5:2 lunch: finn crisps + shaved smoked ham + lettuce + cherry tomatoes (about 100-110 calories)

We’ve been on the 5:2 diet for around 7 months – which includes a month break for Xmas, so lets say 6 months. So I figured it was a good idea to bust out the tape measure and see where we are up to.

I started out at 94-77-94 (37-30-37) and now …. 89-70-89 (35-27.5-35)! A 5-7-5cm loss! Which is pretty gosh-darned Ace!

And Don, we only measured his belly, but he has lost 9cm! Wow!

A couple of months ago, I loaned the fast cook to Vincenzo (who has been talking about starting for about 6 months) because we weren’t really using it. He recently gave it back and it was like a revelation! Already we’ve cooked three meals from it and they have all been amazing – how did we miss them before?

One of the most clever things was realizing I could cook long slow dishes on the weekend and reheat on fast day – yeah, duh. I cooked hot paprika goulash on Sunday and reheated on Thursday – it was amazing and absolutely delicious.

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Today we saw the new planner. It was a freebie consult and we spoke for almost 2 hours. He was very much about looking at our finances holistically which is what we were hoping for. Don and I really liked what he had to say – so he is putting together a proposal for us (again no cost) and we’ll go from there.

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Because we had the planning meeting in the middle of the day, I decided to take the day off and planned to not even touch emails. Except I’d forgotten to put my out of office notification on, so just logged into my mail for a second – argh! So much rage at really tiresome people. So I spent a while dealing with aggravating nonsense.

Surrounding that I managed to get in a 5km run – the first since 26 January (before that it was 3 December). Exhausting – but same pace as ever, which was surprising and a little pleasing.

I pottered about a bit and listened to productivity podcasts (my latest enthusiasm). I also hemmed a pair of white linen pants that I’ve had for about 7 years (and haven’t been able to fit into for many of those years). I was wearing them today and I’ve long been annoyed by their too-longness, so I took action and re-hemmed them then and there rather than putting it off any longer.

I really want to do more of that sort of thing. More action, less dithering.

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Tonight Joan joined us for (too much) wine and Thai home delivery. We talked about her upcoming trip planning (must post about that separately), gossiped about Vincenzo, she annoyed the kitties with too much love and we watch a very peculiar, very naked dutch reality show on SBS.

Good times.

You might remember the teensy spring onion/scallion/sybie plants which we grew from dried up ends and planted in December 2013? They are performing well beyond expectations! Some are approximately the diameter of small leaks – I feel this may mean they won’t be terribly useful for cooking, but I love the unkemptness of the whole thing.

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Knees were hurting yesterday, which I attributed to terrible form when attempting squats, so I’ve eliminated the medicine ball from that bit of the micro-circuit until I improve. Otherwise keeping up – such a small commitment that I can easily persuade myself to do it before jumping into bed. Whether it actually has benefits is another matter entirely, but it must be at least marginally better than doing nothing.

sunset: 9 March 2015

Was pottering on the top floor this evening and noticed the sunset was an astoundingly vivid pink which covered almost all of the visible western sky. Sadly by the time I’d run downstairs to grab the fabulous new camera, there was only a smidge of orange remaining.

Must remember to try again tomorrow night.

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I thought it time for a new micro circuit and I decided to add a 3.6kg (8lb) medicine ball to the mix. Yikes!

So currently: 25 sit-ups with medicine ball, 20 squats with medicine ball, 45 second elbow plank, 25 sit-ups with medicine ball, 20 squats with medicine ball, 45 second full plank.

Such is a testament to my current lack of fitness that I found this pretty exhausting and am quite confident I will sleep very well.

typing on the laptop at the coffee table, looked down and ARGH!

As part of our attempts to be more grown up, one of the projects this year was to consult a financial adviser.

When we moved our mortgage to a new bank at the end of last year, a personal banker came with the package. He has been pretty excellent in making the transition absolutely seamless and has been great to work with. When we mentioned that we had been considering getting some financial advice and he said he’d organise a meeting with one of the bank’s financial advisers if we were interested – which we were.

However, there have been a number of scandals recently where planners employed by the big banks have completely mis-managed their clients funds – leaving those clients out hundreds of thousands of dollars. So we went into this meeting with eyes very wide open and a healthy suspicion.

We (well, to be fair, mostly Don) put in a lot of effort into preparation for this meeting, clearly defining our goals and working out what we’d want our retirement to look like – even down to developing a retirement budget.

In summary, the goals are:
* minimise our tax (Don always has a large tax bill at the end of the year)
* retire between 60 and 65 (everyone over 60 at SML has kind of lost the plot. I do not want to be that person!)
* have the mortgage paid off by retirement
* have $x in superannuation by retirement

Armed with all of this we went into our preliminary meeting. We talked for about almost two hours and agreed to pay a not insignificant sum for a comprehensive plan.

A few weeks later and it was time to meet to discuss the results.

And there was no plan – comprehensive or otherwise. Nothing even remotely resembling a plan. We were presented with some options for investing our superannuation (retirement savings), but mostly were pitched a bunch of ridiculously gold-plated insurance products – so gold-plated that it would take Don’s entire superannuation contributions (9.5% of his salary) to pay the premiums!

There was not even basic projection for where we would be at retirement if we followed this advice. When we asked about how our goals fit into this, we were told they were not achievable. Well, of course they wouldn’t be if all of our retirement savings went on insurance premiums. Unkind people might suggest the planner was more interested in his hefty insurance sales commission than anything else. There was also nothing about what we would need to do/change to achieve our goals or … anything.

Needless to say we were rather displeased and extremely disappointed, but maintained the veneer of civility and professionalism. And really, the dude was a bit of a patronising dick (we were indeed fortunate that he was deigning to deal with us, because he generally dealt with much larger portfolios – which he enthusiastically reminded us on a couple of occasions). Any time we asked a specific question, he would pretty much brush it off and displayed a singular lack of knowledge about several issues .

We reluctantly chalked the cost up to a learning experience. But fortunately when Don gave our feedback to our personal banker (who was at the meeting), he was insistent that we not pay anything and agreed that it did not cover anything we had expected.

Nevertheless, despite this very dire experience, we’re meeting with an independent planner on Friday. If that ends no better, we’re going to have to take this into our own hands.

Once again we wandered down to the park, grabbed a coffee and lounged about watching local cricket.

I think it is maybe 3 (or 4) years since we were there, but we finally busted out the sarong we acquired in New Caledonia. Easy to scrunch into a ball and shove in the bag and much better than sitting in the pokey grass and having bitey ants crawling all over us.

I read a little more of wolf in white van** – as recommended by the most excellent hazelblackberry – I’ll admit I’m struggling with the treacle-ish pace and ever-so-slow reveals.

It was an exceptionally relaxing few hours. As Don pointed out, when you’re slothing about at home you tend to feel guilty because you are not doing stuff – slothing at the park and there are no such guilt issues.

And I really needed relaxing – this week we heard that Dr12 is jumping ship in a couple of months and there are several of us who are devastated. While he may be rather, okay extremely, idiosyncratic, he has shown fabulous leadership, made huge and amazing decisions (such as TheReckoning) and has really empowered and rewarded some of us. The prospect of an internal replacement fills us all with dread.

I had a quiet couple of glasses of wine this evening and sat with the news. Even two glasses hit me like the proverbial – I am sure I will probably regret that decision come the morning.

**$1.92?!? Crazy! I paid 10x that.

As is my way, of course I encouraged the family to complete the vote compass.

And as is their way, they were totally into participating – for there is nothing they like better than a family contest or a chance to compare themselves to each other.

Also as is my way, I was compelled to make a chart of the results.

Despite frequently making charts for a living (though I have people to do that now), I’d not had any occasion to make a scatter plot in excel, so needed to call upon the m4d sk1llz of my lovely husband because it is the most ridiculously unintuitive thing I have ever seen. I think I had forced Vincenzo to do this once, I will apologise on Monday.

Anyway on with the results:

Clearly Joan is our token conservative.

It is very interesting how aligned we all are. Don and I both grew up in families firmly entrenched very far in the bottom right quadrant which we (thankfully) both rebelled against. Fortunately the offspring did not feel the same rebellious compulsion!

worst prime minister ever

I am generally pretty interested in politics and usually spend a good deal of time reading political news and live updates, but I think it is contributing to a less than calm mental state – I’m alternately stabby | utterly despairing at where the current federal government is taking us, their lies, their class warfare, their complete ruthlessness and utter incompetence.

So I think I am going to put myself on a politics diet for a couple of weeks and monitor the results.

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There is a state election at the end of March and the ABC has a very cool tool which enable you to see how your views on various issues against stack up against those of the policies of the major parties.

Yeah, no surprises there.

I will definitely break the diet and watch the election night coverage though – it is a family tradition.

giant chalk rainbow at world square for mardi gras

I am in dire need of a run, having missed out on the weekend. Just how I managed a couple of years ago to get up and run 5km four mornings on weekdays is a complete mystery to me.

I’ve made the first step in sorting our wills and powers of attorney – so very grown up. Should all be sorted by mid-month. I feel very relieved to have begun the process, one of those (many, many) things that was just hanging there un-actioned making me feel guilty.

If Don and I can cover off some of the major things on our to do lists before the end of April, we are planning to reward ourselves with a quick trip to Melbourne. Hopefully this will be the incentive we need to kick some things into gear.

So grumpish and tired of my tiresome colleagues, March cannot end quickly enough!

But in nice news, I managed to get tickets in the STC King Lear pre-sale – hopefully we haven’t forgotten we bought them by December!

Back at the end of January I bought a knob of ginger to make spicy ginger soda. And it sat unloved on the bench for a couple of weeks because I was immediately distracted by delicious lemonade.

I was debating chucking it in the freezer (which is a really most excellent way to store ginger), I noticed a wee green shoot, and rather than freeze, I decided to observe in the name of Science!

Now a month after purchase, we have:

betty the woven goanna’s tail to the left of the shot, not a strange grey, furry growth

Quite amazing!

I blame the heat and humidity for the rapid growth. According to the InformationSuperhighway it can be planted and harvested in a year or two. Harvesting is unlikely, but I’m intrigued to see what happens. Hopefully this does not go the way of the last experiment

Today I finally sorted the box of family silver which has been sitting up here in the way of everything for about a month!

I took inventory and pix of it all and then washed and polished with a soft cloth. There are two main patterns, one from 1913 and one from 1964. I’ve added the 6 place settings 1964 to the cutlery chest for regular use, but we need more proper flatware storage before we bust out the other one – which has more bits.

We’ll be using this set. Mom had wrapped them in cling-wrap (this is apparently not good). But who knew there was coloured cling-wrap?! Truly, America has everything!

Such are our modern, philistine-y ways, that we have absolutely no idea what some of the pieces are supposed to be used for:

tiny fork tridents + knife-ish things (the fork on right is for scale – you’ll be reassured that I know what a fork is)

There are a bunch of random serving pieces too – these are mostly silver plate. I do look forward to adding some much needed fanciness to the daily dining experience.

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Otherwise this weekend was exceedingly unproductive, but quite excellent.

The ducks played an intra-club match on at henson park on Friday evening so we walked down to watch. It was a gorgeous evening, so afterward we walked further to Marrickville and grabbed some vietnamese for dinner.

don shows off his vintage ’05 members hat

On Saturday morning walked down through the park to breakfast to Pig and Pastry

It had turned into a really lovely day, so after we’d dropped off some donations to the Salvation Army and picked up a couple of things from essential ingredient, we decided to wander back down to the park and take in some local cricket.

We have vowed: 1. to get out in the neighbourhood more frequently and 2. that I need more days in my life where I get out and do nothing.