Isolation Journal 80

 A bit groggy again this morning, quick coffee and then onto the team call briefly before a 9.15am training session on coaching with Jane who is also my mentor and she's great!  

We talked about setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time limited) goals.  Then we talked about GROW coaching model where you identifiy the goal the coachee wants to set themselves, discover the current reality, discuss options and then come up with a way forward.  It was a really useful session and left me feeling motivated.

I then had a few calls and went and did Pilates at 12pm which was a very sweaty and warm affair.  2 things arrived for me whilst I was doing the class, my copy of The Midnight Library by Matt Haig that I ordered when I booked onto the Guardian Live event this evening which was an interview and Q&A with him and also my Arena Flowers subscription which this week are lots of pink lisianthus alissa.

I dashed back upstairs to deal with some calls whilst I put some potato waffles and sausages in the oven to cook and arranged my flowers into vases.

The afternoon was a mix of meetings and admin, I hopefully will get more time for proactive calling tomorrow.  We had a good meeting with a client, although I think we'll need to dig a little deeper for candidates in terms of what they are looking for.

I finished up around 6.30pm and had to rush to cook dinner whilst listening to the Archers and I made Hello Fresh tacos with aubergine, beans and feta.  My Guardian Live event started as I finished up tea and they asked the question that I had emailed in when I booked on about what advice Matt Haig might have given to himself 20 years ago.  I love listening to him talk and wish that it was a bit longer than an hour.

I let my food go down a bit and then went out for a run, I'd not got many particular goals for this run, but I was going quite fast and my garmin gave me a +7 improvement on my fitness.  I managed to get my fastest 5K time for a while of 24.43 and ran 6K at a pace of 8.05 per mile.  

I got in and watered the plants and then had a bath and wasted a lot of time in the bath.

Alan has been busy doing his exam and is likely to be up until 4am finishing it.  Some men came to fix the oil stain on the drive, it was noisy for hours and looks no different.

Qubit managed to get 2 dinners by meowing loudly at both me and Alan.

I completed my Tania Hershman challenge last night by writing it all down by hand.  Will do some more this evening and then I need to definitely try and get back to the novel writing if I can.

Isolation Journal 76

We woke up late again at around 10.30am, Alan had been sleeping in the other room for most of the night as it was so warm and his ear had been giving him grief.

I came downstairs to a dead pigeon that Maya had brought in and mauled with feathers everywhere, I cleared it up with Alan's help, thankfully it was completely dead.

I made some tiger bread toast, sausages and scrambled eggs for breakfast with orange juice and we watched some Peep Show this morning.  I listened to more of "I heart Las Vegas"

I then watched some CSI original Vegas episodes as I've finally had a play around with the SkyQ box.  One of the only things I used to watch when I had Sky was CSI, NCIS and Criminal Minds, I used to watch them for hours whilst my ex would go to bed at 9pm about 20 minutes after I had got home.

I went upstairs to read, but ended up messing around on my phone and then eventually got up and hoovered and mopped all the floors and cleaned the bathroom whilst listening to "I heart Vegas" and then went for a run.  I didn't really need to go for a run, but it seemed like something I could chalk up to achievement for the weekend.

I ran 7.2K and just did a very even pace and it seemed to say it was a base effort and took 43 minutes.  It was a nice sunny evening and I did a few Strava segments to increase my Local Legend efforts.  

Alan made dinner which was a Hello Fresh pork and rice dish and also harvested the rhubarb in the garden and bought some more yesterday and made a crumble.  I made Lynchberg Lemonades for me and Alan and we watched even more Peep Show and I accidentally ordered another copy of Girl Woman Other from Hive, forgetting that I'd ordered it already from Fox Lane Books!

Isolation Journal 74

Alan had taken some of the strong anti histamines that he'd been prescribed yesterday for the reactions he'd had and so seemed to sleep ok, I got up and logged on and used Alan's Macbook as it displays a lot of work software much better than my Dell.  I'd gone to bed quite late as I was again writing away like mad and got to another 1900 words last night on the novel.

I had cornflakes and coffee for breakfast and we kicked off with a call at 9am with a couple of us and the morning was busy, but a bit of a blur.  I think it was reasonably productive, but I can't be 100% sure.  

I then went downstairs at lunch to heat up my lunch, the pasta bake from yesterday.  Whilst I was heating it up in the microwave I noticed a small grey dog outside the house, there was a convertable Mazda reversing that I didn't recognise and the dog was jumping up at it.  The Mazda drove off and I made a note of the numberplate as we weren't sure if it had just dumped the poor dog.  Alan ran out to see if the dog was ok, and it was limping a little and someone pulled up in another car and said the dog lived at number 10 so we took her back and found that she was called Bea.  They'd not noticed she'd escaped, I'm glad we found her!

I then ate some lunch and heard Qubit come in making the meow noise that he makes when he's caught something.  Alan got to him first and it was a live sparrow, fortunately it flew into the kitchen and I was able to shut the door, grab the keys and helped it fly away unharmed.

The afternoon was definitely more productive.  I still have loads I'm not on top of, candidate conversations are taking a lot longer at the moment and they all want to give me a life history before I then find out that they only want work in London and they've reeled off 20 years of experience and I have to disappoint them to explain I can't find them anything relevant.  I picked up more jobs for other people which was good, but frustrating as I'd really like a job to work on for myself soon!

I finished work at 7pm and then went for a run, I am apparently "overreaching" according to Garmin so I made sure to run more steadily and did 8K and was "productive" at the end of it.  I saw a cool bird of prey and ran a few segments.  I got back in and went and had a shower as I was pretty sweaty!

I cooked tea, Hello Fresh had accidentally sent us the wrong recipe card for a recipe last week which confused me so I used the chicken from another recipe and some spare chicken to make tea.  We had chicken in panko breadcrumbs and wedges and a cool ginger and carrot salad.  I listened to more of "I heart Vegas" whilst I was cocoking and I finished up some mints that I'd been bought for my birthday and split a bottle of prosecco with Alan.  

We watched Spooks and then I bought a book for my Uni Alumni bookclub.  I choose to buy it from the most local independent bookshop - Fox Lane Books and it's definitely a lot more expensive, but it's important to support more bookshops when they have faced so much competition from Amazon.

Alan grabbed me an ice lolly and went for a bath and I watched some more Catfish

Isolation Journal 47

Alan didn't sleep well, I think I slept ok which was surprising as I felt last night as I was getting into bed that I'd got cystisis, but I did manage to fall asleep and slept through until around 9am, so just around 7 hours, but I didn't feel too tired, but I did still feel in a bit of pain.  I made sure I drank lots of water and also some bicarb of soda - disgusting!

I ordered a Cystitis testing kit from Boots and also booked an appointment with Vitality GP for Tuesday which I can cancel if I need to.

For breakfast we had chorizo and black pudding with maple syrup and scrambled eggs in wraps and I had 2 coffees.  We watched some Scrubs and I felt bad that I again didn't log onto the zoom call for parkrun.  I miss people, but I'm finding zoom intimidating a bit at the moment which is weird as many other circumstances I'm really comfortable with it.

We'd gotten straight into our running gear this morning and I'd managed to spill some oil down my front, but I headed out with Alan and we went for a run to do a (not)parkrun and went down to Newthorpe and then across the railway line and through a field of wheat, we had to go up a muddy lane for 500m to get the right distance and we noticed when we got back the same Flogas truck was parked out the front that was there when we left and when Alan took out some boxes for recycling he chatted to him and realised he'd had a breakdown, Alan made him a coffee.

I busied myself for about 2 hours tidying and cleaning, I vacuumed the whole house and mopped all the floors, I cleaned the kitchen, cleaned and changed the cat litter, changed the sheets on both the beds, took out all the other recyling, cleaned the bathroom and filled up a bath whilst I polished the table and I also did 2 lots of washing.  I listened to the "With me Now" podcast whilst I cleaned and finished off whilst I was in the bath.

I then got stuck in the bath and messed around on my phone and got cleaned up and then Alan made tea and I tried to catch up on my reading for the book club on Where the Crawdads Sing which I'm reallly enjoying, I even read some whilst eating tea and Alan watched the end of the cricket.  

Amazon Prime delivery arrived and I put the shopping away and we had ice lollies and then some salted caramel Ice Cream and cream.  We watched lots of Spooks and I caught up on my step goal as my Vitality points for earlier for our run was 5 out of a possible 8 so I had to get my step count over 12500 to get the maximum points for the day.  

I wanted a bit of a curry snack and so I got it out the fridge, realised it had leaked everywhere and needed to clean the shelf, I then broke the corner bit of plastic and so Alan suggested I superglued it back together again.  I got superglue all over my hands and now can't get it off again and I have crispy hands.  I had the cake that Kirstie dropped off earlier in the week and instantly feel regretful as I'm so heavy at the moment.

Bookclub and Reading

When I went to University I chose to do English Language and Literature largely because it was my favourite subject at school and it was probably the one that I was best at for A-Level. I loved reading, but I always struggled with the fact that I am a pretty slow reader and even though people are convinced that I am fast, it can take me months sometimes to get through a book.  Like a lot of things I need a "target" to work towards, or nothing really happens.

I'm a bit of a geek too ever since I was 15 I have kept a small flower covered book with a list of all the books that I've read since then (which is now going on for about 17 years!).  Eventually I twigged that it might be interesting to look back on how many books that I had read each year and so from 1998 I've got a log of how many books I've read per year which is as follows:

1998 - 26

1999 - 28

2000 - 46

2001 - 34

2002 - 9

2003 - 13

2004 - 6

2005 - 11

2006 - 9

2007 - 18

2008 - 5

2009 - 2 (!!!)

2010 - 7

2011 - 6

As you can see I read the most books when I was at Uni from 1998 - 2001 which is to be expected as I had a lot more time on my hands,  as well as the fact that I had to read about 3 books per week per semester which was 12 weeks in total (so actually I should probably have read a few more than I did!).

As you can see apart from a blip in 2007 (not sure what was going on then!) my reading has really declined - probably as a result of the work that I do taking up a lot of my brainpower and making me fairly tired so I fall asleep very quickly if I try and read at bedtime.  The stupid thing is that I really do love reading, I just struggle when I'm tired and don't have an end date to get things done to finish a book with momentum unless it's an incredible book and I'm hooked.

When I joined Buns & Roses in 2010 I hadn't realised that they have their own Book Club and I was really pleased that they did - it would give me the impetuous to make sure that I finished a book by a deadline as well as giving me suggestions of books to read that I might not normally encounter (at the first meeting that I went to we discussed Jam and Jeopardy by Doris Davidson which was certainly a different read)  and have a chance to chat through them with friendly ladies eating cake.  I've already read nearly twice as many books as I did last year so I think it's got a definite positive impact on my reading.

We meet at the Tiled Hall Cafe which is next to the Art Gallery and the Leeds Central Library. It's a really pretty venue and they serve gorgeous cakes - Earl Grey Tea Loaf, Scones with clotted cream and jam, Caramac cake and Neapolitan Cake.  They also serve a great selection of drinks including wine and beer and my favourite - Suki tea - I love the Russian Caravan which is like a milder slightly less smoky lapsang souchong.

Our last book club was really fun - we met on Sunday and we had all finished reading the book that we were discussing - The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky which we all enjoyed. 

The Buns & Roses Book club is really friendly, we don't worry if someone hasn't finished the book, or indeed if they hate it that's fine too!  Everyone is fine to voice their opinion and most importantly it's fun - we talk about what we think of the cover of the book and who might play certain characters in a film version as well as discussing more technical things like characterisation and plot.

We all agreed that we liked how the book reminded us very much of being teenagers and in particular Susan who is from America said that it really reminded her and felt very well written and representative of her time in high school much better in comparison to some other books that she has read in the past.  

Sam who was new to book club mentioned that she had read the book slightly differently as she'd seen the film first, but really enjoyed the book and actually hadn't expected the form of the book to be the series of letters that are presented.

In terms of characters we felt that they were all very "real" characters and had a lot of sympathy with the main character - Charlie and genuinely felt as though we were taken on a bit of a journey with him and saw how he developed.  

Lianne had been worried about how the ending of the book would transpire and how some of the fairly serious issues would be handled, but actually felt that it was effectively written.

We all enjoyed the book and I found that I really enjoyed the references to different music of the time and how his teacher recommended different books for Charlie to read to help him develop both intellectually and emotionally.  I loved how one of these books was A Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger as the feel of this book was very similar to that, but the characters were much more likeable.

We tried to think of some Christmas themed books for our December Bookclub meeting, but went for Life of Pi by Yann Martel instead and will be meeting at 2pm on the 16th December at the same place - you are welcome to come and join us.