Mittwoch, Mai 09, 2012

Food Update

Maybe you're wondering what happened to my "Getting rid of sugar" - resolve.

Well, as expected/feared, Easter turned out to be a little disastrous in the sugar department, and for some reason the weeks afterwards I just ate whatever I wanted, not always the best choices either. Chocolate bars, cake, lots of drinks (all those birthday celebrations because all my classmates are turning 30...), stuff like that.
Of course, that didn't really contribute to my wellbeing. :P

I have now (maybe for the past one or two weeks) started to reduce sugar again, eat more veggies, all of that. Not yet perfectly, not yet really avoiding it, but significantly reduced, yes. And I'm already feeling much better again.

I am currently a little conflicted on how to continue. There is a wedding in May, or rather, there is a hen night and two days of wedding (civil, church). I guess there will be food and cake, and I can't really see myself not eating wedding cake. ;)
June there are several birthdays, with the celebration of my own at the end of it. And I can't really see myself not eating my own birthday cake, either.

So, I guess cutting out sugar as completely as possible will have to wait until somewhere around the beginning of July. Until then, further reduction, and I'll definitely need to find a way to prepare my own lunch for workdays - everything I usually get also has some sugar content, as tiny as it may be.
At least I now have an additional book to help me make the best of it when the time comes. Although cutting out onion and garlic as well (and other things, as the book recommends) for several weeks will not be fun at all. :P

Easy work

There are several ways in which to receive new titles.

You can go to university and get a degree, and people (at least in Austria) will use it to refer to you. This can be as easy or hard as your course of study and your disposition towards studying makes it.
You can go into politics and be elected and get a title, and people will generally use it to refer to you, and whether it is hard or not to achieve this, I have no idea.
You can be born into royalty and to most people you will only ever be your title. I suppose getting this is easy, but rare.
You can, I suppose, also get married to someone with such a title and people will sometimes use the same to refer to you or, in the case of royalty, you'll get your own. Again, I don't know how easy or not this may be.

The most interesting, however, seem to be family titles. There are some you are born with (son, daughter, grandchild, sometimes niece/nephew or cousin), some you may later achieve (mother, father). And then there are some you can't do anything about and it is entirely up to other people whether you get them (sister, brother, aunt, uncle, grandparent, cousin).

Now, I've been some of these for a long time (daughter, sister, niece, cousin), and I think I know how to deal with them, they are familiar. They have been with me for decades.
Yesterday, I officially gained a new one. One which you have to wait for for a while (30 years? Ok!), one which you can't control (so yes, I didn't suddenly get married), and which I gained without doing any work myself. Still, I can't help feeling happy, and sort of proud, and excited. This is going to be so much fun.

Call me Auntie. Little Leo has arrived.



 (Being the game nerd that I am, this is the first thing that came to mind...I'll let you know later what the second thing was...)

Freitag, Mai 04, 2012

Reading Update

Here's what I've been reading in April (hint - not much):

- I started "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman and have so far read about a third of it.
- I started "Ki im täglichen Leben" (Ki in Daily Life) by Koichi Tohei and have so far read about half of it.
- I started "Powerkurs Japanisch" (Power course Japanese) by PONS, if one can speak of starting a language coursebook. I have so far leafed through it excitedly and remembered some things, but not done anything structured yet.
- I started "Dov'é Yukio?" (Where is Yukio?), a beginners level mini book in Italian - you know, those small books where you only need to have a certain amount of vocabulary and have tests you can do for each (very short) chapter. I so far managed to more or less fluently read chapters 1-3.

What this may tell you is that I went a little wild and dropped a lot of money at the bookstore (I also had to buy some expensive Goethe books for a university course, but *ahem* have not yet started on those...) and that I may finally be getting serious about studying Italian and Japanese. I was in a bit of doubt whether I shouldn't get better at Italian before I attempted to learn a completely new language (completely different to the languages I know so far), BUT as I am currently once again deep within my obsession with Japanese things, and am at this point extremely curious about how Japanese really works and have been trying to figure out things on my own, I thought - why not work at both of them at the same time? I know enough about Italian and have a certain level of knowledge not to be completely clueless (two *new* languages at once might be a little mad, yes) and not to have it interfere with my beginners fascination with Japanese. I think that learning two languages at a different level might also have some positive side effects: maybe being able to read some Italian (as well as understanding spoken Italian and being able to write and speak a little myself) will be a good motivation to get better at Japanese too, for example.

What the reading list may also tell you is that I have been spending my time doing other things, and that is knitting baby stuff. My sister's baby boy should arrive within the next week or so, and after already giving her the two jackets I have finished so far, I am now working away like a madwoman at the beautiful (if I say so myself) green baby blanket I want to give the little boy. Know this - knitting structured patterns, as simple as they may be, still takes much more effort and much longer than plain stockinette. Much more. It is *pretty*, but it just goes on and on and on...

What the list may also tell you is that my mind is all over the place. Again. As if that were unusual, I know, but right now I find it rather unhelpful. Exam on Monday, and I almost can't be bothered. :P Maybe I should just sleep a little more...