Not a Chapter-by-Chapter Post

You might be expecting to see today's Chapter-by-Chapter post where I read Chapter 9 of Stephenie Meyer's New Moon.

You won't find it here.

I had big plans to get ahead and read a couple of chapters to schedule while I'm in Wales, but real life has gotten in the way. I've had a couple of walks, a trip to the mainland and work which have kept me away from the blog.

This time next week I'll be on my way to Wales so I'll schedule a few posts for while I'm away, but it's a holiday so I'll be having a slight blogging holiday. Rather than making a rush attempt at a post, I've decided to take a break from posting Chapter-by-Chapter posts until I'm back from Wales.

Happy reading!

Bullet Journal: Food Log

When I showed off my latest spread in my Bullet Journal I included a shot of my Food Log for the coming month. I've seen these, looking infinitely more attractive than my offering, in other people's Bullet Journals on Instagram and Facebook.

I've been logging my food for nearly two weeks now. I started it with the hopes of helping to improve my results on my habit tracker page, also in my Bullet Journal, specifically on reducing the amount of chocolate I eat.

I know I can eat less chocolate. A couple of times I've given up chocolate for a whole thirty-one days with no adverse effects, the one thing that I did notice when I did that was that I would inevitably end up snacking on other things instead.

Which is where the Food Log comes in.

I'm not being obsessive about it, since I'm doing it to be healthy, rather than in an effort to lose weight. If I'd had more time to organise it, I'd have formatted it a little better. Instead I just listed out the days of the month with 'BREAKFAST', 'LUNCH', 'DINNER' and 'SNACKS' with a line for each. Occasionally I'll have 'SUPPER' too, but that just gets added on at the end of whichever line has the most space (usually the 'dinner' line).

As you can see from the photo above, I just write in what I've eaten during the day.

By last Thursday I thought I was beginning to notice a pattern, so I adapted my BuJo Food Log page slightly. Rather than writing everything in with black pen, I've adopted a sort of colour coding system. Foods eaten at home are black, foods eaten at work are in blue and things eaten anywhere else are green (for the purposes of my tracker, 'home' is not just my home, but my family members' homes as well).

This clarified the pattern I thought I was starting to see.

I snack way more at work than at home.

I suppose it's because at home I can get up and do stuff. I might be sitting and watching TV, but I'll be able to pick up my knitting or colouring in and distract my hands. At work I'll sit there, with a bag of something tasty on my desk, and I'll dip into it while I deal with an email or pop some notes on the system. In fact, the tasties don't even need to be on my desk. We're a sharing sort of group and someone usually puts something yummy out for us to help ourselves to.

I'm trying to come up with some healthy snacking alternatives, possibly carrot sticks and celery, which I can nibble on guilt-free, but if nothing else, at least I'm aware of my predisposition for nibbling on naughties throughout the day at work.

And I probably wouldn't have made the connection if I hadn't gone to the effort of writing it all down. Score another one for the BuJo!

What're some of your favourite healthy snacks to nibble on?

Wordless Wednesday: Cocoon

Books 23 & 24 of 2015: Filth by Irvine Welsh and Blood Bath by Stephen Leather & others

Tuesday means it's time for another pair of books from the depths of my book journal (that's right, it's the book journal today, I'll be blogging about my Bullet Journal again soon).

First up is Filth by Irvine Welsh. This was a book which had been floating around at work and EVERYONE had given up on it. Some had only made it a page or two in before deciding it definitely wasn't for them and bringing it back in for the next person to try.

Well, you know I love a challenge. And I can't leave a book unfinished. And I did need a book with a one-word title for my Reading Challenge. So I took it.

It's pretty much a long stream of consciousness story, narrated by Bruce (among others), and Edinburgh police officer. His marriage has broken down and he's got an uncomfortable rash. His life basically goes downhill from there.

Surprisingly, this only took me about five days to get through. I was expecting it to take me much longer. It took me a little while to get used to the style of writing, but once I did, I was able to read it pretty quickly. At least, I got through the first half quite quickly, the second half took me longer.

I think during the first half of the book I was waiting for Bruce to do something which would make me like him a little more. By the second half, I knew that was never going to come. I wound up just feeling annoyed and disgusted by him, at which point I really wasn't enjoying the book any more and I was just waiting for it to end.

We do get a glimpse into why Bruce is the way he is, but by the time that came around I really hated him and not even that could help me to drum up much sympathy for him. I get that he is kind of meant to be an unlikeable character but I can understand why so many of my colleagues were turned off the book.

In fact, the thing I was expecting to be my biggest barrier to the book, the fact that it's written entirely in dialect with some pretty bizarre formatting, actually was the easiest thing to get to grips with. By the end of the first ten or so pages I was used to Bruce's speech. I suppose living in Scotland for a decade and a half helped too. In fact, the things that probably bugged me most were the complete lack of quotation marks and the interjections from Bruce's tapeworm.

Yeah, it's just that kind of book.

As soon as I finished Filth, I went straight onto Blood Bath by Stephen Leather and a whole host of others. It's basically a collection of short stories, one of which was written by Jack Nightingale creator, Stephen Leather, the others were written by six authors and fans.

It's a fairly short ebook and each story has the same title, but they all tackle it in different ways. It made for a nice little quick read after Filth and despite the subject matter, it was quite light and easy by comparison. This was a good side read in between my Challenge books.

I have to say, I preferred the first couple of stories over the latter ones. Obviously the first one was closest to the Nightingale character because it was written by the actual author. Of all the stories which weren't written by Leather, the ones written by the competition-winning fans were the best. I guess the other authors wrote because they were asked to, the fans were already probably making up stories about the characters and obsessively read the previous books, so theirs felt more true to the original incarnations.


I did think that the book could have done with a little more editing, but it was a free book so I'm not exactly going to complain about a few spelling or grammatical errors. On the whole, it was a good little read. I thought it was an interesting idea to see how so many different stories could all come from the same title and cover. It'd be fun to have other writers do something similar to see the different results.

Pebbly Beach

Each week in my Walk Middle-earth group on Ravelry I set a challenge for people to take part in, if they feel so inclined. These challenges range from things people have to photograph on their walks, distances that should be covered, a particular time to spend walking, to specifically Middle-earthy challenges. Sometimes they're a combination of two different sorts of challenges.

In my Bullet Journal I have a list of potential challenge ideas but I tend to select them fairly randomly; when I set up the group I asked people which challenges they liked the sound of most and the Photo Challenge was definitely most popular, so I've got rather more of them than anything else. I try to make it fair and pick challenges that will challenge me too (it'd be really easy to think, I've got a busy week at work this week, I'll just challenge everyone to take a ten minute walk).

And this week's challenge was definitely a little challenging.

I'd suggested that people might like to take a walk to their favourite place, take some photos and then share their favourite places with the other members of the group.

It was a good challenge suggestion and I was quite proud of myself for coming up with it. Until the realisation dawned that I would also have to do this walk too.

Saturday ended up being a very lazy day and I didn't get out of bed until after 11am. My favourite place on the island is a little hidden away spot, Calvary Pond, and I planned to pull on my welly boots and trek up there with my camera. But I happened to mention to Mr Click that my proper favourite spot on the island is a little cove out at Kilchattan Bay.

When we first visited the island on holiday, when I was about eight or nine, we stayed at the Bay and one of our explorations took us along to a little beach which I nicknamed Pebbly Beach. It does have a proper and far more boring name, but my name has stuck.

So we headed out there and after walking Tara with Mr Click, I left them both at the car and ventured out to the beach.

And if I'd known what the path was going to be like, I would've picked an easier challenge for myself!

It was very boggy, very muddy, and very slippy. It took me about ten minutes to gingerly pick my way along the path, taking occasional photos (and trying to shield my little compact camera from the rain).

And it doesn't really look like much, especially when the windy is blowing and the rain is pouring down. But I've got many happy memories of playing on that beach. I'd scale the rocks and feel like I was standing on top of the world (now I stand almost level with the top of the rocks and they don't feel so very high at all).

I'm looking forward to when the weather starts to improve so I can go back out there and actually spend a little while there, rather than paying a quick visit and heading off before my thumbs freeze off and I got stranded.

Weekly Rundown: Sunday Walk

This year's big resolution is to walk more; not just to be more active but to actually go out places on walks. Luckily I have a group of friends who are happy to go a good long walk occasionally and so this time last Sunday we set out for a rather long Sunday stroll.

The estimate for the walk was that it was going to be somewhere in the region of eleven miles, so last Sunday I got myself organised, pulled on my walking boots and plugged myself into my mp3 player, then walked a mile up the road to the place where we had agreed to meet.

We had a rather muddy walk across the Meadows (our local playing fields) before getting onto the main road. The plan was to walk from town diagonally across the island to Ettrick Bay, a beach at the north end of the island. There's a little cafe at the beach where we were able to stop for some lunch before walking back into town along the front.

The week before our walk we had some awful weather. Storm Henry hit, bringing with him 90 mile per hour winds. The Sunday we went walking was probably the only decent day out of seven. It was pretty sunny on the way out to the beach, only starting to spot with rain when we arrived there.

Along the way there was a lot of chatting, laughing and pausing to take photos.

Arran looking all moody and Middle-earth-ish.

As I've been using my daily walks to count towards my progress across Middle-earth, I decided to have mushroom omelette when we reached Ettrick Bay; after all, according to my Middle-earth mileage tracker I was roughly at the point of the book 'A Shortcut to Mushrooms'. The mushroom omelette seemed fitting.

It was very drizzly on the way back. I ended up absolutely soaked, helped along by a car which drove through a puddle at the side of the road and splashed water over the three of us walking on the path! Despite that, I really enjoyed myself and we've already spoken about planning another walk at some point in the future, hopefully making it a regular thing.

It was a very good Fitbit day as well! I earned a whole bunch of badges, my favourite two being for walking 30,000 steps in a day (I may have put my laundry away one item at a time before bed to hit that quota) and climbing the equivalent of 50 floors!

 

The twelve miles did kind of kill my walking boots though.

I've had those shoes for well over a year now, but the recent increase in walking seems to be wearing them out quicker than before. The walk on Sunday finished them off and I wore right through the grips on the bottom. My new walking shoes have arrived now and I'm slowly breaking them in.


I'm curious to see how long these ones will last me!

Film Review: The Desolation of Smaug, Part 3

Time for another instalment of The Desolation of Smaug.

Last week we saw all the spiders, the Dwarves were captured by Thranduil and his folk and Bilbo smuggled them all out in barrels. Now it's time to catch up with Gandalf and head off to visit Laketown.

100. Meanwhile, Gandalf is trekking up the High Fells.

101. Health and Safety would have something to say about that staircase.

102. And that tunnel.

103. "Oh it's you!" Hi Radagast.

104. "This is not a nice place to meet." Hehe.

105. He was one of NINE. Oh, I wonder who they could be...

106. I love how this ties things so neatly into The Lord of the Rings. I know it's hinted in the book that the Necromancer is Sauron, but they spell it out a lot more obviously here.

107. And Radagast speaks the truth. I like how he's like, Gandalf, we need you.

108. Soggy Dwarves. The special features bit on this is hilarious. I think their fat/muscle suits swelled up with water and they kept getting stuck in the barrels.

109. Look out! There's a Bard about.

110. I love that Dwalin is all tough but when the youngest member of the company is in danger, he just steps right in front of the arrow with just a bit of tree to protect himself.

111. Balin was doing well at the whole 'connecting with the human' thing, until he mentioned the guy's dead wife.

112. Looks like they've found a ride into town anyway.

113. Lee Pace does a really good Thranduil. He's all distant and monotone. I can believe he's Legolas's dad.

114. Tauriel is quick with her blade.

115. And that Orc is not pretty, especially when he does that hissy thing.

116. "I do not care about one dead Dwarf." Yeah, but Tauriel does.

117. The Orc's eyes are unnaturally small. I think that's one of the things that makes him look so weird.

118. "You promised to set him free." "And I did, I freed his miserable head from his shoulders."

119. Thranduil's plan is basically to close the doors and hope no one notices that they're there. It shows how the events of this film change him that he agrees to send Legolas to the Council of Elrond.

120. Uh oh. Tauriel's out after curfew.

121. The 'Dwarf blood' bit is a nice little nod to the bit in Lord of the Rings where Gimli tastes the blood on the leaf and spits 'Orc blood'. These guys should really stop putting random blood in their mouths.

122. I feel like they could have done something before now to show Gloin having money to spare to explain why Thorin asks him for the extra money here.

123. Hehe, Bilbo moving away from the knothole in case they can see him.

124. You should really watch the featurette on filming this bit. Those weren't fake fish they were dumping on the Dwarves.

125. I love Laketown. It just looks perfect. Not quite what I was imagining but it makes perfect sense.

126. Alfrid gets mixed responses online, but I think he serves an important role in this film. He's horrible but he's a great character.

127. You should see the audition tape where he plays the character like a slimy used car salesman.

128. I think those dogs belong to Peter Jackson. He almost had a cameo here, but it got cut.

129. I'm not easily disgusted, but Alfrid throwing the contents of the chamber pot out the window and getting it everywhere is really gross.

130. "There's even talk of an election." "An election? That's absurd. I won't stand for it." "I don't think they'll ask you". Love it.

131. "Bollocks!"

132. Okay, this bit is also really gross. I love Stephen Fry but he's just horrible in this. Which is totally the point.

133. I've never really thought about it before, but this is Bilbo's first encounter with Men. He spends way more time in the company of Dwarves, Wizards and Elves.

134. "What do you know about my wife?" "I know her as well as any man in this town." This film has so many little quotable lines.

135. And Bard's daughters are played by James Nesbitt's daughters. I love how much of a family affair these films are.

136. I love the Dwarf theme.

137. Tilda makes me smile. "Will they bring us luck?"

138. Recap of the beginning of the last film, with a few more shots of people trying to attack the dragon.

139. And a bonus show of Luke Evans made up to look like Bard's ancestor, Girion.

140. They need to get to the mountain very soon or the quest is a waste. Or they'll just have to wait for another year.

141. I'm with Balin. Why the insistence on 'proper' weapons?

142. Oh dear. Kili isn't feeling too hot.

143. Apparently drawing bows on each other is how Tauriel and Legolas greet each other.

144. Sheesh, if Thranduil's treatment of Tauriel is 'favouring' her, I'd hate to see how he'd treat someone he didn't like!

145. Tauriel speaks the truth. It's basically her we have to thank for Legolas being able to head off and join the Fellowship.

146. I love the prophecy rhyme.

147. Who needs a ladder when you've got a bunch of Dwarves to climb?

148. How many weapons do they need? They're not planning on travelling light apparently.

149. Nicely done, Kili.

150. It's snowing!

151. Thorin has got the hang of the politician's speech.

152. Bard has not.

153. They've never seen a Hobbit before. I'm not sure he's the most reliable one to vouch for Thorin.

154. They're all quick enough to complain about Girion failing to kill the dragon, but I didn't see anyone else up there trying to get Smaug.

155. "I say unto you WELCOME!" _{to another episode of QI.}

156. Oh dear. Kili's being grounded.

157. I love those instruments.

158. Did no one notice that Bofur was missing?

159. "The entire town twittering your name." Hehe, nice little nod to Fry's presence on Twitter there.

160. Hehe, I love the Master's response to hearing Kili's sick.

161. The overlook looks suspiciously like the bit of Mordor overlooking the Black Gates.


And we'll leave things there for now. Next week, Bilbo finds the door, figures out how to open it and gets sent inside for his troubles.