huagl – Page 21 – Crafts, Cats, and Occasionally Cursing

The Avengers

I don’t read comic books. Sometimes I want to, but it seems like there are so many, I don’t know where to start. Plus I keep seeing images like this, which just makes everything so overly complicated.

It is terrifying! I have talked to my comic booky friends and gotten some suggestions of a good place to start, so I might get onto that at some point, but at the moment all I have experienced are the movies. I am suitably REALLY EXCITED about the Avengers movie coming out this year. You might even say I have gotten a little bit obsessed with it. It started with watching the trailer and squealing over it. Then I found an Avengers tumblr through another person a follow, and looked at all 220 pages of it. That night I had a dream that Wolverine was at my house in motorcyle leathers. Wolverine isn’t in the Avengers (well technically he is, according to my friend) but it was enough of a connection for my brain. I woke up that morning feeling a bit silly but figured that would be the end of it.

A few days later I went and partook in an Avengers Character movie marathon. It was a lovely day, but 10 hours of movie watching is a fair amount of time. You don’t realise how tiring you get watching movies until you do it for almost 10 hours straight. It’s intense. I had been meaning to watch the Hulk movie (even though the actor has changed) and I enjoyed all the other movies when I saw them originally, so it was a good day. Soon after that I had a dream that Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and I were hanging out at a pub. It was strange because he is about a foot taller than me and massive, while I am a tiny lady. I woke up that time getting a bit uncomfortable that it happened again. This didn’t stop me from looking at Avengers stuff online more, though.

Then the night before last I had a dream with Robert Downey Jr in it. I had watched A Scanner Darkly right before going to bed and I recognised him in the dream but don’t know what he was doing in there, but he was definitely in it. It’s getting a bit ridiculous now. While I don’t mind this happening I would prefer it if my brain would space these things out, so I feel less like a perv. But to be fair, what am I supposed to do when the main actors look like this:

I mean, come on.

2012

Well I am in my second day of 2012 and so far the weather has been gorgeous. It’s making me want to actually leave the house, but at the same time I know that if I do go outside I will end up complaining about how hot and bright it is anyway. Best to stay inside

New Year Resolutions aren’t a big thing for me; I feel like if I make really specific ones (go to the gym three times a week, go for a walk every weekend) then it is just setting myself up for failure, which then makes me feel bad about myself because I couldn’t even bother to do things I should be. So I have my “Resolutions” which are things I really want to happen this year, then “General Aims” for the year that it would be good to do but if I am not as successful with those it’s not the end of the world. Those ones I have more mental leeway on.

Resolutions:

1. Talk to someone about my anxiety – It is getting ridiculous and almost to the point that I can’t just pretend everything is ok.
2. Get back to saving money – Not having to worry so much about money all the time is nice. I miss having savings.
3. Get more tattoos/piercings – I know what I want to get, and I don’t want to second guess myself like I did with my previous tattoo. I am not going to take 5 years to get this one. Piercings might happen first, because they are easier, but I still want both to happen this year.
4. Go on a holiday – Even if it’s just to Melbourne for a weekend or something more fun like going overseas to Japan or America. I haven’t really had a proper holiday in a fair while, it would be nice to do something like that.

General Aims:

1. Ride my bike more – I have been coming up with excuses not to do this, but if I want to go overseas I will need to be fitter than I am now so I have to get on to that. Will try and go for a ride at least once a week.
2. Update this place regularly – Again, at least once a week. If I have more to say in the week then there will be more updates, but even if it just is a post on Sunday of the photos I have taken throughout the week then that is enough.
3. Try to cut back on the amount of stuff I own – There always seems to be a point where I look at the stuff I own and there is just a lot of things that I don’t actually use any more. I need to have regular clean outs where I take clothes and other things to charity stores and try to be less of a hoader. I’ll probably move house at some point this year and would like it to be less of an ordeal.
4. Get serious about going back to uni or not – I miss learning things, so I either have to commit to doing uni again (probably part time, by correspondence) or doing some sort of class. Maybe relearn Japanese in preparation of going over there?
5. Get out of the house more – Even if it’s just going to a local park to have a picnic on the weekend, I just feel like I always end up sitting around the house that even thinking about going outside feels like too much of a hassle.

Basically everything I want to do is reliant on money, so the first thing I have to do before anything else this year is get a job. After that my year should be much easier, comparatively. If you have read all this then good work! Have a photo of a cat as a reward.

2011 Overview

So 2011 is over (or at least will be over quite soon). I am kinda glad. A fair few people I know feel like 2011 was a shit of a year and are looking forward to 2012 simply because it’s not 2011. I feel like the whole ‘2012 is going to be the end of the world’ rubbish is a good excuse to do things I have been putting off for a while. I don’t think the world is going to end in December, but I would like to feel like I have accomplished something this year anyway. Just in case. Before all that I guess I should sum up the positives and negatives of 2011.

Didn’t die
Got the tattoo I have wanted for about 6 years
Kept my job and got a quasi-promotion
Decided cider is delicious
Started dressing more nicely
Celebrated 4 years being with Ben
Moved into a cute little house with some friends
Got a cat!
Finished paying off the money I borrowed off Mum
Taught myself to crochet and started making a blanket

–

Still have anxiety (and I suspect it’s gotten worse)
Still have this cough that won’t go away and the specialist I saw was useless
Family issues keep popping up
My cat got very sick just after we got her (but is better now)
My job got really stressful and I ended up being overworked for not much money
Had some scary relationship talks that ended in lots of tears
Quit my job without something to go to and subsequently have used up almost all my savings and credit card already

So I guess the year was ultimately a good one, I mean there’s more on the positives list than the negatives, but most of the negatives happened fairly recently so it feels like the year has been shithouse. I’ll make another post with my resolutions and general aims for 2012, but that will probably be tomorrow and not when I am about to get ready to go do NYE stuff.

Boxxy

Living with a computery person has some perks. He’s always upgrading his computers, which means I get all his “old” computer bits which are still better than what I had. If I ever have any issue then I know he will be able to fix it. I have even started learning a few things from him talking about computer stuff all the time! This proves I listen to him when he talks, doesn’t it?

At the moment I am using my tiny little computer, Boxxy. When I first got her I was amazed at how small she was. Here she is:

See? Tiny! She’s been my box for almost a year now, so I have grown attached to her a bit. We tried to change her insides to a different case, but it mysteriously wouldn’t work so we chucked everything back. Except now she has some sort of ghost inside her making my life difficult. Sometimes she doesn’t turn on properly, other times my second HDD stops registering as there so I have to fiddle with cords. For a while I had to leave her on top of my desk because if I put her under the desk and turned her off she wouldn’t turn back on. In all of this we had to reformat her and reinstall everything from a backup, which meant I lost a few things. One of which was photoshop. Oh how I have missed photoshop. I had a different photo editing thing I have been using in the interim but it’s just not the same. So we finally reinstalled that shit last night and I drew a picture to celebrate.

It is me doing the “hurray I have photoshop!” dance. It’s been so long since I’ve used my tablet that I have forgotten how to do a lot of stuff, but hopefully I will get back into the habit of using it again.

Christmas

Now that Christmas has been and gone for me, I can claim that it was at least a moderate success. I have been seeing all these posts on other blogs about their decorations, which makes me feel a bit bad about my minimalist (read: lazy) effort. Ally hung some candy canes on the wall behind the tv:

And I made some crochet flowery things that looked vaguely snowflakey:

But that was about it. I’m not a huge Christmas fan anyway, so the fact we had any decorations was novelty enough. We had nibbles and dips to start with, bought ham and chicken and turkey and prawns, made a garden salad and a potato salad (which was so amazingly delicious but also a fair amount of effort) and had nice sourdough bread from the local fancy bakery. Our fridge is struggling with the amount of food we were able to stuff in there. We realised this morning that our cranberry sauce was mouldy, so I went on a quick hunt for some but couldn’t find any. Turkey and cranberry sauce is one of my favourite things to eat, so I was a bit bummed about that.

Both of our families turned up at the same time, which was a nice coincidence, and mum insisted on my opening one of her presents before anything else. Mum is really into Christmas, so it was a lesson in self control that she held out until she did. The flurry of present opening was fun.Our small pile of gifts looked a bit sad compared to the bags of gifts from our families:

After presents was more eating and subsequent resting. I was going to make some sort of trifle for desserts, but in the end we decided that fruit salad was easier and just as delicious. Ben and I both cut ourselves cutting fruit, but that was the only casualties, so all in all it went ok! Everyone got along well, the food was all delicious, presents were enjoyed. We got so many big fluffy towels from Ben’s parents and we have no room to store them, but they are so soft and cuddly! We’ll find room somewhere.

The cats hid outside when people were around, which is not surprising, but Scout re-emerged once my family left and discovered the fancy ribbon on a present box and went to town.

So all in all it was a good day. Now I have the post-Christmas blues, but that could also just be realising how much cleaning we still have to do.