Post Grad Contemplations

Today I was back at uni for a post grad block course. It made me feel so young again! It made me feel so... under grad like... Wearing the standard tight jeans, baggy shirt and cardie combo probably didn't help this feeling, nor the fact that I am young and I've only just finished my degree not so long ago.

I hate that feeling of just getting lumped back in with all the other students though. It makes me want to stand in the middle of the courtyard and yell "I graduated already! I have a really job! i'm just back here because I want to be!". However I suppressed these feelings while at uni because despite all my muttering about wanting to be an individual when at uni I really just want to blend in really and be one of the 'cool masses' and not stuff up. But that didn't stop me from tripping over a door stop while holding a cup of green tea in front of a group of people this morning... I think sometimes I just try way to hard and it results in more embarrassment.

But there are some really good things about post grad.

a. I don't pay for it - its funded through the government for me!

b. I still have my degree at the end of the day so if I fail, while not being so great wont mean a repeated year or too much shame.

c. It means time away from work and re-engaging my brain in thinking a bit bigger.

d. I've got a degree now so lecturers don't tend to talk down to you so much and sometimes you even know more about things than they do.

e. Everyone leaves their cellphones on in class and if I use mine I can blame it on work... not that I would do that...

And to finish this post off... check out one of my fav XKCD comics... I still have these dreams. http://xkcd.com/557/

Credit Card Chop

Like many modern day twenty-somethings I suffer from overspending. I earn a good wage yet every time pay day rolls around i'm always scraping at the bottom of the barrel and often, using my credit card for the few days before pay.

Its sucks. Why? Because every pay I get I have to put a decent chunk on my credit card and get no happiness for it. Usually I can't remember what the money went on, but it always added up.

I tried freezing my card Confessions of a Shopaholic styles in a block of ice in the freezer. The reasoning behind this was that if I really needed the card it was there but I'd have to go through the ordeal of defrosting it first. This worked well until I discovered how easy it was to defrost with the hot water tap on full blast...

So I reached the point where I'm sick of it. I wa

nt to go overseas yet all my money disappears and I'm not saving that much. So I decided to take some drastic action. End result?

Chopped.

Mung Bean Mania!

Another goody that I've managed to find energy for are making my own sprouts. My mum always made them as a kid and I loved watching them grow in our special sprouter. I can't remember about the eating aspect though!

Now I have a basic setup of an Agee jar and a special screw top lid to let the water out. I only

started the process on Monday and I already have edible sprouts! Win! I'm going to try sneaking them into various recipes and hope that the flatmates develop a love for them too!

Vegevege -Day 10

Ok, I'll admit. I cheated. I ate chicken. On pizza in very small amounts. I was out with friends and hadn't mentioned the change to vegetarianess and didn't want to pick off the pieces of chicken from the delicious homemade pizza. It made me feel a little guilty which was lame as I'm just trying this out for me. I have no points to prove, its just a change I want to make for my personal wellbeing.

Since the chicken incident i'm back on the wagon and am loving the new ranges of food i'm trying out.

Winners of the week include:

- Roasted chunks of beetroot. Surprisingly delicious, especially with a small amount of bestfoods.

- Finding what is dubbed "the special needs store" by friends on Dominion Road. Its a bulk food shop that sells all kinds of organic foods. I found carob buttons (childhood fav), dried apricots (the proper sour style ones that make taste explosions in your mouth) and dried bananas along with all kinds of other goodies. I should have taken the flat shopping list to see what I could have bought for general flat wellbeing.

- Finally making it into the Juicery and getting to try a raw chocolate smoothie with chunks of raw almonds. It was like a liquid dessert. So yum. Makes me wish for a better blender.

- Homemade fresh juice. I love my juicer. It brings me much happiness and wellbeing each morning. Though i'm sure the flatmates hate on it in the morning. Yesterday while attempting to shove chunks of pineapple core down the chute it made some terrible noises. My flatmate yelled out from upstairs to ask if I was juicing trees...

- Homemade Spinach, Feta and Pinenut Filo Parcels. Need I say more?

Running is my first exercise love

Running is my first exercise love. But sadly I end up with aching knees everytime I do it. The more I run the worse they get.

A couple years back I went to the physio about my aching knees. He said to stop running and start doing his prescribed exercises otherwise I’d end up like the majority of his patients and then proceeded to point out one guy in his waiting room with a knee bandage. He also told me that I had weak gluetal and quad muscles and that through strengthening them with 30 minutes a day of biking and prescribed exercises that they could get slowly better. He then proceeded to give excruciating leg massages to the point of hysterical laughing which was very close to turning to hysterical tears. I went away, bought an exercycle off Trademe for $1 (which wasn’t bad for $1 but I’m glad I didn’t pay more) which had no resistance so my legs spun useless around... went to the gym for a while on a trial membership but poorness stopped me from getting any further.

2 years on I still have sore knees. I wish they were better, but I really hate slow exercises. To me there is nothing worse than slow controlled exercises. Give me cardio any day.

Every year I vow to get them all strong and happy and do the Auckland Half marathon and every year I fail. I disappoint myself. I LOVE running but the thought of the exercises and 30 minutes on a bike each day just puts me off again and again.

So what do I do? Run anyway. Well semi. I go out with the aim of ‘walking’ and that usually changes to a jog. There is something really exhilarating about running. It makes you feel strong and powerful and like all life’s problems are conquerable. It’s also one of the best cardio workouts I can do. It also leaves me crippled up with muscle pain for a few days afterwards. Nothing bad enough to head to the physio for, but enough to stop me running again for a while.

I might need to get an accountability buddy and just hit up that bike at the gym.

Vegerama - Day Four

Yus! I have this down pat! I make veges look cool! I'm kicking processed food to the curb! I'm going to be super-vegerama-laye-de! Oh what... tough day at work? Feed me! Feed me chips! Argh. Seconds of glory and then fail. Oh well at least they weren't meat flavoured chips.

On the brightside, I'm starting to feel way lighter which is what I love about no meat. Your insides feel like they are bouncy and happy. Go figure!

PS. If anyone has idea on how to gain respect from teenagers when you are small and well semi vegetarian, tips would be appreciated.

Vege - Day three

Ever noticed how great meat can smell when its cooking? Its smells delicious. Perhaps it is delicious overall. I may be a horrible vegetarian. The other side is when its raw its really yucks me out. There is something about raw steak that looks way to cow-like and I reckon this is why I don't usually eat steak (combined with that grassy taste...).

On the upsides, I got to cook new and interesting foods and they were yum. Found out the secret to quinoa and couscous is to cook them in vege or chicken stock and they are palatable. I wish some of my flatmates over the years had known this... would have made some flat dinners a bit more interesting!

Time to go vege

I think people have stopped thinking that I’m weird and just started accepting me as Ginnie. It’s a good place to be. Though I went to KFC once with a friend over summer who blabbed to all my friends and they were genuinely shocked. It surprised me a bit, I harbour a secret love for the crispy KFC coating that I indulge about three times a year is that so shocking? People seem to always expect me to default always to the carrot sticks option in life. Sometimes this is inspiring and sometimes just plain annoying.

However, I'm attempting to go vegetarian again. It has been long enough now since the last attempt that meat is losing its appeal. The land of chickpeas and legumes beckons me with opening arms. “Come eat good food! Feel lighter! Start practicing what you preach a bit more!” Last time I attempted a vege month. However, due to my inexperience and lack of time I managed to eat a lot of the same food, as I only had a small handful of vegetarian recipes and I made them to death and then never wanted to see them again. I also didn’t prepare for the lack of ‘filling up’ that meat does and got quite hungry and ate a lot of nutella on white toast. This went against much of what I stand for in the way of good nutrition, but I was just so hungry and my flatmates at the time had a lot of bread and nutella available.

I’m not sure if I will set a time frame on this attempt. And I’m not sure if I’m going to call my attempt ‘vegetarian’ per say. One of my friends is vegetarian but says it doesn’t define him. He then eats sneaky pieces of meat on his pizza and doesn’t worry too much. I like the idea of this approach, it seems more life friendly.

I’ve also got a plan of attack, meaning I’ve got a list of recipes, have anticipated feeling hungrier and have money to buy suitable filler foods that aren’t totally processed and are marketed as a “healthy” chocolate sauce.

So the attempt begins! I feel a little bit hippy like already!

I'm a stalker.

Are you a stalker? Do you creep yourself out sometimes as well? Do you try to cover up your stalkingness to be less weird around your friends?

I sadly find the lives of my friends (and their friends, and their friends friends) waaaayyyy to interesting. I find myself reading random blogs, looking at photos of people I’ve never meet and never will, looking up friends of friends and pouring over details of their lives. I creep myself out. I find myself knowing random informative facts that I accidently let slip at times and find myself trying to make weird excuses.

But then in some ways, I figure if people are making themselves open to stalking, is there anything horribly wrong with that? If they have their whole world up on [insert cool computerised social medium] surely they must know that people will be looking and reading? Do they WANT me to look and read and inventibly envy them? Though I try to draw the line when I start thinking the “those people are way cooler than me” thoughts and try to switch off facebook/twitter/blogs/google and get on with my life (and start thinking up really cool facebook status updates that I can do from somewhere ‘exotic’ on my phone. Yup. I need a life.

Lonely Nights

Even when you get what you want in life you still have lonely nights. Nights where you need something more than what you have?

I don't feel its a spot that's missing God? And I don't feel its a spot that's missing a person per say. It's just a lonely place where bed and sleep seem to be the only answers.

Sweet Days

Some times in life you just have sweet days. Today was one of them. It rained on and off. My hair threw another hissy fit, I forgot to do my final coat of nailpolish, my outfit was boring, I didn't have enough time to make juice. But it was a good day. Makes me feel a little bit excited again for the future and things to come. Which isn't something i've felt in quite a while and it makes a fantastic change.

Sharpie Tattoos

Two months on and i'm still interested in the idea of getting a tattoo. Though all of the things from the previous post still apply and make it difficult to consider options. After a rather long facebook discussion on my status i've got a few tips and tricks to help me on my journey. I now have a 'tattoo' sharpie-d on my wrist. It catches my eye everyso often and makes me think about how much i may or may not love it. Exciting step. Must remember to wash it off prior to my meeting tomorrow... having a done tattoo is acceptable... however a halfwashed off, sharpie scribbed on 'tattoo' may not go down so well with the boss

Lessons I’ve learnt this year:

1. Be kind to your flatmates. Share you stuff, your food, your hair straighter, do their jobs sometimes. That way you have reciprocal rights. Like when your flatmate buys a GHD, or you run out of nutella, or you leave your washing out and it starts to rain, you have rights. Or I just have some pretty sweet flatmates. Or I’m the flat bully. I’m hoping it’s not the later.
2. Never close your eyes on the treadmill. Even if you want to see if blind people can run on the treadmill... and yes they can, the probably hang on though as that would prevent them from falling off.
3. Starting assignments early greatly relieves stress. Procrastination isn’t actually the funnest way of life.
4. Sometimes you get the short end of the stick. Sometimes you get the long. Both can be equally rewarding, and both can suck quite a lot, you learn a lot.
5. Don’t play push-the-button-tag with the garage door opener with flatmates. The chain will break. The door will fall. Garage door fixing men are not cheap.
6. If you harass the landlord enough he will keep his word and put in a dishwasher a year after promised. The persistent widow story does have a direct application into 21^st century.
7. Drinking too much carrot juice will stain your lips bright orange. And it’s hard to remove.

Juicy juice

Recently I meet a guy who owns his own juice bar in town and makes all kinds of delicious, raw, good for you juices (http://www.thejuicery.co.nz/). It resparked my interest in juicing once again.

I've long had a fascination with juices (thanks to my mum who I think may be a hippy in disguise), but sadly a few years back I went a bit OTT and made a apple, carrot, beetroot, celery juice and then to top it all off spooned in spirulina powder and gulped it down. Instead of giving me all day power and bright eyes it gave me all day nausea and turned me off juice for quite a long time (I haven't been able to do spirulina powder ever since).

So last week I pulled out the juicer, cleaned it and proceeded to juice all the leftover fruit we had. I've been mainly sticking to carrot, apple and lemon juices but this week got brave and added in a little bit of beetroot mixed with pineapple. I know people think this all sounds disgusting, but you'd be surprised at how sweet the juice is! The beetroot comes out this deep redish pink colour and reminds be of the traffic light drinks from cobb'n co (though not so raspberry tasting like).

I've been drinking a juice every morning for breakfast since last week. I haven't noticed a huge miraculous miracle in my life yet. Still darn tired, still sore muscles, skin still not crash hot. So I'm hoping the benefits will come out when I'm 60ish or so. Everyone else will be complaining of sore joints and I'll be skipping around like I'm 6 years old.