prosecco time of the year

plusses:
-netflix has good new stuff (Bright was...interesting, but Mindhunter is great, and new season of Black Mirror is always welcome)
-our home is warm, unlike many other british homes, so i dont take it for granted

minuses:
-might need to change my nail salon, the guy i go to is just getting rougher every time, maybe he hates me :/
-husband is doing 3 nights shifts now so he is gonna be pretty much MIA

i hate cooking especially & additionally for all the language probs it involves when recipies are involved. and they always are. i dont know what the finnish words for various vegetables and spices mean, let alone in english. some i know in one or the other language, even turkish, but when i read lists of ingredients i get really confused. i check words on a dictionary, then go shopping and get confused again, then once i get to cooking stage im confused AGAIN. like jesus F, what is thyme, what is turnip and is fennel different from fennel seeds? and is turnip same as beetroot? it doesnt matter how many times ive googled the same things, i CAN'T remember. anyway. somehow managed christmas dinner - i'd taken the responsibility as Alan is traveling and we wanted a get together with a few people. doctor was working so i was on my own, except Brent came to help with the pork belly.

ive put a ring on it! lol, well, at least i can now, for special occasions. finally got around to getting a wedding ring. still not sure what these 'special occasions' are but never know, might be nice to have a wedding ring? the plan is to get one for doctor too, for the same ambiguous purpose, but need to get his ring size checked first etc. i wouldve preferred titanium or some other harder material than silver but they dont really make these kind of 'organic' shapes from those materials, so silver it is. found this ring on etsy.

our energy supplier kindly reminded the year is up soon, and if we dont do anything, they will update our tariff to a more expensove one. well how nice of them. they really dont care about customer satusfaction do they? but! the email was quick to offer other tariffs that would probably save us money compared to our current one. hmm...  all of the tariffs they proudly offered were more expensive than our current one. 

Dec 24th we enjoyed views from the Shard...

 a lunch in a pub, british style.

and a lovely party at doctors colleagues home, which is a river boat. she is renting it like a flat. pretty damn cool, although not for me. the views and novelty of it was just impressive.

this short story on the New Yorker, Cat Person, was really interesting. also the following interview of the writer Kristen Roupenian. i had some small issues with the main characters obsession about "this could be anyone, he could kill me", and the writer backing it up as its a pretty valid fear. i mean sure, i do suggest using common sense when meeting strangers, but also, its still much likelier that some other horrible thing happens, like getting hit by a car. this was just....  but besides that, very well written and most of all realistic story. the problem with a lot of fiction imho is that it feels fake, and this didnt.

we bought tickets to Toronto for June! it'll be crazy to return after more than 10 years but im so excited. obviously we specifically want to hang out with Hanna and Oytun, we havent seen the since they moved there last year. our group of girls was scattered across the globe, but there is another reunion coming, im going to Amsterdam to see Carilyn and Carina (+partners) in march :D bought that flight today as well. if doctor can get the weekend off, he will join, but otherwise it's just me. i was pretty pleased with myself buying those Amsterdam flights; Ryanair is by far the cheapest at around 38£..  until you add the airport transfer cost from Eindhoven airport to Amsterdam. the next option was  Easy Jet and Vueling, both at around 55£. all 3 of these fly from London airports that have literally no cheap access, min. 20£ return. #4 was KLM at 61£, flying from Heathrow...    it all made sense. and now, since i wrote this, i bet KLM will be massively delayed due to snow or something. british airports cant handle snow at all. with the Toronto flights i also passed the cheapest options, but difference was small and i picked British Airways over Primera Air (?!) and Palestinian Airlines. i have really good experiences with BA, so.