The Chocolate Sorbet from the weekend - very nice, although I didn't get to actually eat much of it, and we left the rest at our neighbours... it would be rude to ask for it back, wouldn't it?
I worked the WW points out as being 4.5pts (according to the nutritionals on the recipe), but not sure if that was per recipe or portion. I'm hoping it's recipe...
Chocolate Sorbet from Cooking Light.com
Last night's dinner:
Steak and Chargrilled Pesto Pasta
Preheat oven to 220 degrees.
Cut aubergine lengthwise, about 1cm thick per slice, lay on grill pan. Cut peppers in half, deseed and lay outer up on grill pan. Spray with low fat cooking spray, or olive oil spritzer.
Cut courgettes into 2cm thick slices, and lay vertically on grill pan (ie, not flat side down).
Chargrill all in oven for half an hour (or until you can smell burning in my case!)
When cooked, cut into chunks of roughly the same size.
Cook pasta of choice in boiling water.
Meanwhile, put cherry tomatoes in griddle pan, spritz with oil and saute until skins burst. Add thickly sliced mushrooms until browned. Remove from griddle.
Season steak with garlic salt and pepper and hit with a meat hammer (?). Griddle on both sides to taste. Cut into strips.
Stir everything together to reheat the vegetables through, and stir in pesto.
In other news - I'm freezing cold today....
Here are the rules:
1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post the rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names.
4. Don't forget to leave them a comment on their blog and tell them they've been tagged, and to come back and read your blog for the whole story...
Okay, well I'm going to ignore the whole tagging thing...
- Each of myself and my two siblings were born in different countries - China, Uganda and South Africa, yet none of us have foreign nationalities. My sister spent a few years of her life with a South African accent as a result. We are Foreign Office kids, and have therefore had the honour of living all over the world. This makes it hard for me to really love England, and settle. But I am learning because Nick loves England and we are gradually finding the nicer parts. Unfortunately we need to win the lottery to afford our dream house and lifestyle. Oh well.
- When I was young, I was convinced that one of us was adopted. I thought it was my sister for many years because I never saw any photos of her younger than about 6 months. Then I saw a picture of my mum at 13 and she was the spitting image of my sister. Although I used to look like my brother, I don't now. He is the spitting image of my dad. I look like some bastard throwback, but I quite like that. Nick is the same - his sister looks like his mum, his brother like his dad, but he looks like neither particularly.
Strangely, my sister's two are following the same pattern, I wonder if their 3rd child will look like neither of them. - I believe that I was born at the wrong time, in the wrong place. Maybe it's something to do with past lives, not that I believe in that, but I always hankered after a "Little House on the Prairie" lifestyle. That's not to say that I don't appreciate the advantages that modern life brings. I have always felt more American than anything else though, despite the fact that I had never been there until I was 26, but it felt like I came home. Every time I leave, I always find it a real wrench. Luckily I have a very accommodating husband who humours me, and while he's not keen on living there, he entertains my dreams of giving up work for 6 months and travelling all around, and in the meantime, visiting as much as we can.
- I have a cousin in Australia who coincidentally lives in the same small town as Nick's aunt and uncle. Nick's uncle has an Australian accent, but his aunt still retains her Welsh accent, which cracks me up. My cousin, who, despite the miles between us, and the years we lost touch, has always been like a twin sister to me. Not that we look alike at all - she looks like Reese Witherspoon (so triggering my liking of all her films!). We have our differences - she's much more earthy than me, whereas I'm more corporate, shall we say! But we have certain things where we have always been in sync. I miss her, and I really wish I were rich enough to fly her and her son over to the UK to see us, and then fly back and spend time with her there as well.
- I have died my hair all sorts of colours over the years, nothing too radical, but I've been red, peroxide blonde, dark brown, nearly black, golden etc. However, now I'm actually going grey, I kind of like it and just have my natural colour. I've also had my hair all sorts of lengths (I'm with Gamba, I have a profound dislike for long hair on men!), yet I only ever used to get it cut twice a year - until now that is... when I try and make it go for as long as possible. I never went as short as this before because I thought it would make me look butch. It probably does, but I like it anyway.
- I am considered the black sheep of the family because I don't really 'do' the family reunion thing. Apparently comments have been made. We have an invite for a wedding sitting awaiting an RSVP at home. We don't really want to go because it's 2-3 hours drive, and would require an overnight stay and it's the weekend before we go away for our Summer hols, so we really want to be at home that weekend to sort stuff out, and to make sure we have everything we need ready. It's not a cousin I'm particularly close to either. I think that if I had grown up with my cousins it may be different, but we didn't, and I would rather spend time with friends, or my immediate family on a smaller basis than grand reunions and weddings all the time.
- I once fell off Victoria Peak in Hong Kong. We were staying in HK with some friends we'd met in Malaysia, and they had driven us up to the top for the view. Emma, the other little girl and I, were all over excited, and jumped out of the car as soon as we were parked. There was a man looking at the view, with his knee up on the low wall, and his elbow resting on it, and chin in hand. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to replicate this casual gazing at the view look, except forgot to stop before I got to the wall, so effectively jumped right over it.
I only tumbled a little way into scratchy bushes etc, and then the man had grabbed me by my (fortunately) long hair and hauled me back over the wall. I wasn't really very upset until I looked down and realised my entire left thigh was scraped to buggery. I still have a sort of scar there - lots of very close surface veins that I really don't like. - When we lived in St Lucia (and I was probably at just about my fattest), we were at a bar/restaurant called the A-Pub in Rodney Bay for dinner, and for my dad and brother to have a briefing about a regatta the next day. I went off to the loo, and when I came back my brother was sat chatting to a rather good looking, tanned and blonde bloke. He turned to me and said, you'll never guess who this is... go on, try. I really couldn't. It turned out it was someone we'd been to school with. Only instead of being tall, blonde, tanned and gorgeous, back then he was short, weedy and very mousey, but with attitude. I felt completely embarrassed because I had gone from being relatively normal to being this complete heffalump, and was mortified because I kept blushing!
I've volunteered this weekend to supply my sister with 2 birthday cakes for both niece (1st) and nephew (3rd) joint birthday party.
Nephew is into playing football (this basically just means kicking a football around a garden, rather than anything organised or watching in on the tv) and 'Harrow' football.
I was thinking of baking a semi-spherical cake and decorating it like a football - except getting exactly black and exactly white butter icing is a bit tricky - would I be better off using fondant icing?
Niece is one, she's not really into anything yet.
I have to top the digger cake from last year, but I'm at a loss as to what to do, (and my colleague who helped me with this design is out of the office until Thursday!).
Any ideas!?
p.s. Between them, both cakes need to cater for around 45 adults plus a few children as well!
I got to the car park (we have permits for one of the shopping centre ones) at 6:55 this morning, with a view to being at my desk by 7, as I have been doing for the past couple of weeks.
Except the car park, which is supposed to be open at 6:30 remained firmly locked. The security on the delivery gate was shut for about 10 minutes as well, and when they opened they said they had no responsibility for opening the main gates, but that they would call someone.
I sat there for around 50 minutes waiting for someone to come and open up, with an ever growing queue of cars behind me.
So that was good.
Secondly, our plumber said he would call me on Friday morning to let me know when he would be able to have someone over to mend our temperamental boiler. He didn't. I texted him on Saturday, and yesterday. Still no reply.
I'm not surprised really, because this time last year it was acting up, and 3 Saturdays in a row we stayed in to wait for him, and he never showed, or returned our calls.
I want to find a new plumber, but he is good - when he actually shows up, and he does stay until the job gets done. Personally I think he thinks we're pains in the proverbials and is trying to ditch us as customers.
I shall try calling him again today.
On a plus side - we have an upholsterer coming over tonight to give us a quote for covering our pouffe and an armchair.
Not doing the race was definitely the right decision. On Friday night I struggled to run a full 2 miles, and have come to conclusion that maybe I do need to see a doctor.
The weird thing is that I feel perfectly healthy, but I seem to be getting more and more unfit with every gym visit.
Actually, I'm not sure it's a fitness thing, because my breathing is fine, but I just feel weary all over, rather than my legs aching or anything specific. I have been getting stitch more recently though.
The thing is that I am not good about going to Doctors. They either tell me I'm overweight (yeah, thanks, I know that), or I end up having to tell them what's wrong with me.
When I had my anaphylaxis, I looked up on the internet about what could have caused it, and then went to the docs in the hopes that they would refer me to somewhere for allergy testing - instead, she told me to look up on Google for allergy testing places - no mention of a referral, or of the National Allergy Centre (I think that's what it's called).
When I went to the docs last year about lack of weight loss, and tiredness - the answer was that I was just doing too much, in terms of my running and working etc. and not really having weekends to relax.
When pushed he did give me a form to fill in and take up to the hospital to have some blood taken to be tested. I didn't do it, because he said there wasn't really anything wrong with me.
This leads me to my second issue with doctors - I am not good with needles. I used to be absolutely fine, no problems. Until a flu jab in my final year at school, when I fainted and crashed to the floor.
Then at uni, having my jabs to go to Turkey, again, I passed out. And again when I had some jabs for going to Corfu.
So, I'm not very trusting of doctors who don't seem to know much more than I do, and I hate needles because I always pass out.
However, I think I need to get myself checked out because a lot of things just don't add up, and I can't find anything online to help. I thought it might be an iron deficiency, but I don't think it is that.
Helpfully when I mentioned it to my dad, he just remarked that he thought I was pregnant.... um no. No chance of that.
I have a report that I run that basically looks at shares... except, where it's trying to take a share of "0", you inevitably get the whole "DIV/0!" issue.
The report that people read therefore pulls through the "DIV/0!" value. Now, no-one's complained, but for aesthetics reasons, I'd really like to get rid of that, so I've tried building an IF clause:
=IF(PromoData!Y17="DIV/0!",0,PromoData!Y17)
except - it's still pulling through the "DIV/0!" and I have tried everything I can think of, putting " " instead of the 0, putting just "", leaving it blank altogether etc. etc. but nothing seems to be working...
Any Excel wizzes out there who can tell me where I'm going wrong?
Thanks y'all!
EDIT: Thanks to a colleague, I have now learnt all about the ISERROR function. Whoop.
The three flavour ice-creams that I would make?
- Lemon and dark chocolate
- Sticky Toffee Pudding (Date with a Toffee Swirl)
- White Chocolate and Peppermint
Hmmm. I might go and investigate recipes now...
This weekend I am making Dark Chocolate Sorbet to take to our neighbours' for dessert - it's low fat, and 3 points per serving.
I just find it incomprehensible that we have this reward system in place, and are supposed to be using it as a system to develop and reward people, yet actually what it does is penalise them for being new to role, and keep people at the same grade for a long time. Apparently though, we are trialling a system whereby they are selecting people to take some aptitude tests with the hope of identifying potential employees for fast tracking through the system, but they're only testing it based on the tests, and what they think the results say, which they'll then compare against the mid year and end of year appraisals. If the appraisals confirm the test results, then they might then implement it. Sadly, in most roles, it's all about creating a "legacy" - become known for something... which rather puts the pressure on those of us who do the donkey work and keep things ticking over for those who create their own special projects to gain recognition for.....
Just had a chat to my boss because they've finally put that vacancy on the bulletin board, and it's ever so slightly different from the one advertised externally. Anyway, he said that basically, because it was a grade higher, that I wasn't the right rating (ie. green or red) on the readiness for promotion scale, and therefore I couldn't even apply for it. He also, ironically, said that if I was working for another company and applied through the retained agency then I'd definitely be considered as a strong candidate. That's pretty sh1tty really, in my book, because technically I've been at this grade for 3 years now, just not within this company. Anyway - it was worth a try I guess, and has made me more determined to go freelance as soon as possible, because then I can work for myself and not put up with cr@ppy bureaucracy.
I made the right decision about not running the race this weekend.
I went to the gym last night, after a 4 day rest. It's usually when I come back stronger and can usually manage a longer run.
Not yesterday. I managed 3 miles, just, with splitting stitch from about 2 miles.
I did some sit ups and some weights as well.
I have to admit that I don't know where my fitness went. It seemingly vanished overnight, back in early March, after my last race. I don't know where it went, because I am still eating and drinking the same as I ever was, and doing less mileage.
In other news, colleagues and boss are doing their best to dissuade me from going for the European role. They say I would hate it. There would be no data analysis, and just relying on other people to feed me data. There would be frustrations with alignment, and not having ownership for anything. There would be a lack of support and direction. I would be a lone ranger. I would be stressed and frustrated.
But you know what? The stubborn side of me rises to that sort of challenge. I feel I could make efficiencies, there is new management coming in who will provide the direction. I could really shine, and not be invisible to senior people. I would have contact with the board in America.
The choices are this:
- I get moved into a slot to cover maternity leave, on a different team. It would be more commercial, but I still wouldn't get to do what I wanted (which is what I am doing), and would merely be carrying on the work of others. I would then be moved to another post, at the same grade for another 18 months or so. I would then be eligible for promotion, but it would have to be to a post where I would have no experience.
- I could stay doing what I am doing, but get no promotion, or significant payrise. I would be under pressure to deliver a "legacy" piece of work (they love that expression), but both I and Boss have no idea what that piece could be.
- I could apply for a job that no one wants to do, get a promotion and a significant payrise, and feel challenged.
Unless I can convince my boss to increase my pay on the grounds of my expertise and skill, which is unlikely, then I am forced to move. I have no experience outside of data and data analysis, and I'm not sure I especially want to move into sales or marketing.
Therefore it seems to me that the obvious choice is to go for the promotion, do the job that no one wants to do for 18 months, and then move on at that grade, rather than the grade I am now. It seems logically to be the best thing to do.
