1. There is no such thing as a bad day. Days can be more or less entertaining, productive, funny, boring, relaxed, hectic, rainy and so on. Never bad per se.
  2. Nerd trick to know if your heater is on: stick/pin a paper to the wall right above the heater. If the paper moves, hot air is going up, so the heater is working.
  3. I cannot stick to the same handwriting for longer than 30 minutes.
  4. Hi, my name is Sara and I am a film freak. And book freak, music freak, languages freak and maps freak.
  5. I can last just about 1 week without coffee.
  6. The silliest the status message you post on Facebook, the more chances you have people will write a comment. Serious stuff is boring.

(to be continued)

moleskines

Just about half the collection

I’ve been putting some order in my collection of Moleskine notebooks, diaries and so on. I use one as agenda (click here to know more about this moleskine hack) but I like the very small, light blue diary. It’s really super-pocket size. I also really like the National Gallery special edition notebook, the red one in the picture on the left. If you get tired of the black, plain ordinary pocket Moleskine, that’s the one for you.

But Moleskines are rarely ordinary. Not only hacks, but every notebook has its own taste and the level of customisation one can give to these notebooks is infinite.

For example, I have one ruled, large notebook that had become my recipes book. As I cook or whenever I am at a cookout, I take note at a small, ruled, reporter notebook. I scribble down notes, tips, tricks and such. Some recipes I don’t keep, but others will be written down in the “official” book later.

Another large notebook is ready for my upcoming travels to Scandinavia. I usually use a plain one, so that I can scribble down, draw or sketch down places, stick photos, bits of maps and so on.

So, what is your favourite notebook? If you have a favourite. How do you like to take notes? Just scribble down anything or follow your OCD* tendencies?

*OCD: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or the “absolutely everything has to be kept in a certain order, at all times”.

pancakes

Wholewheat pancakes

It’s one of those weekends when you feel like messing in the kitchen and experiment a little bit. The following recipe was proven to be a complete success.

Wholewheat pancakes with ice cream and jam

Ingredients:

(serve 5-6 pancakes)

- 1 egg
- 2/3 cup wholewheat flour
- semi-skimmed milk “till the mix is liquid enough”
- 1 pinch of salt
- 2 pinches of baking soda

Mix everything and fry the pancakes in very little butter. Actually, if your non-stick pan is really non-stick, you shouldn’t even need the butter.

Then add a little scoop of ice cream to each pancake. I used ‘clotted cream with fudge’ ice cream, so I really didn’t put too much. It will slowly melt and the icy cold / hot mixture will be sublime. The other nice topping is jam. I had some delicious home-made Daivison plum jam. It matched perfectly with the rest.

Other weekend experiments:

Dala horse banana bread

- Quick & easy pasta

Man lever sitt liv med dubbla bottnar, förmodligen för att man inte ska sjunka om det går hål i den ena av dem.“ -The Troubled Man, by Henning Mankell (chapter 17)

In English it could be translated with “We live our lives with double/false bottoms, so that we don’t sink if there is a hole in one of them.”
Do you agree? I don’t know if this is true. It is probably true for some people.

Porlock

Gravels to the sea

Do I have a double bottomed life? I have back up plans. Most people have a plan B and I’m sure some even go as far as to have a plan C and D and so on. But is it really necessary? It’s probably wise to have at least a back up plan. However, thinking of alternatives shouldn’t take us away from our main plan, the main idea, the one we want to achieve no matter what. Things might change along the way, but if we keep in mind the big picture, we’ll seldom fail. If we do, we can still get up, leave the bottom we reached and get back on track.

This post has no particular reference to anything that happened to me recently. I just remembered the sentence I read a while ago. Then… can you tell I’m in a great mood today? I think it might be the pancakes I had for breakfast/lunch, say brunch. Really yummy. I shall post the recipe.

slaves

The joys of office life...

Luckily, the office memo on the left is not in my office.

Yet!

I am having the most interesting, hectic, rewarding, crazy, unbelievable week at work and I’m looking forward to the weekend. I have to say, PhD life has been really great so far. Probably because I’m still in the “research” phase. I might change my mind when I’ll get into the “write down the thesis for good” phase. ;-)

Anyway… A dear friend of mine is in the UK for a short vacation now so I’m spending the weekend in London with her and another friend I haven’t seen in a while. What a better way to have some fun after a good week of work?

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