In Brussels with a full on cold. Incredibly unpleasant drivers, too. #Catisonacoach

I can confirm that I am not currently on a coach and haven’t been since the 14th of January. Thanks to both of the journeys I am also not planning on any coach trips within the foreseeable future, particularly not ones that involve the use of foreign coach companies. More on that another time.

I think the last two coach trips have somewhat scarred me as I’ve had two coach related nightmares in the past two days.

One of them involved me being stuck on a coach for three days until mutiny. Why this took three days I’m not sure and I also don’t remember why I was on the coach or where I was going to.

The second one was more vivid though and whilst I don’t remember the dream so much now I do recall bits with the help of the notes I wrote down as soon as I woke up:

• Coach travel.
• Several days break somewhere for some reason.
• Handbag stolen.
• XXX helps me retrieve it.
• Then tells me to go for my real love.
• He gives me the number for that person.
• Hollywood happy ending with music.

XXX is a person I know, he is someone I went to school with back home in Germany. I haven’t seen him since 2001 and, apart from having him on my friends list on a German Facebook clone some years ago, have had no contact. In fact there wasn’t really any contact then either; he added me and I accepted the friends request. Whilst he went on to move towns and become somewhat successful in a certain sports discipline in his local area, I haven’t come across him in any news or seen him on Facebook or anywhere.

It truly puzzles me why he appeared in my dream in a manner very unlike how I remember him. In the dream he was a supportive person with local knowledge and able to help me. In a sense he reminded me of Jonathan in the Buffy episode where he made himself famous though he was never anything like Jonathan.

All in all it was one of the strangest dreams in my life and very much unlike previous dreams. And who is my real love? The person representing my allegedly real love in the dream wasn’t anyone I’ve ever met.

I wish I had never discovered the Agatha Raisin series as it is sure to bankrupt me over time!

Since then I have made a resolution that I will only buy one book each calendar week to not only draw out the series, but also ensure my bank account doesn’t hate me too much. Last week I read ‘Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage‘ fairly early on in the week and was tempted to buy the next one as early as Thursday. I managed to not only resist, but also forget all about it until remembering just now!

The murderous marriage was a good book, but it wasn’t fantastic. For most of it it changed the dynamic between Agatha and the other characters a bit too much and the overall murder and plot was completely crazy. It did, however, have this quote which made me laugh a lot:

The rendering of ‘Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina’ was, Agatha reflected sourly, music to stun pigs by.

This week’s book is ‘Agatha Raisin and the Terrible Tourist‘ which some Amazon reviews have called the worst book in the series and which I am now looking forward to reading in bed.

Only five days until I can buy the next one!

My Kindle activity which includes shared quotes and finished books. I blog about books I’ve read in the ‘Books‘ category. And, finally, my Amazon Wishlist includes upcoming books I am planning to read.

She had no texts, no missed calls and the only emails were ones offering her enhancements she definitely wouldn’t be needing without far more invasive and complicated surgery first.

I finished the book quite quickly and enjoyed it. Jessica Daniels is a solid character with enough quirks and too few friends to be completely believable though the plot itself was a bit too straightforward. Maybe it’s because I have read too many crime novels to see patterns easily, but it was still satisfying to see I was right at the end.

Vigilante on the other hand was a little bit less obvious. It is set several months after the first book and things for the character had changed which led to her feeling isolated more. She has picked up some new bad habits which turn out to be quite annoying to read about as I can’t quite follow the character. The book itself was much more fun to read as the story was more compelling and perhaps because I didn’t guess the end.

Overall I am enjoying the Jessica Daniel’s series a lot and book three is on my list of books to read next. I am also looking forward to book four and five which are set to be released later in the year.

My Kindle activity which includes shared quotes and finished books. I blog about books I’ve read in the ‘Books‘ category. And, finally, my Amazon Wishlist includes upcoming books I am planning to read.

I first started a scarf for my friend’s birthday all the way back in October when I opted for a patchworky looking pattern out of various knit and purl stitches over four rows with two different colours until I realised that the colours, whilst matching really well, were my favourite colours, not hers. Knowing that her favourite colours are hot pink and emerald I chose to buy some wool when I was in Germany.

Initially I was dubious about the colours and whether they would really work together, but quickly realised that they were actually practically made for each other and quickly progressed.

It’s the first time I chose to knit a scarf lengthways which is surprising seeing how many scarves I have actually knitted. It was @sahfenn who first put the idea in my head at some time last year, but I never actually got around to doing it myself. With this scarf I was really looking to create something with texture and a bit of an Asian feel which the colours definitely achieve. By knitting lengthways I was able to alternate colours for a large chunk of the scarf which also automatically created tassels at the end.

The yarn is Schachenmayr SMC Bravo which is 100% acrylic and distributed by Coats Crafts and I used approximately 85% of the pink and 55% of the emerald, as well as approximately 35g of gold Anchor Artiste.

I cast on judging purely by gauging the length and lots of guessing and then alternated knitting emerald and gold with pink and gold rows, as well as a pink middle section with a double gold midsection.

Once cast off I knotted the tassels together, two at a time and normally one of each colour. This eliminated having to add tassels at a later point and meant I didn’t have to sew in any ends.

Overall this was an incredibly easy and quick scarf to knit. I now have ideas for my next lengthways scarf with an initial idea of a rainbow coloured one.

It all started early today afternoon when one of my housemates mentioned going on holiday and we then thought we should go on holidays together which led to two of us looking for cheap deals to Amsterdam, then Madeira, Marrakesh, Venice and other places in April.

Come early evening after hours of reading trip reviews and playing around with dates and locations I was caught by the holiday bug and wanted to check, just out of interest of course, what a few nights in Venice at the end of this month would cost just for me. I realised I could travel and stay in Venice for a lot less than I expected. Speaking to a friend hoping she would dissuade me only led to her saying she would be able to join me and I have just completed the booking!

I will be in Venice from the 31.01.-02.02. staying in Residenza Cannaregio, a former monastery directly in Venice, flying to Venice’s Marco Polo airport. No coach travel this time! The hotel has received a wealth of great reviews on Trip Advisor and most importantly looks really good.

Additionally we have decided to opt for a Collegium Ducale Orchestral Concert with an opera singer’s performance in the Palazzo delle Prigioni on the Tuesday.

The entire trip including the performance, hotel, flight, taxes came to less than £200 per person. Including train and bus it’ll probably not be much more and it’s quite mindblowing that it’s possible to stay in the actual Venice for that amount.

Going to Venice will be a strange experience. Even though I’ve been there before, it was always during the summer time and I’ve heard that Venice can seem like an entirely different town during the winter months. It’s also the first proper holiday I have been on in many years as I normally have to go back to Germany every time I have the time or the money or I decide to do other things with my time. I’m really very excited.

I’ve just realised the search with housemates was never completed..

If my memory is correct, which is always a caveat to add to most of my childhood memories, one of the first stories I ever read myself was the one with the sweet porridge. I had been read the more traditional ones over the years and only picked this one, because it was probably one of the shortest ones in the book. I remember leafing through the pages until finding one that was less than a page. Now, many years later, I couldn’t even remember its entire plot and had to look it up during one of the conversations.

Whilst I had been aware of the concept of Sherlock Holmes from a young age I didn’t read them until I was 11, as my parents considered some of the themes and settings to be too adult. I spent Christmas one year reading the collected Sherlock Holmes works.

It’s interesting to see what has happened to the books since. With the Grimm’s fairy tales I’ve watched the Heath Ledger film, some of Grimm and a majority of Once Upon A Time and none of them really does it for me. The latter probably is the most interesting because of its recurring characters and intriguing story, but I have no real drive to carry on watching. With Grimm I’m finding the premise incredibly difficult to swallow.

Sherlock Holmes has had many adaptations and I remember watching quite a few of the older ones. Nothing seemed to quite grab the character for me as the 2009 film though and I’m still planning to see the new film. By all intents and purposes I feel like I should like Sherlock, but, just like Grimm, find the overly modern setting irritating. Sherlock makes me feel both bored and angry at the same time.

Maybe it’s best to keep the fond memories in the past.

I have just ordered its replacement from Amazon based on the good reviews all around the internet – the Remington D5020 Pro Ionic Ultra Hair Dryer which is quite a mouthful. May it last me as long as the other one has.

A purchase I never thought I would make is spending anything above a couple of quid for shampoo, but after yesterday’s wash and cut using only these products I’ve thought that perhaps it does make a difference in what I use on my hair. In addition to purchasing the serum at the salon at the time I have also elected to buying the shampoo and conditioner by Paul Mitchell. I’m hoping this will last years as I don’t want to spend this much on my hair on a regular basis!

I feel like I need to balance this out, turning far too girly.

I got Skyrim on the PC [well, my laptop] since the week of its release and have not played it at all this year. In fact I can’t even remember the last time I did play it, but think it was after Christmas. I even took my laptop to Germany with me hoping I would be able to play some there which, but, thanks to a mixup with travel plugs, I couldn’t.

I have nothing to blame at the moment – I have the time and I have the means right here as I’m typing this post on my laptop. Yet at the same time I’ve had a long day of shopping and getting a haircut and time at my friend’s house that all I want to do is eat the white chocolate brownie I bought from Workhouse Coffee and have some Kindle time in bed.

In the past I blamed having incompatible hobbies, such as knitting and reading [though that's slowly starting to work together with the Kindle], but I can just as well play Skyrim from bed as the desk is next to my bed and I’m playing it with a 360 controller anyway. It’s not even that I don’t like Skyrim – I think it’s probably one of the best games I’ve ever played and every time I’ve played it has been rewarding and brilliant.

So why does it feel like a chore?

It’s a show I discovered years ago and, despite not really being convinced by its concept, stuck to. Mediums and premonitions aren’t really anything I give credit to.

The show was great for its characters, particularly the DuBois family. Joe’s difficulty of dealing with his wife’s abilities and the children’s daily life coming second after their mum’s job felt real. The family had to adjust and even later episodes made a point of dealing with things like the schoolrun or the girls slowly growing up. One of my favourite B plots involved Ariel having to make a difficult decision whether to accept a dead husband’s help deceiving his wife and deleting emails if his infidelity in exchange for him helping her pass the interview for university. Another involved Allison lying to her husband’s mother by telling her she had a dream about her years down the future after having been diagnosed with brain cancer leading to her not making any arrangements when it came close to her dying several years later.

There were also many things that annoyed me – Allison was too vague and often withheld or didn’t share information until the “oh, I saw that” moment which could have potentially saved lives before. In that regard I wish the writers had been more clever about important plot developments.

However, the thing that really left me with a bad taste in my mouth and really made me question the whole show was the final episode. I can’t forgive the writer’s for wrapping it up by removing all the things that made the show great – the family. I remember thinking the episode was less sad than Buffy’s ‘The Body’ and that was in equal parts the episode being sad, the end of a great show and the events of the episode.

Overall it’s a show I can see myself watch again years down the line, but I will not be watching that last episode again.

Memories of the Future was one of the first books I bought on the Kindle and the fourth book I’ve finished on the Kindle.

For most of the book I was disappointed and then disappointed in being disappointed. It felt like he was pandering to the audience’s hatred of his character on practically every page and whilst he pointed out obvious plot flaws, such as a doctor’s kid suddenly being given an important mission, I wish there could have been more on the episodes. Anything than the constant reminder on how it’s the cool thing to hate the character would have been good.

I also didn’t find his writing to be of his usual standard until quite late in the book when it got towards the final episodes of the first season.

This is where the episode, which had been flirting with a left turn at Albuquerque for the last fifteen minutes, sets a course for planet Shark and warps right over it.

Looking back at my Amazon activity I realise I shared quite a few passages which I remember made me laugh out loud, but there were too few, especially at the beginning.

It’s a fun book, but I am overall a little bit disappointed as I have seen much better writing from him in basic blog or tumblr posts and I’ll think twice about purchasing the sequel or any of his other books at full price. Or maybe I just had too high expectations?

My Kindle activity which includes shared quotes and finished books. I blog about books I’ve read in the ‘Books‘ category. And, finally, my Amazon Wishlist includes upcoming books I am planning to read.

My list of started knitting projects:

• A pair of socks – started months ago, am maybe 40% through the first one.
• A scarf – was meant as a present, but might unravel.
• A scarf – was also meant as a present, but I think I will finish it and use it for myself or someone else in the future.
• A scarf – this one was started as a present, but I have since realised I didn’t like the colours for that person so I’ll unravel it.
• A scarf – just started for a friend’s birthday. This is in good chance to be finished within a couple of days.
• An attempt at knitting a basket. It’s actually v6, as I unravelled the previous attempts.
• My jumper – probably at about 30%, haven’t done anything on it in over a week due to a trip to Germany.
• And then there’s always the #doodleblanket..

Projects I want to do:

• A hat – I desperately need another hat that isn’t bright red/orange/purple colours.
• A hot water bottle cover requested by housemate.
• A teapot cozy and/or something to keep tea warm in my cup.
• A proper Kindle cover.

I’m really feeling the pressure from my unfinished projects and will have to really reduce some of them, even if that means unravelling something. I’m also realising I’m in desperate need of finishing something as it’s been almost a month since I’ve finished the jumpers.

It has 2.5 floors of all things wool from Knit Pro needles to sockwool to sections dedicated to fleece, as well as a whole floor just for discounted end-of-range wool with prices of 1 Euro for most skeins.

It’s the shop responsible for starting my collection of Knit Pro wooden needles which, as it seemingly turns out, are turning into my favourite needles and I made sure to pick up a few more last week.

Even though I constantly think my knitting isn’t as good as I want it to be, I still feel that I am learning more about it in general. For example most of my knitted items are 100% acrylic as I like the touch, find it easier to knit with and want to be able to stick it into the washing machine without having to worry. If they don’t contain 100% it is at least the majority in the mix.

As such my recent visit to Woll-Weber KG was a little disappointing as I realised that most of the wool on offer is indeed 100% wool and I had to hunt to find wool made of acrylic for my latest project.

Reading only has one dedicated wool shop out in Tilehurst which I really ought to visit one day!

It sort of happened as I was browsing the Kindle store when I discovered the Agatha Raisin omnibus containing the first for books of the series which now spans more than 20 books.

The books included in the omnibus are:

• Agatha Raisin and The Quiche of Death
• Agatha Raisin and The Vicious Vet
• Agatha Raisin and The Potted Gardener
• Agatha Raisin and The Walkers of Dembley

Whilst they are effectively standalone books they do contain character development and follow Agatha as she moves from the busy city to a quiet life in the Cotswolds all whilst solving murders and making friends.

It’s very much Midsomer-Murders-esque with quaint village life, gardening competitions and women’s societies and I keep expecting John Nettles to make an appearance.

I think my favourite part about the series so far is the protagonist – Agatha. Outwards she is a strong woman coming from a demanding job running her own PR company, but really she has just as many shortcomings as everyone else which particularly comes through in her love for her neighbour and her panic with everything related to him.

The omnibus cost around £7, every future one at least £5. I don’t want to do the maths!

My Kindle activity which includes shared quotes and finished books. I blog about books I’ve read in the ‘Books‘ category. And, finally, my Amazon Wishlist includes upcoming books I am planning to read.

• On time
• Clean
• On time
• Cheap (compared to the UK anyway)
• On time
• Spacious
• On time

Kids playing music through their phone’s speakers aside this is what not to do for German public transport:

• Queue

Every cloud, silver lining and all that..

This book is different, it isn’t written by a survivor or based on diaries, but is completely fictional. Whilst the author has taken efforts researching the subject matter, it feels like we’re strangers starting into something happening rather than get immersed in it.

There is hardly any characterisation and people appear and disappear throughout and past disagreements are rarely mentioned. The protagonist – Rosa – degenerates more and more into craziness and in turn becomes unlikeable. Time jumps months or years ahead with most chapters and if feels lazy of the author to not make any reference or indication to the lost and skipped time with the exception of the new date as the chapter title.

The writing is curious – there are a large number of German words interspersed in the text from her father’s nickname for Rosa – Püppchen – to words in conversations, but most of the time they feel out of place and tacked on and I wonder how non German speakers would cope. The author also had an annoying habit of constructing incredibly long sentenced with ten or more commas which makes for difficult reading.

I wouldn’t recommend it.

My Kindle activity which includes shared quotes and finished books. I blog about books I’ve read in the ‘Books‘ category. And, finally, my Amazon Wishlist includes upcoming books I am planning to read.

All the images from the purple jumper. More info about the knitting here – the story of the jumpers.

All the images from the green jumper. More info about the knitting here – the story of the jumpers.

I can still hear myself insisting over and over to my friend that I was happy with just being able to do a garter stitch and that I didn’t feel like I needed to learn purl or any other fancy stitches. That was back in 2009 and since then I’ve learned a few more stitches. Well, really just one more.

After about a dozen scarves and about eight sets of wristwarmers I felt it was time for another challenge, I felt ready to knit my first jumper. Because I felt I needed to get my head around knitting a jumper I didn’t want to jump straight into knitting one for myself. Instead I decided to knit a jumper for each of my friend’s children – a boy aged five and a girl aged almost three.

The hardest part was deciding what I wanted to knit as there are hundreds of patterns for jumpers on Ravelry and I found suggestions by housemates to be very helpful. The basis of the jumpers was the ‘Knit Coastal Stripe Pullover‘ pattern from Lion Brand Yarn. Ravelry link.

There were a lot of things I modified about the pattern and the final result looks almost nothing like the pattern, but it was a good basis to start with. I found the pattern relatively easy to read and only made one big mistake which was knitting the first part almost twice as long as it should have been!

Deciding on how to modify the jumpers proved tricky and I remember running a lot of things past housemates who I think got about as invested as me in them. As such we mutually chose and decided on:

Boy’s jumper [henceforth referred to as green jumper]:

• Green for the jumper
• A brown dragon pattern on the front which later changed to also include fire as the dragon was too small and couldn’t be scaled without looking too blocky
• A small neckline

Girl’s jumper [henceforth referred to as purple jumper]:

• Purple for the jumper
• A flower garland which later changed to a large pink star for more effect
• A larger neckline

All of the above took me several days to decide on, even though it now seems silly and easy, but I do remember being so much in awe of the project that I wanted to get it right the first time.

Having decided on the colours, calculating the yardages and having asked the lovely @melsworth and @noirem on Twitter about the English substitute for worsted yarn [Answer: Aran] it was time to go wool shopping which was October 30th. As I realised later I had bought about 40% too much wool which I’m sure I’ll be able to use for something else in the future.

Wanting to get the majority of the knitting out of the way I started knitting the back of the green jumper which is where I made the only major mistake of the project by knitting about 300 stitches too much. After that I moved on to the front piece whilst constantly measuring the length. With that in mind I decided to knit bot sleeves at the same time which reduced the time spent measuring that they’re both the same length and I’d equally increase stitches.

Writing it up like that makes it seem like a walk in the park and like it happened quickly, but it actually spans over two months thanks to my thumb injury. I remember the feeling of achievement of having finished the dragon and the fire and realising I got it all right on the first attempt and I also remembered the sadness when I realised my neckline was rubbish and I apparently couldn’t decrease well enough.

Knitting the green jumper didn’t feel right the entire time which is probably due to the long break I had to take with it, but also the wool itself. It split a lot and it just didn’t feel great knitting with it. The dragon, whilst knitted right on the first attempt, was slightly pulling the surrounding wool and there were a lot of imperfections where I didn’t get the tension quite right. The jumper also turned out quite small compared and I found out later that it didn’t fit properly.

Realising that knitting identical pieces at the same time was a stroke of genius I then started on the purple jumper which was much more fluid and easy.

I think I completed the front and back piece within just a few days and the sleeves within a couple of days. It was much more straightforward and pleasant to knit. I added some stripes on the sleeves on a whim, too.

Green Jumper:

• Pattern - from Lion Brand Yarn
• Dragon - from Ravelry
• Fire - scribbled by me on a piece of paper

Purple jumper:

• Pattern - from Lion Brand Yarn
• Star - from a friend’s knitting book

Before sewing the green jumper I blocked it to make it easier to sew it together, but it didn’t make enough of a difference to consider going through the hassle on the other jumper, too.

Again I started with the green jumper and the sewing of it which was, apart from one sleeve, straightforward and helped greatly with understanding how a jumper works. The purple one was a breeze.

I had such different experiences with each jumper that it’s really difficult to sum up. I’m glad they are done and I know I won’t undertake something like it for someone else again. I now understand how jumpers work and was confident enough to now start on my own one.

I keep telling myself that I don’t have any guilty pleasure books and that I don’t mind that some books might not be as highbrow as others, but in all honesty I varely rarely find myself talking about chicklit. I don’t even like a lot of it, most are annoying characters or too much of a will they, won’t they for me to enjoy and they make me want to scream just like most, if not all, rom-coms.

I finished reading The Sleepless Nanny within a few hours and it was enjoyable and I couldn’t stop reading. That’s not to say that there aren’t issues with it, the pace at times feels too rushed and at other times too slow, but the characters work well. The story was believable and whilst there are some little grammar niggles it worked and I particularly enjoyed seeing all loose ends resolved.

I’m now looking forward to seeing what Christa is writing next.

For £1.87 I expected a lot less.

My Kindle activity which includes shared quotes and finished books. I blog about books I’ve read in the ‘Books‘ category. And, finally, my Amazon Wishlist includes upcoming books I am planning to read.

Over the next week I will be spending around 50 hours travelling though I think that’s a rather conservative estimate. My journey involves: Bus, bus, coach, coach, train and bus and the same in reverse for the return journey.

I’m not annoyed about it, after all I chose it and I know I can sleep well on coaches and now have a Kindle, but it’s still quite strange knowing all that time is looming.

I will most likely be tweeting about it as well and most likely use the #CatIsOnACoach hashtag. Feel free to follow it!

Thanks to the amazing, brilliant [insert others here] Joe who bought it off my Amazon Wishlist, I now have a Kindle which arrived today. You know, the item I put on my wishlist thinking no one in their right mind would ever buy it for me!

I’ve played with it a little bit, but have unfortunately been quite busy this afternoon and not yet had the chance to read anything on it properly. I have, however, bought some books for it and downloaded a lot of free ones.

I’m particularly looking forward to having the Kindle over the 50 hours travelling I’ll be doing the next week to and from the Fatherland. More on that another time.

Thank you, Joe!

My Kindle activity which includes shared quotes and finished books. I blog about books I’ve read in the ‘Books‘ category. And, finally, my Amazon Wishlist includes upcoming books I am planning to read.

The book was published in 1844 and is adapted for American society from an original English centred book. Its subjects range from letters of introduction to fashion, conversation and general views on society. I believe the most commonly used word throughout the book is ‘vulgar’ which pretty much describes anything that could possibly be fun.

Obviously this book is terribly outdated with views to modern society and whole chapters on leaving visitor’s cards when calling upon a lady are something that doesn’t apply at all. Other parts on relying on servants to serve dinner or not following fashion are also something that wouldn’t apply in today’s society.

There is nothing more plebian than thin bread at dinner. [Page 40]

Quite a few ideas behind it do apply though, particularly with the conversation section and should still be read for that. It mentions not to talk over others or talking too loudly or whispering with others whilst in company.

Mothers should be on their guard not to repeat nursery anecdotes or bon-mots, as, however interesting to themselves, they are seldom so to others. [Page 97]

Reading this book reminded me of reading an etiquette book when I was in primary school. It used to either belong to my mum or my grandma and was aimed at young girls and teens. I only remember one section dealing with going to an ice cream parlour with a male friend and how every girl should pay attention to not sit within view of a mirror to avoid looking into it during conversation and possibly getting distracted, as well as to never spur the male companion on to do anything daring, such as ordering the largest ice cream!

As a whole etiquette, just like language, is still important. Whether it applies to replying to Facebook messages in a timely manner, something I am always failing at, or how to act within a group or people, it is a skill that needs to be learned. Hopefully though with a little bit more up to date book.

In addition to hearing Captain Hastings’ ‘I say’ or ‘good Lord’ or ‘that girl’s a corker’ it’s obvious that language has evolved since then. A recent episodes had two examples within the same conversation. Whilst discussing a male character the two women said ‘awfully nice’ and ‘frightfully attractive’ which nowadays would be more negative descriptions. I can’t think ever using the adjective ‘frightfully’ to describe something positive.

Tweeting about this sparked a conversation and Kyle told me about the paper he just handed in for university. “Are spelling, punctuation and grammar relevant anymore?”

His conclusion is that it still is more than relevant not only professionally, but also socially and that technology aids us with the help of spellcheck.

Back in 2006 I first blogged about language and my hate for txt spk. None of that has changed.

I’ve been on Last.fm since 2008 and have blogged about it before. Stats fascinate me, but not nearly as much as visualisations created based on the stats.

Saw LastGraph linked on Mark’s blog and created my own graph from joining Last.fm until now.

It’s interesting to see what over 60000 listens look like and even more interesting is being able to tell what album or artists I’ve discovered when. For example The Kooks in September or The Foo Fighters back in January 2009.

The entire Last.fm listening graph for carocatuk. It’s 148MB!

This showed in the form of nightmares and the unusual desire not wanting to live on my own any more has resulted in three moves since then and a number of new friends and housemates. I also got another laptop again.

Thinking back to the first half of 2011 is scary – my life was a complete mess and whilst I was trying to deal with the fallout of it, the constant illnesses and the moves, a lot of other things fell short. I struggled with work yet at the same time was happy to have the regularity and structure of it and not having to think on how messed up my life was. On the other hand I also struggled with friendships and particularly on how to deal with arguments I wasn’t expecting, as well as acquaintances drifting away.

But I got there and it’s not longer really affecting my life.

I’ve written about @satscenes before [though the post is hardly worth clicking through to!] and I’m quite proud that I’ve managed to submit a satscene for every Saturday this year with one hitch once where @akaSylvia graciously allowed me to submit one late.

Satscenes are “photographs of people enjoying their Saturday from around the world” with the only rule being that they must have been taken on a Saturday in their respective timezone. Submission is through Twitter by sending an imagelink to @satscenes and including a location. It is the brainchild of @akaSylvia and maintained by her since Summer 2008.

Here are my 53 Satscenes submissions in 2011:

January:

• 01/01/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – My first knitted hat in progress.
• 08/01/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Earl Grey tea at @giraffetweet.
• 15/01/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – @KevFerguson’s cats!
• 22/01/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – A new haircolour gone wrong.
• 29/01/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – The Oracle in Reading. I also blogged about this picture here.

February:

• 05/02/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – One of @KevFerguson’s cups.
• 12/02/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – A statue in an art shop in Reading.
• 19/02/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – A building in Reading at night.
• 26/02/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Another Reading night time scene. Creative. /sarcasm

March:

• 05/03/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – @KevFerguson and one of his cats.
• 12/03/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Random art [?] in TKMaxx.
• 19/03/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Why is the wool always on the other side of the room?
• 26/03/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Watching Shrek 4.

April:

• 02/04/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – A quaint street in Reading town centre.
• 09/04/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Pint of beer in BoBs.
• 16/04/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – A CSI pause picture with a rather magnified bug.
• 23/04/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – An Easter scene drawn by a colleague.
• 30/04/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Not all my bottles!

May:

• 07/05/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Workhouse coffee in Reading town centre.
• 14/05/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Laundry day.
• 21/05/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Reading in the garden. I think this is also the only satscene I ever submitted as the first. All the earlier timezones must have been slacking!
• 28/05/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – A giant duck appears!

June:

• 04/06/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Shocked by the hike in cinema ticket prices. Went to see PotC 4.
• 11/06/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – A pint of beer in the Sun Inn in Reading.
• 18/06/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – A new picture in my room. Potentially the world’s most boring satscene ever submitted.
• 25/06/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – A tank in Reading.

July:

• 02/07/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Caution: Murder can be hazardous to your health!
• 09/07/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – A picture of a logo of the vegetarian society for a friend. Basically I forgot to take another picture.
• 16/07/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – This was the self portrait Saturday, but I was too busy with the Race for Life and just submitted a collage of my pictures from the day.
• 23/07/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Randomly stumbled across a war memorial service in Reading’s Forbury Gardens.
• 30/07/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Notice signs on the S-Bahn in Hameln [Hamelin, the town of the pied piper]. This is one of only two satscenes to be taken outside of Reading.

August:

• 06/08/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Growing basil!
• 13/08/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – The cathedral in Exeter.
• 20/08/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – #doodleblanket in progress.
• 27/08/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – New earrings looking like balls of wool!

September:

• 03/09/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Cooking leftovers.
• 10/09/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Tidying up.
• 17/09/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – All glory to Cthulhu Hypnotoad.
• 24/09/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – A message on a broken glass.

October:

• 01/10/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Starting to play Deus Ex Human Revolution.
• 08/10/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Starting with Christmas knitting.
• 15/10/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Buying wool for all my Christmas knitting.
• 22/10/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Mysterious anti-climb paint seen in Reading.
• 29/10/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – A scary mannequin in a charity shop’s window display.

November:

• 05/11/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Winning at Monopoly against housemates. Such curious timing that @akaSylvia had already planned to write about Monopoly for that very Saturday!
• 12/11/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – #doodleblanket in progress.
• 19/11/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Assassin’s in Skyrim.
• 26/11/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – A picture of a cat drawn on the condensation of the window. Couldn’t capture it properly though.

December:

• 03/12/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – More Christmas knitting.
• 10/12/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – My friend’s fireplace.
• 17/12/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Christmas knitting. This isn’t actually posted on tumblr as I wanted to avoid my friend seeing it.
• 24/12/2011 – tumblr link – SatScenes link – Purplelicious! Starting my very first own jumper!
• 31/12/2011 – tumblr link – Not yet posted! – Meow – Cat’s ears!

I didn’t sleep well thanks to a scratchy throat.
I started the day with lemsip. I hate lemsip.
I got wet in the rain in town.
I got hit in the back by a shopping basket.
I got wet in the rain in town. Again.
I was stuck in hell, also known as Tesco for over two hours helping out a friend.
I got wet feet.
My feet were killing me.
The kettle broke. It wasn’t me.
My new teapot drops when pouring.
I hit my right knee again.

Meh.

I completed and by now even gift-wrapped two major projects that have taken up a lot of my time of the past months and I can’t wait for Christmas purely so I can blog about it and post pictures as I’m quite proud of what I’ve done.

Overall I’m not completely happy with it though. I’ve thought for a while now that my knitting hasn’t evolved and instead of being confident with with stitches I’m winging it with everything apart from the basic knit and purl stitches. Everything else is trial and error which often makes the completed work look sloppy. Plus I’m sure I’m creating a lot of unnecessary work for myself.

Seeing that online tutorials don’t work well for me and there aren’t any classes in the area I’m going to have to start looking at other options.

Fast forward 12 hours and whilst reading a totally random blogpost [reading the blog as I'm generally interested how the world is changing for children] a long forgotten memory from my mum comes back.

Up until she got ill she used to make me sandwiches for school breaks [German schools are generally only in the mornings, no lunch] and very occasionally she would put in a note telling me she loved me or that she was hoping I have a nice day. I miss that.

I’m having one of those moments.

Took a break from Christmas knitting the other day and attempted a couple of Christmas decorations with dubious results.

I made a star of which we won’t speak of again and a Christmas tree based on this pattern.

I’m not very happy with the tree though crocheting a gold border around it gave it some stability and form. Its original finish made it look like an Ent, as @RebeccaAJones suggested! She also had some fantastic ideas for other knitted ‘Lord of the Rings’ related Christmas decorations, such as Christmas Treebeard, “Merry” Christmas, SamWISE MAN Gamgee, GandELF which I’m sure already exists! It’s also curious timing as I am currently watching the first LotR film for the umpteenth time.

Best tweet of the day, however, came from @DjDATZ resurrecting an old Xzibit meme: I heard you like trees, so I put a tree in your tree so you can tree while you tree!

With regards to the Christmas knitting I appear to be doing better than I thought despite having just unravelled about 3000 stitches due to making something too long. I realised the mistake a while back, but put off unravelling it until now. My to-do list is still long, but no longer seems impossible. Plus I’m sure I’ll finish lots over the next days as each LotR film is about four hours long.

And then it all went wrong and I hurt my thumb.

My current progress:

• One project is 98% complete.
• One project is 90% complete.
• One project is 50% complete.
• One project is not yet started.
• One project is 40% complete and deferred until that friend’s birthday in January.
• One project is 95% complete, but ties in with another project that is not yet started.

So it’s all a matter of getting it done and at the same time continuing to knit through the pain. Brilliant.

Of course once I have completed those I still need to wrap them and I don’t like wrapping presents yet luckily I have a friend who enjoys it so much that she practically asked me to let her do my Christmas wrapping for me. Who am I to argue?!

Turns out wrapping presents is something that many people don’t like doing as a tweet I made yesterday showed: “Far too many people I know truly enjoy wrapping presents. I can’t be the only one that doesn’t?!” #

• Peterbcooper: I like giving people things in plastic bags.
• vegoutgirl: make that two!
• Katie1989: I love it! :D
• ernmander: I don’t like wrapping presents, mainly because I am crap at it.
• noirem: I like box shaped things and gift bags.
• _mickychaela: I usually get my brother to do it. I am so bad at it, they’d look nicer in a carrier bag!
• katupoo: I am bloody awful at wrapping. I barely even try anymore.
• NTGrace: I hate it and always leave it until the last minute :o(
• NickThomsponRG: your not the only one. There is a gift wrapping stand in the oracle which solves the problem
• DavidMurby: No, you’re definitely not the only one :)
• BenPrudden: My girlfriends Christmas present from me is to wrap my Christmas presents :P. But seriously, people do seem to like the wrapping.
• Anie67: you aren’t!
• su_lynx: add me to the list of people who enjoy wrapping presents!

Conversations following that centred around present wrapping parties [*shudders*] and wrapping me up [Noooo!]!

Those following me on Twitter will already know that I have been spending far too much time in front of my friend’s fireplace. They finally had their chimney swept and bought wood and Monday was the first time they lit it. Since then I have spent far too much time at her house for various reasons which wasn’t just the new fireplace. Honest!

And take lots and lots of pictures.

I’ve missed the smell and the sound of a real fire. We used to have an oven [wood burning stove, whatever you call it] back home in Germany which used to heat the house quite well during the winter months.

Having a real fire is a little disappointing. It’s still warm, still smells of wood burning, but it doesn’t have the long lasting heat as all of it disappears straightaway and doesn’t get contained within the oven to heat later.

I’m still enjoying it though!

It’s no secret that I love Nutella which is probably the German in me coming through! I am sometimes surprised that I like it seeing I generally am not much of a chocolate eater, but there’s just something about it.  I’ve blogged about Nutella once before, too!

When I mentioned making a Nutella hot chocolate the other day I got a number of replies from people curious about it and I realised I couldn’t really sum it up well in just one tweet so decided to make a blogpost about it which also allows me to finally use the much underused cooking category of my blog. The image at the top is from @sahfenn who simply takes much better pictures than me!

Will I like a Nutella hot chocolate? Yes, if one or all of the following apply to you:

• Do you love Nutella?
• Do you love hot chocolate?
• Do you love creamy hot chocolate?
• Do you love hot chocolate that doesn’t feel heavy?

Word of advice before you’re attempting this – You will run out of Nutella and milk a lot quicker than you can imagine as it is seriously addictive.

How to make Nutella hot chocolate:

1. Get a saucepan.
2. Measure as much milk as you want to use. I generally go for 1/2 pint.
3. Measure about a heaped tea spoon of Nutella and add to the milk.
4. Use a whisk to completely stir the Nutella into the milk.
5. Heat the milk whilst stirring vigorously to create more bubbles.
6. Either bring the milk to a boil [which is great if you love the skin on your hot chocolate, like I do] or turn off the heat just before boiling.
7. Stir for another 30 seconds to get as many bubbles as you possibly can.
8. Pour the mixture into a cup.
9. Wait at least four minutes before drinking. Trust me!
10. Enjoy!

I have various sleeping issues:

• Inability to fall asleep
• Inability to sleep more than a couple of hours
• Restless sleep
• Over-tiredness
• Being very alert
• Nightmares

I’ve attempted a lot of things to fix it, such as:

• Cutting out caffeine
• Drinking a lot of water
• Drinking very little water
• Getting a bedtime routine
• Removing distractions
• Setting different lights
• Blocking all lights
• Using earplugs
• Sleeping with an open window
• Sleeping with a shut window
• Changing my bedding
• And much more..

Normally I don’t let it affect me too much and I can deal with it, however, getting one night of good sleep normally throws me off-balance for weeks.

I woke up last week Tuesday after the best night’s sleep I could remember in a very long time. It was free from nightmares and lasted seven amazing hours. Of course since then it’s been worse than normal and I am now tired and it will me a while to get used to it again.

As it turns out I have ‘De Quervain syndrome‘ which is a fancy term for a form of tendinitis most commonly occurring with women. It most likely was not caused by knitting though which makes me happy[ish]:

The cause of de Quervain’s disease is not known. In medical terms, it remains idiopathic.

Some claim that this diagnosis should be included among overuse injuries and that repetitive movements of the thumb are a contributing factor, but there are no scientific data that support a link between hand use and de Quervain’s.

Basically looking at that Wikipedia article and elsewhere on the ‘nets it’s pretty much something that gets thrown around, but no one really knows what causes it and what actually makes it better. Not that it would actually make a difference as all the GP said was:

“Well, here’s this prescription gel which you shouldn’t take for more than a week and we’ll see how it goes in about a couple of weeks or so. Oh and if you’re feeling lots of discomfort [I do, this is after me telling her how even getting dressed hurts] do take Ibuprofen tablets, but they’ll probably give you stomach issues so you’ll have to see about that.”

I’m glad I’ve wasted this morning just to get annoyed and now officially worried about a situation I can’t change. I didn’t want to go to the GP this morning knowing exactly that they wouldn’t do anything about it. The only reason I made the appointment was at the insistence of two friends who don’t really seem to understand that I’d much rather be writhing in pain and complain about it then have the injustice and frustration with every GP appointment and also still complain about the pain and my following bad mood.

I have never in my life had a good GP, family doctor, dentist, specialist or anything. Being in the presence of doctors makes me angry based on all the previous experiences and nothing good ever comes from it, especially not earlier this year though that finally sorted itself. Instead I’m left with a hand that still hurts with a gel that doesn’t do much [and cost lots of money] and still angry at the appointment over twelve hours later.

I realise I have issues.

I played the first one shortly after its release and was surprisingly enjoying it very much. The Euphoria game engine coupled with the ability to let loose with a lightsaber worked very well and the difficulties were well matched. I even went back to complete it a second time, despite one of the boss fights being incredibly annoying.

With such a great foundation what could possibly go wrong in the sequel?

This is a purely rhetorical question, as it turns out that a great game can indeed be utterly ruined by a sequel. Yes, I hear some cry, just look at Deus Ex Invisible War to which I reply that I preferred it to the first one. So what about KotOR 2, others may say. KotOR 2 still kept the same intriguing plot lines, as well as loads of added gameplay features.

SWTFU 2 is a mess. It seems to me like I was missing half the content or that I was asleep during the majority as it seemed so incredibly unfinished and, well, lame.

Story: Bla bla bla, stuff happens. There is no plot resolution. Stuff just randomly happens and it makes no sense. Is he a clone? Is he the real deal? Are there more clones? Why do the clones wear such horrible clothes? Why was Kamino not prepared for a second attack? Why was Vader so weak? And whatever the hell was up with that semi dream sequence having to walk slowly for what seems like ever before the final boss battle against real or faux Vader? So many questions, so little care to have them answered.

The game also helps answering this important question within the Star Wars universe that I’ve always* [*never] wanted answering: Are there any other places than the Dagobah caves to get dream sequences and visions? The answer, as you may expect, is no which begs the follow up question if there are many queues? Toilets? Free parking? Jedi on hand to help raise the ship out of the mud? Refreshments? Souvenirs? An ‘I’m with the stupid guy who got his hand sabered off’ shirt? Postcards?

Gameplay: Meh. Can I just use meh to describe it and leave it at that? So you walk around killing stuff. So far so good. Bad thing is that you are apparently stuck in a SWTFU 2 version of groundhog day and every corner you turn just leads to the same kind of layout that was there before. During the first level I felt like I had circled the entirety of Kamino ten times. And that the architects of Kamino needed a raise or a force choke.

I’m realising as I am typing this that I don’t actually remember the other levels much. There was the shortest ever level on Dagobah and something on that Cloud City wannabe, but I don’t remember it. All I remember is killing the same annoying robots over and over and over and over again with the most overused and silliest QTEs which really should have been renamed to STEs – Slow Time Events. I was going to talk about the cutscenes that happen every time a new wave of enemies spawns, but I feel my time is probably better spent ranting about the bossfights.

Bossfights: Only gripe I had with the first game was the boss battle on that planet where some ship needs to be crashed into some planet for some reason whilst the world’s most annoying TIE fighters attack all the time. The second one has a few annoying boss fights that seem to take an eternity even though the game makes it obvious as to what’s to do. Oh, you’re flashing up the B button, I guess I better press it.

I don’t think I can actually decide which of the bossfights was the worst. There’s the giant one which involves dropping down somewhere for 15 minutes Gandalf style, there’s the one with the ship that crashlands which again took about 15 minutes and then there’s the Vader one which just would not end. Spoiler: It did end. Thankfully.

Sound: It’s Star Wars. I liked it. Obviously.

Graphics: I played the game on my laptop on the lowest settings and it was slightly jerky at times which was to be expected. Looked pretty enough though. Cutscenes were unskippable, probably due to the background loading on my poor laptop.

Overall: The game made me laugh and cry for all the wrong reasons and I kept hoping for it to improve up until I completed it. If part 3 comes out we’re all doomed. Doomed!

I got very excited a couple of weeks ago when I received an email to the weekend beta testing for Star Wars: The Old Republic as it has been a game I’ve waited for a long time. I had never played an MMO before with the exception of free trials for WoW, Eve Online, Star Trek Online and Star Wars Galaxies though none of them captured my attention for long.

As I loved KotOR and KotOR TSL, as well as BioWare, I anticipated SWTOR to be the first MMO I would play, particularly as the single player content was rumoured to be comprehensive.

Well, turns out the game is indeed unplayable on my laptop, even using the lowest settings. A couple of months ago this would not have surprised me, but I have since managed to play Deus Ex Human Revolution, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2, as well as Skyrim with no issues, all using the lowest settings available.

I guess returning to the Old Republic will have to wait months if not years.

Years ago – when I used to do a lot of Children’s voluntary work – a child came up to me a few days before my 20th birthday. He was a lovely kid and over the years we had gotten to know each other well.

He was saying to me: “Oh, you’re 20 soon, happy birthday. But, you know, it’s not much longer til you’re 30 and then you’re basically 40 already. Face it, your life is pretty much over and you’re pretty much ancient already.”

The kid said it all like it was a fact and it’s stuck with me since.

Brilliant.

Last Friday I went to a murder mystery evening in Reading organised as part of the Reading Festival Of Crime Writing 2011.

The story:

Sol Joel, owner of the mansion at Maiden Earlegh, diamond merchant, horse race owner and cricket enthusiast was devastated. Firstly his uncle had fallen off a ship in mysterious circumstances, then his brother had been murdered in his office and now he was staring at the body of the England cricket captain sprawled on the floor of the dressing room with a cricket stump protruding from his chest. Thus began the series of strange events that was to become known as ‘The Case of the Sanguineous Stump’

It’s surprising that I, an avid reader and watcher of all crime dramas, have never been to a murder mystery evening before, but I don’t think I’ve come across one near me before. I didn’t really know what to expect and dragged some housemates along saying it’s doing ‘something different to normal’ and ‘I’m sure it’ll be fun’.

The evening was great and I didn’t realise how quickly the three hours had passed. The actors were fantastic and just enough over the top. The main character – Solomon Joel – wore an amazingly big moustache that he used to perfection and there was a lot of overacting that fit perfectly. Minor problems were that there wasn’t enough time to question the suspects, but this could have been due to the amount of people that turned up.

Throughout this evening I learned a few things:

• I am really competitive, much much more than I thought I was.
• If I ever attend a murder mystery evening again I will have to make sure to be there plenty of time in advance to get familiar with the surroundings and have the option to read the material about the actors.
• I seem to enjoy talking in front of people seeing I volunteered to read a small part.
• Moustaches are funny.
• Murder mysteries are indeed fun and different to normal.
• I overcomplicate matters a lot. We had guessed the killer, but we then thought it would have been too obvious and decided on someone else.

Skyrim has consumed my life for the past few days with my total time spent probably around 35 hours. It is quite an extraordinary game with lots to explore and do from cutting random pieces of wood for no reason to killing dragons.

Looking at my stats there are a few things that surprise me; I expected to have picked more locks and harvested more ingredients, but overall it is quite accurate.

I’m starting to feel the pressure of the ongoing quests and looking at the map screen gets incredibly confusing having them all labelled as active ones. I was debating turning them all inactive, but it’s quite nice to enter a new area and organically coming across someone I have a quest with.

With regards to the areas discovered I have now been in six of the major towns which includes Riverwood, Whiterun, Windhelm, Winterhold, Markarth and Riften though I didn’t get to enjoy my time in Winterhold much as I ended up getting into a drinking contest within minutes of my arrival which led to a drunken adventure across Skyrim to Markath, none of which I remember!

The towns are suitably different and each convey a different feeling. Whiterun and Riverwood are quaint and friendly little towns, whereas Markarth is unwelcoming and threating, Windhelm embroiled in segregation and Riften in control by the Thieves Guild.

So far I’ve only had one point of the game which I have struggled with which was during a quest in the excavation site in Markarth which left me adjusting my difficulty after dying continuously in a dungeon for over two hours.

• Locations discovered: 33
• Dungeons cleared: 7
• Days passed: 17
• Hours slept: 28
• Hours waiting: 77
• Standing stones found: 3
• Gold found: 23158
• Most gold carried: 5631
• Chests looted: 253
• Skill increases: 168
• Skill books read: 21
• Food eaten: 162
• Training sessions: 36
• Books read: 133
• Barters: 614
• Persuasions: 9
• Bribes: 1
• Quests completed: 10
• Misc Objectives completed: 47
• Main quests completed: 4
• Side quests completed: 3
• The Companions quests completed: 2
• Thieves guild quests completed: 1
• Quest lines completed: 0
• People killed: 93
• Animals killed: 50
• Creatures killed: 26
• Undead killed: 48
• Automatons killed: 9
• Favourite weapon: Skyforge Steel Sword
• Critical strikes: 64
• Sneak attacks: 1
• Brawls won: 2
• Spells learned: 8
• Favourite spell: Flames
• Favourite school: Destruction
• Dragon souls collected: 2
• Times shouted: 95
• Weapons improved: 4
• Weapons made: 1
• Armor improved: 8
• Armor made: 1
• Potions mixed: 82
• Potions used: 96
• Poisons mixed: 26
• Poisons used: 6
• Ingredients harvested: 196
• Nirnroots found: 2
• Wings plucked: 8
• Total lifetime bounty: 15
• Largest bounty: 5
• Locks picked: 29
• Fines paid: 10
• Items stolen: 45
• Assaults: 4
• Trespasses: 2
• Currently active quests: 13
• Currently active misc quests: 29
• Time played: 35 hours

Since then things have somewhat progressed to a whole new level.

I have:

• Bought more storage boxes bringing the total of my ‘collection’ to:
  Two large cardboard boxes
  Eight medium cardboard boxes
  Two small cardboard boxes
  Two medium hard cardboard boxes
  One small hard cardboard boxes
  Two shoeboxes.
• Bought four cardboard magazine organisers.
• Organised and threw away a lot of my paperwork which now fits into one folder.
• Completely organised my wardrobe and brought several items to the charity shop, as well as threw a lot of unsuitable clothes away.
• Got a new desk with more storage space courtesy of @mrsrickersby.
• Got a jewellery organiser.
• Put a lot of things in a lot of plastic zip-lock bags. This includes wool after realising that airtight zip-lock bags are a fantastic space-saving way to store it with the added bonus of it not unravelling in the box any more!
• [Mostly!] organised my knitting needles.
• Sorted out the big box I had of toiletries which required more zip-lock bags.
• Changed the curtains.
• Moved pictures and other wall decoration, as well as add more from boxes.
• Wrapped two Christmas presents. Not related, but still a sign of being organised!
• Run out of zip-lock bags.

I am quite proud and impressed with what I have done and I do enjoy spending time in my room more than before. Whilst I always knew where everything was before I’ve been able to simplify things to the extent that all the things I use daily are within reach yet hidden away, such as the hairdryer or lipbalm. Most of all it’s been fantastic to be able to have people come over without any warning which actually has happened quite a bit lately for various reasons.

There’s this little voice in the back of my head that wants to say ‘everyone’s always been right – having a system and keeping things tidy does make things a lot easier’. Yes, it is right that I always knew where everything was, but that doesn’t mean it was easy to get to!

So why don’t I sound completely overjoyed and happy?

Well, I think it’s that I’m more surprised, perhaps worried, about this sudden and extreme change in my life. I’ve gone from chucking things somewhere to zip-lock bags, hoovering and tidying constantly.

Under the surface, however, I have now reached the point where I can’t actually stand things not being where they belong and even did more when I had a bandaged hand.

Shoes have to be put away as soon as I take them off. Clothes folded away. Paperwork filed as soon as it comes in. For example, I got home Monday night looking forward to gaming, but felt so uncomfortable that I had to tidy up instead which continued through to Tuesday afternoon with yet more rearranging, hoovering and then some.

Additionally, I can’t even blame my current state of #funemployment, as it started before.

Is it normal to have such a sudden and in no way gradual change at 28?

Since then I have been very cautious and hardly knitted or crochet, always worrying that the pain will return, until the weekend just gone. I estimate that I crochet about two hours on #doodleblanket spread out throughout the afternoon and evening on Sunday.

Today I can feel the strain again very strongly. Not bad enough to be wearing another bandage, but bad enough to feel pain with most movements.

Fantastic.

/sarcasm

Went to bed last night with a slight strain in my right thumb and put it down to too much knitting, even though I hadn’t really. Woke up throughout the night with pain, pins and needles and a slight bit of numbness so decided to go to the doctor’s.

Apparently I’ve overused and strained my thumb through picking up some things and too much knitting [so not just knitting, but knitter's thumb sounds cool!] and will have to wear a bandage and a sling for four days and ‘then see what it’s like’.

This means:

• No knitting
• No gaming
• Mostly one-handed typing
• Unable to use phone properly
• General feeling sorry for myself

There is a possibility it could be more, but it’s unlikely as the pain occurred rapidly, I didn’t break it and there doesn’t appear to be any trapped nerves so overall it’s good news, especially as I googled my symptoms on the way there [Never google your medical symptoms!] and realised I experienced most of the symptoms for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome:

Patients with CTS experience numbness, tingling, or burning sensations in the thumb and fingers, in particular the index, middle fingers, and radial half of the ring fingers, which are innervated by the median nerve. Less-specific symptoms may include pain in the hands or wrists and loss of grip strength.

Now… what on Earth am I meant to do for four days?!

My mum used to have a range of baskets she used for shopping or to keep knitting in and I’ve been wanting something like it for the past years. Baskets seem to be a more common thing in Germany versus the UK as I only rarely see people use them in town and I don’t recall ever seeing a place that sells them.

Tonight I decided to have a look if I could find the type of basket I’m after and, thanks to the brilliance of the internet, I found it and am now an expert on Ghana baskets, bearing in mind I didn’t even know their name before I started! This is how I discovered it:

• Google image search for ‘korb’ [German word for basket].
• Google image search for ‘basket‘. Related searches based on that included: ‘shopping basket‘, ‘wood basket‘, ‘picnic basket‘, ‘open picnic basket‘. None of those were right though.
• Google image search for ‘einkaufskorb’ [German word for shopping basket] which, on the second page lead me to a site listing the type of basket I’m after as ‘Afrika Korb’ [Africa basket]. It also linked me through to another site which seemed rather dodgy [tumblr link, not the actual site!].
• A further Google image search lead me to ‘Ghana basket‘.
• This lead me to the German Amazon site which had a bit more detail about them.

Turns out the baskets I’m after are:

• From Bolga, the capital of both the Bolgatanga Municipal District and the Upper East Region of Ghana. Thanks, Wikipedia!
• Made 100% out of savannah grass.
• Handmade.
• Take about two days to make.

It’s also available on Amazon UK, too, and I’ve added it to my wishlist.  £25 means I should wait a little while before I’ll buy it, but I am rather proud I’ve managed to hunt them down!

The game is, just like the first one, quite a lot of fun, but I found myself not really wanting to kill stormtroopers at times.

The Clone Wars gives a background to what happens to Anakin and the clones and it humanises them. They are the ones that are always left behind or abandoned or discarded which is something I already pointed out back in 2008 when I first watched a few episodes.

At the same time the Clone Wars also show a different side to Anakin, he is a hero and a leader which is more than the whiny and emo kid he is in the films. I’m not the only one that feels this way, as this fantastic article shows:

It’s one thing to be told that someone is a bad guy, but it’s another thing to watch a character that they had come to love and enjoy slowly crumble and turn to evil.

Since I’ve been 14 I have been:

• All shades of red.
• Blond [we won't talk about that].
• All shades of brown.
• Deep purple.
• Multicoloured [we won't talk about that either].
• Black.

Last November I decided to dye my hair black. I wanted to go for a deep brown and figured that black would eventually wash out to give me dark brown.

Yeah, right.

I have since coloured my hair six times in various red and brown shades with no success. I have used anti-dandruff shampoo as supposedly that helps chip away colour with no success either. Short of going to the hairdressers and pay lots of money to get my hair professionally stripped, which would also mean spending far too much time sitting there, I have tried everything.

Last night I gave it another go and the end bits are still mostly black. Learn from this, Cat! Black, just like a fringe, is not the way to go – ever.

Two days after I had noticed my profile is still under review and it is now past the deadline:

Your profile is being reviewed
Your profile was flagged for violating the Google+ Community Standards or Names Policy and is currently under review. Reviews are usually completed within a few days.

During this time, you won’t be able to make full use of Google services that require an active profile, such as Google+, Buzz, Reader, and Picasa. This will not prevent you from using other Google services, like Gmail.

We’re sorry for the inconvenience.

I am now unable to share items in Google Reader though seem to be able to use everything else normally. Even Google+ which is ridiculous seeing it was the cause of the problem!

04/10/11: 

Still no change and I also can’t have a picture on my Gtalk any more..

06/10/11: 

Still under review and the following has been added to the above message:

We understand that Google+ may not be for everyone at this time. We’d be sad to see you go, but if you do choose to leave, make a copy of your Google+ data first. Then, click here to disable Google+.

14/10/11:

No change. *twiddles thumbs*

Now my situation has changed and I am now officially back on the job market and have entered full jobhunt mode. This means I can now use Twitter, Google+, Facebook and all other social networks to help me find a new and, hopefully, fulfilling role, in addition to the job searching I am already undertaking.

Katherine, also known as @TheSourceress, was asking me yesterday if I was thinking about blogging about my social media job searching and whilst I initially didn’t plan on doing so, I have since realised that it can only be advantageous, both from the point of view in finding a job for myself and also showing others that it can or cannot be done. I figure that surely there’ll be a point when everyone is bored enough of my updates to actually help find me a job and constant exposure means that it stays in people’s minds.

My skills and a quick list of previous jobs can be found in my previous post.

So what exactly do I have to start with?

• A Twitter account with currently 996 followers – @carocat
• The active #rdg hashtag with what I estimate around 40 people reading it on a daily basis – #rdg
• A Google+ profile with 113 people in my circles – Cat Fu
• A Facebook profile with 135 friends – Cat Fu
• A tumblr blog with 740 followers – carocat on tumblr
• This blog, receiving around 100-150 views a day currently though it’s not properly optimised these days – carocat.co.uk

Whilst those numbers are admittedly more than the average social media user [insert stuff on how I've been on each of those platforms for many years, yadda yadda], that isn’t it. Each one of those profiles and sites is followed by people with an incredibly large reach and I have the potential to gain exposure much beyond just my social circles.

I used to also have a LinkedIn profile, but deactivated that last year. Depending on how the next couple of months will go I might reactivate and repopulate it.

Let’s just take a look at the posts and tweets I have made yesterday and the response I have gotten:

• Tweet: I #needanewjob in the Reading area. Customer service and copywriting primarily. Native German. Will take any full time job. Help me. #rdg [Link] – This tweet was retweeted by sixteen people.
• Google+ post with more details [Link] – This was shared by three people.
• Facebook post, again with more details. – This was seen by at least ten people based on the comments and private messages I received.
• Blog post: Help me find a new job - This post has so far had 69 views.
• Tweet for the blogpost [auto tweeting]: Help me find a new jobhttp://wp.me/p1ETs-13y [Link] – This was retweeted by four people.

For now I am discounting Facebook as a valuable tool for finding a new job, but my status update earlier hopefully achieved its aim in alerting friends that I am looking for a job.

Google+ isn’t so widely adopted, but the three people that shared my post have a combined 444 people in their circles.

Let’s break down Twitter, my main social network.

The first tweet was made at 4.30pm:

• It included the #rdg hashtag, which has a lot of daily readers/viewers. As I said above, I estimate about 40 if not more. Seeing my tweet was retweeted over several hours this means it was probably seen by most and it is also currently the top tweet for that hashtag search.
• It was retweeted by sixteen accounts.
• Combining the followers of the seventeen accounts plus my own brings a whopping 12599 followers. Excluding bots, inactive accounts and overlapping will still leave several thousand.
• Out of those accounts it was retweeted by six people I know or have met, one recruitment feed, one recruiter and five people generally active on the #rdg hashtag.
• Six of the accounts that retweeted that don’t follow me. They make up 5689 of the followers.
• I also received several direct messages as a result with people asking for more information.

The second tweet was made at 8.44pm:

• It was an auto tweet from my blog, just like this post will be automatically tweeted.
• It was retweeted by four accounts.
• Combining the followers of the four accounts plus my own brings 2387 followers. Excluding bots and inactive accounts that still leaves about a thousand.
• Out of the accounts it was retweeted by two people I have met or know, one regular #rdg hashtag follower and one follower of another account.
• One of those accounts didn’t follow me though follows me now.
• With this tweet there wasn’t much information and the lack of clickthroughs shows that it probably isn’t worth it tweeting something with such little info. As such I have modified the tweet that will accompany this blogpost to include more than just the title of the post: “This is officially my first day of unemployment. Please help me find a new job! Job searching with social media: [LINK]“

I think blogging about my job search will mostly help me and it will help me by giving me something to focus on. It by no means will be the main job searching I’ll do, but it’s something to keep me occupied and hopefully something that will yield results. With a newly updated CV, as well as plenty of motivation I am ready to kickstart this search and hopefully soon find something.

If you think you have a job I would be interested in, please contact me.

Additionally I will be grateful for any tips you may have on finding work.

I am a native German speaker and my background includes:

• Copywriting
• Games QA and Compliance QA
• Games QA Test Lead
• Community Management
• Church Sexton
• Secretarial Work
• Administration
• Bar/Cafe Work with limited food preparation in Germany

I have no retail experience nor any UK gastronomy/bar work experience.

This is urgent and I will appreciate any help. Please contact me.

I have written about 24 before:

• 10 things I have noticed about 24
• What if… 24 was set in 1994?
• Another one to file under ‘I wish I hadn’t bought this’

Instead of incessantly tweeting my annoyance about 24 season 5 or even spoiling it for those that have yet to see it I figured I would sort of liveblog it. As I am starting this post I am on episode 4 of the longest day of my life [again]:

• Seeing it has been over a year since I’ve watched season 4 I spent quite some time on the 24 Wiki trying to remind myself. Luckily I managed to avoid all other spoilers.
• The president is dodgy, mark my words.
• Chloe really does just seem to have long-winded and repetitive personal drama stories in CTU.
• Who is she having an affair with anyway? Wasn’t there someone in a previous season?
• The phone ringtone still bugs me.
• Amazing how much time they’re having whilst launching a major assault attack on an airport.
• Oh look, Mark Sheppard is one of the hostages. Clearly something more dodgy is going on.
• I would not ever want anyone I liked to be taken to CTU for safety – it is bound to end in disaster or, worse, death.
• “I have someone on the inside who can help us.” – Of course there’s yet another mole in CTU. My guess is on Chloe’s boyfriend.
• …and I was right.
• “I need to get into your utilities volume.” Best. Chatup. Line. Ever.
• What’s the deal with all these sockets that always need to be opened?
• I keep expecting the hobbit to get emotional.
• “Jack, I’m sorry I’m being a little distant, you know, in the last 40 minutes when like ten major plot developments have happened, but I feel I need to remind the viewers that we once had a relationship and I’m all emotional right now. Also I need more screen time as my character’s kind of pointless.”
• How many black SUVs were harmed in the making of 24?
• And now for the hobbit sob story.
• I was hoping Kim would be absent for the whole season, but I guess I’m not this lucky.
• Oh no, they killed Mark Sheppard! I was really hoping he’d have a bigger role.
• So how many times has Jack been arrested now?
• I miss Sherry Palmer. The new First Lady is far too hysterical.
• Jane Espenson shoutout!
• I have never realised how much time they spend on talking about time. Say an event was to occur in x amount of time they will mention it with 5-10 minute intervals all the way up until it occurs. Such as the hospital evacuation or the Russian motorcade. Surely they’d have better things to do then constantly ask each other?!
• Edgar’s death was emotional.
• Kim Bauer – lovely annoying as always.
• Officially being inundated with well-known guest stars now – Ray Wise, Stana Katic, Lost’s Desmond.. Guess they had to replace the hobbit somehow.
• I didn’t expect Audrey to be a traitor.
• 24 would be nothing without drama in CTU every episode. Between takeovers, random testing, torture, asking each other about the time and opening up sockets I wonder how they ever get any work done.
• Ha! I knew the president was involved! I have predicted all major plot twists with the exception of the Audrey double bluff so far. Clearly I’m a pro at watching 24!
• How many times has a warrant for Jack been issued now? I just realised I wondered about that earlier, too..
• They haven’t opened a socket in a while.
• Two episodes later and they have finally opened up one again.
• How many helicopters were used in the making of this season?
• The plane landing was the first truly good moment of this season.
• Loved the final cliffhanger.

As with all other seasons of 24 I realised that I had forgotten almost all that happened before in the season. It’s only when I read through the above notes that I remembered the hobbit and that Jack was dead and Mark Sheppard. Luckily I also managed to forget about Tony and Kim, so I suppose it’s not all bad.

In retrospective I think I watched the season over too many days. I think it took me a week altogether and fewer days would have been good. I think the show also tried to cram in too much and whilst Jack was in helicopters many times, which would explain shorter journey times, he seemed to be all over the place all the time. The plane crash, whilst well done, was very over the top, as were all the things happening to Audrey. It’s also strange how the interrogation causes so much pain and then none a little while later and she can go back to work.

Inter agency problems and pretty much anything surrounding CTU was annoying and played up too much. How many times was a warrant issued for Jack’s arrest? How many people were hired and fired from CTU in this season? How many people were interrogated in this season? And why does every season have to have at least one mole in CTU? One would think they would be screening the staff better. Additionally there’s the mistrust to Jack and Chloe. Granted, they are a bit shifty at times, but they have proven to be saving the day in season 1-4 so surely they would be a bit more accepted, instead of having stone after stone after stone thrown in their way which serves no purpose other than stretching a meagre plot out over 24 episodes.

So the president did it. Ho hum. No one knew, not even Mike Novick or any of the other advisers. Now that’s the unrealistic part.

Overall the season was good in the sense that it kept me going and I wanted to watch more, but I will still only be recommending the first two seasons of the show to anyone who has never watched it before.

As a sidenote, watching The Simpsons S23E01 straight after finishing the last episode of 24 was rather fitting.