Tasha's (aka Beren) Journal

I think it may be slipper weather.

I can't wear my slippers in the summer because they are full boot, fluffy ones and they are too warm, but there is definitely a chill in the air now. My only problem is I can't remember where I put them :) Oops. I found one, but I'm pretty sure it's the one surviving one from the old pair that developed a large hole. It also looks like it has been savaged by a ferocious kitty!

I am royally pissed off with the latest Win10 update. It seems to have broken my alarms. I use the alarm clock on windows to tell me to go do things at various times and just now I shut off an alarm and every time I right clicked on something else it came back!

It also seems to have made the lets-open-windows-on-screens-you-don't-have even worse! It used to do it if I'd used a memory intensive program like Photoshop, but now it seems to be completely random. Problem is, it crashes Word. Everything else copes, I just have to right click on the task bar icon while hitting shift and then telling it to move to one of the actual monitors. It doesn't actually put it on the monitor I selected, but it does then put it on an actual screen.

The only way to fix it is to change the display settings of one of the monitors to portrait and then revert it - this seems to make it reset everything so it knows where the actual screens are!

It's Tuesday, which means a new chapter of Dead Before Dawn: The Vampire Curse.

Pizza & Film Night

Had great fun on Sat night - went over to our friends' house and had a pizza and film night. It was so much fun.

We watched two diametrically different films:

Both brilliant for very, very different reasons, and both great to share with people who hadn't seen them before.

Deadpool is so funny and so batshit that is is absolutely wonderful.

Spotlight is so very well done: dramatic, but not overly so and full of brilliant characters and actors.


Food Discovery

So I bought some sausages last week because I thought I would cook them as a treat for Rob, since we try to have healthier options most of the time. I made Toad in the Hole for us last Wednesday. For those who don't know this is sausages cooked in a Yorkshire pudding style batter. It used to be one of Rob's favourites before we decided that healthier options were better for us.

As we were munching our way through it we realised something - we didn't like it any more. It was too heavy and greasy and, frankly, not nice. I told my personal trainer about it at the weekend and he laughed :) Turns out if you eat enough of the healthier side of food eventually, you, you know... get to like it.

Anyone tell me which film I just quoted in the italics? :) The full quote is:

You do it because you were trained to do it, because you were encouraged to do it, and because, eventually, you, you know... get to like it.

Happy Birthday to:
25th: lena204
27th: fyredancer/fyredancer, dramaphile
28th: 69512
29th: koyappi,argylepiratewd, eyoko
30th: lksnarry1,jadehunter, terrayndian/terrayndian, moniquemo,wolfangeldeathtxrabbit
31st: tarnationawaits,ampersandjay


I hope you all have great birthdays and Many Happy Returns to every one of you.

Sumac

Okay, so I mentioned Sumac briefly the other day when I spoke about making Chicken Shawarma and now I have come back to speak some more about it, because it tastes wonderful and I've been reading up on it.

Apparently it's really good for you too.

I  had never heard of it until last week and now I am telling everyone I know how wonderful it is. There's even one study that suggests it has properties that help control type 2 diabetes, but they're still on going.

About all else it tastes lovely and is wonderful in yoghurt with mint. It has a lemony zesty flavour, but with something else as well and without all the hassle of trying to zest a lemon and leave behind all the pith :). It is a middle eastern ingredient so middle eastern super markets will have it, and so does Amazon, at least in the UK. Oh yes and in the US - just search for sumac :)

It's one of the main spices in za'atar, a mixture of thyme, sesame seeds and sumac in equal amounts.

Do you use sumac? What is your favourite recipe?

Woot!

I mean that deserves a post all on it's own, right? :)

So many trousers on the high street these days do not take into account that larger sizes mean the body in them is going to be a different shape. I have an arse, it needs somewhere to fit into :D.

Marks and Spenser straight leg joggers are awesome - not only do they come in many lengths, but they take into account the rear end too. They don't have pockets, but then you can't have everything ;).

More Dreams

My dreams last night were not as interesting as the night before, but then I didn't actually get that much sleep - too hot!

They did involve Ghostbusters - so win - but the only bit I remember was something to do with a college ladies loo at some kind of convention. Not exactly hard hitting, exciting stuff :).

Chicken Shawarma

I made chicken schawama for dinner last night from this recipe: Chicken shawarma flatbreads with yogurt recipe. It was delicious and perfect for the end of a really hot day. I used low fat yogurt and wholemeal wraps as well, so it was good for us too. Rob ate 2.5 wraps and they weren't little wraps either, so he really liked it. First time I have used sumac as a spice - yummy.

I'm having fond Avengers memories now :).

Happy Birthday to:

4th: thorlay/thorlay
5th: digitalwave,digitalwave,ellethgur
6th: ctpaul860,bethac,maddirose, lattebiscotti
7th: roane
8th: khaleesian, splix, lillian78
9th: nenne/nenne, jak_quill, veritas03
10th: chriszac, wingedbishi,beadslut

I hope you all have great birthdays and Many Happy Returns to every one of you.

Managed to bang my thumb between a weight and a chair during my PT session on Saturday - now it has a purple lump and feels very weird whenever I try to use it. I think I may have tweaked my back a little too because my little toe is numb. It looks perfectly pink and healthy, so I must have caught a nerve or something. *sigh* Getting old, that's what it is :)

Went to a lovely 80th bday party yesterday - sat out in the garden under a lovely marquee and chatted and had wonderful food. Made lemon/lime vodka trifles for one of the deserts and they went down a treat :) Will post the recipe over at Tasha's Thinkings tomorrow for Tips Tuesday.

The moment I saw the whole Tom Hiddleston/Taylor Swift thing, all I could think was, wow, that's going to be one perky relationship :). BTW - if it makes them happy, good for them!

So Soph and I had a lovely time in town yesterday doing our ladies that lunch thing :). We shopped for about an hour and 3/4 (we're get bored quickly when shopping :)) and then when to lunch in a lovely tea shop called Tiny Tims Tearooms. It is a really lovely little place with more types of tea and coffee than you can shake a stick at, and wonderful, freshly made food.

We had the sharing platter:

• ham (lovely off the bone type)
• smoked salmon (so soft and succulent)
• cheddar (more than we could possibly eat)
• goats cheese (a whole round)
• pickles, coleslaw and chutney
• bread

Could not finish it :) They also have lots of different cakes and they do afternoon tea in various versions. Their scones are to die for.

Later we watched Suburban Gothic. It was what you might called quirky, but it stars Matthew Gray Gubler and Kat Dennings, so what's not to love?
It's about a young man called Raymond who has to move back in with his parents because he can't find a job. He can interact with the paranormal and when the landscapers find a body in the back garden of his parents' house, bad things start to happen that only Raymond can sort out. He enlists the help of bar tender Becca as they try and figure out what's going on.

Frankly there were points when my brain was going WTF, but the ending makes up for any issues I may have had with the rest of the film. :)

Shopping

So have achieved the weekend shop - y'know that little top up shop to make sure there is something in the fridge for Sat and Sun and all the things I forgot to buy on Monday. It was very straight forward today and so easy to get to the shops because there are no schools in session. Everything was eerily empty :)

Holidaying Parents

My parents are supposed to be going to visit my cousin in France on Monday, but we're not sure they're going to be able to go. What with the petrol shortage and the strikes and now the flooding. It's all looking a little doubtful. Fingers crossed it improves over the weekend, for their sake and all the poor people trying to live through it in France.

Cheapskate Disney

I am most annoyed with Disney or whoever it is they have licensed to anyway. I used to buy Marvel Avengers socks from Sports Direct. They were hard wearing and comfy. I went in the other day to get some more and picked up some Muppet ones at the same time.
Then I tried to wear them!

They have changed how they make them. The material is thinner and cheaper, so now they have to have this really tight elastic to keep them on, which hurts my legs too much to wear. Because I have very minimal muscle on my calves, thank to my fixed ankles, tight elastic is really a problem.

I used to love those socks and now they've ruined them. The ones in the piccie are the old style with the nice wide band at the top, that was just elastic enough to hold them in place, but not tight. Cheapskates!

Scamalot

Also just discovered Scamalot on Youtube - hilarious. This chap, James Veitch, has been replying to spammers over email and the results are so very, very funny. There are 6 vids at the moment and here is #1:

So my darling husband bought me one more Christmas pressie that only arrived today - 32 mini comic book figures :) He knows me so well!

The were late because they came from China... which should give you a hint that they are Chinese knock offs rather than official Lego figures or similar :).

You can also tell this because if they thought the character didn't look dangerous enough, i.e. they had no obvious weapons, they gave them some. I think Hulk and Superman probably didn't need the guns they were given ;).

I honestly have no idea who some of the figures actually are (I only know the really famous characters) and, as I am sure we can all tell, there is a mixture of Marvel and DC :).

My fingers are now very sore because they all came in little bits and Rob and I assembled them. The hands were really tough to get on the arms! Fun though :D.

Somewhat disappointed that out of 32 figures only 3 are female, but at least some of them are I suppose. Of course it says everything that there are 2 Wolverines and 2 Hawkeyes, but no Black Widow at all!

All of them are now taking up shelf space in the library guarding books :)

Who can name all 32 figures in the piccie? :)

So first we have this *points up*. There were times this month when I really didn't think I was going to finish. It was right down to the wire.

1. I had a really nasty cold, which, I kid you not, turned me into a zombie for about a week. I barely managed to write a couple of thousand words.
2. Last Thursday, just when I was trying to get back on track I fell over in the shower and bruised and jarred my left side which made sitting still and writing somewhat fun for 2 days.
3. My parents-in-law rang up and asked if they could come for the weekend. Don't get me wrong, they're lovely, but that meant most of the weekend was spent with family rather than deep in novel land.

Hence by Friday evening I was pretty sure I wasn't going to reach 50K and I almost gave up, but then I decided to give it one last go. It's funny, my stats on the site make it look as if I wrote almost 20K yesterday, but it was actually just that I was so disappointed that I might not finish I stopped filling it in until I was almost there :).

I'm pretty sure half the stuff I wrote yesterday is crap and is coming straight back out again or being heavily reworked, but at least it's in the machine :).

Well done to everyone else who finished too.

The Study

Our study is very nearly finished. The only things left to do are the hearth in front of the fire, for which we have all the bits, Rob just needs to work his magic, and half the door frame which had to be filled so didn't get painted at the same time as the other half.

This is a panoramic view of the end wall and the right side. You can see how it lays out, but unfortunately Rob's phone couldn't get the whole walls in :). Click to see it bigger.


This is of the end wall so you can see the cupboard, which was the final part we put in. We have always had a cupboard on that wall, but it was old fashioned and too shallow to be of any use, so we have extended it outwards using the same system as the shelves (they have an amazing catalogue).

This is what it looks like in daylight and looking at the end and left wall.


This is standing in front of the bookcase looking back at the doorway. That stylish picture on the wall came from Range - was £12.99 ;).

And finally for the room, this is the view of the corner along from the door. As you can see we need to put something on the walls :) It's the exercise corner.

Of course it wasn't quite complete so we also bought a rug and a bean bag chair (which is remarkably comfortable :)). We just need to get some anti-slip for the rug because it tends to move, although we could not have found a better size if we had custom ordered it.


All that was left was something for me to be able to reach the top shelves and Rob found these on eBay :)

The steps are made of yew and the frame is made of pine and they were hand made in the east end of London 40 years ago. They have been living in a dry cellar ever since. As you can see Rob has cleaned the top step just to see what colour it would come out, but the rest still need doing. I have tried them out and they are awesome - just high enough, but not too high so that unstable me can fall off and do some damage :).

This has now become my favourite room in the house. Book! :)

So who else has finished NaNo? How do you store you books these days?

To everyone who is celebrating today, I wish you all a very

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope the heavy snow covering lots of the US isn't causing too much trouble for you all.