Yay Christmas! I had the most lovely dinner with mom, dad and my little brother. After opening the presents we watched Christmas Vacation and then went to my older brother's house to exchange gifts with him and his family.

Here's what I got:

From mom and dad: Christmas toe socks, leg warmers and Íslensk Orðsifjabók (Icelandic Etymology book). It wasn't available for the longest time so I'm really happy to get it. It's brilliant!
From my sister and her family: A book called Auður (about Auður djúpúðga who was one of the first people who settled in Iceland), a fancy bread basket thing and a fancy set of salt and pepper shakers.
From my brother and his family: Two big cook books, Brauð og kökubók Hagkaupa and Kökubók Hagkaupa. Each has 220-230 recipes for cakes, cookies and breads. Awesome!
From grandma Ásta: a cheese plate with a knife.
From grandma Svana: A set with two make-up bags (different sizes) and some make up brushes.
Fromvampyran: A book called Snorri, it's about Snorri Sturluson, a writer and poet who lived 1179-1241. Read the wiki article, he was a very important man. She also gave me a book called Other people's love letters - 150 letters you were never meant to see.

So yeah, pretty good haul! My presents to my family were all a success and I'm just really really happy right now.

I'm home now and I'm thinking about watching the first episode of season 2 of Merlin. I finished watching season 1 last night.

Oh hey, vadalia, mac_lynn and trasgapoca. I tried to send you guys some Christmas e-cards today but they bounced back to me. :( If you'd like me to try again give me an e-mail address that works. :P You can send them to me at kalldoro - at - gmail - dot - com.

I feel weird. I haven't had my period for about a month and a half now. I'm usually very irregular, but this is unusually long. For the last week or so I've been sore and achy, but I can't figure out if it's due to digestion, my uterus or my bladder. I feel sort of weak and woozy.

Then last night I had one of my frequent sneezing fits but after it was over I blew my nose and there was blood. That's weird for me, I never get nose bleeds.

Meh. If I still haven't started by period in January I'm going to get an appointment with my gyno, I'm a little concerned.

Also: No, I'm not pregnant. I haven't had sex since late 2002, there's no way I'm pregnant. :P

My little brother is going to pick me up soon so I'm gonna finish getting ready.

I have accomplished so much today! I cleaned the kitchen completely and the bathroom too. I mopped the floors and everything. I cleaned the oven, changed the cat littler. Did 4 loads of laundry. I tidied up a lot of things. I took bottles and stuff to be recycled and bought some stuff that I needed at the mall.

I am awesome. Tomorrow is what we Icelanders call Þorláksmessa. I won't be eating any skate, but I'm going to spend it at mom's. Maybe bake some cookies. Read a book. Chill.

Then there's Christmas Eve. That's the big day over here. We eat together at 6pm, after that we open the presents and then we have a nice evening together. On the 25th we usually go to eat at grandma's but she's getting old and mom offered to host the thing for her.

I'm pretty much all ready for Christmas. I've bought all the presents and wrapped all but one. I need to pick out what to wear (I couldn't afford to buy anything new this year), but otherwise I'm pretty calm. It's going to be all kinds of nice.

I think maybe I'll try to get some more tidying up done tomorrow before I go to mom's, but otherwise I'm just going to let Christmas come and take it easy.

Oh hey! I sent an application to the University of Edinburgh recently. I just got an e-mail from the director of the programme. Apparently the professors I had listed as references haven't sent anything to them yet and he just wanted to make sure they'd do it soon, so I forwarded the e-mail to them. What I liked was that he said: "I would like to thank you for your interest in our programme, and to note that I am impressed by your personal statement and clear interest in global health." - SCORE!

I'm all proud and tingly! :D It looks promising. I'm still aiming for Sheffield, but it's good to have a second option. :)

Anyway, I'm gonna go to bed now or I'll sleep all day tomorrow. :P

The other day mom told me that dad had bought this incredible oven cleaner. She said all you had to do was spray it on, leave for half an hour and then wipe it off with a paper towel. I decided to try it so I went and bought it. It was expensive, but hopefully worth it.

OMG!

I just tried this thing and it's AMAZING! I sprayed the inside of our oven and left it for half an hour. It's really strong so it had me coughing for a bit.

I just wiped the inside and EVERYTHING came off. Years of accumulated dirt and grease in ONE WIPE! Holy cow. I wasted a whole roll of paper towels cleaning the whole thing. I swear, it hasn't been this clean since it was new. This oven cleaner is incredibly powerful.

So I'm pointing you in its direction. It's called Wipe Out and it's from a company called Mega Lab.

For the Icelanders on my flist, you can get it in a store called Kemi.

It's amazing, I swear.

Thank something awesome-and-god-like-and-yet-not-god-because-he-doesn't-exist that this weekend is over. It's been really long and difficult. There are a few new residents that are difficult and annoying. Last night everyone just about went insane because of this one lady who wouldn't stop talking and cursing and yelling for help and just...gah! And tonight I had to bathe a woman and it was a hassle and now I'm all headachy and my back has gone on a strike.

But it's over! I don't have to work again until January 2nd so this is officially where my Christmas vacation begins. *tired cheering*

I got a Christmas present from work. A fancy paper bag full of goodies such as cheese and jam and chocolate and crackers and reindeer paté and holiday coffee. All very fancy and awesome.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to tidy up as much as I can, then I want to go hang out at mom's and just enjoy Christmas.

Now I'm going to watch Merlin and eat cheese.

Oh wait, I should probably say something positive and nice to round this post out. I like the people I work with. They are kind, loving people and I really like them.

Argh! selecasharp and pixymisa!!! There's glitter everywhere!!

I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. *glares*

Thanks so much for the card and I WILL visit you one day. I WILL!

Exams are over. I have finished this semester. I feel tingly all over with utter happiness. :P

Now I only have one more semester left (and a thesis, omg) before I'll officially have a BSc in Human Geography. This is amazing and scary.

The exam yesterday went really well. I finished the essay late last night and went to school to print it and drop it off. All the printers in the building were out for some reason so I couldn't print it anywhere. I ended up e-mailing it to my teacher just to prove that I'd finished it on time and then today I went back and printed it. So it's officially done.

Now I can chill, properly tidy up and clean the apartment, decorate for Christmas, bake cookies, watch whatever I want, read whatever I want, sleep whenever I want and have a wonderful Christmas.

I'm working this weekend though. Woe. Fortunately only evenings so I don't have to wake up early for anything. :P

I love that I have finished buying all the presents. These last few years I've always done that at the very last minute, but now I can just take it easy and wait for Christmas to get here. It's awesome.

Anyway. Right now I'm waiting for vampyran. We're gonna go to the store and buy what we need to bake cookies. Yay cookies! I'll post pictures and recipes tonight or tomorrow.

I am happy. :)

P.s. I found some Christmas icons the other day, I need to upload some of them.

Wow, I don't think I've ever felt quite so prepared for an exam. I finished reading everything and I wrote about 13 pages of notes and this morning I prepared flash cards that I can read over a few times before the exam starts. I have an hour and a half before the exam and I'm just really calm. It's awesome.

I was a bit nervous about the essay last night, but just now I wrote up a kind of rough structure for it and it's going to be no big deal. I know exactly what I want to say. All I have to do is write it. I have my work cut out for me though, it's probably going to take the whole evening. At least I feel that I know what I'm talking about. :)

Ahh, it's the last day of the semester, I have an exam in an hour and a half, an unwritten paper due before midnight and I just feel good. It's kind of weird. :P

I wish I'd had more sleep though. It took me forever to fall asleep and I'm super tired. Oh well. I'll live.

I am so tired right now it's not even funny anymore. My sleeping schedule is way off. Yesterday I actually slept until 3.30pm! That's just disgusting, seriously! Then when I tried to go to bed at a fairly decent hour last night (about 1am) I couldn't fall asleep. I fell asleep at 6am, woke up again at 7am for about 10-15 minutes, fell asleep again and then woke up at 9.40am.

I'm at the library right now. My last final is tomorrow and I have to turn in my essay for that class as well. I'm not too worried about the final itself, I'm just about done reading everything for it and writing up good notes. It just so happens that the essay is on pretty much the same topic as the exam. :P Basically we covered Durkheim and Mead in the second half of the semester and the essay is about those two. So even when I'm reading for the exam I'm preparing for the essay.

Still. It's a long ass essay and the topic is murder. I'm supposed to write 10-12 pages where I explain whether I agree with this statement or not: "the theories of Durkheim and Mead do not allow for freedom for the individual" ...or something like that, bad translation, I'm sorry. But yeah. Kill me.

The exam is at 1.30pm tomorrow and I don't actually have to turn the essay in until midnight, so I have some time. I'm just completely sick of this semester, tired and cranky, and I just want to do something fun for a change.

Anyway, I'm hungry. I'm gonna go get something to eat before I tackle the next chapter. *sigh*