Day 1 (29-04-2010) - Success

Wrote a job application for a job as an editor in Austria and sended it off at 10:30 PM. Strike!

Did some strength drills.

(Haven't mastered the art of tucking my tummy in and keep breathing at the same time. Continue to work on it.)

Ate only healthy stuff. No cereals. Yeah.

Spend only 1,50 € for some photographic prints I ordered for two friends. (Part of their yearlong birthday present!)

Ordered my new MacBook Pro 13", 500 GB, 4 GB RAM. It should arrive around May 12th. Wahoo.

Finished Mireille Guilianos "Women, Work and the Art of Savoir Faire". Great book, Girls. Read it.

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

Everything new makes the May...

is a German saying. And it seems to hold true for me too.

My mac is really broken, the main board to be precise and therefore I need to replace the whole computer. Like everything this has a up and a down side. Positive is I get a new notebook, MacBook Pro 13", which has the Snow Leopard and a lot more storage capacity, I can get a Magic Mouse and the Photoshop and lots of other good stuff. *happy sigh* The negative thing is that it sets me back financially and not just a bit. And that I have to use my moms notebook for at least 2 weeks. *grumble*

This whole broken Mac business got me thinking last night. In fact I couldn't sleep because I had so many thoughts racing through my mind. I made some decisions last night and set some crisp goals in several areas of my life. This whole stuff isn't really worked out now, but I will do so in the next four days and have started to make my way to my goals right this morning.

(http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/00/10/05/46/another-way-to-go.jpg)

Two of my short term goals I want to share, the other goals (long and short) I'll keep secret because some of them are a wee bit on the crazy side. (It wouldn't be me if I would set reasonable goals, now would it? *grin*)

Goal 1: Highest Priority!!! Get a new job until September 1st, 2010.
Goal 2: Weigh 48,5 kg on my birthday which is September 14th, 2010.

Crisp, ambitious and measurable, just as goals should be.

According to these goals and due to the broken Mac I'll cut back on my time in Blogland. I'll post the Taste Bud Adventures and probably 2 more posts per week, though nothing fancy and definitely not daily. I need the time to find joboffers and interesting companies and most importantly to write the applications.

This weekend I will do a SWOT analysis of me and then head out to conquer the world.

(http://insubordinant.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/pinky_brain.jpg)

Pssst: My secret goal is GLOBAL DOMINATION! In what way? Don't have a clue. ;-)

Okay, that's it for today, there is a documentation and presentation that need my attention.

Do you have goals? (Except the sporty ones.) How do you work towards them?

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!!!

New hairstyle, broken mac

Yep. I've got the Kate Lanphear hairstyle. Here are the pics taken by my Mom, yesterday evening. She said I look 10 years younger with this hairstyle. Works for me. ;-)




My Mac broke last night (it's 5 years old, so it's allowed to break), it goes into repair today and therefore no new pictures made by me until it's fixed. :-(
The timing of this breakdown is really unfortunate though, I need to write applications and now I have to do it on the notebook of my Mom. Darn it.

In any case I'm in love with my new hairstyle, it's really chic and handy (easy drying after the swim training ;-). Fabulous Fab did a fabulous job, as always.

KEEP MOVING FORWARD and get a new haircut!

And the knee story goes on

I've been to my osteopath yesterday. Ani is certainly worth her money! I love it to go there, even though it costs me a certain amount of money. She realigned my muscles and organs and provided some clues of what my body likes and some other life options.
I felt a lot better right afterwards and continue to feel good today. She even revived my decision to not eat cereals, since my body has a high inflammation level at the moment.
She also advised me to take salt and alkali baths (first day Dead Sea salt, next time alkali / sodium bicarbonate bath) to help my body to get rid of some toxins.
And again told me, that my body doesn't want to run marathons. At least not in the near future. She felt that my body wanted something with a lot of air around me. But I don't know what exactly, skydiving, kitesurfing? At the moment cycling and swimming is fine though. I always wanted to try kite surfing. There is a school at the Cospudener Lake, might do a class this summer.

Next week I have a special doc appointment. It's a homeopathic screening. Due to my bureaucratic health insurence I have to pay it myself, but it's worth it. The doc is my "normal" practitioner, he's got the additional homeopathic education, so he will be abled to actually get down to the real reasons of my health problems and not just work at the symptoms, like the other docs did.
I kind of collect allergies, there has to be a reason for it, something like a base allergy. So my hope is, that we find out what it is and get rid of it, so that I get free of the tailing allergies and health problems.
In preparation of this appointment, I have to fill out an extensive form and answer all kinds of questions. It was amazing to me to see it written down how many health issues I have, from asthma to my weight issues.
Anyway, I'm glad that I've got this doc now, so I finally get my health sorted out.


Tonight I've got another really important appointment. Hairstylist! My current cut has grown out and is a mess, as you can see here:

I'm not so sure what comes next, but the hair at the back of my head will get cut short! Now it has the same length as the stuff on top of my head and I dislike it a lot.


I still do my strength drills in the morning. And last night I had a really long sleep. Nearly 7 1/2 hours. That's huge for me under the week. I still could have slept longer! ;-) But I'll definitely concentrate more on treating my body right from now on.

And I found out that "my" bike store does a mtb ride for girls every week (Thursday evening). I'll join it as soon as I got my bike fixed. Wahoo!

Keep Moving Forward!

Taste Bud Adventures - Week 1 - "Vol-au-vent Elisabelle"

On Tuesday I found a wonderful food picture at Elisabelles Blog. So I commented and she was kind enough to send me the recipe via E-Mail.

It went like this: "The recipe is very simple: home made pastry (butter,flour and water), mustard on the pastry and slices of tomatoes than you can top with any cheese you like. I add some hebs (basil, parsley...) and garlic."

Since I've had decided that very morning no more cereals I had to come up with an alternative for the flour. I chose almond flour instead.

So here my ingredients for "Vol-au-vent Elisabelle":
almond flour (grinded almonds)
butter
water

grated cheese
cherry tomatoes
fresh herbs (such as: oregan, basil, coriander, cress)
mustard (for instance: Maille a la provence)

How to make it!
Pastry:
Mix the almond flour with soft butter (the real thing no substitutes! This is french cooking.) and some water, to get something the resembles dough. You can't spread it like normal dough, so use your hands to make some flat cakes at the baking tray which are roughly of the same thickness.


Topping:
Before you start with the slicing of the tomatoes switch on the oven (ca. 180°C = ca. 350 ° Fahrenheit).

Now daub the flat cakes with the mustard and put the sliced tomatoes on it.


Top it off with the crated cheese and slide it into the oven for about 15 to 20 minutes. I put the herbs on them under the cheese, but that's not that good, because they lose their colour and some of their taste and healthy ingredients too.

After 20 minutes take the tray out. Careful, it's hot. (Use cooking gloves.) And put a hefty amount of the fresh and freshly cut herbs on the Vol-au-vents.

Use a big spatula to get the flat cakes to your plates, be careful they tend to fall apart due to nonstickyness of the almond flour.


You best enjoy them with a spoon and a knife on a nicely set up table, drink some nice white wine (or red) and relaxing background music!

Bon Apetit!

Instead of running with them...

my first marathon, second half-marathon or at least my third 10k, I went for a ride with Chris. (I still felt like crying my eyes out when I took my bike out.)

We started out on our usual route but got sidetracked from this. Which led to a photography session of about half an hour. We took hundreds of pics.




Aurora enjoying her time offroad. (But I really need to get the gearshift fixed this week.)

Could there be Dinosaurs?


Only those made of steel.








Chris and I decided to make these our wintergardens.


Some art lying along the way.

Todays stats (including photostops):
time: 2:22 hrs
in zone: 1:02 hrs
HR: 121 bpm

The first post of my food series will be up this evening. Before that Chris and I will go to the botanic garden for another photo session. Spring is fabulous and the weather like a perfect summer day. 23°C and a light breeze. Couldn't be better.

Enjoy your Sunday and races.

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

Food series - Looking for the name

Morning peeps.

I've already got two recipes for you lined up. This Sunday it will be "Vol-au-vent Elisabelle". Next week... hahaha, wait for the surprise, it's something I invented all by myself and I hope it tastes good (it's my lunch today).

In any case I've been pondering the name question for this series and I'd love your help with it. Here are some ideas that I've cooked up this morning in the streetcar:

- Weekly Adventures in Stone Age Food
- French Stone Age Food
- Stone Age Gourmet
- Discovering Stone Age Food
- What's with the food?
- The fun of discovering foodland
- The food sense
- Tongue Fireworks
- Pleasuring your Tongue
- Pleasuring your Taste Buds
- Taste Bud Adventures
- Food traveler
- Adventures in Taste
- Cooking Adventures

The two I favour are bold. What do you think? Any ideas?

Except for a 3 o'clock cookie adventure this morning, which was mostly due to habit and/or sleep walking I've been eating really healthy yesterday. No popcorn at the movie theatre and no chocolate after getting home, I didn't want to eat. I'm so proud on myself.

I've prepared todays lunch yesterday evening and this morning. It contains buckwheat, herbs and veggies. It hopefully tastes well. Tonight I'll go grocery shopping with Dad, since I need new pumpkin seed oil and maybe some other stuff too. I'm thinking on making my Freddy Krüger Eggplant for dinner. Now I just have to come up with food ideas for tomorrow. Maybe an easy salad for lunch, since I'll be home pretty early.


Yesterday I went to watch "Dorian Gray" with Chris. It just started this week in German cinemas as opposed to 9.9.09 in Dublin, Irland. I can't say that I enjoyed this movie. To much gore and bad mood for my taste.

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

New Series for this and my Style blog

Good morning everyone.

Inspiration galore in the streetcar to hell, ahem .... class, this morning. I've decided to start with a new series for this and my style blog.

(http://www.friendsofbutter.co.uk/uploads/124083374363329/resize_500_700_crop_500_300_center_center.jpg)

I'll cook one new recipe per week (new for me) and post it on Sunday. I've got several cookbooks and a new mag concerning food, so I've got a lot to discover and try. Especially since I have to find a way to switch cereals with other stuff and I have to find out how to make the right portion sizes.

Best of all I can develop my photography along with it. Thinking of it, there was a photography mag with an article about food photography yesterday. Hahaha. That's fitting. I'll get the mag in the breakfast break. Photography and Food, the perfect combination for me. Maybe I'll become a food photographer instead of a PR person.


Eating habits
And yeah Keith you are right I'm bored majorly in class, so that's why I eat and also due to peppermint tea (somehow I have linked it to eating). That's why I write blogposts at this time of day too. And the healthy food was only yesterday.
The days before it was mostly raisin rolls or sweet bagels which equals unhealthy food and in my case I'm also allergic to it. I've decided to treat my body as if I was allergic to cereals and sugar. Though I failed this night, because I ate some chocolate cookies when I woke up at 3 AM (I wasn't really awake, so I don't hold me responsible ;-), I ate really healthy yesterday (Elisabelles recipe will be the first one for this week, I took pictures). So I was successfull, though not overall but in a small way. Wahoo.

For today I switched to lemon verbena tea,

(http://blog.tomatenundanderes.at/uploads/Bilddateien/Dateien_Guggi/Zitronenverbene_wkl.jpg)

which you should try. It's tasty and really healthy. You should be abled to get the lemon verbena at your local health food store, it's where I got mine.

What is your favourite recipe?


Training
During my morning chores (washing and caring for my hair, brushing my teeth, etc.) I've done some strength drills for my legs and arms! Baby steps in the right direction. haha.

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!!

PS: @AZ I could send you the recipe for apple milk rice if you send me your email, you find mine in my profile.

Right now I could climb walls

and I don't mean that in a good way.

After another encounter with my mirror yesterday (you would have thought I see myself everyday since it hangs in my room left from my door), I've decided to go back on zero cereal food. I don't know how often I've said this in 2010 already and have failed miserably. And you know what I don't know if I'll stick with it this time for more than 3 days. I've been determined everytime and I am so today. The problem is that I always find reasons to stray from this diet. But it doesn't do me any good. My skin is a nightmare and don't get me started on my bodyshape or my waistline.

Over the last few weeks I have developed the habit of eating all morning. From 7 to 12:30 I ate:

3 hard boiled eggs

3 pears

2 white globe radishes

and my obligatory chocolate protein shake. You would think that I would have been done afterwards, but no I wanted more. I could still eat, but I don't have any nuts with me and I don't want to buy new nuts.

Next thing is, I found a wonderful food picture on Elisabelles Blog (check it out) which made me really hungry and she was so nice to send me the recipe via email. So I've decided to make it with almond flour instead of normal wheat flour. And until then I won't eat.

Still, I want to eat now. Darn it. I mean I'm not really hungry. It's just that I want to put food in my mouth. ARRGGH

You ever had this?

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!!

Sleep deprivation due to general stupidity

*Yawn* Morning folks!

I don't know about you, but my focus of interest shifts often (every few weeks, if I'm good, every few hours, when I'm bad). And at the moment I'm torn between watching korean dramas on youtube, photography and job search. Two weeks ago it was jobsearch and training and sleeping and changing my clothing style. According to this I tend to alternate between my blogs. This explains the lack of posts at this blog. And I don't want to bore you with only non - training related stuff.

The spring has finally arrived in Leipzig and the sun is shining since Friday (yeah, it still goes down at night). Since my knee is still not in its best condition, there is no thought of running. Which is so mean since the Leipzig Marathon uses my street and therefore I see the street signs already, they put them out 1 1/2 weeks ago!). I tell you next Sunday will be hell for me. To see all the athletes skating and running by for about 6 hours and to not being participating, again. AAAAAAAAAARGH. For a moment I considered getting race skates and starting next week with the Inline skaters. Seeing the amount on my bank account I put that thought to rest pretty fast. (sniff) [Not that I can skate well anyway, but who wants to be reasonable?]

Saturday I walked about 3 to 4 k and held a sunlight photography session in my room. Since I haven't got around to test all light conditions (using flash, candles and other artifical light sources) my room still resembles a photo studio and will do so throughout the week.

Sunday, the current training day of my week. (Embarrassing, eh?) Since I only layed down around 5 AM in the morning (Korean drama night, "Coffee Prince" is hilarious), I had a hard time getting up. I even thought of skipping training all together. But since the weather was so nice and I needed to get out at least once in the week...

Chris and I met at 10 AM and started for our usual round.

Stats:
distance: ca. 15 k
time: 1:21 hrs
in zone: 55 min
HR: 129 bpm

We've had the perfect weather, sunshine with blue sky, no wind, perfect temperatures to ride without gloves but not too hot.


We've met a lot of cyclists and there was even a small race for youngsters held at the Markkleeberger See. Naturally the kids had Pro equipment, road race bikes, clothes including bike shoes and helmets. Yes, I was and am jealous. I've wanted a road race bike since I was a little kid. grumble.

Afterwards I had my usual magnesium drink and took a nap until lunch. Chicken and mushrooms for me. And then I watched the last two episodes of "Coffee Prince" and enjoyed the Sunday. In the evening I found another Korean drama "Goong Princess Hours", which is totally addicting too, don't start watching it if you don't have time. (I wanted to stop after the first episode...but I put my Laptop and me after the second episode to sleep, which was around 2 AM. 4 1/2 hours of sleep. Well done, San. )

Well, I've planned to start with a bit more training this week. More biking and maybe even swimming and definitely some strength drills. Hey, I did squats while brushing my teeth this morning, I'm on my way back to the way to the Ironman Hawaii! Hahahah. Big Daddy Diesel provided me with another push in the right direction. Cool Blogger of the Week! Swoon..................................

Okay, I'm back. Sorry for passing out. (*snicker*)

By the way, Jenna from "Will train for wine and chocolate" did her first triathlon. You find her race report at her blog. She is way ahead of me. Well done, girl. (Look at my blog it's green with envy. Hahaha.)

Do you have any media you are addicted to? A book that you couldn't put down? A TV show which you couldn't stop watching? A movie you've watched over and over again? A blog?

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

No real training

though there was a long walk in the wrong kind of shoes on Tuesday, leading to blisters galore. So I got at least a 5k walk in this week. And I climb 3 staircases at least twice a day.
Unfortunately I eat huge amounts this week, which might be due to my lack of sleep. I've become addicted to the korean drama series "Love Contract", so I've watched several nights this week instead of sleeping. Not that smart, but I think we all have days or nights like this in some way.

This weekend I'll start out on a new photography project. Chris lends me her tripod for it. Mine is to weak for my big camera.


Shadow of a street light.


These slides I got back from my cross developed film. I don't even have a slide projector. LoL.

And since Big Daddy Diesel asked:


KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

Pictures, Training and Hair dying (long post)

Good evening. I'm pretty late with this post, I know. To console you:

Me, right now bleaching the rest of my hair, because we ran out of the necessary product Saturday morning while bleaching. So for 56 hours I've had dalmatian hair. (Funnily, I actually quite like this picture of me.)

So Saturday started off with some stress due to the incomplete hair dying, right afterwards I hurried into the city to get the necessary chemicals to complete the hair job and some other stuff. (Yesterday I decided to give my skin one day more for recovery.) Especially I needed the ingredients for my salad for my friends birthday party. And dare I say it. My salad was the most healthy dish on the whole buffet. Okay, there were some raw tomatoes there too, but the rest was artery clogging stuff. We've had fun nonetheless and got lucky with the weather, with rain gone right when we wanted to start the BBQ. I got home at 10 PM, since it was a mixed birthday, both my friends (she 31 and he 30) and their son (3) were celebrating. So lots of kids and the whole family, naturally with all the little kids it ended early and I stayed on to help clear up. Yep, I'm that kind of friend who stays long enough after the party to clean up. :-D

Yesterday was training. It's embarrassing to confess but at the moment I only "train" once a week. Yesterday was cycling with Chris. At 10 AM I was supposed to pick her up, I got up at 9:45 AM, brushed my teeth, drank my proteine shake, got into my gear (luckily I had found my bike gloves last week, it was freezing yesterday) and left the house 10:02 AM. I got my bike out and headed over to Chris and woke her up. Yep, she had fallen back asleep. Like I said, yesterdays weather wasn't exactly nice. When I left my parents it was dry, when I got to Chris (6min later) it started to drizzle and when she finally got her bike out 15 min later it rained in earnest. We've decided to train anyway (yep, we are that hard athletes!), but went for a small round. Luckily 10 minutes later the raining stopped and we continued on to the Markkleeberger See.

We both were lacking strength yesterday. I think mine was due to insufficient hydration, since I only had my proteine shake and no water or tea before heading out. In any case the fierce headwind didn't make matters better. When we got to the wild water rafting station they had training and we could go in and watch. For 10 or 15 minutes we watched and I took some pretty amazing pics (you'll find them at the end of this post).

While I love the pics, I hate what this standing there did to my muscles, they got so hard that I had to walk my bike up the hill, there was just no way to get up on my bike. We had decided to get back over Güldengossa and the southern battlefield. For those of you who didn't know, Leipzig had a major showdown with Napoleon. We've even got a huge monument to prove it.

(okay got out the hair bleach)
So after I got back on the bike we drove through Güldengossa, Wachau and back through Markkleeberg to Leipzig. Which was supposed to be a short trip, ended up quite long. ;-) Though I can't tell you the distance (maybe 15k), here are my other stats:
time: 1:52 hrs (including photo stops)
in zone: 1:07 hrs (told you the day was a bit off, my HR skyrocketet several times)
HR: 129 bpm

When I got home it was noon and since lunch wasn't ready, I just drank my magnesium drink and took a two hour nap. Somehow yesterday was nap day, because right after lunch I was so tired again, that I just took another one.

On the late afternoon I started with what turned out to be a korean movie marathon on youtube, I forgot to eat Dinner and got to bed at 3 in the morning. I had to get up 6:30 again. Now you know why I'm this late.

My knee didn't take the walking on Saturday and yesterdays training too well, it hurt yesterday evening again. >:-(


Okay here are the promised pictures.











For me the BEST picture!









No, she didn't try to stay in my focus. LoL.

Hope you like them.

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

Just a "short" note

Except for a bit of strength training consisting of intelligent squats and another leg drill, I haven't done any training this week (not counting in the walking barefoot in ballet flats).

To make matters even worse I have eaten lots of unhealthy stuff over the course of the last two days. Apple milk rice (yummy but practically only carbs), easter chocolate bunnies (always head first, I'm such a killer ;-P) and 2 Bagels (cinnamon/raisin, chocolate) because they came fresh out of the oven (the smell was to die for).

On the up side I finally bought an iodine supplement again and I even drank my magnesium drink first thing this morning (for that I ended up nearly puking, my stomach isn't used to chemistry right from the start;-) to make up for it I ate a plum, but I still think my stomach is a bit mad at me.

Until Sunday morning there will be no training except for the squats, because there are still 3 applications waiting to be written, I have to bleach my hair (No. 1 priority! ;-P Hey, I'm a girl! *snicker*), my grandpas birthday is tomorrow and my friends birthday celebration too, for which I have agreed to make a salad (it will be a pak choy and sprouts salad with strawberry-mustard-vinaigrette). Sunday morning Chris and I will take our bikes for a ride and this remembers me, that I have forgotten to call my bike dealer for the repair of my gear shift. Darn it.

Another positive thing, the fashion company at which I applied didn't reject me right out of hand. Wahoo.

And my knee seems to come around too. Double Wahoo.

Okay, I have to finish the documentation of our block heat and power plant project. (Boring!)

What are your weekend plans?

Have a fun and relaxed weekend and a happy hello to my new readers, glad you are here.

Keep Moving Forward!

Superheavy?!

I forgot to weigh myself on Monday and yesterday so I did today. And wouldn't you know it, the easter sweets took it's toll.

65,5 kg Damn it!

On the up side, my skin is muuuuuuch better since I skip cereals. Now all I have to do is getting rid of the sweets and move my butt and I'll get rid of the body fat. Mmh, easier sat than done. But I'll succeed. Just you wait and see... Haha. I've watched Jamie Olivers Food Revolution on Monday. This was sooo eye opening.


Guess what, american and russian physicists collaborated and finally found the missing and superheavy element 117. You'll find the news at physorg.com. No, this isn't triathlon-related in general, but since I am interested in both it is now linked. Hahaha.


(http://chemistryandphysics.astate.edu/teaney/S07_Nuclear/First_Gold_Beam-Beam_Collision_Events_at_RHIC_at_100_100_GeV_c_per_beam_recorded_by_STAR.jpg)

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!