18, Stay a while, and listen.

Today's first attempt at one of these ended up being a blog post about exercise. I got sidetracked. For the second day in a row.

So anyway, today I wrote a blog post, linked above. I also did some housework, although not as much as usual, because my right shoulder has a crazypainful spasm. I blame Deckard Cain.

I googled a recipe for paleo meatballs, to try and make some snack-sized meatballs I can freeze. I would normally not bother with my shoulder the way it is, but the meat was defrosted a couple of days ago, and I'd feel guilty about throwing it out.

Oh, and I made myself breakfast. Mushrooms, rosti, lean ham and two duck's eggs. Duck eggs taste ... not quite the same as hen's eggs. I think I'll scramble them with garlic or something next, as they were just a little peculiar for my tastes just fried. I will admit, though, they looked gorgeous. Om nom nom. Overall, as far as my dietary requirements go, it was a pretty good breakfast. 470 calories, 15g carbohydrate, 27g fat, and 42g protein. Maybe a little high on the fat side, but certainly okay otherwise. It probably seems a little high in calorie count, until you take into account that I don't snack, probably won't eat again until 4pm, and then it'll be something fairly light, leaving me about the same calories for dinner. Today I'll probably go over on fat, under on carbohydrate, and hit my protein goal. A detailed analysis of my food requirements will probably get a post of its own, sometime, but not right now. In any case, I'm satisfied that I tried something new today.

So, the shoulder spasm has put paid to plans for a workout this evening, which is somewhat annoying, but these things happen. On the bright side, it means I'll get dinner at around 8pm instead of around 10pm, which is a definite plus.

Still to do: clean out the fridge of perishables in preparation for next week's trip to Seattle, since it's bin day tomorrow. 

.... and hit level 20 in Diablo 3.

16, move every zig

Today's been a productive day.

•  Housework! Laundry, dishwasher, a quick tidyup. 

• Wrote a blog post, State Change, about how I've been going the last couple of weeks. I really appreciate the messages of support, empathy and encouragement I've been getting. Thanks guys, you're all incredibly awesome.
• Talked to my mother on Skype for an hour.
• Had some lemons that were getting to their use-by date, so I juiced them and froze the juice for use in home-made electrolyte replacement drinks (so much cheaper and probably better for me than Gatorade). 
• Ordered the groceries for the week.
• Ate in a timely manner before going to the gym. Hopefully this means I won't hurt too much tomorrow. Fried eggs with lean ham and rosti. Mmmmm. Om nom nom. 
• Went to the gym, and worked out. I think I can safely say I've achieved one, possibly both of my 6-week strength goals. For pushups, the goal was 12 minimum extension knee pushups as a single set max. Today, I did 10 full extension knee pushups on my second set. For one-arm rows, the goal was to do a 7x10kg set. Today I did a 4x35kg, on my fourth set, which is nearly double the weight per hand of my goal. My third set, which wasn't quite good form, was 4x40kg. I think I can fairly say that I've probably overachieved. I'm going to do a formal retest on Wednesday to see how my progress is going. And then set some new goals - again for a 6 week period. 
• Had a wonderful hot bath.
• Finished reading "The Way of Kings" by Brandon Sanderson at the end of my bath. Excellent timing, that. And now, to bed!

13, with links to many photographs!

So, I've thought maybe I should put a photo with each of these, to make them less boring. Not that they are necessarily boring, but as an exercise in anything other than propping up my self-esteem, they lack interest. To me, anyhow. If you've got a different opinion, feel free to share it :P

Also I want to get back into daily (or semi-daily) photography. Well, at least, more frequent photography. Not sure I want to attempt a 365 project again - it might be more stress than it's worth at the present.

Here's a picture for you, taken on my way to the physio.



So, anyway, on with the things I've managed to do:

• Went to physio, got told I'm inspirational and I'm doing all the right things. Yay!
• Processed and uploaded LOTS AND LOTS OF PHOTOS. Many, even. Some from stargazing near Ballarat, the trip to Edinburgh in December, some trains in Tiaro, some chicken soup, and the alchemy exhibition in the Science Museum. And some flowers.
• Talked to my brother on skype for a couple of hours, which was awesome. 
• Started researching new lenses for my upcoming travel. I am teh confused. Is it possible to replace my 18-50mm and my 55-200mm lenses with a single lens? With image stabilisation? I'd like to do that if possible - that and my nifty fifty and a macro lens would cover everything I currently want, I think. Recommendations for an extremely amateur photographer who photographs flowers, architecture, and art but not people? Canon platform, btw. Actually, I'm going to make a post on this. Stay tuned.
• Researched what I'm doing to do on my Florence trip. Looking at seeing the Uffizi Gallery, Argenti Museum, the Accademia, and a couple of walking tours of various districts. I'm there Sunday through Sunday, first week of July. Oh, and we're coming up through Pisa. :D
• Definitely keeping up the exercise - managed to get 40min walk on Thursday. I think I'm going to go back to High Street Kensington to do a photo shoot of a church there, on a day when it isn't raining quite so much. 

This took ages to publish because I was waiting for my photos to upload. Soooo many photos. I should really keep up with them better - then again, that's exactly what I'm doing! Props to me.

Achievements 12 - catch up

I missed a few days, because I was feeling down. A summary:

• I caught a Red Bus for the first time EVER!
• Got myself some Vibram Fivefingers
• Caught a red bus for the second time
• Blogged about it
• did housework, cleaning, etc. 
• Made chicken soup to a new recipe
• Filled out my food diary consistently
• Figured out how to hit my minimum daily calories instead of going into massive deficits
• Did my mobility workouts
• Did most of my other workouts
• Took photographs
• Published my photographs (some of them, anyhow)
• Went on a geek date with the dearly beloved to the Science Museum
• Went to weekly gym seminar thingo - got weighed in, apparently I've successfully misplaced about a kilo.
• Tried runescape

Rightio, up to present day. Today, I:

• Unstacked/restacked dishwasher
• Tidied the place up - Wednesday is cleaner day. 
• Washed my hair.
• Filled out my food diary, I've been good with this.
• Signed up for spotify, so I have music to listen to while working out.
• Researched adult beginner gymnastics in London. I still need to do a lot of strength and flexibility work before I can actually go ahead with gymnastics-specific skills and training, but knowing where to go when I reach that point is a good thing.
• Did two mobility workouts, on shoulder flexibility. Man, do I have a long way to go. Still, it's a heck of a lot better than about 6 weeks ago, when I couldn't even get my shoulder into a neutral position at all.
• Took advantage of my hair being washed and out to take a couple of photographs.
• Did a quick blog post about said photographs.
• Made lunch. And breakfast.
• Defrosted meat for lunch well before midday (it takes ages to defrost here - 2+ days in the fridge, 5+hrs on the bench).
• Went to the gym and KICKED ASS (will post about that in a bit)
• Made dinner - baked veges with bangers on top! Easy 1 pot meal.

Achievements 10

Once more into the breech ...

• Caught up on twitter and email around 8am
• Filled in yesterday's food diary. Note to self: eat more. About double.
• Talked to my mum on skype, yay!
• Cleaned up kitchen lots.
• Emptied bins.
• Had breakfast in the AM.
• Tidied the house.
• Ordered some electrolyte powder and protein powder, since things like powerade are expensive, and I need more easy-to-consume protein in my diet.
• Read up on chicken soup recipes. I feel like chicken soup for dinner tomorrow, and we have some chicken-with-bones in that needs using.
• Also read up on savoy cabbage recipes. Seems I can do my usual bacon, onion and garlic trick - that'll go nicely with some rib eye steak and maybe some mashed spud, I reckon.
• Joined up on MyFitnessPal, since MyNetDiary decided to start charging extra for services I'd already paid for. 
• Went to the gym, and did a lot of strength work.
• Had a nomnom awesome meal of rib eye steak, savoy cabbage&leek, mashed spud, and shaved lean ham for dinner, putting me pretty close to my nutrition targets for today.
• Another long, hot bath to offset the strength work and hopefully make me less sore tomorrow.
• MobiltyWOD - forward hip flexor stretch. I modified it, since the example given stretched my quads rather than my hips.

'Night all.

Achievements 9

So, I picked myself up, and:

• Signed up for Project Euler (here)
• Read up on the theory that Jon Snow was not fathered by Eddard Stark, and discovered that my theory is not unique. Not saying anything more because you know, spoilers are bad.
• In related news, got up to 60% of the way through Game of Thrones.
• Introduced the dearly beloved to Oolong tea. He likes it.
• Unstacked and restacked dishwasher.
• Put the weekly vege box and the groceries away.
• Looked at supplements online - mostly electrolytes, because ye gods, finding low/nosugar electrolyte drinks in the shops is hard.
• Made an Egg Monster, took photos, and blogged about it.
• And did a spreadsheet for the nutritional info. 
• Cleaned up after cooking.
• Processed all the (100ish) photos I took today, uploaded them.
• Finished Egg Monster Blog post by putting photos in. You should go look at it. It's awesome. And the spreadsheet, too.
• Had a long hot bath.

That's all for today, folks.

Cookbook: Egg Monster Adventure!

 Part of cleaning up my diet is severely limiting the amount of prepackaged foods I eat. This includes breakfast. I'm pretty slow to get going in the morning, so having something I can just reheat is awesome and required. Thus, courtesy of the awesome folks over at Nerdfitness, I have the thing known as Egg Monster. It's basically a frittata of sorts. But on to the recipe! And the Adventure!

Ingredients.
18 eggs
200g Pancetta
500g (lean) Beef Mince
170g carrots
140g portabello mushrooms
120g broccoli
200g flat beans
70g asparagus
A Leek.
130g mayonnaise
3g coconut oil
Herbs
Garlic
Pepper
Salt.

Makes 16 servings.
Rough nutritional info per serve: Energy 220kcal, Protein 18.3g, Carbohydrate 3.3g, Fat 19.5g.

Adventure! Recipe.
1. Turn the oven to 170C, and brown the mince in a frypan.
2. While the mince is doing its thing, chop the veges.
3. Set the mince aside, and sauté/steam/grill the veges and garlic, and cook the fat off the pancetta (separately). Drain the extra fat off, and put the pancetta on a couple layers of paper towelling to drain a bit more. When the veges are done, mix the meat and veges together.
4. Beat eggs, mayonnaise, salt, pepper, herbs together.
5. Grease a REALLY BIG pan with the coconut oil.
6. Put everything in the pan.
7. Put in oven for an hour.

The Adventure!
... That's not quite how it really happened. Here's the real (5 hour) story:

Arranged veges nicely, and took several photographs. Turned the oven on to 200C.



Tried to start chopping asparagus, found it was past a useful condition, and got the other bunch out of the fridge. Found flat beans in the process, and decided to add them too. Figured that since I now had different veg, I should take more pictures.


Took even more pictures.


Chopped carrots, leek and mushroom and ... took pictures.




Meanwhile, I cooked the pancetta. And took pictures.


Then I sautéed the carrot, leek and mushrooms and garlic and chopped the greens. And took pictures.


I steamed the greens in the microwave, and put the egg yolks and whites in separate bowls. And took pictures.






You may notice there are only 12 yolks. We'll get to that in a minute. I remembered that this thing was supposed to have mince in it, and put the mince on to brown. Well, actually I spent about half an hour breaking it up with a wooden spoon, then turned the heat on. And took pictures.




Beat the egg whites until slightly foofy, and beat the egg yolks with the mayonnaise, herbs, salt and pepper. Took more pictures.



I mixed my pancetta and mince together in the pan, then thought it would be a jolly good idea to actually have the veges and mince mixed all together. So I put them in a bowl and took pictures.





I greased up my glass roasting pan, and put the mince/vege mixture in. And took pictures.



And then remembered the greens. They went on top. Pretty, don't you think?




I remembered that this was going to rise. So I found my REALLY HUGE metal roasting pan, greased that up, and transferred the meat and veg to it. Oh well, so much for artistry.




I poured the egg mix over and ... oops. Not enough, eh?



So I quickly beat up another half dozen eggs, and added that. And took pictures.



Looks like enough, went to double-check the temperature the oven was supposed to be at ... oops. Mine's too high. Not to worry, I'll turn it down, open the door for a minute, and it'll be Just Fine(TM).Half an hour through cooking, turning the pan around, because my oven is like that.



Aaaaand ... RAWR! EGG MONSTER! Owait, not cooked all the way through yet, back into the oven with you.



During this adventure, I was also weighing everything and writing all the nutritional info down. A lot of maths, really. And then there were numbers. Actually, a whole spreadsheet. See? Numbers. Also, flowers.



Breakfast at 5pm, yay! Om nom nom.





Next time: Less mayo (so less fat), maybe more eggs. And different veges. Maybe less veges. Sooo many greens. And a capsicum. Okay, going now. The End.

Achievements 8 - Triumph despite adversity

Today I have an interview for a job! eek.

• Read an article about how Women Need Makeup. Did not rant. Much.
• Did my mobilityWOD. One minute at a time. Holding a full squat is hard, yo.
• Used google hangouts (for the first time) to talk to some very dear people on the other side of the world
• Double-checked and finalised tomorrow's grocery deliveries.
• Polished my boots.
• Got to interview on time.
• Instead of wallowing in despair, talked about it to people online and felt better.
• Went to gym seminar despite feeling horribly drained.
• Did a workout. Beat last week's run time. 

I still feel utterly awful. Emotionally, today was a Bad Day. BUT I got everything done I set out to do IN SPITE OF THE SAD so in that sense, today was an EXCELLENT DAY where I WON THE EVERYTHING. 

Achievements 7

More doing stuff! Including some things I forgot to include in earlier posts.

• Signed up for a 12 week 'Lose and Shape Up' program at my gym. This is a theory and a group training session a week; the training seems to be mostly bodyweight suspension exercises, which fits nicely in with my endpoint fitness goals.
• Signed up for a 6 week amazingly nerdy challenge at Nerdfitness. 
• Got 10hrs sleep.
• Had a cup of oolong tea. I think it's nice, but ... not as nice as jasmine pearls. Since I can't have much caffeine, I'm going to go back to my jasmine as soon as this packet is finished.
• Figured out an outfit for interview tomorrow. May post a photograph for review later.
• Read all the website from my prospective employer.
• Finished reading "Diaspora" by Greg Egan.
• Got up to Ch 11 of "Agile Web Development with Rails".
• Nerded some more about my Ardvino design.
• Got a fair way through Book 1 of A Song of Ice and Fire. 
• Got clothes out for tomorrow.
• Packed gym bag for tomorrow night.
• Packed handbag for tomorrow day.

Achievements 6

• Stacked and ran dishwasher
• Prodded the dearly beloved into doing his laundry
• Packed books for return to amazon
• Was democratic (voted in Queensland elections)
• Watched a few episodes from Mobility Workout of the Day, because I am horribly inflexible at the moment, and I know that's causing a lot of my ongoing pain issues. Fixing pain is a good idea.
• Took some photos on the way to the pub, whatever. And posted them.
• Thought really hard about the Ardvino project. Did some mockup sketches on paper. Thought about sensors, power, data, and UX for supporting webapp. 
• Got to bed early (8.30pm).

Achievements 5

• Wrote and posted a review of the coconut yoghurt I bought yesterday
• Took my washing in
• Made breakfast (mmm mashed spud)
• Rejected a job application request from a recruiter 
• Asked a different recruiter for more details for another job
• Read "Distress" by Greg Egan
• Read up to Ch 7 of "Agile Web Development with Rails", 4th ed, by Sam Ruby, Dave Thomas, David Heinemeier Hasson et al. And did all the exercises
• Bought next month's phone credit, and fixed the auto-top up 
• Made and ate lunch
• Went to the gym and worked out. A lot. Ow.
• Went out after the gym to a mate's changing-jobs party, and did not drink anything except some fancy-pants nutrient water type stuff with extra electrolytes

And now bed. zzzz.

Achievements 4

• Got to Ch12 of 'Learning Optimism' before sleeping.
• Took in and folded the washing I did yesterday.
• Put a load of my clothes on, including the gym shorts I'll need tomorrow.
• Inbox: 0/42 awww yeah.
• Responded to G+ messages.
• Did my online grocery shopping for next week's order (Note: vast improvement over doing it after when I prefer to have it delivered)
• Packed a backpack to go to the physio and foodshopping afterwards, instead of running out the door with only my handbag and making my back sore carrying delicious food home in a supermarket bag. 
• (re)started a food diary at mynetdiary.com. 
• Played the first two (and so far, only available) levels of vim-adventures.com .
• Wrote a shopping list.
• Finished reading and blogged a book review of 'Learned Optimism'.  
• Washed my hair.
•  Made and ate lunch (cheerios! well, kind of - kosher cured turkey and beef cocktail viennas says the label)
• Hung out washing.
• Received books.
• Frowned. Books damaged. Took photogaphs, filled out amazon returns thingy, printed labels. Decided to return them probably Monday or Tuesday. Accomplishment++
• Wrote a blog post about task management.
• Went to the physio.
• Went to the Planet Organic shop in Bayswater and got foodage. Well, it's near Bayswater. Got extra daily constitutional by getting off at Paddington. 
• Started reading "Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives" by Richard Swenson.
• Unpacked backpack, packed bag to go out tonight.
• Went out! 

Aaaand with that, I'm out the door. 

But it'll only take 5 minutes or, The importance of sticking to the point

I have, for several years, been quite a fan of the Getting Things Done method espoused by David Allen in his book, "How to Get Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity."

One of the key parts of the strategy is that if you have a task, that will take 5 minutes or less, do it straight away.

If you've been following my achievements posts, you may notice that the vast majority of tasks there take 5 minutes or less. It is incredibly easy for me to fill my day with very small tasks. Don't get me wrong; they are things that do need to get done. But - well, let's take an example. Today, I intended to have breakfast early. I went to the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea, while stacking the dishwasher, tidying up the bench, filtering some water for my water bottle, reading my current book, put my laundry in the washing machine, filled my water bottle, packed my handbag into my backpack, went to my desk, sat down and ... realised I hadn't made breakfast. So many tiny little tasks, strung themselves together, and I was distracted away from my original intent.

The next time I went to the kitchen to make breakfast, I put breakfast on *first*, and *then* hung out my washing. The books arrived midway through the hanging-out. I finished hanging out the washing, served up breakfast, and opened the parcel to find my books damaged. having been recently reminded of how easily I get distracted into a chain of small tasks, I posted on twitter, but did not immediately take photographs or go to my desk to start the returns process. I ate my breakfast first - although I did get up to grab a notebook and pen to take notes on the book I started reading. After I finished breakfast, *then* I took photos, printed labels, updated my achievements post.

But those tasks did need to be done - and putting off minor tasks because, well, they're minor is always a temptation. Perhaps I should schedule a block of time of a morning - say, after breakfast and shower - to do all those little, niggling tasks that pile up.

Has anyone else encountered the endless-little-tasks bug, and if so, how do you manage to still get those tasks done and avoid using them as procrastination?

Achievements 3

Today, I:

• Stacked and unstacked the dishwasher
• Had breakfast before midday
• Installed spotify
• Confirmed a job interview booking for Monday (OMG!)
• Bought books to update my technical Library, in both deadtree and soft format
• And then I read some of them
• And got them delivered to my Kindle
• Wrote a blog post about my thoughts on how high to aim when setting goals
• Gave the nice BA man my details so he can take my money and give me flights to Seattle and back
• Washed the sheets
• Emptied the bins
• Got an up to date rails development environment going on a vm on my windows machine, a vm on my ubuntu machine, and my ubuntu machine
• Swore a lot. I'm sore. This is an achievement because I'm sore from GOING TO THE GYM YESTERDAY WOOOOOOO!
• Hung out the sheets
• Put the tulips the dearly beloved got for me in a vase instead of the  packaging they came in
• Chairdanced and sung along to a bunch of songs
• Sat up straight most of the day instead of hunching over like usual
• Caught up on Twitter
• Inbox down to 0/48 !!!!!! GO ME YAYAYAYAY
• Made the bed with clean sheets
• Had lunch (2 meals today, yay!)
• Refilled the rinse aid dispenser in my dishwasher
• Read Ch 1-3 of 'Learned Optimism' by Martin Seligman

Okay. I'll rest on my laurels there, I think. Tallyho.

Achievements 2

• Finally transferred home-made chicken stock from icecube trays to ziplock baggies. 
• Thought about dinner and got meat out of the freezer to defrost. There will be stew. Stew, I say! And maybe dumplings. Not 100% paleo, but well, I do have stuff to use up. And a husband to keep happy. Even if he does make the kicked puppy eyes when I say 'NO TOUCHY' when he tries to lift the lid and check on the dumplings before they're done. Speaking of, I'd better get out more meat and do a bigger batch this time. Last time there were no leftovers and I was all :( because I wanted it for lunch. This time, there will be leftovers! I hope.
• Had peppermint tea of awesome instead of softdrink for non-water drinking stuff.
• Put together my gym bag (gym clothes, deodorant, change of undies and socks, pen, notebook). 
• WENT TO THE GYM. 15min run/walk (1.5km), 3x12 one-arm rows with 4kgs, 3x12 airsquats, 6 knee pushups, 2x30sec planks from knees, a lot of stretching. 
• Asked about the lose and shape up program running at the gym - 12 week course, primary motivation is accountability and in-person support. I'm thinking about it.
• Collected my voicemail for the first time ever in the UK.
• Remembered to buy diced bacon and non-milk on the way home FROM THE GYM. 

Right. Time to make dinner. And have a long, hot bath.

• Made dinner. Beef and ale stew with gluten and diary free dumplings. Was very tasty.

And now, sleepytime.

Achievements 1

To encourage myself and to help me think more positively about myself I've decided to keep a record of things I achieve by doing frequent blog posts. I'm not dating them, because some days I may do none, and others I may do many - either way I don't want to beat myself up for not doing one on a given day, nor do I want to not post because I've already posted that day. What I am not going to record (not here, at any rate) is my fails - past experience tells me that I'll use it as ammunition against my self-image. No achievement is too small or too large for this space. Without further ado, achievement points:

• Caught up on my twitter feeds.
• Reduced my inbox from 500/770 read/unread to 269/440. 
• Washed household towels and cleaning stuff and hung it out.
• Stacked and ran dishwasher. 
• Ate an omlette.
• Got the veges from my weekly veg box put away, and started thinking about uses (muahahaha).
• Cleaned out the definitely past it veg from the fridge and washed out one of the veg drawers because it was growing, ewww. 
• I put more files in MusicBrainz Picard to continue my ongoing fix-my-music-collection effort. This has been going on for at least a year now, but hey. If I get a little further every month or so, I should get through it all, right?
• Finally got around to soaking my ecloth dishscrubby thing in hot water and vinegar because it was starting to smell yuck. 
• Watered my poor, suffering christmas tree. 
• Moved the google swag from the living room to the kitchen where it belongs (fluro green cups, hurrah!)
• Put the cushions back on the couch and the couch-throw away.
• Filed the recipes that have been sitting on top of my printer for ages in my recipe folder.
• Had oolong tea for the first time ... and by finding that link discovered that company does loose leaf tea, which I swear they didn't in January. YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY *cough* as you were.
• Did *NOT* immediately purchase a metric *or* imperial ton[ne] of tea.
• Listened to some more of my backlog of 'A State of Trance' podcasts. Yes, I know. But I find it braincalming and energy-making, so there.
• Looked at Spotify, but they don't do Linux yet. Their website doesn't list my phone either (HTC Sensation) but I can download and install the app anyway. Sent spotify a note telling them it's missing.
• Remembered to put my kindle on the charger.
• Wrote this.

Right. I'll post another one if I get much more done today.