Sunday night chit-chat

As always, your host for this evening's Sunday Night Chit-Chat is the lovely Carla of Half-Dozen Daily.  And for the second time I'm up late enough to have the full thing straightaway so no need to check back in later for the bonus question.  I have a week off work next week but was planning on going in this evening for an hour to do some filing that it would be really great to get out of the way (when I'm out sick, someone covers the basics but things like filing are left sitting and catching up is always difficult).  It's just after midnight now though so I don't think I'll bother, although I am still tempted (there's a security guard 24-hours and I have a swipe card to get into the building at any time).  So, to get us started, here's a photo of a koala bear in Taronga Zoo, Sydney.  I really, really need to get all my photographs from Oz sorted and stored properly, a fact brought home to me this week when my computer went all funny - very glad I'd set up a guest profile because I was able to log in using that and change the access rights so that at least I was able to back-up all of my data!

What are you
Reading
I find it hard to believe that we're half-way through February and I still haven't finished one single book, despite having started five.  Just can't seem to get the necessary concentration going.  I'm going to try and dedicate an hour or so each day next week to just sitting down in an armchair and reading.  Have to get to the international library tomorrow to get a copy of The Master and Margarita, which is book club's first book of the year, meeting the week after next.

Watching
I watched some more Mentalist today.  Am into series three now and still enjoying it.

Listening to
Kenny Rogers (swoooon)

Baking/cooking
Not a thing

Happy you accomplished this week
I made good progress at choir practice and will most likely sing in the concert next week, despite having missed lots of rehearsals due to holidays and then being sick.  Happy that my conductor feels confident enough to let me perform (and that he trusts me that I will in fact keep any noise from coming out for the few bits I don't have right. LOL).

Looking forward to next week
A week off work, getting a few appointments out of the way that have been on my mental to-do list for a long time and lots and lots of singing.  Happy Birthday Handel performance of the Messiah in Halle on Saturday and then up early to travel back here on Sunday to sing in my normal choir's a capella concert.  One of the pieces we're singing is Samuel Barber's Agnus Dei (which is his Adagio for Strings transcribed for  a choir - I didn't even know there was a voice version) and I am really, really looking forward to that.  It's such a fabulous piece of music.

Thankful for today
A particularly nice friend who I shared a meal with yesterday evening, who reminded me that I should be proud of the things I am capable of and not belittle the things I do.  Also, making progress on the Table of Doom, which is doing wonders for me.

Bonus question: Have you ever received a gift you were less than thrilled with?  Did you feel like you had to keep/use it in order to spare feelings from getting hurt?
Absolutely.  Although none so difficult as what Carla's been through this week.  One of my best friends, despite being so great to me otherwise, remains pretty consistently off the mark with her gifts.  I still have a silver serving tray she bought me about eight years ago that I have never used.  It's not that it's not nice - it's gorgeous - I just have no idea what I would ever use it for.  That's nothing to how bad my granny was at choosing gifts though.  Although she did have a lot of grandchildren and didn't really know most of us that well and I do, as an adult, realise what a huge expense and effort it must have been for her to buy each of us a gift each year (she did stop at some stage when I was a teenager - I think she switched to just buying for the great-grandchildren or something).  It was great when she would give us all book tokens but some years she would buy actual books instead.  So, when I was eight or nine, because (I think) she'd heard I liked mysteries (as in the Famous Five, the Secret Seven and so on), she bought me an Agatha Christie double.  The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side and Murder at the Vicarage.  And then a couple of years later, at a time when I was starting to read lots of romance (Sweet Valley High and Barbara Cartland both, moving swiftly on to Mills & Boon, you know, books that had kissing and sex in them), she got me Dark Quartet, a biography of the Brontes.  Still haven't read either of those books.  But they are both still on my to-read shelf.  And my granny has been dead for over ten years now.  Definitely seems like I tend towards the keeping side of things, even if it's something I don't really want.