Christmas is coming! I found myself slightly surprised by the Holiday this year, just cannot believe we are almost there.  For the first time in England though, I’m not spending it at someone else’s place, I’m not in the middle of redecorating or going back home. Thus our new place got decorated.

We were going to get a fake tree, however after most places being out of stock or delivering in the middle of this week we accidentally ventured into the live tree section. And boy did it smell in there. We were very close to just dragging the biggest one they had home straight away, but after careful consideration of our dragging-power decided on a slightly smaller tree.  It was a very eco-friendly move, as after Christmas the plant is going to be decorating our not-so-used balcony.

On the other hand the window decorations are not real pine, however they do look very realistic. After gravity-defying nail plus wall action we have two windows done with a third one still waiting (yes - this does mean 90% probability of more photos coming). Considering some spray on snow on the glass or maybe cut out paper flakes on string… what do you think?

These days Internet seems to be everywhere. You have it on your computers, consoles, even mobiles. Yet still, when moving house getting yourself connected seems almost like mission impossible.

Do I really need to wait for the TV to be hooked - 1 week, then the phone line activated (yes, no drilling or cable work, just activating a line) - 2 weeks, and then finally another week to get the broadband. It’s not like only a select few technology fanatics order such services. You’d think that they’d actually be more than happy to take on new customers. Unfortunately it is more like a rocky road to get that Internet going.

So altogether we have been almost a month without Internet. Feels very weird indeed. The usb dongle was definitely not enough with the two of us trying to share a connection. It’s better than nothing, but stupid T-Mobile content block on random pages can drive you crazy at times.

One thing I was quite shocked to learn during all this phone connecting was that the developer supposedly does not connect the phone sockets in a newbuild. I’d expect everything to be active when you get the keys to your sparkling new flat. But supposedly it’s normal that you have to hire yourself an expensive electrician to have working phone sockets… And there was silly me, thinking that finished means finished…

Even though we have broadband connected now it’s still not over. It looks like the phone engineer conected the wrong socket - we have the main one working and instead of the living room the only other working socket is in the spare bedroom.

Cats are known for their bossy ways. Most are hungry monsters (even with a full stomach). However for some reason my ginger feline seems to be of the anorectic type.

And it’s not just pure fussiness. I dealt with enough cats to know not to give in to a single food type regime, and due to that my cat is exposed to a constant food rotation, both in meat and biscuits. It’s not an aversion to all these foods either. He goes nuts for raw chicken breast and always gets a bit when I’m cooking. However while his interest does not fade, the appetite quickly disappears. He still claws at the chopping boards and looks very expectant, but any piece after the third thrown his way gets a shrug.

Most of the time he would just happily (and very loudly) crunch on whatever dry food was available - preferably at 4am… That is until recently. As we run out of biscuits the cat had a whole day to wait. I figured he might actually stat eating more wet food due to this. I didn’t know how right I was!

The cat that has pretty much been a biscuiterian, suddenly decided it’s all about the meat sachets now. Not only dry food is passe, but the once ignored meat is not the highlight of the day - every 15 minutes that is!

One day while looking for shoes in Camden (where else would you go looking for fancy shoes, when you prefer a Not So GirlyAvoid Heels Style…) in London we were browsing through several stores and goofing around a bit. In one of the shops I happened to find an advert for the “Anti Shoe”.

It obviously sounds like a very bizarre idea in a shoe store. It was a very small shelf under the brand MBT with just a few designs available. Being a very curious creature I just had to try them on to see for myself what is so special about them.

At this point I probably should mention that this wouldn’t be the first “Anti Shoe” I have heard of. I’ve read before about different initiatives trying to aid our poor spines and feet in different ways. One of which was extremely thin soles which encourage walking barefoot-like. This came with a whole lot of theories about the superiority of toes first walking… Though this is a topic for another day.

Back to the MBT shoes then. The feeling was definitely strange. A bit like if someone had put a tennis ball in the middle  of your shoe and asked you to go for a walk… Though even despite the odd impression, they did make you “roll forward” with a certain lightness.

However I did not buy them back then. Firstly I don’t trust things like that without doing some extra research on customer satisfaction… Secondly the price tag doubled my caution.  When a product is expensive and pretends to be some sort of genius invention there is high risk of charging for some gimmick and or brand name, rather than providing actual, long term value.

Surprisingly I found glowing reviews online. Not only that but it proved to be a medical product claiming to relieve spinal problems, and give your whole leg, as well as your behind an extra workout just be the share fact of walking. Well, who could resist that?

After much deliberation (and a few long trips with my soles ending in blisters…) I thought maybe I should give them a try. This is where I hit a slight retail problem. I was told that because they are classified as a medical product, you cannot buy them online and only certain stores sell them. And even when you find the few stores, they do not stock the whole range (which is not huge to start with).

The problem here was aesthetics… Most of the designs are quite sporty, and I like only two, or three at most. Every store we went to they didn’t have the one I liked, or if they did, it wasn’t in my size. Very frustrating indeed. When I almost gave up hope, I actually got what I was looking for at the last store we had on our list to check. Hurray!

After a whole day of walking from store to store, I was keen to give my new shoes a spin and see if they actually sooth the creeping in sole pain. And they did! What I did not realize was that the “leg workout” tag line was no joke. That day I definitely said hello to some leg muscles I didn’t quite know I had…

The first week in the new shoes seemed an odd trade. I have exchanged the sole pain for pains along the back of my legs. But hey, at least it made me feel like I really am getting a workout. Not to mention the funky “ball rolling” feeling that came with the shoes. In a way you could compare it to climbing stairs, or constantly doing toes - heels, heels - toes while walking.

After a while I must say that the purchase was definitely worth it and I’m considering getting another pair - sandals this time for the coming summer. My feet seem to have gotten used to the funny feeling though, as if the “ball” has gradually disappeared. Maybe I just got used to walking in them.

I’m a perfectionist, with a very short attention span. This unfortunate combination coupled with easy excitement about new ideas/projects can cause a lot of trouble.

When doing any writing or painting I practically fear that first word or the first line. I might have a concept ready, but trying to avoid disappointing myself I tend to ponder a lot before I actually get down to it. With drawings there is often a ready image inside my head, which the perfectionist in me craves to output 1:1. Unfortunately lacking in drawing and painting skills everything after the first line, the very first dot put on paper takes me further and further from that mental ideal of the image…

Does that stop me from doodling and sketching? No. But it does make starting on a piece really hard, as I have to convince myself over and over again, that it is OK to not be perfect. To tell myself that each of those unfortunature caricatures of the mental images actually does improve my overall skills making me that one step closer to the ideal drawing.

Similarly with writing. You have an idea, maybe you have even done some background work for your masterpiece. And yet still getting over that first sentence seems like mission impossible. What if it is not good enough, not enticing enough, not interesting enough. It’s your chance to capture the reader, and you just might blow it.

This is where I need to remind myself that this will just be the first draft, that there is room and time for editing. It might be due to the fact that during school years I always wrote my essays straight away. No drafts, no rewrites. Time start, go, no second chances. I would only go over checking the spelling and punctuation before handing my work over to the teacher.  In many ways this was not some writing heroism. It was a practical solution in the war against total rewrites. I knew myself enough, to be aware that were I to allow myself for more than one or two word corrections I would have never finished.

This leads me to the other part of this post. The finish line - dreaded even more by my inner perfectionist than the beginnings…

Once I start a project and get into it, working on it seems to just roll by itself. Excited by the work and new challenges it provides I plough ahead like a madman. That is until it’s about finished. Around the 80% mark it starts to look like plummeting into a black hole. The closer you get the slower you seem to be progressing towards your goal.

And what actually is this mirage of a finish line? For a long while I had to have projects literally taken away from me by force, as they would never be good enough, and there always was something to tweak or fix. It probably took me about 5 years of work in web development to accept the fact that there is no such thing as a bug free, 100% finished application. There will always be issues, there will always be enhancements and new features requested by the client.

Paradoxically this knowledge combined with the inner need to make things perfect, as well as my hate for testing (I really do suck at it…) means that the closer to the end of the project, I find myself less and less interested in it. This is usually when I get my Next-Great-Idea… At least at worked I have deadlines that push my work forward, but at home it is a whole different story. Suddenly even doing the washing, hovering or cleaning the windows seems more appealing…

So how do you stay motivated up to the last minute?