Au revoir 2012!

And so ends one of the craziest years of my life.. Not necessarily the bad kind of crazy (although lord knows, it had its moments). I made a lot of progress this year and met a lot of goals, especially in my academic life – which these days is my life. I passed my 15 hour paper, as I blogged about earlier. But even more exciting: I passed my language exam! I spent a lot of time worrying about that stupid thing, I really can’t express how happy I am that I passed!!! I also applied to two academic conferences and got into both (including the International Congress on Medieval Studies). I also just realized I got an A+ in every seminar I took  in 2012…
That was a lot of bragging, wasn’t it? But as I blogged about earlier, I need to start acknowledging my accomplishments and stop fixating on my (real and imagined) failures.

Even more exciting than all that is: Eric passed his latest actuarial exam is now an actuary! He gets a new job title, letters behind his name, etc etc.. He still has to be inducted in to the ‘society,’ which will take place mid-May in Vancouver (and I’m going, yay!). He is the hardest working person I know, and I’ve watched him work towards this for years. It’s so so amazing to see all those late nights and lost weekends finally come to fruition! Of course he still has a few more exams… ugh. However, once he finishes that he will be a “Fellow” and extra cool 😉

My top 5 books I read this year:

• Eating Animals – Jonathan Safran Foer
• Suspended Animation – Robert Mills
• How to Make a Human – Karl Steel
• Of Giants – JJ Cohen
• Catherine the Great – Robert Massie

My photos from this year are a probably a better way to catch up with some of the stuff I did this past year, click on the pictures below to see more!
Spring and Summer:
 

Fall:

Winter:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND…… here is Gary in a tie, just because I can. Isn’t he dapper?

And here is a song I’ve been listening to lately – the newly released piano version of an old Rammstein song, Mein Herz Brennt!

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Catching My Breath

Somehow… I survived the semester. I finished a month ago, actually. I am only just now catching my breath. It was all worth it, I suppose, since my grades were waaay better than I could have even hoped for! However, I spent all semester repeating “just make it to summer” and now… I’m stuck facing all the things I have to do over the summer. And I’ve spent the majority of the past month sitting down with whatever-it-is-I-should-be-working on and just.. staring off into space. I also have a lot of health issues that I ignored all semester that are now biting me in the ass. I want nothing more than to crawl back into bed and sleep for a solid week. But I can’t, and now, somehow, it’s June. Blech.

Why am I whining? I’ve had some really good times the past month. Firstly, amaaazingly, I saw Rammstein (again). This time I brought a giant German flag with me. It was one of the best times I’ve ever had! Words really can’t describe how incredible their shows are. Neither can pictures. But just for fun, here’s a couple I was able to capture between all the jumping/screaming/singing-my-own-German (as always, click to enlarge):

   

Even crazier: a couple days after the concert my mom was shopping at Fry’s Electronics and saw Schneider!! I’m so incredibly jealous!!!! I also feel super lucky that I have such an awesome mom – would yours recognize anyone from Rammstein? 🙂

Eric and I also worked on ‘upgrading’ our bedroom. It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for years, and finally got the money/time to do it. We got everything from IKEA and it took us 2 days of shopping, assembling, etc – which I thought might turn into The Ultimate Marital Test but it was actually tons of fun!

Ok, here goes some IKEA fangirling: We got the Malm bed and nightstands – which look SO cool, almost like they are floating! We also got two framed drawing collections for above the bed – one is from Da Vinci’s sketchbook and the other is Picasso’s sketches of animals. ART HISTORY. ANIMALS. I love them.

We also used the Dioder lightstrips to do some backlighting behind the headboard. It looks really awesome – click the pic to the left to enlarge (the exact lighting doesn’t really come across through photos…).

We have been sleeping on a mattress that is not only past its prime (we got it from Eric’s parents, who got it from Eric’s grandparents…), but we both found it really uncomfortable. Which isn’t good! You spend a third of your life asleep, so your had better damn well be comfortable!!! So we got the Sultan Finnvik mattress and OMFG is it amazing. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like a memory foam mattress but WOW. Now It’s even harder to get up in the morning. I know I’m not alone: the cats won’t get off the damn bed! Example:

We also got the Sultan Laxeby slatted bed base which probably adds to the extreme comfort and amazing-ness of our new bed. I read a lot of horror stories online about the assembly and instability, but we put the whole thing together (King size) in only 60-90 mins, no injuries, and it hasn’t fallen through or anything. All this talk about my bed makes me want to go take a nice nap with the kitties – but instead I have to go learn the French language… quel dommage!