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 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.

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 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. 

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.