Blue Mondays are bra uncomfortable

Master's
Disgruntled.
                   Frustrated.
                                      I've forgotten a lot since I wrote my proposal.
                                                          Working hard to get that knowledge back.
                                                                             First deadline will not be met.

Project 36
It seems rather obvious, but when you lose fat percentages and weight the size goes too. Now, I wouldn't say that I've dropped a size, but my clothes are definitely getting more baggy and generally loose. So I'm doing the baggy clothes look. It's a fashion statement, I promise!

I've made up my mind to buy as few clothes as possible since I'm losing weight steadily. Which gets us to the subject of  bras. You have been warned. This is the topic of the rest of this section.

Corsets - taken from Wikicommons

As any lady knows, once a brassiere is no longer comfortable it is constantly uncomfortable. Like armour (what else is the under wire for?) it can bite you, chafe you and/or dig into your ribs. Also, like a decent suit of armour, proper bras are expensive, especially if you are an odd size (guessing by models, larger than a B cup).The expense dissuades you from needlessly acquiring more brassiere armour. You hold out as long as you can.

This gold jewel brassiere only costs a million bucks and looks like armour

Did you know?
Playtex has brought out a new collection. "The D-G collection is designed to compliment the curves of women with a generous bust". The collection is affordable (in the R200 range) compared to some of the other options. And the bras are pretty.

A last word of wisdom: Bras are like shoes. You have to wear them in.

Lazy day or lazy me?

Gym
After my own series of unfortunate events (nothing on the Lemony Snicket scale) I went back  to gym today. My routine starts with 10 to 15 minutes on the recumbent exercise bicycle. Sitting back and pedalling is better for my knees than peddling on the normal exercise bicycles. Don't ask me to explain; the biokineticists at the gym said so so it must be true.

Someone at bikerumor.com made a recumbent office bicycle, but that's not the model we have at my gym

I felt rather chirpy at the gym. For starters, my eating plan means that I have energy throughout the day so it didn't take Herculean willpower to do my exercises. I also show less leg in all my exercises - a few centimetres of leg have gone astray.

I decided against posting a picture showing how my tummy doesn't show since it would be too breast-oriented

After happily pedalling to nowhere (or "spinning" in gym speak) I have 10 to 15 minutes on the treadmill. My instructions are to work up a light sweat and not be out of breath. (See my cunning avoidance of mentioning my level of (un)fitness). What I did enjoy was a  new, smaller (by 5) answer to a little, annoying question the exercise machines love  to ask:

Funny how I can never get the answer to the last question

Master's
After being productive and feeling brainy all weekend, today was a wash out as far as working on the Master's was concerned. I read articles on Cracked.com. Snoozed in the sun. Got weekdays and weekend all mixed up. The guilt might make me attempt a second spate of productiveness tonight. Or I'll just be virtuous again tomorrow. After all, making an admission like this on the Internet means that some of the people who are unhealthily interested in my Master's progress can see it too...

This dilemma reminds me of the trouble dolls my mother gave me when she came back from her trip to America.

Cute, aren't they?

The idea is that you tell one trouble to each doll at night (my mom bought six so that's how many troubles I'm allowed to have a day). The dolls will help to solve your troubles. From owning my own trouble dolls I can add one extra smidgeon of information: you can only tell the dolls about the same trouble so many times before you start doing something about them.

Studying in Paradise

Master's
The house I live in now used to belong to my grandfather. He always said that he lived in Paradise with his friends, the birds. I have to agree. Today was a perfect autumn day. My clothes felt fresh and warm from drying in the sun. I had the privilege to work on my Master's in the garden under the Jacaranda. The day was mild enough that I had my head in the shade, but my legs could be poked out into the warm, soothing sun.

Ye olde techno peasant notebook in beautiful surroundings

Project 36
The only part that marred the effect of being able to study in utopic surroundings is that I'm ravenous most of the time. I kept on having to get up every so often to search for sustenance.Yep, I've gone from feeling hungry to starving. The first three weeks of following my eating plan were invested in forcing myself to eat regularly. Now I have more portions to eat, but I have to exercise self-control not to overeat. Vegetables cooked with only herbs and water don't count as portions - so my veggie intake has gone up quite a bit for those times when I just need to fill the stomach and not take in additional carbohydrates.

Supposedly the increase in hunger shows an increase in metabolism. I would be sceptic, but I've put in a valiant effort to remember the last time is that I was constantly hungry - my early teens. I don't think that this means that another growth spurt is on the way (pity, since a little extra height wouldn't hurt). But it is the kind of hunger that occurred just before the puppy fat went. Let's hope!

Assumption is the mother of all...

Master's
There are only two weeks left before my chapter has to be in so the pressure is on. I've made up my mind that if I cannot make my deadlines I will give up the Master's, hide from those who have threatened me with death should I fail to complete the Master's, and start working again. So this morning I got up, meandered through the house and tried to wake up so I could write and be productive and generally virtuous.

Only to encounter... the irritable mother. As stated in my last post, Upcon ate up more time than anticipated. The nice bronchitis and the strong antibiotics also ensured that I was "'n nul op 'n kontrak" (literally, a zero on a contract or useless) last week. (Also why there were no gym updates.) So back to this morning. Groggy Dina gets her tea (the mother washes the dishes at me in the kitchen), switches on her notebook and opens Word (2007). The Force warns me of a malevolent presence at the living room door. I look up to see the mother giving me the evil eye.

At this point the virtue I aimed at is not yet in place. My Jedi powers are weak. I am neither a saint nor particularly awake so I demand what's wrong. Apparently my mother thought I was on Facebook (naturally, since she's an addict) and was angry because I "wasn't working on my Master's". At that point my modem wasn't even plugged in. The irony is that I'm now happily venting on my blog instead of working on the Master's. Oh well, such is life.

UPCON aftermath

As mentioned ever so briefly in my user profile, I tend to help with organising UPCON each year. This year's convention took place last weekend (7 and 8 May). Running around for the con also explains why I haven't updated my blog as frequently as usual.

Gluttony, lack of
The strangest part about being at a gaming convention was not to have an urge to suddenly consume large quantities of food. I expected at least one of the seven deadly sins this weekend, gluttony, and possibly wrath. As part of being chairperson of the Great Geek Collective (GGC) I was in and out of the kitchen to deposit money, check if the anime maids were still in one piece and occasionally hiding from the rest of the people at the convention.

The irony? I've been known to eat for comfort. I had access to all kinds of food. I only drank three cans of fizzy cool drink over the course of the weekend and, this is very weird (also read the original meaning) for me, had no urges to eat chocolate of any kind. Apparently the hot cocoa and 70% dark chocolate that I'm allowed to imbibe have lain my milk chocolate addiction to rest. For now.

Anime maids (from the University of Pretoria's Society of Anime and Manga) and Gork in the background

Borg Queen costume
The logo for the GGC was designed by Sin Bin as was my outfit for UPCON. 

Logo as designed by Sin Bin

Unfortunately I didn't get round to building suitably awesome headgear to go with the outfit and the efforts to do so on Saturday morning were a flop. Note to self: buy cyber extensions when I see them next, much less effort. Good friends saved the day by carefully inserting fuses into my hair which later fell out all over the show. It was part of my evil plan, of course. Pick them up and be assimilated!

Neville saving the day

Project 36: Le Cutie of Borg
I should have anticipated a slight problem with my outfit. Since leaving my former employer I've dropped a whopping 5 kg. And last week's visit to the dietician showed that I've lost the amount of fat equivalent to  five blocks of butter (so far). I'm also no longer at risk for developing Type II Diabetes. Hooray!

The small problem was, well, that I was smaller than anticipated. The first set of measurements were sent through while I was still a contractor. My fitting was two or three weeks before the event and everything was a perfect fit. If Sin Bin had not cleverly bought along safety pins the pants would have fallen off. Even so, after the official costume competition I opted to put on my skirt again instead of the awesome pants since  that to which I ended up pinning the pants was also looser and threatening to go down with the ship. Thanks, but no thanks.

Photo by Duane Havenga

P.S. I love those gloves. They were warm as anything, but really added to the effect. And they rocked when the temperature dropped.

Master's
UPCON took up a lot of time as did sleeping. Chapter due by end of the month. No further extracurricular activities for me for the rest of the month. Another side effect of UPCON was getting bronchitis, so antibiotics-inspired writing, here we go!