Kindle guilt

I think today I crossed over to the dark side. I was getting the train to work and I picked up the book I’m currently reading. It’s a massive, hardback beast of a book and it wouldn’t even fit in the bag I took today. And then the bad thought popped into my head. Maybe I should just get it on Kindle instead…

I have a Kindle, I really like it. However, I tend to only use for reading the classics that you can get free (and occasionally some legally-dubious ones that my father-in-law got off a colleague, but let’s not mention them!). For all my other reading needs I go to the library. I’ve spoken about my reasons for this before – no space for books, I don’t reread them, saves money, blah blah - I like my library.

I’ve never swapped an actual book for the electronic version of the same book before. It feels like the first step on a slippery slope which ends with my wrists becoming too weak to hold up normal books and me forgetting how to turn actual pages.

P.S. The book is IQ84 vols 1 & 2 by Haruki Murakami. Zoe recommended another of his books to me and I enjoyed it so much I went straight onto this one without realising the epic proportions!

Home alone

I was off work for 2 weeks. The first week was spent sorting out all those annoying little things that I've been putting off doing around the flat and having a door glossing marathon, well half-marathon I still have another coat to do on them all. Then we went to Spain for 8 nights with the in-laws.

We stayed in a villa in the Andalucian hills and spent our days lounging around the pool and our nights drinking cava and playing cards, yahtzee, Trivial Pursuit... you get the gist. It was great but both myself and the hubby agreed that a week was long enough this time. We did the same thing a few years ago when I was working full time and at the same time writing my PhD thesis. Back then doing nothing but lazing around, eating and drinking felt like a huge luxury. This time being in an isolated villa and having to rely on my father-in-law to drive us down a ridiculously steep and bumpy dirt track down a mountain if we wanted to go anywhere felt a bit restrictive and we would've liked to explore a bit more. Don't get me wrong though, it was great to actually get a bit of sunshine and relaxation.

We arrived back on Saturday night and planned to have a lazy Sunday, wee bit of unpacking, some washing and maybe rent a DVD. Most of Sunday went to plan. I even made an excellent (if I do say so myself!) bean enchilada-lasagne hybrid using tortillas in place of the pasta. It was very tasty and good cold too.

Then it all went downhill. Our oven door shattered of its own accord. Hubby went away for the whole week. I went back to work and the people who were meant to have done things for me while I was off hadn't, and my quite important scheduled emails hadn't sent because my work computer is weird and crap.

So tonight I am home alone and determined to cheer myself up from these major back to work/Monday/oven-smashing blues. I stopped at Sainsburys for milk and came out with a pleated skirt and a chocolate brownie. I sang at the top of my voice all the way home in the car. I've just eaten the previously mentioned Mexican food cold for my dinner. I'm now in bed away to watch an episode of the Killing and then start my new library book, IQ84. I am hoping that Tuesday will be better.

Time to waste

I’ve just had a bit of good news about my job. I’m currently covering for someone who’s on maternity cover and yesterday she told me she wasn’t planning to come back until January. Good news because I’ve got to pay for holidays somehow! But also it means an extra 4 months of commuting while still not being in a permanent job.

I don’t actually mind the travelling part of commuting; it’s the waste of time that gets me. In my old job I left the house after 9 and walked to work. This meant I could do dishes, hoovering, tidying up, washing… or just have a lie in, watch tv or read for a bit before I went to work (some of these happened more than others!). Now I leave before 7 every day and rarely get home before 18.30 if not later. The bonus is extra reading time, or circling things from the Fringe programme time this week!

It would be quicker if I commuted by myself but the hubby also travels to work. Unfortunately we work on completely different sides of Edinburgh so one of us has to drop the other off and then drive across the city. I always campaign to get dropped off first since my work is a million times easier to get to, but I don’t always win.

Commuting has transformed me into an early riser and with that comes early to bed. I used to regularly stay up until 1am but nowadays I quite like getting more than 5 ½ hours sleep so bedtime is more like 10.30, 11 if I’m feeling crazy! So my evenings are shorter. Housework, gym, friends, food shopping, eating dinner… I struggle to fit it all in my 3 hour window and sometimes long for the days when work was a 15 minute walk away.

However all that aside, I don’t dread Sunday nights anymore. I really enjoy my current job and I’m good at it which makes the commute worthwhile. I don’t know what I’ll do in the future. We’re hoping to move from our flat to a house next year but that involves lots of saving and deciding where to buy. I need a job to be able to do that and I’m craving a bit of stability in my work life. So who knows?

Do you commute to work? Are there any tricks to finding the time for everything else?

Learn something

Does everyone get sidetracked when they've done an online search for something?! I was looking at the BBC news site, to see if there was anything interesting on there that related to my work - and any pressing celeb gossip I should know about obviously. I ended up reading about a new scheme to deliver free higher education for all - not related to my job at all, but I thought it was really interesting.

Big fancy American universities such as Princeton and Stanford (we've all seen the hoodies!) host courses on Coursera, and the University of Edinburgh has just become their first UK partner. The website lets anyone sign up for free and get access to online courses delivered by academics at these universities. They're not degree level, although you do get a certificate, and there's quite a random assortment just now. But I think the idea is a great one.

Education shouldn't be about how much money you have or your parents have. It should be about wanting to learn and achieve something for yourself. I don't agree with the government strategy of encouraging everyone to go to uni straight from school; some people aren't suited for it or are not interested in it. But I do think that opening up access to learning for those that want it is so important.

Quite tempted to sign up for something...

This weekend...

We realised that sometimes the more you do in a weekend the longer it feels, which is never a bad thing. On Friday we made Smitten Kitchen's homemade pizzas for our friends who've just announced they're expecting a baby. They went down well, even if my oven did slightly burn the back corner!

Then on Saturday, after being bitten by the seaside bug, we headed off to Rothesay for a day trip. Unfortunately the promised sun never really materialised and we didn't like Rothesay as much as Millport but it was still nice to get away. Rothesay has a bit of a run down feeling and is much more of a working town than a tourist place. There was a small museum that showed how it used to look, it used to be a tourist mecca and people would come for 2 weeks! Despite it not living up to former glories we still had a nice look around the castle (and a nosey at the wedding that had just taken place), a walk along the seafront, some chips and an ice cream. A Saturday well spent.

We met up with a couple of friends for a 'quick drink' when we got back, that turned into several drinks, an Indian and a last one for the road!

On Sunday we stayed in, tackled Friday night's dishes, had another friend over for tea and biscotti and watched Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Overall a lovely, sociable weekend with lots of eating and drinking.

MILLPORT

This weekend we went to the seaside! I love being by the sea. I grew up on the coast and it always feels like home when I go back, regardless of where we are.

Millport is a wee town on the island of Great Cumbrae, less than a 10 minute ferry ride from Largs on the Ayrshire coast. We had the perfect British seaside weekend. And it was sunny!

Hired bikes and cycled the 10 mile route around the island, played crazy golf, ate ice creams, went onto the beach and clambered about on the rocks, sat in a beer garden, walked up to the tiny cathedral, got a wee bit sunburnt. Perfect.

TRAY BAKE - THE SEQUEL...

So, not content with my baking success of last week I decided to make another tray bake for going away this weekend. I had a vague Malteser cake recipe in my head but got home to realise that I'd mistaken white chocolate for milk and that the only Digestives I had were chocolate ones. Not one to be beaten by chocolate, and with the mantra 'mixing chocolate and buttter, how wrong can it go??' ringing in my ears, I forged ahead anyway.

Turns out melting white chocolate and butter together can go a bit wrong, luckily I rescued it with a bit of help from the hubby. And what was meant to be a Malteser tray bake turned into a tray bake/fudge hybrid that tasted so good and was so addictive!

300g white chocolate

125g butter

3 tbsp golden syrup

200g (ish) Maltesers

200g (ish) milk chocolate digestives

Melt the butter, syrup and white chocolate together in a pan. Mine split and looked like it had curdled. I took it off the heat and beat it for about 10 minutes until it came together again. It still looked a bit dodgy but worked out fine in the end.

Mix in the Maltesers and the crushed up chocolate digestives. My husband crushed these and was a bit over-enthusiastic with the rolling pin. A lot of them were very crumbled but I think this actually helped the texture so I would recommend a mixture of very crushed and chunks of biscuit.

Spread the mixture out in a foil-lined tin. I use an Ikea glass oven dish. Sprinkle edible stars on top even though it looks a bit ugly (hubby likened it to stovies!) Surely edible stars make everything look good??

Chill in the fridge until set then cut up into small pieces. Devour over a weekend.