I turned 25.  Me and the better half had an awesome day cruising through the country for business and pleasure alike (mostly pleasure). In the evening we enjoyed a couple of hours of Sonata Arctica… absolutely BRILLIANT live, just like the last time.

The next day I definitely had a hard time walking. Or bending my legs, for that matter. Maybe I’m just getting old? :)

At any rate, we’ve also booked a 10-day vacation in Rhodos, Greece (thank you, tax returns) – in an all-inclusive hotel even. It is slightly farther away from the main city of the island, but I’m sure that will work out fine.

I am utterly hyped up for it. It’s been a long while since I visited Rhodos and kind of want to see all those places again.

Toene the Sylvari – Forgal lost

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The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out
You left me in the dark
No dawn, no day, I’m always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart

Toene gently laid down her bow next to her and leaned forward to enjoy her meager campfire’s warmth. Her companion, the brown bear whom she’d playfully nicknamed Brother, was off somewhere – probably trying his mettle against the fish in a nearby river. Darkness was descending in the area and the forest was filling with nighttime sounds, but the young Sylvari hardly cared. She ran her hand through her blond-with-green, leafy hair that was quite typical with her kind, while sinking into her recollections of the past days.

Much had happened and left a devastating trail straight though Toene’s heart.

A great victory had been won, but at what price?

Toene pulled her knees against her chest and wrapped her arms around them, wincing against the pain of multitude of bruises and cuts still on the mend.  She thought of Forgal Kernsson, the tall, imposing Nord whom she’d spent so many months with, adventuring through the forests and mountains of Tyria. He’d been as much her cornerstone as she had been his after the Risen activity had multiplied on the coasts and had led to the capturing of Claw Island off the coast of Lion’s Arch. Forgal, with his uncanny ability to keep her on the path towards the completion of her Wyld Hunt, had indeed taught the lithe Sylvari woman a lot about life. And from now on she’d have to make do without his grin and twinkling eyes.

“I thought you’d be long asleep, Commander” a deep voice sounded from behind Toene. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Trahearne, another friend of hers, slowly walking towards the campfire, then sitting down a couple of feet away from her. One could see Trahearne was no sapling Sylvari – his skin was mixed shades of dark green and brown, as was his hair. Yet his eyes were a bright amber yellow. They looked at her curiously.

Toene shrugged. “I wasn’t sleepy” she replied simply, turning back to the campfire.

The two Sylvari sat in silence, listening to the crackling of the fire and the wind blowing through the trees around them. Some moments later they heard something approaching through the darkness and while Trahearne grew alert, Toene waved her hand to calm him. A great furry form emerged from the bushes on the other end of the campsite, carrying something in his mouth.

“It would seem Brother brought us dinner”, Trahearne chuckled.

Toene watched, a small smile turning the sides of her mouth upwards, as the great brown bear pushed through the undergrowth and trotted next to her. Brother then promptly opened his mouth, dropping the two large rainbowfish into Toene’s lap and growled low – the sound vibrating through the two sitting Sylvaris and making then quite glad the fuzzy creature, closer to 800 than 500 pounds in weight and quite imposing to see up close, was on their side!

The Reasons I Smiled Today: Part 2

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Since another week is rolling to a close (and the winter doesn’t seem to want to let us go) I thought I’d do a little Friday post while planning all kinds of things for next month… Thus, the reasons that I smiled today are:

1. My master plans are coming together beautifully. My better half’s birthday is in a bit more than a month, but this year I opted to start early and seems like I am on a roll. 2 out of 3 online ordered packages have arrived and are awaiting wrapping. I’m still wondering if I should go an extra mile to pack the individual items separately.

You’re wondering what’s in those boxes, huh, N? :)

2. I managed to update WordPress without breaking all my posts like last time.

woman_cheering

3. Due to number 2, I am also not seeing the annoying prompt to update my WordPress on top of the page.

4. I’m almost finished with one of the most brain-wreckingly boring projects at work I’ve had for a while. Blergh! (Think positive, think positive, think positive..)

5.  It’s Friday. And I am being fed white chocolate eggs.

b0711w-1

Overall things seem to be going fine. It’s been a while since I last sat down to sew anything, but I’m sure I’ll eventually get back to that too. For the moment I am actually playing the Sims 3 with all of its’ expansion packs. Just for fun. I’d play Darksiders II but for the terribly bad camera control I don’t REALLY feel like struggling through all that.

Friday!

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Fridays are unlike any other days. Friday means making a decision of rushing through that pile of Stuff(tm) that you still need to do or deciding to leave it for next week (always a bad choice for me, knowing that next week there is plenty more Stuff(tm) to do that turns out to be more important that the Stuff(tm) that you were supposed to finish last week).

Luckily, in our office, Friday has become something of a Random day. Animal noises are made, balloons are being kicked from one end of the room to the other, and people generally seem to have more interest in talking about what they are going to do in the weekend than actually working at that moment.

I actually waltzed into the office at 7.30 and thought about the decoration in our shared office.

This is where I sit - isn't it excittiiinnngg?!

At any level, the space I share with 9 other nutjobs (no offense, folks), is far from the cozy it could be. Maybe big vases and some fresh spring-y branches would help? ..

Probably not. At least I tried.

I’ll just go ahead and concentrate my efforts in organizing our apartment first I think. :)

The reasons why I smiled today (so far)

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The whole week has been somewhat dreary, so I figured I might start with the good of the day.

1. The news reader of 3FM couldn’t stop laughing after a parodic jingle played by the DJ, which made me laugh until I was crying (luckily I wasn’t at the highway yet)

2. I watched my colleagues recount math from their school lessons and I realized I happily forgot mine.

3. Instead of sitting in a traffic jam for 2 hours I managed to dodge most of it by checking the current situation through Twitter and http://www.anwb.nl/verkeer .

4. Without thinking more of it, I just put up my sunglasses the moment I stepped into the car. That might have saved a couple of lives. Including my own.

 

Sewing and growing more attached to my Singer

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I have a thing called “every time I get sick I feel more creative”. Maybe it’s a direct correlation between extra “free time” (that borders on boredom) and creativity?

It’s rarely ever that my sewing fingers itch lately, so I got up to the sewing room, set up some music via Spotify (and suffered CONTINUOUS breaks in the music because of the bad wireless connection upstairs) and opened the binder I had started making with different fun projects that I had almost forgotten that I had.

Then I discovered a pattern I had printed out a long time ago. The super-easy reversible bag by verypurpleperson.com.

Reversible bag by verypurpleperson.com

So I cut the pieces out of the A4s, taped them together and set off to search big enough batches of fabric (since this bag is made from several pieces but they’re all fairly large). Turns out I actually had a pile of brown canvas-like fabric, and some brown striped fabric.

During this project I actually had FUN. For once I wasn’t afraid of screwing it up WHILE sewing.  It was amazing, and almost relaxing. A definite improvement from the “I have an expensive sewing machine serving as a playground to Maggy, I think I need to fix this”. I truly envy the ones who can come up with something, sit down and make it happen. :)

Pity enough, I haven’t taken any pictures of my ready bag or the making of. It’s already in use as my lunch grocery bag though, and is quite sturdy. I’m satisfied with how neat it turned out, though I do regret the fabric choices now. Maybe I’ll whip up a couple more for fun?

Inner organizer monster that I didn’t seem to know I had

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You know, it amazes me when other people see parts of me I’m quite unable to see.

For a while now I’ve been playfully labeled slightly OCD about things (hey, I just like keeping things in order) by a colleague. I would deny it while stuffing my meager belongings in a beautiful black organizer on my desk. Awhile ago, during a planned cleanup session, I actually took it to myself to organize the massive filing cabinets we have in our office at work while everyone else was carrying out hundreds of kilos of what I deemed to be trash (sounds quite cruel, doesn’t it?). It’s still not perfect but it makes sense and whenever someone is looking for something, I will know if we have it or not and where. I like that feeling.

A couple of days ago, while recovering from the flu, I crawled to the Marskramer downstairs and grabbed a couple of Sunware storage boxes.

I had somehow finally succumbed to the curse of our hugely disorganized pantry/stair closet and decided that it was finally a time for me to put the things in ORDER. Up until now we were stashing a variety of things (and when I say a variety, I mean anything ranging from charcoal for the barbeque, to glassware that we don’t use, to pasta sauces and funnily enough… part of my riding gear) in that closet in closed or hard-to-see in Ikea storage boxes. That closet is dark, and these boxes weren’t helping in making sure I found what I needed!

MOTORP

 

BLADIS storage box

 

You know what’s wrong with that pantry, in addition of being small and hard to get into (unless you’re tiny like me?). It’s dark like a cave. Not inviting, no sir.

Turns out the internet has a solution for that too.

I started looking for lamps that wouldn’t require a cord (as we don’t have any outlets in the stair closet) and after digging through a ton of infant night lamps I had my answer: motion sensor lamps powered by batteries.

Battery powered lamp with motion sensor

I am going to love our pantry after I’m done organizing the heck out of it!

We were talking about this organizing twitch I have at work after some of our colleagues were done dragging 14 boxes into our office and in front of the before mentioned filing cabinets. I would eye the boxes and ponder how the hell I was going to fit all that was inside the boxes IN THE CABINETS. Somehow the discussion led to labeling, and now I am entertaining thoughts of asking for a labeling machine for my birthday next month.  Hmm, that COULD be nice. :)

Snotzombie

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Like the title says, I think you can imagine I’m not feeling quite that fresh. Actually, the only thing that has kept me breathing are these tissues:

I have emptied 2 of these 8-packs and one singular big box. I say tissues with lotion are like, the best thing ever. Better than sliced bread. You know what also works finely on dried nose after such an ordeal? Aloe vera after sun lotion. Won’t hurt and gets absorbed fast. Almost instant relief in combination with these tissues.

Despite being the local snotzombie, I managed to do a tiny bit of sewing (there are two mothers-to-be in the family again so I’m figuring the other one can’t go without a small gift this time around!). I’ve already pulled out my trusty turtle pattern pieces and have the exact right fabrics picked out. She loves purple, so she’s going to get purple. An overload of purple.

I’m thinking of filling up the stash more with the Cuzco series from Kate Spain. I found an X-L layer cake in a German web shop. To buy or not to buy? Aaagh.

Well, I am a fabricholic, that much is for sure. :)

 

My Monday in one 9gag meme-image

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Just as I was done complaining to myself how stressy this week would be (as both me and the better half have trainings this week and he has to stay at a hotel several nights, leaving me to be the cat entertainer for a couple of days).

I’m sniffing and flu-y.  Ah, well. Maybe it’ll go away before Wednesday. Maybe.