Archives for October 2018

I woke up shortly before the alarm. Still feeling rather meh about writing.

Made breakfast, found that it was really windy, wrote for ten minutes, crocheted a bit. I decided that it was too windy to go running in the woods and also there wasn’t really enough time before the piano tuner was due so I did strength training for the first time in ages.

I wasn’t sure what strength training to do either but then I just did a slightly easier version of what I had been doing before I stopped. It was fun. I am all sore today, of course.

Then I sat around waiting for the piano tuner, did the dishes while he was tuning, had a really nice conversation with him, waited for him to leave, helped my husband to prepare for lunch, went grocery shopping, had lunch and then I procrastinated for an hour.

This doesn’t look pretty but was rather good, it is eggs in mustard sauce with potatoes.

Finally got myself to take a shower, taught a couple of students, did the lunch dishes and rushed off to Munich.

The  Stammtisch was really nice with a lot of people and I managed to do some networking. Went back home and went to bed too late.

Today there will be the run I didn’t do yesterday, some teaching and I have a rather long list of things I need to do. Including sending my mother’s birthday present off which I should have done yesterday or the day before.

Oof.

I blame not writing the day before. Yep. Not at all. Which made me rather cranky as usual.

I woke up at 5.38 and started reading. When the wifi turned on at 6 I immediately downloaded the sequel to one of the books I finished the night before. (I actually finished two books that day, first my main read for two days, then something I had stopped reading halfway through and then that had a big cliffhanger so I got the next one from Kindle Unlimited.)

And I got the „Bullet Journal Method“ book. I’m really looking forward to that one but first I have to finish the two novels I started in the past two days and the two non-fiction books I am actively reading. Keeping up with what books I have read or not and when is becoming quite the chore at the moment. Oh, and one of my library wishlist books became available and I’ll have to return another Moomin book in a few days.

So yeah, more reading than writing yesterday.

I finished ripping the big fat pi shawl back and am now the proud owner of four balls of yarn again. (The fourth one is not pictured. I put it aside because that is the yarn I made after I had run out of the original spinning fiber and that yarn is not as nice as this one so I’m hoping to be able to make the cardigan without it.)

Next up I’ll skein and wash them. I forgot to take my Fitbit off for yarn-winding and ended up logging 6,000 steps while sitting at the kitchen table.

I talked to my husband for an hour about friendships and people and all kinds of things, then I went off to the health food store. We made lunch:

Yummy. Chickpeas, eggplant (last ones from the yard), tomato sauce (from the yard as well), bulgur and feta cheese.

Then I sat at the kitchen table procrastinating and tore myself away just in time to start teaching. Non-stop teaching until dinnertime.

The boy needed to stay off social media for a day for school so every time I wanted to talk to him I couldn’t use my phone to text him but would have had  to climb the stairs instead. (His English teacher apparently was very impressed by Jaron Lanier’s TED talk about how social media controls our behavior and told them if the whole class stayed of social media for a day they would write one less English test. Me, I’m thinking the whole approach is less than ideal but since none of us wants the boy to lie to his teacher he had to spend the day listening to music, reading books and studying Latin. (He need to learn 500 words of vocabulary until tomorrow. Yeah. I thought so too.))

So I got myself ready for bed early. No writing because I fell asleep before.

Today there will be running if I manage to squeeze it in before the piano tuner shows up (he is notoriously late but not reliably so) and a little teaching and tonight I’ll go to the parent Stammtisch. So I better get some more writing in before lunchtime…

Woke up a little early but didn’t even attempt to write.Got up in time, had breakfast with the boy, procrastinated a bit.

When my husband had breakfast I started ripping the pi shawl back. I want to knit the yarn into a cardigan. Did a huge pile of dishes with all the pots because the night before the boy had taken a shower at the time that I would have wanted to do the dishes and then it was too late for me.

Went running:

Not all that idyllic at the moment.

Then I helped with making lunch:

Then some more procrastination, a nap (I am experimenting with napping after lunch at the moment.) a shower, more dishes and then I had an idea. I have been wanting to make a certain cowl for months now but I didn’t have the right yarn. And last Saturday at the yarn shop I didn’t find the right yarn either. I talked with Laura of Wollkanal and that made me realize that I can spin for it. Of course!

I looked through my fiber stash and while I did find some fiber I could use there wasn’t enough of it.Today I did connect the dots and remembered how happy Laura had been about her dum carder. Duh. I could card different fibers together and that would also take care of the ugly neon colors and the fiber feeling flat. So I pulled out the fiber:

I will card the dark blue merino together with the black BFL and the turquoise with some of the BFL as well. That should make everything fluffy, interesting and give me enough yarn.

It will also mean that this project will take ages because I don’t really have the time for it right now but whatever.

I taught my students. I watched ‚Doctor Who‘. I went to bed.

Today there will be errands and the health food store and teaching and I don’t know what else.

I didn’t sleep well, woke up in a cold sweat around 3.20 and felt sick. I wasn’t sure if it was something I had eaten (too much fructose) or an infection.

I woke up from the alarm, lounged in bed for an hour and had breakfast. I didn’t feel good. And didn’t write.

My husband showed up and ate breakfast, we talked. I had sore muscles everywhere, all that running and walking the day before might have been just a little too much.

I did the dishes and then yoga. Yoga made things a little better. I ate a mid-morning snack because I didn’t feel well and then I helped making lunch. Goulash, orecchiette and salad:

For once I decided to take a nap. I think that was a good idea. I’m usually waking up rather early these days and then I’m all out of energy in the late afternoon. So I guess I’ll experiment with a 30 minute-nap after lunch for a bit. If I have the time. I’m sitting around for half an hour after lunch anyway, maybe napping will make the rest of the day a little better.

I still just hung around most of the afternoon but I did paint my toenails purple and refilled all the empty fountain pens – as one does. I also watched yet another free online course. I do like the teacher, she is rather sweet but I lost patience about ten minutes into her first video. The class is aimed at people who have never taken an online course before, and of course she had to explain everything in detail for people who had never met her before but it was a little slow for me.

The class is about altering patterns for tops so that they fit which I am rather interested in. She also invited a couple of experts, a woman who will be talking about body-positivity if I understood her correctly, a woman who is an expert on bra-fitting and a third one whose specialty I don’t remember.

I have the distinct feeling that I am not the right person for this class. Again. The ultimate goal of hers is to get people to sign up for her FBA (that’s Full Bust Alteration) class. I would love to take a class on that topic but then I remembered that I already have successfully made those alterations in the past. I just followed the instructions in one of my sewing books. Successfully. So I might be better off not paying the money for that class.

There is, of course, a closed facebook group for that class (the free one for now) and we are encouraged to get ourselves a learning buddy. Now. I know that the whole accountability partner thing is scientifically proven to help people. But. Actually I don’t think it has ever worked for me,

I was just talking to my husband the other day about workout buddies. Both of us have tried exercising with friends and have had arrangements where we agreed to meet the other person at certain times of the week to exercise together. Everybody will tell you how great that is, that you’re just so much more motivated when you know there is someone waiting for you.

Interestingly enough the friend that I went swimming with started to cancel about three weeks in. There was always some reason. And because she didn’t come I didn’t go swimming either. Until I decided that I wanted to get fit and that I liked swimming and that I would go Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays come what may.

I did have another friend who sometimes joined me on Saturdays and he was more reliable but in the end it was just me and me alone who moved her ass to the pool three times a week for two years.

And my husband tells a similar story. He had a running buddy. They started running together. The buddy wasn’t terribly fit. He wanted to change the route all the time, and he was way more interested in the conversation than the actual exercise. In the end my husband decoded that he would just go running, with or without the other guy and since then he has been running regularly on Monday, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Some time last year he added a Friday workout as well.

As I said, I know that science shows that being accountable to someone helps but I have to say in the end you either develop a sustainable habit or you don’t and ultimately you have to be able to do it on your own or it won’t happen.

The boy showed up around 5.30 because he was hungry and we watched the finale of „Star Trek: Next Generation“. I like it. The story is a bit crazy and the whole thing moves rather slowly but it is a nice goodbye to the series. I guess we’ll watch „Voyager“ in addition to „Deep Space Nine“ next.

Then I started writing this post, remembered that I had forgotten to prepare my bullet journal for the upcoming week, wrote for 25 minutes, let all the dishes pile up and went to bed.

Today there will be the usual Monday things, running (ouch), music, writing and probably not much more. I am in project-planning mode, I want to crochet another cowl, didn’t find yarn that I liked for that project (and could afford) on Saturday, thought I had enough fiber to spin for it and found that I haven’t. I might card some things together. Hm. Maybe I should mix some white or black in with the neon-turquoise and the flat blue. Yep. Sounds like a plan. I’ll divide the rest of the black BFL into two parts, card this into the ugly flat merino and should have enough for the cowl I have in mind. Huh. Problem solved. (And yes, I am fully aware that I am at a point where „I want to crochet this cowl“ turns into „I will card all this fiber and then I’ll spin it, neglect all the spinning projects in progress, ply it, wash it and then I will crochet the cowl. I might put it on the Louët Victoria instead of a spindle. Sounds like a plan. Now I just need an extra week somewhere.)

Apropos extra week, I also decided that I will do NaNoWriMo after all. Rather spontaneously on Saturday while walking the the yarn store. I am a little behind where I had wanted to be with the novel in progress. I’m at 22,000 words. The novel will probably be between 90,000 and 95,000 words when finished which means there are plenty of words to be written during November. So I think I will rebel and just continue the novel-in-progress.

I also am thinking of knitting a big sweater in lace-weight yarn for NaKniSweMo. First I need to liberate the yarn from the pi shawl I made, though. I won’t be wearing a huge circular shawl anyways, so I think I will rip that whole thing back, wash the yarn and make this cute cardigan out of it.

Planning and plotting. And I have re-inked pens to do it with. And yes, I am aware that I am making use of the collective NaNoWriMo and NaKniSweMo-energy out there for my own projects but I also learned in the past that if I rely on that to get my projects done I will only write for 30 days every year. Which is not enough.

I’d say that day was full enough for two. And went great.

I started the day by waking up at five again. After turning the lights off at eleven. Not ideal.

Did not write first thing but read and was excited about the day. Found out that the train I had planned on taking wasn’t running.

Had breakfast, meditated for five minutes and actually started writing. 25 minutes gave me 900 words which is not shabby at all. I saw my husband briefly and made him cranky by sending my phone number to Laura whom I was supposed to meet later that day.

Then I went out the door on my 8k run. Since I was short on time I managed a record time (for me). My bluetooth headphone battery died right in the middle and I didn’t even care.

It was slightly foggy still but became sunnier later in the day.

I’m still testing contact lenses and I like them.

Ran back home, took a shower, applied makeup and rushed off. With the old headphones because they don’t need charging. And with a phone that wasn’t fully charged which makes me nervous. But then it doesn’t take much to make me nervous.

I decided on wearing jeans, the striped t-shirt I made and my new Cria sweater because it was colder than I thought. I also was a bit afraid that Laura – the podcast listener/podcaster I was meeting – would be put off if I showed up in handmade purple things from head to toe. I knew that I needn’t have worried about that though when she send me a message saying, „I’m wearing a yellow t-shirt and a turquoise cardigan. (Plus a dark magenta scarf and a red coat. I knew I would like her when I saw that.)

Since the trains weren’t running properly I took one for about ten minutes (after walking for twenty) and then I took a tram and walked for 1.5 kilometers after that.

We had a great time at the wonderful Mercerie yarn shop. I almost bought some yarn, even, but was overwhelmed by all the wonderful shade that yarn came in, so of course I decided, „I can spin for that project instead.”

We stayed at the shop until it closed and I had tea and some cake instead of lunch. Then I asked her about her plans and she said, she had none but wanted to see some touristy stuff.

So we set out to walk all the way through Munich. From the West through the center out to the East. Along the way we encountered a lot of other tourists. When we decided that it was indeed time for real food we went to the Augustiner Keller which is about as touristy as it gets but we managed to find the part that was a little less crowded.

We had excellent beer and some Bavarian snacks. And we talked. And talked.

That might have been the first time ever that someone told me she likes it that she isn’t the one doing all the talking. I am rather used to people being mad at me for my incessant talking so that was a nice change.

When we had finished our meal we decided that it was time to head out again. Since the trains still weren’t running I had the crazy idea to walk to the East train station.

My train went a few minutes later. I was a little tired by then and only realized that I had arrived at my station after we pulled out again but that was not a problem. I just got off at the next one which is nearer to my home anyway. And I was thinking that they wouldn’t check tickets on a weekend where there is train chaos anyways. And I got lucky.

Went back home and my Fitbit showed me more than 28,ooo steps walked and more than four hours of exercise. Apparently I expended more than 2,800 calories.

The boy and I watched a very nice episode of „Deep Space Nine“ and tried the delicious champagne truffles I had received, I ate some cheese and had another beer.

Then I found that the podcast hadn’t finished uploading and so I re-started that for the third time.

I’ll get that out today, I promise.

Today there will be yoga and a little writing and not much else. I know myself well enough to know that there will be all slump all day.