The fact that a new year has just started is pretty much coincidental – I didn’t start out with any sort of grand resolution to seek out new things in 2013, it just so happens to be January.

Music: My latest obsession is to turn the TV to the satellite radio channels and leave it there for hours. It’s great background music that doesn’t distract from my other obsession (more on that below), and there are no commercials. My constant is the “Rock Alternative” channel, and only once in the past few weeks have I heard something that made me yell at the TV (an absolutely horrible cover of RHCP’s “Breaking the Girl”). Every once in a while I’ll hear something that grabs me by the girl balls, so I use technology to find the song and download it with iTunes credits I got for Christmas. I’m hearing a lot of new music, am newly obsessed with this song, and given the amount of Florence and the Machine I’ve heard lately, I feel like a true hipster. Success all around!

Games: Listening to music on the TV leaves my hands free for what I do with the rest of my time: play Paper Mario Sticker Star on the 3DS. I received it (along with Scribblenauts Unlimited) from Ed, and I’ve been spending most of my waking moments (and some of my sleeping ones) playing it. It’s a surprisingly huge game (or I’m just really used to iOS titles): I’ve sunk almost 24 hours into it so far, and I figure I’m about 3/4 of the way through. I’m enjoying it much more than I did the last half of the last Paper Mario game I played and it’s been almost refreshing to get Nintendo Thumb after all these many years of iPhone Wrist. Fun stuff.

Also, when I DO get Nintendo Thumb, I just grab my iPhone and play my other obsession: The Grading Game for iOS. It’s literally a game in which you have to find spelling errors and grammatical mistakes in a series of student essays, and I am infatuated with it. It’s not perfect – I’ve actually found a mistake in the game that cost me points – but it’s very fun and totally aimed at word nerds like me. The game can be surprisingly difficult (I’m a speed reader and even I have trouble getting through some of the essays in the allotted time AND because I read so quickly I often glance over a word to absorb it without reading the entire thing and therefore skip a spelling mistake I should have caught), but it’s great. And educational. I now know an awful lot about Political Action Committees, for some reason.

Lighting: Ed’s parents gave us some money for the house for Christmas, so we’ve ordered the ottoman that will replace my favourite chair and also picked up a Hue light kit. We spent most of last night playing with coloured lighting, and will be picking up more bulbs (slowly, as they’re friggin’ expensive) to mood light Sparta to our heart’s content. It’s a neat (if pricey) little system, and I can’t wait to do more with it (rave at my house in March!). I kind of want to replace all our light bulbs with fancy ass wireless LED ones, but a) I am not a millionaire and b) we have way too many lamps that require tiny-based Ikea bulbs. The rest, though – soon there will be colours EVERYWHERE. The Lady Cave is next!

Internet: I’ve reactivated my Tumblrs. I post little things there, like pictures or two-line updates, or things that catch my fancy. Feel free to follow me there (especially if you too have a Tumblrs; it’s the one place I will guarantee a follow back), because everyone totally needs yet another place to see my brain juices.

The Rest: This is our one weekend this month without plans, so we’re enjoying it accordingly. Soon I will have a shower and go buy a flash for my camera, and at some point we will need to get groceries. The transition back into work on Wednesday was smooth and fun thanks to the addition of Sam at the office, so the rest of my life is wrist-deep in the status quo at the moment: I’m pleasantly occupied by my many electronic devices, the annoying and extremely inappropriate crush I seem to be developing on someone, and preparing my wardrobe for the eventual return of the sun.

How’s by you?