No cheese, no problem!

Days 2 and 3 of the NCNB challenge ("no cheese, no booze" - see previous post if you have no idea what I'm talking about) have been extremely easy due to two reasons:

1) I've substituted cheese with chocolate.

In a long run this obviously beats the point of no cheese, no booze, since part of the challenge is to be a little bit more health conscious and say no to other temptations too, not just to cheese and booze. However, I thought that saying NO to everything at once would be a too big of a shock, and therefore chocolate and nuts have been welcomed with open arms so far. Gradually they will be eliminated (or at least cut down) too. For January.

2) I've caught a cold and tea is more appealing than wine.

However, since this is a second cold in a month, and chances are that it lasts as long as the other one (=forever), I might be soon tempted to switch tea to hard liquor. Also, the results of the current scientific experiment called "How Many Liters of Chamomile / Ginger&Lemon / Sore Throat Tea Can a Person Drink in a Day?" supports the switch: after 3 liters of herbal tea in a day you'll feel tead-up and want to drink anything else but tea. But let's not be too pessimistic .. yet. Oh well, maybe the new Echinacea Elder Tea makes the difference!

And at least I have VERY pretty tea pot stands, thanks to Santa Claus (aka Noora and Mom):

Btw, going back to the cheese ball accident of Day 1: I woke up on Day 2 thinking that since the cheese ball was made of cream cheese, I'm saved - because Philadelphia is not forbidden! Hooray!

No cheese, no booze January - Day 1

Little Christmas parties, holiday with plenty of socializing, New Year's party with sparkling wine and sparklers ... time to start 2012 with a 31 days long No cheese, no booze challenge. With one exception: Philadelphia. In moderation.

First breakfast of 2012 was an immediate test of my willpower, as Lebanese cheese was calling my name. Brain started to rationalize that since Philadelphia is an exception, maybe the Lebanese cheese could be too. As the Yes - NO - Yes - NO - battle was still going on in my head, my fingers were approaching the cheese in a slow motion, getting closer and closer. In the last second brain said NO and fingers did a quick turn to grab chocolate instead. Willpower 1, cheese 0.

Nepalese lunch at friends was delicious, and for sure white wine would have complimented the food amazingly, but willpower won. 2 - 0.

The big battle was a January 1 party at another friend with plenty of cheese and booze available. Hostess carefully inquired whether I could start my challenge a day later, but after a little hesitation I said no. Armed with a liter of tea I entered the kitchen to help in preparations. Ham rolls were safe to attack, but a constant no nibbling-reminder was needed when rolling cheese slices.

No matter how many plates of dips, pickled things, veggies and ham rolls the table carried, the cheese was the king. Cracker without a cheese? Unheard-of. But doable. Sigh. When the fellow-party-goers heard about my no cheese challenge they were eager to point out any hidden cheese, like mascarpone in tiramisu. Simultaneously they were trying to convince me that it's actually not cheese, it's just cream. Tough call, but no to tiramisu. Heartbreaking.

In the early stage of the party, while I was avoiding brie, gouda and getting bored with carrots I indulged a mysterious ball, rolled in sesame seeds. The flavor was slightly lemony and texture a little too creamy to my taste, but good nevertheless. Only later, when someone mentioned "cheese ball" my mind connected the dots - that's what the familiar has been taste: cheese! Dammit. But since it was an accident, it doesn't count, right?

First day of no cheese, no booze had been full of challenges, and even with the little cheese ball accident I congratulated myself for the 3 - 0 score. 30 more days to go!

Signs of winter

Days are getting colder..



.. trees are empty


.. summer flowers are dead


... and the hockey rink is up!

Ten day stats

I've never liked maths, but when I was writing my thesis I realized I like stats. At that time I was collecting, categorizing and analyzing newspaper articles, and now in my work I'm reporting monthly workshop stats: how many clients, how many results, what kind of results. Passion for stats has followed me home, and to make sure I stay on my new anti-stress path, I'm now collecting stats about things that make me feel good, or signs that tell that things are not good. To ensure that this stats collection doesn't feel like work, I'm using a cute little greenish-yellowish book instead of an Excel sheet.

For the past 10 days the "feel good stats" look like this: 10 x exercising, 2 x sauna, 4 x beer/wine, 1 x nap, 4 x socializing. The "not so good stats" tell that stress is still there, but definitely less than before the thinking week: 3 x early morning wake up to think work, 1 x more than 7 hours at work, 2 x no time for 1 hour lunch break. Good start, I would say!

Word count

Today I accomplished nothing, yet I'm exhausted. Or maybe it's exactly why I'm exhausted. 7+ hours running around the office, talking in half sentences. It's one thing, for example, to try to mix eggs, toast bread and pour milk in a glass at the same time, than trying to have three quick meetings at the same time in three different boardrooms. I've never tried the first scenario, and I wonder how the result would be, but today I proved that the second scenario for sure isn't successful.

Eight days at work after my one week thinking leave. In my anti-stress resolutions I promised to be better to myself and to my loved ones, yet I see the signs of work-tiredness creeping into my everyday life again. At home, in the mornings, I'm silent. In the evenings, I'm silent. I read friends' emails to me, but I don't respond. As if I have a limited number of words per day, and since I have to communicate so much at work, I don't have any words left for home, let alone to meet any friends after work. Or maybe I'm just being a Finn? Well, it's time to balance word count, so tomorrow they'll have a silent Finn in the office, and a talkative Finn at home!

Che's footsteps

As a teenager, I was in love with Che Guevara, like so many others around the world in different decades. I don't quite remember when or how I fell in love with him, and the "why" might have been just the teenage group thinking phenomena - someone discovers something "cool" and everyone else follows, until the next "cool" is discovered. For me the cool of Che didn't wear out too fast (although I never finished his biography by J. L. Anderson), and it actually expanded to reading about anti-apartheid activists Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko. (And now, when I think about it, it obviously continued beyond teenage years and led me to write my thesis on the Black Panthers.)

Che's passion to help others and change the world spoke to me, and I was dreaming that one day I would be making a difference too. Most likely NOT by starting or joining a revolution, since I was too busy playing volleyball and too chicken to join any even remotely activist groups in Finland, but by doing something. I guess I'm closest to that something in my current job: I know that everyday our services help newcomers in Canada to set their goals, to feel more confident and to have HOPE. Unfortunately the same job also exhausted me and pushed me for a one week thinking leave.

During that week I had plenty of time to re-organize work/life priorities and think many things, among them also the approaching Canadian November (dark and rainy, although not as dark and rainy as in Finland). I had time to count my remaining holiday-days, and realize that there are plenty, and I should use most of them by the end of the year. Hooray! Holiday! And where to? Well, a natural destination is the Crete of Canadians - Cuba - where everyone goes at least once. A month from now I'll be landing in Cuba, and I promise to think about Che when I drink rum on the beach. But I promise not to buy any tacky Che souvenirs with his famous pic on it.

Once again, time to try again

Last time I wrote almost a year ago, October 21. I was blaming Facebook for stealing my creative writing bursts, but I should have just been honest and blame myself. Also I was blaming work for consuming all of my energy, and leaving neither English words nor sparks of creativity for myself. Funnily enough, work, and especially my past weeks' work stress has resulted into something good: it has encouraged me to ponder again what I truly enjoy in this life, and how can I increase FUN and decrease STRESS. Getting in touch with old friends has been one part of this making-everyday-enjoyable-again-trip, and thanks to many of you who write a blog or write for living, I suddenly found myself thinking about writing again. And here we are, a new entry in the almost-dead-blog!

Obviously one of my hidden obstacles for writing in English has been fear of making grammar mistakes. Perfectionist as I am, I would LIKE to write perfectly correct English while being funny and witty, but LAZY perfectionist as I am, I simply don't want to take time to check grammar when in doubt. I feel it takes away from the authenticity of the writing, it feels like cheating. Sadly it was just an excuse, and it took away the whole writing itself. However, I might have found a cure for my perfectionism in a tennis court - as I played occasionally tennis this summer, I realized that it's ok not to be excellent, or even good in it. I can be silly and make mistakes, and it's just fine and fun. With this new revelation in mind, and new retro colors of the blog, I will approach writing too, and we shall see where it will take me!