Geeking it up

So, me and Tom are the kinds of geeks that get excited when our local supermarket starts selling ramen noodles, since you usually have to trek to specialist stores to get them.
I had sesame flavour. Holy heartburn batman. Since I've been pregnant the weirdest things give me epic heartburn, such as eating on single cheese and onion Hula Hoop. Joy. These noodles though, holy cow. Also, we have a huge (small) wasteland behind our house because our house is part of a still-being-built development. I looked out the window...
He was literally staring at me for about ten minutes. Cute.

Jewellery January Week 1

I tried to do this one time before, I got as far as two pieces of jewellery, found out I was pregnant and very sick and couldn't carry on. I figured, what better time to try again than January, a new month, a new year! It's still difficult, seeing as I'm almost two weeks over being 9 months pregnant now, but I'm managing somehow to make one piece of jewellery every day! I'll be posting what I've done every week in a lump post, so here's what happened the first week:

Poupee Girl

For those of you that don't know, I'm a user of Poupeegirl. What is this? I hear you ask. Pupe (Japanese spelling) is a Japanese fashion/social networking site. You get an avatar in the form of a doll, and can buy virtual clothing and accessories for her with the currency of ribbons. You earn ribbons by simply signing in, dressing up your doll and posting photos of your real life wardrobe items and accessories. I know that there are girls on this website who struggle to find items to photograph and upload to the site - I feel lucky that I have an excessive collection of jewellery to post (since I make jewellery!). You can post up to five items a day, but to be honest I just can't be bothered :) It's something of an addiction.Here's my Pupe, she's called Miya :) I think that Pupe originally started off entirely free, but of course in the ever growing quest for money, the Pupe staff saw dollar signs (or yen signs) and began to churn out highly desirable exclusive items that could only be bought by exchanging real life money for a new currency, jewels. I've never bought jewels, and refuse to do so, however there are many girls who have spent upwards of $100 in their Pupe life in order to get these items. Crazy stuff.

The Internet is PUBLIC?!

I've heard horror stories about people having pictures of their family and their kids - their babies - used freely like stock photos around the internet and in publications and so on, all because they posted an image online. I will be posting pictures of my daughter on facebook, probably one or two on here, but I think I'd have to have a hard think about privacy settings and what I share. It's easy to think that you're in a little bubble on the internet, hard to think that people are actually looking around at what you put out there.
In other news, still no baby. I'm 10 days overdue, and although I've posted a really nice message on facebook telling people that all the repetitive every day questioning about whether she's here or not is stressing me out and that I'd tell them as soon as she's here, they're still sending messages. She's definitely coming by the weekend let's say, as the meds won't let me go past the two week late mark.I've started making a habit of wearing jewellery every day. I have an impressive collection of both precious and costume jewellery that I never wear. On the plus side I'm having fun with this pile of jewellery, on the downside, I'm buying jewellery again. Yes, I do make jewellery, but it's like being a chef, sometimes, you kinda wanna stop cooking and go out to a restaurant. I bought this elephant necklace from Accessorize and I love it :) It kinda reminds me of my childhood vaguely, something to do with a Christmas cracker prize, a bright green, plastic elephant.

Minna no Nihongo

I took a Japanese class back in September 2007, to try to keep myself in the books after graduating from university. It was a beginners' class, and the best fun ever, so relaxed and with a bunch of fantastic people. My tutor Eiko was lovely and was always excellent at going at our pace and answering our silly questions. I met some great people on this course! Eiko decided to stop teaching at the end of our class in June 2008 as she was expecting a son and so I decided not to take the next year of the course. I actually really regretted not taking the course and ended up joining again the following year with Tom in tow. Eiko was back, however because of the demands of so much teaching, our class (year two) was integrated with the advanced class (year three) most of whom had actually lived in Japan for months at a time. I found the class very difficult, and although I managed to bag myself a nationally recognised qualification in business Japanese, I decided to quit again.
I've been missing it of course, so I ordered the book the class was being taught from. It's entirely in Japanese, in Japanese characters too (kanji, hiragana and katakana) so it's nothing easy! We actually started from something like the 12th chapter in the class because the advanced class had already started from the start. I'm starting from the very start, taking it slow so that I don't get too frustrated with learning like I did with the advanced class.

Overdue

I'm only two days overdue, considering they don't do any major interventions til 14 days I'm doing pretty well! But if I get another text or email asking me if I've had the baby yet, or if I'm feeling any twinges, I'm going to go crazy. I've simply started ignoring them now, I think replying to them all would be a full time job - some people actually send the same question every day, regardless of what I say!

Happy New Year!

Happy new year to anyone who happens to stumble across this blog! It's officially my due date today, 9 whole months of growing a baby. She's showing no signs of wanting to come out, to be fair who could blame her, I suspect it's kinda warm and cosy in there. I do, however have a lovely cold right now after trying to hard to avoid the sneezers and the coughers. Do you think excessive nose-blowing can induce labour?! At least there's no debating now, she's definately going to be a 2011 baby, definately born in January... just... which day?!