Learning new lessons

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So this week I signed up to Live Below the Line, a challenge to eat and drink for less than £1 a day for 5 days. It’s day 3 so far, and interesting! I’ve learned a few things:

1. I’m addicted to caffeine. I spent Day 1 caffeine free, suffered from headaches and intense someone-hit-me-with-a-pole-axe drowsiness, and then caved and spent some of the little money I had left on some tea bags. Life is normal again. But I think maybe I need to cut down on caffeine generally…

2. I can make potato farls with value instant mash potato (see photo – mash made up with water, flour, salt, marg – done).

3. Lemon squash is an entirely feasible acidic liquid when making soda bread. The result is a slightly dense, slightly lemon flavoured bread with a great crust.

4. Less is more – Mum liked my limited ingredient pasta sauce (canned toms, chilli, stock cube and onion) better than the more complicated ones I make!

5. Things like rice pudding are actually sweet enough as is.

I am missing milk in my tea, and vegetables, but otherwise so far so good…

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9 years!

Happy (belated) 9th Birthday Blog! This blog was born on 22nd April 2004. At that time I was studying, wasn’t living in my own place, talked a lot about food and my pets. Oh, how things have changed…

Not.

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Friends with faces

I’m decluttering at the moment. Partly because I have too much stuff and no living space (properly moving home to parents after having somewhere else to put stuff since 2003) and partly because having stuff grates on me. I’m a hoarder who dreams of being a minimalist. But I’m doing well – things are flying out of my life at great speed. The hardest thing to get rid of though is cuddly toys, and I have A LOT. I’ve already done one weeding through, aided by Spock thoughtfully leaving a poo to desiccate in the box of toys under my bed, thereby requiring them to be thrown. Today I’m trying to reduce them to only the truly loved toys, but I have a problem getting rid of things with faces. I’ve taken photos to preserve those leaving me for posterity…

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From left to right, Scruffy the dog who has not survived the post-poo-wash, Wombat, Sooty the puppet, Daniel (I think), Big Ben who is very difficult to get rid of but does take up a lot of space, Roland Rat, Debbie or Brian the hedgehog (I had one, Ding had the other), a unnamed sewing craft doll, a feathery puppet thing and Dicky Byrd. These chaps are all leaving for the big toybox in the sky. 🙁

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From left to right (by nose position), a rabbit I got as a grown up, Mystic the horse, Danny the rabbit, Sarah the cabbage patch doll, Timmy the dog, a rabbit I don’t know the name of, Bunnykins the troll, a teddy my Nan got me which I never bonded too but feel bad getting rid of and I don’t even remember his name, Scar, a TY leopard, Oo Oo who was always the villain in our games, a rabbit who’s name I’ve forgotten, and a furby. I hope Oo Oo finds a new home where he can be rehabilitated and isn’t hanged from the bannisters for various villainous acts.

Somewhere on the web I read a line that said something like there are enough real things with feelings in the world to be spending time worrying about and trying to help, instead of agonising over the fate of cuddly toys. Which is a good point. However it’s still really hard to get rid of things with faces! *flails*

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Arise, Sir Soda Bread!

So it’s been a while. Rather than trying a massive recap post of boredom I’ll gradually add stories and tales of the last n months as and when.

So instead, I present my latest endeavor, early stages. I am obsessed with baking bread at the moment, thanks to the Silver Fox of baking, Paul Hollywood. However, I am also on a diet. Bread is not conducive to diet. This is the early stages of the endeavour, when I just bake bread and tally up calories, to gain an appreciation of what I’m eating when I eat half a 500g loaf in one sitting.

First loaf in my repertoire was a bloomer from Paul’s bread show (BBC website) cooked for Easter Sunday family meal. Kitchen is too cold to raise things (and yeast went out of date in August 2012 but we know I’m stubborn so move on) so when it failed to rise brilliantly I knocked it back, added another sachet of yeast and put in it front of the halogen heater, which caused it to rise (perhaps too fast but can’t argue). Result was a reasonable if every so slightly dense loaf. Pictures are elsewhere, but just envisage a bloomer and you’re about accurate.

Second loaf:

Focaccia (from River Cottage Bread)

500g strong white bread flour – 1800kcal
1tbsp olive oil in dough – 124kcal
liberal splashings of olive oil for kneading – say another 2tbsp – 248kcal
7g yeast
10g table salt
240ml water
for garnish – olive oil (stopped counting at this point), rosemary leaves and flakey salt
Total – 2172kcal (217kcal a serving?)

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I didn’t count the servings, but if you cut this into 10 bits that’s 217kcal a bit. We probably did cut it into about 14 bits, but didn’t always stop at one bit…

Lessons learnt – I used extra virgin olive oil. Don’t use extra virgin, use normal. Cooked extra virgin has an ever so slight bitter taste to it. Otherwise, easy recipe, recommended.

And now my latest/current attempt, in the oven as we speak. I call this:

Kai-doesn’t-have-any-buttermilk-but-is-too-lazy-to-go-buy-some-and-too-stubborn-to-bake-something-else Soda Bread (debatably from Paul Hollywood How To Bake but with modifications)

500g plain flour – 1800kcal
1tsp bicarb
1tsp salt
200g fat free fromage frais – 100kcal
~200ml skimmed milk – 70kcal
splash of vinegar (i.e. when you suddenly remember after forming a dough that you need more acid because milk isn’t very acidic)
Total – 1970kcal (serving info to follow once we start eating it)
848g – 232kcal per 100g. Taste-wise, needs a bit more salt?

FYI 400ml Sainsbury’s buttermilk is 236kcal, versus this combo of 170kcal.

Cross fingers and hope it rises (photo at 5 minutes baking).

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Arise, Sir Soda Bread! 30 mins as per recipe and sounding hollow = done, but leaving it in now to brown a bit.

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Well, can’t say it didn’t rise! I appear to have made a giant scone…

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We like tha moooon!

I’d like to tell you a story. It’s a story of great destruction, but also of rebirth, and even features drunken debauchery. It’s thought to be a true story.

Once upon a time, there was a star. It was fairly unremarkable, forming on the edge of an average galaxy. Around it formed a handful of rocky planets, asteroids, comets and gas giants. The star has its own story, which I may tell later. This is not a story about the star. This is the story about an unlikely partnership that resulted in an equally most unlikely outcome. This is a story about the Moon.

Back when the Earth was new, it was a ball of molten burning rock. It had no satellites of its own; it was bored and alone.

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As bad luck would have it, it turned out that the Earth was not actually alone. Another planet, called Theia, had veered into its path. Theia was smaller than the Earth, but was still about the size of Mars; this wasn’t some poxy little civilisation-ending asteroid, this was a bone fide proper planet, and it was on a collision course with early Earth.

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The collision was a glancing blow, full on enough to blast Theia to smithereens and rearrange Earth’s face in no uncertain terms, but not so full on that the two planets annihilated each other to form an asteroid belt. The resultant spew of rock and planet innards went into orbit around the damaged Earth, and gradually coalesced into a ball of rock. The collision also knocked Earth off kilter, putting it at an angle of around 21-23 degrees; it’s still wobbling about between those values.

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The Moon was very close to the Earth at this point, and the Earth was spinning like a top – a day lasted only around 5 hours. Both were still molten hot, and the huge red glowing Moon rising rapidly in the airless sky of Earth would have been remarkable. Eventually though, both Earth and Moon chilled out. They stopped burning, the Moon cooled right down as it was small enough that the heat caused by gravity wasn’t enough to keep its core burning, and the Earth formed a thin crust of cool surface over an interior still heated by the force of gravity. At this point the Earth had no atmosphere, no liquid water. Water had been brought to the planet by colliding comets, but all in all it wasn’t looking great for the ball of rock. However the collision with Theia had had a curious side-effect; the neat layers of metal and rock that made up the planet were blasted apart, and the inner layers of iron had been splattered out of the planet, onto the surface. Iron is incredibly reactive (think rust), and it reacted to form the early atmosphere of Earth. Methane and other gasses important to life were created, and the formation of air combined with the cooling Earth allowed comet water to condense. The oceans started to fill…

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Meanwhile, asteroids and other bits of celestial rubbish were going on rampant joy rides around the solar system, crashing into anything in their path. They bombarded the Earth, however the Earth had a protector. For some reason the Moon had formed so that its rotation about its axis was the same as its orbit around the Earth – it only ever faced one side towards the Earth. It wasn’t until astronauts got to see the ‘dark’ side of the Moon (which isn’t necessarily dark – it’s only called that because we can’t see it from Earth) they realised it was completely pock marked with craters; every crater representing an asteroid that didn’t hit the Earth, stopping life in it’s tracks. That was rather nice of the Moon.

So things cooled and stabilised. The tilt caused by the collision with Theia was maintained by the Moon; like spinning around holding a weight, the action of the Moon orbit gyroscopically stabilises the Earth’s natural wobble. If the Moon moves further away (which it is, at a rate of about 3cm a year) the wobble will worsen. Mars doesn’t have a big Moon to stabilise its wobble, it only has two potato shaped tiny rocks orbiting it. Although Mars is currently about about 20-25 degrees like us, it has been up to 60 degrees tilted in the past. Go home, Mars, you’re drunk.

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The lack of wobble is important. If Earth wobbled over to 90 degrees for example, for 3 months of the year the South Pole would point directly at the sun for 24 hours of the day, whilst the North Pole spent the time in darkness. The side facing the sun would cook for half a year, then freeze for the other half. Such extremes are not conducive to existing life (although there are things that can cope with hot and things that can cope with cold, there isn’t much on this planet that can cope with hot AND cold), and they also aren’t conducive to life starting. Evolution needs longer than a year to adapt to climate change. So – wobble bad, Moon good. Don’t worry though – the Moon will need to be a good several thousand miles further away before Earth starts to wobble, and at 3cm per year that’s going to take a while. The tilt has another effect of course – it gives us our seasons. Not required for life, but fun.

Are you wondering how an Earth with a 5 hour day and a stupidly close Moon became an Earth with a 24 hour day and a Moon at a respectable 0.25 million miles away? If not you should be. It’s fascinating. This brings us onto the gravity thing. Gravity is the attraction between two masses. It’s incredibly weak compared to other forces of attraction and repellingness – your hair will stand on end with static electricity, a repulsive force, easily combatting the effect of gravity on your hair. You can use a magnet to pick up a weight; the magnet easily overcomes the gravitational pull of an entire planet. However if you get two big things (say, oh, I don’t know, the Earth and the Moon) the forces start to mix things up. As the Moon orbits it attracts the ocean, tugging a tidal bulge up away from the Earth. The Earth is spinning fast, and the Moon is orbiting slower, so the bulge is being dragged backwards around the Earth as it spins. This friction acts as a brake on the Earth, slowing it down, so a day is getting longer and longer (though so slowly it’s been 24 hours for the entirety of human existence). However a second effect occurs; the tidal bulge is so big itself that it has its own gravity, and as it’s slightly in front of the Moon thanks to the Earth spinning forward underneath it, it pulls at the Moon, speeding it up. When orbiting things speed up, they get pulled outward, thus the moon is moving away. Picture time!

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Yes, there is more to say about this picture. The distance the Moon is from the Earth results in a specific amount of tide. Any less, and we wouldn’t have tides. Any more, and at high tide every day England would disappear under a huge wave of water. This matters, and not just for those in England. The effect of tides on rock pools are thought to be responsible for life on Earth. Think primordial soup. With clams. The water rushes in, the water rushes out, the sun warms, the UV light causes chemicals to react and BOOM – amino acids. The building blocks of life, made in a pool. This is a controversial theory, but I like it, and it’s better than the one about the flying spaghetti monster. However, if tides were too high, you end up with the extremes issue again – rapidly changing extremes and life are not happy friends. So, if the theory is correct, the Moon was just at the right distance for life to occur when it did.

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So there we are. We have a large Moon that promoted early life by its own creation bringing metals to the surface that in turn gave us water and air, by causing tides to allow life to begin, protecting early life by absorbing asteroid bombardment and continued protection by stabilising the tilt of our planet. The very existence of life on this planet is a massive series of coincidences, aided by the Moon. Oh, and the best bit? The Moon is 400 times smaller than the star we orbit, and it also happens to be 400 times closer to us than said star; any deviation from this and it wouldn’t work, and remember, the Moon is moving away from us all the time. This fact that this also occured just at the point we happened to evolve and look up; one of the greatest natural wonders – the solar eclipse – is a great cosmic coinscidence.

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Dear Life, FYI, you = complete

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Yah. That was my Shatism. Yeah, that was it being linked to by William Shatner. Fo reel.

What’s it all about, Alfie?

I may be a little giddy. Just a bit.

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Festival of Light

My favourite holiday 🙂 Fireworks! Whether it be for Guy Fawkes or Diwali I love the festival of burning and exploding things in preparation to the looming Winter. Plus it curtails a prolonged Halloween, which is always good (people knocking on my door uninvited is never a recipe for a welcome holiday). Bring on Yule!

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Blue skies, smiling at me, nothing but blue skies, do I see…

Well. What to say. What a day!

We got in, didn’t manage to get into the talks but then we’d have to have woken up even earlier before dawn to have achieved that. Hopefully there’s a DVD version as apparently they were excellent. We got in just after 9, queued for Stage B talks with a random pleasant Sheffieldian who was on her third day of trying to get into some talks at least, until we heard along the queue grapevine that Brent had sold out. Then we went on an autograph hunt. As so many people were in the Stage B queue we found the Captains’ autograph area generally empty – the staff actually looked confused if we asked for a ticket rather than just joining the open queue that was there! First we went to William Shatner. There’s not much time for the captains so all Bill does is sign, but AnM got a fantastic shot of him with me there. He looked at me with that sort of soft expression he has (which I have on FB characterised as if I had just given him a kitten) and said “Thank you so very much” – I have no idea what I was being thanked for but I expect I was staring at him with the same “wow a kitten!” expression. He was adorable! Next was Patrick Stewart, who sadly couldn’t really hear my still-too-scared-to-talk-at-normal-volume voice over the noise of the crowd, but he did pick up that I was talking about The Tempest. Last of the Captains was Kate Mulgrew, who was really lovely – she called me sweetheart twice, although bear in mind all I could think of to say was “I really like your hairstyle?!?!! hashfangirlflail” I particularly like AnM’s photo of me at this point as Kate looks slightly bewildered and my head and hands are blurred, mid-flail. But it was still fantastic.

The hall itself was… ok. There were two bars which were half-heartedly themed as Klingon and Fed bars, plus a museum and some trade stands. With the exception of Stage B talks which we could have benefited from having multiple day passes i.e. multiple chances to queue, I’m glad we only had day tickets, as beyond autographs and photo shoots there wasn’t much to keep your attention for more than an hour. The museum was mostly someone’s collection, and everything else was a bit half-baked. I realise that I justified the entrance fee by considering it an access to the autographs – had I not got autographs and got to meet the guests I possibly would have wondered what I’d paid for. However, since I got very autograph happy, that wasn’t an issue 😉

Then I think we dallied for a bit as Brent was still in his talk. We may have gone window shopping. Oh I had at some point gone to get some fake voucher money for autographs and came back with said fake money and a Brent Spiner photo shoot ticket (how did that end up in there?!) Eventually he came back and we went to get his autograph. He was just lovely – he makes an attempt to interact with everyone and for me he commented on the lack of letters in my name – lack of n’s, no e. I said I was downsizing, he approved. <3! AnM got his autograph too - handily I'd brought all my spare printed photos. I was having a dithery moment of whether to buy more autographs, and so while my brain stalled and tumbleweed rolled by we sat down for a bit. Randomly two girls from our old school walked up to us and said Hi, which threw me totally but was lovely! We chatted a bit - they'd been here three days and said Friday was the best - loads of time with each guest etc. I do suspect that with minimum 4/17000 representatives from our school we were perhaps the most represented alumni of a grammar school there. Then, the second highlight of my day (the first being chatting to Brent Spiner). The photo shoot with said same Brent Spiner. We got there early, and ended up getting told to go sit down and that they'd call us in groups of 50. With ticket 411 we though we should sit down. However then people started just freely queuing, so I wandered in and joined the queue. The girl behind me (aka Wocket) struck up conversation over our jewellery; her necklace matched my earrings, and for the half hour we stood there we got along famously. Talked about genesis theories, fanfiction, Transformers, jobs, cats, and maybe just a little of Star Trek. As I fail at having pockets, let alone a phone, pen or paper we had to wait until we'd gone through the photo shoot to swap FB details. As for the photo shoot, Brent put his arm around everyone and I've no idea if it was allowed but I certainly put my arm around his back 😀 <3 <3 Not the most flattering lighting for me but I think it came out well. Again he was lovely - I can't remember what he said but he made the effort to say it. He called Wocket "babe" - she has a great standby line "I hope you enjoy the convention" which apparently I need to learn. After bouncing enthusiastically out of the photo shoot we made our way to AnM and attempted fruitlessly to swap FB details, reverting in the end to pen and paper. How archaic. AnM and I then left the hall to huntergather and found pie (there was a pie bush), which was rather nice. I can't remember if this was before lunch or after but I did eventually decide that I would get John de Lancie, Michael Dorn and Denise Crosby's autograph, partly because they had no queues (a Q with no queue?!). John and Michael were very quiet, but I choose to believe this is because I was struck dumb and unable to talk, and expecting all guests to carry the conversation is naive 😉 John looked at the slightly dodgy picture for a long while before signing - it was the only high res image I could find online and it clearly had stripes on it from being taken from an old TV set. Denise however was lovely, despite my unintentional insult "I don't have a picture of you, I ran out of photos!" Smooth. She even posed for a photo with me. Lovely lady! And wow she almost looks how she did when playing Tasha Yar, some 20-odd years ago. After lunch we returned to the Brent queue for me to get my new photo shoot picture signed. He had a huge 1hr queue (the crewmember manning his VQ deserves major props for his bright attitude and reliable predictions of waits) so we wandered off to Stage C to see a talk by Richard Arnold. It was a pretty interesting talk - all about the years he worked with Gene Rodenberry. It also had info in about the way Paramount mistreated the old Star Trek folk, which was pretty shocking. All very eye opening, although they did finish amicably. I also learned about the number 47 - apparently it's an in joke - almost every episode has the number 47 in it. Species 8472, 47 Baku abducted (Dad spotted that one!), 47 people saved, planet 4 having 7 moons etc. Lastly we went back to Brent to get my photo shoot photo signed. And of course I talked nonsense instead of what I wanted to say. Which is fine, he talked nonsense too. He was still lovely, despite it being about 3.30pm on day 3. Le sigh 🙂 Having spent more than was sensible we decided then to make like a tree and go. I now have an inexplicable urge to tour the US attending Star Trek conventions... which considering how much I hate flying is saying something. SPOILER FOR NEMESIS - IN PLACE FOR DING! * * * * * * SPOILER FOR NEMESIS - IN PLACE FOR DING! I re-watched Nemesis (sort of - was also surfing. FYI title of blog is a song Data sings in it) tonight, and I realised something had changed. Previously (bearing in mind I'd last watched in on Wednesday before the Con so 'previously' is fairly recent) at the point of Data's last scene I'd felt bereft (read: I was in floods of tears). This time, having met Brent Spiner, it's like my brain accepted they were separate, and the "Goodbye" was from Data, not Brent. Which I realise is tremendously gushy and I may review and edit this in the morning lol, but there we are. There is life after Trek.

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To boldly go…

There always has to be a Next Post, and it always feels wrong (especially when it’s an upbeat one), but there has to be one.

I am very, very excited. Naturally this isn’t very obvious outwardly as I’m generally calm, but I can assure you – I am. I’ve been catching up with my Star Trek film box set over the last two weeks, plus Pick has been showing episodes of TNG; so I’ve been thinking about Star Trek more so than usual. Today while mid-work I randomly stuck “Star Trek convention UK” into Google, on a whim, just to see if they ever occurred. And, lo and behold there is a convention. A UK one. A Star Trek one. In London (down the road from me). And it started today.

😯

Now if that isn’t spooky, I don’t know what is. I dithered a bit, I do hate to be spontaneous after all, but when I saw that Brent Spiner (<3) would be there, as well as Patrick Stewart, Kate Mulgrew, John de Lancie and William Shatner, and you can pay to get autographs and MEET THEM – well, I was sold. There were tickets available for Sunday, so I bought one, then found out Ammie could attend also, and bought a second. So, in the last four hours I’ve gone from girl who was planning to maybe plant some brassica seedlings out into the lottie this weekend, if the rain held off for an hour or so, to girl who is potentially meeting some of her life heroes on Sunday.

If she’s brave enough to actually meet them. And she’ll have to be brave enough. Because frankly, Trek conventions in the UK are rare, her ability to spot them is limited (as evident by only spotting this one today), and this is a special year (25th Anniversary of TNG) so there are an unusual number of said heroes present. This is it. To boldly go, and all that.

SQUEEEEEEEEEEE!

Memo: don’t introduce yourself as Kai. It’s more weird when people might actually recognise the reference.

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Special boy

Thomas Alan Sidney
Spring 1999 – 5th October 2012

Following approximately a year of worsening health, culminating in a diagnosis of lymphoma six weeks ago, we said goodbye to Thomas on Friday. Such a brave boy, he kept purring right to the end. We plan to bury his ashes outdoors so he can enjoy the sunshine forever.

Sleep well, our special boy. We all love you so very very much.

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