Alright, let’s see. This year sure was eventful and I probably forgot half of it (thanks to a certain blog-posts-went-bye-bye-fiasco, read more below) but I did my best.

Let’s start with the obvious, shall we?

Internet:
May bought my second domain, namely oceansaway.org, and generously hosted it at her reseller for me. In late summer, I accidently deleted my CuteNews folder and so all my entries for the first half of 2007 were gone at once.
I decided to start over and switched to Wordpress, with which I’ve been happy ever since. It took me about a month to figure out how to make my own theme and by September oceansaway.org was back up and running.
In late November, however, I had to take another big hit domain-wise, as May’s account was hacked and with hers all my stuff including the domain registration and all Wordpress entries were deleted. I swear to you that I was close to tears because those entries included my first considerations as to which university I would go, several school projects, the seperation from a very close friend and much more.
Being the blog addict that I am, I immediately went ahead and registered a new domain, highwaybynight.com, and started all over. The new blog was up and running by December.

I also found many new, great blogs this year, such as: kristiegirl.org, dooce.com, dasbecca.com, alittlelessordinary.com and thepioneerwoman.com as well as other websites, including justjared.com, wetforwent.org, colourlovers.com and 3191.visualblogging.com.

Computer:
This year, I finally said goodbye to my big ol’ regular desktop computer and bought a white Sony Vaio laptop - one of the best purchases I have ever made. I wasn’t aware of the fact that some computers would, in fact, GET THE JOB DONE instead of constantly being flooded with viruses, being not able to recognize all kinds of hardware, suddenly rebooting out of nowhere and so on.
With my new Sony and the new operating system Windows Vista all that changed and so it is now my baby. I kiss it goodnight everyday. Seriously.

Movies/Shows/TV:
I stopped watching TV this year altogether. There just came a time were everything on TV basically just annoyed the crap out of me and there was no sense in even trying to find something worth watching. Since the summer I have not watched regular TV at all and I don’t miss a thing about it whatsoever.

I did, however, start watching American TV shows online, most notably Prison Break and Gossip Girl. I also found myself buying more movies on DVD as the year before - probably for two reasons: a.) I really like how I am not dependant on television anymore and can schedule myself when I’m going to watch which show or movie and b.) I made a few new friends with whom I started planning regular movie nights with.

Friends/Family:
Talking about friends; this year was somewhat crazy as far as personal relationships go. I grew apart from my best and only friend to the point where we don’t talk to each other anymore now.
But I also made a handful of new friends because, suddenly, I wasn’t in this exclusive friendship with my best friend anymore. And has it ever been this much fun to be around… people! Because of these new friends I have been more active and out and about than ever!

School:
That school was a bitch this year would be an understatement. Then again, it wasn’t as bad as I expected my senior year to be. So far everything looks great - in an average kind of way - and my graduation should be a sho’ thang.
I took skipping class to another level this year as I didn’t attend P.E. at all (except for two lessons at the beginng of my senior year). What’s worse is that I GOT AWAY WITH IT. I got an average-not-a-sports-fan type of grade for it and all the missed classes did not appear on my term paper.

I have also visited several universities this year in order to make a decision as to what I’m going to do after graduation. The one I liked most was Maastricht University in the Netherlands and I had a great time at their Open Day in November. Moving to my own apartment and studying abroad suddenly became a realistic possibility.

Photography:
I also took my photography to a higher level this year when I bought my first SLR, a Canon Eos 350D. I’ve enjoyed taking pictures even more ever since I got it and can’t imagine taking photos with a regular digital camera now.

Books:
For the first time ever, I read more than 90% of the books I read in English. Most of them were ordered at amazon.com and shipped over here from the US. I also started reading my first novel in French.

Traveling:
Talking about French: I rediscovered my love for the French language when I went to Paris in January for four days. I went back to France in September - to Séléstat and Colmar, to be exact.

I did more traveling that September as I went on a class trip to Freiburg, which is a city in Southern Germany where I had never been before.

I also went on my first ever vacation without any parents - my one year stay in Kentucky aside. I went to Fehmarn, a German island and we planned everything, drove up there ourselves and paid for it with our own money. A typical Dear Diary moment, no?

My traveling highlight of the year, though, was when I went back to Kentucky for three weeks during the summer to visit my host family and all my friends over there. It was amazing to be able to go back and see that nothing had changed and everything was still as amazing as I had fantasized in my mind. It’s one of those things - while you’re away, you’re constantly thinking about it and you try to be rational about it and tell yourself that NO IT CAN’T POSSIBLY BE THAT GREAT OVER THERE, SURELY YOU’VE BEEN AWAY FOR TOO LONG TO REMEMBER CORRECTLY. And then you come back and you find that everything is every bit as awesome as you thought.

As much as I thought that this year was crazier than any other year, I think I’m safe to say that next year is going to be even more out there - what with my graduation, potential moving aborad and starting university.

Here’s to a great 2008! Which can only be better than 2007, right? It’s an even number and looks and sounds so much better. 2008: it’s so pretty!

Happy New Year, everybody! and thanks to my handful of readers for sticking with me!

My grandma had a stroke on December 26 and has been in the hospital on constant supervision ever since.
Apparently, her sister was over at my grandma’s house when it happened. My grandma fell down and couldn’t get back up. Thing is, her sister is in a wheelchair and is slightly mentally disabled as well. A cab driver from the old people’s home she stays at takes her to my grandma once a week and picks her back up in the afternoon.
So my grandma lay on the floor for three hours until the cab driver came back and heard my grandma’s sister yelling for help inside the house. He then called 911, they broke the front door open and took my grandma to the hospital.

At first they didn’t know what had happened to her but figured out that it could have only been a stroke. Caused by the split-second-long disfunction of her brain, the muscles in her legs clenched and she couldn’t move them anymore.
Luckily, she seems to have recovered from it; her leg’s won’t be paralzyed forever or anything like that. She did say that her legs still hurt, though - which is normal, given that the body literally stopped taking care of them for a short period of time. And it takes her a while to gather her thoughts and utter complete sentences - which is also normal since what usually happens during a stroke is that a small part of the brain more or less stops working because for some reason blood is not being pumped through it anymore and then, in the best case, another part of the brain takes over and - as in the case of my grandma - is now responsible for the legs.
This extra work for a certain part of the brain causes everything in one’s body to function much slower.

How do I know all this? Well, it’s almost exactly a year ago that my mom had a stroke and so, unfortunately, I’m familiar with the reasons and consequences of strokes.
The fact that my mom went through this makes things harder for us. My grandma is in the same hospital and, obviously, in the same unit. Going back to that hospital and going through the whole thing again is more or less impossible for my mom because getting over her stroke, both physically and mentally, has been the hardest thing she has ever had to do.

My dad, who’s the only immediate family my grandma has left, is especially worried about what will happen after they release her from the hospital. He’s hoping health insurance will pay for a couple of months of rehab - but nobody knows what we’re going to do after that.
After my grandfather’s death last year, my grandma’s been taking care of their huge, old house all by herself.
Up until now she was still able to run the necessary errands on her own but from now on she won’t be able to do so and has to be checked on all the time. The problem is, my dad won’t be able to pay for her to go to an old people’s home because he’s already paying for her sister - who’s always been in a wheelchair and never worked and therefore isn’t supported by the state.

It’s a mess and it sucks that this happens to us. Again. This is going to sound incredibly selfish, but if my dad should end up having to pay for his mom’s place in an old people’s home, he won’t be able to pay for university for me anymore. And for reasons that are probably obvious yet somehow morally questionable, that makes me really, really angry.

As mentioned before, I took a bath today and boy, do baths ever do wonders to one’s mood! There’s something about baths - about long showers, too - that completely soothes me and no matter how cranky I may have been, it’ll turn me into a completely different person.

So. I took a bath, using new bath salts I had bought yesterday and reading Gossip Girl. My day couldn’t have possibly started any better. I was kind of dreading the fact that I had to meet with a couple of girls from school, N and K, to work on our Senior Book later during the day. But It was still a pretty good morning which is a relief because recent mornings always sucked as I can’t seem to fall asleep as quickly as I used to and then always wake up with a headache and annoying pains in several other body parts.

It also annoys me that Christmas is over already. Look at this pretty candle decoration which sits in the middle of our dining room table. It’s so pretty, with (above) and without flash (below), and I don’t want it to wander back in the attic, buried under tons of other Christmas decoration.

Our little get-together for the Senior Book went just fine, though. And I’m sure if a certain someone hadn’t been there we also wouldn’t have had to move from the little café where we had met to my house because it took us so long. Yes, cafés have to close sometime, moron!

Anyway, moving on. Tomorrow will be filled with shopping and exchanging Christmas presents and using gift cards and other fun activities that involve purchasing in any way, shape or form.
I love shopping; sadly, new things make me happy. I know that it only makes me happy for an instant and neither my bank account nor my parents approve of spending so much money all the time. But seriously, I’d rather be happy for an instant than unhappy forever.

God, I’m so bitter these days. That, too, annoys me.