New Years Resolutions: Three Months In

I know there is still a couple days left in March, but I thought, since it is almost three months into 2014, it would be a good time to take stock of my New Year's resolutions and see how I am doing. So, for 2014, my new years resolutions were:

1. Lose weight

Yeah, I've gained like two pounds, so that one isn't going so well, something to focus on going forward, as well as...

2. Run regularly

Nope. Though I do keep meaning to. Its going to be easier now that I've cut my hair, so my ability to go for a run is less dependent upon whether or not my hair will be able to dry after my post-run shower in enough time for me to style it for whatever else is going on. I really need to focus on actually running, even though I am busy and it is kind of difficult. My friend Maya is moving just up the block from me, and she's been meaning to start running to, so hopefully we can start running together and motivating each other to actually run. But, for now, a mini-goal: run tomorrow!

3. Up my eyebrow game

Check! Obviously this is an ongoing process, but I've been experimenting with different shapes as well as filling them in with a couple of different pencils (best pencil so far: a £1 one from Primark - who knew?). Also might go and get them done at the Benefit brow bar before London Book Fair, because both Melissa and Maya swear by it and it might be nice to get them professionally shaped for that event.

4. Read 50 books

Well on my way! While I haven't read much these last couple of weeks, since the start of 2014 I have read 14 books (Fingersmith by Sarah Waters; Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn; Catching Fire and Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins; Looking for Alaska by John Green; Breed by Chase Novak; City of Bones, City of Ashes, City of Glass, and City of Fallen Angels, all by Cassandra Claire; Divergent and Insurgent, by Veronica Roth; Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levathan; Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman).

5. Practice French more (use Duolingo every day!)

Also going very well! I have used Duolingo (and thus practiced) French for every 67 days of 2014 that have passed so far! French club has also been meeting (nearly) every week, and Alix, who is the fluent French-speaker of the group, has told me that she has noticed me getting better since we started meeting - while I knew I was getting better, its really great to have a native speaker tell you that! 

6. Graduate and get a real life job (maybe even get a flat without roommates…)

Ongoing, obviously, but hopefully also on track! I've just applied for a job down in London today, so thats all very real-life-y! 

French Club (but really, more book covers)

Edit: this post has been shoved back in my schedule several times, and as such is now from absolutely ages ago. Sorry about that. 

Last Sunday I headed to school in the morning in the hopes that I would be able to spend some time designing covers in InDesign for our anthology. Unfortunately, they do not seem to heat the computer room on the weekends, so, when, after an hour and a half, I could no longer feel my fingers, I elected to leave and find somewhere else to hang out until french club convened at two. Rather than hop from coffee shop to coffee shop, I decided to just head to Waterstones, where I drank tea and read Good Omens for several hours. 

Which is really just a lovely way to spend any day. I don't know if it was just the copy of Good Omens that I got from that rather large (and no altogether legal) book download, but it was typographically frustrating. Which is so nerdy. However, I finished Good Omens a couple of days later, and I have to say, it lives up to its reputation - fantastically absurd, funny, and incredibly British. So English it hurts. I recently read a review which summed up Good Omens, which went something like this (SPOILERS) "Six billion people almost die, and it is FUNNY" - I think thats a fairly succinct analysis.

In more nerdy-ness, after French Club, Alix and Rachel and I participated in our weekly tradition of wandering around Waterstones, critiquing book covers.

This cover for 'The Returned', while I really liked the idea behind it, I really did not like the spacing of the type - I thought that both the boy should be lowered slightly, as well as the tagline. I don't like the layout, basically, though I do like the fundamental design elements that they are working with.

It was a rather gloomy and rainy day, but as I left Waterstones, I was again struck by how incredible it is to live here, and to exit a bookshop to be struck by the view of a castle atop a hill, dominating the modern cityscape I was a part of, a strange mix of new and old.

French Club

French Club is still going strong - besides one day the other weekend when 90% of the group had skipped town, we've been meeting once a week for over two months now. I have used my French language app 47 days in a row now. While my progress has slowed down somewhat now that I've hit things that I have never learned before in my previous attempts to learn the language, I'm still chugging away at it (and occasionally sending Alix incredulous messages questioning the validity of the entire language). Last Sunday we decided to meet at The Elephant House instead of our usual location of Waterstones, because we hadn't been there for a while, but we decided we probably wouldn't be doing that again, because The Elephant House is so popular, we felt really pressured to leave and give up our table, while at Waterstones we will sit for two hours no problem. After that we headed downtown as Alix and Melissa both wanted to try and find some nicer clothes for interviews, and I wanted some more button up shirts (I currently own three, one white one that has a grease stain on the chest, one plaid one with a rip in the armpit, and another plaid one that doesn't fit well... so I could really use some more). Unfortunately, I didn't manage to find any that really tickled my fancy, but I did get my very first pair of leggings, and Alix managed to get a super cute pair of heels from Office (Leanne was working... it was hilarious to see her standing behind the counters, which are designed for normal height people to stand behind, with her shoulders just peeking out). After that, we headed back up the mound, stopping at a drugstore where I finally managed to find the kind of floss I need for my permanent retainer (I may have bought three boxes... they were on sale too). Then we went to Subway for dinner, the only one in the city that actually has plain yellow mustard and thus my favourite one, before going next door to Frisky for bubble tea :) 

Awesome Sunday with the gurls :)

Totally Judging A Book By Its Cover

So last night I curled into my bed at 9 pm to start reading... and the next time I looked at the clock it was 1:40 am and I had just finished my book. In sum: if you are a fan of YA fantasy, I really recommend Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments series. 

After Rachel and I deciding that we were too brain dead after an entire day at the school to do French Club Wednesday nights, we have moved French Club to Sunday afternoons. Which was really fun and leisurely, and, y'know, we didn't stay so late we got kicked out, which was a nice change of pace. My french continues to get better and better (22 day streak on Duolingo) and French Club remains fun and chill. 

After French Club was over, we inevitably ended up wandering around the bookstore - I didn't buy anything (go me!) but it remains a very real danger, and is definitely the (somewhat questionably) downside of meeting in a bookstore (its also kind of an upside). We also engaged in quite a bit of criticism about cover design and fonts, which was very nerdy. Below are some of my favourites. 

Also seen: my pretty pink nails :)

en français maintenant!

One of my new years resolutions was to finally and definitively learn French. I had downloaded Duolingo in September, but had only used it one or two times. Duolingo is a language learning app which was voted Apple's App of the Year, and Google Play's Best of the Best. It really is quite an excellent app. It goes through level by level, learning things such as food, animals, adjectives, possessives, plurals, etc. There are bars below each completed level which shows its strength in your memory, and the app encourages you to go back and practice weak skills (the strength bars fade over time). However, it is also very good at working previous vocab and skills into the new lessons as you unlock them, and also incorporates new lessons into the 'weak skills levels' when you go back and do them. Within the levels themselves, you will read the french and translate it into english, translate the french into english by choosing from a list of words, and vice versa, translate from french to english without a list, and vice versa. You also will have french read to you and have to translate it, and be required to speak french into the microphone to check your pronunciation.

While I am obviously doing French, Duolingo also does Spanish, German, Italian, and Portuguese. It is a really good app, and I recommend it to anyone trying to learn a language. I use it for about ten minuets every day, which I've been doing consistently for about ten days now, and it is really exciting how much vocab is both coming back to me and how much I am remembering.

I was planning on asking some of my French friends if they would mind being speaking buddies with me, but my other friend Rachel beat me to it, and a group of us formed a French Club (called Omelette du Fromage). We have had two meetings on Wed night (though that will have to change, as Rachel and I are in doing our live project from 9-5, which is exhausting) in a cafe, and while the only persons to show up thus far have been myself, Rachel, Melissa, and Alix (with Alix thus bearing all the burden of the only native French speaker, and only real competent French speaker, though Rachel is much better than me, having lived in Paris for a year) it is really fun, and though I can't really keep up with Rachel, much less Alix, it is fun and helpful to hear it spoken. Plus we meet in a cafe and have coffee and cake so that's always a good time ;)

Look at that dapper little owl (I got enough points from levels to buy him that outfit - there's fun rewards like that for getting more levels).

I don't know if its just the vocab that I've done so far or what, but the sentences they have me working with have been quite morbid at times (at other times, they have me saying je suis un douphin).

Learning the verb seul (alone) was especially depressing (in response to me complaining that it kept telling me everything was alone, and questioning why the ant was alone, Alix responded "TOUT LE MONDE EST SEUL ET TRISTE" - EVERYONE IS SAD AND ALONE. Cheers Alix).