Health kick and shopping

The weekend started off quite well – went to a friend’s gig from work and she was amazing Plus it was a cheap night out as I got a lift there and back. I didn’t go to sleep until about 4am though, and then I felt quite rubbish on the Saturday. It was too late to go shopping and I went downstairs to find loads of ants in the kitchen, which put me completely off cooking or eating anything in the house! Plus 2 of my housemates moved out, so there’s only me and another guy now and he’s not been in for the past week. So I didn’t really achieve anything on Saturday except for cleaning.

Oh, and I got a new addiction – that ‘Be a tycoon’ application on facebook. I’m alternating between it and the online version of ‘Settlers of Catan’. And I also found an amazing website for downloading exercise and workout videos – exercisetv.tv. Unfortunately it didn’t occur to me until I got a warning message that downloading them would use up so much of my mobile internet bandwidth for the month, but I still have about a gig left to play with which should be enough for random browsing.

Sunday was a much better day – I put down salt to get rid of the ants which has mainly worked. And I went shopping in town and treated myself to a new long sleeve top from Animal and got a couple of cheap workout DVDs from a charity shop. The Pilates one I did the other day – it’s very soothing because it’s set on the beach with the tide coming in and out. The other is MTV Power Yoga, which is pretty hardcore and doesn’t have a warm up. I think once I learn the positions better and do a proper warm up beforehand it’ll be more enjoyable! For now I’m sticking to the ExerciseTV workouts, which are great for mixing and matching. And I can really feel the burn from the past few days!! I’m following one of their 2 week workout plans, which is helpful because then I can do the right amount and type of exercise, and be motivated to do it. I’ve downloaded a good mix of pilates, yoga, cardio, stretching, dance and other workouts so I don’t get bored.

I also bought a top which I’d been looking at a few months ago, but decided it wasn’t worth it at £32. But on Sunday I saw it reduced to £7!! And I got it home, tried it on and realised it would go perfectly with a navy blue shrug type top I got from Poland a couple of years back and have never really worn because it clashes with almost everything. So happy about that! I do need to buy some new pairs of jeans because all the ones I have are too big or have holes in. I’m waiting until I got back to Notts for that though so I can get Joe or someone to use their student discount When I got out of the outlet centre, I noticed a proper farmers’ market (small but perfectly formed). As well as fruit and veg, they had homemade doughnuts and ice cream and stuff as well. I didn’t buy anything, but I’ll definitely be back. It’s so nice having a couple of markets close by, and I’m going to make more of an effort to buy from them (especially food). Not only is it a lot cheaper, but it also hasn’t travelled thousands of miles and helps out local farmers. It’s just more convenient to buy from the supermarkets as they are open for much longer, but hopefully I’ll get out of that habit.

Now that I’m alone in the house, I’ve monopolised the kitchen space more. I bought a cheap blender, and lots of frozen and fresh fruit, and made smoothies yesterday. Lovely and chilled and fresh I’ve decided that I’m going to get back into my old good habits of cooking properly instead of just eating cereal for dinner! I also need more energy for the workouts. So I’ll probably be posting lots of my recipes – generally quite healthy, very simple, and very quick. I don’t cook meals which take more than about 20 mins total unless I’m cooking for a load of people.

I’ve also been looking into web design courses, and I have quite a few choices and things that I’m qualified for but I’m not sure what to do at the moment. There are a couple of great courses, but at 3 years long I’m not sure I want to invest the time! There’s also a master’s course I’m qualified for at a really good university, and it’s all online, but it costs £16,000 (average master’s is about £3,500 to £6,000, so it’s a lot more expensive). Then I have the option of doing a short course, but there aren’t any good ones near me, and I don’t think I can get to them whilst living/working where I am. Sigh. I think I just have to keep looking.