Square One

Socialising

2009-06-16T15:55:00.003Z

In the past few weeks, I have had something approaching a social life. I spent a lovely day with Rosemary Riveter and her parents, and we went to the current exhibition in the Queen's Gallery (The Conversation Piece: Scenes of Fashionable Life. It was good, especially as Rosie looks at pictures for about as long as I do.)

Then later in the week, I went to the knit night at K1 Yarns, which was very pleasant. I met lots of lovely people, including Wendy aka Tartanqueen, who I know from Ravelry. I also got quite a lot of sock knitted simply because I could knit uninterrupted for a couple of hours. I wasn't able to go back last week because I had to collect my bike (it was in the workshop - I managed to break the axle!) but I'm sure I will return. And I'll bring my crocheted guinea pig as requested.

Last weekend my parents-in-law made a flying visit. J took Friday off work to entertain them, which was just as well since somehow I failed to realise in advance that they were leaving on Sunday morning. (Whenever I think I'm getting better at knowing what's going on and organising myself accordingly, I do something like this.)

Despite this, we had a nice time, I think, if somewhat low-key.

All this socialising is very nice, but it is causing me to think that I am on holiday. Which I'm not. Soon I will have to get seriously going on my thesis (I'm still in the writing-vague-plans stage) and this is making me a bit nervous.

However, this week I will genuinely be on holiday at least some of the time. We are going up to Crieff for a few days. Crieff has the advantage of perfect, perfect familiarity; there is plenty to do if you want it, or you could just go for walks. Or sit and read books. No pressure.

We are taking the guinea pigs with us. I'll let you know how that goes...

Time passes

2009-06-07T22:09:00.002Z

That was not meant to be a nearly three-month hiatus.

I didn’t feel much like blogging for a while. I was doing a big project at work which was stressing me out, and was working late a lot and then coming home and feeling that I had no brain or energy left to blog with. Yeah, I know; I only work three days a week. There we go.

2009 has been a depressing kind of year in so many ways, which has probably contributed to making me feel that I want to draw my head in, like a tortoise. It’s not had too much of an impact on J and me; we still have our jobs, and we’re doing OK. J has been feeling well enough to go to work for much of this year, as well, which is fantastic, although tiring in its own way as he has needed a lot of support. We’re beginning to feel we might be able to do grown-up things like book exciting holidays and actually expect J to be well enough to go, but we’ve been so tired out by the daily round that we just don’t feel like it. Yet. Things are getting better.

What happened in the past three months? Let’s see. We redecorated the entrance hall/stairway/landing of our house, and hung some pictures up. I did quite a lot of work in the garden, mostly on the lawn (boring) but also growing vegetables from seed and some flowers.

We did a lot of cycling and fitted panniers to J’s bike so that he can carry more stuff on it – I’ve had panniers for a long time and they do make a bike a lot more useful. We visited my brother in Dumfriesshire, which was lovely and very relaxing. I read quite a lot of books and did some knitting.

I completed the six-month fitness course in the gym; at the end of it, I still hadn’t lost any significant weight, although I was running a good bit faster and lifting heavier weights. A couple of weeks later, feeling my motivation starting to sag a bit, I had a couple of sessions with a personal trainer. This resulted in a new programme which relies almost entirely on free weights rather than machines, and a different sort of interval training (much shorter intervals, but higher intensity).

The new programme is interesting, and I enjoy it while I’m doing it, but it is definitely more demanding and takes longer to do than my old routine. Instead of having different days for upper and lower body, I do all the muscle groups every time. I know that the old programme wasn’t having quite the impact I wanted, but sometimes the new one feels like a lot to tackle in one session.

For that reason, a few weeks ago I took a break from it until my big work project was finished. I know that exercise is supposed to give you more energy, but if I’m too exhausted to do anything else, then it’s not working. I’ll be resuming this week, but if it continues to be too difficult to keep up, I will think about following the same basic outlines but splitting up the exercises into upper/lower body days to make the overall routine shorter. It won’t be as high-impact, but it will have more impact than not doing it because it’s too much!

The piggies are in good health and are not suffering from exhaustion in the slightest.

Summer has arrived in Scotland and last weekend we went to the beach and swam in the sea. No photographs were taken of this. This is what the sky looked like that weekend, though. It’s not so hot now, but still feels like summer – maybe the second half of 2009 will be a bit more promising?

Pounding away

2009-03-24T11:28:00.002Z

I've now completed three-and-a-third weeks of the six-week fitness challenge I signed up for at the gym. It's going pretty well, I think. As usual, I'm enjoying the weights more than the running. but the running is all right, especially since I started remembering to bring my headphones with me. I can't listen to music while running on a treadmill (I always try to match the rhythm of the music, not the treadmill, which isn't a great idea) but I can watch TV. Countdown is surprisingly good to run to - all those ticking clocks make the time go by more quickly!

I'm noticing the same patterns I remember from before: lower-body exercises are easy; upper-body exercises that use free weights (all dumbbells in this case) are harder but progress is being made; and upper-body exercises that use machines are hard and deeply unrewarding. I think it may be simply that the machines are designed to accommodate much broader shoulders, but aren't adjustable in that direction. Maybe I need to find dumbbell exercises to replace those, too.

The only disadvantage to the dumbbell exercises is, again, perfectly familiar - I'm always the only girl in the bench gym. I'm really not sure why, as you do see the occasional woman in the Olympic gym, and lots of women use the machines. Or maybe the place is full of women on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and I just don't see them...

I've been increasing the weights for every exercise except the dreaded upper-body machines, and I've increased my average speed for the interval training. I've also noticed an improvement while cycling. I haven't lost any weight to speak of, though. Hmmmm.

The disadvantage of all this gymming is that I tend to come home pretty tired, which has (as you can see) had a knock-on effect on my blogging. Often I just don't feel like turning the computer on. Maybe this will change as my fitness levels improve - let's hope so.

Notwithstanding my poor blogging record lately, I seem to have garnered an award.

I know for some people this sort of thing is old hat, but I have never (to my knowledge) been given an award before! Thank you, Warty Mammal.

1. Put the logo on your blog or post
2. Nominate at least 10 blogs which show great Attitude and/or Gratitude!
3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link to the person from whom you received your award.

Actually, I will need to think about who to hand it on to. And work out whether I am being recognised for my attitude or my gratitude. I think I probably do better on the latter.

A blogless month

2009-03-09T23:33:00.002Z

Yes. OK. I don't think the February daily posts were meant to be. It's been a while since I've gone a month without posting at all.

February was a rather depressing month in many ways. The weather was horrible. Lots of credit crunchiness on the news and on everyone's blogs, and the Australian bushfires. We are lucky not to live in such a flammable country; we're also lucky in that we, personally, haven't felt the effects of the economy in any serious way.

Lucky in many ways, in fact. I wish everyone else wasn't having such a bad time, though. (We're also worried about J's grandfather, who hasn't been well.)

What have I been doing while I wasn't blogging? Well, J's brother visited and we went for a snowy walk at Vane Farm, a nature reserve in Tayside.

(Click to go to my Flickr and a lot more photos - it was a beautiful day).

Then his parents came up for a weekend and we went to Crail (in Fife). J's grandfather was stationed there during WWII, so it has a bit of historical interest for the family. (This photograph does not fully capture how cold and windy it was.)

Apart from that, I did a lot of knitting:

This is my latest - the Halley's Comet Hat designed by Marnie McLean. It has a pretty flower (or comet, I suppose) on the top:

It's the first lacy pattern I've knitted and I'm very pleased with it. I also went to the Woolfish festival in St Abb's on Saturday and bought lovely handpainted and hand-dyed sock wool, so probably more socks are on the way...

The other thing I did this month is get back into the gym. My old gym is offering six-week basic training programmes, including a free one-hour induction. I've been out of the gym long enough that I felt I needed a refresher course, so I signed up. The induction was excellent (thanks, Bob) and I'm now halfway through my second week of weights and interval training on the treadmill.

I'm somewhat irritated by how weak and slow I am, but nonetheless, I've now been running more times than in the whole of 2008!

My fourth blogiversary was last week. 2008 was not a good year for fitness, mostly because I was working too hard (I seem to remember this happened last time I did a Master's degree...) Let's see if 2009 can be better.

Thinking of Australia

2009-02-09T23:41:00.003Z

It's hard to know what to say about the fires in southern Australia. So many killed, and so many more homeless; and it's still going on. Even for those who are safe, it's such a terrible thing to have to contemplate.

Words just fail. But we are thinking of you, Australians.

I didn't post over the weekend, though I started writing an entry which I still haven't finished. Maybe tomorrow.

Six things

2009-02-06T23:52:00.001Z

The Holistic Knitter (in her guise of http://lyndasbookblog.blogspot.com/) has tagged me for a meme. I do memes all the time on LJ, but I'm not sure anyone's ever actually tagged me before! Here are the rules:

Link to the person who has tagged you.Write down six things that make you happy.Post the rules, tag six others and let them know you did it.Then tell the person when your entry is complete.

1 Reading. This must have brought me more pleasure in life than any other activity, since I've been doing it constantly from an early age. I am shamelessly addicted to stories; although I enjoy non-fiction as well, there is nothing quite like having a new book from a favourite author. I always have a book in my bag, and love reading on-screen more than I ever thought I would, as well.
2 My family - see last entry: my parents are pretty nice too :) I include J's family, who are the best in-laws one could ask for.
3 Reading in the bath. This may be a subset of number 1, but there is no better place to read. My ideal bath is deep, and the water is hot enough to last at least 100 pages. Sadly, with environmental considerations (and because I'm so busy) I mostly have showers these days. Haven't worked out how to read in those.
4 The natural world, and our imitations of it in gardens and parks. I love flowers, and I love... landscape. Woods, hills, shores. I'm fortunate enough to live in a place where all of these are fairly easy to get to.
5 Making things. Whether it's baking, drawing, sewing or knitting, or just putting flat-pack furniture together, I find the process very satisfying. I am always disproportionately pleased with the results, maybe because I don't truly believe it's going to work.
6 Sitting in cafés. This may be a slightly odd one. I like good coffee, but it's not just that; I enjoy sitting in a place apart from the cares of home or work for a bit, whether I'm with friends or on my own just reading or people-watching.

Tagging. Hmmm. As I've never been tagged, I don't think I've ever tagged, either. Isabelle, scoliyogi, Rosemary Grace, Loth, Jeni and Anna - please don't feel obliged, but I'm waving at you.

Siblings

2009-02-05T23:45:00.003Z

My sister's company moved offices a week or so ago, and handily for me, her new workplace is a stone's throw from mine - I can even see part of the building out of my office window. So we've decided to have a sisterly lunch every Thursday. This week, my brother was in town as well, and he came along too.

I get on well with both my sibs, though we're all very different. I will never be either as organised, imaginative, or stylish as my sister, and I'll never be as witty or grounded as my brother. They're very good company.

We've always got on well. Apparently when my sister was brought home from the hospital, I thought she was the best thing ever, and she was my boss from then on. When my brother arrived, she and I instantly co-opted him as an extra doll. The poor kid spent the first few years being dressed up in a variety of outfits, put in a doll's pram, and arbitrarily re-named for whatever imaginary game we were playing.

We did this a lot. My sister was always the guiding spirit, and there are plenty of pictures of us dressed up to play circuses, schools or Peter Pan. We also drew and made things with paper and sellotape ("There are lots of little bits of paper all over the carpet again...") and built intricate structures out of Lego. We didn't always do the same things - my brother was a big car enthusiast from an early age - but we did often play together, and were closer than most siblings I know. I'm glad we all still like each other!

This photo was taken almost 22 years ago - I'm seven, and the others are almost six and two. Doesn't the weather look lovely?

It is minus 5 degrees (only celsius, but still) outside at the moment. It seems impossible that sandal weather will ever arrive again. But it will. Patience.

What we did at the weekend

2009-02-04T22:45:00.007Z

I may not have mentioned this before, but my husband has a lively interest in audiovisual and broadcasting technology. Not just the programmes, but the methods of transmission and recording. He also likes to be well-supplied with equipment for receiving and recording transmissions, though he doesn't require it to be new - in fact, he'd rather have something old if he can get it to work. He also likes his hi-fi to sound as good as possible.

As a result, this is what the corner of the sitting room looked like until last Saturday. Lots of boxes and wires.I'm certain that I've mentioned that the TV in the picture above was on the blink. Latterly, it was switching itself off almost immediately after being switched on, which made watching it a bit difficult.

However, the corner of the sitting room now looks like this. Better, isn't it?

(That's an episode of Frasier - the one where a basketball player rubs Niles's head for good luck.)

It took a while to select and buy the TV, partly because we are cautious people when it comes to buying new stuff, and partly because it is impossible to buy new cathode ray TVs any more, and the flat ones seem to sell out very quickly. However, the decision to buy a corner unit was taken and carried out in about 24 hours, mostly because a family trip to IKEA happened to coincide with TV Delivery Day. (If you're reading, Shauna, it's a Leksvik.) I'm so glad we went for it.

Still, you're not interested in our TV. What you really want to know is whether Linds's carrot cake turned out well.

I think this picture speaks for itself. (Goodness, Cupcake looks huge. Maybe she's actually an albino wombat or something.)

Better day

2009-02-03T23:00:00.001Z

The snow was all gone by the morning. I'm sure that the high spirits were just because this much snow is so rare, as Anna said in the comments. It's not often that there's enough snow for a snowball here (and there still wasn't really enough for good snowman-building).

Earlier in the day I had walked into town along the bike path. I wouldn't have dared to bike in the snow, but some hardy souls evidently had, from the tracks. It was fairly pleasant walking, as the track had hardly been used, so the snow was still white and "dry". There were a few footprints, covered over a little; by the time I had been to Homebase and returned, my outward footprints had disappeared under more snow. (This probably doesn't seem unusual if you live in a snowy country.)

I was buying matchpots (for the ongoing hall-redecoration project), tie-back hooks, and two underbed storage boxes. I slightly regretted this as I was trying to walk home carrying two unwieldy plastic boxes - fortunately not heavy. But it's worth it. I now have a tidy bedroom. When I got home I hemmed the new red curtains for the spare room and hung them up, and they look very good. So it was a pretty productive day, really, up until the trauma.

Today wasn't quite so productive, although I did manage to paint the matchpots on to the wall (they look completely different in the light conditions at the top and bottom of the stairs - it's so confusing). And I made this carrot cake. I like baking, but we tend to make the same three cakes over and over, and they're all out of How To Be A Domestic Goddess. Time to branch out.

My brother-in-law is coming at the weekend, so we had an excuse. I hope he likes carrot cake. This is a BIG mixture - we got a loaf tin and nine largish cupcakes out of it. The icing is delicious, though we haven't actually tasted the cake yet! Aren't we restrained?

Mixed kind of day

2009-02-02T23:46:00.001Z

At about 6pm today, I was all set to write a nice upbeat post about the constructive day I'd had - I got quite a lot done and went for a snowy walk. Apparently Britain has had more snow today than it has for eighteen years!

Then, just as I was waiting for J to come home from work, some boys came past our house and decided to pelt our windows with snowballs. Big teenagers. Hard.

We live in an area of Edinburgh which used to have a bad reputation, and is undergoing regeneration. I've honestly never had any regrets about moving here, or much to complain of regarding neighbourly behaviour. We live between a young doctor and a retired couple. The place seems perfectly civilised.

This didn't. When I heard the boys throwing snowballs at the elderly couple's house next door, I went to the window to see what was happening, which was obviously a mistake. I'm sure it wasn't personal, and I'm sure it was just high spirits really, but they were shouting and swearing and I was genuinely frightened that the windows were going to break. I don't think they could tell how much noise it made for the person inside.

I ended up calling my mum and the local police, in that order (but by then the boys had moved off). The policeman on the phone said that they were getting a lot of similar complaints - and it was happening all over Edinburgh - and they had just sent a police car to patrol the streets, but they wouldn't send anyone out to our house unless we had property damage. Which was fine. Nothing to see here. The boys didn't come back.

J came home just after that, and we had our tea and watched University Challenge and I felt a bit better, but he's now worried that our windows will be broken when we aren't here. He's rationalised that we are under pretty much constant surveillance from the old people's home across the road, so disaster is unlikely to occur, but he's unnerved.

So maybe you'll get a cheery upbeat blog tomorrow. I like snow, and I like people, but I'm feeling a little bit jaded about both just at the moment.

So that was January

2009-02-01T23:41:00.002Z

Oh, I didn't post much, did I?

One reason is that I haven't been doing anything for my course, so I haven't had the computer on nearly as much. The other is that I've been unusually tired, and haven't really done much to blog about or felt like blogging. I have been twittering a bit, and if you read them you might have noticed that notable events this month have mostly involved falling off my bike.

Right. New month, new resolutions to blog properly and get on with things. I successfully did NaBloPoMo last November (one post per day for the whole month). Let's see if I can do it again. February is a short month, anyway.

In months that aren't November, NaBloPoMo does themes. This month's is WANT. So here goes. In February, I want to blog daily and I don't want to fall off my bike again.

January doesn't bring the snow yet

2009-01-13T21:34:00.004Z

We didn't have a terribly wonderful start to the New Year - J was feeling very down after we got back from his parents, and didn't manage to get in to work all week. But he seems to be recovering from this setback much more quickly than he normally does.

He hadn't seen his cognitive therapist for a couple of weeks because of being away, and was beginning to feel that the therapy wasn't really helping. After his session on Thursday, he was considering not going back. However, he IS going back. She said at the session that he may need to accept that there are times when his depression will be bad enough that it gets in the way of making progress, and to learn to wait it out, rather than blaming himself or despairing.

He's also supposed to build something enjoyable into every day. This would be easier if he weren't so tired in the evenings, but we're working on it.

Last weekend he decided that he needs to do things that will have a visual result, and consequently has started painting the woodwork in the hall as a preliminary to redecorating the walls. This is excellent. We've been meaning to paint over the multitudinous scrapes and handprints since we got here, but put the hall off till last since it's an awkward area - the stairs are narrow and it's pretty much impossible to go up or down if someone's painting there.

He's finished the banisters already. Now to start thinking about colours for the walls. He fancies pink, which I have some trouble envisaging, so I see shade cards and test pots in our future.

Apart from this impressive progress towards an Ideal Home, he's been really pretty sanguine and resilient, has gone into work twice - well, it's only Tuesday - and has recovered quickly from daily frustrations (such as phoning Orange customer services) which would ordinarily cast him into gloom. I'm cautiously optimistic about the rest of the week.

For the last few days I've been very tired, partly because it's been that time of the month, partly... I don't know why. I've been to bed at a decent hour and everything. The past couple of days have been spent mostly in desultory tidying, the kind that doesn't have the visual result J finds so important. (I really don't like tidying, but it will be worth it.)

Which is to say I haven't been to the gym yet. I am going to at least phone them about renewing my membership before the week is out, though.

Resolution time

2009-01-08T21:45:00.002Z

Happy New Year, everybody (only 8 days late!)

I got back to Edinburgh on Sunday and rather hit the ground running - Monday and Tuesday were spent frantically springcleaning the house (or removing the pall of very fine sawdust that the guinea pigs generate) and since yesterday I've been back at work. I had a very nice restful time over Christmas and New Year, but the restorative effect has worn off rather quickly.

I have an awful lot of New Year's resolutions. It's more like a to-do list. This is probably bad.

* Finish my degree
* Redecorate parts of the house (paint the hall, get rid of the awful dirty-beige living room carpet)
* Sort out all the stuff in the cupboard in the study, ditto the spare room, and rationalise it
* Go on holiday somewhere that is not Britain
* Spend more time making things
* Revamp this blog so it looks less 2001 (it didn't even exist in 2001...)
* Read more widely
* Eat more healthily, avoiding chocolate biscuits
* GET BACK INTO THE GYM THREE TIMES A WEEK

Yes, the last one is deserving of those capitals. 2008 was not a good year for fitness in the slightest. I spent the first half of it with sore feet, and once I got my insoles I went running twice. Not stellar. I hardly did any weights and basically depended on cycling to remind me that I like to move, and it wasn't enough.

That, combined with spending three days a week in a room with a constantly replenished tin of chocolate biscuits, has not been good for the body. Weight-wise, I'm about back where I started back in 2005 - slightly fitter, perhaps, but still. It may not be a coincidence that at this point I had not long finished a postgraduate degree, and that during my university career I had depended largely on cycling as my exercise. I am somewhat frustrated to be right back wher eI started. (Maybe I should have called this blog something indicating that I intended to learn from the past?)

Anyway. This period of my life is over. The biscuit tin at work officially no longer exists. (That red thing over there? Just an optical illusion.)

As for the exercise... well, I managed to hurt myself on Monday in an incident involving a fully loaded drawer. I pulled it out too far and then leant in and grabbed it, preventing it from squashing my feet and kneecapping me on the way, but wrenching something in my lower back. Not my finest moment. However, it's feeling a lot better now and if all goes well, I'm hoping to get back on a treadmill by next week.

The frozen south

2008-12-31T12:09:00.002Z

Hello, people! I am blogging from the frosty Midlands, where I'm staying with J's family.

I came out of the other end of Assignment Time and was instantly plunged into finishing up my Christmas shopping, and then socialising with my friends and relations. So I haven't had a lot of time to blog. But I had a lovely Christmas in Edinburgh with J, my parents, siblings and cousins, and then came down to Worcester to spend New Year with the in-laws. It's very chilly, but we've been out for walks and around the town, and seen some friends and their children.

I got lots of lovely books for Christmas:

Diplomatic Immunity (Lois McMaster Bujold)
The Ghost Brigades (John Scalzi)
Beauty and Spindle's End (Robin McKinley)

I've read the first two already, and reviews may be forthcoming shortly on the other blog. Meanwhile I am rereading Bellwether by Connie Willis, as I need a break between all these new stories.

I am being summoned to have a cup of tea - a major part of activities when staying with my in-laws. I'll be back home on the 5th.

Busy busy busy

2008-12-16T20:46:00.005Z

I have two assignments to hand in on Saturday, so have not had a lot of time to blog. Or a lot of time to do things that are blogworthy. Or to do any Christmas shopping.

There's always time to cuddle the guinea pigs.

On the other hand, I got an early Christmas present yesterday when my Bookbloggers' Christmas Swap parcel arrived from Mariel of Troubles Melt Like Lemon Drops. Thank you very much, Mariel!

(You may contend that I am not a bookblogger. However, if you look to your right, there's a link to something called Bibliomane, and I do sometimes blog about books there. I'm hoping to have more time and brain to write proper reviews when I'm finished with all this studying.)

As you can see, my parcel contained a copy of The Gift by Alison Croggon - an Australian writer and poet I haven't heard of before, but the book sounds like my sort of thing.

It also contained these fabulous digital socks.

I have something of a sock addiction which goes beyond a desire to have warm feet. In the winter I particularly like knee socks, which these are (moreover, they're knee socks which stay up). So I'm very pleased with these indeed. They are also so very loud and cheery that I smile every time I look down.

My last day of work is tomorrow, but from then until the weekend, I will be determinedly writing essays about Scottish Local Government. I'll see you on the other side. I can do it, with the help of my new socks -

- and my lovely assistant.

Took a week off

2008-12-08T10:36:00.000Z

I didn't mean to. I think the first week in December must be relatively unblogged, since so many people are recovering from NaBloPoMo.

I don't have any terrific excuses, other than being up to my ears in work (but then I always am).

My parents-in-law came to stay for the weekend. It was good to see them, and also good that J could show them, in person, that he's making progress. It's been very difficult for them over the past months, being at a distance.

J is still plugging away at his therapy, and does seem to be getting somewhat better at leaving the house with less checking. It's still there, but it's not taking him so long and he's managed to stop some checks altogether.

I have nothing profound to say. Here, have a video of a talented mouse.

Wet pigs

2008-11-30T23:46:00.000Z

I've just finished clearing up after the daunting task of giving the guinea pigs a bath. They do not consider this a fun way of spending a Sunday evening. In fact, they usually protest loudly and either cower pitifully in the bath and shudder (Cupcake), try to run away up the sloping end of the bath, giving the illusion of running on a treadmill (Pumpkin) or demonstrate just how high a pig can jump when desperate (Brownie).
But on this occasion they were very good and I'm only lightly scratched. We have to shampoo them periodically to ward off fungal skin infections, which Cupcake and Pumpkin had earlier this year. Otherwise I wouldn't bother - we never washed our previous guinea pigs and they kept themselves perfectly clean, cat-fashion.

They do look nice and fluffy once they've been towelled off and blowdried (on a VERY gentle setting, with the dryer held at a distance!) And Cupcake always looks beautifully white when she's dry, like a washing-powder advert.

I think they've forgiven us. Maybe.

This is my last entry for NaBloPoMo. I did it! I posted every day for 30 days. It may all have been piffle, but it's nice to know I can do it.

I'm going to have some time off work this week - will we see if I can keep this posting up? I suspect I won't, but I think I've proved I do have time to post more often than I did before this month.

Frosty day

2008-11-29T23:26:00.003Z

It is really cold tonight. I've just been out in the garden (to empty our collected vegetable peelings into the composter) and the grass was crunchy and the birdbath was frozen over. It's supposed to be -4°C according to the weather forecast.

We went into town to meet our friend S this morning as planned, which involved getting up rather earlier than we normally would on a Saturday. But it was worth it. The morning was crisp and sunny (though not warm) and we had a very nice breakfast in the Southern Cross café in Cockburn Street. I'm pretty sure this particular café was chosen because it was the first one we encountered on the way from the station, and I do not function very well before I've had my breakfast.

I don't normally have croissants or hot chocolate for breakfast - which is perhaps just as well - but it's nice as an occasional treat!

S is a serious globetrotter, at least compared to us. He had been in Germany and France the previous two weekends, and has also recently been to China (in fact, I've never been able to mention anywhere he hasn't been). We aren't nearly so good at booking holidays. When we mentioned this, he said "Why, what's so difficult about it?" and we didn't have a very good answer.

One reason is that J gets stressed by the prospect of leaving home (and his piggies) but that isn't the whole reason. I like travelling, but I'm not confident about organising it myself, especially if someone else is going to have to put up with my decisions (what if I choose terrible accommodation? what if the place I decide to go is really boring?)

Also, I've not had a lot of time off from the degree in the last two years. Maybe once it's over, we will organise more trips.

We stayed up town for a while and bought J some new swimming shorts. He claims to have had his old ones since he was either eleven or thirteen (he can't remember) and years of chlorine has faded them from navy blue to a sort of greyish purple. Late November isn't the best time to buy swimming shorts, but in the end we did manage to track some down. Unfortunately, we didn't actually have time to go swimming after all that. Still, now we have the kit, there's no excuse not to go!

Unbounded domesticity

2008-11-28T23:44:00.003Z

I've spent the last couple of hours making two banana loaf cakes and an apple pie, with J's help. ("It's the opposite of making meals," he said. "You're in charge and I'm the sous-chef.") All this is in aid of our parents; mine are coming to Sunday lunch (with my sister and Granny) and his are coming for the weekend. Not this coming one, but the next one. The freezer is a great invention.

The banana cake is the recipe from good old How To Be A Domestic Goddess. I hated the title when it first came out - I don't feel I was born to domestic goddesshood, or even priestesshood - but I've made more stuff from it than any other cookbook we own. I find the recipes easy to follow and not nearly as prescriptive as some; there's a certain willingness to accept that you might not have the exact ingredients to hand, or that you might want to experiment. In any case, the banana cake seems to be foolproof. We've made it many times with and without sultanas, and with slightly more or less banana than the recipe suggests, and we've always ended up with a tasty cake.

I've started to think about Christmas - December isn't far away now. Advent is one of my favourite times of year, and we've already got our Advent calendar ready. And as you can see, I've churned out a couple more little woollen heart ornaments in odd moments. I like having a finished object after less than an hour's knitting!

Tomorrow we are going to meet a friend for brunch (his term; I don't really move in brunching circles) and maybe go swimming. I haven't been swimming for ages. This may depend on whether I can find my swimsuit.

Nothingy kind of day

2008-11-27T23:43:00.000Z

Today was blissfully free from incidents, but it hasn't left me a lot to write about. J is still cheerful. I went to work, and nothing much happened there either. I knitted a small Christmas tree ornament (that's what I'm using it for, anyway) in my lunch hour.

On the way back from work, I got very very wet. And cold. This is the first day I've got caught in seriously wintry weather. Fortunately for me, I had changed (I don't always on the way home) and had my hi-vis waterproof jacket on, so the wetness restricted itself to my trousers, which I then changed when I got in.

I'm not feeling under the weather any more. See, I have a superior immune system. Or I'm just lucky. Or my body knows I'm too busy to be ill. Or something.

The lurgy of Damocles?

2008-11-26T23:44:00.004Z

Unfortunately, I am still feeling a bit tired and headachy - well, achy in general, in fact. Perhaps I am incubating the bug everyone else seems to have. If so, it's somewhat irritating, since it seems only a couple of weeks since I recovered from the last time I was ill (actually, it was mid-October). My ears seem a little blocked up and my head feels a bit... heavy... although I don't have any cold-type symptoms.

The head wasn't helped a great deal by the office being extremely hot today. Apparently, it was freezing in there yesterday, and they got someone to come and turn all the radiators up. Well, it worked - possibly too well. It's an old building and the room has several cold spots, all of which seem to affect my colleagues and not me, so I don't feel I can ask them to open a window and freeze for my sake.

Anyway, when I came home, J made the tea and I sat on the sofa and knitted (I've got half my scarf done now) and then watched Heroes, which was very exciting, of course.

The TV switched itself off several times during what was evidently a silent montage of various of the characters watching the eclipse (a Meaningful Moment) which perhaps wasn't terribly helpful of it. We're quite used to this quirk it has, and we've got cable, so if we route the sound through J's hi-fi setup the sound doesn't vanish when the picture does. University Challenge works OK as radio, but Heroes definitely suffers a bit. Perhaps we need to bite the bullet and find a new TV.

Right now, however, I'm going to bed. Night night.

Sunny day

2008-11-25T23:16:00.002Z

It was a beautiful day today, with bright blue skies and golden light. It was pretty chilly, though, and there was still frost in the shade at lunchtime. I went out to buy some groceries, came back into the house and thought "Good, it's lovely and warm in here." Then I noticed that the thermometer in the living room was showing 14° C. The guinea pigs were all piled into their little wooden house in a big furry lump.

Whether the cold had anything to do with it or not, I've been a bit headachy all evening. I used to get them all the time, but it's been a while. It's a bit better now, but nevertheless I am going to have a relaxing bath and go to bed. With a hot water bottle. I think the pigs have the right idea.

In which I develop professionally

2008-11-24T23:01:00.004Z

I went to a one-day training seminar today (on Financial Records). It was a lot more fun than it sounds. My previous job was in the archives of a bank, and when I started, I was prepared for it to be very boring. So I was amused when the archivist leading the seminar also admitted that when he started his job, he thought exactly the same thing.

The practical session, in which we got to look at some real account books and ledgers, was particularly satisfying. My current job is interesting and challenging, but it's almost entirely hands-off, and I do miss working directly with records.

It was also good to meet up with several former colleagues and catch up. One of my current colleagues was also there, and she asked if I was going to claim back a day of leave, since I don't usually work on Mondays. J asked me the same. Perhaps I missed a trick there - it never occurred to me.

I'm not very good at using up all my leave anyway. When you're only at work three days a week, it never seems like a good idea to take a Friday off without a special reason, because that will make the working week so short that it'll be stressful to fit everything in. And I'm never quite sure I won't want the leave at a later point. It's the same rationale which leads to keeping things (bath gel, craft materials) rather than using them up, because they are too good to waste.

It's a silly thing to do, though, because craft materials are doing no good in a drawer, and bath gel will go off eventually (I know, because I've managed to keep it long enough that it did). And if I don't use my leave, I lose it - I can only carry over five days, and I don't get paid any extra for not using it.

I'm not sure I'm going to be able to fit in the extra leave days before January, but maybe I should make a New Year's resolution to make use of what I've got, while the opportunity is there.

Light on the horizon?

2008-11-23T22:43:00.004Z

J has been a lot better all this week, and has been to work for the whole week and been generally cheerful.

What's more, as we were making our way into town yesterday, he said to me that he now believes he can get better. It may seem like a small thing, but for so long he has been completely without hope. It's understandable that he would become discouraged after such a long period of depression, and so many attempts to treat it. But it made it very hard for him to motivate himself for the hard work of getting better.

He's not cured yet (if you can talk in terms of a cure for depression). He may have achieved a lot this week, but it's been at the cost of a lot of OCD checking. However, he's not been completely derailed by the checking, and he has managed to go into work even if he knew he'd be a bit late. In the past, he's tended to see lateness as a complete disaster, and just as bad as not arriving at all. That's not helpful.

But still! He's been to work every day, cycling nine miles each way; he's managed to come to a decision and buy a digital camera, some new jeans and warm gloves; he's caulked some crevices in the guinea pigs' run; he's kept filling in his CBT tables; and he's not been thrown into gloom by our TV being on the blink and the video recorder not working. I think this may be more than I've achieved this week.

I have, however, now made it through all but a week of NaBloPoMo. Again, I've got some way to go, but I can see the end in sight!

We have a working camera

2008-11-22T23:20:00.008Z

And we like it a lot. We've just spent the past hour taking pictures of our little housemates.

Whether they are overjoyed to be co-opted as photographic models is a bit uncertain, but we're quite pleased with the results, given that we haven't yet memorised all of the manual, and were taking these photos after dark, in rather dim conditions.

We're particularly impressed with the macro setting, which is excellent for showing the details of fur and whiskers.

Guinea pigs are somewhat ludicrous animals. It's hard to imagine how they could have evolved, given that their main purpose seems to be to squeak loudly and bumble around. But we love our three very much.

We spent most of the daylight hours today in town, buying clothes - cords for me, jeans for both of us and - finally! - new tracksuit trousers to replace my aged and ragged ones. It took a while to find any which were warm, decent and black, but BhS finally provided some for only £12, which seems pretty cheap.

I'm not so thrilled about the jeans, since they serve to prove that irritating quotation about it being difficult to have both a finely honed mind and a finely honed body. Postgraduate study is bad for both one's physical fitness and the fit of one's jeans. (These ones are the same size as my old ones according to the label, but in a more forgiving cut.)

I've always found buying jeans frustrating, but it's even more annoying when I know that if I'd kept up my maintenance efforts successfully, I wouldn't need to be doing this. But there's no point in dwelling on it. I don't have much time at the moment, and weight loss is not top priority, and there's no way it can be. When I finish this degree, I will get back to it. In the meantime, well, I need to wear something.

The piggies don't worry about their weight. If you're a guinea pig, you're supposed to be rounded.