Well this has just been one exciting week!

Got the training out of the way, which went well.

Then it was on to the real serious stuff - booking my trip to Gothenburg in 8 weeks time to go over and see Salem in concert. There were a couple of snags/hitches to begin with, but everything went well and I've now got flights, hotel and concert tickets booked!

Ironically, this happened on the same day as the announcement of Salem's new album being released so Wednesday was such an exciting day!!

After weeks of reckless gorging I've decided to lose a bit of weight and have been good this week. Result this morning = 2 lbs lost. Which may not be much for some people but that's major for me.

And I'm getting my (very long) hair cut tomorrow.

Good times :)))

It's not that it's easy, we just make it look that way

Been feeling a bit more tense than usual of late. Among other things, the time has come again for me to tutor another training course tomorrow and my stomach feels as if it's tied in triple-knots at the thought of standing up and delivering a course to a large group of people, only a couple of whom I know. The hardest thing about all this for me is the time-management aspect, trying to fit it in with what is a very stressful time workwise at the moment. Oh and the other tough bit is slotting all the course content into reasonable timeslots over the two days. It may look easy but there's a lot of work goes into it to make the event run smoothly.

My heightened state of agitation has had an impact on my relationships with my closest loved ones: I wouldn't want to hang out with me at the moment, I'm even getting on my own nerves. Got some other potentially stressful stuff over the next week and then things should hopefully be easing off a little.

Stuff worth looking forward to: the Planet Salem Gothenburg 2010 Adventure.

Only eight weeks to go!! Planning is underway but it's already hit a slight snag which I really hope can be resolved as I want to get everything booked before this week is over. And if it all works out I'll be so excited that I'll probably burst. Which would probably save me having to crash-diet :)

All decluttered out.

OK so there wasn't much relaxing after all as I spent the best part of the day continuing to declutter my bedroom. I suppose you'd still describe it as cluttered, but only with furniture and my sprawling CD collection. There is not a magazine, a mess of USB cables, a takeaway menu or a piece of unopened junk mail in sight. I'm tired now, but very happy; it's been a productive day.

Not so happy that I'm back at work tomorrow though :( still it's not long till the weekend :)

Blue Monday? What Blue Monday?

Apparently some psychologist came up with this formula that today, the third Monday in January, is the most depressing day of the year, when the realisation kicks in that you can't pay all those Christmas bills, you can't keep your new year resolutions, the weather is rubbish, the nights are still dark etc etc.

The one thing about throwing yourself into home improvements is that you forget all of the above for a while! Today was a very good day. Day off work for new blinds being fitted on our new windows so everything is nice and clean and new and lovely. Now that's done I could put my room back together, although as Operation "Declutter EuropeCrazy HQ" continues, I ended up spending the evening throwing more stuff out.

Extremely tiring day though, so off to sleep shortly! Even better is that tomorrow is another day off work, so will probably do a bit less housework and a bit more relaxing. Zzzzzzzz......

Snow = gone.

Yep, it's all gone. Finally. After almost five weeks.

Lots of rain came during the night on Friday and finally washed the snow and the three-inch-thick ice away, which deserves a great big woo-hoo!!

It's still very cold though, so my big red waterproof Trespass jacket will no doubt see much more action before the winter is out.

More to follow ....!

Touchy!

It's not been all bad news over the last few days though, as I've got me a new phone, one of those state of the art today, obsolete tomorrow, touch-screen phones. Which is surprisingly easy to use, (even with my index finger all plastered up following a horrible accident at home last Friday) and it might even help me to text quicker. Being the world's slowest texter, that's a tall order :)

Anyway it's got 'widgets' and a decent camera and I've even got some music on it, even if it's only five songs just now, all by the same person. Yes, that one.

Which brings me to a conversation earlier tonight with the eternally technophobic faithful travelling companion:

Me: "I've got a tune from a certain Swedish musical genius as my ringtone."

Him: "Basshunter!"

The return of...pavements!

The last 48 hours have just brought more personal lows (and extreme lows in some cases), leading me to believe that the beginning of 2010 reminds me more of 2007 (yes that bad) anyway I'm looking on the brighter side today.

Pavements are back! Yes finally after four weeks of snow, the pavements have begun to re-emerge. I'd forgotten what they looked like, and indeed forgot how to walk on them - got so used to walking that funny way you do on snow and ice.

The world's most insignificant Christmas lights are still up and still lit in my town. Have they not heard of Twelfth Night? No wonder we get so much bad luck :)

Windows 2010 / Frozen Britain / Buffering / Phone....

Taking a bit of "chill out" time which in these temperatures takes on a new meaning!

I'm not referring to some new operating system, but actually to the new windows at EuropeCrazy HQ which are very nice and functional and ...new, but there is so much else to be done, involving continued upheaval over the space of the coming week which means normality and blogging and stuff is on hold yet again.

FROZEN BRITAIN! yells the headline scrolling across the screen of all our news channels. As this country is totally rubbish and can't get anything right, we're therefore subject to salt shortages. (I wonder what the implications are for chip shops across the UK???? What will you have with your vinegar??) Anyway there's a grit shortage, cars are skidding and crashing, people are falling and fracturing limbs, and we've been looking out at the same snow/ice which has refused to shift since about mid-December. Still, it could be so much worse. You could live in a part of Russia which is -40 degrees. Wonder how they cope? Better than us, I should imagine.

What's been annoying me today? Constant buffering on YouTube, and not being able to watch the Norsk Melodi Grand Prix because I don't have this super-duper-fast internet connection.

On the plus side, I got my new touch screen phone on Friday, which is going to take me about 5 years to actually learn how it works, ha ha.

And one more thing: woolly hats with pom-poms totally rule.

Festive season = officially over.

Today we took the Christmas tree and decorations down, so I suppose that signals the end of the festive season then. Took my false nails off too, which also usually signals the end of the festive season. Typing will now get easier, which is a total relief when you make your living as a typist ha ha!!

Although it is still very "Christmassy" outside as we had yet another day of snow and there is no sign of it going away either....

The forthcoming window replacement has given us a good reason to de-clutter and clear out the house. This has been hectic but strangely therapeutic: I should do this more often rather than putting off until tomorrow what can be done next week. :)