Category Archives: asininity

Pinteresting

Like so, so many other people… I’m on Pinterest. But unlike the 25 people or so that have auto-followed me in the last two weeks, I actually use it. A little.

Virtual scrapbooking. I don’t real-life scrapbook. But I do like to pin the odd thing here and there that interests me, or things that I would like to own one day. Stuff like that.

I think the best thing to come out of Pinterest are the following two websites… they often make me laugh. HOWEVER… a lot of times these images are definitely NSFW, so be careful when/where you check them out.

Pinterest, You Are Drunk

The description for this site is “Y’ALL ARE GOING A BIT OVERBOARD OVER THERE. I’M HERE TO HELP.”

One of my favourite recent pins was this one…

Makes being single seem like a great thing to be.

WTF, Pinterest?

I’m sure you can imagine that this one follows along the same lines. The description for this site is: “I am often inspired by what you pin to Pinterest.com, but sometimes, you make me say, “WTF”?”

A great recent pin?

I don't get it either

 

So. Whether you are new to Pinterest, a long time Pinterester, or someone who doesn’t give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut what the sweaty squirrel Pinterest is… these sites are worth having a look.

Christmas Wishes

I am FINALLY going through all my photos from last year and trying to get them uploaded. This year I’m going to try my best to a) take more photos and b) upload them regularly. Because uploading this many photos is NOT FUN.

Anyway… I found this picture in amongst my May photos from 2011…

24/12/09 - It's me Robert. I am seven on Christmas. My dad is poo. Merry Christmas.

 

I was with Eva in a pub near Black Friars Bridge that day. We had been just roaming around London and then stopped for lunch. I seem to remember that the food was okay and the ale was lovely. They had a guestbook lying around, and this entry was just one of many. It made me wonder about this poor 7 year-old kid, in the pub with his old man on Christmas Eve.

Who let me in the kitchen?

Yesterday Tyran bought this mixer machine thing. I’m pretty sure that’s what it said on the box.

like the window full of herbs and lemons?

There it is! It has other marvellous attachments (like a blender… Welcome to Margaritaville : Population – Me).

You can see in the picture I made some mayo (that’s the gloop in the jar, and I’ll write more about that later). But the very first thing I did was cut myself on the fucking thing. Twice.

first boo-boo

 

second boo-boo (the big cut)

After some emergency first aid (and a hell of a lot of whinging) I used the machine to first make mayonnaise and then the MOST GARLIC-FILLED GUACAMOLE IN THE UNIVERSE.

five cloves of garlics. and a shallot. vampires beware.

Now that I had some deliciousness happening, I decided I should probably pull something together for lunch. I had a butternut squash hanging around, so I thought I would roast that as a start.

I usually buy the squash already cut up (I’m lazy, yo), but this time I had a whole squash to cut up. Fresh-cut butternut squash smells good. It is like pumpkin… but more apple-ly. I was surprised that there were seeds in there. I don’t know why I was surprised. I suppose that’s what happens when you are used to buying all your food already processed.

lookit all those seeds!

Seeing those seeds gave me an idea: Could butternut squash seeds be roasted just like pumpkin seeds? They sure look the same. So I thought I would give it a try. Win! They did roast up exactly the same and were super delicious.

In the end, my lunch ended up being home-made mayonnaise (with chipotle paste – so good) with roasted butternut squash, guacamole (again, home-made – I rock) and tuna wrapped in seaweed with glutton-free soy sauce and with butternut squash seeds to finish. SO YUMMY.

I also had fresh iced tea. I used the blender to crush the ice for it (fancied it up a load, didn’t it?). It is just rooibos tea with ice and a sprig of mint. I’m getting very used to iced tea with no sugar or other sweeteners. Some teas (like rooibos) are fairly sweet naturally, so you don’t need to add anything to it.

nom nom nom

This lunch was WAY too big. It ended up being 1067 calories. I should have had half the amount and saved the seeds for a snack later. But it worked out okay – I ate this late in the day and just didn’t eat again, so I came out ahead of my ‘allotted’ calories that day (thank you Fitbit for tracking all that for me!)

It’s been an interesting month of eating well. It is delicious but a hella lot of work. I would definitely make this again – but would eat less of all of it.  Either just the tuna and avocado wrap or the squash… or half servings of both.

Diarising

I’ve had a few journals over the course of my life. Perhaps a good dozen. I was even one of these girls who had a diary with a lock at one point.


It’s the kind of thing you get for Christmas and have to wait for the first of January to start using. And I would be so excited to start using it. Various years of my life, a journal would be started, in earnest,  on 01 January.

And after a few days, for whatever reason, I would miss a few days. And I would hate that there were blank pages. I’ve always been an all-or-nothing kind of person.

And then I would read what I had written over the last few weeks, and critique not just what words were there, but the handwriting and the pen (or, heaven forbid, pens) that I had used to write with. But I was especially hard on the words. What I had thought was brilliant at the time of writing (often just a few short weeks prior) had become drivel. I mean, I was doing this to myself at 7 years old.

Fast forward to autumn of the same year. I would find that diary and decide that I would try to give it another go. Blank pages be damned! And so a mostly empty diary would be given new life as I wrote in it again for another solid 10 or 15 days. And then it would be abandoned again, just as it had been before.

Eventually I would find that diary tucked away a year or two later and read it again, thoroughly embarrassed by the absolute garbage I had written. And what do you do with garbage? You burn it. Oh, the bonfires of words I have enjoyed. So many.

I’m only bringing this up (feel free to leave a “cool story bro” in the comments) because it struck me this weekend that my blog follows the same pattern. Like this blog in Janaury,  I seem to remember that all my shiny new diaries, so full of promise, always started with the same sentence: “This time I’m going to try writing every day…”

Under what circumstance, or set of circumstances, might you noodle for a catfish?

I’m afraid to answer this question.

I could come up with something pithy and hopefully witty. Or at least, I could try. But I worry that “noodle for a catfish” is a euphemism for something dirty unknown to me.

Confession: I’m going to Google it. While I do, you can enjoy this amusing image of a cat. On the internet. With a caption.

I’m back. Good news: It apparently doesn’t mean anything dirty.

However, Urban Dictionary  tells me that “to noodle” means “to mull over, think about, contemplate, ponder, puzzle over or brain-storm”

Which makes this question weird.

I might think about a catfish now and then. They are worth some contemplation. Weird looking little buggers, aren’t they? So they are worth mulling over. Mostly I think about how gross it would be to have my hand caught in their mouth. EW. And the whiskery-bits give me THE FEAR.

But a circumstance where I would have to think FOR a catfish? As in: On behalf of said catfish? Well, I can only think of one. I bet this guy was hoping someone would think of a way to get this freaking basketball out of his mouth. So if I came across a catfish with a basketball in his mouth, I would definitely noodle a solution for that poor thing.

Year of the Dragon

FINALLY.

The Year of the Dragon. I’ve only had to wait 12 years for it. The last time it was the Year of the Dragon was 2000 – 2001. I was 24. I had just graduated Univeristy.

And I would have never dreamed that by the time it came around again I would have travelled all this way, met all these fabulous people and be living in London. No one dares to dream that big.

But here I am.

And although I have come a long way, I still have a long way to go. And I would like to focus on some of that stuff this year.

I don’t know how well a Fire Dragon (that’s me) will do in a Water Dragon year. But I have some plans to get where I want to be.

There are improvements I would like to make in regards to my creativity, finances, health, lifestyle and relationships. I’m putting a big focus on my health, and I’ll post more details about that soon.

I hesitate to call any of my plans this year “resolutions” or even “goals”. I think I’ll stick with “plans”… but they will be measurable plans. And because they are not going to be NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS, I’m going to wait until after the Year of the Dragon officially kicks in… and after I’m back from Vegas (work trip) before I get going on anything in earnest.

Here’s to making this year a good one!

Back to It

A short post just to say I’m going to try and get back into doing some writing on this blog.

How often do I blog about blogging? Ridiculous.

It is something that I like to do, and want to do more of, but I just don’t. It’s like all things that are good for you… sometimes it is just easier not to do it. I mean… part of me likes running. But another, more bossy part of me likes going to the pub and drinking a beer instead. So I don’t always run.

I want to finish going through The Interrogative Year. I want to journal a bit about my goal to get to a healthy weight this year (more on that in another post). I want to huff and puff and passively-aggressively review apps/tools/programs/etc that I’m using. Or not using, if they suck. I want to write a few more short stories. I want to express how I’m feeling or what I’m thinking about in more than 140 characters (damn you, Twitter).

I think I may have to intersperse shorter posts with longer ones. Plain ones (like this one) with fancy ones (with pictures! and links!) to keep momentum going.

I’m not making promises. But I am sure going to try.

Again, that is.

I do it to myself

And so I have only myself to blame. But I bet I am not the only one that does this.

Ever put something “somewhere safe” so it a) wouldn’t get lost and b) you could “easily” find it again? And then you never, ever saw that item again?

Yah. I’m trying to find the charger-thing for my Jawbone Up bracelet (another post on that one day) and it is completely MIA.

raR! Just be somewhere obvious, you bastard!

Grumpy Old Machine

My computer is growing senile.

I’ve had the poor thing for awhile now – since 31 December 2007 to be absolutely specific. I remember the date because it is the last time I used that credit card, ever.

It’s served me well, my poor little Dell Inspiron 530S. Sure, it’s up and shit the bed for no reason on more than one occasion and required some tough love to get it going again, but overall? For a PC? For an OLD PC? It was doing fine.

Tonight though it decided to be extra dinky and weird for no good reason. Got four nasty beeps on post – the BIOS equivalent of the computer flipping me the bird. HOW RUDE. It’s a sure sign that the hardware has decided enough is enough. Most likely the RAM or where RAM meets motherboard.

So I pulled it all out and turned it on with no RAM in it at all. Two beeps on post, which is a good sign. Pulled it out again and put in two of the RAM sticks. It turned on fine. Another good sign.

Then I stuck in the other two… and the computer went batshit. Kept turning itself on and off, like it was having some sort of fit. What a drama queen. So I pulled the power and it settled down.

::SIDE NOTE::

Wouldn’t have been weird if it had kept turning itself on and off after I unplugged it? Just sayin’. Weird.

:: END SIDE NOTE::

Anyhoo… swapped the RAM around and now it is fine again. WTF, Computer? You are losing the plot.

I need it to hang on for a bit longer; I really cannot afford to buy a new machine right now. I just worry because it’s Senior Moments are growing more and more frequent and more and more extreme. It’s a good thing I keep everything on an external drive and on the webskipops. Seriously.

Wunderlist: Part Two

As some of you already read in my earlier post today, I was having some extreme issues with Wunderlist this morning. The login was balls and then the site went down.  Not a good start to our relationship.

So I passive-aggressively complained here on my blog and sent a tweet about the site being down. Nearly immediately, @wunderlist tweeted back with an update. Which helped control my rage. It was rather interesting how just a little personal response went a long way; I was at the point where I didn’t care if I logged in ever again (I have other lists, right?) and got turned back around to being willing to give them another go.

And then it got a lot more personal.

Kirsty Lee, Social Media Manager at 6wunderkinder got in touch directly. It would appear that she had read my earlier blog post and was also aware that I had spewed forth my frustration on Twitter.

Not only did she reply in the comments to the earlier post, she also emailed me directly to let me know that a) they are working on some soothing salve to decrease the ball-ache of registering via Facebook (sadly, not by killing Facebook but rather with updates to the app) and that the site was down because the servers went down.

I am appeased.

After just using the app today, I can’t yet feedback how useful I am finding it. But after today I am happy to tell the interwebs that the team behind Wunderlist obviously cares what their users think. They obviously care what I think.

They care even though they don’t charge people anything (did I mention earlier that the service is free?). Even though my blog is mostly read by my moms and a few other people who clearly hate themselves and wish to be punished. Even though I’m not a “power-user” or whatever grotesque “you deserve our attention, money-spender” category companies lump people into. They still care.

Kirsty’s actions today (personalised and timely) made all the difference with how I feel about their brand. Instead of focusing on the issues I had this morning, when I tell others about Wunderlist, I’m going to tell them all about the solutions. About the really positive experience I had with the company.

Why aren’t all companies working with their customers/users like this?

Thanks, Kirsty. Tell your boss you deserve a raise.