Taking the good with the bad.

I took a nifty test, as a bit of a pick-me-up. It required registering, but it was free, so, yay.

VIA Signature Strengths Test

Your Top Strength
Appreciation of beauty and excellence.
You notice and appreciate beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in all domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.

Your Second Strength
Judgment, critical thinking, and open-mindedness
Thinking things through and examining them from all sides are important aspects of who you are. You do not jump to conclusions, and you rely only on solid evidence to make your decisions. You are able to change your mind.

Your Third Strength
Love of learning
You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.

Your Fourth Strength
Curiosity and interest in the world
You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery.

Your Fifth Strength
Hope, optimism, and future-mindedness
You expect the best in the future, and you work to achieve it. You believe that the future is something that you can control.

*************

Winter always presents two problems for me: it gets bloody cold, and it gets dark too soon. The lobby here at work isn't very well-insulated, or well-heated, so I tend to spend my work hours curled in a chair in front of a space-heater, wearing my coat. It also tends to be fairly chilly at home, so I sleep in more, simply because it's very very cozy under the covers and I know it's the warmest I'll be all day.

It's almost always sunset before I get up, so I'm getting less exercise than I became used to this autumn, as the nature preserve closes at sunset on the dot. I miss my regular hikes, and I still miss my martial arts classes. I want to get out and be doing things, but my car is still being stubbourn. The present problem is that the passenger-side window decided it wanted to hide and not come up out of the door, which means if I drive even the mile between my Dad's place and work, my hands become completely numb (which is not good, what with steering at all...), so, all trips anywhere aside from work and back are kind of out of the question, right now, anyway.

On the bright side, it should be fixed by tomorrow afternoon. Also on the bright side, in spite of the cold, Winter does have a beauty to it, especially around sunrise. I have green tea and instant miso soup to keep me warm, and am keeping myself entertained by playing Disgaea on my Nintentdo DS (Thank you anastras and taytheer for getting it for me!), studying my vocab, and watching The Saddest Music in the World. In spite of the title, something about the movie cheers me up. It's a good thing to watch when it occurrs to me that I might be taking myself too seriously (which was happening entirely too often for my comfort for a few months, there). :-P I highly recommend it for anyone who likes morbid comedy and classic film. It was made in '03, but as if it were made in the early 30's, right down to the slightly-grainy, black-and-white picture, acting styles and dialogue that come over as a tad old-fashioned, and enough irreverence and sex to make any fan of pre-codes happy. It also has Isabella Rossalini as the sexy femme fatal, Mark McKinney as a wise-cracking and cold-heartedly optimistic New York producer, and Maria de Medeiros as his amnesiac nymphomaniac girlfriend. Good stuff. ^_^