I'm planning my next vacation. So it's either Morocco, Egypt or Thailand. Morocco would require me to take 8 days off work, Egypt 10 and Thailand 13. Egypt and Morocco would both take place middle of September, and Thailand middle of October. I really just need a vacation asap. Always these damn decisions.

I've mentioned this former classmate of mine a while back. We're still chatting over Facebook and it's slow torture for me. We're still flirting and getting to know each other, but god, I'm so impatient. I really like him. He makes me laugh. He asked for my cell phone number a while back, so we exchanged numbers. It seems like he's interested, and hopefully he can tell that I'm interested too. I don't chat with people I don't like over 4 hours! There have been talks about meeting eachother but in a joking matter. I'd very much like to meet him (haven't seen him in 6 years), but on the other hand, I'm scared that if we meet it'll be horribly awkward and it'll destroy whatever we have now. Aaargh! Why must I be such a wuss?

My birthday was two weeks ago. It was nice, although I didn't really celebrate it on the day. I had to work, I went working out, got home, showered and watched Northanger Abbey. Sunday before my birthday, we had our family celebration. We had a nice family BBQ. My mom's birthday is the day before mine and coincedently my brother's girlfriend's birthday is the same as mine, so we had plenty to celebrate. The weekend after my birthday I was invited to dinner at my friends place. Another friend, Gabi, was there to surprise me. They had even baked me a cake. I was really touched. Saturday morning I met up with Gabi again and we went to a yoga trial lesson. A former classmate of ours wants to become a yoga instructor and because of that, she has to give lessons to Newbies while someone is observing her. She did a good job. I like yoga, but I still prefer the faster and more physically exhausting workouts that I have now. On Sunday, my friend Shirley came over for dinner. All in all, hanging out with friends all weekend was great and just what I needed after another stressful week at work.

-The massage I got. 1 1/2 hours and I'm all relaxed and ready to fall asleep.
-The muffin I got from a coworker as a thank you for nothing specific. Nice, n'est pas?

The rest of the day can go and die in a fire for all I care.

I haven't updated in a while. I blame it on work being really stressful and my roommate moving out, which meant that there were people coming by to see the room all the time. And really, the last thing I wanna do after a stressful day at work is talk to strangers, trying to get an idea whether or not I can imagine us being roommates.

Things that happened in the meantime:

-My grandmother moved from her second floor apartment to a ground floor apartment in the same building. Although moving took the whole day, I had fun. My family is quite amusing and together we made fun of the gazillion things my grandmother owns whenever she wasn't in the room. I think I will never forget the look of horror on my aunt's face after unpacking something particularly ugly.

-My roommate moved out about 4 weeks ago. I still haven't found a new one. To be honest, I haven't been looking for the past two weeks, because I went on vacation. I should put a new ad up. Well, maybe tomorrow. Living alone has been a nice change. I forgot how much I turn into a slob without a roommate. I'm in no hurry to find a roommate, but I want to eventually get one again. I don't need the extra space and I like to be able to talk with someone when I get home.

-My vacation was nice. The weather was great, real summery, almost to hot to sightsee and we had a good group, with one notable exception. Why is it always guys that can't read social clues? The guy was generally immature and incapable of retaining any information, a xenophobe and homophobe and spoke only German. I wondered why he even left Germany when he doesn't like new things and back home, everything is better? Part of me felt sorry for him, but part of me was annoyed. He provided countless hours of entertainment for the group though and unified it. All in all, it was relaxing.

-Work is trying to kill me. The Swiss army in their infinite wisdom thought they needed my coworker not just 3 weeks but 4, which means I will do two jobs for the next 4 weeks. Thanks so much, morons!

I spent a good deal of last week in bed, because I was sick with the Super Flu. Not that Super Flu is the official name or anything, it's more the first time in a while where I have been so sick and haven't felt better after 2 or 3 days. Now I only have to get rid off the cough and I'll be back to normal.

I had booked a trip to Thailand (guided tour) in May, but two weeks after I booked, they canceled the trip, because of too few bookings. I then booked a shorter trip to Greece also in May.

Continued mingling with cute guy from Business English Class: yesterday having lunch with him and his coworkers and today in Business English Class.

Only two more work days to work before the long Easter weekend. I have a meeting tomorrow about a project I have been working on for a while and I'm pretty anxious about it. I'm scared that I have forgotten something important and will therefore embarrass myself horribly.

I'm a bit annoyed about my coworker. He took the next 2 days off and has given me a lot of his work to take care of. And I get that you can't finish everything before time off, but there's a lot of stuff that I feel he was just too lazy or too unorganized to take care of. Bleh, the next 2 days will be stressful.

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday I was ready to curse the heavens and today I'm happy and grateful.

Grateful because my friends pretty much organized our weekend trip to Lausanne in April by themselves. All I had to do was okay the hotel. They were so fast emailing back and forth and I was swamped at work and voila, it was done. One thing off my plate.

I have a business English class once a week paid by my employer. Yesterday, they called me and told me they would dissolve my class, because the minimum of people wasn't met. They gave me 3 other classes I could join. I was all, the universe is against me, cute guy is totally gonna pick another time and I won't see him every week and slowly get to know him, damn. And today in the canteen, he came over and sat with me (his coworkers had left, but still squee). We talked, it was a bit awkward, but okay and he totally picked the same class. Awesome! He has the prettiest eyes. And later we joined his coworkers for coffee and it was way less awkward.

Yesterday I got the Pushing Daisies Poster I ordered. It's not quite as big as I would have liked, but the next bigger one would have been to big for the frame I already own. It's pretty and I hung it up directly opposite my bed.

And tomorrow I get a massage. Life is good. If only the taxes filled themselves out, it'd be perfect.

My love life is still non-existing, but there's been a slight change in the past few weeks. I've been chating with a former classmate of mine over Facebook. We've been talking about hockey, holiday plans and other stuff and the messages have gotten pretty flirty. I haven't actually seen him in several years. But I've always liked him and had a crush on him back in the day. He's a sweet guy and really funny.

There's also a cute guy in my Business English Class, that I'm trying to get to know better. And Office Crush is still nice to look at, even though there's nothing happening there.

She told me that she gave notice at her job and will move back to Germany around Mid May. I'm don't quite know how to feel about this. On one hand, it was inevitable. She has a boyfriend in Germany and they saw each other only about every 3 or 4 weeks. And there are certain habits of hers I won't miss, when she moves out. On the other hand, I've gotten really used to her, I like her and we've settled into this routine. And now I have to find a new roommate. Last time was a pain. Bleh!

My internet has been really on the fritz the last 3 weeks. Sometimes my internet connection works, sometimes just not. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for minutes. It's a real pain in the ass. I complained about it to my ISP, but I've not received any answer yet. I have a feeling it might be connected to the various construction sites that sprung up in my neighborhood since the new year. My beautician has had the same problem (she lives across the street from me).

I almost set my nightstand on fire yesterday. A candle to close to my earphones & my iPod-Remote = stinky electronic disaster. Fortunately, "only" my earphones and iPod-Remote were affected, but still. It stank horribly and I could have hit myself for being so stupid.

God, it's so freaking cold. The past week and a half the weather has been constantly 5 degrees below zero. And to top it off, there's this lovely wind chill, which makes it feel even colder. I know the rest of Europe is even worse off, but brr. I'm so not a fan of winter. And the cold makes my skin all dry and flaky. Can it please be spring?

In Swiss hockey news:
Streit first Swiss Player selected as an All Star. And here's an article about Streit's long way to the NHL.
And yesterday, my favorite Swiss Club the ZSC Lions won and made it into the Champions Hockey League Finale. They don't stand a chance in hell against the Russian club, but still, Top 2 Club in European Hockey. On the way to the finale, they won against Swedish, Czech and Finnish Clubs, so it's a success for Swiss Hockey in general.

cleolinda's entry made me think about what I'm looking for in a guy. Given that I'm slowly tiptoeing into online dating again, it might helpful to put what I want into words.

( What I'm looking for )

Step 1: Put your music player on shuffle.
Step 2: Post the first line from the first 20 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing.
Step 3: Strike through the songs when someone guesses both artist and track correctly.
Step 4: Looking the lyrics up on a search engine is CHEATING! Though, really, can I stop you?
Step 5: If you like the game post your own.

( Click me )

In the past few weeks I've read more books:

Shutter Island: Liked it, but totally saw the end coming. The twist was to be expected. I mean, they were investigating in a psychiatric hospital. If that's not a clue, what is?

Then we came to an End: Good descriptions about life in cubicle land, but so looooong. I really thought it was never gonna end.

The Rossetti Letter: I loved it. Good mix of romance/travel/historian novel. And it totally makes you want to go to Venice.

The Eyre Affair: I'm no literature nerd, but I really liked the world he created. I got two of his other books from the library and I'm looking forward to reading them.

Water for Elephants: Really interesting book about traveling with a circus. I liked it a lot.

March: So, so. Parts of it were touching and parts of it kind of boring.

I had a lovely, relaxing weekend, which I spent with my oldest friend, Gabi. We went to Grindelwald. Our hotel was awesome. We booked it very late, on Wednesday, arrived on Friday and we got a free room upgrade to the Panorama Suite. The Panorama Suite meant a great view, huge room, great bathroom with floor heating and a big bathtub. The Hotel had a steam room, a herbal sauna and a Finnish sauna, which we used Saturday and Sunday. It was very relaxing, sweating like mad, showering and then spending some time lying down and reading. The Hotel had 3 different restaurants, but we went to the same one twice because the food was just great and relatively cheap. The whole weekend only cost me 300 bucks, that includes my train ticket to Grindelwald, and 2 dinners, because we each got a 50 bucks discount. But all in all, what I enjoyed the most was hanging out with Gabi, talking, catching up. I just don't see her enough.

It was good that I relaxed this weekend. Because today at work, it was very hectic and stressful. We're currently understaffed and there's constantly stuff happening that requires our attention. And tomorrow the coworker I share my office with has the day off. I'm so not looking forward to fielding all these calls by myself. Bleh!

At work, it's been decided that our backoffice (basically all the assistants) of our division will be presented in the next employee magazine. That means we get our picture taken (which I hate!!!) and have to write a short text on since when we are with the company and what we do every day. While writing the text, I realized that my work consists mostly of answering phones and putting stuff into a program, which sounds like the most boring job ever. It's not quite as bad, there is interesting stuff too, but that mainly consists of stuff I see because I work there. The other issue is that I used to help someone with their work and due to staff changes I only do very little and very standard stuff in that area. I totally should have brought that up months ago, but I have been procrastinating. Helping out in that area would certainly enrich my job.

My sister, on the other hand, who finished studying to be an English and German teacher this summer and couldn't find a job as that, just got a job as head of accounting in a company. And she's gonna make 1200 more than me a year and has no formal training. I feel a bit insulted by that, to be honest. Apparently actually having experience and having trained for a certain job means nothing. I got to admire her self-confidence though. I wish I had half of that. Damn me being the oldest child. I only got saddled with being the responsible one. Bleh! And of course, this happens when I don't feel fully happy about my job.

From the Sierra Nevada we went to Grenada. We spent 2 nights there. I liked it. Funny tidbit about Granada: when you order a drink you get a tapa free of charge.

( Read more )

My trip started in Malaga. I flew via Madrid with Iberia. Wow, what a cheap ass airline! No wonder that my flight was dirt cheap. You don't even get beverages for free. I expected to pay for the food, but not even water? Seriously.

( Read more )

I've been a bad LJer. But I have a good excuse for at least 2 weeks, because I was in Andalusia on vacation. It was nice and the weather was great. I took a lot of pictures. I will do a picture entry or two later.

Here's what I've reading the past few weeks:

Carter beats the Devil: A interesting book about a magician, but it got a little long at the end.

The Namesake: I loved this book. It's very well written. The characters are relatable and you really get where they are coming from. It's about the search of the son of immigrants for his personal and cultural identity.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics: Too long and because of the constant stream of pop-culture references it took me a while to get into the book. Well observed human behaviour and group dynamics stuff, but the open end didn't do it for me.

Neverwhere: Although it's the first book I've read of Neil Gaiman's, I just love the worlds he creates. Stardust is also on my list, because I loved the movie.

Still on my list to read: Lost Art of Keeping secrets, Shutter Island, Water for Elephants, Stardust, March, The Eyre Affair, Blind Assassin and Then we came to the end.

I'm currently reading The Time Traveler's Wife and find the whole idea really intriguing, even though time travel makes my brain hurt with all different timelines.

Today was the last day of one of my coworkers. I'll miss her. In the afternoon, she asked me into her office. She told me that she thinks that I'd totally be able to do her job, but I need to sell myself better. I agree with her there. I should at least pay more attention to take credit when I deserve it. Men usually do better with that.

Now to the GRR Part. She also told me that someone mentioned to her once or twice that I was reading during work hours. As in reading non-business books. Because apparently when I'm physically at my desk, I must be working. There is simply no way I could still be on my lunch break *sarcastic eyeroll*. She didn't tell me who said it, but I have a pretty good idea. Especially since the same person blew up over a simple misunderstanding this afternoon. The woman is a part time employee that I never really warmed up to. I may have to talk to one of the team heads, not just about that, but other work stuff.

Apropos people not liking me, I think I should just give up with Office Crush. His behavior at several informal get-togethers indicates that he doesn't like me that way. I mean, he walked away and started to talk with other people, like he didn't want to be around me. He sits as far away as possible from me. I need to face reality. On the bright side, I'm going to Spain for two weeks tomorrow. Maybe I can flirt with a cute Spaniard or something.

I still need to pack. I don't wanna!