1. I forgot to take my annual birthday photo. Whoops. So 8 days later here’s an extra special pic for my 31st.

2. A friend told me this great joke which involves hand gestures. I’m not very good at telling jokes, but I want to get good at telling this joke. Request it next time you see me.

3. I got a great job and neglected to say more publicly ‘yay!’ about it. In case you didn’t know I’m now working with the Mozilla Foundation and Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) coordinating the School of Webcraft. It’s an awesome project which lets people learn web development skills for free in a peer based environment.

You really should get involved. Offer to lead a course, or participate and learn web skills alongside other lovely people.

4. 2 months ago (today) I got engaged to the man previously known as The Contender or the Bearded Maths Captain. You could now call him The Intended, or TiBo.

The Romantic Story: We got engaged on a dike in the Netherlands after a week of sailing. TiBo said “What do you reckon we get married?” and gave me a ring made out of aluminium pipe and LEDs. I almost fell over with happiness.

If anyone tells you that being engaged doesn’t feel any different to normal life, they are possibly not doing it correctly. Being engaged to TiBo feels amazing and sparkly and even better than the way life was before. I’m so happy that I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him.

about a year and a half ago I posted a list of 100 Things I Want To Learn (More) About…. I wrote the list when I was in a more active phase of my DIY Masters, a very slowly ongoing project which I can say has led to many good things in my life even if I haven’t yet earnt and given myself a DIY degree. Anyway, the list had a lot of random skills and activities which ranged from learning how to cook family recipes to more advanced work skills.

A couple of friends started to write their own lists and a couple even made it up to 100. Recently Pete Hindle, returned to his list of 50 things and updated it with comments as to what had been achieved and his current thoughts on his list. Pete almost died and so has a) a really good excuse for not finishing things on his list b) his life has changed drastically which definitely changed his opinion about some of his learning items. It will be interesting to see if the life changes I’ve gone through (finally meeting a good man, getting a job, getting another job, travelling away from Berlin a lot) have affected how I feel about items on my list.

100 Things I Want To Learn (More) About… Updated!

1. Botany
   Hmmm. I haven’t yet learnt to identify plants using a taxonomy. So. No.
2. A musical instrument: guitar or cello
   Let’s just say that 360 days ago I was given a beautiful guitar and can barely play 3 chords. So this learning task is active, but moving slowly. Actually taking lessons might be the next step.
3. Haircutting
   I can cut boys’ hair if they have some curl to hide the mistakes. The mistakes aren’t as often or severe as they used to be. But I haven’t learnt any fancy techniques (yet).
4. How to make a sponge cake
   Really, why would I make a sponge when there are so many other amazing cakes to bake out there? Not Yet.
5. How to maintain my bicycle
   In general I’m better at working with bikes thanks to a couple of sessions at Regenbogen Fabrik’s bike workshop. But my bike in Berlin is not currently maintained – sadly the type of maintenance I know won’t make it better, it will just keep it existing for longer.
6. How to make bagels
   Nope. One day, when I’m making brunch for people. I do finally have a recipe I want to use.
7. Throat Singing
   Hah. I find the idea of throat singing fascinating, but I don’t want to learn it that much. Let’s just say I may have still wanted to impress my ex at this point.
8. Bookbinding
   Not yet. I don’t have anything I want to bind at the moment, and it’s pretty easy to get amazing notebooks in Berlin.
9. Basic Arabic
   Nada. But my amazing new flatmate is doing Islamic studies and she can write essays in Arabic.  I know who I’m going to ask for help.
10. How to make better Karelian pies
    I’ve not made a Karelian pie for ages. I think that visiting friends in Finland and buying Karelian pies has to be higher priority than making my own… I’m getting really good at making Spinach pancakes, one of my other Finnish food desires.

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