More pretty sparkles

My plan for a lazy holiday is working well. In one sense I’m achieving very little with my days off (I’m not even getting as much reading done as I’d expected), but in another, I’m achieving exactly what I planned – totally relaxing and letting the stress of the year drift away. I reckon by the time I go back to work next week I’ll be ready to face whatever 2012 throws at me (remind me I said that in February when life starts getting chaotic and overwhelming again, won’t you).

It hasn’t all been laziness, though – I did make myself a case for my kindle, as promised:

Yep, cats and sparkles. What else did you think I’d decorate it with? 😉

I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. Between the inner and outer fabric layers it’s got a layer of snowfoam to protect against knocks and scratches, and a layer of plastic to give it a bit of water protection (it’s not completely waterproof, of course, but at least I won’t need to worry if my bag gets rained on). So now I can happily cart my magic book device around with me everywhere I go.

The other big excitement of the week was a trip into Riccarton to spend lots of money. Well, some money, anyway. We had a few vouchers and Christmas money to spend, plus I got a nice wee bit of back-pay, so we had a splurge on a few DVDs (Harry Potter 7.2, the latest Pirates of the Caribbean, and a box set of Supernatural, which MrPloppy started watching on TV from about series 6, so wanted to see the earlier series), and a new shiny food processor – I’d been wanting to replace our old one for ages (I bought it with my first paypacket from my teaching job, so it’s about 20 years old and definitely showing its age), and the post-Christmas sales meant I could pick up a decent one for under $300.

It’s got all sorts of exciting functions and attachments my old one didn’t have, so I spent most of yesterday playing with it and trying everything out (so we had pizza made on proper home-made yeast dough for dinner last night, accompanied by fresh-squeezed fruit juice (in the well-known combination of orange, apricot, strawberry and melon (otherwise known as “whatever fruit I had on hand to test the extractor thingy on”)) with crushed ice. Of course, that will probably be the last time I use half the attachments, and within a few months I’ll be back to the old standbys of the chopping and grating blades with all the other parts lost at the back of the cupboard. But I’m having fun in the meantime 🙂

I’ve been playing with the new DD site, which has been interesting. Definitely needs a lot more work, but I can see how it could be an improvement over the current one. Well, just as long as it lets me change the colour scheme – the current DD theme is possibly the ugliest I’ve ever seen!

Currently reading:

Real book: Machine of Death edited by Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo and David Malki!
E-book: Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
Audiobook: The Calligrapher’s Daughter by Eugenia Kim