I'm walking 10.000 steps daily now. Well, not each day and not since long, but I am around this number since 2 weeks or so. Who would've thought. Walking to work is roughly 2600 steps I think, so going there and back is a little more than 5000. Going to the supermarket around midday is another 1000. That means I have to fit in another 2 walks each 15-20 minutes to reach my goal daily. Not very easy. Gym days help, as cardio on the cross-thingy counts and 40 mins mean another 4500 to 5000 steps. Walking to the gym or home is roughly 2800 steps.

Zorn is in holiday and I stayed in the office, the ideal plan would have been for me to join her and the group of friends she went to the netherlands with, but it was impossible, workwise. Either she could have gone or I, but not the both of us. I'm happy for her to have a relaxing week, but also sad I couldn't join. I want holidays. As in, going somewhere, relaxing. But it costs money and, meh. Well, WGT is around the corner, so that is 6 days of camping with friends and seeing bands and dancing and stuff. I look very much forward to that. I hope it will be very warm and not rainy.

For reasons I am trying to come up with a 10 (?) point list of little things that always make me (very) happy. So far I've got:

1. Singing birds. I really love hearing birds when outside. Robins and blackbirds are among my favorites.
2. Riding my bike over loose plates in the sidewalk and hearing the clack-clack that it makes.
3. Buying watermelon and eating it and it's perfectly ripe and sweet.
4. Listening to very slow moving freight trains passing by at night.
5. When I stop with my bike at a traffic light and my handlebar is in the perfect position to lean onto something so I don't have to get off my bike and balancing is effortless.
6. The sun shining through leaves of a tree.
7. Watching sunsets, the stars and northern lights. I'll never get tired of that.
8. Riding my bike through the sleeping city very late at night in summer.
9. Small furry domesticated animals (cats, dogs, rats, ...) falling asleep on me. Ok, would probably work with reptiles and birds, too.

This is what I got so far. I am surprised how much involves sounds, as I am usually very sensitive with sounds. Like, a lot (misophonia, I guess).
There is more stuff, but the other stuff I can think of right now involves other humans and somehow I feel that is a second (but also important) list. It has things like:

1. Getting a massage. It is #1 for a reason and honestly, could be on this list several times. I am a sucker for massages. I love them and I will love you if you massage me. Effort is usually enough, you don't have to be trained to do it. Nearly any massage will do. I love them. So, so, so much. Really. Nothing is better.
2. Random strong connections with strangers. A very honest smile. Sitting next to each other in the tram and legs touch on purpose. Or even fingers. I am not talking about totally random strangers, but about people you randomly encounter, but instantly like a LOT, the chemistry is just right etc. These happenings are very, very rare.
3. Being hugged in the right way. My ideal hugger was a guy I barely knew and I haven't seen him in 15 years. I *think* his name was Jan, but I am not sure. His nick online (but I don't know where) was cmdr_keen, I am not sure why I still know this. He had a lot of acne-scars, but I guess he was my type, I really liked him. And he really gave the best hugs, it was amazing. Tight (but not suffocating) and honest, totally unafraid, very confident, close with the legs (as in, opposed to people who lean very much forward to hug). I'm not sure why his hug stuck with me so much, I really barely knew him (I saw him - if at all - once a week at the disco and we didn't know each other well).
4. Being tied up. It is very silly and questionable that I don't put more effort into being tied up, considering the few times it's been done I liked it so much. And that it is probably very easy to find people willing to tie me up.
5. Going out to dance with friends and being in a discothek that is filled with people who enjoy themselves. Yeah, large groups of people like that give me energy. It often makes me feel like an emotion-vampire, as in ... all these vibes from other humans give me a boost.
6. Did I mention getting a massage? I did, yeah, but I have to, again. Really. It's my non-plus-ultra. Do it and I will love you. I am known to bringing massage oil to the discothek in hopes of getting massaged. I might aske near-strangers to massage me even (I once got the greatest ear-massage (yes) in a pub by a total stranger!).

I really need to sleep.
But I want to complete the lists at some point. I will think about more stuff ... I'll see what I can come up with.

I kind of binge watched Travelers on Netflix. Not completely in one sitting, but especially the second part of season 1 was finished in two evenings and that only because I didn't want it to be over on the first of the two evenings. Noooow I have to wait till autumn for more, oh my!

The show is about five time-travelers from the future (duh) who come to our time. They do so by taking over the bodies of people who are about to die. That means for others they don't die, so the travelers have to go on with the lives of their hosts all while a) getting used to the 21st century and b) doing the tasks they were sent back for. It's not very sci-fi heavy, imho, certainly not what I would call hard sci-fi. It plays today (the future is never shown, just talked about) and there are not many futuristic gadets - they couldn't bring any, so anything futuristic they need is something they have to build.

I really love the characters somehow and I totally enjoy the moments when it's about them personally and not the big plot. I mean, that is interesting as well, I just enjoy the personal struggles even more.

So, yeah, I recommend this show :)

* * * * * * *
Very unrelated rec: A while ago at Zorns place while cooking a spice called "Cafe de Paris" was used. I really liked it and today bought my own and already used it on some vegetables I fried in a pan - super tasty, if you ask me! It's a mix of many, many spices. Roughly these ones, but I think the one I bought has a little different ingredients, seems to be the same like with curry, always a little different: Turmeric, ginger, allspice, fennel, pepper, coriander, cumin, mustard seeds, fenugreek, chilli, paprika, onion, garlic, celery seeds, cardamom, thyme, tarragon, dill, marjoram, parsley.

* * * * * * *
Ate no sugar for one week now. The sweetest things I had were Ketchup, Joopie-Sauce and fruits. And well, I did add two small spoons of sugar to my vegetable lasagna sauce because that is just how I make it, but that was a biiig pan full, so I counted it as spicing which it was, essentially.

How was it? Erg, hard. The first two or three days I was very tired, but I am not sure I can say it was because of the lack of sugar (rather lack of sleep). I often craved sweet stuff and constantly had to fight the urge not to simply eat or drink something sweet. That also didn't vanish after a few days. Maybe a week wasn't enough? Well, I didn't cheat even if I could have often and I'm proud of that. But this morning, now that the week is over, I really had to eat a slice of bread with Nusspli (something like Nutella/a chocolate spread). And no, it was not "too sweet".
I'll see how the next days go. I'll try not to indulge too much and go back to where I was before this week. I might skip sweet drinks a little while longer or if I *really* have to drink something sweet will try to diet/zero versions. I'll see.

So, the past weeks I've often felt like half my diet consists of sweets. I ate SO much marzipan, emptied a 1350g (!!!) box of "sour cucumbers" (actually very sweet gummybear-style stuff) on my own, drank a lot of coke and other sweet drinks, etc etc. It was really ... awesome and horrible. I love sweet stuff. But I am sure it was too much. I didn't gain weight - or if, just very little, but I still felt like I am eating too many sweets. Really. SO many, ALL the time.

So I decided to not eat sugar* for a week. Not all of lent or so, but ... a week. That seems doable. Today was the first day. I managed - I ate two slices of bread in the morning with egg salad, salad, tomato and some turkey, another slice with the same stuff around midday, plus a banana. In the evening I made a tortilla, but with paprika, tomato and chard, which was quite tasty. I had some ketchup with it, the only thing I maybe should have left out, but, yeah. The craving is there, thou. We have a lot of sweets at home and not simply eating just a small piece ... gah. But I want to get through with that one week! Sugar is a drug and booooy do I notice it.

* With sugar I mean mostly sweets and sugary drinks and probably all sorts of cakes and similar. I'll not avoid fruit, I *might* eat something like joghurts or quark if it doesn't have too much sugar, but will not eat chocolate pudding and similar. I'll not eat Nusspli (like Nutella), I am not sure about marmelade, but will probably skip that, too. But it's in the grey area for me. So all this is more about getting rid of sweets and sweet snacks/drinks specifically.

It's not a lifestyle change, I'm not doing it to diet some more, it's really just because I noticed I eat an ungodly amount of sugar and I need to try and get a grip on that again.
I'll try not to replace the sweet snacks for salty ones in that week, but will try to snack on fruit and veggies if I have to.
I'll tell you how it went!

* * * * *
On a very different note, I got the results from Naomis surgery. It was a tumor, but a benign one, so ... all is fine! The wound is healing fine, no cone of shame needed anymore, cat is basically back to her old self, yay!

Just how good is sense8?
I mean, it's like original content fanfiction that you threw a lot of money at to make a series out of it.
Unfortunatly I already watched the whole first season and the christmas special.
I want more!
I know, I know ... season 2 is coming soon. Still! Now!
Any other fans here?

* * * * *
It's carnival time here. Thursday was our annual potato-pancake party, which was a bit smaller than the last years, but still nice. We also found a spot in a bar close buy to confinue partying afterwards and it was fun. I was Batman and Thomas was Robin. Zorn looked super awesome, she was Poison Ivy and actually had dyed her hair red. It looks so good! Also, I flirted a bit and got a kiss or two and well, it was nice.
We went home around 9pm and Thomas and our sleepover guest went to bed at 11pm. I was awake until 4am, as I could not sleep when all these existential life questions came back to me.
Friday was spent at home doing some work and not much else.
Today is more carnival activity.

* Naomi has to have surgery. She has a small lump over her eye, which has been there a few months now. First, when I noticed it, I thought it's maybe from a scratch or so. Went to the vet as it didn't go away. Vet suggested it could be an insect sting, which seemed strange to me, as at this point it had been there at least 2-3 weeks. She gave her antibiotics and some other stuff.
Well, as guessed, that didn't help much. It was just there. But it also didn't seem to bother her. My birthday came and I had invited a friend who is also a vet and asked her to take a look. She said she thinks it's harmless, probably just a lump of fat, something that can happen with old age in cats. But she also said if I am concerned she can come over some other time with stuff to poke it and see what's inside. It took a longer while to get a date for that with her, but two weeks ago she was finally here and poked it and took some samples. These were sent to the lab. Aaaaand well, she called me a week ago and told me, okay, it is *not* as harmless as she hoped, but also not yet bad. But the cells are starting to change (into cancer) so it should get removed soon. I now made a date in a clinic she recommended and so Naomi will have the little lump (it's really only half a pea in size) removed and it will get tested again. All that will cost around 500 Euro, which makes it more unlikely I will manage to go to Worldcon in Finland, later that year. I didn't have the money for this trip in the first place and this now makes it even more unlikely I will spend money I don't have.

* I need to stop formulating LJ entries in my head when I am on the go somewhere. Because when I do this I tend to not write it down. *sigh*

* A few days ago I went home from somewhere and it had rained before and it smelled like petrichor (which I love). It suprised me, because I can't remember having smelled it in winter before.

* I'll go to a concert in a few minutes. I am looking forward to spending time with friends and I guess it will be fun, but I am somehow not too enthusiastic about the music (Pelemele, they make rock music for kids and this is their annual concert for grown ups (but with the songs they also usually play for kids).

* I can't find my ID and neither my passport since a few weeks. Super annoying, ugh.

I am very late - I even need to backdate this an hour to not be too late, but:

Happy Birthday to my LJ! Which is now 16 years old!

And I have not abandoned it, despite writing very little in the last year. My new years resolution is to change that again, I want to get back into this and I know I can.
I have another week off from work, so I can use this week to make an entry each day, to get me back on track.

A general roundup:
Everything is the same, more or less. Still the same job, still selfemployed on the side. Same boyfriend, cat is still alive and well. Chaos in my flat is unchanged. Still playing Stardew Valley and now also Civilization 6 which was a christmas gift. Family is mostly fine, except for my godmother (who is my moms cousin), who is in hospital bc of cancer (they removed one of her lungs) - I just can hope for the best.

I'm working on a "one-second-a-day" video for 2016. Due to my mobile breaking there is a gap I still need to fill with videos/seconds, but I will try to do so tomorrow (thank god it seems they updated the app I use in a way that makes this easier than to fiddle around with the phones internal date). I'm looking forward to it, this was really an important project for me last year.

Thanks for staying with me :-*

I'm having a kind of free weekend. At least I hoped so, but it's not totally true: Tonight is a big birthday party of a collegue of Thomas and we are invited, so this evening is not free. And tomorrow there is the usual movie evening. And yesterday we were invited over at Ninas place. It was nice, but I didn't get the free time I feel I need right now.

What I would *like* to do:
- Play Stardew Valley
- Attend the fleamarket
- Go to the gym and watch another episode of Agents of Shield (3.2) on the cardio
- Look for a pic of my great-aunt that I could try to draw for her birthday and, well, start drawing
- Wrap up the 5 advent-calendars I'm making for friends

What I *have* to do:
- Sort pics of two weddings & retouch them for uploading
- Start working on a 30+ page broschure for a client
- Work on a logo I promised someone
- Do my taxes (3rd quarter & 2015)
- Write bills
- Clean up the kitchen
- Clean up/tidy my rooms
- Continue painting the front hallway
- Take out the trash
- Write mails and sort out a lot of small stuff (sending people pics, requesting changing tickets, etc)
- and more more more

*siiiiigh*
I guess it will be a mix. I'll pack my gym stuff and on the way out take the trash with me, head to the fleamarket for half an hour and then to the gym. Then I'll be back home and will try to work on one or two of the first 4-5 points of my "have to" list. This will probably take all afternoon before I have to get ready for the party.

We went and saw Dr. Strange - actually, I saw it two times already. I enjoyed it lots! Visually awesome and I loved the actors. The plot was quite standard origin story like. The jokes were good and well timed. The whole movie felt too short. And again I was a bit baffelt how funny it is with BC, that he can be so alien-looking and really not attractive at all in some pictures and then, at other times he's like so super attractive it's unreal. Being Dr. Strange definatly suited him very well.

Last night I noticed bluetooth isn't working on my phone, this happens somestimes. Usually a reboot solves the issues ... this time ... not. Actually, rebooting the phone threw it into a boot-loop. I stopped fiddling with it at some point, letting it charge and tried again this morning, but nothing seemed to help. I managed to get into recovery mode and there tried some things like swiping caches and such ... still nothing seemed to help. So, it came to a point *this* evening there a factory reset seemed to be the sensible thing to do, so I did that ... and booted the phone to find it nearly in it's original state. Original being = as it was before it broke, NOT empty, like I would expect with a factory reset.
That ... was baffling. But good! Well, now the phone is on again, I'm making backups and will have to turn it off again tormorrow, to put the SIM and SD card back in. I hope this will not break it again ...

I was in Bruges with three friends for a hen do (?) over the weekend, it was really nice. Does anybody care for photos? It's a really beautiful small city with - I kid you not - around 50 (!!!) chocolate shops. And so much beer. Like, 300 different kinds or so. And I don't even care for beer! But Belgium is famous for it's beer.

I'm fine.
Busy, but not deadly busy. fuchs was here yesterday evening, which was really nice, haven't seen her in ages. Tonight there is dinner at Thomas' parents, which usually is a nice thing, too.

I had a wonderful birthday party, it was sooooooo full, but also awesome, having so many friends here (50+ people) and I think everybody enjoyed him-/herself. I got a lot of nice presents, comics, socks, games, tickets for fairs I want to attend, money for certain stuff, flowers, chocolate, sweets, bike-tours-around-cologne-book and a computer game: Stardew Valley.

Speaking of which, I really enjoy this game! It has a tiny but of a farmville vibe (which I admit I played a lot when I wrote my diploma), but is so much more. It's single player (but multiplayer will come). You inherit a farm from your grandfather and start off there. You can work on it, but also explore the area around it as well as the nearby village and it's citizens. You can interact with them, even marry and have a kid. You have quests to fullfill, like getting stuff for people or killing monsters in a mine or finding something someone lost or building something. It's pixel-based art, so might look old, but is actually from this year. Has really good ratings on steam and was a big hit when it came out. One or two things annoy me, but I saw there are mods for that and I might try these (for example I find fishing ridiciously hard).
Amazing fact: The entire game was designed and programmed by one single guy, including art, story, character design, music, etc.