Casu Consulto

• I am at my grandparents' for the holidays, as usual, and I'm determined to try and enjoy myself rather than focusing on the fact that the memories of my bad x-mas experiences outweigh the memories of the good and as a result, I'm not very fond of them. So far, it's been not bad, but there's still tomorrow's preparations for Chrismas Eve dinner to get through. As long as I can make it through that, there'll be a couple of days' peace while we all sink into food comas.
  
• I'm trying not to let my grandparents' obviously and visibly declining health (or maybe it's just old age?) or the fact that my aunt who lives next door got a very bad cancer diagnosis today (the words "malignant" and "metastasis" came up) affect my mood. #fuckcancer
  
• I'm in a deep, dark hole as far as my MA thesis is concerned, and I have no idea how I'm going to get out of it. I know what I want to write, I know how to write it, I have the research and the materials, but I'll be damned if I can actually motivate myself to sit down and write the fucking thing.
  
• My mom's coming to Poland for a week-long research trip in January, and while she's requested that I take some time off to spend it with her, I'm not sure that's going to be possible, given that it's going to be right at the end of the semester and I'm going to have a crapload of work to get done.
  
• I didn't get around to renewing my passport on time, which means no February trip to New York for me this year (which I actually didn't know was in the cards until my mom asked if I wanted to go today). Not that I really would have considered it very seriously, given how far behind I am on my thesis, but it would have been nice to have the option.
  
• The cat continues to be simultaneously the most adorable and the most irritating cat ever. I brought him with me for the holidays, and he's been spending a lot of time outside, which of course means that when we go back to Wrocław, he's going to be pining for the fjords outside, and given that we live on the 7th floor of an apartment block, it's not going to be easy to give it to him. I guess I'll have to make sure the balcony gets catproofed again so I can at least let him out. That and we'll have to keep buying the calming collars which, while they don't entirely cut down on the yowling, at least cut down the volume and actually do make him a bit calmer and gentler.
  
• My DW account has expired, and other than the lack of the extra icons, I don't really notice a difference. I'm not going to renew it right now, because I rarely have time to post anyway these days. Hopefully if/when I get my fucking MA thesis done, my brain will reboot and I'll have more time/energy/brain power to write more.
  
• I've resigned myself to the fact that we're not going to get a proper winter with snow and everything (or at least not in time for Christmas), and I've moved on to wishing it was spring already so I can take my bike outside and start learning to ride it. G and I have taken it apart and put it back together a couple of times, and I'm learning a lot about the mechanics and specifics of it, but dammit, I want to actually get out there and ride.
  

Mirrored from Tangents and Digressions.

• Just a heads up, the uploads will be delayed or somewhat sketchy for the next three weeks, because while I still have "high" speed internet here, the upload speeds are crap, and since a lot of the shows aren't getting uploaded to the usenet server I use right away, I have nowhere to wget them to the server. So, uh, I'll put up what I can, and the rest will get filled in after New Year's when I'm back in Wales.


• We went and looked at Christmas trees yesterday. I tried to lobby for a fake tree, citing savings and durability, etc., but while Grandpa said that he could probably be convinced, Gran would never go for it. We didn't buy a tree, because it's "too early." This will be my third Christmas in Poland, and putting up the tree like, a day or two before Christmas Eve hasn't stopped being weird and probably never will. Having grown up in Canada, the middle of December is the perfect time to get a tree IMO, but the traditional Polish thing to do is to put it up the day before Christmas Eve, decorate it Christmas Eve morning, and it stays up until February 2nd (Candlemas). *hands* I'm trying really hard to just keep my mouth shut and go with the flow and not question things too much ("That's just the way we do things" is the usual explanation, which is fine and dandy, but why do *I have to give up the things I want and they get everything their way?), but it's hard, you guys.


• My grandmother keeps saying "you haven't had any cake! I left some cake especially for you!" and it's like she's forgotten about the three months of diet before I left. Granted, I didn't really keep the diet in Wales, although Marta and I tried to eat healthy, and we both lost some weight, but come on, stoppit. I'm not going to have a very hard time resisting the cakes, because while I haven't cut out sugar entirely, Gran's recipes have far more sugar than they need to, so after a relatively low-sugar three months, this stuff is making my teeth hurt.


• I'm going to visit Grandma S. and the family on Monday. Gran is sick, and they're not quite sure what's wrong, so it's a doctor's visit after doctor's visit, and my aunt doesn't sound too optimistic about finding out what's wrong. I'm going to try and visit them after Christmas, possibly Boxing Day or the 27th, too. I still have no plans for New Year's Eve, and while last year was fun (a couple of classmates and some cheesy movies), at the moment I'm kinda leaning towards hiding up in my room with a bottle of champagne and watching movies on my own. I have a feeling I'm going to need some hermit time before I have to be social and see people to say goodbye before leaving.


• We're leaving from Poznań again, which means I have to get from Lubań to Wrocław, and then Wrocław to Poznań, and then to the airport. I found there's a direct shuttle bus from the train station in Poznań to the airport, so at least I've got that figured. The trip will involve either spending the night in WRO and catching a train at 4am, or arriving in POZ at 3:30am, so I'll probably try for the 4am train, or figure out if I can maybe arrive late at the airport and just wait there overnight? IDK. Here's hoping I don't run into shenanigans like I had on Wednesday again. *sigh*


• The annual Christmas Carol concert at our school is on Tuesday, so I'm going to try and swing my trip to WRO to make it there. Our institute's director always has a special Christmas lecture, and this year's is "The Natural and Supernatural History of Santa Claus," which I think is the same lecture (or similar) to the one two years ago, but they're always really cool, so I'll probably end up going anyway. And then there's some homework Marta and I have to do some research for, and I'm going to see about visiting my family in Wrocław before I go back to Lubań.


• I was going to try and get in a viewing of The Hobbit before New Year's, but seeing as the movie opens December 28th here, I might end up waiting until we're back in Wales, since IDK if I'll have the time. Enh, I've got plenty of other movies to watch and books to read, so it's not like I'll be bored. Maybe I'll even catch up on my reading a bit!


• I kinda wish I *had taken my camera with me (it got left behind to minimize the luggage weight), because it's so pretty outside and I wanna take some pictures. Have to remind Marta to bring my small camera that I left at her place so I can have something with me.


• I'm going to try and get my grandparents to watch The Sound of Music with me this year. It used to be on TV every Christmas in Canada, and my mom and I used to watch it every year. Plus, it's a musical, and I think they'll enjoy it. I stopped by the movie rental place and the dude there was all "lol, no, we don't have that," but I found a download that might be watchable, so we'll see how it looks on the giant TV downstairs.