Post isolation fantasy choices challenge

Kezzie has put together a challenge with some questions about what people will do when all the restrictions are lifted and we can safely go about our lives again. I thought it would be a fun thing to ponder so here are my answers.

1. Restaurant you would go out to.

We usually go to a vegetarian/vegan restaurant called Tibits whenever I’ve had to go into the office in Germany. We haven’t been since the beginning of March and I’m actually starting to miss it! Or I might like to try a restaurant that we haven’t been to yet.

2. Friend you would meet up with first.

As I mentioned in this post, I don’t really see many friends at the best of times, but I had been planning to meet up with my friend who lives Karlsruhe and her boyfriend once the weather got warmer so  hopefully we will get to do that before the summer is over!

3. Place you would go.

Realistically it will probably be Germany to work since I’ve now missed 3 of my regular trips there 😅. But if we’re talking fantasy answers I would love a weekend away somewhere. Maybe up a mountain somewhere in Switzerland.

4.  Shop you would go to.

I don’t really do much shopping outside if supermarkets – Switzerland is too expensive! So it would probably just be the department store Manor to buy stickers (I use them on the envelopes when I send cards for Post Pals or letters to my pen pals). Or I would go to the bookshop, wistfully read all the synopses then leave without buying anything because they’re sooo expensive. I can honestly order a book from Waterstones in the UK and pay less for it including postage to Switzerland!

5.  Food item you would buy/eat.

The only thing I haven’t been able to buy is yeast and since I planned to make hot cross buns with it I feel like that ship has sailed!

6.  Cake you would eat.

If I want cake I can make it (as long as if doesn’t involve yeast!) but I do love the chocolate, pear and hazelnut cake from the restaurant at Papiermühle so I would have to say that.

Toblerone cheesecake

7.  Show you would/will go to see

We didn’t have any planned so I would have to see what’s on once events are allowed again. I’m hoping for another good comedian to come to Switzerland. Bill Bailey would be nice!

8.  Concert you will go to watch.

Jan is still hoping a project he’s involved in will go ahead in October so most likely that.

9.  Relative you will hug first.

My mum had been planning to come over in June so if we can rearrange that it will be her. But honestly I don’t even know when I will see any member of my family again. Flights probably won’t be going for a long time 😦

10. Holiday you would go on.

It would be great if we could rearrange the Poland trip we had to cancel. Or maybe I’ll take a trip to the UK and hug all my family!

11.  Other activity you would take part in.

I had been planning to sign up for a beginner’s crochet course at the end of March so if that’s repeated when things open again it will most likely be that.

12.  Thing you would do at work.

I am still working as normal and I already worked from home apart from on two days a month, so there’s no task that I need isolation to be over to be able to do. However, things were really slow this week so I am hoping our customers will get back to work so they can send us things to translate!

13.  Item you would buy.

I don’t think there is anything I want/need that I couldn’t just order now. Maybe we will finally get round to buying balcony furniture?

That’s it. I really enjoyed thinking up these answers. Hopefully I will get to actually do some of them this year! If you want to answer them too I would love to see your answers and please also link to Kezzie’s post and stop by to say hi/let her know you’ve done it.

It’s all the same to me (but also not)

As everyone else laments everything that’s changed for them recently, it occurs to me that my life is mostly continuing as before.

I’ve been working from home for almost five years now. My two trips to the office in Germany are on hold for the time being, but basically my situation is the same as always… at least for as long as there is work for me to do. So far I’ve had just about enough to keep working me normal hours, so keep your fingers crossed that continues to be the case!

Jan working from home as well is, of course, unusual. He has occasionally in the past but never for multiple days in a row. But since he’s set up in the spare room and seems to have multiple conference calls with California  (which means they take place pretty late in our time zone) I think I’m actually seeing less of him than before. At least when he goes to the office once he’s home for the evening he’s generally done. Now more often than not he’ll emerge briefly to eat whatever I’ve cooked then disappear back to the spare room until long after I’ve gone to bed.

I only ever managed to make two friends here… or possibly more acquaintances. They are the other half of our quiz team. But even before the pandemic we hadn’t yet managed to find a date this year when all of us had time for the pub quiz. The only other people I know here are from Jan’s choir, and while I occasionally get to join them to socialise (and even hosted one of them who needed a place to stay when Jan wasn’t even in the country) they’re really his friends. This was never more clear than when I decided to join them for a virtual beer last week only for it to end up as the three of them speaking Swiss German while I contributed nothing because I was too busy concentrating on trying to understand what they were actually saying! The rest of my friends and all my family are in other countries so not socialising regularly is nothing new for me.

Most of my hobbies are solitary, indoor activities. I read, I cross stitch, I make cards, I read blogs. My friend recently sent me a colouring book so I’ve been working on that. All of those are things I can still do.

I won’t run out of books any time soon…

Day to day, my life is the same as it always was, except that I no longer go for walks on my lunch break, but only venture out to the supermarket once a week (whichever day we run out milk) and stock up on all the foods we’ve used since my last shop, hoping each time that what I buy will ensure I don’t have to set foot in the supermarket again until the following week.

The things that have really changed for me are more long term. I may not socialise regularly, but my friend K – who lives in Berlin – and I had been making plans to meet up in the summer. Who knows whether that will be able to happen now. I also had tentative plans with another friend and her boyfriend  – we went to the Christmas market in Baden-Baden last year and thought it would be nice to meet there again when the weather was nice for a look around the town. Now the weather is stunning but the border to Germany is closed and we’re all supposed to be staying at home anyway.

Speaking of nice weather, now is the time of year that we would be starting to go on day or weekend trips whenever Jan wasn’t busy with choir practices. And on the weekends that he wasn’t around, I would take long walks by myself or explore local places. That’s all out the window now  – we can still go for walks, we’re not in total lockdown yet, but we’re supposed to only take short walks close to where we live and avoid popular places where other people might want to go, so it will be a long time before I even get to see the Rhine in Basel again never mind anything further afield!

One day I will get to see this view again…

Finally, my mum had been planning to visit us in June. Will some of the restrictions in Switzerland have been lifted by June? Maybe. It’s possible that at least some businesses may be able to open again by then (like dentists). Will the UK be back to normal by then? I doubt it. Will there be flights? Also doubtful. When will I get a see any member of my family again? Who knows.

But while I am sad that I am not going to be able to take any trips or see friends and family who live in other places, I feel like I am actually comparatively lucky. I have a job that I can still do even while self-isolating and a life that was already mostly spent indoors, alone (sometimes with my boyfriend). For other people, staying home is a much greater adjustment. Take Jan for instance: no going into the office every day and seeing colleagues, no practice every Monday with one choir or on several weekends and evenings a month for another, no regular meetings for another project he’s involved in, no going for beers with his friends. And his one choir’s trip to Sweden in May is also cancelled. How long do we think it will be before he’s entirely sick of only having me for company?  😉

I feel for all those of you who have had to cancel plans and are missing spending time with your friends, family and even co-workers. I hope this is all over soon and you get to be with them all again. And as for me… well, I’ll be just fine. I’ve been training for this situation for years. Who knew being anti-social and terrible at making friends would one day turn out to be a super power? 😂

How much has your day-to-day life changed since everybody started to stay home?

Mid-week confessions

This is actually kind of a filler post because I just do not have time for the one I actually want to write. It involves uploading photos, and we all know how long that takes. I’ve seen similar posts to this on various blogs (here’s one by Unlocking Kiki), and now it’s my turn. So, without further ado, I confess…

• I don’t always wash my hair when I should. Washing (and blow drying) my hair takes time, and sometimes staying in bed for just that little bit longer wins. I only do this when my hair is at the stage where it feels horrible but still looks okay, and so far nobody’s said anything so it seems to be working out okay 😉
• I am terrible at housework. Okay, this is nothing new to long-term readers of my blog. I even have a “world’s worst housewife” tag. My shower has needed cleaning for weeks, but I keep putting it off, I almost never wash the dishes the same evening I cook with them (in fact, if I don’t need last night’s dishes the next day I will sometimes even leave them for another night) and the windows of our flat haven’t been washed once since we moved in. I do hoover regularly and keep on top of the laundry though, it’s just anything that involves my hands touching cleaning substances that I don’t like…
• I almost never manage to eat five portions of fruit and veg a day. In fact, yesterday I think I managed half a portion (I ate a clementine at lunch time , but you need two for a “serving”). Now the papers are reporting that we may actually need to eat seven servings a day. I am doomed. Dooooooomed I tell you!
• Last week, I bought mini chocolate eggs with the intention of sending them to a friend for Easter, but I forgot how late Easter was and having them sitting around was just too tempting, so I ate them.
• I haven’t really exercised since before I went to England over a month ago. I did some sit ups once when I was feeling particularly guilty about all the crap I’d eaten that day, but that’s all. Really need to get back into it… what the scales (and measuring tape) are showing me are not pretty.
• I LOVE Cheddar cheese, the the extent that I will actually break chunks off and eat it by itself. I could never become vegan purely because of Cheddar cheese!

OK, that’s it. I need to get back to work now (after the shortest lunch break ever!) I have so much to do. Seriously, the only thing that’s getting me through this week is the thought of the overtime that I can take off some time when it’s a litle less crazy! How long til the next public holiday?!

Throwback Thursday

While I was in England I actually managed to make some headway on clearing out my old bedroom at my dad’s and in the process I found some old photos, so I thought I would completely embarrass myself and share a few of them with you. Apologies if the quality isn’t the best, I had to take photos of photos again.

Little baby Bev

This is one of the very few photos of little me where I was actually (sort of) smiling. There’s writing on the back of it: “Hello there. Looks like mam’s bringing me food?”. Apparantly somebody (presumably my mother?) is trying to imply I was only happy when I was getting fed! Also, what the hell colour paint is that on the wall?! The army has a lot to answer for, I’m telling you! (They’re also responsible for the awful brown carpet… although the “lovely” sofa was entirely my parents’ doing. What can I say… it was the 80s!).

Me aged 2 and a half with my baby sister

It seems I wasn’t too impressed at having to hold my little sister! Not sure who I’m giving the evil eye to here… (Usually I don’t post photos of other people, but in this one my sister is a baby! I’d love to see someone pick her out of a lineup based on this!).

First time in snow (probably)

Check out my fabulous snowsuit! I actually remember it because my mum kept it til I was about 10, but I don’t remember ever wearing it. The photographic evidence says I did though.

There you are. I hope you enjoyed your glimpse into my babyhood. Maybe one day I’ll share more…

Who Am I?

This post was inspired by Charlotte at Sherbet and Sparkles. Recently, she wrote a blog post based around the question “Who am I?” and asked all her readers to get involved too. I’ve actually had quite a few new followers on the blog recently, so I thought this was an appropriate time to finally respond to her request.

So, hello! I’m Beverley, a 30-year-old English girl who is currently living in south-west Germany. Karlsruhe, to be exact. Most Germans should have heard of it because it’s home to both the German constitutional court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) and the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof). The latter is the highest court for all matters relating to criminal and private law, so Karlsruhe is mentioned on the news a lot. I share a flat with my boyfriend, who I will have been in a relationship with for 10 years in February 2014!

The botanic gardens in Karlsruhe

As an army brat, the question “where are you from?” is not an easy one to answer. Do I say the place I was born, even though I always hated it and never felt like I belonged, even while living there? Should I say the town my parents are from, despite the fact that I’ve never lived there? Or is “home” the place my dad moved to once he got out of the army, and where I also moved to when I was 13? Usually, I tell people I’m from Northumberland without specifying a town – I tend to get away with it because most people couldn’t even locate the county on a map, never mind name any individual towns! My parents are both from Morpeth, where my remaining grandparents still live, and that’s been the most constant place in my life. We went there for at least one holiday every year. Both my parents now live back in Northumberland, although neither of them actually moved back to their home town simply because it’s too expensive!

Stepping stones crossing the River Wansbeck in Morpeth

As you probably know by now, after graduating from university I moved to Austria for 10 months. I still have a slight obsession with all things Austrian! In 2006, I moved back to Karlsruhe and as of September 2012, Karlsruhe is officially the place I’ve lived in longest in one stretch ever! Technically I lived in my birth town for more years in total because we were posted there twice, but Karlsruhe is catching up… if you count my year abroad, I’ve actually spent 8 years in Karlsruhe now.

Snowy Feldkirch, December 2006

I have one sister, with whom I share two parents, and two half brothers who are not related to each other. My younger half brother, my dad’s son, was born a few days before I moved back to Karlsruhe. He’s 23 years younger than me!

I used to be a natural red head, but based on the photos above, you’re probably thinking I’m a brunette. Here’s a photo of me from the days before I was allowed to dye my hair. See… red! Well, reddish anyway…

Me, aged 3 or 4, with my grandma’s dog

What else can I say? I work at a translation company, which is usually interesting but can get stressful. You won’t read too much about my job on the blog because I’m not sure how much I can say without getting into trouble. I certainly know better than to name any of our customers 😉

My biggest love is reading and I dream of having my own library some day, like the ones you see in old houses and castles. My other big passion is travel – I get restless if I have to stay in one place for too long. So far, regular day trips and holidays have been enough to keep me from getting entirely sick of Karlsruhe but I’m not sure whether I’ll live here for the rest of my life…

So that’s me! I hope I haven’t repeated too much of my blog’s about me page. If there’s anything else you want to know, just ask and I’ll see about answering 😉 Now it’s your turn… tell me about yourself!

My hair through the ages

This post was inspired by Jane at Is That You Darling, who recently shared some of her past hairstyles on her blog. Unfortunately, a lot of my old photos are in England so I can’t go back quite as far as Jane (no baby photos here), but I’ll do my best.

I was born with black hair (as was my sister), but it wasn’t long before it became clear that I was going to be a red head. By the time I got to about 10, I hated my hair colour, mostly because the other kids called me gingernut – even though my hair colour was technically too dark to be properly ginger! My mum always referred to it as “the colour of autumn leaves” because if you looked closely, it had bits of blonde and brown in it, as well as the red.

This first photo was taken when I was about 3 or 4. I do apologise for the quality of the photo (and most of the ones from when I was a kid). I have no scanner, so I had to take photographs of photographs…

The dog in the photo with me is Cindy. She belonged to my grandma and I was devastated when she died. In this photo she’s probably about 5 years old.

The next photo shows me aged 7. I’m sure on the age this time because that was the age you had to be to join the Brownies! I was so proud of my uniform.

Now for a few “special occasion” photos. One was taken at my cousin’s christening in 1991, which would make me seven (it was before my birthday). I’m including it despite my looking less than impressed because it gives you an idea of how different my hair can look depending on the light.  The other picture is from an official family photo session (was anyone else dragged to those every few years?!) – my brother and sister are actually in the photo with me, but I’ve cropped them out seeing as I don’t have their permission to post them all over the Internet. You can see my brother’s arm still, though. Judging by how little my brother is, the photo must have been taken in late 1991 or early 1992, making it less than a year after the other photo and me 8 years old.

In the christening photo, the light makes my hair look almost blonde. The other one shows my actual natural hair colour. See, I told you I was a redhead! Also, note the crimped hair in the second photo. That was the 80s/early 90s for you… the minute there was a special occasion, the crimpers came out!

Once I got older and was given permission to start doing what I wanted with my hair, I started dying it various colours to get rid of the red. Ironically, as I got older, my hair’s natural redness began to fade to a more brownish colour, at which point I started dying it shades of red that are much more intense than my natural colour ever was. In between, I’ve experimented with plums, browns and even blue (it went green… not exactly the look I was aiming for!). Meanwhile, my natural is still red, but you can only tell in the right light, so most people assume I’m naturally a boring mousy-brown. Here’s a photo that was taken after my hair started to darken:

I’m not certain of my exact age in the above photo, but I can’t have been older than about 11 because the woman in the photo with me is my step mum and she died only a few months after I turned 12. Look how thick my hair is! That was the reason my mum went and got it cut really short at some point. I then moved to a new school at 13 and spent months being asked “Oi, are you meant to be a boy or a girl?” Needless to say, I soon grew my hair out and have never dared go any shorter than chin-length since! I can’t show you any photos of the short hair phase because (thankfully) I don’t have any here…

How about some more recent photos?

Both of the above photos show my natural hair colour at roughly the same time. The difference is, one was taken outdoors with the sun shining on it and the other is indoors away from the light. Notice how one looks plain brown while on the other one the ends at least seem to have a hint of red?

Above are some more of the various colours and styles that have graced my hair over the years, from left to right:
1. Dressed up as a goth, aged 17, for a sixth form Halloween social. The black dye was temporary.
2. Me at uni in 2003 after an attempt to lighten my hair (I later did it again and ended up an orangey-blonde colour)
3. Year abroad, either the end of 2003 or the beginning of 2004. Natural colour and far too long! I acheived those waves by putting my hair in two plaits over night.
4. Year abroad, June or July 2004. By this time I’d had my hair cut and dyed it dark red.
5. Austria, December 2005. Back to my natural colour. I’m including this because I cut my hair myself! And yes, it’s a selfy!
6. A different shade of red, 2012

And finally, the most recent photo I have of myself. This one was taken at the Weinfest on Saturday. Considering I still had toothache here, it’s actually not a bad photo 😉 (This time it’s my friend who’s cropped off, not a sibling).

Phew… I think that’s more photos of me than I’ve posted on my entire blog until now! I do hope no dodgy people are going to track me down because of it…

The Liebster Award

Back in June, Gina from A 4star Life nominated me for the Liebster Award. Thank you Gina! I was in Ireland at the time, then busy with one thing and another, so I’m only getting round to posting the award now. As always with these things, there are rules:

• Post the award on your blog
• Thank the blogger presenting you with this award and provide a link back to their blog
• You then need to write 11 random facts about yourself
• One good turn deserves another, meaning, you then need to find 11 other bloggers with less than 200 followers who you think are deserving of the award so that you can then nominate them! In other words, keep the love going and help small, new blogs get out there and get noticed!
• Finally, the award presenter will ask 11 questions of you which you need to answer and then you, in turn, ask your nominees 11 questions, and so it goes.

So, first of all I need to give you all 11 facts about myself.  I apologise if I’ve told you any of these things before, but after 5 years of blogging it’s hard to remember what I haven’t said!

• I almost studied Russian at university, but ended up not getting in because my grades weren’t good enough. The uni that did let me in didn’t offer Russian, so I did International Relations instead.
• For years I wanted to be a teacher. I changed my mind after spending a year as a language assistant in Germany and hating almost every minute of it (except the days where I went to either my amazing year 7 class or the better behaved of my three year 6 classes)
• On my mum’s side of the family, I am the oldest of 18 grandchildren. There was one cousin who was older than me, but she died before I was born.
• On my dad’s side of the family, I only have one first cousin! She was born in December 2012 and she lives in Australia, so I’ve only ever seen photos of her. Most of my dad’s cousins (my cousins once removed) are actually closer to my age than his though.
• I am the only one of my siblings who has a name that doesn’t exist in Germany (even with a different pronunciation). I find this ironic seeings as I am also the only one who lives abroad.
• The first book that ever made me cry was Black Beauty.
• I hate ketchup! I can put up with it in burgers, but refuse to eat chips (fries) with it on
• My favourite crisps are the kind that are meant to appeal to kids, like Monster Munch and Wotsits. I also love Frazzles.
• I love my job, but the thought of spending the next 40-ish years of my life doing nothing but work (with the occasional holiday in between) makes me want to cry.
• When I was about 10, I begged my mum for months to let me become a vegetarian. When it got to Christmas, I changed my mind. Christmas without pigs in blankets isn’t a real Christmas!
• I used to be able to quote the film The Lion King word for word… thanks to my brother who was obsessed with it and watched it multiple times every day! I can still quote quite a lot of it.

And now to answer Gina’s questions…

1. What’s your guilty pleasure?
   Eating ice cream in the middle of winter while sitting in front of the radiator, wrapped in a blanket. I only do this when the boyfriend is away!
   Oh, and also if nobody’s watching I will sometimes open my empty packet of Flamin’ Hot Monster Munch (I only do it with the Flamin’ Hot ones) right out and lick off all the crumbs. Disgusting right? I can’t believe I actually just admitted that when I have real life friends who read my blog! (Hi guys!!)
   

2. 

   How could anyone resist that little face? (Photo: Wikipedia)

   Cats or dogs?
   Definitely dogs! If I didn’t live where I do, I would love a little white Westie or a Beagle or a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. There are a few individual cats I like, but for the most part I think they’re evil and probably plotting to take over the world… only the lack of opposable thumbs has stopped them until now.

3. What time do you normally go to bed?
   I would like to go to bed at around 10 on week days seeing as I have to be up for work at 6, but I almost never manage it. Usually it’s somewhere between 10:30 pm and midnight, but if it’s quiz night can ends up being as late as 2 am…
4. What’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done?
   Most embarrassing. Ooh, difficult! I’m always doing embarrassing things. Seriously, I can embarrass myself just by opening my mouth.
   Hmm, the one I can think of right now happened when I was 17. I was invited to my friend’s birthday party… at a pub. My other friend had brought along a bottle of vodka, so we spent most of the night buying coke then topping up with her booze, until she ran out. Then we started ordering triple vodka and cokes. I was supposed to take the last bus home, but completely forgot about it. Then, an hour after it had left, I went into the toilets, sat down on the floor in front of the sinks (I couldn’t make it any further) and threw up all over myself. I was literally metres from the cubicles! Then my friend had to call my dad to come and pick me up because I couldn’t remember my own phone number. My dad just laughed at me all the way home, but the friend whose birthday it was didn’t speak to me for about three months… he worked at the pub and when the owner found out my age he came close to getting fired. Oops!
5. What’s your favourite joke?
   Not my favourite, but the only one I can think of right now:
   What do you call a chav in a box?
   Init
   What do you call a chav in a filing cabinet?
   Sorted
   What do you call a chav in a locked filing cabinet?
   Safe!
6. What’s your middle name?
   Ann – along with about half the people I went to school with! It seems Ann was a popular middle name for my generation…
7. Do you prefer the city or the country?
   I don’t like big cities, but I wouldn’t want to live right out in the country either. I like Karlsruhe because it has the best of both worlds – it’s a city so there’s plenty going on, but it’s nor a huge city and the atmosphere is more like in a small town. Also, the countryside is close enough to visit.
8. If you could go anywhere right now, where would you go?
   The Ukraine…. or Slovenia. I reeeeally want to visit the Postojnska cave (click the name to see the awesomeness)
9. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?
   At work, a translator who is proofreading for me. Privately, Jan on Tuesday.
   
10. Would you rather have feet sized ears or ear sized feet?
    Feet sized ears. I could hang loads of earrings from them and turn them into a fashion statement… ear-sized feet would make walking too difficult!
11. Would you rather be attacked by a dozen duck sized horses or one horse sized duck?
    I think a horse-sized duck. Maybe I could tame it then give people rides on its back. For a small fee, of course 😉

Next, I have to nominate some people for the award… or actually, it’s more of a challenge than a nomination coming up with all those facts. Sorry guys! I hereby nominate:

– Kay from Have You Seen My Glass Slipper? (I recently started reading her blog, and she is awesome! I wish I’d had her attitude at 18…)
– Tina from KulturSchock
– From Casinos to Castles
– Fay at Fly on the Wall
– The Diary of Sugar and Spice
– Katrin from The Land of Candy Canes
– Linda of Expat Eye on Latvia
…. and I know that’s only seven, but that’s all I can think of right now without giving this award to the same people who got the Versatile Blogger Award from me not long ago…
You are all free to turn it down, of course 😉

And here are my questions for my nominees:

1. If you could change your first name to anything at all, what would you pick?
2. Where were you born?
3. What is your favourite quote?
4. Tea, coffee or hot chocolate?
5. If you could own any animal, what would it be?
6. Why did you start blogging?
7. Who is your favourite author?
8. What is your favourite flavour of crisps (chips for the Americans)?
9. Apart from blogs, which website do you spend most time on?
10. Do you have a talent? If so, what?
11. What was the last song you listened to?

Birthday plans

If you’ve been reading my blog for longer than say a week, you’ll probably have noticed that I have a birthday coming up (and if not, I applaud you on your superior selective reading skills!) As that birthday is, in fact, a week today, I thought it was about time I started figuring out what I want to do. Here’s the plan:

* Obviously I shall be ignoring all healthy eating plans completely. Birthdays do not come with calorie limits! So for breakfast I plan on having a nice fattening sausage sandwich with brown sauce.  I might even shove some bacon in there too. Yum!

* Jan has taken the day off, and he suggested going somewhere. I’m not sure what he has in mind, but wherever we go, I will definitely be tracking down some cake. You can’t have a birthday without cake!

* In the evening I would like to go for a meal somewhere – I don’t do cooking on my birthday! Then I shall ask my friends to join me in the Irish pub for drinks. It’s like a birthday ritual!

*My real celebration will then (hopefully) take place on the Saturday after my birthday…. if Jan actually books the place, that is. If not, I guess the party will be at my place.

So there you have it. Not too bad for a mid-week birthday.

Weigh-in Wednesday: 30 minutes exercise not happening!

So, it’s Wednesday again (how did that happen?!), and that means it’s time for another weigh in.

Despite my plans to treat myself on Saturday, I actually ended up doing pretty well this weekend, mostly because I was so buy preparing for curry night I didn’t have the chance to eat anything else that day! In the end, I was only 10 calories over my daily limit despite the glasses of wine.

My weight has fluctuated a lot since last week, but it hasn’t gone back up to my starting weight at any point, which is good. Last week, I was 0.5 kg down from when I started… this week I’m at roughly the same, although I did record a weight that was 1 kg down from original weight. Only on one day though.

My body fat in percent also fluctuates quite a bit, but it’s only gone above last week’s measurement of 28.5% once. This morning’s result was 27.8%, down 0.7% on last week and 2.2% on my starting percentage. Here’s the graph from MyFitnessPal to show you how much it fluctuates. It’s generally around the 28% mark though… well, apart from that one day where it shot waaay up to 29%!

After getting stuck at 78 cm for what felt like years, my waistline measurement finally crept down by another half centimetre (yes, I count the halves!) and has been 77.5 cm for the last three mornings in a row. I did measure 77 cm once, but the next day it had gone back up again.

My plan for this week was to try and actually achieve my goal of 30 minutes exercise on 5 days a week. Sadly, this hasn’t happened once so far… since last Wednesday, the most I’ve managed is 15 minutes. It’s just too hot to exercise! And this week I also have far too much to do.

Photo: zebedee.zebedee

On the calories front, I’ve been doing really well! Admittedly, I was 375 above my limit on Friday, but apart from that I’ve been sticking to it pretty well. The last couple of days I’ve felt really hungry and just wanted to eat everything in sight. On Monday I was good and managed to restrict myself to a single serving of dark chocolate peanut M&Ms and a small handfull of spelt snack things from the organic supermarket, but yesterday U was unable to resist the cheesy crisps and eded up around 300 calories over my daily limit. To compensate, I forced myself to jog on the spot past the point where I would normally have given up and managed to make it to a whole 5 minutes on both days. Quite an achievement for me! Not that it helped much… 5 minutes of jogging in place burns a mere 42 calories. *Sigh*

I’m not sure how well I’ll be able to keep up with the healthy eating thing while I’m in England, but I’ll do my best. We’ll see how well I fared in two weeks time…
Wish me luck!

The upper end of “normal”

*This is the post I had actually planned to write today… the one from this morning was just an added bonus, hence the two posts in a day thing*

The observant among you have probably noticed that I don’t live in the same town where I work. Every day, I get up at 6 a.m. so I can take the (stupidly early) train to work. At first, I bought monthly tickets, but that got annoying after a while so as soon as I passed my probation period, I ordered the BahnCard 100 from Deutsche Bahn.

The BahnCard 100 (Photo: Wikipedia)

There are three versions of the BahnCard – BahnCard 25 gets you 25% off train tickets, BahnCard 50 gets you 50% and the BahnCrad 100… well, can you guess what that one does? Correct! It allows me to travel on any train within Germany for no extra charge. The card itself costs a small fortune, of course, but it comes with CityPlus, which allows me to use opublic transport within any town that participate in the scheme. As both Karlsruhe and the town I work in have CityPlus, with my BahnCard I’m covered for the trams as well. After working out that buying three monthly tickets (for the train and both tram networks) I would only be spending €15 less than the monthly price of the BahnCard 100, my choice was clear.

The other thing that comes with BahnCard 100 is a bonus scheme. It used to be automatic, but recently they’ve changed it so you have to opt in. Non-BahnCard holders can join the scheme as well – they just have to order a separate bonus card. Basically every euro you spend (either purchasing a BahnCard itself or travel tickets) equates to one point for the bonus system. And once you get enough points, you can go to the Bahn website and exchange them for things. There are various “prizes” (for want of a better word) available – everything from train tickets and reservations to wine gift sets and iPads.

Mmm, wine! (Photo: Wikipedia)

A few weeks ago, I received a letter telling me some of my points were about to expire, so I decided it was time to claim a prize. I went on the Bahn website, looked through all the options, and eventually decided to order myself a set of scales – the kind that promise to analyse your body as well as weighing you. They duly arrived on Saturday (when I was not home!) and the neighbour who had taken them for me brought them round on Monday night. Being a man, and therefore a sucker for anything with buttons, Jan wanted to set them up for me immediately. So into the scales went my age, height and the amount of exercise I do, and onto the scales I stepped.

(Photo: SalFalko)

My weight was pretty much what I’d been expecting (and no, I’m not telling you what it is!), so no surprises there, although I would like to get it down a bit. Then came the fat analysis part. Body fat proportion: 30%, said the scales. jan, who was holding the little booklet looked that up. “It says you’re normal,” he reported. “20% to 32% is the normal range for women in your age group.” I went and had a look. He was right… 30% is normal… but the upper end of normal. I’m only 2% away from the “Overwieght” category… just like my waist to height ratio puts me at only 0.02 away from being overweight. Eeep!

I’ve said it before, I know, but this time I really do need to get serious about shifting some belly fat! So far, I still look pretty good in most of my clothes, but seeing that I’m only 2% away from an unhealthly proportion of body fat actually kind of scared me, so I want to put a stop to the weight gain before I actually am fat! I’ve been doing quite well on the exercise front recently, so now all I need to do is ditch the junk food (would now be a good time to admit that I treated myself to a Magnum after work two days in a row? What can I say… I was hot!), pay closer attention to my portion sizes and make a real effort to cook nice, healthy meals containing actual vegetables!

Coincidentally, while I was planning this post, The Pink Rachael introduced her new weekly series, Weigh-in Wednesdays, so from now on I shall be linking up with that. I’m hoping to get at least a centimetre or two shifted before I go to England and have to appear at a christening in – gasp – a pretty frock!