There's always some excuse

So.
My New Year's resolution is to live in the moment. In the small picture. Is that weird? Not when you use examples. Enjoy the night, don't bog yourself down with thoughts of the next morning's obligations. Be mentally present at work, don't count down the hours until the shift ends. Keep running, just feel the running, try not to anticipate the finish line or it will come more slowly. You remember moments in life, you don't remember transitions between them. So see each moment separately for what it is.

Also: Pay off a grand of HECS each invoice.
Also: Be chatty with guests at the hostel. Nearly everyone has a sympathetic side.
Also: Put myself 'out there', both in a sense of physicality and personality. People, on the whole, like me, but I forget that, and consequently I come off as a little reserved on first impression. So: do things outside of my comfort zone, with people who aren't already inside the personal bubble. Let them in.

Wait, a few more. These are the ones I'm already failing:
Keep my nails nice. Seriously. Torn, uneven nails are not cute. You don't play cops and robbers in the playground these days. You are a big girl now. Evidence: menstruation, ownership of high heels. (I kid.) Big girls have nice nails, ok?
Auf Deutsch mit den deutschen Gaesten zu reden. Look, I don't even know if that's correct. I miss the feeling of navigating my way through successfully through a sentence, my mind laying down the path pieces for my words to skip along. I have deteriorated so much in German, I reckon, and a good lot of that is confidence. Fine, my secondary resolution is to get a HD in German at uni this coming semester. That sounds ambitious for someone who can barely stutter out a phrase on the cuff, but I reckon I could do it - after all, I did get distinctions last year by doing nothing more than the minimum; the push of what I'd learnt in year twelve still carrying me along. Sure, it'll be a step up... but I'll give it my best shot this time.

Alright. Enough resolutions. Its going to be 41 degrees tomorrow, and I'm going to THE BEACH, which is against everything that me and my pasty skin stand for. Its with DW and some of his friends, and I have suspicions that he will want me to be all bikini-body and bare. Dude. This girl does not tan.

For some reason I've been thinking about what I look like lately, not in a body-image problem type way nor in a fit of vanity. Well, maybe it is the latter, in a sense. But I've just been trying to get a guage on what I *actually* look like, and I've been thinking about my outer shell, if you will, with a sense of curious detachment. Sure, there are physical qualities about yourself that you know for fact. But. What else? You get used to seeing pictures of your face, but then you see a shot taken with your face side-on in the background and its weird. So that's what my nose is like from the side? And my chin? Interesting to know. I've been made aware that I have a distinctive jaw, which I would not have ever known about myself had it not been for observant male friends. Then again, one described it as kind of detaching itself from its proper position when I smile, but looking nice (w.t.f?) while another called it 'slightly manly'. And do I have the family nose, which is not a particularly good thing, or does it, as someone said, 'have a very feminine curve'? What does that mean, anyway? Can it be both? When did my skin stop being 'oily/combination' and start up with 'dry/sensitive'? Is that what it even is? Do people see my arms as all pink and freckly, or do they not notice? Is it obvious that one eyebrow has a slightly higher arch than the other, when not properly groomed? Hey, my elbow looks pointy in that photo. Are my elbows pointier than other people's? My hair looks pretty there. But there, my hair looks like a square. Would people describe me as a blonde? And body shape. Clearly I'm on the thin end of the spectrum, and not overly curvy, but... what's my gangliness to grace rating? To some I'm probably 'too scrawny', to others 'petite', to others, dare I say it, 'hot'. My boss declared that I had the same proportions as his six foot, D-cup wife, which... is maybe an exaggeration. But nevertheless, some people seem to see a quite feminine physique, while other sets of roaming eyes pass me over in favour of some more... spantaneous bootay. Shopping for black work pants in a cheap store mainly frequented by thirteen-year-olds and Asians gave me some insight as to why I had slowly come to feel smaller over time... pants declared size ten in that little store are skin tight, while in big-girl-shopping land a size ten may slip entirely past the waist and cling for dear life on the pitiful semblance of hips. I haven't shrunk since early teen years... good to know! Of course, this is all getting into people's personal preferences of attraction, which really is vanity territory, but I just want some objectivity, damnit!

Alright. This entry is certainly more than enough introspection for one night. Let me look outside of myself for a minute, and talk about:

Twilight. Overall, I have to admit that I was kind of 'meh'. There were bits that were good, bits that were sexy or exciting, but I felt like I could tell that the author liked writing those parts too so put all her energy there and then just burbled her way through the joining-up-parts. I was passively entertained, but I don't know that I'd jump straight to the sequel.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. I realised how biased I was when I looked up reviews after the movie, and decided not to read the unfavourable ones because they clearly didn't get it. Haha. Something which I haven't yet seen mentioned, is that it made me feel that being 'old' wouldn't be all that bad... going backward through the years makes it look like, wow, 65 is really a spring chicken! And what superb physical condition he's in at 50! For a moment there I thought it would be better if there was no real connection between the man in the diary and the woman reading, because it would give it this sort of existential touch, a suggestion of the way we metaphorically bump into each other and see brief glimpes into each other's lives. But I think it was actually better how they did it. I liked the ending, with the baby's eyes a nice creepy touch. Plus, Brad Pitt is sexy. There was a point where it was like the producers flipped a switch and it was like, there he is! Goodbye weird old-man relationship, hello Mr Hot Stuff!

I'm looking forward to the Time Traveller's Wife coming out, but I have a feeling that although TTTW could be done justice with that same depth of emotion, it... won't be. Hm. We'll see.

The Island of The Colourblind: I got this for Christmas and I'm still reading it - it's not something that you whip through in a frenzy, but I like it. I have a soft spot for non-fiction tales of biology, especially ones with copious digressing footnotes, and I like thinking about the bizarre yet totally fateful occurrences on our planet. I plan to read more of Oliver Sacks stuff... He lets me, who can never go back to 'hard sciences', see more of our intriguing world.

Alright. It's late. Enough.