Brain drain

Tonight Kerrianne’s brain debuts on ITV1 West at 7.30 p.m. As it was her birthday yesterday we are throwing a brain party in her honour. We are all going to sit and watch it with a glass of vino and eat cauliflower cheese and jelly.

Actually I am going to eat dinner beforehand. I don’t think I could watch brain surgery and eat brain food at the same time.

I woke up very grumpy today. I’m getting better as the day goes on. I screamed at the scales this morning when they told me that I had put on 5lbs in 2 days. I didn’t think that was possible, especially since the last 2 days I haven’t been eating awfully at all. I guess chocolate really doesn’t agree with me. Graham was laughing as I cursed at the scales, telling them they were lying, but probably only in relief that he wasn’t the only one putting weight on.

I really don’t know how I’m going to lose all this weight I put on since meeting Graham. On looking at my food diary the last month it is clear that the problem lies in the fact that we are just too damn social. When I cook for myself at home everything is fine, I stick to my 1400 calories a day which should see the weight slowly dropping off. But we like going out to eat and that’s the problem – I can’t control what goes in my food, and even if I think I’m making sensible choices they’re normally not. Going out for drinks is a problem too. If only more places sold diet lemonade, or sugar free Red Bull as well as diet coke then it wouldn’t be so much hassle.

Gah. Indeed.

I’ve told Graham that I don’t want to go out for dinner in April after this weekend – see if it helps any before we go off to Paris. Lets see if that plan works, but I somehow think it is going to be a tough one to keep to, especially as we have just bought a voucher book that gives us discounts at loads of nice Bristol restaurants – the offers last till November/December so we don’t have to use them all at once, but it’s damned tempting. I guess I’m just going to have to be strong on this one. Make sure that Graham has access to lots of takeaways whilst I cook for myself. Maybe go out for drinks after dinner rather than going out for drinks and dinner…

Speaking of food I must just record the fantastic meal I had when we went out to lunch for my dad’s birthday at The Daffodil. The crispy duck warm salad starter was nice enough but nothing to write home about but the main. Oh. My. God. That was bloody delicious. A medium-rare chargrilled rump steak served with peppercorn sauce and a chorizo and spinach potato cake, with a side portion of broccoli perfectly cooked with fennel and toasted almonds. I never knew cows could taste so good! I haven’t had steak in a restaurant for about 4 years but that meal has certainly opened my eyes.

You see? You see how hard it is going to be for me to go without restaurant food for a whole month?!
By the way, Lord of the Rings trilogy day went very well. I only fell asleep for a couple of minutes during the second one, and it was all good fun. Enjoyed the films as a complete story rather than stopping mid-story, so it was definitely a wise choice of mine and Graham’s not to watch them all as single entities in the cinema.

It's Oh So Quiet...(again)

Do you really like it, is it is it wicked? I’m lovin it lovin it lovin it, I’m lovin it like that.

It’s the second day of the easter holidays. This holiday is always quieter than any other holiday. We ran out of things to do at about 11am yesterday, but I won’t be bored cos I’m getting used to it now.

To give you a picture of just how quiet it is, I’ve only issued 3 books today, and returned 6. I put an author declaration into a thesis. I relabelled a book. I chatted to one of our visiting professors and I put a book into another professor’s pigeon hole. Oh and I filled the printer and photocopiers up with paper.

Other than that I have been on the Internet and chatting to Sue and arranging our night out tonight with Kerrianne. Sue is now on a training course and I’m worried that my huge Internet usage is going to get me into trouble with someone up on high. So I’m writing this as a Word document and I’ll publish it on the web later on. Afterwards I’m going to read my new Murukami book for a bit – The Elephant Vanishes.

Somehow, even with it being so quiet I managed to miss our usual thief yesterday. I’m so annoyed with myself. If I’d seen him come in then I would have chucked him straight out and one of our postgrads wouldn’t have had his phone stolen. Ho hum.

There has been a load of schoolkids in the building today here for some chemistry fair. I forgot just how noisy they can be. I’m glad I don’t have to keep them under control all the time. I really do feel sorry for Ed and all the rest of my teacher friends.
Well at least it’s Easter this weekend, so 2 weeks off for them. Hopefully Ed will come round to ours for dinner sometime as I haven’t had the chance to have a proper chinwag with him for ages, and it’s been even longer since Graham saw him.

Tonight we are going out for dinner and drinks. Kerrianne, Sue and I will eat either at Ask or at some pub, then we’ll go down to The Robin Hood and meet up with Tristan, Kate, Rich and a couple of others, and hopefully Graham will make it too as I’d like for him to be on my quiz team.

On Thursday night we are going to Cheltenham to see my dad for his birthday. He doesn’t know I’m coming so hopefully it will be a nice surprise for him. We’re going out for lunch on Friday with him to the Daffodil, so looking forward to that, and then Graham and I will go and see Alex for a few hours. Later on we’re meeting up with Matt and co for some drinks, and Moz and Fix are back from Germany for the weekend so they’ll be coming along too. Hopefully she will be a little less grumpy than last time we saw her.

On Saturday we’re coming back to Bristol to spend the day with Ade and Annette and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Since they’re all extended editions we’re either not going to make it through all of them or we’ll be leaving Nailsea at about midnight. Not got anything planned on Sunday though so it’s OK if we have a late one. Graham is on call all this week and weekend unfortunately, so no doubt as soon as Monday comes around we’ll be off somewhere for him to have a few well deserved drinks.

I’ve just spent lots of money in The Guild on Easter pressies. Mum and Dad have done the best out of it but they deserve it as they have been really generous this year with money for my Christmas and birthday presents – they’ve paid a fair whack towards my holidays to Paris and Canada which has really helped!

Right then, looks like Murukami is beckoning me…

Queen of the mucus

One week after recovering from my last cold I caught another, worse one. This time I was off work for 3 and a half days and the weekend was a write-off - I had shivers and aches and all sorts, very flu-like but not actual flu. At the moment I still have a horrible chesty cough and the amount of snot that keeps building up in my nose is unbelievable! I'm not quite sure why I keep getting these colds as I normally manage to miss out on them.

I'm not a very good ill person. I get bored quickly and want to be normal again and so I get depressed. It made me feel very sorry for Graham having to be off work for 4 weeks.

Feeling a bit better about work again at the moment - not getting too stressed out at the naughty students. I've warned a couple of them that they are on our offenders list and that if things carry on or get worse they will be reported to the department, and they were actually quite grateful that I had let them know that.

Looking forward to the Easter break next week - a 4 day week followed by a 3 day week. On the Thursday night we are going down to Cheltenham for my dad's birthday as a surprise. We'll go out for lunch with him and I want to spend some time with Alex. I may also get around to seeing Matt and Moz but it depends on how long we stay - if we go back Friday evening then there's no chance. On Saturday we are going to Ade's girlfriend Annette's house in Nailsea. She has invited us all round for a Lord of the Rings day - we will be watching all three films and eating lots of junk I imagine!

Haven't got anything planned for the rest of the Easter weekend but we may go out somewhere on the Monday - see if we can find some ferrari racing or something somewhere.

Next Tuesday Kerrianne, Sue and I are going out to dinner to celebrate their birthdays early and then afterwards we're hoping to go along to the pub quiz at the Robin Hood on St Michaels Hill. Then the following Wednesday we are going out for Kerrianne's proper birthday to another pub on St Michael's Hill for another quiz. Better watch that, might start becoming a habit.

Curry madness

Went out with all Graham's friends at the weekend - was good to see everyone together again for the first time in ages. We went to our usual Indian, sorry Pakistani, restaurant for Graham and Hing's belated birthday and found that Naz is working there again. He disappeared many months ago and there didn't seem to be a good reason, so it was nice to see him again, even though he's got more excited than ever. He chatted non-stop for about half an hour at the end of our meal and has decided that he will try and sell our flat since it is in The Bristol Magazine that they have a few copies of in the restaurant.

The sneaky bugger caught me out with his curry sales pitch and I ended up eating a popadom and a starter in addition to the main meal and he also made me order a pint of cobra even though I just wanted water. Bang went my diet for the evening. Just as well I'd had hardly anything to eat all day before that.

We stayed up to watch the Australian GP - the first GP of the year. Unfortunately the race itself was a bit on the boring side as there was not much racing action/ overtaking/ crashing etc. But the result was interesting - Fisi won, Alonso third so a great start for Renault. Barichello got some points for ferrari with the old car, so I hope the new car they bring out isn't twice as good otherwise it will be a runaway season again. Schumacher was never really in it and crashed out before the end - all his fault but of course he blamed someone else, and also really angered us all by putting stewards' life in danger just to give him a push out of the gravel trap so he could go back to the garage. McLaren did Okish and showed they had a competitive package, Williams also. BAR were pretty dire, so were Toyota and Sauber. But the biggest surprise was that Red Bull racing did really well and Coulthard was very unlucky not to get a podium finish.

We opened Graham's 3o year old port on Saturday night and it was loverly. Not quite what we expected - it was actually lighter in colour than usual, with a less sweet, more alcoholic taste.

Rang mum just to say happy mother's day and she told me that they hadn't gone out for a meal as planned as dad had been really ill. He's OK now apparently, but a bit worn out and depressed bless him. Hope he's feeling better by the end of the week as we're off to Colleys for one of their huge posh meals (another night the diet is going out the window, but I have been very strict with myself otherwise). It's his birthday in a couple of weeks too.

Maureen emailed from Oz at the weekend - Lorraine is doing very well with the new baby, finding it a lot easier this time around. When she had Zoe she was suffering from bad hormonal rash for months as well as trying to cope with first-time baby, but she's not ill this time and a baby pro! Poor Maureen is in the wars - a muscle in her back has been torn again and if the pain and disibility doesn't go away she might have to interfere with her cancer treatment to sort it out.

Work's been OK today. I haven't been bored once. Just the right balance between enough things to do and a bit of free time to surf the internet. I do want to go home now though cos I is hungry!
I decided not to bother applying to Costco as I think it's going to be extremely hard trying to explain why I would suddenly want to move from library work to big retail work without giving away the fact that I'm trying to move to Vancouver. Also I figured it'd be too much hassle getting there on the buses and I didn't fancy having to do weekend shifts.

I don’t like it

Not a good March so far and we’re only 10 hours into it. I hardly slept a wink last night, and when I did doze off I kept dreaming about food and waking up. Not that I was hungry at all so I don’t know why that was happening. This morning I was all dressed and ready to leave the house, with 9 minutes to get to the bus stop before the bus was due (it is an 8 minute walk) when my bra broke and the underwire stabbed me in a very painful place. I then had to remove all my layers and find a new bra to wear and then put all my layers back on again, so obviously by that time I was not going to catch the 8 O’clock bus. Nay mind, I said to myself, I’ll get the 8.15 bus instead and I’ll still be at work on time. But the 8.15 bus didn’t come, and nor did the 8.30 and in a repeat of my Wednesday last week I waited at the bus stop for 40 minutes until one did arrive and thus got to work 25 minutes late. Bah. And I twisted my ankle slightly running up the steps to work. And it’s raining, which I wouldn’t mind so much if it had snowed properly when they had forecast it.

I’m not in the best of moods. You might have guessed that already.