The Mezzanine

Glanced at my outfit in the mirror just now.

First thought: "Huh, I look like Lara Croft, only with smaller breasts."

Second thought: "Huh, I look like Buffy from The Wish, only with darker hair."



...anyone ever noticed how much Wishverse!Buffy dresses like Lara Croft?

Plans for Yesterday Evening:
1) Go home.
2) Turn on air-conditioner (it's HOT outside).
3) Do some proofreading.
4) And maybe watch some television.
5) Cook dinner.
6) Restore phone to factory settings and reinstall everything, in an attempt to stop it from suddenly dropping the battery to NOTHING in the middle of me doing stuff.

What Actually Happened:
( more lists )

...the train driver suddenly stops the train and announces "Sorry folks, we'll be stuck here until they've put out the fire on the track ahead", and everyone shrugs and goes back to their newspapers, paying little attention to the smell of smoke wafting through the carriage.


(This is all happening right near the city centre, mind.)

1) This morning will be relaxing.

2) This morning I will put the laundry away, do another load of laundry, drive to the farmer's market and buy some veggies, drive to the supermarket and buy some cleaning products, drive to someone else's house and drop off some of the clean laundry I've just done, make a healthy lunch, pat my cat, empty out one of my cupboards and find some way of organising the whole thing, empty out a second cupboard and find a way of putting everything in it into the first cupboard, watch BtVS, and hopefully find some time to sew a quilt cover.



These are both facts that my brain considers to be true.

"I just did ten minutes of bike riding, and felt like I wanted to die. Hurrah for fitness! *is exhausted*"

"You know, you should really push through the wanting to die bit if you want to get fit."

"Yes, I did. Which is why I kept on going for a whole extra bit."

"Well, I mean - instead of just ten minutes, you should be trying to do twenty minutes."

"How about, instead of doing five minutes, like I did yesterday, I could push through the pain and get it up to ten minutes? LIKE I JUST DID."

"Yes, but you need to be riding for longer."



*narrows eyes*

I realise they were trying to be helpful and advisey. But honestly - just because my Steps To Fitness are teeny and pathetic, doesn't mean they're not HUGE ACCOMPLISHMENTS as far as my body is concerned.



(I can now go up teeny little hills without falling off my bike! Yay me!)

I have two images in my head.


One is of me, down at Philip Island, riding my bike alongside my two adorable nephews, both riding the bikes they got for Christmas. How fun! And auntyish!

The other is of my bike dropping off the back of my car halfway down the freeway to Philip Island, being horribly crushed by the car behind me, and reduced to a couple of bits of twisted metal for me to mourn over.


...at 6pm this evening, whichever image seems more probable to me at that instant will dictate whether I take my bike down to Philip Island or not.

(I'm not overweight - but I'm at the heavy end of my healthy weight range, rather than the other end where I was two years ago. I'd prefer to move back in the other direction.)

I've installed their "points tracker" app on my phone, and am dutifully entering food into it.


And here's the thing: I'm an inveterate snacker, but defiantly so. You give me a diet program that bans me from eating BAD CHOCOLATE THAT'S BAD FOR YOU, and a tiny rebellious part of me will narrow its eyes and mutter "Just watch me".

But WW? They are fine with me eating chocolate. Just fine! Eating chocolate, custard, or pigeons are all perfectly okay as far as WW are concerned. No probs.

So, I open up my points tracker, and enter "I am going to eat chocolate".
And it says "Okay! Great idea! How many squares?"
Hmm. Well, I don't have to eat that much really...
"Four squares," I say, expecting it to scold me.
It doesn't scold me. It nods enthusiastically, and reminds me that this will cost me 3 points.
...which is quite a few points, if you think about it. My breakfast cost 3 points.
I think about this for a second, and then say "Um... how about three squares of chocolate?"
"Sure!" says points tracker. "That'll be 2 points."
Woo! 2 points instead of 3! Score!
And points tracker and I grin at each other, and I waltz off to eat my chocolate...


The thing is, a diet that takes responsibility for telling me off is never going to work. One which calmly sits back, smiles, and makes me take responsibility... well, actually that's kinda mean. But very effective.

...just because.


Buffy

- Spike's arrival.

Because suddenly vampires were not angsty gothic people, but would make ridiculous comments about Woodstock and then go watch telly.


And way before that...
- "They can fly??" "They can drive."

It was just so mundane and common-sense-y.


Farscape

- Crichton's first week in space:
"Get a tractor beam on that shuttle!"
"Tractor beam? What's that?"
"Graviton field. Attracto ray. Superglue. Whatever it is that you yanked me aboard with."
"You mean the docking web?"
"Yeah! Fine! Use it on the shuttle!"

Star Trek really has done a lot for us. Because, despite the fact that none of us have ever seen one in action, anyone who's watched even the slightest bit of television would recognise the draggy laser thing as a "tractor beam".
I loved that Crichton's space-vocabulary was completely different from everyone else's.


Also...
- Frag-cannons.
Specifically, the fact that Crichton reacts to the name "frag-cannons" by grinning and looking around to see who else has noticed the silly; and meanwhile, everyone else it taking it totally seriously because OH NOES THE FRAG CANNONS!


Doctor Who

- "Wait! The Prime Minister's an alien! ...nah, that's never going to work, is it?"

Most shows would have either had him continually insisting that the PM was an alien, with an aggrieved why-does-no-one-believe-me air, or else had him try to conceal it from the get-go. This one made a nice change.


Leverage

- Parker's origin story. With her blowing up her foster family's house to get her soft toy back.
AND IT WAS ALL CUTE AND EVERYTHING.

In retrospect, I really should have bought the butter-menthols.


My night so far consists of waking up every half-hour or so to vomit. Then trying to find yet another butter-menthol substitute around my house...

(Does the rest of the world have butter-menthols? They're cough drops - containing butter and menthol - and are really good for soothing sore throats.)

The interesting bit? I'm not actually sick.


I was sick, a couple of days ago, with a cold. In which, courtesy of a stuffy nose, I ended up with post-nasal drip - which is where you have snot dripping down the back of your throat and irritating you into coughing.

I also (if you recall) have had whooping cough in recent memory. Which means my throat is slightly more sensitive than it should be. So, slight cough became bigger cough, which has now progressed to REALLY HORRIBLE cough that wakes me up every half-hour... originally just to cough and feel lousy, but now I'm actually throwing up from coughing too much.


I need butter-menthols, or similar (used up the cough syrup this morning). I don't have any - but I've already explored the full range of stuff available in my house, from lemsip, to asthma puffers, to soothing drinks, to, most recently, just big spoonfuls of honey. Hopefully it'll calm my throat down enough to last until 7am, when the shops open.

I'd considered buying butter-menthols yesterday, actually, but shrugged and decided I could always get them when I needed them. Hah.


*is miserable*

There's one thing I really miss about uni. I used to be able to walk into the caf, grab a chair, and instantly join in on a game of some sort. Cards, or board games, or RPGs... you name it, we played it. All day long.

It was wonderful. I'd get to play games with people whenever I want. Whereas, these days, I have to ring all my friends, check when we're all free, set up a time, find some good games, organise snacks, and hope we all want to play the same thing and can hang around long enough to play everything...


I had people over today, for exactly that purpose. It was very fun - and made me miss uni so much.

(Someday I'm going to make some robotic friends, to live in my cupboards and come out to play Citadels with me any time I want.)