Party People

 

Pre-Covid, I used to always celebrate my birthday in a restaurant or bar with a pretty large group of friends. I still managed to do so in 2020, but in the subsequent two years my birthday fell into a national lockdown and so this meant that it was a very lowkey affair, i.e. I celebrated with Highflyer and met friends for a chilly walk with to-go coffee when they would give me presents. 

Back in the "party days" I would typically choose a Friday or Saturday night as close to my actual b-day as possible. This year I played with the idea of re-launching the streak of dinner-parties, but as my birthday coincided with an MBA module and the subsequent weekend fell into the Viennese semester break when most of my friends would be away, I initially decided to postpone it to next year. Well, the Empress and the Pampered Princess had other plans and both tried to convince me that I MUST properly celebrate again...so I did last weekend and it was really nice to try out a new restaurant and see the "gang" (plus the addition of one of my friends' boyfriends who had not been around in 2020 yet, minus two people who fell sick) together again. People still tell me that our wedding last summer was their "highlight of the year" and it's so evident that most people's hunger for socialising is back.

Mere Mortal

Beginning with March 1, I will be a mere mortal when it comes to frequent traveller privileges as relative inactivity has led to me losing my FTL status at the end of this month, unless I choose to pay a rather hefty price for renewal, which I have decided not to as this will just delay the inevitable for a year. My favourite perk apart from occasional last-minute upgrades at the gate was being able to skip queues and checking in an extra piece of luggage, but I shall survive without those privileges and being the registered spouse of an airline employee is not the worst alternative, either. Still, it feels like the official end of an era that, at one point in my life, I was really eager to cling on to business-and-weekend-tripping-me and found it hard to accept that my life was more stationary. I still love travelling, though, and am looking forward to our UK trip in May that was originally supposed to take place in May 2020 when a global pandemic had other plans for us...

Adult Content

One undoubtable sign that you are getting old is the type of items you covet. If your "fetish" turns to kitchen appliances, you have truly arrived in adult-land. While for several of my friends their Thermomix gadget is the holy grail, I personally love appliances with a retro vibe such as my Kitchen Aid mixer and my most recent gift to myself (purchased mainly to see if it will really make bread so much better and crunchier), a cast-iron Le Creuset dutch oven that I had been eying for a while and pulled the trigger on last week. 

This is not to say that I'm not still into handbags, but there, too, my focus has been on classic brands that hold their value for quite some time and I am less of an impulse-buyer of inexpensive seasonal items any more. 

The label "lifelong guarantee" on my Le Creuset baby gave me a rush of excitement and somehow reinforced the feeling that I had been investing in something solid...well, literally, because these things weigh a tonne.

 

Long Term

Every time I am in Carinthia together with Highflyer like last weekend I am happy when he makes appreciative comments about something. In particular when my favourite Tyrolean, who used to think his native province was the only one where there are decent ski resorts tells me he approves of my favourite Carinthian ski resort. Needless to say our lakes are an added bonus. I mean, how can you not like them? Or, in other words, do you seriously think I could have married someone who hates them?

Why does his approval matter? Well, with the two of us having roots and family in the South and West of Austria respectively, but sharing a home in the East, where we also work, there's the issue of where we will eventually settle once we're retired (15-ish years to go, but still). While to me this is still very much in the distant future, hubby brings up this topic quite frequently and has already decided he wants to have a pet cat once he's retired, which my inner cat lady more than approves of. Regarding the location, Carinthia already scores higher than Tyrol as a retirement seat because of family-owned property in two diffent locations versus a rented apartment in Innsbruck. Despite this advantage being an acknowledged fact it's an added bonus to know that hubby actually also likes the sunny South.