Weekly Update Y2w1

So, my weight is still increasing after the Christmas period, and I don't know whether to start a new graph for the new year (in the hope that it decreases nicely and looks pretty), or to own the fact that I haven't lost weight, and am back to where I was a month or so ago? What do you think? Should I start again (again)?

What I am starting again, though, is tracking.  Once again, I'm using My Fitness Pal to track what I'm eating, as there does seem to be a correlation between me tracking and at least maintaining my weight, if not losing it.  I am also reconnecting with the 2B Mindset, specifically the 2 Bunnies - Water First, Veggies Most, Use the Scale and Track what you eat; and aim to do Body Groove at least once a week, if not twice.  My new day for Body Groove is Tuesday (since I'm home all day Tuesdays) and the Friday mornings that I'm home (roughly fortnightly).

I've also joined a local online fitness/get healthy group, in the hope that it will motivate me and spur me into action.  This is not a new year's resolution - it just happens to be in the new year, because it''s after the Christmas period.  I need to lose weight for my health and for future surgeries.

And because, whilst watching Friends with my girls, DD2 commented last night that I looked like Monica, and should do what she did and simply lose weight.  As much as I should be horrified by that comment, I'm not - I'm more horrified that I look at 'Fat Monica' and notice that she's thinner/looks better than I do.

The Empty Door by E R Mason

The blurb for The Empty Door says:

Cassiopia Cassell’s high IQ had always been too much for the men she’d dated. But now her beloved father was missing, and the only way to rescue him required she retain the services of a man with special abilities, a man she did not care for, and one she would have to convince to accompany her through an unexplained portal that led to dangers beyond imagination.

This book for me was a mixed bag.  It has tonnes of potential and some really good ideas.  Unfortunately, it seems to be two books in one.  There's one storyline which has this artefact that causes people to see their true being (and therefore the suicides of some bad guys).  Simultaneously, there's the storyline with the missing physicist, hidden experiments and a portal to another world.  Each of these plots has potential to be great books in their own right, I just don't understand why they've been put together?

That said, I have put book 2 on my wishlist, so it can't have been that bad.  I just hope this book focuses on the Cassiopia/SciFi side of things...

My Books of 2019

Now I've had this blog for over a full calendar year, I can see the books I have read this past year - so here is the list of them!  If you look at my blog, there are more book reviews than just these ones list, but they weren't actually read this year.

For each book, I have linked to my review (and within each review is a link to the Amazon page where the books can be purchased, though of course there are many other book retailers where you may prefer to spend your money).

January
King Arthur and Her Knights 1-3
King Arthur and Her Knights 4-7
Love Me Sweetie
Bloom: 50 Things

February
No books finished this month!

March
Women of Courage

April
Again none.  I was doing a Bible read-through, where I was reading the whole Bible within 6 months, and that often took more time than I planned.  This coming year, I'm going back to reading it over a year.

May
Nowt. Nada.

June
Finished reading the Bible!

July
Lorna Doone
The Fourth Element Trilogy
Love Me Dreamy
From Daughter to Woman

August
Enjoy Your Prayer Life
Born a Crime
Dev Haskell Private Investigator 1-14
Blood Singers Series
Skip
When the Body Says No
Stories Aren't Just For Kids
Garden Girls Cozy Mysteries 1-3
Fahrenheit 451

September
Abducting Abby
After Math
All The Way To Heaven
Agent With a History
Against the Odds
Russian Hill
Contract Snatch
Emotions, Mirrors of the Heart

October
Praying For Your Children
Parenting
Kappa Quartet

November
Adam's Journey
The Poet X
A Life of Balance
Sei Thrillers 1-3
The Pilgrim's Progress
The Overcoming Life

December
Love Me Darling
The Forgotten Girls 1-3
The Ravagers 1-5
plus two more books whose reviews have not been published yet!
(I will add them to this list later this week)

Wow, that's quite a list!  Thirty-nine different links, with over 70 individual books read (I've included the Bible as one book, rather than 66 separate ones).  I said the other day that I thought trying to read 50 books in a year might be challenging, but clearly I am reading more than I thought, so will aim to read at least 70 again next year.

The Ravagers by Alex Albrinck

I've still been working through my list of books from my old kindle that I had bought, but hadn't read.  Now I have a new one, there's a feature where I can automatically see all the books that I have and haven't read, so I don't need to keep my paper list any more.  Anyway, The Ravagers by Alex Albrinck was next on my list to read, so I have read it this month.  Having read previous books by him, I knew I wouldn't be able to put this down, and I wasn't wrong.

The blurb says:

In the distant future, humanity staggers as wave after wave of population decimating catastrophes push humanity near its extinction point.

A gift from the past provides them a way forward, and soon the human race is exploding its numbers, recreating civilization, generating art and commerce, and expanding its technological capabilities. The growing human civilization also bring back the concepts of war; East and West wage an eternal detente, neither side willing to attack, neither willing to announce peace.

In the midst of resounding success, a dark force conspires against humanity: the unleashing of a shockingly deadly, destructive weapon that will leave humanity on the brink of extinction once more.

Five people must deal with the launch of this weapon, work to survive, atone for their role in its creation, and try to discover and thwart the plans of those who launched it. 

Before it's too late. Before everything is gone.

The Ravagers is set in the future and refers to our time as "The Golden Ages".  It is interesting because it has advanced technology in some areas, but not in others (for example, no air travel) and people are scattered around the world in densely populated, walled citiplexes, that keep everyone safe from the beasts that roam the land.  One of the ways that technology is advanced, is in the area of weaponry - Ravagers are robots that can deconstruct any material (except Diasteel!) down to its atomic constituents, before using those elements in order to create more ravagers.  As such, a few can easily become a thick oily sea of ravagers ravaging the country.

It took me barely a week to read all the books in this series.  I don't want to go into too much information, but there were some surprises that actually did surprise me!  There were also some I could spot too, but was riveting nonetheless.  This series is set in the same universe as the aliomenti series, but you certainly don't have to have read that to read this - I personally recommend you read both!

Weekly Update No52

And I've got to the end of a year of updates!!!

Ok, there were some weeks I've missed, but overall, considering I am not very good at starting new habits, nor am I very good at breaking old ones, I think that's pretty good, even if I do say so myself!

As expected, I have put on weight over Christmas, but it is only slightly. That massive spike was my weight on Boxing day, but it has settled somewhat, and though my average has increased again recently, there seems to be a sinusoidal pattern to my 5-day average.  Obviously, that is not that useful for actually losing weight, but is a good thing to notice (I think) when I'm simply recording what I weigh. 

In the new year, I will need to make more of an effort to actually lose weight, and then to keep it off.  I haven't determined yet how best to do that, especially as I'm not making any resolutions this year, but it is another thing I am keeping in mind. I want to keep up my weekly updates though, and think I will go for a slightly different numbering system.  Instead of calling next week No53 (which it undoubtedly is), I think I will go for Yr2No1, so it is easy(er) to see at a glance whereabouts in the year we are.

Happy Christmas and New Year!

I hope you've all had a good Christmas, and will have a fantastic New Year to come!

Image by Markéta Machová from Pixabay 

I know I haven't posted much recently (and aim to post my last weekly update of 2019 tomorrow - if I remember), so hope you've all had a good time.  I had a good Christmas day with my husband and girls, but was ill on Boxing Day, recovered the next day but because I hadn't done much I was literally awake all night.  It did mean I got to finish yet another book (ooh, did I mention, my husband got me a new kindle for Christmas!?), so I'm even further behind writing up my reviews.

I have today joined Goodreads, as I was prompted by my Kindle (I've since learned that Amazon now owns goodreads, so that'll be why), so that'll be yet another outlet for me to bore share my reviews with everyone.  As I had to write 20 reviews in order to get recommendations from goodreads, and I wanted them sooner rather than later, I have slightly skewed my results by adding all the book reviews from here all on to there dated today, but at least in the future the timing should be more realistic.  I can also see that you can set a target of the number of books to read in a year, and I don't know whether to be conservative (20) or challenge myself (50) or choose a more realistic number in the middle.  When I'm in a 'reading mood', I can read a book a day - especially if I'm on holiday.  However, I know that when I read my classic (I aim to read one a year), it often takes me much longer than I would guess, due to the old language or simply because it's more verbose than many contemporary books.

Then, there's new years resolutions to think about.  I've decided I'm not going to make any - not one.
I don't keep them - they just are another stick to beat myself with, so I'm not going to resolve to do anything different.  I want to lose weight, in order to have DIEP, but if it means I have to have implants instead, so be it.  I would like to lose weight, but would rather spend time with my children creatively, than worrying about keeping things tidy so I had space to exercise.  And we've not long gone past the shortest day of the year (in terms of daylight, not hours - that's in Spring) and I still feel good.  I have been talking with my therapist about stopping sessions, and I feel like that won't be detrimental to me.  I haven't yet conquered my emotional eating, but when it happens and I put on weight (you'll see tomorrow, just how much...) I don't berate myself and have huge guilt leading to another binge.  So, that's progress!  I also have bought another version of year-in-a-Bible and am looking forward to that again from the 1st.  I am hoping my younger daughter will permit me to read it to her, because I have decided to try The Message translation (ie one with much more contemporary language).

So that's my round up of the past week or so.  I now need to find out why my Snowball keeps separating? Yuck!  Next time, I'll just drink the Advocaat neat, I think! Cheers xx

Hair Transformation

This year I decided to buy myself a Christmas present.  As I don't go to the hairdresser's often (my usual routine is get it cut to the jaw/shoulder, then let grow for 2-3 years before cutting again.  No point wasting money in between on trims...) I will get my hair done as I have always wanted it.

Well, always is a bit strong because though I have always wanted the colour, how that colour would be applied has changed.  When I was a teen, I wanted jet black hair, but with a purple sheen.  I never died my hair then, because I was a 'good girl'.  It was against the school rules, and wouldn't look good when going to university open days.  When at uni, I wanted to go a more vibrant purple, but again, I didn't because it wouldn't look good when going to job interviews.  In my job, I would have liked to go purple, but again, it would not look very professional.  So I never dyed my hair.

After I quit work (to become a SAHM, and then later when HEing), I thought about it again, and when I turned 30yo I got my friend to dye my hair for me.  As my hair is naturally very dark, it needed bleaching to within an inch of its life.  Unfortunately, I have a lot of red pigment in my hair, so rather than a nice white-blonde, my hair turned decidedly 'lion mane'.  Not to worry, as I was putting purple over the top.  However, it turned out that we hadn't got the hair white enough, so the purple came up very very dark.  More like the black with purple sheen I had wanted in my youth.  Not only that, the colour barely lasted a fortnight before needing to be redone, and redone and redone.  If you haven't gathered by now, I'm not a girly girl.  I'm not high maintenance.  I can't be arsed to spend all that time and money on myself.  So eventually I dyed it brown again.

Fast forward a few years, and I've been wanting to dye my hair again.  I've been getting recommendations from friends (and random people on the street with bright hair!) as to where to go.  I finally decided to travel to Swindon to get it done by Sharon Rewston and I'm not disappointed.  Even though it cost a lot of money (to me, that is, given I don't get my hair trimmed due to the cost!) I am very, very pleased and can say it was well worth it.  And eight hours sat in the chair, with a hair dresser that was happy to let me read, rather than make small talk (thank you!), meant I finished a brilliant book, that I'll review in the next few days. A full head of foils is heavy!  I swear there must have been a whole roll or two of foil on my head, lol. It turns out, that my virgin hair can actually get quite white with the right bleach, but it's the previously dyed ends that make me look like a lion.  And nobody realised how long my hair was (almost everybody, including my husband, thought the first picture was DD1!), because I always wore it tied up in a tight, but messy, bun.

So yes, I'm happy.  Having only had it done on Monday, I don't know yet how it'll fade, but fingers crossed it'll last a good 6+ weeks, and I have the last of the pink dye to mix with my conditioner in order to refresh it. I have had so many compliments, from friends and strangers, I'm wondering why I had never done it earlier?  Not only that, even my mum thinks it looks lovely! 💖