hunningham | Recent Entries

I saw Dune 2.

Missed Dune 1 in cinema but watched it on TV last week, and saw Dune 2 on big cinema screen on Monday.

Inspired to give it a go by this newsletter from Marie le Conte. Completely enjoyed & very pleased to have seen it.

I got a yoghurt maker for Christmas and since then I have been churning out a batch of yoghurt about once a week. I'm not saying it's better than shop-bought yoghurt, but it's easy to do, and good to eat, and makes me feel like a Domestic Goddess of the kitchen. I like a thick greek yoghurt style, so I always strain it for an hour or so.

What's fascinating is the whey which comes off when you strain the yoghurt - it looks vile. Yellow, oily, funky smell and I can see why people used to feed it to the pigs. I cannot believe that someone managed to turn this byproduct into a 3 billion dollar industry (whey protein powder).

And yesterday I forgot about the yoghurt and left it in the strainer all day. Today I am eating yoghurt by the slice.

So yesterday in bed (yes I know, as pillow talk goes it's weird) I was telling himself about the sacred chickens of Rome. And he did not believe me. We got as far as ".. taking the sacred chickens on important sea voyages .." and he was all nope, you almost had me but that was just too much.

Today I was able to send him link to wikipedia entry on Roman alectryomancy Very gratifying

So my insomniac middle-of-the-night brain is not smart. Last night I was awake at 3am and my mind was worrying about catfood. Earlier that day I'd put in a online order for couple of big sacks of kibble for fussy cats from Pets at Home. And in the middle of the night I was convinced that I'd ordered the wrong type of catfood and that my particular fussy cat would refuse to eat it. And this would be a (sinful) waste of money, and I would have to find a cat shelter where I could donate the food, and and ...

And I could not tell myself that this Did Not Matter. Aaargh.

I am desperately tired, and desperately sad.

Here's a photo of various bits & bobs on my desktop. All good in the hand, and good to look at.

From left to right we have we have:

Arthur the Bird. Present from himself years ago. He's very friendly.
The thing which goes boing - a wind-up toy. Functional in a very satisfying way - the head is the turning key
Knife for opening letters. It's an old sheffield steel knife which has been sharpened so often that it's been ground down to a point.
Pot with pens, pencils, pliers etc. It's the perfect size to hold in your cupped hands
Tiny blue dish I use when I'm eating pumpkin seeds. Perfect size and the most intense blue in
Black stone. Sometimes doubles as a paperweight, but really here because it's beautiful and is a perfect fit in the hand.
the world.
Celedon green bowl. I can't remember where this came from - etsy?
Glasses case made from a red-and-white striped fabric which always reminds me of the big top in pictures of the circus.

I have just been out for lunch with himself. Cafe was full of students (or student-aged people) & couples taking their toddlers out and very loud, so we sat quietly in one corner and read books at each other. I had shakshuka eggs & a side of bacon and they were really excellent. 11/10 yes, would go back again.

I have now setup two different email programs on my laptop. The idea is that I will use one of them (apple mail) for personal emails & greenparty emails, and the other (thunderbird) for work & business, and this will make it harder to access personal emails during working hours. If this doesn't help, I can always try an app-blocker. Ongoing work for the Greens has been eating so much time recently, and it has to stop.

I have been watching Jack Reacher on TV with himself. Started off enjoying it muchly, and then somewhere about episode 3 or 4 the elastic in the suspenders of disbelief went ping, and it got dull. Too many scenes with Jack Reacher punching people, too many characters being killed. Whenever a new character appeared on screen I was just waiting for them to be killed off - dead brother's love-interest is going to secret meetup to hand over secret documents - how long do you reckon she's going live? Not long. And once I got to the point where Reacher is punching things because feelings, and I'm just sitting there on sofa thinking "Oooh, he's lost his binky!" then might as well give up & go home.

I'm now reading reviews of Chinese TV dramas - I fancy some martial arts with people leaping off roof tops.

If anyone likes audiobooks, can I recommend this? It's a novelette (novella? novellina?), and the narrator is Moira Quirk who is wonderful & perfect.

It's the story of a princess (a very nicely brought-up princess, not one of *those* princesses) who is imprisoned at the top of a tower, and what she does when all the princes who come to rescue her are crunched up by a diamond-toothed dragon.

I hereby forgive and pardon every Gym Bro I have ever seen flexing & admiring himself in the mirrors at the gym.

Because I have just been flexing my arms & admiring myself in the bathroom mirror. I can see the muscles in my arms and shoulders. It's very exciting and I am so impressed with myself. Had to tear myself away and stop admiring my lovely shoulders (traps! delts!). It's a good thing that the crossfit gym does not have any mirrors at all, not even in the bathroom, because I might get caught doing a little pose & flex and oh the embarrassment.

Charlie Cat comes into the bedroom first thing in the morning, as soon as H. gets up to make coffee. So when I get up & make the bed there is usually a sleeping cat, all curled up & looking comfortable. I do like having a made bed, so I move cat to top of laundry basket, make bed and gently replace cat.

Somehow this has the feeling of a magic trick - look at how I whisk away the bedclothes and replace them without disturbing the cat! Ta-Da! And now my lovely assistant will give the cat a treat!

Of course it has far more to do with cat's determination to stay asleep than any dexterity on my part.

Right now I am looking at website statistics. I am so bored.

I need a tag for trivialities

I use a logbook for tracking work, for taking notes, and for making lists. This is for scribbling, so it's not a thing of beauty, although I have borrowed a few habits from the bullet journalling people. (Notably I number all the pages and make a little index at the front for content I want to find again.)

I also cover the books in pretty paper - I think I did this with the first work book 15 years ago because I kept on misplacing it and I find it easier to track brightly coloured things. Also it looks so nice.

I'm very fussy about the notebooks I use. They must be hardback, plain pages with no lines, and decent quality smooth paper. I'm currently using the Oxford Black & Red A4 notebooks and will probably stay with them for the rest of my life or until they stop making them. The only downside is that the Oxford notebooks have inspirational quotes on the inside covers (e.g. 'The secret of getting ahead is getting started') which really do not inspire me to do anything more than grind my teeth.

So when I start a new log book I:

carefully scissor out the pages with inspirational quotes,
cover the inside cover with white paper (to hide more inspirational quotes),
number all the pages,
cover the notebook in coloured paper.

Then it's good to go.

Four A4 logbooks, for the years 2022 - 2024.

Covered (left to right) in cream paper with cacti, paper with slices of watermelon, bright blue paper, and green paper.

Not exactly a New Year's Resolution, but there are a few things I want to try out or get done over the next two or three months.

I'm sleeping okay at the moment, but it feels a bit precarious, as if any little shift could tip me off the balance beam and I'd land back in the pit where I was in October / November. So I'm trying to work on better sleep habits. There are some little things I want to try over the next month:
- get up at same time every morning, irregardless of when I went to bed or how badly I slept
- take a couple of minutes to fill in a sleep diary
- 10 minutes mindfulness practice as a dailyish habit
Greens. I want to stop doing some of the things I'm doing, and make sure that for everything I am responsible for, someone else knows how to do it and can take over if needs be. Because I do a lot and it's gotten quite stressful.
Something fun with himself once a week. We are going to plan this, put it in the calendar, organise food so it happens. Doesn't have to be a big thing - pint in local pub, a walk, meal out, swimming, local art gallery, cinema - but something which we can do together and which gets us out of the house.
Watch more TV It's about relaxing, not getting stressed, giving myself time to wind down and also spend some time with himself.

Will report back on 1st April or thereabouts.

From the guardian 100 tiny changes to transform your life: from the one-minute rule to pyjama yoga

We have the practical (waterproof trainers, better way to fold T-shirts , new twin duvets), the very much annoying (I put a smile on my face the moment I wake up), the doesn't quite understand 'tiny change' (I choose to move house and downsize), the life is meaningless if I'm not productive (I am acknowledging that my body is a work tool) and the seriously what-the-fuck, but hey sounds like more fun than pilates (I learnt to ride a horse and joust).

But my standout best of show is Tim Dowling who wants to rescue trapped bees.

They get stuck by our kitchen skylight, buzzing in panic. Shooing them with a magazine only makes them panic more. It’s frustrating and a little heartbreaking. But, recently, I discovered that they will nestle long enough on a feather duster for me to take them outside.

That's my resolution for 2024! I will rescue trapped bees

Perfect is the enemy of good, and a short post is better than no post. So - not going to manage an entire state-of-hunningham to cover the past few months of hiatus. Instead we have the three small things.

1. We have just finished a box of shortbread biscuits from the co-op. They were wonderful. I am passionately fond of shortboard; so plain, so delicious. I have tried to bake my own and it's never been very good. Sadly shop-bought is better.

2. Aged father-in-law has left. He's been staying with us for two weeks, and although he is a delight & a joy and I love him to bits, two weeks feels like a long visit. We've had little trips out and gone out to cafes for lunch, and now I am wandering around the flat, trying to work out what to do with myself.

3. My jade plants have died. I left them outside during the December cold snap, thinking they would be okay (also I was lazy) and no they weren't okay. Black & shrivelled. I have rescued some of the green(er) less shrivelled leaves to see if I can propagate a new plant.

I've been using beeminder for a couple of years to track habits, or things I would like to be habits. It's goal-tracking with teeth - there's a commitment contract and if you don't stay on track you pay a fine. Amount of fine is entirely up to you, myself I had a bunch of weekly activities setup with a $5 limit.

About a month ago it was all just too much and I had a giant fit of the could-not-copes and turned off beeminder completely. And I find that without that constant little nudge, a lot of activities don't happen. For example, I'm not writing anything in dreamwidth. And because I'm not posting (and brains are weird), I find I don't read dreamwidth either.

So I want to try the habit-tracking again. But not beeminder, or not beeminder right now. The money side was getting all tangled up with bad-person-thriftless-did-bad-thing and just don't need to give house room to that particular set of evil mind gerbils right now this moment.

So. Anyone have a favourite habit-tracker?

I love scuffling through autumn leaves. The crunch, the rustle - it feels very tactile. Like being a little kid and eating rice crispies.

Our local organic shop has been selling adam permain apples this year. They're a variety I've not had before, and I love them. Dry & crisp, with an almost nutty taste. I'm now looking forward to the winter oranges.

I got a vase by Joanne Wason for my birthday (very like this one). The glaze is creamy white, with little speckles - like a good egg. And it feels amazing when you hold it, soft and almost creamy. Some pots just beg for the hand, and this is one.

My uncle Oliver has died. I had spent a lot of time with him at the start of the year when my father was dying; a sweet man.

I'm holding myself ready for the funeral; in Ulster it tends to be done quick so could be flying out next week.

I've been thinking about my father again, and I just feel very tired and sad.

Edited to add: funeral is Monday, I'm flying out Sunday night.

At the beginning of August I stopped drinking coffee, and started to drink tea instead. I have problems sleeping well, and this was an attempt to cut out one obvious culprits so at the very least if people said "you should stop drinking coffee" I could say "done that!" And I normally have 4 to 6 cups a day. Which is a lot.

So for the past two months I have been starting the day with a pot of strong tea. I found I really wanted coffee for meetings, but made do with a little cafetière of decaff.

I've been sleeping very badly (4 hours a night bad) since I came back from holiday and heard about Charlie's death (mid-september). Yesterday I had been awake since 2 o'clock in the morning and about 8 o'clock I decided bugger this for a game of soldiers I really want coffee.

I ground a tablespoon of high-roast beans, added half teaspoon of cardamon and made myself a little cafetière of good strong coffee.

And it was very calming. Over a space of about half-an-hour I could feel myself shifting down a gear and settling into focus. It was like having a staticy radio and sloooowly turning a knob until you're listening to gardeners' question time. Fitness tracker stress tracker turned blue and told me I was in a state of rest. And I cheered up. I also got a really good day's work done (first good day since all this started).

Had some more coffee mid afternoon. Slept really well last night.

I have been listening to an audiobook of The Corner That Held Them by Townsend Warner. Disappointing. This is a favourite book of mine, but I'm not enjoying the audiobook. I'm finding it slow & dull, which is a shame. May abandon the audio, reread the book.

Unreasonably warm weather for October. My cat is being a dirty stop-out cat, coming in with the milk bottles and then sleeping all day. He also has picked up a flea infestation, and is covered in bites. I treat him with Stronghold anti-flea drops regularly, but it doesn't seem to have helped. Booked in for the vets.

I have a garmin fitness app, and I normally use it for step counting. But the past couple of weeks I've been checking out the other statistics - sleep, stress, body battery etc. It outputs a little stress graph which is vividly consistently spiky orange. I feel vindicated.

I have been awake since 2.30am. I am so very much not happy about this.

Nothing big worrying me, nothing obvious but I am running in mode highly anxious and my body is sending up distress flares.

I am doing the obvious boring things which are meant to aid sleep & relieve stress:

exercise (but not just before bed time)
eating sensibly, lots of veggies, avoiding sugar
bedroom is cool, peaceful, not used for anything but sleep
drinking plenty of water
outside time & making sure I get some daylight
no screens before bedtime or in the bedroom
cutting out on alcohol & caffeine
regular mindfulness practice (yesterday morning, yesterday evening AND at fuck o'clock this morning)
gratitude journalling

This morning I've been looking in reddit forums for advice, and some people are recommending cold showers as a way to reduce stress and tension. I am appalled by this suggestion, but I'm desperate enough to consider it.

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Proud to be an Introvert

Recent Entries

One thing for a post is enough. It doesn't have to be three

Whey powder - who thought that up?

The Sacred Chickens of Rome

Middle of the night is stupid time

(no subject)

Fragments of life

Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower, by Tamsyn Muir

I am liking my body

Let sleeping cats lie

2024 - I start a new logbook

Not quite new year resolutions

Tiny changes for 2024

Today 3 small things will make up a post

Beeminder

Beeminder

3 good things

Another death

Coffee is a weird drug. And it has a weird effect on me

Small things make up my life

I am not having fun

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