Priorities,

Christmas and family make you think about your priorities a lot, and with the new year looming people begin to think about New Year's Resolutions. 

I might have mentioned previously that I am taking part in Veganuary. I want to do it to prove to myself that I can, and to explore the different culinary options available. Part of the idea is going to be seeing if I can actually drop the amount of meat products I have in my diet as a long term plan, though the success of that is to be measured later. 

My other "resolution" is to aim, as thoroughly as humanly possible, at getting my own place. 

I don't do overly well living with other humans because I like things to be a certain way. I like to know that when I am planning, on the train home, to cook a meal in a certain way that the knives for cutting things and the board I like are there and ready to be used. I also like to know that no one has eaten any of my ingredients, though that has happened before now. 

As much as I remember the solitude which can be created, because I felt that plenty of times in my little studio flat, it can also be wonderful to be able to come home after a really shitty day and be able to shut the door on everything else. You can shut the door and leave it outside along with anyone that you don't want to invite to cross your threshold. There is a stability and a sense of home which I don't really get from living in a shared house. Granted, I'm going to have to deal with that in case of a significant other, or kids or whatever, but still, it would be nice to have some time and space to myself and it is something I can't wait to create. 

The idea of a home is something really important to me and a lot of the things which are left at my mother's house are actually things I want for my future flat. I would probably have chosen the wall colours by now if I didn't know that it was going to be at least a few years before I was actually able to put paint on my own walls. 

Ah well, onwards and upwards...

Does It Feel Like a Tuesday?,

My very simple answer to that one is no, it does not feel like a Tuesday. 

My university timetable this year means I have a three day weekend (Saturday to Monday) and so the start of my week (Tuesday) is where I get 'that Monday feeling' aka the first day of the new week where pajamas are banned as a wardrobe option and you have abandon your duvet and hope it will take you back later. Normally, it doesn't really bother me so much, but today, it's driving me nutty. 

Part of that is due to the fact that my Tuesdays are normally a reasonably easy day. Come in, sit through two hours of lecture and then go home, but today I have a meeting at lunch and am working this evening. And I spent the weekend in Budapest. Yeah, that makes 'that Monday feeling' even more sucky than a hangover.

For those of you who didn't already know this, I turned 21 just under a week ago, and after puzzling for a long time as to what I did actually want for my birthday, my parents and I agreed that a little weekend city break was the perfect option, and Budapest held some kind of appeal even though I had less than no idea what was there other than the River Danube. Even so, the trip was booked, we were packed and ready to f*off to another country for a few days - the only obstacles being getting up at 3am and driving to Stansted. Ugh. 

What I found amazing - other than the pilot not knowing that in order to land, we must first take off... - was that when we landed, the sun was bright and the temperature was creeping it's way up to 22◦ and then it stayed there for most of the day. I was as pink as one of the Care Bears that evening. 

It was a weekend of a lot of walking - a lot of the interesting architecture and the shopping district is all down by the river, which we were staying about 2miles from - but the chimney cake and the views definitely made up for it, and even the Terror Museum was well worth a look, even though there wasn't much of it actually translated into English (and where it was, the mistakes were kind of distracting!) 

Something that was more interesting (as in, well, that's odd) than interesting (as in, ooooh, that's catching my interest) was the set up of our room. I haven't quite figured out why the bathroom had a window that looked out into the bedroom, but perhaps I don't want to know the reason. Don't get me wrong it's frosted up to normal human shoulder height (so up to the level of my nose) and there is a blind over it, but the design flaw to that is that the pully for the blind is on the OUTSIDE! It's rather peculiar, but as long as you are sharing with someone you trust or don't mind seeing you in the shower, it's not too odd I guess.

I can't decide if the best part was that I got to spend so much time with Ben (sorry, I know that's cheesy :P) or the fact that he ordered breakfast in bed for us on our last morning there. Drinking Hungarian fizzy wine and having dippy eggs and pancakes was a pretty special way to start our last day out there, and shopping was obviously the best way to end it. 

Something to keep in mind is, if you go to the same shops we have over here, the pricing is going to be the same, but it doesn't require going off of the beaten track in order to find something local and a lot cheaper. I was really surprised by the relatively low cost of food, and even cheaper cost of alcohol, though I wouldn't have been quite so surprised if there were the same amount of stag parties on the plane out there as the plane coming home. The fact that you can get a shot of Jaeger, or Unicum for as little as 290Ft (about 80p) in bars on the main street makes it pretty attractive for such events. 

If you want to take a look at some of the photos, you'll have to check out my Instagram or Facebook. :) 

The Grand Days of Getting Old(er),

I know that things change as you get older; the priorities you had when you were a child disappear as you become a teenager, and then eventually that gives way to less and less mild forms of adulthood, but recently, I've been noticing it a lot. 

In the place of happiness from making a mess and eating a disproportionate amount of chocolate to what would be deemed healthy is now the joy that comes from cooking something which is more than just edible, or the sense of calm that comes from your house being clean as New Years passes. I can't explain how good it felt that when midnight came and went, much as it ever does when it's not celebrated by fireworks, I knew that the bathrooms had been drowned in the appropriate amount of bleach, the sofa had been hoovered and the kitchen sink had been scrubbed until it was almost the same colour as when it was in the show room (I will point out that that day was some time around twelve years ago). I'm even happier now that my room is properly clean thanks to my new hoover. 

The weird thing is, whilst I was still living at home, my mother had to withhold my pocket money in order to get me to do anything which resembled cleaning - except for rinsing my plate before putting it into the dishwasher, but I don't really count that. I'm now at the point where I can't focus on anything else unless something at least looks clean - well, the kitchen and the bathrooms anyway. My room doesn't get done unless someone is making me do it, or I have an assignment due. 

Pair all of that with the knitting I've been doing recently, I am honestly turning 90 on my next birthday.