Quarterly Update

Back in January, I made 13 resolutions for 2013. We're now a quarter of the way through the year, so it seems like a good time to see how I'm going so far.

Fitness
1. Run 500km this year - As of this week, I have run 135.5km. This is 10.5km more than a quarter of the way to my goal, so this is good! I've gotten to the point where I enjoy running, even though my daily run is still only between 3.5 and 5km. I have had one week where I ran all 5 days of the week, but then got sick so haven't sustained it.

2. Cycle 1600km this year - So far I have cycled 366km. This is 34km less than a quarter of my goal, so I need to pick up my game!

3. Do push-ups at least once a week - I have done this so far! Most weeks I do push-ups twice a week, even, always in lots of 30. So far I'm up to 540 push ups for the year, which is 18x.

Work
4. Clear out my email inbox every day - I was going really well with this one before teaching started. I was down to 30 emails at one point! Because of this, I have been more on top of responding, writing things down in my diary and then deleting emails, and so on. Once teaching started it all got a bit hectic, but I still try to find the time to do this regularly. I currently have 89 messages:

5. Unsubscribe from email lists - I got on that pretty early in the year and have managed to avoid signing up for new things, for the most part. But when I'm busy, if I get a stupid newsletter I don't want, I tend to delete it straightaway rather than going through the steps of unsubscribing. Still need to keep this up!

6. Turn my PhD into a book and get it published - I write every Monday morning and am about halfway through the mammoth task of turning my very academic PhD into a publicly accessible piece of writing. I'm happy with how I'm going so far!

Crafty
7. Turn the spare room into a craft room - I did that in the holidays, though it still needs some key things (like a futon or spare bed for lounging on and also for guests). I have spent rather a lot of time in there this long weekend, making curtains for the bedroom window.

8. Finish crocheting the blanket I started in early 2012 - I have added two more rows to this blanket, and will probably finish it off some time this week.

9. Sew curtains for the bedroom and hallway, and possibly other rooms - see above for bedroom curtains. Due to a long gap between buying fabric and making curtains, as well as slightly shonky planning, my intention to get 4 curtains out of this fabric failed - we'll get three, which means I can't really use them for the hallway window. So, still need to work on that.

Garden
10. Plant more flowers amongst the veggies to attract bees - two weekends ago Andy started a bunch of veggie seeds in seedling pots, so the following weekend I planted some sunflower, nasturtium, marigold and echinacea seeds. He's not sold on the idea of flowers in the veggie beds, but this will happen!

Home and Life
11. Keep track of everything we spend for at least two months this year - we did this in February. I haven't had a close look at it yet to see where our money goes, but at least we did the hard bit!

12. Do more food prep and meal planning on the weekends - we have had lots of success with meal planning, and I definitely intend to keep it up!

Example of meal planning success: Channa sag paneer with chappati

13. Help out with at least three vegan outreach stalls - I have done one so far, at the uni O Week Market Day, and will be contributing lots of baked things to the Townsville Vegans Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale in April. On track!

Holidays are Over

Today marks my return to work, after four weeks of blissful holiday fun. We opted not to travel during our time off, partially because we went south in November for a wedding, partially because we are trying to pay off a mortgage quite quickly, but mainly because our house is still new to us, we haven't had any significant time off since moving in, and we just wanted to hang out here.

I did only a little bit of work during my time off - work that I have wanted to do for a while, but keep putting off because the idea of starting it, amidst all my usual work, was too daunting. Thus, the holidays were a good time to get a start on turning my thesis into a book with no other work distractions, and now that I have a good start I think I will have the motivation to keep working on it.

What made up the bulk of my vacation?

I did manage to blog a lot more regularly. I won't promise to keep it up throughout the teaching semester, but I'll try. I updated and added to the pages across the top, too.

We took Tika for plenty of swims.

I read a lot of books. I went to the library maybe 6 or 7 times during my 4 weeks at home, to pick up books I had reserved.

We painted the toilet and the hallway.

This line between living room and hall is gone. I call the colour "soy chai latte".

I did some bigger cleaning projects that I don't do normally, like dusting off the blinds (a big job, since we always have our windows open) and moving furniture to vacuum under it.

My dislike of these blinds is now more than aesthetic.

We planted a few more things in the garden - a peanut butter tree, jackfruit, another papaya, some more pineapples.

We harvested many huge piles of basil and filled up the freezer with pesto.

Gnocchi with pesto, spinach and broccoli.

(Seriously, our freezer is so full right now, between pesto and mango and reduced-to-clear tofu and veggie burgers.)

Future smoothies.

I took many, many naps.

Like this, but on the couch.

We watched series one of The Killing, a Danish crime drama. It was really good - a little bit like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but less polished. I am looking forward to watching series two!

I made a pretty good dent on organising my craft room.

Before.

After.

And used it for the first time, to sew a Go board.

I rediscovered my love of cooking and had time for more complicated recipes, like Mochi, Bacon Cheeseburgers, or steamed buns filled with Lamyong beef, cabbage and 5-spice BBQ sauce.

We made mango chutney and jam, and did a few more things that will get their own posts in the coming weeks.

Mango pancakes with mango jam.

But sadly, the holiday fun times are over. I didn't tick off everything I wanted to get done - cleaning behind the oven was never really a priority, I guess - but it was so great to have a few weeks off to play, to relax, to tinker.

Plans, Goals, Resolutions

I know some people think new year's resolutions are for suckers. I've heard the argument that January 1st is an arbitrary date, that resolutions are just setting ourselves up for failure, that if you want to change your lifestyle you should do it and not wait for the new year, yadda yadda yadda. When I was younger, I never had resolutions. I don't know that it was for any of these reasons, or because I was already so perfect I didn't need to make any changes (ha!), or more probably, because resolutions weren't a thing we did in my family. But somewhere in my 20s I started making them, and I think it's a good opportunity. Sure, in absolute terms, the start of the year could be any day. But in our social context, January 1st marks a new beginning, and I am happy to take advantage of that opportunity!

Just to keep things interesting, some photos. This is cashew cheese, enjoyed at a Vegan picnic and again at our house. Yum yum. 

So this year, I have some resolutions, some plans and some goals for the year ahead. I have found, over the years of resolutions and non-new year life changes, that I commit to new habits much better when I have a concrete goal. If I say "keep doing X" I'm more likely to let it slide than if I say "do X 3 times a week". I also do better, as many of us do, when my plans are recorded so I can be held accountable. So the list below reflects that, and also gives me an opportunity to keep track of what I've done, which gratifies my Type-A, list-loving personality.

Fitness
Run 500k this year. I started running in October 2012, and in an attempt to keep me running regularly, I'm setting this as my target. My normal running routes are between 4 and 5 kilometers, so this means I will need to run an average of twice a week across the year. Do-able.

Cycle 1600k this year. My commute to work is 4k each way, so this is 40 weeks of riding 5 days a week. That gives me some wiggle room for the weeks I am on holidays, the weeks I travel outside of Townsville for work, and any days that are rainy.

Do push-ups at least once a week. I started doing some push-ups every now and then in the second half of this year, and I think that strength-training in general is a very good thing.

Breakfast on the patio on New Year's Day

Work
Clear out my inbox every day at work, most likely at lunch, but at least before going home for the day. This way, I will be less likely to forget to respond to emails (especially from students, who get a bit stroppy when you don't reply to them!), and I will have less clutter in my inbox for when I need to find important things. Despite cleaning out my inbox in the first half of 2012, I still ended up in December with 1300 messages - just in my inbox. I spent about 2 days deleting most and moving some to folders. I'd like to do that more regularly this year so I don't have a big task in December 2013!

And a related one: Unsubscribe from email lists that I don't read regularly, and stop subscribing to new ones. I put my email address down for a lot of things, and as a result I get a ridiculous amount of messages that I delete without reading. Instead of telling myself I might read it next week, I'm just signing off.

My biggest work goal for this year is to turn my PhD into a book and get it published. The second part of that might take more than 2013, but I have already started on the first part. I have a well-published mentor to keep me on track, I've made my plan public to colleagues, to friends, and to the people I researched with, so the plan is set in stone and it will happen this year.

Crafty
Set up one of our spare rooms as a craft room. At the moment I have a table, a few boxes of yarn, fabric, paints and glitter(!!), and a new sewing machine. But there is no real order, nothing is organised and the room isn't really pretty, so I don't use it much. (There is also space in the room for a futon or some kind of guest bed, and it's also the room that houses my clothes and some random bits like suitcases, so it's more a craft-corner than a craft room, but that just doesn't have the same ring to it.)

Finish crocheting the blanket I started in early 2012. Preferably in time for winter, so we can use it to keep warm. It's about halfway finished.

Sew curtains for the bedroom and the hallway, and possible for other rooms.

Garden
Plant more flowers, bee-attracting ones, in amongst the veggies. We actually looked at buying a hive of Australian native bees, which are sting-less, and which would really help our pollination efforts! But at about $500 to get the hive and the bees up to Townsville, we decided against it. Instead, I will put more sunflowers and other bee-friendly flowers in our garden beds to get some to visit our garden of their own accord. (Note that Australian native bees produce almost no honey, just enough for themselves, so our plans to get bees were of course unrelated to honey.)

Home and Life
Keep track of everything we spend for at least two months of the year. This is something we have done every now and then for the last few years, mainly when we were saving up to buy a house. We keep a scrap of paper on the fridge and every day write down what we've spent, and on what. Then I transfer that to a spreadsheet and we can see, over the course of a month or two or three, what our money goes to. We're pretty good at saving rather than spending anyways, but this is just a good check of what is up with our budget.

Do more food-prep and meal-planning on the weekends. In the last few months of 2012 Andy and I were both super busy, and I don't think 2013 will change very much. As a result, we'd often say to each other, "What do you want for dinner?" - "I don't know, what do you want?" - "I don't know". And then we would just decide to throw some veggies on the BBQ and that was that. BBQ veggies are good, but not particularly inspiring, and they don't really make good leftovers for lunch the next day. So I'd like to have a better idea each week of what we can have, especially quick meals, and also maybe keep some food in the freezer that I can have for lunch on BBQ days when there are no leftovers.

Help out with at least 3 vegan outreach stalls. I hope it is more, but I'll be realistic. For at least one of these, I'd like to head over to Magnetic Island to hang out with Stevie and Luc at their weekly vegan outreach table.

So there you have it - 13 things I'd like to see happen in 2013.

2012: In Review

It's been a big year in my life, though I suppose they all are in different ways. Since today is the last day of the year, it seems like a good time to wrap up the things that happened this year, big and small.

Milestones

In April, Andy graduated. The most ridiculously coloured robes are saved for the highest honours, of course, and are only donned by those becoming Doctors.

Three days later, we settled on our house. Actually, we were meant to, but some shonky paperwork from the other side meant that we moved in and settled a week later. But regardless, we moved in, which is the biggest thing.

Having a house means we have the power to make choices like... painting the living room orange! Or the bathroom bright blue!

And it also gives us space for furniture, which we buy second hand and then I have excuses to do fun things to, like paint and cover with fabric.

And more meaningful things, like putting a big pile of solar panels on the roof.

In May, we adopted our beautiful Tika dog. Nacho and Tika have reached a relatively peaceable equilibrium. Tika still runs in fear from time to time when Nacho chases her, but she also manages to sneak in big kitty kisses when she comes in from outside.

In July, my job upped from a half-time to a full-time position. That was something I had been hoping for. Now I think staying part-time might have been nice -- full-time work is a lot of, well, work! I love love love my job, it's flexible and I get to have interesting intellectual conversations, and I get to hang out with students as they learn stuff and open their eyes and expand their worlds. But it is also really tiring to work all the time and still feel like you don't get everything done.

Mundane

This year I read 51 books, just over my goal of 50 for the year. Three of these, at the end of the year, were children's books, but I think they still count. My favourite book of the year is hard to choose, but I think I'll go with Jasper Jones, which I read back in February. I loved the characters, I thought it dealt with a bunch of different political issues in a non-preachy way, and the novel was also suspenseful and interesting to read, which is of course the most important thing.

Andy and I have planted 13 trees, 3 bananas, 3 coffee bushes, 2 grevilleas, and piles of smaller plants. The only thing we have spectularly failed with has been a tea plant, which didn't make it through the first few weeks of summer in its very sunny position. Clockwise around the garden, the trees we've put in are: avocado, mulberry, Australian blood lime, ice cream bean, star apple, guava, West Indian lime (key lime), pomegranate, three papayas, mandarin, and lemon. Yesterday Andy ordered three more which we'll plant in the new year: a Peanut Butter tree, a jackfruit, and a grumichama. We've also got some seedlings of the Queensland Peanut tree to go on the verge.

This pomegranate is the newest addition to our orchard.

I travelled to Cairns twice, to Melbourne once, to Sydney once, and to Brisbane twice. Amongst those travels, I hung out with 5 other vegan bloggers - Susan, Mel, Amy, K and Toby, two of whom I met for the first time. Andy and I also took a purely enjoyable - not work related - trip to Jervis Bay for a wedding.

I took up running, and finished off the Couch to 5k training program (finishing just at the start of summer, which was not wise timing). Regular walking and then running lead me to discover the joy of podcasts. The two that I subscribe to are Team Earthling, an Australian vegan podcast, and Progressive Podcast Australia, a generally leftist political discussion. I also get my nerd on with iTunesU and listen to lectures and open courses in between episodes of these two.

And in November, I worked with some vegan friends in Townsville (including Stevie and Luc from Team Earthling, whose blog post about the event I will direct you to) for a vegan outreach stall at the uni. Stevie (and sometimes Luc) have been rocking the ongoing outreach stall on Magnetic Island, and I'm hoping we can organise more on campus in 2013 - O Week would be a good place to start!

It's been a big year, an interesting year, and I can only hope that 2013 is as fruitful for us!

Random Things

The wonderful Mel recently bestowed upon me the Food Stories blog award, which demands that the recipient share a random fact about themselves, before passing the award on to 5 other bloggers. I occasionally "win" awards like these, and I think I most often go "Oh, how lovely, I must get to that." And then I promptly forget about it. So I will certainly feel no ill feelings towards the five of you who I nominate if you forget, or just don't feel like participating in this. But, in the spirit of random facts, I have a few random images to share, with a random fact each.

The place I grew up is about a 2 minutes walk from this small town War Memorial. My dad actually organised the transport of this tank to its final location. Andy and I visited when we were in the US in October. It was not that exciting, really, but hey, a tank!

We got solar panels a few weeks ago, but there is no space to plug the inverter into our meter box so they are just sitting up there doing nothing. We have to wait another month before we will get any sun-powered electricity!

Tika loves going for walks, especially to the beach, but she is too naughty to go off lead. Instead, we bring a really long rope so she can run around and go into the water without making us swim with her.

Nacho makes a point of sitting on every single piece of furniture, box, bag, or other new thing we bring into the house. Like this dining table we bought from a garage sale and are sanding down and refinishing.

Now, to spread the story telling love... I will pass this on to:

• Emma, from Vegan Food for the Hungry Student
• Kate, from No Meat and Three Veg
• Nadine, from Plant Life
• Claire, from Almost Skinny Vegan Food
• And Dee, from Cycling Paradise (not a food blog persay, but good stories no less!)

All five bloggers tell interesting stories that I love to read, so if you haven't checked them out recently, or ever, you should pop along to their blogs and read some of the tales they tell.

Graduated

Hey, so remember how last year I submitted my PhD thesis?  Well, after 6 months of examination, then a few corrections, I made it through!  My thesis was officially passed at the end of February, about 2 days before the deadline to attend the graduation ceremony.  That ceremony finally happened, on Friday.  And I officially became Dr Theresa, PhD.

JCU's academic dress is a bit ridiculous - blue and red wizard robes, a blue velvet bonnet, and a wand (just kidding - I felt like I needed one, but no wand was provided).

I opted for plain black underneath, but splashed out and bought myself a pair of red Melissa shoes to go with my silly outfit.

After getting dressed and taking photos, I was led into the ceremony - the doctoral grads sit at the front of the room, off the side of the academic staff. 

After all the undergrads and masters students were presented with their diplomas, they called out our names, announced our department and our supervisors - who stood up, and we 'doffed' out hats at one another.  Then I walked forward a bit, and as a guy put my hood on me, another guy read a short summary of my thesis.  Then it was on to shake hands with the Chancellor of the uni, have a little chat, and get my diploma.  Andy sat as far back as he could, so I don't have any good photos of this, but it was pretty exciting (for me).  A really important ritual - and when I was announced to the crowd as 'Dr Theresa' I really felt like I had completed my Phd.

So anyways.  The next day, I joined with a few other postgrads to celebrate the graduation - not just for me, but for another friend who completed her Masters degree.  We spent Saturday afternoon drinking beers, experiencing an earthquake, and eating too much sugar.  My contribution took the form of:

Orange-blossom water cookies.  Basically snickerdoodles, but with orange blossom water.

Gingered chocolate chip cookies, from Vegan Bake Sale.  These were a crowd favourite.

Caramel apple upside down cake.  So sweet - a good cake to share, so you don't get a sugar coma from eating too much.

And a non-sweet, sundried tomato and cannellini bean dip.

All up, it was a great weekend.  (And p.s. - the earthquake was no big deal.  There was no damage anywhere.  Me and two others at the party felt it, while no one else noticed.  Those that did notice joked that it was an earthquake but thought it was my friend's kid jumping around on her wood floors.)

Handy Woman

Last weekend after filling up the washing machine with laundry, chucking in the laundry balls, and turning on the machine, I was met with an obnoxious beeping noise and "E90" instead of the usual filling-with-water-and-washing-my-clothes that I expect from any good washing machine.

Home alone, I didn't have anyone nearby to say "fix it!" to.  So I had to figure it out for myself, which I was dreading - I don't have a knack for anything mechanical, and I had no idea where to even start.  So if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, you can follow my lead.

 The tools of my trade.

1. Open the hall closet where (along with just about everything else) the appliance booklets are stored.  Have a quick glance but get tired of looking for them.  Shut the hall closet and open the internet.  Google your appliance name and download the book.

2. Eagerly read through the book, only to find that it doesn't identify the error you're experiencing.  Arg!

3. Google your appliance name and E90.  Read the comments about how sucky your brand of washing machine is; discover that the fix is pretty easy.  All it will take is finding the blue wires that go into the control panel, wiggling them around and spraying with WD40, and wiggling them around again.

4. Go look at washing machine.  See no blue wires, because obviously they are inside the machine; see no way to actually get into the machine.  Take out the deterget tray, find two screws.  Think they might be the answer.

5. Return to hall closet, look for screwdrivers.  Look, and look, and look.  Eventually get a chair to stand on and find them shoved into the back of the top shelf, thanks to your 6'6 husband who forgets that not everyone can see that shelf so easily.

6. Unscrew the only two screws you can see on the whole washing machine.  Try to pry off the front panel.  Fail.  Wonder how on earth everyone else on the internet just automatically knows how to take apart a washing machine.

7. Return to internet.  Post query - how the hell do I even get to the wires?!  Thankfully get almost immediate response, slap self on forehead for not thinking to look at the back of the washing machine (in my defense, it is really, super duper heavy and the back is hard to see).  Struggle with moving washing machine by yourself.  Eventually succeed, finding a massive pile of dirt underneath the washing machine, thanks to a few hundred industrious ants. 

8. Look at screws at the back of the washing machine, which your screw drivers are not capable of removing.  Return to hall cupboard, stand on chair, and search through the mess of tools; find a set of spanners.  Struggle with those, but eventually succeed in removing the top of the washing machine.

9. Return to the internet, double check what you need to do.  Locate blue bundle of wires going into the control panel.  Try to reach them through the tiny and sharp-edged opening you can see them through.  Try to poke them with a pen.  Realise that's a bad idea - even if you succeed in  getting them unhooked, how will you get them back on?

10. Return to the internet.  Follow up helpful response with another stupid question.  While waiting for a reply, vacuum ant-dirt and clean masses of spiderwebs from behind washing machine.  Get reply - just take off the control panel.  Wonder why helpful post-er can't sense your frustration and lack of knowledge about just how to remove control panel.  Refrain from posting another stupid question and instead go study the washing machine for clues.

11. Find two more screws, which are also not screwdriver-able.  Try spanners, which don't work because of the confined space.  Get leatherman, remove screws.  Struggle for 10 minutes with the control panel, but eventually succeed in removing it - though without any knowledge of how you've done it, and thus, an inability to replicate this feat in the future. 

12. Wiggle wires, spray WD40.  Fight with wires to click back into place again.  Eventually, finally, thankfully, succeed.  Turn on washing machine to find the E90 and the beeping is gone!

13. Struggle to re-attach control panel; eventually decide it's too much trouble and it's close enough.  Screw top back on.  Feel sweaty, but pretty chuffed with yourself for fixing the washing machine - and all the while wearing a dress, no less. Bask in the green light of success.

14. Realise this is not that big a deal, really, but write a blog post about it anyways!