Ch-ch-ch-changes!

Decisions are made, plans are drawn up (and you may have noticed that I have a great love of lists :P).

I am revisiting a promise I make to myself often, which is to shift some weight. And by “shift” I mean abandon them on the roadside like a cigarette end or apple core flung out of a car window by a speeding motorist on the motorway. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for my lipids, and in the off chance of some horrific disaster I’m sure my saddlebags could keep me sustained for quite a while. But let’s face it, I’m not a camel or an elephant seal (thank the Gods, for they are UGLY as sin!), I could do with becoming leaner, like a leopard or something. Except.. less climbing trees. Getting up isn’t really the problem, but I really don’t like climbing back down again! However, this time I am going to be a bit more relaxed, and chill out about it. I don’t believe in cutting something out forever, because I am never going to stick to that kind of plan. I *like* carbs and protein and vegetables, and all of them are necessary for my body to function. So no, I’m not going to fret over whether I can allow myself one breadstick, as long as I don’t eat the whole box :P My problem has always been that of moderation, I just can’t get enough of a good thing! 

So that’s change number one.

Another thing is that I have made a list of epicness. It’s 101 things to do in 1001 days. If you search the internet for that phrase you will find a million lists like this, filled with peoples’ wishes about what they would like to accomplish in 2 and a half years (roughly). I am not going to post my list, because some of it is personal to me and those I choose to share it with. However I can tell you that one goal on my list is to go without soda for 30 days. I drank way too much of it over the Christmas & New Year period and figured a mini detox from it would do me good now. I started on the 7th of January, and today I admitted defeat. I spent the last two weekends with my Significant Man Person (SMP) at his house, and it’s easier to decline the offer of soda when you’re a guest in someone’s home! But this weekend he visited me, and a bottle was brought in to my house. Even the smell of coke in a glass was tempting me, and I was trying to be good. But by the end of his visit there was enough left in the bottle for a small glass. Defeat never tasted so sugary and delicious! :P I will of course re-visit my 30 day challenge at a later time, but I am glad I had these two weeks off!

Another new happening in my life: My phone broke. My iPhone lasted for years until my constant use killed it. My replacement HTC barely lasted a month before it started acting up. It started off with it thinking I had pressed a button I hadn’t, and delayed reaction time. I put it down to the cold, but as it carried on I got increasingly frustrated. Then my home and back buttons stopped working. Then, right in the middle of texting someone, the spacebar stopped working. So I was forced to either writemysentenceswiththewordsaltogetherlikethis OR to_write_like_some_teenager_with_a_mopey_attitude. I was not pleased. I went to O2 and spoke to a Guru (Guru, really? Come on O2, what’s wrong with Tech Support?). They said “Yes, hmmm, it’s probably a software error”. I was recommended to back up my stuff and return afterwards so that my new baby could be sent away to the mobile hospital (the baby and hospital thing is me talking, not the Guru! :P). On Saturday the 21st I returned, ready for my phone to be shipped off and doctored. In the mean time I was given a courtesy phone. IT’S A NOKIA!!! I haven’t had a Nokia in what feels like a million years. And wow, after several years with a touch screen and qwerty keyboard it’s really weird texting “old school” (or morse code style according to my dad! :P). I am disappointed that this Nokia C1-01 does not have the game Snake, but hey, it calls and sends texts, I won’t complain! It’s also infinitely lighter than all the fancy smart phones it almost feels like a toy, hehe. It’s so cute!!!

The three updates above are really about rather shallow things, body & accessories topics “R” us was not really the main theme of this blog, now was it? What’s happening in the brains department, Miss Sophie?

Well, I am in the middle of reading Life on Air by David Attenborough. I say “middle”, but I’m really three quarters through, hehe. I have admired David Attenborough for a long time, he’s been an institution in my life since I can remember. As a child I was the one who’d watch Discovery Channel & Animal Planet and the like, I loved natural history and animals with a passion. So it’s no surprise that several of the productions featuring him have crossed my path. This winter I’ve been wanting to learn more about people, and so more biographies have been added to my wishlist than ever before. After seeing Frozen Planet on BB iPlayer, this book landed itself in to my Christmas Wishlist. I was very kindly given it as a present and I’ve been working my way through it. Normally I can devour a book of this size (some 400 odd pages) within an evening or two, but I felt like savouring this one. My respect and admiration for David Attenborough has risen from its already elevated position in my estimation. The book is incredibly well written and covers his life from being hired by BBC up until near present day. The anecdotes are well placed and often witty and tell a story of a remarkable life and career. It is mostly centered around his professional life, but he brings in comments about his personal life to bring it in to context. He is generous with his “name dropping”, which is wonderful for an inquisitive person like me, as I’m now tempted to look up these other remarkable people he’s met! I could go on about this book forever, but seriously, just go read it. I’ll lend it to you! 

What other things should tantalize my brain? Well, the Edinburgh Lectures programme for the next half year has been posted! It can be found here: http://edinburghlectures.wordpress.com/programme-2012/. For a very small sum of money I have the opportunity to attend varied and interesting lectures on various topics. I have chosen the first one on the programme,  A Celebration of Women in Astronomy, and am awaiting my ticket arriving in the post. £6 for an interesting lecture is money well spent in my opinion. I don’t know overly much about astronomy, but here’s my chance to hear more about those who do (or did). 

So we’ve covered mind, body and tech today, not bad really :P I’ve not mentioned heart or soul, but I hope you’ll trust me when I say I have both areas covered! :)

I hope everyone has had a lovely weekend and wishing you all the best in the week ahead!

Now.. How Long Until Easter?

Hello again, Friends!

I hope everyone has had a thoroughly enjoyable Christmas and New Years Eve. If you haven’t, then chin up! There’s plenty of time to make it better for next time round! :)

I had a most excellent time back with my family who live in Norway. My mum has three dogs, each with an enormous capacity for cuddles, so needless to say I was covered in dog hair for most of the trip. Luckily I don’t care about that sort of thing :)

As per usual Christmas included the development of the additional Christmas Stomach. There is no logic or science behind this, but it is clearly the only way that much food can exist inside a person. Now, for me the stuffing of my face is partly due to the fact that I can’t get some of this food in Britain. At least not without taking a picture of a pig to a butcher and going “yes, that bit!”. It’s a bit more effort than I normally would make, so Christmas (or any trip home really) is an ideal excuse to eat ALL the food I can’t get here, from roast pig to snacks and yes, even a type of breakfast yoghurt! 

Our dinner table on the 24th (when we celebrate Christmas in Scandinavia)

Apart from the dogs and the food my trip was excellent, which made the idea of going back to Edinburgh and back to work all the worse. But I survived! As we often do, despite the end-of-weekend/holiday fear. 

New Years Eve was also lovely! My Significant Man Person (we’ll call him SMP for short, shall we?) came through to Edinburgh and we had a lovely dinner. It was not the dinner I had planned, but it was still delicious! Breast of chicken stuffed with slices of chorizo, with fried potatoes. Cheesecake and ice cream for dessert. The New Year was laughed in with stand up comedy DVDs and snuggles. New Years Eve doesn’t really do much for me as the first of January doesn’t really feel very “new” :P SMP and I slung back and relaxed with excessive violence, watching Starship Troopers and then onwards to the cinema for a showing of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Excellent film, but there were scenes that made me very uncomfortable, and it is most definitely appropriately rated at 18. Having said that, I can recommend it, both Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara did very well, and I love Stellan Skarsgaard, so it was two thumbs up from me! :)

New Years Quests

Resolution. Res-o-lu-tion. Rez-uh-loo-shuhn. 

According to the Dictionary, the definition of the above is as follows:

1. A formal expression of opinion or intention made, usually after voting, by a formal organisation, a legislature, a club or other group.
2. A resolve or determination.
3. The act of resolving or determining upon an action or course of action, method or procedure, etc.
4. The mental state or quality of being resolved or resolute; firmness of purpose.
5. The act or process of resolving or separating into constituent or elementary parts. 

Yes, there will be a short test later! Hehe. 

If you add the word New Year’s before Resolution it essentially translates in to: “Stuff I told myself I would do last year which I never got round to because I was so busy doing that life things”. Or perhaps, like me, you were exceptionally vague in your last years resolution that you aren’t satisfied with the result and need to repeat the experience. An example from my life is putting “Lose weight”, but never adding the pressure of stating how many kilos or pounds need to get trimmed off before I stuff my face with Christmas food again! 

Sometimes I get an overwhelming sense of deja vu and I think some of it is partly due to magazine headlines. This time of year they are all the same! “How to stick to your resolutions!”, “How to drop a dress size by Valentines Day”, “Tone your flab so the ladies will love you” (I’m obviously (or hopefully) paraphrasing). Without fail these headlines appear in publications both frivolous and supposedly serious. Maybe they should be honest and write “We know you hate yourself a little right now, so here’s how we can re-inforce this by pretending to help you!” What a boring way to spend my year! I’ve decided to keep important lifestyle decisions separate to jolly New Years wishes. I’ve also decided that I am renouncing the depressing resolution style that reads “I wasn’t good enough at something last year, I need to do better this time”. 

So, in keeping with the blog in general, I am making some New Years Quests instead. These will be fun things that will require some effort and money on my part, but I am certain I will enjoy! If I enjoy them I am more likely to actually carry them out, hehe. 

A few of them include:

1. Host a Christmas party (so I have some time to plan, haha!).
2. Complete the cross stitch pattern I bought because it reminded me of a friend (I’m not telling too much so it’ll still be a bit of a surprise! :P).
3. Go on a Scottish holiday with SMP.
4. Take at least three singing lessons - because singing is great and makes me feel good.

I haven’t finished thinking up all the fun things I’d like to do, but it’s certainly enough to start with. I want to make 2012 fun, not kickstart it with a guilt trip about the pretty good year I have just had! 2011 was good to me, but I suppose it helped that I was good to me too! :D

I am going to finish off now, with best wishes to you all for a fabulous new year. Live it wonderful and live it well, we'll never get a 2012 again! :)