I just got a ukulele and its quite fun.

This year I got a waterproof loudspeaker from my wife. I absolutely love it and I'm super excited about it.

The story behind it is that a few months ago our apartment got renovated. Our bathroom looks/feels really nice and new now but unfortunately we had to get rid of a small closet which we used to store shampoos, soap and other stuff like that. I love to listen to music in the shower and sing along. I suffer from depression but this is something that always cheers me up and brightens my day. Back when we had that closet, I used to put my laptop computer on top to play the music. Now this is not possible anymore. For a while I considered buying a new closet but my wife made me realize it's not an option. As part of the renovation, the builders constructed a little wall behind the sink that makes our already small bathroom even smaller. This means that if I bought a new closet, we couldn't properly sit on the toilet anymore.

For the past few months I have been very sad about this. I tried to get used to silent showers but it's simply not the same. It's so boring. I tried to sing without music but it wasn't as much fun as before.

Now that I have this loudspeaker, I can connect it to my computer via bluetooth and then I can put it anywhere in the bathroom I want. I could even take it into the shower with me since it's waterproof. So now I can finally listen to music again and this makes me very happy :). In fact, it's even better than before because the loudspeaker volume can be turned up more than that of my laptop computer. This means I can now even listen to podcasts or audiobooks in the shower and I can make it loud enough that I will still understand everything over the noise of the water.

Blankets. You can never have enough *nice* blankets.

Don’t give me the cheap $20 blanket ruined by one wash cycle.

Favourite Gifts From When I was a Child: Boppit, (probably got three of those for a few years) and Furbee.

Favourite Gifts Now: Last year my brother made me the Jordy LaForge visor from Star Trek, and my sister got me a bookmark from the 221B Baker Street Sherlock Holmes museum which was leather and had an Arthur Conan Doyle quote on it.

I often get lots of chocolate. I have no complaints about this. I also get given lots of toiletries which I choose not to take as an implication that I need to improve my personal hygiene. This year I also got a USB power bank, which is super useful, and my other half went well out of his way to get my old old sunglasses re glazed which will be great in the summer when I can wear them without people thinking I'm trying to look like a disaffected member of generation Y. Yes, sometimes I wear sunglasses so I can sit at a bar and strike up a conversation with someone without that someone thinking I am some sort of freak, I don't care if people judge me for that.