Last Post of 2023

Property of Stormberry

 I'm finishing this year with:

1. A lot of plans for the next year,
2. Resolve to endure to get much closer to my goals throughout 2024,
3. COVID-19 for the first time in my life.

Yep, that last one is quite a thing. For me. I came down with what I thought was "flu" on Christmas day, but it wasn't until two days later, upon the insistence of my mother (she suspected it could be COVID), that I took the test (there was one kit at home) that I realized I, indeed, had COVID. Oh goodie. I managed to avoid it for three years, but in the end I became a member of the club.

I guess I have this new Eris variant, but if you ask me, it feels exactly the way flu feels like. The first two days were horrid, and now I'm stuck with the Runny-Nose-From-Hell. I'm pretty sure I've blown my weight in snot out of my nose by now. Isn't that lovely?

The advance on the thesis front is really slow, as the current task isn't very inspiring and quite time consuming. But it is, nontheless, moving forward. I just really hope I can finish it this year, as I'm aiming for that in one of my New Year Resolutions. I just want to be over with it, so I can start working on getting a PhD.

Both the MSc as the PhD are a matter of personal goals, and not a professional goal, as my current job hardly even recognized the actual work I do, much less my preparation I have for it, so the extra degrees are simply a way for me to accumulate and explore new knowledge. What can I say? Some people colect stuff, others like travel, others rather party or date or have sex, and I like knowledge. Now, this doesn't mean that I only read serious, scientific or philosophical things, as nothing could be farther from reality. I like stories, and my favoured type of readings are novels. I guess I like knowledge because I like the stories that come within the knowledge I seek: economics (my favored area) are full of stories.

I can't blame COVID for the slowing of the progress of my thesis, but I do intend to use the days of vacation (of which half is already gone) to work on it, and present my tutor with something of an advanced improvement by the begining of next year. I really need to get going, get all this small details hammered out so I can go on with the story behind my research: innovation policy's effect on labor.

By the end of this year I've made a couple of big decisions looking forward to 2024. I paid in advance the whole year at a gym, and so I intend so go, at least twice a week, to get in better shape. With that in mind I also ordered a new fitbit to keep myself motivated to exercise. My weight has been going up and I moved into the overweight zone, so I have to start making changes to get back to the normal weight, not only because that's healthier, but also because I want to fit back in my clothes again. It would be just too expensive to change my whole closet. And I like a lot of my clothes, so why change them?

Every year I also tend to make big budget plans to rid myself of debt - inspired mostly by the incredible success I had in 2011 when I whipped out  a staggering debt by the sheer power of my determination - and this year I have made that same decision with a small added trick: a more detailed plan and an actual commitment to get it done. I have two debts: the credit card and the loan from the FGA. The FGA loan works down in a constant fashion, but the credit card debt fluctuates as here and there I find myself in need of using the card. After much thinking I realized that the trigger for my card is always the same: vet expenses.

I've changed vets last year, as our old vet has become hideous with cats. The new vet is a place that actually specializes in cats, but I have been noticing that - under the guise of worry and care - they have been pumping out loads of money from me (my card, to be precise) for a lot of check ups and test my babies probably don't need. One of my cats -Woody - has costed me a fortune with citologies and a biopsy of an unhealing nose problem. It turns out that he has feline AIDS and on top of that a very serious skin cancer. The outlook for him is bleak and his chances to get cured are minimal, yet the vet was pushing for an appointoment with an oncologist and maybe start a chemotherapy treatment. That's where I hit the breaks. Goodness, no. I won't run myself into debt to torture my cat and make his last days a living hell.

I've decided to limit the vet visits to vaccines and that will be that. And to kill my credit card. So I sat down, mapped up all my forseeable expenses and laid out a detailed fortnight by forthnight plan. It came out quite a strick one, with nearly no wiggle room, but certainly one that needs to be implemented.

Something we sometimes forget to see is our own reality. By turning a blind eye, by not making a plan, not looking at our balance, we try to pretend that things are much better, much easier, or running much better than they are. I did not delude myself, these are my expenses, these are the things I spend on, and my only "wiggle room" are my groceries, where sometimes I run amok packing up the cart with things I end up throwing out as they rot on my shelves or my fridge (my waste basket eats more veggies than I do).

2024 is a year for me to take a hard look at things, work for my goals, carve a path for the future I want from here on and get on with the program. It's not going to be easy, I know that, but it's nothing I can't deal with. I have proven myself time and again that I can adapt and I can flourish in any situation. I am resilient, creative and I can stick to my own plans with astonishing stubbornness, as my recent Mock Lottery Project showed me this year. If I want it, I can make it happen, and I will make it happen.

2024 will be the year I'll step on the gas on to reach my goal to become the Aunt March of my story.

Grief

I'm trying to understand myself and my grief. It's been about a month and a half since Hyperion died, and somehow I don't get over it. Through the years, I've had many cats and many of them have died, of course. While Hyperion lived, I thought sometimes about what would be my reaction  the day he died. I thought that maybe I'd be sad but I would quickly look for a new cat. It had been so with Ramses, our Siamese cat. However, ever since Hyperion got sick, the idea of him dying on me was simply unacceptable for me. Now, after he has been gone, I find myself missing him everyday.

My memories of Hyperion extend to all of my senses, but curiously, they are mainly concentrated in my sense of smell and my touch. I remember his smell vividly, often to the point where I can suddenly smell him, and fell at the same time the soft fur of his head pressed to my upper lip. I remember his fur against my nose, the touch of his head against my hand, how it fet when I scratched him, or his weight as he leaned agaings my hand or sat on my lap. The heat of him, the vibrations of his purring, his big paws in my hand or pressing against me.

I still sad as I remember that he's no longer with us, that I can't go home and wait to see him, pick him up and caress him. Yes, no cat has ever been so long with us as Hippie, so is it that why I don't get over his death so easy? I got over breaking up with my ex so much faster and so much painlessly, and yet here's a cat - ok, a great, awesome cat - and I don't seem to be able to move on, see my life without him.

Grief can be so weird.

Stand in the Eye of the Storm

I've been falling off a little on my regular rhythm here. A lot of changes have happened, there have been a lot of things over which to think about, a lot to meditate on, and also a lot of things with which I sumply have to come to terms, accept them as they are.

This week I finished the first of two graduation seminars at the University where I study, with a less-than-satisfactory grade. Less than satisfactory for me, mind you, as I did pass and not with the lowest grade possible. The bar was raised much higher in this class than in others - regarding the grade you needed to pass (normally you pass with a 7 out of 10, but for this class you needed an 8 out of 10), which wasn't told to us  from the begining, but only in the last session with our tutor. Sadly, the actual tuition wasn't matched to these expectations, nor was the actual paramethers of grading any clearer than a picture of the monster of Lake Ness in a foggy night. I did spent a few days mulling over it quite upset, but then again I decided that it wsn't worth my time. Truth to be told, what matters in the end is the diploma I'll get and the knowledge I've gathered, and all the rest is simply "inmaterial" for me. In a weekwe'll be starting he second and last seminar, which will be on auditing. We are supposed to go auditing an enterprise, which will be interesting. I have no idea how people at universities actually think students can so easily find companies that will allow them to peek into their books and get information for school projects. That's just not the way it works.

In this week that passed, I have racked up my debt on my card due to an emergency: my previous laptop - well, my eight years old netbook, Nagi - died on me. He was having a lot of trouble of late, being incredibly slow to open even the simplest of things, like a word file, or a dossier, and then on Monday, it showed the "blue screen of death" as it crashed on Carrie and I while we tried to download some episodes of Hannibal. Nothing else to do, I had to buy myself a new netbook. This one, actually, an 11 inch Toshiba, Björn. I like Björn, but I'm at odds with it as I can't set the Hungarian keyboard on it, and the Latin American one (which I haven't used in ages now) is driving me insane. Choosing Björn was actually a long process in which I requested Carrie's expertise in computers. My only requirement at first was to get a 10 inch netbook, and not in an off color. However Carrie convinced me to look at other stuff like hard drive space - ok, I was considering that one too - RAM, and the processor's MHz measurement. Thus, after a long chase, and me outruling everything of 12 inches and I, I allowed myself to be convinced to choose an 11 inch netbook. I honestly consider it a commitment, because I do want something I can put easily in my bag and also something that fits in the folding table of a plane.

Setting Björn to work wasn't an easy task either, as Björn can't get on the internet with a cable, so you have to deal with in entirely on wireless connection, and have you tried to install Office with a wireless connection? It took me over nine hours to get it on with the trial version! I do bought a Home&Student Office - one of those perennial packs, because I'm not into paying loads for yearly licenses - but if I have the chance to get a trial, why not profit from it?

Anyway, this is how things are currently. Björn isn't as fast as I expected him to be, but it's ok, and I'm much happier now, feeling safe about my documents, knowing things won't just get up in smoke and disappear from my computer when I most need it.

I've now a couple of days of calm before the new seminar starts. I'm getting ahead with my letters and also took the chance to start reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" in Hungarian. These days of peace and quite should be savored. However, a damp spot just fell upon these perfect days yesterday, as my cat Hyperion came home in a pretty bad shape. He was salivating a lot and acting a bt strange, unable to walk well and generally looking bad. As we could, we took him to the vet, not knowing what had happened to him, whether he was poisoned or not. He started getting more and more aggressive until he was just crazy out of it. The vet said he was completely disoriented and couldn't recognize anyone. He was in such a defensive, out of his wits state that it was impossible to try and treat him, even after being shot with diazepam. The vet said he wasn't poisoned, but he suspects he had been hit hard and that the blow may have affected his brain, due to which he couldn't recognize anyone, making him rather dangerous. He has been kept at the vet over night, and today we will be told if there's any hope for him or if he shall be put to sleep. It´s kind of awful trying to imagine life without Hyperion. We have other two cats, but Hyperion was, really, like a ray of light, the one that made stuff more colorful around.

We now must wait.

The Accomplishments of the Day

It's past 22:30 h and I'm sitting at our desk (not my desk, though I would have loved to have a desk of my own by now), sipping delicious Yoga Tea by Demmers Teehaus. This is a kind of beautiful herbal tea that helps you relax, calm down, just like a good session of yoga, and which I'd love to call Shavasana Tea. This particular tea is also beautiful because it changes color as you pour the hot water onto it. First goes blue, then gray, then green to brown and finally a golden, bronzed red. The taste is amazing and it does prepare you gently for sleep. I love this tea. ^_^

Tomorrow we'll go to Mezőkövesd (again) with my Mom and Dad to visit Mama and Papa and stay for a day. Due to this, it seems that we'll also be carrying Cinder around, since we can't ask her to feed herself while we are not here. Then Kari is right too, this is a great chance to see how she behaves around Mázli and Picur (the other two cats), as well as around Gina and Bence (the dogs), since probably he'll have to ask Mama and Papa to catsit Cinder when he comes to Costa Rica.

The plan to go to Helsinki is not going as smoothly as planned. The airplane ticket is what's giving us a headache, as there's a really good price at one airline we can't get hold of (no phone to call, no designated contact to help us in case something doesn't go as planned), and the others are a bit more expensive than we would have liked it to be. Oh well, oh well... something will come out of it... eventually, I hope. However I did manage to finish Trish's letter and mail it, as well as sending a short misive for a friend in Costa Rica, plus a couple of postcards. I had also lunch at Nordsee - first time in Hungary, as I usually have my Nordsee fix in Vienna - and then had a coffee at Starbucks, while getting acquinted with the fab mugs and thumblers you can get, and one if which (at least) I would certainly own and take with me back to Costa Rica! Yes, I know, I'm going all crazy for tea and all, but coffee... coffee is my soul!

Today I feel quite accomplished, even if for many it doesn't seem like a day where I've done much. Yes, I didn't save the world from inminent death, nor I completed my whole new List of 13, and add to that, the movie Headhunters - based on the book of the same title by Jo Nesbo - is premiering THIS Thursday, and I've only read chapter one of the book, so I have about two days to finish the book, so I can run into the movies as fast as I can to watch it as fresh as I can knowing well the difference between the book and the movie... from the perspective of the book. Yeah, better spoil a movie than a book don't you agree?

And yet, today is a great day.

Pets

Tomorrow my brother, my boyfriend and I are going to Vienna. We are going to spend three fabulous days there - as always when I go to Vienna - stay at out favorite hotel (okay, my favorite, but I haven't heard anyone complain about it), and go visit our favorite places, and have a great time. This time around, however, there's a new factor: Cinder.

Cinder is our new cat, or more specifically, OUR first cat. She's new, lovely, adorable, eats a lot and loves attention. She's an in-home cat who sometimes gets to go outside acompanies by... well, by me, because my boyfriend feels quite stupid walking a cat on a leash. I also feel weird and don't know what to do - I have never walked a cat in my life, for all our cats have always lived outside - but the idea is that eventually she gets to spend a part of the day outside chasing birds and climbing trees. It's hard to have a cat in an appartment, so up to this point, if someone ever had an in-home cat, I'd love some advise.

Now, we are preparing to go to Vienna for a few days, and aside from buying the train tickets, reserving the hotel room, preparing the program, and setting the clock to wake up in time to catch a good train, we also have to make sure Cinder gets taken care for while we are not here. The other day my boyfriend and I went to buy some groceries, and it made me smile to see how our basket included cans of cat food and other cat related items. It suddenly made me think about how some people feel like a family when they start buying baby food or things that children need, but also how some - like us - get that family feeling from our rascal cat. We laugh when she comes up with some new idea, and can stare at her playing with her teddy bear or her little toy mice, and also berate her and try to reason with her. She's part of our holidays even when she can't come with us. She's an important part of our daily lives now, and just as Cinder is part of our family, so are pets for many people.

Pets are important in people's life. Some neglect them and abuse them, just like some people neglect and abuse their children, and it's wrong in both cases. I just wonder why is it that many people believe that caring and feeling love for your pets is less important than feeling love and caring for your children?

I believe that it's no a matter of whether you have children or not, pets or not what matter. Having children doesn't make you better, taking responsability, taking care is what makes you better. Or are we worse for taking care of a cat, than parents who spend all day in front of the computer and neglecting their kids, just because they have children and are more "mature" and we are not?

Pets can make us as happy as children make others happy, and you know what? Taking care of our elders too, with the added benefit that our elders always have amazing stories to tell us. ^_^

Miau-Mew!

There's an advertisement I love a lot, about cat food, that shows different people with other pets and how myserable they are due to them. The guy how has to get up from bed when he just wanted to turn for the night because he has to take the dog out, dog which is barking like hell. The kid who can't go to play because he has to change the water of the fishtank. All the while people with cats are shown enjoying their lovely, furry, adorable, ever so beautiful cats. As a fervent Cat-Lover, I absolutely relate to the ad. (I won't buy Hyperion that brand of cat food, though. He has Cat Chow, though from time to time I like to surprise him with a can of Whiskas, lox. ^_^ He totally worths it.)

A lot of people in Costa Rica simply hate cats, which is totally unfair. They call cats disgusting, when the cat baths often, things a dog doesn't. They call them noisy, when the cat's voice ain't half as loud as the dog's barking or the parrots heinous strident shrieking. Hungary has more cat-lovers, which is just another reason to love my homeland more. (Ok, I love Costa Rica too. It has cat-lovers, like Shimmy Gin ^_^. His Tisú rules!!) I don't really like any other kind of pet. I find dogs disgusting because they are smelly, noisy, dependant and their hair is coarse. There are beautiful dogs, though, like the Husky and the Irish Setter, but I really, really hate the fact that they drool so much. I remember once I shared a piece of food with our old dog, Lobo and his drool was all over my chop sticks. Wasn't so bad, but I really, really prefer to share my food with my cats: they don't drool over my food. They are clean.

I don't like fish because you can't interact with them. Besides they are not pretty. Their eyes are ugly and they have no real face, and if you touch them they feel icky. Birds don't really look at you and they have weird faces too. Their legs are too thin and don't really do much for the body. Maybe I'd love a falcon, because it's more sturdy, more harmonious, but birds are not really my thing. You have to keep them in cages, clean their cages... and they are smelly. Besides they can harm you. No, not in a Hitchcock way, but they can nick you or pinch you with their beaks. That's not fun.

Cats are fun in every way. I won't try here to sell the idea of cats to people who don't like them, but I want to share why I love them.

First of all, cats are BEAUTIFUL. It's just so hard to find one ugly cat! Well, I've seen them, so I know they exists, but the largest part of cats are all just beautiful. The very idea of "cat" has always been associated with beauty. Cat-like women are hot, mysterious and wanted by all, like Catwoman. Cat-like eyes are the most beautiful kind of eyes anyone can wish for. Add to it, they have such a soft, lovely furrrrr!!! Oh, I love cat fur =^_^= I like also the way they smell. I love to hug Hyperion, kiss the top of his lovely head and sniff him up a bit. He's such so delicious!

They are not noisy and their voice is so lovely. They don't mew out of the blue at everything, but mew to get your attention when they see you, if they feel like getting something to you and they can't get it any other way. Cats catch rodents... well, those who do. Hyppie doesn't share those inclinations: he's a pacifist PETA kind of cat. =^-^=

Cats groom themselves, and when they have enough space (not locked in a tiny apartment), they clean after themselves. They burry their own mess. Have you seen a dog looking for a place to do its business and then clean it up? Well, cats do. Cats are independent, and this is the feature I love the more about them. Cats are for people who like functional relationships, where they don't step into each other's business. Cats are not a substitute for a clingy, dependant significant other, some needy someone that can't do anything for itself. Cats manage their own lives, run arround, have their own businesses, visit the neighbours, eat here and there (Hyppie's friends, Miska and Millie come over to eat, and I'm sure Hyppie also goes over for a snack), excersize, but then come home, mew at you, rub up, purr, curl on your lap and share their happiness with you.

Maybe I love cats because they remind me of me and the people I like the best: independent, calm, happy and looking for happiness, enjoying every minuto of their life, either at hunting or sleeping, ruled by their will, but easily working around and adjusting to their environment without giving up their nature.

Cats are just the best.
=^-^=

My Hyperion

I know many don't like cats, but I really, really love my Hyperion, so for those who do love cats, I'd like to brag. ^_^

Let's not leave out Hyppie's friends, Mili and Mishi. Here they are: