Summer Holiday Goals

Slowly getting round to posting all the things I've wanted to post. It's been nearly four weeks since dissertation hand in so I am feeling more like myself again. 

Oh look, almost all the failures were chores! I think I can cope with that. 

I think the dissertation was 17,000 words before I went back to work - not too shabby. I didn't quite manage sauna every week but I did do enough sauna visits to count as one a week, just about, so tick to that - and a number of different saunas, too. Plus the hot yogas: I managed to make a very sweaty summer deliberately sweaty. 

There were many swims. I thought 10 would be a challenge and was fully prepare to visit both my local pools if needed but it turned out to be quite easy and it made me go and swim in at least two places I might not have done otherwise. When I landed in Krakow seven hours earlier than Zoe, and then had to queue through passport control for over two hours, throwing myself in a body of water was basically the only thing I wanted to do with the time so I took public transport and then a walk and then had to figure out how to swim with my phone because I was too nervous to leave it on the beach (waterproof pouch ftw). It felt like half of Krakow was down there: what a treat to be a little like a local. 

I stopped counting the places I bought ice cream from because they were so numerous (best flavour: cherry poppyseed in Bratislava) and, although I listed cocktails there, there were also considerably more than five of those (best new cocktail: plum sour in Budapest). There were plenty of novels. I read The Names almost in one day on my journey to Krakow: it was a good distraction in the passport queue. I didn't really rate Yesteryear and James was OK (probably would be better if I'd read Huckleberry Finn before) but I loved the others. 

At home, I finished Euphoria - a fitting end; and we defrosted the freezer early in the holiday so I got it out of the way before the heavy dissertation work kicked in. I went to one Tuesday crafting and haven't been able to go since, but I'm hoping to be a more regular visitor. 

Workfree days? There were a couple. One of the exam board guys finished an email to me saying he hoped the board wouldn't be 'chasing me down the runway with scripts' which they sort of did, a record 44 came through to mark after I'd left the country, but then they did finally stop and I did have a couple of days of holiday when I didn't do any dissertation work, though they were days with excursions or travelling involved. But it was always going to be a stretch and it got me out of some house chores and it was only one summer. Next summer will be much different.