Where has this holiday gone?
I was worried at the beginning that I would be bored with no work to do, but I have managed to keep myself pretty busy, first, by completing my work on a project with my supervisor at Middlesex and second, by trying to get the house in some order. Having kids means that our house is never in a state of order for more than about five minutes or until the girls wake up, but given my obsessive tendencies, this drives me crazy. I hate when dishes are out, I hate when the floor is dirty, I hate when things aren't put away. I also hate that in this house which we are renting with about 30% more furniture than I think is actually needed, I'm always stumbling over something. Why the hell is there a chair in front of the door?
I have been, little by little, trying to solve these problems. Today it was putting some chairs up in the attic and while doing that, sorting out the garage a little bit. The garage is a mess too, also full of things that belong to the house, so throwing anything away is not a possibility. I cleaned out the garden moving like 50 kgs of dirt to the recycling centre and then the inside of the car. I organised the desk when the hard disk died.
We also have been doing some fun things and by fun, I mean leaving the house under the pretense of doing something fun. Last week was Stonehenge, yesterday the pool which allowed me to lose a bit of my farmer's tan and see Yoko in her new swimming suit. This weekend we cycled about 30 miles, which was good exercise and good fun. I think more cycling is in the cards today.
I'm ready to get back to work on my article though and start making some decisions about my data set, analytic methods, etc. By the end of September, I hope to have all the bad blood responsibilities I've taken on over the last year finished and focus on three things in the 2010-2011 school year: PhD, teaching, and one committee for a visual methods conference next year. No book reviews. No extra work. No helping put anything else on. I'm going to focus. I can say no — watch me.
I've also been trying to keep up my diet and get back under 81 kgs and a healthy BMI, which is going okay. I realised yesterday that I had seriously misunderstood what a resting metabolism rate is and this is probably why I have been having bad headaches. Especially on Sunday. Shit. I thought I was going to die. I guess I can eat more than I thought. The problem is, of course, like in April when I was running so much, I would have to eat more. And eating more is fine, so long as you are running it off. Well, stop running and the habit of eating is still there. So I am exercising a bit less this time around and focusing on eating well. It's something I need (underscore need) to get under control at this point in my life, or I'm going to have a wicked tough time staying healthy into my thirties. This year has been better: I started exercising in April and with the exception of June have been doing pretty good.