Monday, 29 December 2008

New Year's Resolutions

This Christmas period seems to have just disappeared without a trace. I’ve been preparing for it for ages and then suddenly we had our Christmas Eve dinner, unwrapped the presents and… and it was over.


The tree is still up, it will remain ornate till the 6th of January, but the mood has changed – it’s time to be preoccupied with New Year’s resolutions.

To be honest every year my goals are huge, but it doesn’t matter how much I try, most of them are postponed as things like getting a house built can’t happen in a day, but if you live in Lithuanian it might take you probably up to 5 years (bureaucracy I’m afraid)… I’m keeping my chin up and hope that in 2009 we’ll at least have a pond dug and some trees planted, oh and having our own fence would be marvelous! The rest is simple – loose some weight (if it’s so simple why didn’t that happen in 2008?), travel a bit more (hard to achieve when one doesn’t feel well on a plane) and finally figure out what I want to do in this life (don’t ask me how old I am as this really gets me down – I desperately need to find something I’m good at).

Right… So that not to get too depressed I wish you all a Happy New Year, let it be the one when at least half of your dreams come true! And I’ll keep my fingers crossed that the 1st of January would bring us real winter with plenty of snow for my dog to enjoy (no wonder her name's Aliaska) and for me to take photos of.

Tuesday, 16 December 2008

Almost a Christmas Carol

A few days ago on someone’s blog I noticed a counter that said – it’s 10 Days to Christmas! Only ten days? Can this be true? It really shocked me as I still haven’t bought anyone’s presents, haven’t planned when we are getting the tree or what we are going to put on our Christmas table!

Usually I’m a lot more organized than this, but this year I was the busiest I’ve ever been and on top of that managed to get a cold that locked me in the house for at least 5 days… I’m also under a lot of pressure as the presents, that Santa is going to bring me this year in corporation with my boyfriend, are already safely hidden somewhere in our wardrobe. I can’t believe he’s done that to me! It’s him who has to sweat on the 24th of December trying to get the last bits in the crowded shopping centers…


Yesterday I decided to pull myself together and at least sort out the Christmas cards (on several blogs I noticed I’m not the only one, who still hasn’t done this – it’s not nice, but knowing that the others are also experiencing stress encouraged me!). Anyway, I was really glad that at least the cards and post stamps were bought last month. So I made a list of friends who deserve a card, tried to write something personal for each of them, licked the stamps, placed them nicely on the envelopes, added addresses – I felt I was working in a factory! Then suddenly I realized that one of my friends has moved to another place and I haven’t got her address… After remembering that she has sent me a card and that the new address would be on the envelope I just put her and her boyfriends name ‘Jurate and Paulius’, thinking that I will add the rest of the information in the morning. Now have a guess – did I remember this?

Oh, no! It wasn’t until I got a text from this friend when it suddenly daunted on me that a red envelope that says ‘for Jurate and Paulius’ will never reach its destination… By the way, the text arrived after about 45 minutes after I’ve put the envelopes into the yellow post box (yes, in Lithuania they are bright yellow). So how daft is that? I bet it’s 10 out of 10! I then also remembered an advert for post services that I’ve seen in some magazine – ‘we always deliver your mail, unless it doesn’t depend on us’ and it had several photos of envelopes: some with illegible addresses and one with just ‘for grandma’ written definitely by a child on it.

So here I am, encouraged by someone else’s stress, talking photos of my Christmas cards that are ‘done’, so that I could brag about this, and later on feeling completely disorganized…

Wednesday, 10 December 2008

Seeing Betty – Probably the Only One Experience in My Life

Just came back from my short trip to the UK and I can’t believe I managed to squeeze so much in! Everyone is waiting for Christmas and I feel that I’ve already received all of my presents… Don’t get me wrong, I’m not disappointed; it’s just weird that one month can bring so much excitement – huge museums and galleries, ice skating rinks, colourful flowers in December and hot chocolate… weird personalities, Indian food, little markets and her Majesty Elizabeth II! It’s so different to what we get living in Lithuania, that I just need more time for getting back to my normal life…

Meanwhile I’m presenting a few photos that I was lucky to take on the 3rd of December 2008.

A short explanation: before going to the UK I did some research on the internet and gathered lots of information of what it would be interesting to see in London. One of the things on the list was changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace; I even found a website where you can check their schedule - http://www.changing-the-guard.com/sched.htm and decided that we’d do this on the 3rd of December. But I never dreamt I’d see Betty! Anyway, it turned out that everyone was getting ready for the annual event – State Opening of Parliament*. There was no way I was going to miss that! So I joined the crowd and got my camera ready.

Believe it or not, but that's Her Majesty's husband Philip and the Queen herself, hiding behind him!


State Opening of Parliament - please click on the link for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Opening_of_Parliament