NewKitty is very encouraging

I’m up to 22 pushups! This is crazy! It is still quite hard and there is a long way to go, but I’m very appreciative of the slow approach. All very kaizen – oooh! look at me busting out the management nonsense!

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I’ve spent the evening on the InformationSuperHighway (with the assistance of Joan who is expert at such things) searching for ideas for a handbag replacement because this bag which I completely love and adore is really reaching end of life.

The leather, which was, and is still, incredibly supple and buttery soft is splitting in places (like right in the middle) and professionals tell me that he really can’t be repaired <sob>. I think the fabulousness of the leather really led to the demise, I’m not too precious about how I treat him and he’s really not built for tough conditions. But he’s put in a stellar 2,159 days of hard grind (so far), so possibly it is time for a dignified retirement.

The difficulty is of course, that I love the existing bag so much that nothing quite measures up, but after my many hours of searching I’ve at least narrowed it down to a style. Well, mostly. Hobo or bucket. Maybe. Something unstructured. With feet. this is currently leading the way.

But I will take my time and not buy a ridiculously expensive handbag on a whim. Maybe something to consider as a present to myself if this <vague blogging> exciting SML opportunity </vague blogging> comes off.

On Monday I finally busted out ampoule #1 from the babor advent calendar I very-expensively impulse-bought back in November.

I use l’occitane immortelle precious serum every morning and I’ve been really happy with it, so I had little expectation that the babor stuff would be that much different.

I was wrong, I was totally glowing (in a good way) afterward. They are quite mental if they think that ampoule contains one application – I’ve been pretty free and easy with it and it will last at least 4 days. Though is pretty difficult to store.

The problem is that if I wanted to actually buy some, it is almost impossible to decipher what I’m actually using because the writing is so tiny and the package not well labelled.

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Today was the hottest April day in 150 years (34°C!), so of course when I got home I busted out the vacuum cleaner and did the 3 flights of stairs and associated railings. I was quite exhausted afterward, but at least it is one task that I won’t have to do on the weekend!

It has been quite a long while since I’ve done a stuff in/on … post.

I miss taking photos of the silly things that cross my path, so I’m briefly resurrecting the series – here’s an extract from my work notebook.

A quick sketch of a long time colleague and her not-quite-twin sister who now also works at SML. They live together, lunch together, holiday together, are super-tight and very often wear matching outfits.

It’s totally like The Simpsons brought to life.

So it’s been roughly 45 days since I started rubbing caster oil on my venous lake for 5 minutes 2x per day.

Despite the very badly lit and oddly oriented pix, it appears as though there is an improvement, though the spot is still visible.

NOW

THEN

Even if it isn’t fading, the bottom right of my lower lip is now super-soft from the continued application of oil.

I think I’ll persist with the experiment for another 45 days and revisit. It is always a possibility is merely looking faded because of the daily rubbing and will come straight back when I stop, but hey – science!

2.66km run this morning – went okay. Next we increase to 2.93km!

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I finished up the final bits of the second skirt conversion:

Action shots from earlier in the week:

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Did a bunch of ironing, not pictured. NewKitty hung out with the DVD player while I watched more Midsomer Murders.

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And cooked a big batch of chili

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Also made a temporary box to contain the spices which wouldn’t fit in the existing spice box and were sliding about falling out of the cupboard.

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I admired the garage coat rack (feat. a very small selection of Don’s hats)

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And I read a bunch of War and Peace – I’m now 19% of the way through (that escalated quickly!). I’m much more engaged and feel like I could make a real stab at finishing this. The Space-kindle says I have 9 hours and 9 minutes to go, but I think that is just a little unrealistic. I read pretty fast, but not quite that fast!

Wow, absolutely knackered this evening.

Got a late-ish start just before 8am on what is now our regular Saturday morning bike ride. I find it quite hilarious that we’re all “let’s go for a short ride” and were talking 40km. That was a pretty swift progression from utterly hopeless to sort-of-okay!

We went quite fast. Well fast for us. Fastest 500m was 32.9km – and that was on the flat. It really got the blood pumping (yay endorphins!) – and, heresy, I’m actually enjoying the bike rides a lot more than running right now.

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I did get a run in yesterday after work. This is probably the last one I’ll manage for a while because daylight savings ends tonight and we’ll now arrive home in the dark. The upside of this is that it will finally be light at a decent hour of the morning!

I ran 2.42km – I’m increasing by 10% each time. I’m being super-conscious of my form and so far the ankle is holding up okay. Planning to get out tomorrow morning for a 2.66km run.

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Today was World Autism Awareness Day so after the bike ride we went with Joe/Frank to an autism meetup at COFA. Services and information for adults on the spectrum is pretty disparate and difficult to track down, so it was pretty excellent to learn about autismCRC who have a focus on research “across the lifespan”. It was really interesting to see what research projects are underway and potentially participate.

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Then we did tons of grocery shopping – which took us around the world in ghastly Saturday traffic. Our goal this year was not to shop on weekends and we were doing pretty well, but we’ve both got a hellish couple of weeks ahead of us, so the plan was to over-plan what we can to make everything as seamless as possible.

We needed to stop in at Essential Ingredient and naturally came away with much more than we’d planned to – including a new scale, our old one was driving us batty by flicking to lbs and being quite unwilling to move to grams.

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I’ve also managed to avoid mindless snacking – though I did just this minute scoff a Lindt Bunny.

Remember when I went to the spa to celebrate my old lady day? I was up-sold on a bunch of product which has sat in the back of my cupboard for over 4 months.

This morning I dragged the bag out and am going to force myself to use the contents. The big box is an advent calendar containing different serum ampoules (the therapist recommended I use one a week, rather than each day), the others are an exfoliating powder for my face and a sample of collagen cream.

I may report back.

I really need to stop buying stuff only to not use it (yes, let us not speak of the overlocker).

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I stumbled across the shmoop study guide to war and peace when I was searching for a chapter name to paste in a post (being on my tablet, pasting is much quicker than typing). It amuses me greatly and I find it completely delightful. It contains such gems as:

• Prince Vassily is bummed and starts to complain about his deadbeat kids who are costing him an arm and a leg.

• But maybe this isn’t the best way to get to the bottom of things, since Andrei and Liza clearly need some couples’ therapy and not just to bicker with each other in front of a friend.

To be honest it is very much enhancing my reading experience, though I suspect the novelty may wear off.

Argh! I wrote this on Thursday and just reàlised it didn’t post. Gosh-darned tablet, this is not the first time this has happened. I’m still counting it toward my posting streak – of 96 days! Only 269 days and a whole lot of filler until I hit my target.

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I did also take some pleasing kitty pix with the DSLR before that sunset. What an adorable monstrous beast BabyKitty is – this is why she gets away with waking me at 4am demanding food.

I wonder if I should accept the idea that it is unlikely that I will achieve much in the evenings because I’m generally too drained. I really don’t care for that as an option though. Perhaps I need to focus on just doing one non-cooking activity and build up from there. I might give that a crack for a week and see how I progress.

But in very good news, did not snack at all this evening – we’ll just gloss over the fact that it was a fast day.

One of my goals over the break was (and is in general) to take more photos with the DSLR, so I captured the rather excellent sunset from the top balcony on Thursday night.

Sadly I didn’t do too much with the camera after that. I think I need to make some sort of pact with myself not to immediately reach for the iphone when I want to photograph something.

And as for that post-work no-snacking goal? This morning I had all good intentions that I would come home and instead of plonking myself down in front of the laptop, I would Action some Items to avoiding eating All The Things. But by day’s end those plans had fallen well by the wayside and I ate almost my body weight in salted peanuts. Hey protein! And not biscuits! Baby-steps.

Sadly, today was the last day of my lovely break. And the last day of my three action items. And what do you know? All done!

I’m totally rolling this approach out to other weekends/months. I’m amazed that I actually managed to do three of the things that I have been putting off for months! Probably

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I took Corey down from the wall and rode him down to the bike shop for the first service.

I even rode all the way there and back on the road! At some point I will stop being excited by that – this is not that time.

He’s definitely a little smoother since.

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Coat rack – fin!

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Planter – fin!

A little crooked, but I’m pretty pleased with how it looks – certainly much better than the cardboard template that sat there for 3 months!

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In non-action items, I went for a 2.2km run (slowly increasing the distance), screwed up my knitting (now repaired),

watched a bunch of Midsomer Murders, repaired Joe/Frank’s split work pants and turned that other dress into a skirt (about an hour of hand sewing to go).

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Back to SML tomorrow – it is going to be completely nuts for the next couple of months.

I have a couple of small goals for the next couple of weeks – and one of them is to cut back on the snacking. We’ve made a pact that we will cease with the making of bikkies or cakes because we cannot control ourselves in the face of them! These cookies are particularly amazing, the recipe makes tons, and has been part of our downfall.