Six Months In

Well, I started this blog a little over six months ago, and I posted a bunch of benchmarks then as to some goals that I wanted to work towards.
Lets see how I'm going measuring up to those goals :)

Health & Fitness

• Weight: 81.5kg
   - Goal: 70kg
   - Current: 80kg. This one doesn't seem to be going too well actually, I seem to be losing very little to no weight. I ran with a calorie counter app for several months at the start of the year (so pre-blog), and by its calculations of my intake & exercise, I should have dropped around two kilos a month. 
• Girth: 40"
   - Goal: 36"
   - Current: 38-39". This varies quite a bit between days, evidently some of what I'm eating is bloating me a bit. Still, while it's not the speed of progress that I'd like, it's still progress
• Situps*: 19 (yes, I couldn't manage #20)
   - Goal: 50
   - Current: 30. Well, that's certainly better. And that's without actually doing regular situps too, that's just the workout that my abs get from other exercise. I really should be trying to do situps at least every couple of days.
• Riding Distance: Unknown, but somewhere over 10kms
   - Goal: 30+kms
   - Current: Well, I did the 50km leg of Around the Bay with no issues at all. True we had a large stop for lunch, but even without that I would have been fine. We're planning to do 100kms next year!
• Running Distance: Unknown, but not much
   - Goal: 5kms (Couch to 5K Program)
   - Current: Honestly, still don't know. I haven't done the C25K thing yet, though I did just pick up Zombies! Run!, so I should get some more running exercise soon. Not an easy one to benchmark unfortunately. I do know that I can out-sprint quite a few people at Swordcraft, so that helps :)
• Eating Habits:
   - Need to increase my Fruit & Veg intake by quite a bit. Going to kick off a new eating plan when I get back from Tasmania next week
   - This one I'm confident to say I have vastly improved at. Most of my dinner meals include 3-4 serves of veggies nowadays, rather than the 1-2 that they used to. Still don't tend to eat fruit regularly, but my general Fruit & Veg is vastyly better than it was.

Creative

• iPhone/Android App: Currently have one with a bunch of friends partway between planning and Alpha stages.
   - Needs a whole bunch of one-liners written up
   - Needs art done (This will be done by someone else)
   - Needs programming tidied up and tailored (This will be done by someone else)
   - Need to organise a team meeting to see where everyone is up to. Hopefully this weekend
• Writing: Going to leave this one on the back burner for the moment to relook at later on. May well do this for NANO this year
• Well, unfortunately the App plan fell apart, and I didn't take part in NANO, the whole 'big writing piece' thing is still proving too big of a stumbling block for me to have even started looking at.
  On the other hand I'm now learning Silk Painting, and am currently assembling my own kit so that I can start making my own pieces without Janet's assistance.
  So creativity has gone in a completely different direction to what I'd planned, but I think it's still valid progress. Sure it's not the "Woohoo, novel" thing that would have been nice to have done, but we take what we can get.
• Oh, and I Really need to start learning how to use my camera better. Only a few months until New Zealand!!

Big & Scary

• Career:
   - Goal: Intellectually stimulating job that still pays well
   - Current to dos:  A friend of mine runs a Recruitment agency. Must polish up my resume and send it to her
• Place to live:
   - Goal: Have my own place rather than renting, in a spot that is near work and appreciates in value so that if I decide I want to pack up and head overseas, I can sell it and cover my debts.
   - This one is also getting to sit on the back burner for a while. This will be looked at after Career is more organised I think
• Fully willing to admit, no movement here. I find trawling through job sites like Seek to damned hard to differentiate between, since most jobs don't give the exact location ("Inner City" could simply mean that the job agency itself is in the inner city, and the job is two hours out), or payscale (not even a broad range), and tend to just be a collection of buzzwords rather than an actual description of the job (tip for job agencies, saying that your job is "To be part of a hip, dynamic IT crew of go-getters and like minded people" tells me exactly NOTHING about what the job is about)

Intellectual

• Haven't done anything about courses or anything here either. On the other hand.. I haven't really felt the need to further my education either, so maybe it's safe to say that I think I have enough on my plate here.

In general.. things have actually been quite busy. I went from barely ever seeing people and spending most of my evenings doing nothing, to having four nights a week taken up by activities, and normally at least one day a weekend as well.

My sleep has been.. fluctuating. I had been fine for most of the last six months, but started having some sleeping trouble the last few weeks, and I'm taking some steps to try and figure out why (cutting a couple of specific things out of my diet and trying to eat dinner at a more normal hour for eg). Hopefully it's just an adjustment to the changing weather or something.

The other idea, which is quite possible, is that I've just been doing too much and I'm burning out from cramming so much into each week. The next couple of weeks have 1-2 things that I normally do each week having been cancelled, so we'll see if that makes any difference also. I'm also dialing back my Monday night swordfighting to learn the silk painting, so there's a bit less physical activity.

Mentally/emotionally I think I'm improving too. I've done a bunch of things that I'd never done before (and several that I wouldn't have even considered), I think I'm giving things a go a lot more than I used to. Looking back at past behaviours I think I've grown a lot as well. This is good :)

The two big bugbears of "Work" and "New place to live" are still hanging over me (Work especially), but other than that... I think life is actually going pretty well at the moment. Yes being thinner & fitter would be nice, but I'm.. not discontented with my life.

One thing that's been bugging me though. It's been a long time since I had a noticeable adrenaline hit. You'd think doing swordfighting three nights a week would mean I'd be pretty familiar with adrenaline, and certainly earlier on that was true, but nowadays it's just not happening. I nearly got cleaned up by a ute a couple of weeks ago and while I had a spike of fear before the guy opened his eyes and hit the brakes (moron decided that looking before entering a roundabout was for suckers), there was no corresponding adrenaline, and no shakes or similar afterwards.

Not losing the weight that I think I should be, not getting as much rest as I want, and adrenaline just not happening? Is there some kind of metabolism issue or something that could be causing/contributing to this? 

Probably worth me doing some research into.

Anyway, I think I'll wrap this up here.

What I would like, is anyone reading this, please let me know if *you* think you've seen a difference in  how I've been acting/behaving verses six months or more ago. I can think internally all I want about what I think has been happening, but I can't see myself from the outside and know if other people are noticing anything :)

PS: I can't let any "Halfway there" comment go by without referencing this somehow. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDK9QqIzhwk

Another one of those "Stuff" updates

So, time for another one of those semi-rambing "what's been going on" updates :)

First up, apologies for the delays for the planned post on gender stuff, haven't been finding a chance to sit down and write it all out, hopefully it shall come soon.
It won't be the next one however, since I've just passed the Six Months point of this blog, and plan to do a writeup there. I'll need to compare myself to my benchmarks from the start before I can do so though.

Anyways, main things that have been happening:

Entertainment:
I've been reading through the Dresden Files books recently, up to book nine at the moment. Urban-fantasy detective books with a noir feel. I won't go into too much detail for fear of spoilers, but they're definitely worth a look if you're interested. There's quite a few books but they're self-contained and relatively small, so you don't need to worry about "Arg, I'll need to read a dozen books to get the whole story" type of thing.

Food:
Well, as people have been continually poking and prodding me about, the 'vegetable of the week' plan fell by the wayside as something that I just didn't have the time to keep up with, but I've been trying a few new things with food.
Most recently I've been having a go at roasts. Sounds simple, right? But not something I'd done before (other than one of those ready-to-roast splayed chickens that you just throw in the oven for X minutes), because growing up I'd ended up with the impression that Roasts were some huge arcane ritual taking hours of prep and half a day of cooking time, so I'd never attempted one.
Laura disabused me of this notion while chatting online one night, so I've been having a go at a few of them recently.
Here's one of my first attempts:

It was tasty :)

I'm still failing at managing to do a decent roast potato though, they're just not coming out crispy...

I roasted a Girello last night (from what I can gather it's a similar cut to Silverside) in foil, mustard on the top and covered in red wine. It came out tasty, but a bit dry somehow :(. I've made up a few containers with meat, potatoes, steamed veggies and gravy that I can heat up for lunch the next few days.

Oh yes, my plans to start making my lunch rather than buying it each day? Have been up and down. Some weeks I'll manage it but more often I won't. Hopefully as Summer approaches and non-warm sandwiches look more appealing I'll get back into the swing of things.

I've also been doing more experiments with my shortbread, mixing in new and different things. People seem to be enjoying it :). I've been asked for the recipe, and a couple of people have asked me to bring some along to the next Swordcraft camping weekend.

Alas I'm.. having issues eating it a the moment due to mental association (while I was sick with gastro the thought of shortbread made me ill, so those associations are still there, even though I know it won't make me ill), but that should pass in time.

Hair:

A couple of weeks ago I went into a new hairdressers (also discovered through Laura) that should hopefully be able to finally kill off the pink hair that my 'do had turned into after Shave for a Cure. 

For reference, the pink hair had had temporary auburn and dark brown colours put over it (by me), and a dark red (professionally) and yet the pink still kept coming through.

So I went into this place, which has received awards for its colours, and figured that they should be able to do something with it, plus I was ready for a new style.

So we agree on a dark brown, the hairdresser says there will probably still be some reddish bits to it in the sunlight, but I didn't think that'd be a problem. Then while washing out the dye, she takes one look at my (still wet) hair and goes "Hrm.. let me get some toner to try and get rid of the pink that's still showing..." so even after having a permanent dark brown done over it, the pink was *still* visible. Talk about hard to kill!

After the toner was put in as well, the pink is finally gone, but rather than dark brown I have black hair in anything other than direct sunlight. 

I also had it cut into a new style with some layers (moreso than they'd normally do) and such, and for shits and giggles I had it curled before I left (hairdresser's idea, though I went for rather smaller curls than she'd thought), I was only having a weekend at home catching up on tidying and stuff so no big issues if it looked horrible. 

I think it came out pretty darned well though.

New Thing (TM):

Another new thing for the month, a couple of Thursdays ago I went along to a Burlesque outing with a few friends. It was an.. interesting.. show. Lots of audience.. if not participation, at least banter, very strong kinky themes, probably quite confronting to a lot of people since there was no sugar coating of anything.

It was quite funny watching the reactions of some people who were there. Some evidently were quite into it and having fun, others were very obviously going "Ohgods what have I gotten into, pleasedonttalktome!"

The group of girls I'd gone with were very much in the former category, several of them having been to the show before (and were recognised as such by the performers).

I dressed up for it as well, ending up rather more... feminine than I'd planned, but it worked. I learned two things: 1) Silk shirts offer NO wind protection, and are freezing cold even with a woolen jacket on over it. 2) Corsets aren't nearly as hard to ride in as I'd suspected.

Patient Zero:

This one hasn't happened yet, but it's booked for a few weeks time and I thought I'd mention it :D

There's a place running what is basically a laser-tag Zombie outbreak in Melbourne. You and a bunch of friends (half a dozen total) form a squad, make a booking, and have to go through a building full of people dressed as zombies, presumably find survivors and the source of the outbreak, and get out again.

Very much looking forward to it, I think it's going to be awesome :D

Anyways, I think I'll finish up this post there. Next one should be up in a day or so once I've compared myself to my starting benchmarks and can give a "Six Months In" update.

Activities!

Ahoy!
So, apparently I'm continuing my trend of posting large globs of stuff infrequently rather than small bites as they happen.
Unsure that I like this trend since it makes it easy to put off posts to 'add them to another one later', but considering how I keep managing to fill up my regular time, posting more regularly is a little tricky on the schedule.

I'll see what I can do to find a happy medium, but in the meantime, updates! Disclaimer: As usual this is being written in bits and pieces over several hours, sorry if it reads a bit disjointedly.

There's really been two major pieces up update since my last post, and really, two big pieces of news in a month? That's actually not a half bad ratio I'd say!

Major News

Great Southern Gathering
So, this was actually on the weekend after my last update. Big.. well, bigger than monthly bash, SCA weekend event. This one was mostly classes on the Saturday (everything from forging and knife making to rapier and heavy fighting advice and such) and then a tournament and the Rapier prize fights on the Sunday. I attended a few Heavy classes on things like advanced power generation and footwork, which I think will be helpful, but I won't go into detail on since I don't think most of my readers are heavy fighters :)

Laura went for and succeeded at getting her Free Scholar prize in Rapier, which is the first "rank" you can achieve.
She was quite obviously nervous, but acquitted herself quite well. Would have been nice to see more offense from her examiners, but it was fun to see her get fed up with someone's defense and just swoop in, trap their sword out of the way and stab them a few times.
Oh yes, and she did it wearing this. This is the favour that I made for her under Janet's tutelage. It's watercolour painted silk, and the yellow background is the silk sash Laura got for winning her prize:

I'm planning on getting Janet to give me some more lessons on silk painting, and getting my own gear to start doing this at home. Silk painting is *fun!*, and for pretty much the first time in my life I can look at something artistic that I've created and honestly say that I did a good job, which is a kind of awesome feeling. Definitely something I want to do more of :)

Around the Bay in a Day
Myself and a bunch of others took part in the 50km leg of Around the Bay in a Day last weekend. Our team name was "Cyclists of Penzance", so most of us were either dressed as pirates or had pirate hats attached to our helmets (though I can't help but notice the one person NOT in costume of some kind is the person who named our team...)
Was quite amusing actually, the guy doing announcing and general chatter over a microphone at the start line said that it "it's a proper race without pirates", and we hat large numbers of people commenting throughough the race (including a couple of "Aaarrrrrr!"s from the police helping direct traffic near the start.

I think the furthest I've ridden in a day before this was about 30, 35ks, but at the pace we went I had no issue with the 50ks.
We took it nice and easy because, well, one member of our team was still on the tail end of a bout of gastro, one had the flu, and one had stomach cramps. Yay riding wounded!
We got through it all, those of us in front paused to regroup before riding over the finish line together (to a rather thunderous round of "Arrrrrr!!" from all the people on the sidelines), so all in all it was a fun day.
... except for my arms getting quite badly sunburned.
It was perfectly logical, I figured we'd be done by 12:30ish, meaning I'd get some sun but would avoid the UV danger time of the day, and should get some sun without burning. But due to our pace and taking a nice long lunch break we left lunch at 1ish, meaning the return leg was done in full blazing sun, and I didn't think to apply sunscreen at lunch.
Yay for lobster coloured arms ><. Slowly getting better at least.
I also ended up with an increadibly sore rear end by the end of the ride since I just had my standard non-padded bike seat. Definitely need to get myself a padded seat cover.

Incidentally, riding over the Westgate Bridge was an interesting experience, though the way back we had a big tail wind so it was vastly easier (heck, part of the ride back on the flat there was enough wind for me to just freewheel without pedaling and still keep up with everyone).

Here's a picture of us :) (yes, my hat made an absurd windsail, felt like I was going to get blown over)

Health Stuff
On the good side of things, my back is pretty well back to normal nowadays. Occasional twinge when I have a violent sneeze or similar, but that's about it. Huzzah for working spine!

On the bad side of things I got gastro last weekend. On the same day as Laura's birthday picnic. I still went along (I just thought I had food poisoning until mid afternoon).
I won't go into the details but suffice to say I wasn't back at work until Thursday and I had the worst stomach pain I've had in my life.
The silver lining was a reminder about how awesome my friends are. Lara brought me medication so I could still go to the picnic Sunday, Hespa & Laura dropped by Monday morning with DVDs and juice and broth and such, and Hespa hung around for most of the day to make sure I was ok.
Huge thanks guys, I was really touched :)

Roleplaying
I've finally started my new roleplaying game that I'm running, in the Mistborn world (books by Brandon Sanderson). The first session ended with the players each being handed an encoded poem, and having to decode the hidden message to advance the plot.
Two have now completed this (though one cheated, but she's forgiven since she found typos in my code), so next session we can advance.
It's been quite some time since I got into player's heads like this. Great fun :D


Hrm.. I think that's about it really for this entry. Another one should be forthcoming soon(tm) with the gender topic I mentioned last post. If it's not up in the next few days, someone poke me.

Random mass update!!

Yes, I know, I'm sorry. My posting regularity is utterly terrible these days, I'm just never managing to sit down and write anything.

Having a go at that again now. I do apologise if this ends up sounding a little disjointed, I'll be slowly writing bits of it through the day.

So.. last post was just over five weeks ago. There's a couple of things that have happened since then, but honestly it hasn't been all that busy (other than my usual weekly stuff anyway).

Wedding:
The big standout one no doubt was Ashley & Rebecca's wedding. Nothing quite like rocking up to the wedding and having the groom hand you a tablet and ask you to record the wedding for him. That was rather unexpected! Since when do people think I'm good with electronics gear?... hang on...
The wedding was small, and very, very geeky, from Star Wars awards music while walking down the aisle, to vows involving "Till Ragnarok comes", and Adrian giving an "Ode to Pi", with slight rewording which had the whole room either in hysterics or wondering what on earth was going on.
It was a good ceremony all in all, it's nice to see people taking something that important and then making it fit them, rather than going "Well we have to do it the traditional way" and going with the usual solemn ceremony.
Something involving history, geekiness and everyone laughing fit them far better.

Clubbing:
Honestly, this one was rather funny.
A friend invited me to go along clubbing a while back at a place she goes to. I've been clubbing once before when I was at uni and didn't think much of it, but in the spirit of trying new things I figured I'd go along.
Now, earlier that day I was at a friend's place planning the group trip to NZ that we're having, and after the planning was done I was slumped half asleep in a beanbag while the others broke out a boardgame.
Something was mentioned about plans for the evening, and Laura mentioned that I was off clubbing that evening. She sheer amount of incredulity in Lena's "Darren, clubbing??" response was hilarious :D

The clubbing itself ended up being more fun than I thought it'd be. The music (at least in the area we spent the night) was quiet enough that you could actually talk, and honestly I spent most of the night watching people and chatting about random stuff with a few friends-of-friends that I met while there.

New thing tried for month of September: Tick

Back:
My back is.. fluctuating... most days I've got some kind of twinge in it, but it's exactly that, a twinge rather than "Oh gods I shouldn't do that again". A bit like muscle pain from doing a lot of exercise, but without the 'nice' edge those tend to have.
Been to the physio a couple more times, but basically it boils down to: I'm spending huge amounts of time in an office chair for eight to fourteen hours a day, five to seven days a week, and its catching up with me.
I'm doing stretches and exercises every half hour or so at my desk (when I pay attention to the RSI timer thing I've setup), but really I need to get myself a new job that involves moving around for at least part of a day. Walking to other buildings to setup computers and stuff. Or maybe just changing careers entirely and becoming a professional travel writer. Hah!

Health:
Thankfully am finally over the latest bout of the flu. Not much need be said here, but fever & hallucinations really suck

Weight: 
Unfortunately due to a couple of emotional rough patches and some comfort eating I've put back on most of the weight that I'd lost, which annoys me to no end.
It seems to have redistributed slightly since my waistline remains the same, but I'm under no illusions that I've put on enough muscle to make up the difference.
I somehow think my hope of losing 8-10 kg in the twelve months of this blog isn't likely to happen thanks to this setback. I'll just keep my fingers crossed I come out with a net loss of something at the end.

Personal Stuff:
I won't go into specifics, but I've had a few very 'down' spots personally/emotionally recently. I've mostly dug myself back out of it again, and talking to people has helped, but.. yeah, not fun times, and I know I hurt at least one person during it, but I think we're better with it now.
Also, gods I hate it when something that's.. important but not overwhelming, suddenly gets stuck in your mind and all that you can do is chase that one thing, to the exclusion of everything else.
I do NOT like that degree of obsession randomly cropping up in my life.

Food:
I'm a little up and down about bringing lunch in with me to work, I'm managing it.. every second or third week at the moment, typically spag bol or butter chicken or chili con carne or similarly easily 'made in bulk' foods.
Now that the weather's warming back up again I may give sandwiches another go
I think the 'veggie of the week' idea is well and truly dead. Being out 3-4 nights a week isn't leaving me with enough time to use something like that.
Maybe I should do a "try new recipe once a week" or such, that I can do on a weekend.

But hey, I'm getting decent at making pie at least :)

SCA:
Going to an SCA camping event this weekend (Great Southern Gathering) which will be interesting. There will be classes on various things, fighting training and such. Will be a new experience.
Laura is also going for her "Free Scholar" prize in Rapier at GSG, think of it as like a martial arts grading. It's not completely analogous but its close. I've been informed that I'm allowed quiet, reserved encouragement from the sidelines. Waving pompoms is strictly prohibited.
I did manage to get her fighter's favour completed last week at Crafthall thanks to the awesome tutelage of Janet, I'll post a picture up here after the event.
Silk painting is a lot of fun, and surprisingly therapeutic, I most definitely need to learn more from her and perhaps try my hand at some solo.
Also need to look at getting more garb made (since while I have rudimentary sewing skills, I don't really have the time required to become good enough to make things I'm happy with, not right now at least.
Similarly I need to finally get my own armour, have been speaking to Rodriego about having him make me a set, need to follow that one up...

Leisure Time: 
I've been finding myself spending a LOT less time playing computer games than I did a few months ago. Well, with the exception of the weekend just gone, when I was playing Borderlands 2 a lot, but in general computer game time has gone down, reading time and time watching tv shows has gone up.
Unsure what, if anything, this says about my tastes, maybe I was just getting bored with the games right as interesting new shows and books cropped up.

Tidying:
I also had another big go through my wardrobe and cupboard, tidying things up and throwing out a pile of stuff that I no longer need/is busted.
I'm also trying a technique suggested by my friend Rachel. Put all my clothes on hangers in backwards, then when I use them, put the hanger forwards again. Then after X amount of time I can go through and I'll know exactly what I have and haven't used, and anything with a backwards hanger can be stored or donated or packed away or similar.


Hrm. I think that'll about do it for now. I do have a discussion on gender and such that I plan to put up, but I think that'll deserve a post in itself.

Also, Laura has suggested that I ask people what they'd like to see/read about in the next post. Feel free to weigh in!

Introspections

Not a huge amount to mention here events-wise at the moment, but there's been a couple of introspections and realisations that I thought I'd write down.

Winning & Losing
I'm not sure how long this one has been in play (wow, what an amazing pun. Laura, I blame you!) but it finally hit me while talking to Laura after a Swordcraft game a couple of weeks ago.
When it comes to games and matches and such, I no longer care about losing.
Considering what I used to be like, that's pretty big. I've always been competitive (and I'm pretty sure that at this moment, both of my parents are adding "And you were a little shit when you lost too" to that statement) and no matter what the match/game/challenge was like I always hated it when I lost.
Now though... I just don't care.
Don't get me wrong, getting taken out of the match early/getting easily clobbered/being outmatched still frustrate me, but not because I've lost, because it's boring. Crushing someone else with no challenge is nearly as bad.
But in terms of actual outcome? As long as I enjoyed myself, it's all good.
Knockout tournaments still present a bit of a problem, since you have to win in order to be allowed to keep playing, but for things like Swordcraft, where when one side wins you just reset and keep going? Don't care anymore!

I know, seems like the kind of thing that's drilled into kids all their life, but the whole "It's not that you won or lost, but how you played the game" thing is something I've always struggled with.


Limits
This one isn't quite so nice, and could be considered a backslide in some ways.
In the past, whenever I've copped a hit or clobbering of some kind I've never really had a.. mental reaction, for want of a better term, to it. Or when I have, I've been able to shove it aside and ignore it.
This.. seems to have slipped a bit.

Ok, specifics.
Last week at Swordcraft (isn't it amazing how many of my posts, ideas and realisations start with "After the last time I ran around an oval beating people with foam weaponry and shouting at the top of my lungs while one or two hundred others try and kill me" ?) I copped a sword thrust directly into the left eye, shoving my contact lense off my eye and seriously ruining my night (didn't help that the guy who did it briefly said "are you ok", and when I said "no" and walked off the fielding clutching my face he just ignored me and went back to fighting. He's now been.. spoken to.. by three players and a ref about both his unsafe fighting and pathetic sportsmanship).
I could easily recognise the.. kind of disconnected apathy that I had afterwards that meant I just couldn't not get into the rest of the night, and very nearly just walked off and didn't come back, but whereas before I'd normally be able to shove that feeling aside and get back into the game, this time I just.. couldn't.

I'm not sure if it's because it was an *eye* shot (head and face shots haven't bothered me much) and therefore something more severe than I'd normally taken, or if maybe the whole lowering/breaking of emotional/mental barriers that happened a few months ago means that I'm just no longer as good at blocking things out.

Not really anything with much of a resolution there, but I figured it was worth mentioning nonetheless.

Back & Neck Pain
Thought I'd give an update on this one. I'm going my physio-mandated exercises at work, and keeping up with my usual activities. My back is now perfectly fine.. probably four days out of a week, slight twinges one day, and moderate ones the other two.
Haven't yet figured out a reason for when it's more painful than other times, but it's a massive step better than it was, and getting better.

My shoulder on the other hand is still having a few issues, though I'm not 100% sure if it's because my neck muscles especially are still tight, or if I've just had a bit of atrophy happen due to using it less. I suspect a combination.

Either way, things definitely on the improve in that area :)


Anyways, I think that's about it for this entry :)
Hope everyone is keeping well!!

I'm not late, I'm just chronologically impaired

So.. erm.. first thing's first, an apology. It's been nearly a month since the last post (I've had a few people prod me about this blog, which is good), somehow my month filled up ludicrously, to the point where I've had only a couple of free afternoons in the last few weeks, and they've tended to be taken up by collapsing in a chair and occasionally going "argh". Likewise spare time on weekends tends to be taken up by cleaning, shopping, groceries, washing, and all those fun domestic things that need to be maintained.
Turns out that having regularly scheduled events every Monday, Tuesday & Friday evening, and every second Thursday evening, kinda fills up your weeks...

So, plan is to slowly write this entry bit by bit when I get a spare few minutes at a time, and hope to have it up by tomorrow night (ie, have more than one post in July). So if this seems a little disjointed at times, or the writing style shifts a few times, that's why :)

So.. what's been happening. Erm.. let me check my calendar so I don't forget anything (I probably will anyway, but hey, I can try).

Trivia: A group of us (ten I believe in the end) went along to a Trivia night run by the Melbourne Browncoats (a Serenity/Firefly fan group).
That was a very large pile of fun, and the questions were actually varied enough that everyone on our table got the opportunity to be the 'expert' for at least part of a round, which very rarely happens. We ended up coming second, with one or two points between first and second place, which was awesome :D
There was, however, one thing that they.. didn't really think through...
They had one of those "Count the number of Easter eggs in this jar and you win it" things going. Then partway through the knight they announced that for an extra dollar, they'd tell you if the true amount was higher or lower than your guess.
Queue me and one of the others looking at each other, and him announcing that a standard binary number search will only require seven or eight guesses to get the answer..
So we wander up there and start doing a standard binary search:
Aside note: Here's what I mean by Binary Search. Say you've got to guess a number between one and fifty, a binary search is where you just keep splitting the difference. eg:
Number between 1 & 50, so you start by guessing 25
If it's higher, it's between 25 & 50, so you split the difference again, 37
If it's lower, it's between 25 & 37, again, split the difference and guess 31
Then you just keep that up until you're done. Theoretically any number can be found within seven or eight guesses.

So, we start doing that, the guy running it quickly realises we're up to something and declares that there is now a limit of one guess per person. So I grab the rest of the team, we all line up and keep it going. We're two numbers away from the exact guess when he declares that our team is banned from making more guesses for two rounds.
We got there in the end (three people ended up with the correct guess, so the eggs were split). Worth it just for the look on the organiser's faces :)
Definitely a fun way to spend a Saturday night.

Date: I won't go much into details or specifics, but I had a date on the Tursday night after trivia. It was an.. interesting experience. Believe it or not I'd never actually been on a 'date' before, typically having gotten together with people that I already knew, in rather different circumstances, so the whole "go somewhere, meet the person, see if you're interested in a relationship" thing was just.. bizarre.
Still, it was a fun night (in possibly the most cliche thing possible, we went to a movie. The Spiderman remake to be precise. Actually a surprisingly decent movie), we shall see what comes of it once her workload settles down and a second date can be organised.


Brave: Saturday midday a group of us went to see Brave, the new Pixar animated movie. Absolutely awesome! The usual excellent animation expected from Pixar, actual Scottish (and one 'really good at faking it') voice actors, gorgeous scenery that looks exactly like parts of England and Scotlant (I swear at one point they might as well have been mapping the scrubland around Glastonbury Tor) and an excellent story.
Actually, the story deserves a bit extra mention, There are going to be some spoilers here, so just skip to the next section if you don't want to be spoiled (in which case, get out and see the movie ASAP! It's really worth it).
Now, I'm sure we're all aware of the whole "Child/Teenager running away from parental induced responsibility X" type stories (arranged marriages being rather common), typically resulting in a "I'm sorry Son/Daughter, we were wrong, you can decide for yourself/be yourself/do what you want" kind of resolution.
Brave is the first movie I've ever seen where running away from your unwanted responsibility absolutely screwballs everything around you and has repercussions, and in the end the result is *compromising* with family and tradition, rather than breaking it. I know that seems silly, since that's what happens with most arguments etc, but it's pretty rare for a movie to actually show that.

Similarly, I'm sure we're by now familiar with the "Girl who is kickass at all the traditionally 'masculine' things like fighting and drinking, kicks the men's rears at everything, and in general shows that girls can be badass too" type of movie/book/story.
Once again, we have a movie where compromise actually exists. Yes, our plucky princess protagonist (there had to be alliteration somewhere, right?) is a fantastic archer, climber and horse-rider, and an at least proficient swordfighter, but unlike most "badass female warrior" archetypes she actually takes part in the feminine things as well (and climbing a rock pillar in a dress is far more impressive than doing it in pants).

Dear gods, we have a vaguely balanced character who learns from their mistakes and comes up with a compromise over the whole movie-inducing difficulties.
This kind of thing should not be rare enough in a movie to warrant special notice!! It's a pretty sad state of movie affairs when something so simple is deserving of high praise.

Lauren's party: Moving on from the movie, later that day was Lauren's birthday party, costume theme of "Video Game Characters". As always her parties tend to be awesome fun, with ludicrous amounts of sugar being consumed, and laughing at my hilariously inept attempts at singing along with the "Singstar" game (hrm. May need singing lessons if I don't want to sound quite so dodgy, and to actually be able to hold a note).

Here's my Minsc costume (standing between Link and a Lemming), yes, the hamster is part of the costume. 

There was also a game of Ghost Stories.... we lost :(


Swordcraft Quest: And then last weekend was Swordcraft Quest! I've mentioned Swordcraft before, it's the 'medieval paintball' thing where you run around hitting people with foam latex swords and such.
Quest is a camping event, Friday night, Saturday night and part of Sunday that was held up at Brittania Park (a guides/scout camp out in woop woop), with much in-character shenanigans, laughing, killing, belting people with weapons and all round good old fashioned fun.
My orange-shell fire cakes went over a treat with my warband (even if it did take one of them an hour and a half to eat his orange, and I had to keep running after him and threatening him with a stick if he didn't eat his orange), and the "dump a liter of cake mix into a foil shell and throw it in the fire" idea didn't actually work too badly.

All in all tonnes of fun was had, next to no sleep was had, and dear god was I grateful for my shower and bed when I got home!

The Bad: Well, that's the list of events and fun things, so I figure I should also mention the less fun things at the moment. It would appear that my desk job has finally caught up with me and is doing my back in. I pulled a few muscles in my neck/leg/arm a month or so ago, and trying to relieve strain on them caused muscle pains in my lower back, which due to the desk job just isn't coming good.
I've been to the physio a couple of times, and he's given me a bunch of exercises to do during the day to try and loosen up my back (apparently my back & neck muscles are stupidly tight), but in the meantime I just have to put up with twinges and soreness when I move or lean :(
Fingers crossed this gets cleared up soon, I really don't like having a sore back!

Milestones: There's a few good things here :)
1) I rather think Swordcraft Quest can be considered something I haven't done before, so awesome work there
2) Weight update! I was 81.5kg with a 40" waist when I started this blog. I'm now 78kg and 38" waist! Weight and size and slowly coming down again! Woohoo!

Stupid body grumble grumble

Not really going to be an update this week.
Pretty much as soon as I started getting over the flu my body decided it'd had enough of this "Operating properly" thing. An old pain that occasionally crops back up in my right glutes kicked in, as did a really bruised/pulled muscle feeling just below my right shoulderblade. A couple of days later I apparently sprain my neck right after going to bed, and I've now also got a pain in my lower back from trying to stop the other three pains from hurting too much.
Yay me.

Magnesium, painkillers and a hot towel (really need to get a proper heat pack I think) have finally started making a difference, but it's still been a shitful couple of weeks, and left me feeling kinda miserable.

*Sigh*
Fingers crossed I'll improve over the next few days.
Why doesn't my place have a Spa (or at least a Bath) dammit!!

Rather bit miserable

So, sorry for the delays on this post, guess I'm not doing particularly well at regular posting at the moment.

Anyways, lets see if I can get you all updated...
First up, I'm currently feeling rather miserable due to illness. Currently on day four of a bout of some kind of bug, hot & cold flashes, shivering, feeling like I'm being stabbed with pins, ludicrous amounts of sweating last night, really sore stomach that feels like my intestines are bruised, very very short (a few seconds) but intense headaches whenever I stand up, plus other bits that are kinda TMI. So I've been off work since Friday, sleeping twelve hours a day, and trying to fight this off with Vitamin C, fluids and cold & flu tablets.
Saw the doctor today and I'm pretty much at that stage where if it's a 'standard' bug I should come good by Wednesday, and if I don't I'm to head back in for another appointment. He said there's not really any specific symptom there that indicates the need for antibiotics, and it'd quite possibly make my stomach worse. Plus my temperature is only slightly elevated, and I'm still functional.
Fingers crossed I'm better by Wednesday, because gods I hate being sick like this!

In terms of other things, lets see, what's been going on..
I had my second counseling appointment. It continues to be good to talk about things but.. how do I put it.. since I don't really have a sense of what I want to get out of these sessions, other than a bit of clarity and perspective, it's hard to figure out what to actually do in them. At the moment we're mostly just talking about things that have happened and how I reacted, so there's no real sense of moving towards a goal. Oh well, I guess we see what happens. This may well be perfectly normal for counselling sessions when you're not there with a specific "I need help with X" type of thing.

On slightly more unusual news, and on the 'trying new things' topic. A few years ago Laura gave me a voucher for one of those beauty places to get a facial and either a massage/manicure/pedicure. At the time I kind of ummed and ahhed over it for a few months but couldn't really manage to ever make the booking, so I gave it back to her. In the spirit of, well, the whole purpose of this blog, I decided to 'return to the scene of the defeat' so to speak, and made a booking to basically recreate that offer.
It was an... interesting.. experience. Don't think that facials are my thing somehow (though the scalp massage was fantastic, as was the foot rub) but it was definitely something worth trying out. My feet felt absurdly soft/squishy afterwards too, that was a bonus.
New thing tried out, tick!
Comfort zone pushed, tick!
Horrible pun made, tick!

Now, I can't remember if I mentioned (and can't be bothered going back through my blog), but I'd needed to send my camera back to Olympus for a repair quote, since I couldn't get a bunch of the functions (like manually adjusted shutter speed) to work. I could select the options, but the little selection wheel wouldn't let me alter them. Olympus' customer service hadn't been able to help with it either, so I sent it off. A couple of days after I received a call from a lady in their repair center, asking me if I'd spoken to the place I bought it from since she'd just unboxed my camera and saw it was only a few weeks out of warranty, so maybe they'd be nice and let it be covered. I told her I'd already tried that and they weren't offering me leeway, but I figured it was awesome customer service from them that she actually called me to check that.
Well, a few days after that, my camera gets sent back to me. I figured this was weird, since I hadn't had a followup and no mention of a repair quote etc. Unboxed it and the note inside said that it works perfectly, I just had to use the ring on the front of the camera, around the lense.
How fucking hard would it have been for their customer service monkeys to say that??? I'd been using the control wheel on the back of the camera, which you use for changing all other settings, but apparently the "Control Ring" is around the front lense and not used for anything else (and you only find out about it if you read through the advanced manual from their website, and realise that they define "Control wheel" and "Control ring" as two different things).
Argh!!

Anyway, rage aside I now have my camera back and apparently it works perfectly, so I've been messing about with the shutter speed a bit. Here's a couple of shots with me playing a laser pointer over a half full glass and a couple of prisms etc beside it (note that this is 20 & 25 second exposure):

Then these two are of my room. This one is a pitch black room with a laser pointer being played over it for a minute:

And for this one instead of just the laser pointer, I also used my bike lights, giving them about equal amounts of 'lense time'. You can't really see evidence of the red one, barring a couple of little smudges:

Yay for cameras and lasers! Now I just have to learn to use these settings properly, rather than just in amusing little oddities.

Trying to think of what else has been happening, and I think the last one of note is last week I had my second lesson of SCA Rapier fencing. It continues to be an interesting experience, and is highlighting some of the oddities in how my joints work as I've been needing to slightly adjust my stances to stop my knees going "Oi, our union says we don't have to bend that way". I was allowed to take part in the sparring as well, which did somewhat surprise me, but I guess with Heavy training they knew I wasn't going to be swinging wildly and causing injury. I fully expected to be killed in three seconds every bout, but I actually managed to hold my own. Sure I had no style, no finesse, and was making huge wild parries and jumps and most of my hits on opponents were pure luck rather than creating openings, but I definitely made people work for their shots.

Going from sparring against Gindi (the trainer) and Laura was a huge contrast. If I tried to forcibly move Gindi's blade he'd typically adjust his grip/stance and push back. Laura would just disengage around my blade and do something else. Now I know how all those people who used to tell me I fought like a rabbit back in Kung Fu felt.
The third person I sparred against was a little of a mix of the two of them, though he had a habit of using a specific sequence of moves where he'd hit my sword out of the way and then lunge in at the same point. After he tried it the first time I was able to see it coming and dodge it pretty easily. Didn't figure out how to hit him back while he was doing it mind you, but I think avoiding it is a darned good step.

All up, awesome night, even if Laura did end up killing me most of the time by taking out three of my limbs rather than torso/head shots (To the pain!) :)

In terms of how I think I'm keeping up with the general theme of the blog.. I'm somewhat behind where I had hoped/thought I'd be, mostly in three places:
1) I still haven't completed the cleanup of my shelves, which I'd hoped to do one shelf a day at.
2) I had been hoping to have worked out a 'daily checklist' of things to do, mostly exercise related, to make sure I do every day.
3) The whole 'vegetable of the week' thing fell over after a few weeks and I haven't got back on the bandwagon yet.

Have failed at all three so far, but as a number of people have told me, making too many changes too quickly can stop you managing to achieve any of them, so I'm going to pare things down to this:

1) Clear out a shelf a week. More if I feel like it, but one a week minimum
2) Do some kind of exercise that's not commuting, per day. Three days a week are already done thanks to activities, so I just need bits to do for the other four. This can then be slowly transitioned into something that I do daily
3) Make sure I do up the vegetable intake a bit, and maybe try and work out some kind of easy vegetable *thing* that I can pre-make so that whenever I'm in a "Blargh, too exhausted to cooking, making something instant" mood I can still add vegetables (anyone have ideas on that? I need something that's reasonably tasty, goes with soup or noodle type instant dishes, gives me at least a couple of veggie serves, and will last at least a few days in the fridge).
Veggie of the week may return once I have my cooking more stabalised.

So. I.. think that's got you all up to date. Fingers crossed I'll manage to bring the next entry in rather sooner. Maybe that should be another item, get back to writing at least one blog entry a week!

Continuum!

Hey everyone. Really sorry about the long delay between posts here, I've had a very busy fortnight and just haven't had time to post.
My time has pretty much been split three ways:


First up: Costume Preparation 


I had to do a pile of running around like a headless chicken looking for costume bits, things I'd forgotten about, picking up thread, and all kinds of things along those lines. I think I've only had two lunchbreaks where I haven't been riding off to somewhere in the city to pick up things for Continuum costumes. And I still haven't made it to Lefflers to get leather for SCA and Swordcraft stuff.

And of course, once I had all the bits together, assembly was required (huge thanks to Lisa for assistance with some shirt sewing stuff). I am certainly getting better with Sewing. Heck, I can even manage to reliably thread the thing, rather than the bobbin thread going "neener neener, you can't catch me". I finally finished my costume Friday middayish (with Continuum happening that afternoon).
Pictures shall be in the Continuum section below.

Secondly: Counselling 


I went along to the University counselling service a couple of Wednesdays ago. It's one of the things Laura & I have said we should do with all the stuff that was going on with us, and lets face it, my brain probably needs a tuneup :)
I won't go into the details, but suffice to say it was certainly worthwhile (I have a followup session in a week and a half) and I think I'll get something out of it.

Finally: Continuum!!


So, the thing that all this costuming etc had been leading up to was Continuum , a Fantasy/Sci Fi convention being run over the long weekend.
Now, for those unsure this wasn't one of those "Conventions" that you tend to see on TV, with thousands of people all in costume, standing in lines to see the latest X and posing with celebrities. This one is much smaller and more close-knit. A few people were in costume but it wasn't the norm (more on that below), and most of the programming consists of panels on various topics (Everything from "Is kids TV less traumatising now than it was when we were kids" to "How do you write different genders/cultures to your own" to "Two people loudly talking about their Doctor Who disagreements" [though there was a lot of agreement there...] ), with three to five people up the front nattering back and forth.
There were a lot of writers there, but we're not talking the big, household names, mostly smaller and/or local authors, people who write for fun, etc. And of course piles and piles of fans.


This was the first such Con that I've ever been to, and in true Darren style I kinda leaped right in and signed up to talk at a bunch of panels. I did "21st Century Storytelling", which was basically about Video Games becoming a more narrative-driven media and such, "Supernatural", about the TV series, and "Build it and they will come", which was about world building for Roleplaying games.
I've been told that I acquitted myself well all around, and I'm quite sure the people telling me this wouldn't have hesitated to correct me if I'd done badly, so I'll call it a win :)

Laura came up with the idea of doing a 'themed' day costume for the Saturday & Sunday, of Steampunk on Saturday and Goth on Sunday, and considering that I'm doing that whole "Say Yes to more things and try out stuff" thing, I decided to do so as well!
Unfortunately there's no picture of Sunday's Goth getup, but here's mine & Laura's Saturday steampunk ensembles (the flash does odd things, so I'll give you the flash and non-flash versions):

Then Saturday night was the Maskabolo ball, with the theme of "Enchantment under the Sea". Here's where my Captain Nemo costume got used. Unfortunately I don't seem to have a full body shot of it (though that will quite likely come later), but here's a shot of myself, Hespa as GLaDOS, and Laura as the Companion Cube.

For reference, here's the character my costume was based on:

And here we have the Companion Cube valiantly defending Nemo from an onslaught by the evil computer system, GLaDOS...

And Nemo gearing up to avenge the Companion Cube...

So yes, overall a fun time was had by all!!

I can definitely tick a few things off my "To Do" list, and I think I'm well within my rights to tick off the "Do something new/interesting/odd each month" option as well, since I went to my first such Convention, spoke on three panels in front of an audience, and went to both Lunch & Dinner in that crazy steampunk costume (Lygon street cafe in a steampunk corset & tophat? MADNESS!)

Overall, a very fun and very exhausting weekend! I'm now back at home (well duh) with a pile of costume and clothing bits strewn around the room, shoes and boots all over the floor, and a pile of dishes in the sink. One load of washing is currently in the machine (and probably due to come out now) and I'm really hoping there's enough food in the place for me to make dinner tonight.


So, I think that's all for today, it won't be a fortnight before the next post!
Also, can I please ask that anyone reading this posts a comment! Doesn't matter if it's just a "Haha, you look funny" or something, it'll do me good to remind myself that people are reading, plus seeing what people think is always fun.

Productive Weekend

What's this? Two posts in only a few days? This is SPARTA!... wait, no, This is Madness :)

So, only a brief update today really, but Sunday was quite productive so I figured that I'd post it while I'm on a roll.

So, Sunday was also a clothes shopping day, but for non-costume related things. All I really did was have a wander through KMart to see what I could find, but I came up with a pretty good haul (and just about everything was on sale!!)
Items I ended up with:

• A couple of pairs of pants that aren't either jeans or 'good' pants
• A couple of button up shirts (seriously, why the lack of button up short sleeved shirts? There was one style, in a bunch of colours, surely I can't be the only person who wears these things in Winter?)
• A pair of Pyjamas (first time I've owned those in what, twenty years?)
• One black business shirt that may find use at Continuum, depending on what else I find
• A new jacket that is.. halfway between my current blue blazer and a rain jacket. 
• A new woolen, button up jacket that should do me proud the next time I end up somewhere so cold I think I'm going to get frostbitten (*cough*MtWellington*cough*)

Not a bad haul methinks, and like I said, basically all on sale. Also! One piece of awesome news, now that my gut has receded enough to not need extra space, I'm down to a men's small (well except for the woolen jacket, that's a medium). This is fantastic! My gut no longer dictates my shirt size! Woohoo!

I'm also down to an 87 in pants, and this should hopefully shrink further through the next year.

Only downside of the weekend shopping trip was my failure to find any Victorian style shirts (ie the ones with the ruffled cuffs etc) which I need for a plan for Continuum, but oh well, can search elsewhere there.

Also plan to hit Target this week sometime, since I hope they'll have more casual shirts.

I also managed to throw together a bracer for use at SCA tonight (only a rough one, need to get some leather to finish it off, and get some more craft glue... I.. erm.. lets just say that I found my craft glue upside down in my craft pile.. with the lid having worked its way off. In good news, I've managed to de-glue everything now.

Oh yes, speaking of SCA stuff. At last Monthly Bash I was.. well, 'given' I guess a spare Demi gauntlet since my current one wasn't really safe enough (and by 'given', I mean it was an old rusty one and by the time I was de-armored the guy who had loaned it to me had already left, apparently not wanting/remembering it). Now this Demi was *covered* in rust, no metal visible, one big lump of rust.

Some elbow grease and a good soaking in CLR Clear and it's now back to metal and quite shiny again! The bucket of CLR looked like a bucket of mud by the end.

In cooking adventures, I decided to have another go at Pie last night, combining the last two recipes I've mentioned on here into a Shepherd's pie but with mashed cauliflower rather than potato. 

It.. didn't come out too bad. I got the blind baking thing perfect this time (yay for picking up baking paper), but I think there was still too much liquid in the meat mixture when I put it in, since it didn't hold together. The mash is different, but I think it still works.

Just means that rather than something that looks like a slice of pie, I end up with a mound of mince & mashed cauliflower on my plate, with some pastry bits hidden under it. 

Oh, yes, speaking of food. When coming back from my shopping trip I had my first chocolate bar in around a fortnight (mmm, peppermint Aero), and today at lunch I had my first cake (vanilla slice) in about the same amount of time.

Sweet things really are that much sweeter when you don't have them all the time.

Not much been happening today, being a work day and all. I headed out on my lunchbreak and picked up some string for re-lacing my Demi (and forgot craft glue ><) and stopped by a new Goth shop that Laura spotted (that's basically next to the place I got the string from). Alas they didn't have Victorian style male shirts in there either, the very helpful sales girl showed me the least-feminine girl's Victorian shirt that they had there, but alas it was too small. 

On the other hand, if anyone's looking for Gothic stuff in the city (especially either shoes or women's clothes) , it's worth taking a look, lots of stuff and really nice staff. Ground floor at Australia on Collins, first store on the left from the Lt Collins st entrance. Discover something or something (me bad at names? That's unpossible!).

And I think that's about it. SCA fighting training tonight which is always fun (even when you end up with a suspected fractured arm). 

Talk to you next time!

Productive Week!

Hello once again everyone :)
First up, my apologies for these updates being more sporadic than I had planned, I've had a few nights recently when I've been late home and just too busy to post, and a couple of nights that haven't gone so well and I really haven't felt up to posting anything.

So! Lets see, what's been going on recently...

Well, first up this week turned out to be Cauliflower week. Mostly at least. Monday I think I just ended up with noddles since that was all I could make quickly enough to fill my stomach after SCA Fighting training (plus I kinda had an empty pantry).

Tuesday I had a go at SCA Rapier fighting as well. It's.. interesting. Very different to Heavy, and a whole lot of old Kung Fu reflexes started kicking in, since we spent a lot of time concentrating on footwork and specific stances/ways of moving. I think I'll keep going (after uni exams at least, they're on brief hiatus while people go through SwotVac), and hope that my old reflexes help more than hinder me.
Oh, and also, very different muscle group usage in the arms. I can fight for several hours at Heavy without my sword arm being sore, but ten minutes into Rapier and it felt like it was going to drop off. Who came up with this "You must hold your sword up, unbraced and pointed at the enemy at all times" thing anyway??

Where was I? Oh yes, Cauliflower
I was sent this recipe by a friend from work, and decided to give it a try Wednesday (Kudos to Rachel!)
Also, please note that I haven't added any embellishments to this, this is exactly how she sent it to me...

____________________________________________________________________________________________
"Mash & Grab"
Serves 4

Ingredients

8 chicken sausages

8 fresh sage leaves

spray oil

one large cauliflower

2 cloves garlic

salt and pepper

1 red onion

1/2 tbsp marg/butter

1 beef stock cube

1/2 tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp balsamic vinegar

1/2 tbsp plain flour

175ml water

small handful blueberries

1 tbsp herb and garlic cream cheese

Method

-30 mins

preheat oven to 200'C. spray a roasting pan with non-stick oil, sprinkle the sage leaves over it and place the sausages on top. bung it in the oven to bake for 10 mins

-20 mins

wash the cauliflower, remove the outer leaves and cut it into 3cm chunks

peel the garlic and put it and the cauliflower in a large pot, cover with water and add a pinch of salt. boil for 15 mins or until soft

remember the sausages? turn them over to bake for another 10 minutes until they turn a nice shade of brown. give them a prod at the end and make sure your fork comes out hot.

-17 minutes

now, onto the onion gravy. finely slice the onion and fry in marg over a medium heat. sprinkle with salt and crumble in the stock cube, stir until light brown.

add the brown sugar (1/2 tbsp) and balsamic (1tsp) and stir for another two minutes

remove and set aside 1/3 of the onions then add the flour (1/2 tbsp) to the rest and stir for a minute to coat the onions

slowly whisk in the water (175ml) until you get a gravy consistency, then mash the onion with a fork

Add the blueberries and crush them using the fork

add the remaining onions and keep it all warm until you're ready to serve

-5 minutes

one the cauliflower is soft, drain it in a seive. use a small bowl on top to force out as much excess water as you can, then put it back in the pot, add the cream cheese and some salt and pepper.

an electric hand mixer is the best gadget to pummel the cauliflower to that mashed potato consistency, but one of those medieval hand mashers works well too

Dollop the cauliflower mash on a plate with a theatrical flick of the ladle, top with two sausages per person and drown them in your guilt free gravy.

Garnish with a sage leaf and tuck in.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Honestly I didn't think all that much of it. The sausages were really nice, and the mash actually wasn't half bad, but the gravy didn't really suit it for me. Turns out that while I like onion flavoring, and onion pieces in my bolognese, I don't like fried onion much.
Still, well worth trying out, and chicken sausage and salad sandwiches make for a great lunch :)

Thursday I was out with friends and there was takeaway had, and Friday was just plain ole sausages, veggies and gravy (don't worry, Cauliflower was in that one :) ). Tonight is likely to be chicken and chips (don't worry, home made), so no Cauliflower there either, but I do plan to try a Shepherd's Pie tomorrow night using the mashed cauliflower rather than potato. Will see how it goes :D

Moving on from food, one new thing done during the week: Thursday lunchtime I went to one of the massage places attached to the vic market. Might not sound like much, but while I'm fine getting up on stage and talking in front of a few hundred people, I'm horrible at things involving making appointments and going to new places on my own. I even feel embarrassed calling restaurants to make bookings. So yes, this was actually a reasonably big deal for me (Kudos to Laura for both the idea and the recommendation of place to go to).
So swallowing my fear I went along to Sabai Thai at the market, and it was definitely an enjoyable experience. I had a half hour massage that was back, back of legs, arms, shoulders and head, and while Laura had warned me it'd hurt... yeah, it hurt. Most especially on the backs of my calves and the sides of my neck, and my back gave a couple of almighty cracks as well. I walked out having traded a pile of knots for a pile of bruises, a trade I think was well worth it.
I also made a booking for somewhere else, but that's not for a few weeks so you'll need to wait to hear about that one.

Friday lunchtime (I seem to be doing a lot of things in my lunchbreaks recently) I went along to the Vic Market in search of boots for my Continuum costume (Kudos to Lauren for both coming along, and scouting the place for me so we didn't have to scour the whole market). For those not in Melbourne, Friday was the day we had the massive downpour of rain, netting up to a month's rainfall in a day, with up to 100km/h winds. Dear lord am I glad the markets are undercover :D
Net result, boots have been acquired (Thanks for the offer Nicolai, but I won't need to borrow yours :) ), they fit, are actually quite comfortable, and while they are *loud* (oh gods the clicking!) should fit the costume quite well. Hespa however has warned me that if I think the boots echo on concrete, wait till I get to the Maskabolo ball that I'm making the costume for, and listen to them on the dance floor (Note to self, learn to tapdance)

Today has been remarkably productive.
I had my haircut (sorry mum, no fringe and no 'short top back and sides'), then headed up to Savers (big Op Shop) for costume bits. I've now got what should be a perfectly viable pair of white pants, and a blue dress that I'll be able to modify into Nemo's coat/jacket/tunic thing (must figure out a way to hide the back zip).
After that I scoured... seven I think different fabric stores (and ran into Rachel and her friend Mindy) before finally finding something that.. while it's not what is used on the costume in the movie, should be at least thematically appropriate.
Other than that, hair dye has been acquired to finally remove the pink from my hair (I think two months is long enough for the Leukemia Foundation), fingers crossed I manage to actually get my whole head!!
I've also done a couple of loads of washing (the second of which should just about be ready to be taken out of the clothes dryer now...) and picked up food (and Cider!) for dinner tonight.
Tomorrow's plan is to pick up some non-costume related pants and shirts that fit me properly. Hopefully that goes well!

LARPing, Costume and Misc

Hey all!
Been a few days since the last update, so lets see if I can catch things up a bit.

Went along to a LARP for Serenity today (as in the Firefly series). Been playing in a fortnightly tabletop game and then today was a big freeform with people from all the crews, most people dressed up in costume in some way.
It was quite a bit of fun. We blew up a firing range with a load of explosive paintballs :D
My first time doing something like that, but I enjoyed myself. I'm playing a fashion-ignorant, absent minded Engineer was interesting to costume for. I ended up with workboots, work pants, a Hawaiian shirt and a leather jacket, with a couple of Nerf guns and a whole pile of tools in my pockets.

Hrm, speaking of LARP, had a load of fun at Swordcraft on Friday. For those unaware, Swordcraft is basically "A hundred people on an oval, dressed in all kinds of costumes, forming various different "Warbands", wailing on each other with fiberglass & foam swords".
It's quite silly, and quite fun. Damned good exercise too!
I normally just grab a sword and shield and fight like that, but decided to borrow a quarterstaff, drag my old blue robe out of the wardrobe (leftover from playing Cutwell back in our production of Mort) and go as a "Monk".
I spent half the night sprinting away from a group from the Bandits Warband (typically while they screamed either "He's got loot" or "Run Monk Run"), and the other half sneaking up behind people and clobbering them. Huge piles of fun, definitely going to be something to go with for a while I think.
Really need to get myself some leather armor to wear under the robe, though that could take a while to get hold of.

Lets see, what else...
Oh yes, on the costume front. For the Continuum convention's costume ball I plan to go as "Captain Nemo". Costume something like this from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie.

Now, certain bits (like the beard) will be ignored, but basically I'll need to assemble:

• Black knee high boots
• Turban (Maybe, not really required)
• Knee length blue jacket/tunic
• Patterned white fabric to sew/glue onto it
• Appropriate style white pants
• Fancy belt (or black belt with fancy buckle, and use the same fabric as the jacket addition)
• Bandoleer
• Sword (You can't see it in the shot, but he uses a scimitar)

All in all it shouldn't be too tricky I don't think:

• The jacket/tunic will be a scrounge ebay/op shops, or find a pattern to make. Actually, a blue robe or dress should be easily adapted. Just cut to knee length and slit the skirt portion front & back. Assuming I can find one in appropriate fabric.
• Belt buckle should be findable from the Vic Market (no doubt a belt will be easy there as well)
• Patterned fabric like that should just require some fabric shop scrounging
• Bandolier... thick belt re purposed for over the shoulder should work
• Sword, I can hopefully bribe Laura to borrow hers (once it arrives)
• The pants.. probably again ebay/op shops
• Knee high boots.. that could be the tricky one. Any ideas (other than the aforementioned ebay/op shops), since I hardly want to spend huge amounts on them.

Now, that's just what's required to match the picture there. In the original books it's very much steampunk themed, so I was thinking of some other additions to it, but I'm not sure what's required (if anything really). Something to think about there (unless anyone else has some ideas?)

Deadline: 9th June (three weeks... crap...)

Moving on the SCA stuff, I do have one other small but rather important project there. I need to make a 'favor' for someone to carry into battle. Basically someone bearing your favor means that they fight for you, they carry your honor, and you trust them to represent you.
Most commonly in the SCA at the moment this is a small piece of cloth worn attached to your belt. I need to go with something Scottish themed, but unsure what exactly. It also really needs to be personalised, and have a crazy notion that this may require me to learn how to embroider (which is a terrifying thought).

Deadline for this one would be September, but earlier is good.

On the more structured and regular front, I'm thinking I need to come up with a daily checklist for myself, to make sure that I'm doing some things regularly to get into a good habit.
Thus far I'm thinking:

• At least 20 situps
• Clean out/retidy one shelf or other similar unit in my house
• Some form of cardio exercise (even if it's just riding to work or the supermarket)
• Write one Affirmation (for the App we're making)

I'm sure there should be more things going on that list, but I can't think of anything just yet. Any ideas?

Previous Business:

• The old bits of useless clothing etc that I had to dispose of have been chucked.
• One of the shirts that I can't really wear but are still good has been taken. Anyone want a Blue, Cream or Black shirt? They're listed as Medium, but very loose
• Old microwave has been disposed of

Still haven't managed my "Do something different and weird/unusual" for this Month yet. Nothing's really come up. Anyone have any ideas? Doesn't have to be complex or spectacular, just.. something new, weird or a bit unusual.

Anyway, I think that's about it for this entry. Tune in in the next couple of days for this week's Vegetable Challenge. I'm thinking carrot...