My week in a nutshell #3

Another holiday, another short week. This week we had Sukkot, which I will not even try to explain.
Somehow in such a short week we I managed to go to a concert (Kanye West - so fun!), go watch a movie (The Martian - highly recommended!) and become sick (The Common Cold - neither fun nor recommended).
There was also a walk in the park, in which we saw geese and stared at puppies (we're creepy like that).
It is slightly starting to feel like autumn here, with some unexpected breeze blowing suddenly every now and again, but the AC is still very much needed.
Oh, I also lost a pair of beloved shoes, which is kind of a big deal for me because I get very attached to my stuff. The good news is I HAD to buy new ones instead...

Polka dots!

Have a lovely week everyone!

My week in a nutshell #2

Since we are in the midst of the Jewish holiday season, we are enjoying some weeks of very few work days and very long weekends.
This week, however, was not so much a holiday as a holy-day (see what I did there?) - this week we had Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement.
Traditionally, you're supposed to fast for 25 hours and reflect on your sins. I personally spend the day reading, sleeping and doing some thinking in between (mostly about how hungry and thirsty I am, but not only).
Just for the record, nowadays most of the people I know don't do any of those things, and simply enjoy the day off (including my boyfriend, which made for an interesting experience).
Anyway, as my Dad said - after Yom Kippur a new year begins, because you can start to sin again. So sure enough, just two days after fasting we went for a fun Happy Hour at our favourite cocktail bar (though let's face it - any cocktail bar can be in the running for that title. I mean - cocktails).
Then there was some shopping with my mom, and also a stroll around the farmer's market at the Tel Aviv Port.
Fun fact - we live right next to the port (which I don't take advantage of as much as I would have wanted), and my boyfriend's office is also located in it, so usually he does the market shopping on his way home. This week we decided to go together, and it was obviously lots of fun.
And just like any visit to the port, it ended with us eating ice cream and watching the sea (which I can do for hours).

This is what the Israeli Autumn looks like, by the way.

Next week we're going to see Kanye West! So hopefully I'll finally sit down to write a full post. Until then, I'll go back to enjoying my loooong weekend.

My week in a nutshell #1

Remember that 100 happy days challenge that was all the rage a while back? I personally didn't take part in it, but I know that people who did said it helped them find the good in everything, even on lousy days.
Since I can't always find the time to write long posts, but on the other hand I do want to commit to this blog and make it a constant in my life, I decided to start a weekly segment here (hence the #1 in the title).
So each week I will give you a short description of how my week went. Hopefully it will also help me find good experiences in my week, but don't expect me to sugarcoat anything - if my week is shitty, I assure you you'll hear about it. Soooo let's start!
So this week was actually pretty nice. We celebrated the Jewish New Year (which is called Rosh Hashanah in Hebrew) in the beginning of the week. It consisted of a lot of family time, which I really enjoyed, and kinda needed.
It also meant that we had a really long weekend, followed by a two day work week (or as I call it - Utopia).
Then the weekend came again, and it consisted of just the right amount of fun activities balanced with laziness.
The only thing that got in the way was me worrying too much about work stuff, which is something I definitely want to NOT do.
I'm going to finish this with one moment from the week - boyfriend and me at my family's Rosh Hashanah dinner:

This is only a tiny part of the food situation that was going on.

So this was my week. How was yours?

Triangles are my favourite shape

Israelis love music. We go around the world to see our favourite bands showing live, and we LOVE it. But there's nothing we love more than standing with thousands of other people in our own wet hot summer nights, shouting lyrics from the top of our lungs.
Now here are some facts:
Fact one - Israel is a pretty small country.
Fact two - the middle east is not a peaceful place.
Combine these two facts, and what you get is years of bands and artists not coming here, or scheduling concerts and then cancelling them.
When you live in Israel and an artist you love announces they're coming, you spend the time from the moment you buy the tickets until the day of the concert praying that no war begins suddenly, and that the artists don't cave under the pressure of anti-Israel organizations and cancel their show.
And sometimes, all the stars align and someone up there listens to your prayers, and a band you've been waiting for actually comes and gives a hell of a show.
That's what happened to us this last Sunday, when Alt J came here.

Pictures are by my boyfriend, who has a better camera on his phone than I do

About four months ago it was announced that Alt J were coming to Israel. I immediately sent the article to my boyfriend, along with a bunch of exclamation marks. In return, I received a link to an article saying tickets were already available.
So of course we immediately purchased two tickets, and it’s lucky we did because a few hours later they were sold out. Another show was set for the day after, for which the tickets were quickly sold out as well.
Then it was decided to move the show to a bigger venue to allow for more tickets, and those were - you guessed it - sold out.
We held our breaths for four months, and then August 23rd arrived, and the band was in Israel. *sigh of relief*
To be honest, as excited as we were for the show, we really didn't expect it to be THAT good. I mean, it was so good we hardly took any pictures, and didn't bother with taking videos at all - we were too busy having FUN.

He's also taller, which helps when you're taking a panoramic shot of the crowd at a concert.

And I have to say, nothing feels better than watching an artist humbled by the amount of love and appreciation a crowd showers on them, especially when you're part of that crowd.
The day I was on the train on my way home from work, and spotted some people who were clearly going to the second show. I was excited for them, and just a bit jealous...
The next big show we're praying won't be canceled is Kanye West in a month from now. I will definitely keep you posted on that. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

9 to 5

Remember how I thought I was never going to find a proper job, and would forever move between pointless temporary jobs? Well, luckily I was wrong. I found a job! (hence the lack of posting)
About a month ago I had a job interview, and I got a call back a few hours later saying I got the job. Since I had to give my notice to my previous employer, I only actually started the job at the beginning of the month.
I'm still figuring out my way around the job itself, but since this is also my first office job, I find there are a lot of other things that are new to me and require some figuring out as well. So here are some of them (in list form, because I-love-lists-and-how-is-it-possible-I-haven't-made-one-yet??):

Cliques / Intrigues
I know that this sort of thing is almost impossible to prevent - where there are people, there are groupings of people - but honestly, I don't think I've experienced this since high school (in my previous job at the store, we worked one person per shift, so this obviously didn't really happen).
It might just be little ol' paranoid me thinking no one likes her because she's new and doesn't fit in, but it honestly feels sometimes like there are impenetrable groups which I am not allowed to enter.
I know it might change after a while, once I find my place and my peeps, but for now it's a bit of a throwback to teenagehood.

Dress Code
In my various jobs I've encountered various dress codes that employees were expected to follow, some stricter than others. Having never worked at an office, though, I didn't really know what to expect (and what was expected of me).
I had a vague recollection of seeing people in the office wearing jeans and t-shirts when I went there for my interview, but still, for my first day I decided not to take too many chances. So I wore nice pants (that aren't jeans), a pretty plain shirt (that covered my shoulders) and closed shoes.
I spent the first week observing others to see what was acceptable, and since then I even went so far as to wear a dress (gasp!).
Still, I'm not entirely certain yet what is considered office-appropriate in this particular office and what isn't. I do no flipflops are strictly forbidden, but other than that people seem to be wearing everything.
Personally, I draw the line at short dresses/skirts, revealing tops and spaghetti straps (but that might change in time, considering I have a 10 minute walk from the train station to the office, under the Israeli July sun...).

Food
Luckily for me, there aren't that many options for eating out in the vicinity of my office, so I'm not constantly wasting money on that. However, that does mean I have to make sure I always have food in the fridge to take with me to work.
Now, so far my boyfriend has been very patient with me in verifying my outfits and cooking my lunches, but that patience might run out at some point (and leftovers from his and my parents can only take me that far...).
Which means that some time in the near future I am going to have to start cooking for myself. Yikes.

I am going to leave you with that unpleasant thought ("What did you bring for lunch today?" "Oily pasta and burnt chicken!"), and finish this no-picture, lengthy post now.
Here's hoping I'll have more time to post again soon.

Little boxes

Last week I bought two storage boxes, and now I feel like I can conquer the world.
Allow me to explain:
When I was in the army, I'd come home every second weekend and there would always be a surprise waiting for me. Sometimes it would be a new shirt my mom decided to buy for me, and sometimes it would be MY WHOLE ROOM ORGANISED COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY.
As you can tell by the tone, I didn't like that sort of surprise all that much.
See, my mom likes it when things are tidy. Me? Well, I definitely appreciate tidiness, and I wouldn't call myself messy, but, well... I guess some people would.
I mean, when my stuff looks like it's in a mess to other people, but I still know where everything is, that's fine with me (like all messy people say: my mess has a system). But when it starts to bother me, that's when I know it's time to tidy things up a bit.
Enter storage boxes.
One of my mom's tidiness tendencies is putting things in nice storage boxes, which I never really understood - why would I put all of my cosmetic products in a box, and then put said box in another box with other cosmetic products? Why not just put them all on the dresser or shelf or whatever?
That was always my point of view, including when I was packing to move in with my boyfriend. Every cute little metal box I had and wanted to throw away (which is a big deal for me!), was somehow utilized by my mother: a box which once contained chocolate now contains warranty cards for all my jewelry; a cute box with cats is now the home of all my nail polishes, etc.

The problem starts when there's no room in the box to buy more...

So when we moved into our apartment, everything that I brought in a little tidy box, stayed that way. Mostly because I couldn't be bothered with changing it. Life went on, and little did I know more boxes were in my future...
(This should totally be the a cliffhanger to end part 1 of my story, shouldn't it?)
Our apartment, in case I didn't mention it, is small. Everyone who visits immediately describes it as "cute", which we all know is code for small. It also really is cute, mind you, but if there's one thing that I really don't like about this space, it's the bathroom with it's tiny rubbing-against-the-slimy-shower-curtain shower.
Now, as renters there's not a lot we can do to make the apartment really nice. We did put up some pictures with double-sided tape, and we try to keep things relatively tidy, since mess only makes a small space seem smaller.
The one place where we did a very poor job of keeping it tidy was (surprise, surprise) the bathroom. Whenever I wanted to clean it a bit, I had to move so many things from place to place, and the only thing worse than cleaning is putting things back in place when there's no clear order.
When I realized how much this was bothering me, I knew what I had to do (cue a voice softly whispering: "boxes..."). So I went to a home decor store close to my work, one of those places that sell cute knickknacks, and I bought these two bad boys:

In case you were wondering, the beard products aren't mine.

Oh, yeah... Notice the creativity in using a container made for cutlery for our hairbrushes? Notice the thoughtfulness in buying them both in different shades of white - not too matchy, and yet timeless?
Yes. This just might be my greatest achievement.

Sparse blogging

I'm finding blogging a lot harder than I thought it would be, for several reasons, the main one being that I can't commit to anything. I start something, get super excited about it, enjoy it for a short while and then can't be bothered with it anymore. I think it's typical to Geminis, and it makes for a nice excuse, but I'm not sure how much I believe in that.
Still, it's something I have known about myself for a few years now, but I actually don't know if I was always like that or if it started recently; just like another trait I've acquired: procrastination (incidentally, also something that makes blogging difficult).
As I already mentioned, I studied my butt off in school, complete with pulling all-nighters for math exams (if you found out how much I used to love math, you would probably stop reading this blog forever). But then university came, and studying-like-mad somehow turned to this-can-wait-till tomorrow. I still pulled all-nighters, but if I'm honest those were now mostly forced (I totally blame Pinterest).
So now I just constantly put off things I planned on doing, even enjoyable things, for no apparent reason. I always find time for another episode of The Good Wife, or one more round on Kitchen Scramble (to my shame); but anything else I ignore or decide to do later, the excuse being that it's going to take too much time and now is not the right time. And in case you were wondering: "now" is never the right time.
So this makes blogging a difficult task for me, especially combined with the fact that's it's hard to find things to write about. Which is funny, because I am the world's worst over-sharer. Let's say I'm having a conversation with a person I sort of know, like a friend's friend or a coworker. They will go home afterwards knowing way too much about me, and I will go on thinking "why the hell did I tell them all those things??".
Which things, you ask? Ah, well: my worst breakups, my biggest insecurities, my grandest failures (yes, it's mostly negative with me)... The worst thing is when I talk to that person again after a considerable amount of time, and they remember and refer to the stuff I told them. Gah, the horror. Can't we just pretend that conversation never happened?..
Blogging (or blogging for me, anyway) is a lot like those conversations, because I tell you way too much about myself and later wonder if I shouldn't have. In a way it's even worse, since the internet is forever, and if you don't exactly remember what I said you can always go back and check, because it will STILL BE HERE. I am going to have to think on that...

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Yet another post with no picture! To make it up to you, here's a photo of the cat and I sleeping, as shot by my sneaky boyfriend (because people with cats will always show you pictures of their cats. Always.):

Look at that ball of cat! And no, I did not match the nail polish to the blanket on purpose.