…in which she is now just a hungry hippo.
Posted by: skelseh on: November 26, 2009
I’ve been fairly productive this week; getting into a few little crafty projects. However they are Christmas based and while I really want to post about them, it might ruin some surprises. So you’ll just have to wait until after Chrimbo.
Not that having ruined the surprise will make any better the fact that I’m giving out home made crap this year to some friends, but I’m always told it’s the thought that counts. Heh. Yeah.
Week one of the diet is now over. It’s really nice to have the enthusiasm and will power back that I had before, and it’s been pretty easy, all bar one rather bad hangover day where I just wanted to eat everything in sight (and some things that were out of sight). Anyway, here’s a nice screenclip of my Nutracheck week view:
Week One: Spot the Hangover
Actually, I should admit that the booze from Saturday night isn’t on there. Reason? I don’t know how much I drank. But I drink spirits, not beer or wine, and that’s the lowest calorie way to get drunk (a shot of vodka is around 50 kcal). I’m not about to stop going out and enjoying Saturday nights, and I’m certainly not going to starve myself for a day to let myself do so.
Weigh-in isn’t officially until tomorrow morning, but I doubt there’s much change this week. When you make any big changes to your lifestyle, it takes your body some time to adjust. People rarely see any real progress in the first week. I didn’t last time.
Week two sees the start of my exercise regime. This week has just been the diet, aside from cycling to work a few days, but if I want to see any good progress I need to move my butt a bit more than I do at the moment. It also wouldn’t hurt to tone up a few of my jigglier bits. So this week I try my hand (legs, bum, various other body parts) at Pilates.
If I stop posting, it’s because I’m too sore.
…in which she is a big fat hippo.
Posted by: skelseh on: November 20, 2009
I am what is commonly known as an ex-heffer. That is, a few years ago after I finished university, I weighed a big fat 12.5 stone (175lbs, 80kg), which is pretty hefferish for a shortass of only 5 feet and 3 3/4 inches. I have pictures, but I’m not going to post them. Even now I can’t bear to be seen looking like that.
So I did something about it. I got serious about it. I bought a £70 exercise bike from Argos, and started counting every last calorie that passed my lips. It was kinda hard, but after only 3 months, I was down to 9 stone. Someone told me I looked too thin, so I let myself grow some curves back, and levelled out at 9.5.
That was about two years ago, and I kept it pretty constant after that. But a few months ago I started learning how to bake things. Nice things. Things I should not have been eating. Right now, I weigh 10 stone.
But not for much longer! I guess I’m just one of those lucky people who will always have to keep an eye on their weight. I could bitch and whine about how unfair it is; how it’s the wrong kind of ironic how my friend M has an over-active thyroid and is slim no matter what, and yet she ’spends’ her daily calorie intake on packets of grotty crisps, while I have to almost save up my calories for all the nice home cooked yummy recipes…
Woops, got carried away there, not bitching.
In any case, it’s time to get serious again. I had a rather fat day today (it’s never good when you’ve had the munchies in the morning, and then it’s a colleagues birthday at work and he brings in cakes in the afternoon) but as from tomorrow I’m back on the gruel and rice cakes. Woop woop!
Who ate all the... random crap?!
And the reason I’m posting about it here? Fear of humiliation is a wonderful motivator to do something right. I don’t want you all judging me when I fuck it up =P
…in which she gets serious.
Posted by: skelseh on: November 15, 2009
The new series of Top Gear has begun and I refuse to become obsessed with the music they use this time around.
That’s all I wanted to say, I just felt the need to record my resolve.
…in which her thoughts are taken over.
Posted by: skelseh on: November 10, 2009
I love when movies get stuck in my head. I seem to have a very selective memory for movies – I can usually judge how much I enjoyed a film by how much I can remember of it. I have been known on some occasions to completely forget I’ve even watched a film, later re-watching it and discovering why. I guess that’s a problem.
The opposite of that though is that when I love a film, really love it, I can’t stop thinking about it. It happens rarely, and often for completely different reasons. However three recent occurrences of this spring to mind…
* * * * *
Taken
I resisted watching Taken for so long; such a familiar synopsis: A former spy relies on his old skills to save his estranged daughter, who has been kidnapped while travelling in Europe. Guns, bad guys, revenge. The type of film you could easily predict, and easily forget.
When I eventually succumbed to watching it one pizza night, I was proven wrong. The whole film was an edge-of-the-seat thriller and I’m pretty sure my heart was racing from the moment the kidnap happened, right until the “end boss”. I loved it.
I’m not very good at constructing long and clever sentences to describe films, but all you really need to know it that it was frantic, brutal, and Neeson Kicks Ass. Two weeks after watching it the first time I caught myself replaying the kidnap scene in my head, remembering Neeson’s message to the bad guys;
I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career; skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you…
…and I will kill you.
Chilling!
I watched it again that night. It was so nice to see a film like this that didn’t muck about, wasn’t filled with gimmicks and clichés, got the adrenaline pumping and just – well – kicked bottom. Like good thrillers ought to.
Human Humdrum recommends Taken for any Pizza Movie night. Give it the full home cinema treatment.
* * * * *
The Lake House
The idea of The Lake House is total crap: Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock live in the same house, but two years apart, and they fall in love whilst sending each other letters through a postbox that apparently can bend space-time to deliver them. Even as a Sci-Fi geek I don’t buy it. Yet the makers of this movie managed to pull it off somehow. There was something really nice about these simple letters, about every day observations, going backwards and forwards between two people who had never actually met, and in our modern world of emails and Internet that is something which is believable.
There’s a really nice part of the film where they take a walk through the city together. Of course they aren’t really together; Reeves, in the past, has made notes about his favourite places on a map, and Bullock takes his tour of the city physically alone, but reading his comments on things along the way. I realise that sounds pretty lame here on your screen, but I think they did it very well in the movie.
There are plenty of questionable bits of plot – for example Reeves at one point plants a tree in his time, and then it magically appears right next to Bullock in her time. But once you manage to put all the stuff you ever read/watched/learned about paradoxes and alternate time lines out of your mind, these little things are just nice touches in a movie which is just really… nice.
In any case, this movie was one that I was still thinking about the day after, rewatched the week after, and still thought about the week after that. I consider it a bit of a guilty pleasure: a movie which I know isn’t going to win many awards and my friends will probably think is lame, but I enjoyed it all the same. And after all, that’s all that matters.
Sunday afternoon viewing and – while it’s a romantic film – it’s not your cheesy chick flick so boys, don’t be too scared!
* * * * *
Before Sunrise
I have a memory of being a young teenager, up late watching TV in my room, seeing a movie in which a man and a woman were spending a night walking around some European city. They had just met, but had fallen in love, and would have to go their separate ways in the morning. I wasn’t really at an age where I appreciated ‘grown-up’ films, or had even seen many, yet this film made a real lasting impression on me.
While I forgot completely what the characters looked like and what they did in the movie, I never forgot the emotions and the way the film made me feel. Years after I would tell people about this film I’d seen where two people meet, spend one night together, and then go their separate ways. But no one else ever knew what I was talking about.
Earlier this year when I was talking to a colleague of mine about movies, he asked if I had ever seen Before Sunrise. The second I said “No” something clicked in my brain. It turned out that the movie that I was starting to think I had only seen in a dream, was this ‘Before Sunrise’ and other people had actually seen it! Finally knowing its title I got myself a copy and when off work recently with a dodgy tummy, I sat down to watch it.
It was like watching it for the first time – I remembered none of the conversations and situations, yet everything was so familiar. It was the movie that I remembered from all the way back in, like, 1996.
The plot isn’t clever, there are no twists, no surprises. Mostly the film is just showing a conversation between two people who have just met. It isn’t glamorous or controversial, but instead there’s awkwardness, shyness, and the nonsensical babble that you get in real life when meeting someone for the first time. Movie critics know how to put this a lot better than me, but it just feels very ‘real life’.
About half way through they have an encounter with a gypsy palm reader. I’ve no idea why, but this character fascinated me, and I replayed the sequence a couple of extra times. There’s one thing she says that I love:
“You need to resign yourself to the awkwardness of life. Only if you find peace within yourself will you find true connection with others.”
Crazy old lady aside, this really is one of my favourite films. Yeah I know, it’s another romance and I’m a girl so you’re not surprised. But I’m not a fan of sickly-sweet romantic movies, and I usually hate films where nothing really happens. But I love Before Sunrise and I’m going to watch it again in a few months.
Watch it. Watch it when you have 105 minutes to yourself and you know you won’t be disturbed. There was a sequel made 9 years later, called Before Sunset, and you will probably be temped to watch it straight after. But leave it a couple of weeks. If you can.
…in which she gets her 5-a-day!
Posted by: skelseh on: November 8, 2009
For my birthday, my parents bought me a smoothie maker. Today I wanted to try it out. So I went to Tesco and bought a bunch of ingredients…
Triple Sec, White Rum, Ice, Strawberries, Lime Juice & Caster Sugar
…I threw them all into the blender jug…
Note: no babies are in this recipe.
…WHIIIIIIIIZZZZZZZZZZZZ…
Still no babies.
…and PRESTO! Strawberry Daiquiris!
I wish I owned Martini glasses =(
They were good! *hic* Not as good as the GORGEOUS Daiquiris we had in a tiny Finnish bar in Tenerife, but I strongly suspect there’s a higher percentage of alcohol in the ones I made tonight. *hic* Remember though – Strawberry Daiquiris are seriously good for you.
I heart my smoothie maker. Thanks Mum ^_^
…in which she gets handy with a sharp knife.
Posted by: skelseh on: November 4, 2009
I have been informed by one of my dear friends that yesterday’s post was a touch on the Emo side. So sorry about that. In order to make up for it I shall today turn the knife from my wrists to something more creative and post all about pumpkins!
With my birthday falling on All Saint’s day every year, All Hallow’s Eve has always been a big deal for me. It’s the day before my birthday, and as a welcome distraction from the wanting desperately to open presents “NOW NOW NOW”, I instead got to dress up as something scary (most commonly the bin-liner witch) and go around demanding sweets* from my neighbours.
As a result, most of my birthdays tend to have a Halloweeny theme, and now every year – as if it were Christmas – I get the two boxes of Halloween decorations down from the loft and ‘do up’ my house in a spooky way.
Including, for the last 4 years, carving my very own pumpkin.
2006, 2007 & 2009
I try to keep them simple, but make them look scary. Last year’s pumpkin lived on the patio table right outside my back door for a while once Halloween was over. I forgot one night, opened the blind, flicked on the outside light and jumped about three feet when I saw it.
This year, inspired by more clever buggers, I tried doing it a little differently, using peeled flesh for teeth and eyes to get a two toned effect. The result is pretty good in the dark, but possibly scarier in the light. At least I think so!
"Demented" apparently!
I did the carving on the 29th, so to keep the pumpkin fresh I put him in the fridge for two days, forgetting to tell my boyfriend. I wish I’d been there to see his face when he first went to get milk out.
And, just because I am a geek with too much spare time on my hands, I tried another new thing while I was carving my masterpiece. Check it:
*Unless it was the Gibsons, who always gave out very out of date packets of crisps. Thanks Julie!
…in which she ponders “getting old”.
Posted by: skelseh on: November 3, 2009
Updates are thin on the ground at the moment – I know. In complete opposite to what you would assume would be the case, now that the weather has got shitty I have actually become busier during out of work hours.
Part of this is due to the fact that I just celebrated my birthday. It was on Sunday the 1st of November – at 17:30ish to be exact. I am now 27.
While this isn’t “old” by any stretch of the imagination, it’s still slightly disconcerting. To me anyway – I realise that anyone older than 27 has little or no sympathy, and anyone younger is just glad that they aren’t yet 27, so just spout some lame attempt at reassurance like “Ow, 27’s not THAT old”. But the fact remains that my body has now been running for 27 years. You don’t get many cars still on the road that can claim the same, and they at least get their engines turned off from time to time. Even when I’m asleep mine is just ticking over. It’s the organic equivalent of idling at traffic lights.
Though it’s not really the physical age thing that concerns me; I’m a little worried that my mental age isn’t really catching up. People I work with seem to delight in telling me all the things that they had done by the time they were my age: got married, had kids, bought a house, already the manager of their department etc.
My own attitude to many of these things is still “there’s plenty of time for all that”. I don’t have the means or interest to buy my own house yet, managers at our company work too much and play too little for my liking, and I’m not ready for marriage regardless of whether or not I have met the right person. As for babies – the little things still just horrify me.
Should this still be the case at 27? Should I be worried that I am so far “behind”? My close friends are all pretty much in the same situation as I am, but the majority of them are younger than me, albeit only by a couple of years. Then when I look on Facebook at the people I used to call friends, I’d say 90% of them are either engaged or married, many of whom with little sproggs already.
It’s not that I’m worried I haven’t got all these things yet – it’s that I don’t WANT these things yet. Even the most boisterous and – with want for a less horrible sounding word – immature friends from school are now settling down and becoming family men/women.
I haven’t really come up with an answer to it all yet, I’ve just been choosing to ignore it. But when I’m in what I hope is the right frame of mind, I tend to say to myself “hey, stop trying to use other people’s lives as a template for your own”. Actually that sounds really good – I need to copyright it and sell it to a Chinese cracker company.
Words of wisdom copyright 2009 Human Humdrum
Besides, there’s a chap in Somalia who’s body has been running non-stop for 112 years, and he thinks that he’s up for getting married again, and even hopes to father more children. While you may think that’s a little bit creepy – especially considering that said wife is 17 years old – I take it as a good sign that there is still hope for me yet!
Note: This does not mean that I am interested in marrying a 17 year old.
…in which Spam Spam Spam Spam Spam.
Posted by: skelseh on: October 19, 2009
“Spam, Egg, Sausage and Spam doesn’t have much Spam in it”
This post is about Spam. We’ve all had it, we all hate it. When I was at school there weren’t really any good spam filters, and I remember my hotmail address of the time would get inundated with spam, getting 100s of spam mails every week toward the end, when finally had enough and decided to get a whole new email address just to dodge the spam.
Eventually FREE ANTI SPAM SOFTWARE started cropping up, but since this usually blocked as much useful* mail as emails about how to improve the performance of your member…ship, we all found ourselves with Spamboxes or Junk Folders on our email accounts that we still had to skim through regularly in case of wrongly blocked emails. So while we no longer got excited about “You have 1 new message” just to find out it was about cheap Viagra, we still had to eventually see the email about it, even if it was just the subject line.
Our spam filter at work is still kind of like this. It’s pretty good; not once has it let something questionable through to my inbox, and has never blocked something that I should have been receiving. However once a day it automatically sends me a report telling me all about the mail it has blocked for me.
The purpose is so that I can white-list anything that is in there by accident, yet the reality is that instead of receiving spam, identifying it as spam by reading the not-appropriate-for-work subject line, then deleting it, I now receive the spam report, check everything is spam by reading the still-not-appropriate-for-work subject lines, then delete it.
Of course there is a huge benefit for people like john.smith@yahoo.com who receive a large number of these things a day – you just get one report summing them all up. But for someone like me who’s name is fairly unusual so I only get one a day anyway, the mail filter does Absolutely Nothing Useful. In fact I now get two of the buggers every day instead of one because I am administrator for two separate mailboxes.
I was discussing this matter with my colleague (who has a name much like John Smith), for whom the filter IS beneficial. He was still able to see my point though because of another filter he used to have at a previous job. A profanity filter. Apparently this profanity filter worked in much the same way as our spam filter; blocking any and all email that contained blacklisted words. At the end of each day the software would compile a report about all the emails blocked that day and send it to you.
However, instead of sending you the From and Subject information and then allowing you to read the emails with the offending words blanked out, the reports just listed each one of the words that it had blocked the emails because of. Profanity filter report = list of swears. It didn’t even let you read the emails the words came from.
I guess the upshot of that would be that you could swear as much as you like to your boss via email, he’d read it, but you’d never be found out. Now that’s an email filter I could really get behind. Actually if anyone knows where I can get this software I’d be very appreciative.
* Useful is a matter of opinion of course. Perhaps you need better membership.
…in which she is Intertained.
Posted by: skelseh on: October 16, 2009
I really shouldn’t be updating this. I should already be sound asleep since, thanks to some over-eager French colleagues, I have to be at work for 06:30 in the morning. But sod it; Maggie Thatcher used to get by on 4 hours sleep a night. Mind you, she is a butt ugly old bag.
Anyway, update on the last post: Flump has now pretty much fully recovered. Thank god! I don’t think I’ve ever been so worried. After her trip to the V-E-T-S it became clearer that it was a problem with her breathing – and a pretty nasty one at that. I let her sleep as long as she needed, even staying out of the computer room all evening so as not to disturb her. Every time I checked on her I could hear her squeaking slightly as she breathed. It was heartbreaking.
Fortunately when she eventually got up she seemed to have a lot more energy, and the next day she seemed all better except a slight whistley nose. Then yesterday I took her back for her 2nd antibiotic shot, and the Doc (not “the nasty man” as I called him – oops) said that she didn’t seem to need a 3rd, so hopefully that is that. This evening she was bombing around the bedroom floor with no trouble at all anyway, and she’s certainly not lost her appetite for popcorn.
I managed to waste a good section of my evening on YouTube today. Not on people’s stupid pet videos (hehe), but on some fantastic Re-cut Trailers.
I found this one a few months ago: a Thriller version of You’ve Got Mail. I think it’s terrific. The grin at the end just makes it for me.
Brilliant! I’d forgotten about it until my Italian friend posted a link on his Facebook to another recut Trailer, this time for Scary Mary Poppins (get it here) Then I just got stuck watching loads of the damn things. There seem to be quite a few really good ones out there too – amongst all the crap of course. But here are my two favourites of the today’s Tubing for your enjoyment!
Alright the second one isn’t a new take on a film exactly, but damn – I’d go and see it!
Though not right now. Now I have to go and sleep, in preparation for tomorrow’s day of trying to look interested and not falling asleep in the conference room. Ugh.
…in which the Doctor eventually knows best.
Posted by: skelseh on: October 12, 2009
Part III of the Tick Bite Fiasco
Back in the drizzly UK, tired from our 1 hour flight delay and 4am return home, I dragged myself out of bed early and phoned the doctors. Keeping out of sun and sea for 12 hours meant that my ankle was no longer swollen and tender, but it was still an angry shade of mauve taupe. I made an appointment to once again see Doc Bone.
“Been attacked by anymore wild hedges or creepy crawlies?” he jovially asked. “No, but look what happened to that tick bite” I said, hoiking up my jeans leg and showing off my gruesome flesh. “Wow!” he exclaimed “it’s really gone to town on you hasn’t it?!”
Unsure about what exactly had gone to town on me; I explained my Tenerife Doctor ordeal and showed him the drugs I’d been on. As it turns out the antibiotics I’d been taking, Cloxacillin, aren’t usually prescribed in the UK, and wouldn’t be any good against Lyme disease anyway. But Doc B still didn’t think it was anything to worry about. He figured the redness would just go after a few days and we needn’t do anything.
I guess I put up too much resistance or just looked like a terrified little girl, because he eventually promised me he’d look into Lyme disease and check there was nothing he was missing, though he was pretty certain that it wasn’t an issue in the Lake District, or anywhere else in the UK for that matter. I remained sceptical. I had read this.
Two days later he called me on my mobile whilst I was shopping for girlie accessories for my Mother’s 60th Masked Birthday Party. I had a purple mask and, since my ankle was going to match, I darn well wanted earrings, necklace, hair accessories and a belt to match too.
He said that as it turns out the Lake District does have Lyme Disease (le gasp), and while my ankle wasn’t showing the typical bulls eye rash of Lyme Disease, his clever Doctor sites (that us normal folk can’t access – we are just stuck with WORSTPOSSIBLESCENARIO.com) said it’s best to treat any reaction. He suggested that it was ‘just in case’, I wonder if it’s more just to ’shut her up’.
So here I am, currently being treated for Lyme Disease. I’m on a two week course of Doxycycline (not forgetting self-prescribed yoghurts). As if to be sympathetic, or to just Join In The Fun, my little Hamster, Flump, has now come down with a respiratory infection and is also on antibiotics. Poor little mite.
As worried as I was about my own health, I find myself immeasurably more worried about hers. Being a parent is hard.
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