Quick like

Song of the day: “What do you mean” by Justin Bieber, naturally. I know, embarrassing, right? Still a cute song.

This will just be a quicky post, more to let y’all know that, yes, I’m still alive. I’ve got good news, but I don’t want to jinx it with a massive post, so you’re going to have to be a little patient for my next blog to discover what it is…I hope. Could all turn out to be a bust, so I might end up depressed and never post again. Hah. Just kidding, of course I’ll post again. Y’all know better than anyone that I always come back, no matter how bad things are. I mean seriously, after all the shaite you guys lived through with me here, we all know that only death would stop me…maybe. *wink*

But anyway, other than the potential of good news in the near future, things are going steadily. Big brother is working full time now, which is heavy on him, poor thing. In-between writing, editing, keeping the house tidy, cooking meals, and doing the groceries, I am applying for work. Not having much luck so far, but luckily I can keep myself busy.

Have been picking up my fitness again. Don’t like the lack of activity, so doing more fitness is definitely a must. Also, that stupid leg of mine where I had my operation is bugging me again. The one vein they missed is playing up, so I might need to get back to the doctor for that in the near future. Darn. I hate that.

Had a nice visit with our former colleague last week, and with his wife and newborn son. Cute little fella, and only six weeks old.  Got to hold the kid, too, which was a little scary, considering how small he was. Also got to play with their labradoodle a bit and that was cool too. Fun dog.

Spent the second day of Christmas with family down south. The trip took 2.5 hours, but it was very pretty down there. Flowing green hills (despite winter) sunshine for the day, and a wonderful house belonging to our aunt…well, sort of our aunt, more by law, I think you’d call it. Gorgeous massive kitchen that made me so jealous. Seriously, I want a kitchen like that, some day. Littlest brother was there, stepmom, our father, stepmom’s  mother, sister and brother, so we had a nice full table. Was a very nice afternoon, with five or six courses spread out over five hours. By the time we got home, a nother 2.5 hours trip, we were starving again.

Did a full-blown cleaning session of the house the other day, which took a couple of hours, but the result was splendid. Much, much better. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been vacuuming, dusting and cleaning horizontal surfaces, it is just that if you go at it with the full focus that I used to apply at work, you really notice the difference. Hah

Been working on the books a lot. Edits, some writing, and synopsis, and whatnot, prepping several stories at the moment. Want to have some stuff ready before spring to start sending out again.

But that’s it for today, just a quicky update, I fear. Be patient with me please.

Thoughts, dreams and reality. :-)

Song of the day: “Hallelujah” originally by Leonard Cohen, but I’ve been having covers in my head ever since I got curious and found a whole batch of them on Youtube. Seriously, there have been oodles of people who did the song…and in many beautiful ways, I might add. Worth a spin, if you like the song!

So, yeah. Had a bit of relapse with my cold. It was gone, which had me getting back to my workout routine all excitedly for over a week of daily workouts of over 45 mins a pop, only to end up with my cough coming back full force and a fierce pain in my throat that took me three days to get rid of again. Grrrr. No worries, though. At the moment, considering I don’t have a job or anything (well, I am doing some serious writing at the moment, so that is debatable) I’m not doing my workout in one allotted time (seeing as it is a known fact that for a little while after your workout your immune system has a serious drop) but am stretching it out through the course of the day with five to ten minute exercising sessions. Annoying, for sure, but doable for the moment. Hah.

I have broadened my job search from night reception work at hotels, courier and facility management to--sit down, don’t get caught unawares—work as a jack of all trades in greenhouses. Saw an application for that recently, and thought, what the heck. I’d get to work with plants, be inside a relatively warm place most of the down, and get, according to statistics, decent pay. Now, I’m pretty sure that my resume (and lack of official qualifications) isn’t going to look very impressive to these people, but still, it’s worth a shot.

Been doing a lot of reading online lately, including on American politics. I have friends on either side of the fence, so it can’t really be helped, and considering that this is not a political blog, I am definitely not picking sides, but it is a big event in history, so it’s gotta be mentioned. Admittedly it is a fascinating thing to watch, really, hearing both sides hammering away at each other, guessing what is going to happen based on he said-she said kind of stuff. I can only think back of this blog back when the last president was picked. Basically everyone thought that finally all their troubles were going to be over and he was basically going to achieve world peace. Back then, I said it was going to be pretty tough for the guy to live up to that, and it was. With this future president, I can only say, he’s probably going to surprise people. Right now, there is such a low opinion of him that even if he manages to do one thing right, he’ll astound people, let alone if he does a couple of things moderately well.  Puts the last president at a bit of a disadvantage, but from what I understand of him, he rather likes martyrdom, so basically he got what he wanted.

As with all things, we’re going to have to wait and see what happens in the future.

The other thing I’ve been reading up on is 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd wave feminism (I know, how controversial am I today, right? I swear, I’ll keep it mild, and won’t do this a lot) and have come to the  conclusion that I am more of a 2^nd wave feminist. Serious, the 3^rd wavers are completely bonkers! The hate that is coming from them, the convoluted logic and full blown hatred toward men in general, it’s astounding…especially since these women, well, girls really are either my age, or younger than me, and have not faced the problems that 1^st and 2^nd wave feminists faced. In fact, the majority of these girls seem to have been coddled, helped at every turn, and now think that it is time to get back at the “oppressors” for the evil deeds perpetrated towards the generations preceding them.

Now, if these girls were living in Middle Eastern countries, Asia, Afrika or whatnot, I would understand, seriously, there is some evil shaite going on around the globe, but they’re not. These are girls and women in Western countries where they are protected, supported and helped by not only the law, but by the general public too. They have healthcare, the opportunity to educate themselves, work whichever job they wish to pursue, and basically live their lives the way they want, and yet they figure they have to fight the opposite sex and the establishment for rights that they already have. And all this while there are women in this world who are really bad of. I have to say that the stuff that I have seen online about these so-called feminists is nothing short of embarrassing (for me anyway), if not downright insulting toward women with real problems. Feminism has definitely gotten a bad name because of these entitled girls trying recapture the “magic” of brah-burning for a plain and simple game of “getting back at” and what can only be called an underhanded attempt at gaining power in the world over the back of men, but most especially other women.

Okay, enough silly things that thankfully don’t much affect my world at this juncture in my life, it might, at some point, but not yet. I’ve been having some seriously weird dreams lately. Several have been downright icky, in fact. Like the other day I was dreaming of this evil serial killer who used a metal garrote to literally saw the hands of a woman. He was starting on the second hand, lots of gore, lots of screaming going on, when I finally managed to wake up. I was seriously freaked out from that one, but will admit that this particular dream is going to do really well in a book at some point.

Luckily I had some nice dreams, too. One of them included grandpa still being around, which was rather nice.

So, there was a rather big storm in Spain, which had us worried about family, friends and pets for a while. Seriously, there was a red alert and everything. There were floods that caused two deaths, lots of properties destroyed, animals in distress, a tornado over sea, even, and gawd knows what else. Reassurances were a long time coming, but in the end everyone I knew reported back with an “okay” so that was a big relief. Jeez. The only plus that comes from this that the water reservoirs that have been close to empty for the past decade or so, have filled up to almost 40 percent for the first time in 20 years!

Writing wise I’ve been doing relatively well at the moment. I am doing an average of 2K-3K words a day, at least, so the book is steadily progressing. Yay! At the very least I am completely back IN the story, which certainly helps. Yay

On the cooking front I’ve been doing some experimenting lately. Made a rather interesting pumpkin pie the other day, also a lentil/beet salad that went well with the folks I made it for, but didn’t resonate well with yours truly. Hah.

Littlest brother’s visit has been rescheduled to this weekend. Something came up the last time, so that was a no-go. Considering big brother and I were still battling our colds back then, neither of us minded all that much.

So that about sums up this blog. I’m sure I’m forgetting important stuff, but that can’t be helped. I’ll be back.

Nothing of much interest, I assure you

Song of the day: “Human”, by Christina Perri, gorgeous song, admittedly, but it has been in my head a bit too long now. It’s been going on and on and on for about three days now, so I wouldn’t mind if it went elsewhere…you want to take it as an earworm? You’re welcome to it. Hah.

Right. Time for an update, isn’t it? Should have done it earlier, but I’ve recently had a bad cold and am only now well on the way of recovery. It was bad there, for a bit, with me coughing like and idiot for almost a week, but now all I’m left with is an occasional tickle, so I’ll apparently survive. *sigh* Big brother is still in the midst of his cold, I’ll have you know, and he’s struggling with it. It doesn’t help that he refuses to wear scarfs, and sometimes even sweaters, and that he doesn’t like to use stuff like vaporub and whatnot, but that’s choice, I suppose. He’s spending a lot of time in bed, sleeping it off, so lucky for him he didn’t need to work much this past week or two.

Not a lot of interesting things happened since the last blog, at least nothing that will titillate you into reading more of this, I could of course make stuff up, but that just wouldn’t be fair.

First off, I did manage to do some writing, so the past few weeks weren’t a complete loss. (pats self on the head) Nothing earth shattering, but added several pages, which is definitely a plus. Gotta get that book written and the way to write a book is one page at a time, naturally. Characters are still developing nicely, so all in all it is not going all that bad.

The chauffeur job for the hotel didn’t work out. They could only guarantee four hours a week, which just wouldn’t do. Drat. Would have liked that kind of work, I’ll admit. Regretfully that one is out of the picture now.

Been steadily applying for jobs, of course, just like I’m supposed to.  At the moment I am aiming for facility management, night reception clerk for hotels and courier. There’s quite a few jobs out there for that, now all I’ve gotta do is snatch one…of course I am not really in a hurry at the moment. I would like to continue writing a bit longer if at all possible. That of course hangs in the balance of not liking being unemployed and not having sufficient funds coming in, but you can’t have everything, I guess.

Cooking has been somewhat uneventful lately. Basically survival food. Lots of salads with pasta, etc, small snacks in-between recovery naps. Did have a gorgeous cauliflower soup that worked out really well last week. And this week I did a nice tomato soup, which was a bit on the spicy side, and therefore extremely good. I love spicy tomato soup.

Once I was on the road to recovery I also finally managed to do some serious cleaning around the house. Vacuumed, removed spider webs and cleaned  horizontal surfaces. Was pretty necessary after I was pretty much out of it for a week. Much relieved by the improvement, can’t stand messes much these days.

Heard that our former teamleader’s baby was born, so we’re going to have to go for a visit one of these days and see junior. Very happy for them.

Went to visit tenant the other day. Brought her a present. A really nice paint and drawing set that she was really happy to get. Was good to see her pleased, especially since she said she was at the moment avoiding eating in the dining room because all the “old folk” were not doing any conversation during dinner. It just wasn’t cosy there, she  claimed and that made me a little sad.

Also visited with our father and stepmother down south, which is a trip that takes more than two hours in total. Very unhandy, but it was a nice afternoon at their new place. They made quite a bit of headway with their garden, which is starting to look nicely spacious. Later in the day they took us out for dinner at a cute little Italian restaurant in Germany. I would love to have something like that place. It’s tiny and runs more on take away than anything because their place is so tiny, but they are stacked most nights. Was nice, despite having to travel a long way afterward. I was so tired at one point that big brother had to take over driving. He did, for fifteen minutes, when he had the same problem (he was still very sick that day). At this time I had gotten a five minute nap, and managed to drive the rest of the way without trouble. Phew. Was afraid there for a moment that we would have to sleep by the side of the road somewhere. Hah.

The weather has turned to genuine winter. We’ve had wind storms, rain storms, fog, and as of yesterday the temps dropped below the freezing point. Yikes. It gets cold here with a capital C. What with winds coming from the north, it’ll hit you in the face like an icy four by four. Clothes don’t seem to help all that much, and most of the time I am now struggling with keeping my core temperature high enough not to end up with chattering teeth most days.

Well, I’m going to leave it at this. I can hardly start telling y’all about even more boring little titbits than I already have. Jeez. Let’s hope I have some nicer stuff to talk about next time, right? I’ll even try to spruce things up a little. Gotta go.

We'll see where it goes

Song of the day:…hmmm, I’m not entirely sure. I had a weird one in my head during the night, it was there every time I woke up, like a friggin’ echo,  and now that wanna write it down here, for the life of me, I can’t remember which song it was. Ah well, better to be grateful that I don’t have that earworm anymore, right?

Right, what to tell, first  a bit of semi-good news. Big brother has a new job, full time, near the airport, meaning quite a bit of commute, poor boy. It’s kinda good for him, I think, to have to be there without me buffering conversations and such. He’s on his own, needing to make contact and what not. It’ll be cool to see how that works out, whether he’ll gain some confidence in that regard. He’ll be working at a big company, transport and installation of big household machinery. He comes home with stories of his new colleagues, which is kinda weird for me too, considering normally I’m right there when the stories are made, so to speak. It’s different, I’ll say that much for it.

As for me, yes, I had a job interview that seemed to go well enough the other day. If I get it, it won’t start until January, so at least I’ll have some time to write still. Got some serious ideas rolling through my head for the banshee’s story, so I really want to get back to that soon. Added to that, I still need to work on “Gun” a bit, despite having promised myself to focus on romance for a while. I got an idea that might help me to get the story unstuck, so keep your fingers crossed…but I was talking about my job interview, right? Well, it would be as a chauffeur, not a lot of hours, which I like, in particular since they pay relatively well for those hours, so, yeah, let’s hope I get it.

On the down side of it all, with big brother and me soon working at different locations, we don’t have much choice, we’ve been looking around for a very cheap, very frugal car for the past week. That meant loads of driving around for me, test driving, checking rust, (you wouldn’t believe the carpheaps people are trying to sell) booklets, license plates, because yes, you do have to be careful that a car is not legit, and whatnot. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to get the dozen we’d selected online down to three, of which big brother made his decision. It’s the smallest, basically a covered moped, hah. Can you imagine big brother with his 6’ 5” in a teeny weenie car? It makes me chortle. We’ll be picking it up Tuesday, so keep yer fingers crossed that it all works out. I sure look forward not having to get up at six to bring big brother to work. Hah.

Did some sewing lately. This area of the Netherlands I can’t really find stuff that I like at thrift stores, so I get smaller sizes that I do like, and work on them. Let me just say, I look pretty bohemian most of the time. I got seventies jeans, people. As in legs so wide the darn thing practically looks like a skirt. I love it. You can’t believe how comfortable that is after all the silly skinny fit jeans you can get by the dozen these day. Hate that design. I’ve yet to see anyone over a size zero look good in it. *sigh*

Been experimenting with cooking a little. Now figured out how to prep bulgur, which isn’t bad, I tell ya. I might write it down for the cooking blog, one of these days.

Winter is really coming now, we’ve had a warning that the first wet snow might be coming soon, we’ve got lots of northern winds, the trees have already lost more than seventy percent of their leaves, we’re getting a lot of rain, so yeah, winter is close. Don’t particularly like it, but what can you do, right?

Did see a rather lovely movie the other day “Mr. Deeds”  with Eddie Murphy. I was wonderfully surprised to see him in such a serious role, and in such a lovely  little story to boot. I read some reviews of the movie, which were positive toward him, and yet demolished the rest of the story, which I didn’t get at all. It was the whole thing that set a beautiful background for his role, made him shine even more because the story wasn’t from his perspective, like usual, but from someone who loved him dearly and made him better than good, it made him GRAND. Seriously, it is definitely a movie I would suggest you’d have a look at. I enjoyed it tremendously. It brought Eddie Murphy back for me.

I’ve had several requests lately to review books, some of which I agreed to, despite being short on time, as usual, grrrr. But I haven’t gotten around to it, bad Sammi, bad Sammi.

Fitness has been sporadic what with the busy schedule since the last blog. I do squats and such whenever I get sore from working at the computer, or studying…I’ll get to that soon…and push ups, sit ups, stretches and whatnot, so I’m not letting it slide, no worries.

Been in a very strange mood lately. Moody almost. Snappy even. Been missing the dogs like mad, and don’t really understand why it is worse now. Perhaps it has something to do with living out here in the country where having a dog would be totally awesome. But alas. Can’t be done. It is not allowed with anti-squatting. Makes me want to publish a friggin’ book or two so I can have a place of my own where I can do what I friggin’ want, like have a dog! Grrr

Have been studying, don’t have much choice in that regard, since we paid for the dratted course. Hah. But, it’s not going bad. We’re into the third section,  did our second test and only had on of 24 questions wrong, primarily because it appeared to be a bit of a trick question, we could have had it right if we had assumed some things that weren’t actually in the question. I don’t know if that was intentional and that they want you to make assumptions, or if something had been accidentally left out. Whatever it is…not bad, only one wrong. Gotta hold onto that little victory after weeks of frustration, reading boring laws.

Edits…well, that hasn’t changed at all. Seriously, there’s times we’re at each other’s proverbial throats. Nuff said.

Had our father and his wife came for a visit last week. Had a nice afternoon. Had pastries with tea, went for a walk through town, cooked dinner and talked about lots of things, including our new place, their new place and such. It was nice.

Well, we’re going to see how it all goes from here. I got stuff to do, things to arrange and…gotta go.

Hit by the muse...

Song of the day: “You don’t own me” by Grace. Very cool version of the old song, I’ve gotta admit. Sure, the movie it was for was pretty much carpy, but that doesn’t change that the song was good.

So, yeah, not a lot has happened since the last blog. Been pretty busy with studying, naturally, which regretfully takes a lot of time. Had some frustrating moments there, since this particular part of the material involves law, which is convoluted, boring, confusing and whatnot. It takes time, discussion (and boy do we discuss stuff, because on more than one occasion we get stuck on a part in the lesson books that just doesn’t make sense. Grrrr) and more time if for no reason than that often I need to go back and reread stuff. Seriously, law books need a proper editor! Jeez.

Still working on the edit. In all honesty we are taking our time in that regard, wanting it to be good before we risk sending it out as well. There are some scenes where get snag on, meaning more discussions, but this time the old familiar one that involves fierce debates about sentence structure, punctuation, grammar. Like the other day we were seriously arguing about a sentence that went like this: “the guard’s nod assured her that he would keep an eye out.” Or something along those lines. It was downright ridiculous. We argued for more than twenty minutes before I finally decided to just erase the sentence and put something else down. Darn it. Very frustrating, if a tad funny in hind sight. Personally I’m rather glad that no one needs to witness such arguments, because they are of course completely silly.

I do have a job interview next week, as a driver for shuttle busses at a hotel, which should be interesting to do at least. It’s not a enough hours for sufficient earnings, but it is something at least. I’ll let you know how that works out. I like driving, so in that regard it would be fun. And the earnings would be good.

Got a call from a temp agency the other day, but apparently that was still from when I had filled it in at our previous place, so it was of no use. Pity too, since my application at the temp agency was focussed on the whole cooking bit. That would have been very nice, darn it, but can’t be helped. Too far away.

Big brother had a job interview today (he’ll also have one at the hotel as a driver but this one was for full time) at a big company supplying home appliances to people’s homes. It would require him to deliver and install, which should at least be interesting for him. The only thing we have to figure out is the logistics of it, since both of us will need to get at work a considerable distance from home. Don’t know how that is going to work, so yeah, I’ll have to keep you posted about that too.

Had a wonderful cooking experiment with chickpeas that other day. Very yummy. Perfect finger food too, and easy to serve with a nice dip like garlic sauce, mustard or a sweet ‘n sour chilli. They’re fried little balls, so they went well with a salad, or beside fried rice, or with a very hot chilli beans stew. Definitely worthy of repeating, and very easy to make…not to mention healthy.

Been eating a lot of salads lately, which is unusual for me. I don’t mind salads, but I’ve never actually had that I was in the mood for them, only in the height of summer, but lately I’ve got a hankering for them, so I’ve been overdosing on raw stufsies. Loads of carrots, cauliflower, lettuce, tomatoes and spinach, the latter because I was at the doctor’s for a blood test and the basic test shows that my blood is still off. It sure explains why I am often still tired, despite having caught up on my sleep shortage from the last work year. This of course means that I’ll have to be back to get a more thorough test to see where the problem lies this time. Not looking forward to that. It is starting to look like my severe anemia in the past has become somewhat chronic and which is now  reluctant to be solved with good nutrition. Grrrr. Can I just say for a moment that I seriously dislike that, so I am definitely going to work on that in the near future. Again, I’ll keep you posted.

Went on a nice bike ride the or two the past few weeks. First one into the country, rather than go to the gym, now that weather still permits such outings. And just a few days ago we headed on into the city to have look around for the first time, which was nice. Didn’t get home until twilight (yikes)  with my bum hurting like heck because a thirty minute ride stretched out into a two hour trip that did an excellent job of providing exercise. Had been inside for several days, and really needed some fresh air, so it did us good. Added to that we had a couple, or three trips to the gym, and that was nice too.

What else…gawd, I had a sleepless night sometime last week because I had this rather splendid idea for a short story that I just had to write down before I managed to stop thinking about it and could go to sleep. I’m thinking a demon hunter, set in Atlantic City, contemporary with, of course, a hint of romance in it. Got most of it worked out in my head, along with the story which is supposed to happen all in one night. I’m rather excited about writing it, if you must know, because it has been a while since I have been hit by an idea like this out of the blue. For the past few years writing has been very much like work. Work that I love, but work still, and this was different; this was a muse hitting me right he between the eyes. Yay!

Well, that’s it for now. Time to hit the sheets and catch some Zzzzzs. Need them, if you must know. Had too little of it last night.