Hibernating Cat Is Hibernating

I'm totally antisocial at the moment. I might've turned into a hermit. I blame January.

That said, I seem to either be less stressed or just coping better, I didn't have as many braindeadness this week. But I'm still not very much in the mood for socialising or even leaving the house. It's gone cold again and until today it was grey & unpleasant outside. So I've basically just been coming home after work & hiding in my room where it's warm & cosy.

I've done yoga 3 times this week & I'm actually starting to want to do it in the evening. I'm quite impressed at myself. Unfortunately my right ankle is kinda borked, it's been all hurty & stiff last week and since then hasn't really recovered. I'm not sure if yoga is favourable or just making it worse, very much hope that I manage to get it sorted (by taking anti-inflammatories) in the next 2 weeks.

After doing my best bear-in-winter impression for most of the week I decided that I have to at least trek into town this weekend for a bit of pre-holiday shopping. I was totally out of white t-shirts (they always seem to die first) and also needed a t-shirt bra or two as my old ones don't fit (to be honest, they never really fitted that well). Cue a bit of a shopping disaster. I got sucked in by the sale at La Senza & ended up buying two bras that I really shouldn't have bought. This shop seems to only sell padded bras anyway & the ones I got my hands on were majorly bolstered. And, being a size 36DD in that shop (turns out I'm only a D at H&M), the last thing I need is any more padding. Trying out these bras under a tight t-shirt at home resulted in a massive giggling fit & some Pam Anderson impressions, but there was just no way I could sensibly wear them on holiday. I'd also found some cheaper & nicer bras at H&M, so those monsters had to be returned. I also got myself a quite cute bikini (blue with white polka dots, 50s style with a little skirt over the bottoms) & misjudged the size of my bottom somewhat & needed a bigger size. AND I got one bra in white that after a bit of thinking I'd rather have in black. All in all, total lingerie chaos.

I was entirely more successful with the t-shirts & even found a blouse or two. I also managed to emerge out of Whole Foods with only the stuff on my shopping list, although I was very tempted to buy the organic curly kale that was sitting in the fresh produce section looking all vibrant green & luscious (I need help). I sourced umeboshi vinegar in the Japan Centre, again without giving in to temptation to buy loads of other stuff as well.

In the evening I cooked a very delicious pumpkin (erm, butternut squash, couldn't find a pumpkin anywhere) noodle casserole, half of which is now in the freezer for days I can't be arsed to cook.

Due to the La Senza situation I bussed it to Westfield today & returned & exchanged stuff. I now have fitting bikini bottoms & a new black bra. The girl in the shop actually told me that I was lucky to find a bra in the sale "in your size" (thank you very much). I'm starting to reconsider shopping there again...

Once I was in the shopping centre it would've been rude not to have a little look around. I've got myself a travel guide for my upcoming trip to India and a new vegan cookbook, with pictures this time. Most of my cookbooks don't have photos of the food in them because I don't need them to know how a dish will taste - just reading the ingredients list does the trick. And my dishes rarely look like they glossy food in the picture, anyway (I'm a bit rubbish at presentation). But I've been so uninspired lately that I figured I need a bit of visual help. I'm looking forward to try some of the dishes & hope they do come out as tasty as they look.

After I got back I got busy doing the laundry & dyeing my hair, I even cooked a stir-fry for tomorrow.

Maybe I just needed a weekend of shopping & taking care of myself.

Lazy Sunday

I'm happy to report that I'm considerably less stressed out & brain-mushed than yesterday. I'm still a long way away from being relaxed & ready to deal with the world, but at least my head doesn't feel like it's packed in bubble-wrap anymore. I don't like that feeling at all.

I didn't trek down to Redhill in the end, felt a bit guilty for letting my friends down, but the combination of a 1 1/2 hour tube/train journey and the prospect of having to socialise with a large group of people was just too much. Instead, Chezza came over & we played silly Wii games until after midnight. I ended the day with a bit of Family Guy & had a nice lie-in this morning. Oh, and I baked cupcakes that I totally forgot to offer to my guest...

Probably due to not really wanting to deal with anything in my life, yesterday was mostly a junk food day. As in, vegan junk food which might be a little bit healthier than omni junk food. But I still feel a bit grossed out at myself today. It's scary how much the way I feel correlates to my body weight. In combination with emotional eating it's a vicious circle - I don't feel happy & eat, then I put on weight, feel even unhappier & eat even more. Hmph. The solution obviously is to feel happy all the time, but I haven't found a way to achieve this yet.

Anyway, I'm planning to have a completely lazy day today to recharge my batteries in order to be able to deal with another week of work. I hate having to do this, work shouldn't interfere with my private life, but at the moment that seems to be impossible. I might try meditating today, I've been reading Eat, Pray, Love recently & the author describes a meditation that simply involves sitting still & smiling. I think I can do that. I also have to cook food for lunch tomorrow, which most likely will be a broccoli udon stir-fry, because I like broccoli & udon. I might eat a cupcake or two, because I made them & they're tasty. I'm watching David Attenborough on TV at the moment, great stuff & feeding my brain in a subtle way.

I've recently discovered Pinterest, which is great visual candy & very inspiring. I might actually sign up & create a few vision boards, I'd love to have one in my room, too, but I'm not sure I would manage to hang anything on to our hard-as-hell walls. And I would have to find a nice board first. I think we've got a mission coming on.

And something I should always bear in mind:

Persistence is not about knocking on one door until the dang thing finally opens.

It's about knocking on all of them.

Knock, knock -
    The Universe

Can I Get Off Now, Please?

It just never ends. Work, that is. I'm still insanely busy & not in a good way. To make things even more challenging, they've reschuffled the channels we're working on & have decided to give each of us 2 channels because obviously we're not busy enough with the one channel we got. My manager it totally convinced I can do this, I'm not. Just as it is my to-do list exceeds 20 items & that's not counting any long-term projects. I'm at maximum capacity if you ask me, but they keep dumping more & more stuff. I've never looked forward to a holiday that much & I honestly hope that those 2 1/2 weeks I'm away are going to be busy as hell so my boss sees how much work I really do.

On a completely different note, I've bought my ticket for BURNING MAN!!! This makes it kinda official that I'm definitely going, with or without friends. Playa, here I come! *squeeeee*

But, believe it or not, the week hasn't been just work. I've met up with Babs for 40%-off sushi goodness at our new favourite YoSushi near Oxford Street. They even have Japanese toilets & of course yours truly had to check out all the functions... The conveyor belt was stacked with the more interesting sushi creations, although I'm still not entirely sure that salmon mince stuff with coriander dressing was such a great idea.

As it is, sushi is my only guilty pleasure when I officially take a break from veganism. One day I hope to even get fish out of my system. I'm still amazed at how much better I feel when not eating meat & dairy (& almost no eggs) & I'm contemplating doing a cleanse once I'm back from holiday to "reset" my body. This would hopefully get me closer to my goal to eat more raw foods as well. But first let me stuff myself with great Indian food :)

Today's plans are to venture down all the way to Redhill for a friend's birthday celebrations. I'm still in two minds if I actually want to do this, but if I don't I'll probably just end up staying in bed all weekend which always makes me feel like I don't have a life at all (although it is quite a nice thought). I also should start stocking up on light-coloured t-shirts for my holiday, the white ones always die before any others & I sort of like the idea of not melting in the sun because I'm wearing all black.

Eat Your (Dark Green, Leafy) Vegetables

Since becoming vegetarian/vegan I've been on an neverending journey of culinary discoveries. I'm now eating more interesting, healthy food than ever before. The fresh produce section of a supermarket seriously excites me & don't even get me started on what a farmer's market does to me. There are so many incredibly tasty foodstuffs around!

Obviously, there are veggies I like more than others, the ones that are my current staples are broccoli, green beans, rocket and, more recently, savoy cabbage (lovely crispy-curlyness). With very few exceptions, I seem to at least tolerate most veggies.

Until recently, one of those exceptions was kale. Just seeing it sitting on the shelf amongst the other dark leafy greens scared me. While pak choi is your gentle smilling chinese guy, kale is the godfather & spinach is its bitch. This paranoia of kale goes back a long way, right into my childhood. There's a German dish consisting of shredded kale, salty beef/pork and potatoes, all cooked forever in a stew (Gruenkohl & Pinkel) which was the nightmare of my childhood. The kale in it, cooked to death & unseasoned, smelled & tasted of freshly mown grass, so my main objective whenever it was on the menu was to get as many potatoes and meat as possible and try to avoid the kale.

I would've happily gone on avoiding any contact with kale, but it started cropping up in quite a few otherwise rather tasty sounding recipes. It's also insanely healthy. So, feeling adventurous & slightly reckless, I bought a bag of kale & then got scared again right away & hid it in my part of the fridge (as much as you can hide a giant ass bag of leaves). It sat there mocking me for another day until I plucked up the courage to do something about it. A bit of googling for appropriate recipes ensued & I emerged with what I thought was a rather inoffensive way of preparing it - Kale Chips.

And what can I say - it's absolutely delicious!!! The oven baked kale (sprinkled with 2 tbsp oil and 2 tsp of season-all & baked for 20 minutes at 200 degrees, in case you're wondering) actually tasted just like crispy seaweed, my all-time Chinese buffet favourite. I was absolutely thrilled & almost ate the whole batch (300g) in one go. I'll be making it again tonight, just to make sure the last time wasn't just a lucky coincidence...

Rather pleased with my results, I'm now contemplating tackling other veggies that I'm currently neglecting. I'm pretty sure that fennel & I are never going to be close friends as it just smells wrong, and I'm not a big fan of celery stalks due to their fibery ribs (although I love the smell of celeriac root, it's instant yummyness), but that can probably be fixed as well if I just find the right recipe. I might try my luck with beetroot next, it just looks so nice & the colour is simply amazing, but I'm not quite sure if I like the taste.

OMG, just think of all the possibilities!!

Tron: Legacy

After quite a long time of abstinence (for my standards), I've made it to the movies again on Tuesday. The film I chose to start the a new year of movie going with was Tron: Legacy, and we went to see it in the IMAX, in sparkling 3D, because this is how this film should be viewed.

If at all.

I've seen the original Tron on TV, sometime when I was a teenager. I remember kinda being impressed by it back then, it was kinda cool & different & geeky. Don't remember much of the story, though, and the sequel seems to have the same issue. The story is just a bit naff, it tries to be geeky & technological, but it just never quite gets there. Basically, in summary, boy gets sucked into computer world ruled by an evil programme, finds long lost father, falls in love, then has to sacrifice long lost father to save himself & the girl.

Ahem.

Don't get me wrong, it's still extremely shiny, and the soundtrack by Daft Punk is impressive and just as 80s as it can be (not sure why anyone would try to be 80s, though).

Did I mention it's shiny?

 

There's an awful lot of light-cycling, light-fighting, light-anything around. It's very, very stylish. It's actually a bit like The Matrix at times, only it's trying too hard and The Matrix did have more of a story (we don't talk about the sequels, really, we don't) and slightly less shiny-ness.


There was some eye-candy around. I definitely appreciate eye-candy.

Olivia Wilde, of House fame (she played "Thirteen"), was tasty. I want that hair. I also want the shoes. Not sure about the suit, but if I had her figure I'd probably go for it as well. I spent at least half of the film wondering where I know her from and then the other half following her every move. Jeff Bridges, on the contrary, was less impressive. Let's just say that CGI still has a long way to go before it looks anything like the real thing and his acting as the father was more like the Dude but in a glow-in-the-dark bathrobe. Not sure who played the son & really don't care that much.

All things considered, it's about 3 out of 5 slightly blue-glowing movie stars. I'd like to be more impressed, but I simply wasn't.

Yes, OK, I'm Stressed

You cannot believe how busy the last few days at work have been. Frantic & mind-numbing doesn't even come near.

I've been churning out reports like a mad-woman, while everybody around me seems to be fairly relaxed & not too busy. I realised that I'm totally stressed out when my brain, when I got asked to talk about one of my recent projects in a meeting, went like this

For a good 30 seconds, I didn't know where I was & what that person opposite me was talking about. Thank god the rush of blood to my brain got me going again, and apparently I've turned it all around quite impressively. But that total blank was scary.

And just when I thought I'd finally had some breathing space, my boss agreed to turn around a report that takes about 1 day just getting the data ready in, you guessed it, a day. I almost burst into tears when he told me. Cue another afternoon & morning of intense busy-ness, but I made it. I produced spreadsheets of doom & in the end wrote a nice 2 pager, telling him to please check the data as, honestly, I wasn't able to tell anymore if it made sense or not. I then had to disappear to a meeting he didn't go to coz he was too busy, but one of us had to go.

Turns out he didn't check the data & the next morning we got hit by an email asking us if a certain percentage is right, because it contradicted something we'd run in another system (which does happen, they're two totally different beasts). So we ended up checking everything, and of course it was just that percentage that everybody wanted to talk about that was wrong (I'd run the data on the wrong time period, go me).

I don't make mistakes very often, but it seems that if I make them, I go for the big, important fuck ups.

We managed to correct everything without looking too stupid, but since then I'm beating myself up about it. Because I'm like that.

By Friday afternoon I was so burned out that I spent the last 4 hours at work just bimbling about, running data & trying to look busy. I really couldn't think anymore.

I so need a holiday.

Friday evening was much better. I went into town after work to meet up with John, we went to that lovely vegetarian South Indian (Sagar) I've been to with Arnon & Cara when they were visiting (it even has a VEGAN menu!!!) & caught up on what's been happening in our lives since we've last met. Really good & it helped de-stress me a little.

Today I trekked over to North London for a bit of Burning Man planning. Cue major excitement (Yay! Squee!). We've sent out emails to the RV companies asking for quotes, and once we've secured a vehicle we'll get on to booking flights & hotel rooms. I'm so looking forward to it, it's going to be so much better than last time because this time I'm involved in the planning.

But first I'm off to India in about 5 weeks. Still need to sort out camera & travel insurance, also need to loose some weight because otherwise I won't have anything to wear.

At least in terms of travel, this year is looking a lot more promising than the last :)

Happy New Year

Happy New Year, everybody! And I'm only 3 days late...

I survived 3 days of work inbetween the festive weekends, picked up my passport (now with shiny new  6 months visa for India) and made it to the Monkey Party. It was a great party indeed. I wouldn't call it epic, but it definitely was a good start to a new year.

I'm not sure if I ever get around to writing a recap of 2010, but it certainly was a year of major ups and downs, it mostly felt like an uphill struggle. Everything was just so much effort.

Last year, I

• fought to get the job that's currently making me happy
• broke a bone for the first time, ever
• went to Secret Garden Party, which was great
• had my first root canal & it actually wasn't as bad as everyone says
• tried dating & couldn't be bothered too much, really
• saw some awesome gigs

This year, I'll

• go to India
• go to Burning Man for the second time
• be more sociable
• make more effort to eat completely vegan & try to add more raw foods
• get my weight down to pre-London level
• do more yoga (goal is at least 3 times a week)

 The overall goal is to feel happy & complete with my life, be it on my own or with a partner. I'm not sure yet how I'll sort this out, but think that after all that happened in the last year I'm more on the path to understanding myself than ever before. I can be pretty confusing...