The ending that was never an ending...

It's been a long week. I left home thinking that by this time I would be feeling better. That handed in I would feel a great weight had been lifted and the stress would be gone, but sadly it was never to be. You see, I had forgotten a few important facts.

At some point in the next month I am going to be called back to Scotland for a VIVA. For those of you who don't know, a viva is a meeting with a professor you have never met, who has been given your report to read. In a meeting that will last at least an hour this stranger will attempt to tear holes in everything you have done for the past 18 months. They will find every flaw and they will demand logical and scientific explanations for everything you have done, not to mention indepth knowledge of every material used and every technique mentioned.

The last viva I sat did not go well. This one will require just as much work to prepare for as the actual writing took. So there goes feburary.

Should the viva go well, the most likely outcome is I will be asked to do minor corrections (typos and the like) and told to hand in the final thesis one month later, resulting in yet another trip to Scotland. So there goes March. And in April I have to move back in with my parents, kissing goodbye to the space I need to clear my head and figure out exactly what it is i want to do with my life (other than just be left alone). And here was I hoping it would all be wrapped up in 2011.

So if I'm mean to you in the next couple of months; if I snap, bitch, moan, shout, cry or even just ignore you, then I apologise now. Please just give me the benefit of the doubt. I promise when I'm not having a major life crisis I'm a nice person. Honest. And I will get heck there. I hope.

P.S. the next person the ask me what I'm going to do next is going the get their head ripped off so I can use it as an ornate drinking vessel. Fair warning.

The Great Diet of 2012 Week 2, plus A Long Train Journey

First things first - the diet. This week I am down another 1.4kg, so woop woop. Feeling quite happy about this one - keep it up at that rate and I will soon be seeing the difference. Im also pleased because that is purely a exercise loss. I have not eaten right at all (between the sisterly fuddle, the goodbye dinners and the lunches with girlfriends I can think of a single day I "diet" ate) but I have exercised every day. Now I just need to find a balance between last week and this, and I will be onto a winner.

This week is not going to be a good diet week. This week I am in St Andrews. In fact this post is coming to you from a rather swish room in the Greyfriars hotel on North Street. Its going to be an expensive week, and its going to be a week of grabbing food on the go, snacking in coffee shops and eating in restaurants. I think for this week if I can make it home without putting the 2.5kg back on it will be a success.

To get to St Andrews involves a 6 hour train ride, and I was lucky enough to get a straight train, all the way from Derby to Leuchars. I was also lucky enough to get a decent seat, mostly to myself. About 4 hours in a young girl got on, at Durham and we got chatting. After that length of time I was glad for someone to talk to actually.

She turned out to be lovely. She is in her final term at Aberdeen Uni, studying (thought a weird set of events which made for a great story) Anthropology and History. She enjoys it very much. After I told her I was on my way to hand in my Masters, the first thing she said was "Do you think you will do a PhD?". And because I felt like a conversation I told her the truth. And this led us on to talking about University, and how the are run and what it means to be at university and all manner of related things.

It was incredible really. In that way strangers can be honest, and you can be really honest with strangers, I began to think about what I had done, and where I am in my life. See, as you may have noticed, I'v been feeling pretty down about the way things have turned out. Iv been blaming myself, and feeling like I have totally cocked things up. But some how, magically, this total strange on the train helped me to see things differently. Helped me to start to stop blaming myself. So I go to bed tonight feeling, not exactly happy, but more contented than I have done in a long time. I have no idea who that girl was, I don't even know her name.

Anyway, bring on tomorrow, and the supervisor to change all that.

The Great Diet of 2012 Week 1

Week one of my diet past in a haze of hunger and self flagilation. Whole days went by without me feeling properly full, and whole meals went by during which I ate only lettuce. During this time only 1 morning passed I which 8am didn't involve me throwing on my clothes and heading for exercise. At least twice I had the unnerving experience of waking up and finding myself already half way down the canal path on my bike.

I weighed myself every day this week to track my progress. The best I managed was 2.5kg down on mondays weight. However I had a poor weekend, with conceded family encouraging me to actually eat, so weigh-in found me only 1kg lighter. This feels pretty pathetic, and has led to a poor start to what will be a tough week.

Ahh well, back to the self-flaggeration tomorrow. Think I can get back to the gym soon, which will save me.

A diet update and a film review

Day 1 and day 2 of super diet have gone rather well. The weather is against me, the wind prevented me from cycling today (blown in canal, I think not) but i went for a walk instead. Most importantly I have eaten basically nothing and I'm getting used to being hungry. I expect my body to start consuming my ass quite soon, in order to sustain my basic brain functions.

Went to see the US version of Girl with a Dragon Tattoo yesterday and was very pleasantly surprised on many levels. Having read the book and seen the Swedish version I was quite scare of what the Americans might do to it, but it was very good. The main character was possibly better played by Craig than in the Swedish version (although he insisted on having his glasses hanging off his face half the film which drove me mad!). Overall it was a fantastic film - harrowing and surprising, with a great sound track and very well filmed. The director handled some very difficult material with care and it was dramatic without being crass.

The other interesting thing to come from that cinema trip was Sony 4k. Joni spotted this advertised on the cinema website over my shoulder and said he would go see any film with me as long as it was in Sony 4k. To which I replied what the hell is Sony 4k? What has followed is 2 lengthy discussions of film and sound, and how they work, which i will not bore you with. Suffice to say a film shown in 4k has four times as many pixels as a 1080hd film (which is what most bluray films are). It also specifies the sound comes in a .wav format, which i am assured is damed good.

But will I be able to tell the difference, I hear you cry? Let me say this. I am half blind and tone deaf. Even with my specs my eyesite isn't particularly good but i noticed. I noticed the moment the secreted came on and not the film trailers. I noticed the moment the still secreted started flashing up, while everyone was still coming in. It was like that first time you flick from BBC1 to BBChd, and you really marvel at the difference. And so I would advice you to find a cinema with Sony 4k and go watch a film, and marvel in how our technology has progressed. And after that go home and lament that all your dvds are in standard format so don't have even a quarter of the quality.

New Years Resolutions

I don't normally make New Years resolutions. In fact some years ago I made a resolution to never make resolutions again, and thats has been working pretty well for me so far. But this year Joni and I got talking. Joni is always into resolutions and he has convinced me to make some this year too. We decided there are five categories of New Years Resolution, and so I'v tried to set of resolution for each category. They are as follows:

1) Personal Interests

I resolve to go to the Broadway Cinema once every calender month in 2012. I'm ashamed to say that earlier this month I went to the Broadway for the first time, which is shameful because its such a great cinema I can't believe I have never been before. I really enjoyed our James Bond Marathon Challenge of 2011, so I hope this resolution will encourage me to see some more unusual films, and it a fabulous setting. 

2) Personal Well-being

I resolve to loose 15kg. I know this is a very boring resolution, but I'v gotten so fat recent that every day I don't have a heart attack is a bit of a surprise. I plan on losing the first 10kg with a month of eating basically nothing and exercising like mad. When I can't stand this life any more I will take on a more normal, steady dieting regime in order to be a more super-sexy me. 

3) Life Style

I resolve to have a Christmas party in my house next year. This one, I think, is actually a very clever resolution and probably the most important. It covers all the major things I want to achieve in the next year, mainly for Joni and I to have our own place, fit for some sort of Xmas or New Years party. 

4) Relationships

I resolve to not accidentally kill myself in 2012. Joni decided this would be the best thing I could do for our relationship yesterday, after I nearly cracked my head open on the fireplace. 

5) Altruism

I can't think of an altruistic resolution, which says a lot about me. I think four resolutions is enough for one person, I'll face altruism next year. 

So there you have it, my New Years Resolutions. I shall come back to those at the end of the year, to see how I have done. In the mean time, Happy New Year to all, hope this one turns out a bit less shit than the last and we don't all die in a Mayan Apocalypse. 

A dilemma...

I am at home this week, and this has brought something to the forefront of my mind, which is I have to attend 3 weddings in the next year. And not just attend, actually take part in all 3 of them! This means a lot of photos, which are going to be on display a lot. So Im going to have to dome something about what I have affectionately being calling "my Scotland weight". In order to understand what sort of a deal this is to me, you have to know something about me which some people don't always understand...

I live for food. I love cooking, baking, creating and eating food. From the finest dinning of Michelin start restaurants, to creating something new from scratch to enjoying the fruits of a good recipe book. Food is a huge part of my life. I would choose going out for dinner over a concert or a night out any time. Baking has become my go-to activity for boring nights or Sunday afternoons. Having my own flat on accentuated this love more. Joni and I would take any excuse to look up some new complicated meal online or in one of my many recipe collections and have a night in cooking together. I even enjoy McDonnalds! 

So you can begin to see why the quest to look better is quite a tricky one. Im asking myself to give up my hobby and my favourite past times. This is obviously never going to happen very well, so instead im going to try and become a bit of an exercise freak. I hear people who exercise a lot can eat whatever they like. Its going ok so far. I'v been home for 4 days and I'v already increased my exercise levels exponentially. We will have to see if I can carry this on over time. Tomorrow will be another good day. 

So watch this space for tales of my amazing weight loss..... 

"Stuck in the middle with you..."

So Im feeling very stuck in limbo at the moment. I'm very ready to say goodbye to this place, and this project, but I still have months to go. Its very much not fun any more, trying to drag up enthusiasm for all this stuff. I'v gotten fat living in Scotland, and I can't start exercising again till I get somewhere where its safe to go out after its gets dark at midday. I'v got lots of plans and Ideas of things I can do next but I can't start them till I finish up here. And the worse part of it is I really can't do anything to speed things up - my supervisor will drag this right up to the deadline even if I took a full draft to his office this morning. Urrgh frustrating!! Im even becoming jealous of Joni who at least gets to move out of this god forsaken spit of land we call Scotland in 10 days.

OMG we have to move house is 10 days and like nothing is packed!! panic!! We are busy trying to use up the various bits of food we have hanging around. I could be doing a lot of baking in the next week to use up all the flour and sugar. And I think Louise (who I am staying with after we move out of our flat) will be getting a parcel of all the little bits we don't manage to use.

As part of our doing-things-we-want-to-get-done-before-we-leave thing, Joni & I went to the Scottish Deer Center yesterday, which was surprisingly good fun. It had a lovely amateurish charm abut it, the paths were almost completely mud and the deer were mixed in together with really odd information signs, but you could get a big bag of food for £1 and the little ones all went mad for it. Sadly you wern't aloud to feed the reindeer because they are on a special diet (flying-pellets I reckon), but they were very ice to look at. AND we saw a red squirrel!!

They had quite a strange variety of animals, obviously slowly working on slowly expanding. They had Scottish wild cats (after seeing which I am convinced Tay is related). They had 2 wolves and a red fox which were being fed venison, which made me giggle. They also had the most amazing little sheep which are apparently the last truly wild type of sheep left in the world, and they live on the islands off the top of Scotland. Joni enjoyed feeding them.. 

All in all a lovely day, and fairly good value for money. It was expensive, but you were left with the feeling that no one was getting rich off that place, and all the money really was going into looking after the animals.

(P.S. All today's photos were provided by my awesome new phone. I'm quite enjoying that they are even better quality than the doggy old camera)