I just spent the better part of the day obsessing with the search of a little table or container to put next to our bed, as a night stand or shelf to store books and magazines and such. Problem: The slot is only a little over 40 cm wide.
I'm going insane over this! Of course there is a great variety of things, but very little that's actually appealing to me.
Then I found this:
(sorry, the pic is not working, here's the link)
And absolutely LOVED it.
Want to know what the problem is? It costs freaking 399€!!!!!! Plus 59,90€ in shipping and handling!!!! ARRRGH! I am currently quite pissed that I don't (YET!) lead the life that would allow me to just briefly check my cash balance and say "ah, what the hell" and click the order button!
But hey, something to look forward to, right?
While sulking about the whole thing, the idea came to mind to make this my DIY-project for the year... I once built wooden CD shelves and also a book board. Plus I like working with wood.
So we'll see.
I'll go cool off now. Have a good one.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Sorting, Planting, Chocolate fingers
Hey y'all! (Have I mentioned that I spent a year in Northern Michigan? ;o))
Back here after a good day at work yesterday. Last night, I got stuck on reading Questionable Content, a highly recommendable web comic - that is if you don't object to sexual puns and lots of swear words!
So today I set out to do some goal work! As today is Saturday, I did what I usually do on a Saturday morning - clear the piles of papers, notes, books and mail off my desk that usually gets accumulated over the week. Part of that pile was the thick folder of files for Thursday's Civil Servant Adventure, so those are now safely stored in about 4 different ring binders. I did tell you that I was a structure freak, right?
Reward: a cleared desk. Brown (ok, slighty greyish, it could use some dusting). I am mentioning this because not too long ago, it was hard to ever find a spot of surface of this desk. For Christmas, I bought myself a file registry, in the shape of a slick black box. Now I can sort all the things that still need doing in the corresponding file and have it out of sight until I need it :o) Hence the empty desk. I do realize that this sounds incredibly geeky, but hey.
Anyhow, today's post was supposed to be about plants! I just spent the better half of an hour listening to Jethro Tull, planting all of the following:
- 2 sprouting onions
- 4 mandarine seeds
- roughly 70 red pepper seeds, using the mini green houses!
Sprouting onions.
The onions just got stuck into wet soil, bottoms down, sprouts out into the air. As I have no idea whether this will work, I'm excited to see what comes out of them.
The mandarine seeds I just lightly pushed into the wet soil. Can you spot the four white dots?
As I was told to put them in a dark and warm corner, they ended up in my garlic & onions drawer :o) I'll just have to make sure that I don't forget the mandarines there and keep watering them...
The red pepper seeds I just spread out over the punched sheets, mixed them with soil, and soaked the mix with a spray gun.
More wet soil on top, clear foil around it, voila. Please note that I have no idea what I am doing here, so don't do that at home unless you can live with the subprime consequences ;o)
I was thinking about calling the goal "grow onions" achieved, but I guess I'll wait and see whether they actually thrive. If not, I have about 360 days to try again!
That's the thing with making your goals less than crystal clear, you can't be sure when you have achieved them... I might have to toughen them up a bit :) But this will be a work in progress - this year is all about formulating, pursuing and achieving goals! I'd love if some of you joined me and shared their ideas, stories, successes and setbacks with me!
Have a great Saturday evening! We'll be watching HappyThankYouMorePlease - saw it on the plane to Thailand this/last summer and loved it! If you've heard about the TV series How I Met Your Mother, main actor Josh Radnor aka Ted Mosby directed the movie! Well worth seeing!
Enjoy!
Back here after a good day at work yesterday. Last night, I got stuck on reading Questionable Content, a highly recommendable web comic - that is if you don't object to sexual puns and lots of swear words!
So today I set out to do some goal work! As today is Saturday, I did what I usually do on a Saturday morning - clear the piles of papers, notes, books and mail off my desk that usually gets accumulated over the week. Part of that pile was the thick folder of files for Thursday's Civil Servant Adventure, so those are now safely stored in about 4 different ring binders. I did tell you that I was a structure freak, right?
Reward: a cleared desk. Brown (ok, slighty greyish, it could use some dusting). I am mentioning this because not too long ago, it was hard to ever find a spot of surface of this desk. For Christmas, I bought myself a file registry, in the shape of a slick black box. Now I can sort all the things that still need doing in the corresponding file and have it out of sight until I need it :o) Hence the empty desk. I do realize that this sounds incredibly geeky, but hey.
Anyhow, today's post was supposed to be about plants! I just spent the better half of an hour listening to Jethro Tull, planting all of the following:
- 2 sprouting onions
- 4 mandarine seeds
- roughly 70 red pepper seeds, using the mini green houses!
I was thinking about calling the goal "grow onions" achieved, but I guess I'll wait and see whether they actually thrive. If not, I have about 360 days to try again!
That's the thing with making your goals less than crystal clear, you can't be sure when you have achieved them... I might have to toughen them up a bit :) But this will be a work in progress - this year is all about formulating, pursuing and achieving goals! I'd love if some of you joined me and shared their ideas, stories, successes and setbacks with me!
Have a great Saturday evening! We'll be watching HappyThankYouMorePlease - saw it on the plane to Thailand this/last summer and loved it! If you've heard about the TV series How I Met Your Mother, main actor Josh Radnor aka Ted Mosby directed the movie! Well worth seeing!
Enjoy!
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Civil servants
As the saying goes: Time flies when you're having fun.
Today was not one of those days. I am very fortunate to have flexible working hours, so this morning I decided to come into work one hour late AND leave an hour early - and still it felt like the day was just not going anywhere. When I was beginning to think about going home, I realized that it was only shortly after 10am...
Or to put it in my colleague's words:
"First day at work after holidays = fail. Please make me unhave it."
Anyhow, I had a good reason for taking off early. I went to tackle another one of my goals! Sorting out my national retirement account. Last weekend, I spent sorting files and official documents, juggling application papers, and trying to wiggle my way back into my earlier youth to figure out whether DRV had listed all of my activities, such as work and studies.
To make things short, I was bringing a flex-folder of considerable size, coming without an appointment, and pretty late in the evening. To defend myself, I tried calling about 17 times to get prior information or actually schedule an appointment, but the only response I ever got was a "sorry, no one's available right now, call back later, click." AAAARGH.
Well, they had to deal with me. I arrived at 5:21pm, their opening hours ended at 6pm on a Thursday. Not a single customer was there. The receptionist was shuffling magazines to keep busy.
Despite having to live through an ongoing tirade about how I really should have called or made an appointment, I successfully left the building at 6:01pm, with a much lighter folder, a confirmation of having submitted all the necessary paper work, a happy civil servant that was ready to head home on time, and with the flattering feeling that it was highly unusual for "such a young person" to actually take an interest in sorting out one's retirement account :)
Now it all depends on how quickly they process the whole thing. I'm getting closer to checking off my first goal for 2012! *grin*
Today was not one of those days. I am very fortunate to have flexible working hours, so this morning I decided to come into work one hour late AND leave an hour early - and still it felt like the day was just not going anywhere. When I was beginning to think about going home, I realized that it was only shortly after 10am...
Or to put it in my colleague's words:
"First day at work after holidays = fail. Please make me unhave it."
Anyhow, I had a good reason for taking off early. I went to tackle another one of my goals! Sorting out my national retirement account. Last weekend, I spent sorting files and official documents, juggling application papers, and trying to wiggle my way back into my earlier youth to figure out whether DRV had listed all of my activities, such as work and studies.
To make things short, I was bringing a flex-folder of considerable size, coming without an appointment, and pretty late in the evening. To defend myself, I tried calling about 17 times to get prior information or actually schedule an appointment, but the only response I ever got was a "sorry, no one's available right now, call back later, click." AAAARGH.
Well, they had to deal with me. I arrived at 5:21pm, their opening hours ended at 6pm on a Thursday. Not a single customer was there. The receptionist was shuffling magazines to keep busy.
Despite having to live through an ongoing tirade about how I really should have called or made an appointment, I successfully left the building at 6:01pm, with a much lighter folder, a confirmation of having submitted all the necessary paper work, a happy civil servant that was ready to head home on time, and with the flattering feeling that it was highly unusual for "such a young person" to actually take an interest in sorting out one's retirement account :)
Now it all depends on how quickly they process the whole thing. I'm getting closer to checking off my first goal for 2012! *grin*
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
When the postman comes a'knocking...
I must say, this kind of goal hunting is working out pretty well for me. Granted, it's only day 4 of the new year, but I have already put work into achieving goals where normally I would have said "nah, I can do that tomorrow"... And don't we all know that sentiment...
Updates on my findings:
Over the past two days, mail arrived from two major health insurers in Germany. One of the finance magazines recently ran a test on the quality of health insurers that do business in all of Germany. I did a couple of the selections available, and three interesting results came up:
a) It seems that the best health insurer for both my region and myself is "Techniker Krankenkasse".
b) My partner in crime is using a different insurer (which is not the interesting part of the discovery yet...), took the tests, and it turns out that he is using the perfect match :)
c) The insurer I am currently using isn't all that bad after all. They made rank 4 although they are more regionally situated. As they don't offer special benefits in my area though, I will stick to my goal of switching - to a) ;o)
So today I received the application and everything for TK. The other infomail was for DAK, which I also scored very high on, but they turned out to be quite a bit more expensive, with pros that were more or less negligible. So it is settled.
I also passed by our HR person today, informing her that I was thinking about changing - and she had nothing better to do that curse me just in case I wouls forget to inform her about the details! A very friendly curse though, so no offense taken.
...
Oh. I just went over to check the link for DAK - and found out that starting in April (roughly the time that I would be changing), they will cut the extra costs I was referring to above... Damnit, I guess I will have to do some more research after all.
Ah well, one step at a time. 363 days to go :)
Updates on my findings:
Over the past two days, mail arrived from two major health insurers in Germany. One of the finance magazines recently ran a test on the quality of health insurers that do business in all of Germany. I did a couple of the selections available, and three interesting results came up:
a) It seems that the best health insurer for both my region and myself is "Techniker Krankenkasse".
b) My partner in crime is using a different insurer (which is not the interesting part of the discovery yet...), took the tests, and it turns out that he is using the perfect match :)
c) The insurer I am currently using isn't all that bad after all. They made rank 4 although they are more regionally situated. As they don't offer special benefits in my area though, I will stick to my goal of switching - to a) ;o)
So today I received the application and everything for TK. The other infomail was for DAK, which I also scored very high on, but they turned out to be quite a bit more expensive, with pros that were more or less negligible. So it is settled.
I also passed by our HR person today, informing her that I was thinking about changing - and she had nothing better to do that curse me just in case I wouls forget to inform her about the details! A very friendly curse though, so no offense taken.
...
Oh. I just went over to check the link for DAK - and found out that starting in April (roughly the time that I would be changing), they will cut the extra costs I was referring to above... Damnit, I guess I will have to do some more research after all.
Ah well, one step at a time. 363 days to go :)
Monday, January 2, 2012
And back to work
Well, it's official. The new year has started and the first day of work has been achieved :o)
It was a good day apart from the fact that I missed the train on my way home. Which stinks because instead of 1,5 hours I needed 2 hours and a quarter... But I made it home, and in a fairly good mood as well, I might add :o)
Good enough so, that while I was waiting for my super healthy (*cough*) frozen sausage pizza to get done, I decided to try out my DIY discovery from last night - the mini greenhouse! While I was fidgeting around with those, Dennis got so antsy from watching me that he went to find himself his own milk box - and did a second one :o) Group greenhousing at its best *grin*
And now (drum roll please!), here they are, each one truly one of a kind ;o)
It remains to be seen whether soil will actually stay inside the boxes ;o) Well, you never know until you try. I already have plans for mass production.
This is it for now - good night, everyone!
It was a good day apart from the fact that I missed the train on my way home. Which stinks because instead of 1,5 hours I needed 2 hours and a quarter... But I made it home, and in a fairly good mood as well, I might add :o)
Good enough so, that while I was waiting for my super healthy (*cough*) frozen sausage pizza to get done, I decided to try out my DIY discovery from last night - the mini greenhouse! While I was fidgeting around with those, Dennis got so antsy from watching me that he went to find himself his own milk box - and did a second one :o) Group greenhousing at its best *grin*
And now (drum roll please!), here they are, each one truly one of a kind ;o)
It remains to be seen whether soil will actually stay inside the boxes ;o) Well, you never know until you try. I already have plans for mass production.
This is it for now - good night, everyone!
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Wonderful Sundays
Could the year begin with anything better than a Sunday?
It's incredibly mild outside today, so a distinct feeling of spring time is sneaking around the house :o)
Which brought me to starting some prep work for tackling my goals. From our fruit chocolate fondue last night, I saved mandarin seeds. A little while ago, I also dried the seeds of red peppers.
It seems that, when rearranging our kitchen, I apparently didn't do too good a job of storing the onions (supposedly in a dark place), therefore I have two prime examples for sprouting onions now :o) I just read that onions should grow into leek when you stick them in soil. I guess I'll give that a try! Should work the same with garlic, they said.
Regarding the peppers, I just learned that the red ones are the ripest of the bunch, so seeds from red peppers are the most likely to succeed! Lucky me :o) Now I just have to find a way to avoid the disastrous effects of my missing green thumbs ;o) At green-24.de they had all sorts of helpful information. Google is your friend after all. I am tempted to ignore the time frames they give though - I will give it a shot to let them sprout in the middle of the winter, indoors.
And the mandarin seeds seem to sprout best in a dark surrounding and damp soil, and once the greens appear, move them to a sunny place.
Hah, I just found a lady that created a photo series on how to build your own mini greenhouse out of a juice box :o) It's in German, but the pictures are self-explanatory! Things like this make me happy :o)
Will keep ya posted and have a great start into the new year!
It's incredibly mild outside today, so a distinct feeling of spring time is sneaking around the house :o)
And the mandarin seeds seem to sprout best in a dark surrounding and damp soil, and once the greens appear, move them to a sunny place.
Hah, I just found a lady that created a photo series on how to build your own mini greenhouse out of a juice box :o) It's in German, but the pictures are self-explanatory! Things like this make me happy :o)
Will keep ya posted and have a great start into the new year!
Step by step into the life of my dreams
It's here! Happy new year, everyone!
I had a fabulous time last night. We opted for bypassing the happy party people in Cologne and Frankfurt and instead had an excellent chocolate fondue with a variety of fruit (including a Khaki (?) that my friend Dorothée left us with), a Billy Joel Live in Concert experience, and watched Michael Jackson's This is it. I am amazed at what that man could do with his body. Not that this is news, but shockingly, to me it was. Sure, I had seen the moon walk, but to have an entire crew of people do the robo dance in sync that just screams MICHAEL was pretty spectacular.
Billy Joel did a concert together with Paul McCartney. This made me think: a) for next year's new year's celebration, I could definitely do with a live concert, and b) I will have to add another goal to my list: MORE LIVE MUSIC!
Then we watched how our neighborhood blasted itself into pieces. It was pretty, for the most part. I also got to sit on my window pane. From the soreness of my bum, though, I am now more convinced than ever to tackle my goals of cozying up that prime spot.
Can't wait for this year to happen :o)
I had a fabulous time last night. We opted for bypassing the happy party people in Cologne and Frankfurt and instead had an excellent chocolate fondue with a variety of fruit (including a Khaki (?) that my friend Dorothée left us with), a Billy Joel Live in Concert experience, and watched Michael Jackson's This is it. I am amazed at what that man could do with his body. Not that this is news, but shockingly, to me it was. Sure, I had seen the moon walk, but to have an entire crew of people do the robo dance in sync that just screams MICHAEL was pretty spectacular.
Billy Joel did a concert together with Paul McCartney. This made me think: a) for next year's new year's celebration, I could definitely do with a live concert, and b) I will have to add another goal to my list: MORE LIVE MUSIC!
Then we watched how our neighborhood blasted itself into pieces. It was pretty, for the most part. I also got to sit on my window pane. From the soreness of my bum, though, I am now more convinced than ever to tackle my goals of cozying up that prime spot.
Can't wait for this year to happen :o)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
