After that I was decided… caffeine and taurine must go!

By the afternoon after my last drug filled beverage I felt quite rubbish, almost depressed/lethargic and with a headache.  (Is this the caffeine withdrawal?)

On day 2, I feel much more alive but I’ve been very thirsty and have a bit of a headache again by late afternoon. Slept a bit better last night too.

From reading around, it looks like it’ll be day 5 till my brain chemistry is back to normal – scary.

Wish me luck…right now, I either need a nap, or a cherry coke…

So here it is reproduced with kind permission from my mother (who had it published a LONG time ago in a little book) for all to enjoy:

• Sausage meat (1/4 kg)
• Onions (1 large one)
• dried Sage
• Tin of baked beans
• potatoes (1/2 kg)

Note: the amounts weren’t in the original notes for some reason.

Fry the onions. Boil & mash potatoes.

Put all ingredients in a casserole dish in the following order :-

sausage meat, fried onions, dried sage (to taste), beans.

Top with mashed potatoes.

Cook for 35 to 40 mins at 190 degress C

Eat + Enjoy!

It’s chinese year of the TIGER… grrrr. Came out of my house to see a dragon earlier – COOOL! Missed it the last few years, video below.

So for me, as usual, I set my resolutions at CNY – mainly because, the start of the years always a weird point to do things and there’s always lots going on.

Last years “no platic bags” was generally good, hard at first but worked out. The greener me went well, sold the car (saved bucks and the environment) and I made some good progress on a number of projects.

So what for this year?

1) No more Mr Nice Guy – I’m taking a much firmer, no-nonsense approach with companies that don’t pay up on time. Training is all paid up front anyway,  as it has been, but no longer am I going to tread gently with organisations that take months paying. My payment terms for project work remain 50% up-front, but I won’t do ANYTHING till that’s paid now (no strategy meets esp.) and 50% on completion -  BUT I’m adding a discount for people that pay within 7 days of the invoice… and using the EU 8%+BR+£30 per overdue invoice.

2) More Mr Nice Guy – I kept this pretty quiet, but I wrote an eBook and a publishing agent has got interested – if I can write a draft of a full book by april, he’ll take it to the London book fair – yikes.

3) More downtime – been working faaaaaar too many hours, saying no to a few things.

4) A charity challenge – any suggestions for this year?

Hey ho… not sure anyone reads here anymore – if you do, say hi.

Luke

Now that seemed quite a large number to me, being more than one every other week.. it did make me wonder how many I used before.

Time to start planning this years resolutions, as with most years I’ll be setting them on chinese new year.

Can’t wait till February… damn new years resolution swimmers were clogging up my lanes last night!

I will start using this again in the new year, I’ve finally nailed the techy stuff I’ve been struggling with and I’llupdate here soon.
All I have to add is that I’ve only used 32 new carrier bags this year, something I’m quite proud of.

What to resolve for 2010???

According to our beloved Echo there is a crime wave happening to local businesses because of the recession.

27 crimes in 2007

38 crimes in 2008

20 crimes in 6 months of 2009

Really? Thats quite a leap of faith – how exactly can that be linked to the recession?

If you could show that there were approx 18 crimes in the first 8 months of 2008  and then a jump in the last 4 months to 20… continuing at that level for the first 6 months would of been 30 reported crimes not 20 in 2009.

That could be argued to demonstrate a trend, the fact that these 6 months seem consistent with the last 4 months of 2008  (Remembering that 8 months of 2008 were NOT in a recession).

You could also argue that the crime levels should still be rising as the effect to the “man on the street” happens after the point at which we technically enter a recession – redundancies didn’t really start till the beginning of 2009 so really, it would need to show a more significant rise as of this year than in 2008 at all.

Pah.

My march to more sustainable, responsible living continues:

1) No more carrier bags – win
– used 2 since June, donated the first half of the money to Julia’s House for the parachute jump. Its actually quite hard to break the habit, try it.

2) Sell the car – done
- A few reasons, but mainly –> I don’t need one! I was getting lazy and using it when I didn’t need. So I sold it. Also to encourage me to plan a bit better and use public transport (I get loads done on the train). I’m going to work out how much it cost me to run across the year and compare to a year without.

3) Own an electric car by 2012 – that’s the plan… if someone can make one that does > 100 miles!

4) Do more meetings over the web – I’m trying to cut down some of the meetings I do that I don’t really need to do face-to-face. First proper one this Wednesday.

5) Don’t eat air-freighted food – bye bye sugar snap peas

6) Your ideas – suggestions please.

ROBOT DANCE
At 12.30pm on Monday 13 July 2009 in the courtyard at KUBE.

We will be attempting to break the official Guinness World Record for the LARGEST NUMBER OF PEOPLE ROBOT-DANCING AT ONCE… and you are invited to come and help us make robot-dancing history!

The official rules are:

- Everybody must be dressed as a robotof some description, so tin-foil hats, cardboard heads, washing machine tube arms, pipe-cleaner antennas and neon clothing are strongly encouraged.

- With the above rule in mind, if you turn up dressed as a human then one of our volunteers WILL ambush you with silver tin-foil – be warned!

- We must dance for at least 5 minutes in a robotic manner.

- You must sign in on arrival so that we have an official count of numbers.

- Please arrive for 12.30pm, we may have a run-through first to get us in the pop-locking mood and possibly require a second attempt, so please allow until around 1.30pm to complete the attempt.

- There will be a ready-prepared routine to follow so don’t worry about choreographing your own routine or not knowing the moves! Just follow our lead! It’s very simple and doesn’t require any dancing experience or skill!

- The attempt will take place in the KUBE Courtyard.

- Please be aware that the attempt will be being filmed by artists and press and photographed and may be broadcast later in public or on television (you can always wear a robot mask if you’re shy!)

- PLEASE BRING FRIENDS / COLLEAGUES / FAMILY / NEIGHBOURS / KIDS / ROBOTS – to break the current record we need 300 people or more. The more the merrier. Recruit passing strangers on your way!

You can still sponsor me