My friend from Dublin, Mags, gave me a lovely little book on Christmas Day - a blank, but lined, volume, a magnet enclosure, and covered with photographs (or paintings) of the most well-known of Irish authors. (Alas, no women ones! Any suggestions to join the likes of Samuel Beckett, Oliver Goldsmith, James Joyce, Patrick Kavanagh, Sean O'Casey, George Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge, Oscar Wilde and William Butler Yeats? Better, which one would you swap her out for?)

I decided, late on the evening of New Year's Day, to try something I think I manage to "choose" every New Years' Day - begin a diary. Hopefully with more knowledge of myself in the writing of it now than previous years; I think no one will miss my point if I say that January is the best documented month of my life.

Anyway, a page-a-day shouldn't be too heavy, and at least now, I have an interesting survey to distill from 14 days, although my reader will have to forgive the bullet-point style. (At least it's not powerpoint presentations or something equally likely to provoke flashbacks to work/office trauma....)

• The first two weeks have been exams and illness - the latter being mostly the very last days, when I either picked up a vomiting bug or a case of food poisoning. Feh. I missed one of the exams I might have conceivably passed as well. But I soldiered out and got a sick-note from the doctor - having watched the way Mr Sweetie's work deals with his notes, I thought this wouldn't be a bad idea, when I e-mailed my university to say, "Sorry, felled by illness." (The sympathy of the doctor was also soothing, I have to say. Amazing when someone with a stethiscope and white coat says, "Wow, you must really feel crap; most everyone else in your condition usually holds out for a house-call.")
• As I was returning home from my visit with the doctor, I noticed a hatless and agitated young man further up our street, aggressively arguing with... nobody. I hurried on indoors - feeling ill made me absolutely disinclined to be anywhere near his kind of disturbance. But he was about to bring the disturbance, not to me, but to my neighbors. He got in a highly audible shouting match with the shop keeper next door, then walked across the street to where a car was parked, and used his head as battering ram to break the rear window. He scampered off right after that - he may not have been in his "right mind" but he sure had enough awareness to realize this was going to bring out everyone who'd heard the breakage. Not to mention the police, who I promptly phoned. (Lesson: make sure the local cops' number is programmed in the mobile phone.) Really, I was not looking for that kind of excitement.
• As the sales coincide with the exams, I didn't think I'd get much of a chance. Again. However, wandering down the street from where-ever that day's exam has taken place back to where I pick up my transport home, I've been looking in shop windows and... have discovered that moderate indulgence of retail therapy during the sales is an excellent post-exam stress-buster. I've managed a pretty wrap-around orange dress at half-price (confirmed, as I'd lusted after it during its' full-price stage), a nicely shaped grey turtle neck at 30% off, and a "little black number" of a beautifully lined if slightly short black dress at only 35 euro (half of the original price, again). Now, for a nice pair of shoes to replace the bunches I threw out (gave away) after realizing I'd been buying them too small for the guts of 20 years... Mr Sweetie was even a partner in the bargain hunting, as one recent day we walked past a small home-goods shop, and left with two steeply discounted, simple "tower" drawers - perfect for keeping some of my more frequently used A4 format papers from class. And beads.
• Mr Sweetie's been keeping busy with, among other things (besides work and keeping yours truly in good food while devoting herself to being a bookworm), the reorganization of our library. In part, it was so he could equip the cases with backings to better protect the books - in the end, he only got only one backing on a case, before he felt he had to get the books back up off the floor in order to protect them from the cats. The whole book-shuffle also unfortunately contributed to some fierce dust allergy reactions, and he's spent more than one night in the guest bedroom, in an effort to ensure a better night's sleep for me. Poor sweetie.
• I never did get those pictures up of the local school kids making snowmen in our near-by square. Our frigid weather endured until just a couple days ago - now the snow is long gone, and the high levels of reflected light, making even a dull day more bearable, are gone along with it.
• Mr Sweetie's installed a cat-flap in an interior door - this means we can keep the large door to the back of the house CLOSED, which improves the heat retention noticeably, particularly when temperatures were below freezing. However, the little darlings haven't yet figured out that they can push through the flap, so it's currently propped open with a hammer - the head makes a very stable base for the odd time of a cat brushing past, so there there are not too many accidental closures.
• Part of my recovery had me also making an important reconnection with my enjoyment of studying, not for exams, but just for my own joy of finding out something. It started when I ran across a newsfeed from the department - and I looked up an article on the proposed appointment of a US ambassador, which I realized was actually from a Japanese newspaper website. "There must be a Japanese original to this!" I said to myself, and indeed, there was. So I fired up all my favorite dictionaries (hat tip to pelianth) and a brilliant web tool called Reading Tutor, that effectively assembles a finely adapted dictionary for any text you choose to offer it.
• The dojo had their annual New Year's reception - while I'd been ill just before that day, at least I was well enough to get out, and do so in style: I wore a series of traditional Japanese garments (Christmas gift from Mr Sweetie), including a pink-to-purple hakama, to help celebrate. I got a lot of compliments (ego-boo!) but given that I'd been recovering from 2 days of being flat on my back or hanging over the toilet, I was exausted after only 90 minutes of what amounted to standing around looking pretty. Sheesh! But it was also with another reward: a bottle of wine from the club, for my work in keeping the mats swept up most of the days we train. I reckon it's a case of enlightened self-interest: not only am I spared rolling around the dust and crud that accumulate on the mats, but I get to care for my dojo mates, and nurture a kind of home-feeling in this place, which can still feel very new to me. (Although I've practiced longer at this dojo, living here for three years, than anywhere else I ever trained at in Dublin...
• My herculean effort to get to the doctor for that sicknote looks to have paid off... when I handed it in, I was told quite unexpectedly that the advisor was looking into getting a re-scheduled exam for me. We didn't have much chance to talk, as I'd barged into another appointment of hers (well, the door was open, yeah?) but today I got her confirmation - so I'll have to endure exam-mind a little bit longer, but I feel it's to a very good cause. When I finalized the arrangement of time and place (really, just confirming what was offered, because who am I to say they have to do something else?), I really felt like I'd won at being alive.