Goodbye 2012!

It's been an amazing year. I've done so many things that I've never done before, learned a lot about myself, and in general kind of grew up a bit.

Um… what else did I do?

I did a lot of things this year. In fact, if anyone wants to find out what I did, I invite you to look around the rest of the website. No more than 5 days can possibly have been skipped. So… I believe I've fulfilled the conditions of this blog— and this challenge— properly.

It was a big thing. It was… really painful at times. In a way, it's been a journal online. Which meant that sometimes I skipped over important things (like getting invited out to drinks by a Polish guy in Cambodia— I gave him a preeeettty firm 'NO' and ignored him hence after), made too big a deal about less important things (sometimes I wonder who cares about this writing stuff/what I ate for breakfast type-things).

I have hated this thing at times, and yet, I don't particularly want to let it go. I like this habit.

So what's the deal for 2013?

Drawing. I'm not sure what the point of this challenge was, but the point for drawing every day in 2013 is to improve my drawing skills. Humans, possibly, or perhaps I'll be drawing entire scenes. We'll see… I have a few hours to figure it out— rules and all— before I have to start drawing.

So I'll be drawing every day, putting it up online (on Wordpress this time, http://minodays.wordpress.com ), writing a bit about it…

(Oh, also, in interesting/important news:)

- I finished MilWordy

- The correspondance between Bouchra and me is 53,099 words from January 1 2012 to October 10 2012— just my half. Bouchra has written more.

Cluj-Napoca

We're in Cluj-Napoca, after starting out quite early this morning and driving out all the way here… it took us about nine hours. Very interesting, in the end. I liked it.

After reaching Țuțu's house (Though her real name is Carmen, we call her Tsu-tsu), we ate lasagna, talked a bit, and then we kids (she has a daughter named Teodora) went upstairs to talk and play Monopoly.

Though Ioan was beating us apart, we girls got together in one team— pooling our resources, and beat him soundly in the end. After all, Ioan was getting to be a bit too rich for our taste. :)

I wrote a bit more today, but mostly copied down Facebook messages.

This could honestly some day amount to the length of a novel, which is a bit frightening.

I also managed to find out something very interesting: Lou Bega, who sang Mambo No. 5, is not only not from the 1920s or something, he's in his late 30s, he was born in GERMANY, and he brought out an album in 2010.

When everything you know is wrong…

Craiova

We are in Craiova! After starting out early in the car, we ended up here about noon— earlier than we'd expected.

We visited with most of Mom's family— her cousin and her daughter and their families, then to Dad's father's cousin, and met their two children (who are also in their thirties)…

It's weird how 'the children' of a family grow up and all of sudden they're not children any more and you're still saying 'the children' because… that's what they are. To you.

That's actually kind of from the point of view of my grandparents and all the older set, as that's what they call us and all those who now have kids of their own— the children.

—

I slept in the car— I tried to write but couldn't, since I was falling asleep every few moments and starting back awake. Right now I'm not very tired at all, but tomorrow we head out early and we'll have to stay in the car for seven hours, during which time I absolutely need to write at least 10,000 words.

I foresee no sleep for a while, in a way.

Which doesn't sound nice.

Laziness

A veeery lazy day today; I woke up late, wrote nothing, watched a Korean movie (pretty interesting, except now I have the accent stuck in my head.)

At about three, we headed to my cousin Ioana's house (which we've never seen before), for the blessing of the house. That was pretty interesting— it's a beautiful house, with white walls and pretty furniture and things like that. We stayed for the blessing of the house and the eating and things like that, but then had to leave early because we had to pick up my glasses.

That was pretty interesting, I guess— yesterday Dad and I stopped at the office of one of Dad's old college friends, who effectively put an end to any dreams I ever had of not wearing glasses without an eye operation.

It's a bit sad to realize that I'll now have compression spots on my nose, but… I'm just being whiny about things now.

Eye Doctor

Went to the eye doctor today— one of Dad's old college mates.

I'm not writing lately, which is very annoying, as MilWordy will soon be finishing.

I wrote a bit, actually… but then I watched three movies, including ONE FOR THE MONEY (a movie version of Janet Evanovitch's book of the same title), THE UGLY TRUTH (a Katherine Heigl movie also, which was okay), and then, finally, PRETTY WOMAN (which was lovely and I liked very much.

Tomorrow I will probably regret the fact that I didn't write much today, but honestly, I don't think I have the energy to do things like this right now.

Oh well?

We'll see how things work out with MilWordy. Best of luck to me in actually finishing it!

(For the last twenty five words I need to write… lately I've been feeling quite ridiculously unhappy about various things. I think I'm becoming sliiightly depressed. The only cure would seem to be completing this goal I set last December…)

The Life of Pi

(I'll get to that in a second.)

For the moment, in a bout of desperation because I need words for MilWordy and don't have the time to write many words, I'm going through Bouchra and I's Facebook messages and copying and pasting that from Jan 1^st, 2012, to the present day.

It's 13,000+ words and I haven't even finished June.

--

We went to see The Life of Pi with my cousins and their significant others, in 3D. 

And let me just say that all the water animation is amazing. I was watching spell-bound, which I don't think I've done in a while, and I was looking at it with so much awe because there were clouds, and phosphorence, and so many things in 3D are so mathematical and then people can bring out beauty like this.

I kind of wish it was a true story. I want to see all these places.

Afterwards, Vlad and Tamara and we headed to Tamara's house to play board games, which were actually pretty cool.

We finally reached home at about 9pm. And had a lovely time wirting and such.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Today was a beautiful day. We woke up early, went to church, watching people go in and out and in and out. I think, in a way, it was good that no one stayed, because the church was full to bursting with the people who did stay, and the people who didn't basically tripled that number.

I apologize if I'm not making sense.

We came home, opened our presents (a fountain pen, replacement ink cartridges [100!], cuticle oil, a book, and marzipan!), seriously some of the coolest presents ever.

Lunch was delicious— the usual Christmas feast, which I would describe, but I want to say that I'm really happy, despite the fact that there's a metaphorical hourglass in front of me and the pulverized egg shells are draining out of the top half into the bottom half, and I'm not sure if all the things I have to do will be done by the time that hour glass is empty.

But I have faith that I can do it.