I’ve been coveting this light box for a few years and recently, after some agonising¹, finally I pulled the trigger. My philosophy was that if my desire had not waned at this point, I probably really actually do want it (as opposed to whim).

It arrived yesterday and this evening I cracked the box and I AM HAVING SO MUCH FUN!

wee truck found in the sea in new caledonia

still life with giant lemons

favourite tacky souvenir from rome

current knitting project

dslr (he really needs a name) with new 35mm lens

All taken with the iphone 5s (I’m really stunned by the clarity of the pix)

It is really hard to take photos in ThePalace(OfLove), we have spotlights and the light and reflections bounce everywhere. This will let me have a lot of fun taking random photos of tiny objects! You have been duly warned.

I do want to keep up all the time and take photos of all the things, but fortunately it folds away neatly, else the kitties would quickly make a bed from it.

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¹ I’m still kind of coming to terms with allowing myself to spend money on frivolous things.

boxing newkitty

I’m trucking on and fighting off the cold. I feel rather better than yesterday, which is surprising as SML usually makes these things infinitely worse.

It was fitness/wellness goal setting day at SML for the week ahead and I chose (amongst other things) “do one thing outside my normal routine each day this week”. This evening it was reading the DSLR manual and futzing about with the new 35mm lens I bought at lunchtime in the best #treatyoself fashion.

I think coming up with new things will be quite a challenge, but I desperately need something different in my life. I’ve fallen into a bit of a winter rut – where the days pass by in a monotonous monotony, because it is so cold and dark and whatever. 

One of my other goals for the week is to ditch the cold – so I need to take it easy, to stay warm and force myself to have a lengthy, refreshing sleep.

So, those Action Items …

I read Janie Bolitho: Plotted in Cornwall (Rose Trevelyan Series) on Friday night. It wasn’t awful, but was a bit hard going and very much needed a good edit.

I powered through Saturday.

Starting with a 35km bike ride:

It was excellent to get out, though I struggled on some of the rare steep hills – quads just gave out completely and I had to get off and push.

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I finally unboxed the overlocker:

Fortunately it came pre-threaded, so it wasn’t too much if a stretch to test that it worked.

Now I just need to watch the instructional DVD, which hopefully won’t take another six months.

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I made some really excellent double chocolate muffins:

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And took a second DSLR photograph (first being the muffins):

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And did some non-list items, like folding laundry forever and sewing a coat chain (for hanging) onto my puffy coat.

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And then I woke up during the night with A Cough.

I’ve been trying (successfully) to use my mental powers to ward off a sore throat for a couple of weeks, but today it finally caught up with me. I felt like really ghastly and my brain was very broken. Thinking was hard.

Pah! So I did little else than mope about on the couch and look at pretty photos on bored panda.

Overall? Disappointing.

I really need to stop being tempted by kindle sales.

Friday saw me end up with 9 books for under $20! Though whether any of them are worth reading is another thing entirely.

Additions to the stash below (not affiliate links – that’s not my bag)

Jorn Lier Horst: Dregs (William Wisting Mystery) AU$2.89

Michael Hambling: Dark Crimes AU$0.99

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Flow – The Psychology of Happiness AU$1.99

Janie Bolitho: Plotted in Cornwall (Rose Trevelyan Series) AU$2.19

Karen Charlton: The Heiress of Linn Hagh (The Detective Lavender Mysteries Book 1) AU$0.99

James Crumley: The Last Good Kiss (C W Sughrue 1) AU$1.99

Ulla-Lena Lundberg: Ice AU$1.89

Adrian Magson: Death on the Rive Nord: 2 (Inspector Lucas Rocco) AU$1.39

Melodie Johnson Howe: Mother Shadow (An LA Murder Mystery) AU$3.09

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And that is in addition to the four books I bought since the last sale a couple of weeks ago (eeeeep).

Viveca Sten: Closed Circles (Sandhamn Murders) – bought the second in the series after reading the first (acquired in the first sale). To be honest both were a little underwhelming, but I needed closure.

Philip Kerr: March Violets: Bernie Gunther Thriller 1 – as suggested by the excellent practical reinventor

Clive Cussler: Piranha: Oregon Files #10 (The Oregon Files) – clive cussler is my guilty pleasure. Honestly these books are among the (unintentionally) funniest things I’ve ever read. I just completely delight in them.

Clive Cussler: The Emperor’s Revenge: Oregon Files #11 (The Oregon Files) – see above.

Liane Moriarty: Truly Madly Guilty – because I enjoyed Big Little Lies (which reminds me of our Hong Kong holiday, because I devoured it while we were there)

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When I went to grab the link for the sale I was tempted by a couple more, but have thus far managed to resist. With this haul, the last haul and the 10 or so others that are waiting to be read, I have quite enough to see me through the next few months (or few years!).

▶ moderate length bike ride
▶ 5km run
▶ unpack overlocker (really!)
▶ bake muffins or biscuits
▶ meal plan for coming week
▶ worky-work (2 hours only)
▶ attend to eyebrows
▶ take 10 different photos with DSLR
▶ read 2 books
▶ make a list of things I’ve been meaning to post about (so I’m not forced to resort to tedious lists such as this)
▶ start practicing stretches for the splits goal
▶ knit 5 pattern repeats of scarf
▶ sit and think – about life, what I’m doing, where I’m going, what I want

I suspect that there will be at least 3 of these things which will not be Achieved, though I cannot say quite which!

Earlier this week I was making a giant paper Gantt chart (taller than me) with lots of moving parts, as part of planning our key business activity for the year. Old skool, but it is more effective than anything else we’ve tried.

[I’d insert a photo of my masterpiece, but none is extant]

I’d exhausted all of the colours of post-it flags we have, so turned to coloured dots for fixed dates. 
I grabbed a packet from the stationery shelves and was delighted to find a competition sticker affixed to the box:

A competition which ran August to November … 1995.

This precious box has survived three office moves. I was involved in two of those moves and there was some pretty ruthless culling of everything. How this survived is quite the mystery. Sadly the competition details have been lost to the mysts of tyme.

Door #9 and #10 were, as expected triple booster fluid

feat. newkitty fur

I liked it. Still second favourite, though disappointingly no skin reorganisation was in evidence.

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Door #11: collagen booster fluid

This is absorbed incredibly quickly into my skin, as though it (my skin) is a sponge. So much so that I’m surprised every morning.

It is pretty inoffensive. Whether it has improved the elasticity is quite another thing altogether.

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We’re getting to the point now where I can’t compare #1 through #11 with any sort of effectiveness/accuracy/Science!.

I feel like I really should have set up some form of ratings matrix at the outset. I think my skin looks better in general – but this could well be because I am actually paying very close attention to it!

This afternoon I skipped out of SML early to attend my six-monthly dental hygiene appointment. Yay for healthy teeth!

The weather was gorgeous, sparkling and unseasonably warm, so I decided to take a leisurely stroll home through ye olde (beautiful) stomping grounds:

I do miss that place like crazy, but I was only commenting to Don on the weekend that the ‘ham is, after four years, finally beginning to feel like home. Though of course ThePalace(OfLove) totally feels like home and has done for ages, it has taken quite a while for us to feel like we belong in this suburb – and it is still touch and go at times.

Tonight I busted out the DSLR for the first time in an age.

Infinitely superior to the iphone for kitty photography – particularly in this Palace of terrible light.

I must drag it out more.

With one thing and another it had been almost 5 weeks since out last bike ride, so we were super-keen to get out today.

Unfortunately it was drizzling when we were about to leave, but we thought we’d give it a crack anyway – there was only 20% likelihood of rain, so how long could it last?

We’ve ridden in the heavy rain before and it was all okay, this time though – the road was really greasy and slippery. It was so slippery that I almost ran into a car when trying to stop at an intersection. I braked hard and my back tyre locked and started fishtailing all over the place – it was a good piece of riding on my part, I managed to manoeuvre around the rear of the car, rather than hitting the door and flying through the air. Yay!

After that the rain got heavier and heavier and we got wetter and wetter, so we called it short and headed home. We rode a total of 15km which was pretty disappointing – hopefully we can get out for something a bit longer and drier next weekend.

After we arrived home the weather improved pretty much straight away. I did a bunch of tidying and reading and then dragged myself out for a 5km run in the late afternoon which felt amazing – much better than yesterday’s 5km. I can’t explain what the difference was. But it is very pleasing when you arrive home from a run completely exhausted!

I need to get more cardio into my weekdays. Quite how I am going to achieve this has yet to be determined!