Moving towards meatless ...

I've blogged briefly before about wanting to eat a diet that's closer to vegetarian, if not actually veggie. I have made an effort to look for veggie and vegan cookbooks (both in bookshops and in the library) but haven't really found anything, which is a bit of a shame ... ah well.

I'm making some progress: for the last week and a half or so, I've cut out meat except at dinner time (i.e. in the evening). This is definitely a reduction in the amount of meat I eat, but is easy to sort out from a practical point of view because it means that Chris and Sarah don't need to change their habits.

It's been ... about the right level of stretching for me, I think. I miss meat more than I thought I would - part of this is because I don't tend to cook in the evenings, so suddenly all the thinking about food I'm doing completely excludes meat, which feels a bit weird. Also because there generally is chicken and ham and things in the fridge, so it's very tempting to want to stick them in a sandwich / in noodles / etc - I think it would be different if I didn't have bits of chicken right there whenever I open the fridge.

I've been making an effort not to just replace my meat consumption with cheese, and to try and make sure that this pushes me towards eating more vegetables, rather than towards lots and lots of toast. This is mostly working.

I think this is changing how I feel about food ... although it's also made me realise that I really don't want to give up dairy, or at least that it would take a long time and a lot of gradual adjustment for me to do so. I don't know if it's changing my appetites a bit - well, as I'm still eating meat (or fish) daily, I wouldn't expect much change. But I went out for lunch with Chris, my parents, and Hazel today (yay, they came to visit :) that was good) and found that I definitely ate / wanted much less meat than I would've done previously (it was an all-you-can-eat place that has a huge variety of different meat dishes - so I had some, and won't have meat tonight). And I think I wanted vegetables more than I previously would've done. I am definitely more a fan of huge portions of vegetables than I was previously - definitely coming round to the way of thinking that if half the volume on your plate is veg, 1/4 is something starchy, and the remaining 1/4 is anything you like, you're starting to do it correctly.

Examples of things I've been having for lunch:

• toast and avocado ... mmmmmm. With chilli sauce sometimes.
• mushroom filled pasta and lots of spinach
• pseudo-pizza - toast, ketchup/chilli sauce/garlic paste/tomato puree, peppers and mozzarella
• mushroom filled pasta and stir-fried spring onions / mushrooms / peppers
• veggie curry - I made some of this last week, had one portion and stuck 3 in the freezer - it's not as good when reheated though, the cauliflower's gone all soggy rather than holding its structure, so the texture is more homogeneous.

I think this is definitely healthier - not that my previous diet was bad, but cutting out meat at lunchtime definitely cuts down the amount of processed meats I eat (because things like ham, salami and frankfurters were the sorts of meat that I'd tend to have at lunchtime, but not at dinner) and processed meat isn't great for you. So. Going to stick with this for awhile. Suggestions for recipes / books / websites / etc very welcome. Anybody else done something similar? How easy or difficult was it to change your habits?

Recovering

I worked for over 9 hours today ... not quite 9 hours straight, I did stop and have lunch in the middle, but still. Pretty much 9am til 7:30 I was sitting at my desk, programming, working on reports, programming, wondering why the program didn't work, researching stuff online ... I don't know if this is a record for me in terms of hours working per day (and of course I'd love to say it isn't because the vain part of me wants to say that I'm so hardworking that of course I regularly put in 10 hour days, but the reality is that I don't and that I probably wouldn't work well if I did) but I think it is a record in terms of density of work (as in, I reckon if I've worked for longer in the past it's probably been all morning, then spent the afternoon doing something completely different, then late into the night).

University has certainly taught me that I can work harder than I would've thought. That's kind of a nice thing to know, even if it's not a nice thing to do. Work is hard at the moment - I don't mean in terms of content - I keep feeling anxious and knotty and stressed when I sit down to work, and so ending up just feeling slightly tense and ill a lot of the time ... but the only solution is to keep on working, and pray, I think. And probably jog - I managed to go jogging on Tuesday, but haven't been since - maybe tomorrow. Exercise is good for stress.

Chris is ill with a bit of a stomach bug (he's mostly okay, just spending a lot of time asleep on the sofa and feeling a bit icky) ... although he's still managing to be incredibly supportive and sweet, which is amazing. He's been a gem ever since I've been home (absence makes ...?) - lots of laughs and smiles and hugs and no complaints about me disappearing with the laptop to do coursework all the time. He bought me an Easter Egg today. He's a star.

For the time being, I'm snuggled up on the sofa alternating between watching episodes of the Gilmore Girls (S4) and Roswell (S1). A good way to recover.

Looking back at Roswell

This is my 500th post on this blog. I think that means I should write something extra-happy, or extra-deep-and-meaningful, or something like that.

I'm not sure if blogging about Roswell qualifies. But hey, here goes.

Whilst away for the weekend with Hazel I finally found the complete first season on DVD. I've been kind of wanting to rewatch things for a while ... and I've been wanting to watch right from the beginning, because Season 1 was the best, and things went downhill from there I reckon ... and I want to try and get the whole thing the way it should be. From the beginning. The last time I started watching this I was ... just in my teens? It was a long time ago.

I'm up to the 4th episode now (Leaving Normal) and here are a few things I've noticed this time that I hadn't thought last time:

• They're so old. Really, really old. They're supposed to be 16 year olds, and the actors are in their mid-twenties, and now that I'm past twenty (and when I look at 16 year olds I notice how young they are) it really, really stands out. Especially when you see them with their parents.
  
• In the first two eps, Max and Liz were more gormless than I remembered, and I totally, totally did not buy it. This felt weird because I was totally drawn in the first time round, fell for the dream right from the pilot. But by the third episode ... the magic was coming back (the acting was less awful, for a start!)
  
• Michael is amazingly cool. And Isabel is really quite nuanced. And Maria is prettier than I remembered. I suddenly see how these could be people's favourite characters (again, first time round I was too wrapped up in Max and Liz to notice them). In particular they're a lot more 3D than others (As I'm now a fairly strong Polar, I'm particularly interested in Michael's character this time round ...)
  
• The stuff about their powers is so inconsistent. But pretty cool. (In particular Michael has more control than you see in most fanfic.)
  
• The jokes are better than I remembered. The one-liners / strange situations ... I'd totally forgotten about most of them, and they're pretty good.
  
• I have a lot of sympathy for Kyle. A lot. He's such a great guy. And Liz treats him so badly. Aliens are no excuse. Frankly, Liz is bloody heartless (or just completely wooden, blame it either on the character or on the acting) in the first few episodes and I am so much less sympathetic this time round than I was last time. I really hope this gets better because she was my favourite character (probably because she was the clever brunette, tbh).
  
• Knowing a lot of what's going to happen, of course, tints the way I see everything. In particular, I can't be scared of Sheriff Valenti, knowing how he comes round. And it's kind of bittersweet and kind of especially beautiful seeing the group starting to come together knowing that it's not going to last. I haven't actually seen the end of Season 3. I don't know how much the unity comes back; I stopped watching when it was all broken. So I have some new stuff to look forward to when I get that far (Hazel bought S2 and S3 second hand, and I've borrowed them off her).

Rediscovering the characters is actually pretty exciting. I tend to read Liz-centric fic, which tends to have overly-detailed portraits of Liz/Max/Michael, and pretty 2D portrayals of other characters, so it's good to get some balance. And I've honestly forgotten huge amounts of detail from the series - so while I know important points about who dies and who knows which secrets, I get to rediscover the small stuff. That's pretty neat.

So, uh, happy 500th post, dear blog. Anybody else have stories of rediscovering childhood stories and finding them different from how you left them?

A Few Thoughts

Hey hey, people.

I'm away for the weekend staying with my lovely sister :) this has been great. A bit of a real holiday (the rest of the vacation being full of coursework and revision, thus not a holiday). We've chatted / hung out with her friends / gone shopping / watched lots of Jonathan Creek and Roswell DVDs ... good times :). I haven't brought any work with me, which has been really really gorgeous although quite odd. But this is probably the only work-free holiday I'll have before my exams in June, so I'm making the most of it.

Several thoughts:

• I've come to a decision about this moving-towards-meatless thing - for the time being, I'm going to only have meat / fish at dinner time (that's in the evening, for anyone who's confused ...). This minimises inconvenience to Chris and Sarah, but is still a significant step for me - no automatically reaching for a ham sandwich, that sort of thing. In the past I wouldn't have tended to have meat at every lunchtime, but it could well have been 5 times a week (often eating leftovers, or sandwich type things with meat in them).
  
  
• I need a routine for working. I've written one which timetables my day from 7:20am til 6:30 pm and includes 7.5 hours of work in it ... if I try it for a while and it seems to work I'll post it, I think. But I'll wait til I've tested it. It includes the non-work things I think are vital (or that I want to think are vital) like: some time with Chris before he goes to work, jogging early in the morning, prayer, food!, time to do random errands (laundry, go to the library, etc) so I think it may work quite well. I am now, of course, feeling kind of guilty that I'm timetabling about 11 hours of which 3.5 are *not* work. This is slightly insane. (Somebody comment and tell me that 7.5 hours a day with the potential for a couple more hours in the evening if necessary is a perfectly reasonable workday, please?)
  
  
• Stuart Townend's "Who Paints the Skies" is a really awful song. Grammar-fail to the max ... here's a snippet:
  
  
  Who paints the skies into glorious day?
  Only the splendour of Jesus.
  Who breathes His life into fists of clay?
  Only the splendour of Jesus.
  He really has no excuse. Stuart Townend is far too experienced a songwriter not to understand English. 'Splendour' is not a 'who'. Neither is 'Mercy' (this comes up in the second verse). The chorus is rather odd too:
  
  
  He is wonderful, He is glorious,
  Clothed in righteousness,
  Full of tenderness.
  Come and worship Him,
  He's the Prince of life,
  He will cleanse our hearts
  In His river of fire.

  Individually, I agree with most of those statements, although I think 'Full of tenderness' is pretty misleading on its own, and I'm not quite sure what 'His river of fire' is supposed to be. But together ... do those make a coherent whole? I'm really not convinced. (This was sung at Hazel's church this morning, and we sort of looked at each other and sighed at the lack of grammar).

 I think that's all for now ... hope people are enjoying Uni winding down for the term, and getting ready for a profitable Easter vacation.

Excogitation #04 - practical solutions: workspace

Let's start with a picture.
This is what my work area at Uni looks like:

It's tidy at the moment ... had a big tidy up of my room over the weekend, which helps. In theory I would keep it in this state all of the time. In practice ... well ... let's just say I don't quite manage that.

(I haven't got a photo of my workspace at home to hand, but I will add one at some later point).

There's a lot of advice out there about organising space for study, and most of it is really good ... for example see about.com's advice (aimed at distance learners but good advice for anybody), or this article from education.com. You've probably read that sort of stuff already. I'm not going to attempt to recreate it all here ... I'm just going to say a couple of brief things about how I handle (or fail to handle) my work space.

Things I may not be so great at ...

• As noted before, I don't necessarily keep my desk tidy. This is because I forget how much better having a tidy, clear desk makes me feel ... because once it's been messy for 3 weeks you forget that it's actually only about 5 minutes' work to clean it up. But if I have lots of clear workspace I feel like work is sensible and reasonable and something I'll probably enjoy doing - rather than something I've got to grit my teeth and get on with.
  
• I'm going to try and combat this by setting aside 5 minutes at the end of each day to clear my desk - I'm also going to be trying to finish working at sensible times like 6 or 7 pm (not 11pm), which should help with this.
  
• On a related note, when I'm surrounded by clutter, my underlying level of stress goes up ... way up*. So in addition to clearing the desk surface, I need to try and make sure that things are generally filed in the right place, and pens are accessible, and all of that sort of thing. This, I usually manage.
  
• The internet is a wonderful place ... except when you spend 45 minutes reading blogs and forums when you really meant to be checking email and then closing the thing down. I need to get better and turning off. I think one of the underlying motivations here is feeling like I want to be available online in case anybody turns up who I want to talk to. That's perfectly understandable from a social point of view, but really bad for work. Solution = sorting out times to see / email / chat to friends, maybe? Which would reduce the motivation for hanging around online by quite a bit.

Things I am rather better at:

• Making sure I have good lighting - both here and at home I have my desk near a window, for natural light, and a desk lamp for supplementary light. Natural light definitely, definitely helps my concentration and my mood.
  
• Lots of clear space - for maths, anyway ... I usually want: a textbook, my notes, the sheet of questions I'm writing on, a pad of paper for good answers, and a pad of scrap paper for rough scribbles all out at the same time. This is why at Uni I commandeer the table in the middle of my room as well as the desk the laptop lives on when I'm working.
  
• Pens easily to hand (pens of various colours, pencils, highlighters).
  
• Planner - I write everything down, mostly in my planner, including daily to-do lists, so having it to hand is always useful.
  
• Some sort of drink nearby - hydration matters.
  
• Some sort of positive thing to look at ... inspirational quotations (in theory not too cheesy), or cards from people that make me happy, that sort of thing. Makes the space a bit more human.

Overall ... I'm not doing too badly. I have reasonably high hopes for the rest of this academic year. If only I can remember to keep stuff clean and uncluttered, I think I should be able to reduce stress a fair bit. And I need to remember not to kid myself: I can't work while there's music on, I certainly can't work to Radio 4 (far too interesting!), and I generally can't work seriously whilst on the internet (though I can get some stuff done).

Anybody else got stuff to say on the subject of physical space in which you study?

(*Do other people find the same clutter / stress correlation holds? I've read about it in lots of places but don't count that as scientific because they don't tend to cite any sample group, and so I figure that the only people who would bother to write articles about it are people who find it does hold for them)

Reviving the Study Blog

Billy and I are going to restart using the study blog we had over Christmas. So if you were a reader/author before, you can head on over there in the next couple of days (as in, I haven't managed to post anything interesting on there yet, but intend to soon). If you weren't previously a member but would like to post to it / read it, let me know via comments here.

thankfulness

Finally.

There is space. To stop. And reflect.
On the term just past.
On the year almost done.
On the three years quickly closing.

The learning.
The growing.
The loving.
And knowing.
And seeing.
And becoming.

The great times.
The hard times.
(The boring times)
The people who drove you crazy,
The people who kept you sane

To all of the above: Thank you.
My time would not be complete without you.
And it is not yet complete.

There are new things to do.
New people to meet.
New things to see.
But time rushes on ...
      the future beckons and promises nothing.

Lord, let me walk into it a better person.
Changed by this chapter
Growing in your grace
Learning to be wise

Learning to love, without condition
(A long way to go, but I'm on the right road)
Learning to see, without judgement
Learning to be.

Being.


Not my will.
Yours.

The new skirt is lovely :)

I wore it out today and it was great. It's quite fitted down to about the knees, but then kicks out in the back, and is slightly stretchy denim, so is comfortable for walking in properly. I can even jog in it :)

Blowing off steam

Why are the people you want to talk (read: rant) to on the internet not online when you want them to be?

Bah.

Thoughts on Food

I've been reading a lot of stuff lately about meat and dairy and how it's unnatural and bad for humans to be consuming them ... some on here: http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/ and other websites and stuff too. And starting to think ... yeah, drinking milk after you're weaned is kind of weird. And drinking the milk of another species is even weirder (I've never quite understood people being weirded out by the idea of adult humans consuming breast milk - surely it's more normal than drinking cow's milk).

So I'm starting to think about going closer to veggie ... and maybe at some point closer to vegan. Don't know if I'll ever get that far. And certainly I love pate and cheese ... although you can get veggie versions of pate. Hmmmm.

Something to think about. I think I'll try to get a hold of some good veggie / vegan cookbooks, and start cooking a greater amount of veggie food.

Fairtrade Challenge: How did it go?

So about a week ago I posted about setting myself a fairtrade challenge: to only buy fairtrade products for one week (10pm Friday 26th, when I made the decision, til 10pm Friday 5th).

I haven't entirely succeeded, which is to say that I've bought some things that aren't fairly traded. But I have:

• learnt a lot more about what fairtrade products are available in my area, and where to buy them.
• spent more money on fairtrade things than on non-fairtrade things
• only bought non-fairtrade things when I couldn't find a fairtrade alternative and I needed them pretty urgently (so couldn't wait until after the week was over)
• spent time searching out fairtrade items where before I would've bought the non-fairtrade product because it was more convenient (e.g. juice).
• sought to buy ethical things where I wasn't buying strictly-fairtrade ones, or if that wasn't possible, sought to spend as little money as possible so as to leave myself as much money as possible to buy ethical stuff with.

So here's my week's shopping:
 

1: Divine Dark Chocolate Fairtrade mints. These are really nice - had a friend who was delighted to learn they existed, because they're like After Eights, but made by an ethical company not an evil one! They're also vegan. 

 

 2: Assorted Fairtrade products. Namely:

-Golden Caster Sugar

-2x large bars Dairy Milk

-1 bunch bananas

-1 packet of dried apricots, 1 packet dried mango

-Sainsbury's basics hot chocolate

-1 packet double chocolate biscuits, 1 packet fruit, chocolate and nut biscuits

-1 packet apricot Geobars

Also a packet of Traidcraft tissues. These aren't technically fairtrade because they're made in the UK from 100% recycled paper. But supporting Traidcraft definitely means supporting Fairtrade. And I really needed tissues. I think they count.

3: Not fairtrade but supporting Oxfam ... I was in Oxfam looking for fairtrade products and I saw this skirt. It's really lovely. I've wanted a denim skirt like this for a while. It fits well. So I bought it. 

4: Not Fairtrade but necessary ... I'm going away for the weekend, and showering facilities may be, ah, sparse, so cleansing wipes and body spray seemed like a Really Really Good Idea (the wipes were BOGOF, the body spray was about 30p off plus an extra 50p worth of Boots' points), plus plasters, and I need the rosin for Saturday. So far as I know there are no fairtrade alternatives for any of these.

 5: Fairtrade juice cartons! Again bought with going away for the weekend in mind - they'll be good to have on the train. This is an example of something where I would've previously bought the non-fairtrade option, but because I was stopping to think about it, I made sure to go and find these because I knew I could get them in town somewhere.

I've also become aware of lots of new Fairtrade products that I didn't previously know about, so when I run out of things / next want to buy I will swap over to using the fairtrade product. These include:

• peanut butter
• honey
• golden syrup
• juice  - I've now found where to buy large 1L boxes of Fairtrade juice from, not just the little cartons.
• chocolate spread
• muesli - I knew this existed but was too lazy to buy it previously, I now know precisely where to get it in the centre of town, so no excuses.
• wine - this doesn't quite count, as I did previously know this existed and where to get it, but I almost never buy wine anyway. Nevertheless, as this week has made me think more about Fairtrade, I will make it a priority to buy it next time - so this week's made a difference.
• ice cream - I hadn't thought of it as a priority before, but now I will!
• spices - I now know you can get some spices fairtrade. I will keep looking for them.
• beer and ale (made with Fairtrade sugar) - I don't drink much beer and ale, but might try these out! Especially if I'm with friends who drink beer (so I can try a bit, and then pass it round to see if other people like it).

I'll also add that I'm quite impressed by Sainsbury's, who appear to be slowly but surely switching to Fairtrade in all matters. All their bananas are now fairly traded. Their own-brand tea, coffee, and hot chocolate appears to have gone / be going the same way - I was really impressed by this, because I think that some supermarkets *cough* ASDA and Tesco *cough* would say "No, what the customer wants in a Value Hot Chocolate is the absolute minimum price possible, we will maybe provide a Fairtrade option in the mid-range of prices, but not for the basics" but Sainsbury's doesn't seem to be doing that, and appears to be switching everything, without making too much of a fuss about it.

All in all, I'm happy with how the week's gone. I don't think it's cost me any extra money particularly either - given that I haven't been eating at cafes or canteens or anything (because that = buying non-Fairtrade stuff that I didn't need to buy) I've probably spent about the same amount of money as I would've done any other week. Although I have bought some things that weren't fairly traded ... I think this has been a resounding success.

Excogitation #03 - getting on with it

This is a really simple point (simple, not easy):
don't make excuses. When you should be working, work.

It's obvious, everybody knows it ... but actually doing it can be really quite hard.

Part of the hard bit is working out how to define 'when you should be working'. There are some obvious answers, like 'when you're in a lecture' (defining 'working' there as sitting, listening, taking notes and interacting as appropriate), or 'when you're in a class' (similarly). And then 'outside of those times, quite often, to do all the homework you need to do'. That's fine. I can mostly cope with that - those are all decisions in principle, rather than specific thoughts at a specific moment in time.

The things I struggle with are more along the lines of 'I feel really tired and drained from society stuff / an emotional conversation / etc, and I have some work that needs doing but is not yet urgent. Should I go and work?'.

It's getting easier and easier as I'm getting to know myself better - I can now, almost all of the time, work out whether I should actually go to bed / watch an episode of the Gilmore girls / do something else so as to unwind and sort myself out, or whether I am just making excuses and what I really need to do is knuckle down and get on with it (which *can* be therapeutic in and of itself, although given that most of my work is tricky and confusing I wouldn't say it's *generally* therapeutic, or at least not til you get through to the end and things click into place).

And actually, I've had some trouble definining 'work' as well. I used to feel terribly guilty about working at a slow-ish, relaxed pace - even if I had the time to do so, it felt like it shouldn't really count unless I was 100% going for it, really pushing myself, possibly into misery. Working at maybe 70% capacity (or sometimes 50) felt ... well, it felt like I was mucking about and being inefficient. THAT IS ENTIRELY FALSE. I can't work at 100% all the time, and I shouldn't try to.

All-out-going-for-it mode should be for when I'm really into it and it happens by itself, close to deadlines, and exams. I'm learning to internalise that more and more, but I've got some way to go. The other thing that helps is trying to dedicate huge amounts of time to working. If there's lots of time, then it doesn't matter if you hit a dead patch and spend a whole hour trying to understand one little thing (which actually, isn't that unusual in maths and you probably shouldn't beat yourself up about it). If you'd planned on top-speed-efficiency and your work's due in in 4 hours' time ... it's not so good. Scheduling in huge amounts of time is not always possible, but it's usually a little bit more possible than my subconscious thinks it is.

Don't make excuses. When you should be working, work.

Fairtrade Swaps

A Spacefem Quiz Result:

You're an intellectual and you know how you use your mind, so you'd rather not take breaks from it. You can always think out a situation and know what needs to be done. The only thing that frustrates you is not being valued.

Our Potentially Ridiculous Hobby Suggestion For You: Radical Activism Got some spare time? Be a radical activist! Make protest signs and stand on a corner and see who waves and smiles at you. Join a group that needs your help. Wear t-shirts with ultra-political slogans or design signs to hang in coffee shops. Just remember: give peace a chance.

Your scores: Serious 26.22 Creative 23.32 Motivated 20.98 Resourceful 19.58 Focused 17.1