A new normal

To my surprise I realised today that it has been five weeks since I submitted my PhD thesis. That means that for five weeks I've been sitting around doing nothing much. Honestly. I've watched a lot of daytime TV in my pyjamas (mostly cooking shows for some reason), attempted some cooking experiments (with varying levels of success) and walked/run on my treadmill a bit. That's pretty much it. It is strange how quickly I've become accustomed to this lifestyle and yet how much time has passed with nothing much accomplished. 

This is me. [via]

I don't like it.

I do think I needed a long break after all the stress of the final couple of months of my PhD. My brain is starting to come out of the fog though and I want to start being active again... and yet at the same time sitting around and being a hermit just seems easier. It's a weird state to be in considering how ambitious I usually am. 

The other difficulty is the uncertainty. Not knowing where/when/if I'll get a job is very unsettling, as this is the first time since I was around 15 that I've had no idea what's next.

At least I have some more undergraduate teaching lined up as of next week. Nothing big or permanent, but something to tide me over until I get some sort of grown up job. Fortunately I haven't been booted from the PhD office yet (often they make people give up their desks once they've submitted) so I may also try to finish writing up my papers when I'm at uni. 

Err, so yeah. That's what's going on with me. What have you been up to? :)

Snippets

Snip·pet (noun): A bit, scrap, or morsel

I applied for a job today. The position is to be a lecturer in biological psychology at a university in the UK. It took pretty much the whole day to write the application so now I'm exhausted. Good thoughts, prayers, crossed fingers or whatever would be appreciated! 

I don't really like my hair cut now after all. It was good for a few weeks and I received some really flattering compliments (including from you guys - aww thanks). Now it's grown to an awkward mullet-esque length and I'm stuck between deciding to cut it again and just letting it grow out. 

My home laptop has died I think. It's had a good run of about 3 years and luckily I was suspicious the end was nigh so made sure to back everything up. Hopefully I will get a new one soon - my supervisor has nicely allowed me to borrow a lab laptop for a bit so that's what I'm using currently.

Shot from last year's city 2 surf.

The City-2-Surf (a 14km run) is less than 3 weeks away and I have definitely not trained sufficiently to expect to run very much. I enjoy running and I know exercise should be a priority but it is a bit difficult when I've got so much thesis-ing to do! My friend and I have decided to walk most of it, which considering it's 14km is still pretty reasonable. Hopefully we'll still dress up as sporty zombies from the 80s!

I got to be involved in one of my favourite things - a trying on clothes montage. As I mentioned a while ago my sister is getting married next year so my mum and I went with her to give opinions on about 12 wedding dresses. Although fun and some of the dresses looked really lovely on my sister, I believe that the montages on tv/movies do not adequately portray how long and exhausting the day ends up being!

Disturbing fact: foot spas at pedicure places have lots (and lots) of feet cells of previous users clogged in the jets. That certainly does not make me want a pedicure anymore, or help my foot phobia one bit.

Ahh this is so comfortable soaking in other people's feety grossness [via].

My most recent baking disaster the other day saw me ruin yet another pot attempting to make custard. It was burnt so badly we've had to throw it away. That makes three now... oops. In a recent baking success however I made banana bread muffins which were awesome. Husband and I agreed it was the best thing I've ever baked (which perhaps considering the baking disasters doesn't say much). 

I got a 'revise and resubmit' from a journal for one of my papers. That's much better than a rejection so hopefully they'll accept the revisions!

OK that's probably enough snippets for now. Sorry for a not overly coherent post but... eh.

Cooking and Running Adventures of Late.

(Not doing both at the same time - though wouldn't that be interesting!?) 

One of the things I've been doing while working from home (well when not actually working), has been collecting recipes. I'm not sure I'll actually cook most of the recipes, but I do like imagining I have, and how they would taste. For this I partly blame Pinterest, as there are heaps of delicious looking meals on there. 

The other day I made chicken, mushroom, spinach and cheese filo pastry. Sorry I didn't think to take a picture, mostly because I learned the hard way that you don't put any pans on the bottom of the oven. It might seem obvious, but it turns out that the bottom of the oven is very hot and cooks things SUPER fast. So mostly I spent the evening trying to get rid of the horrible burnt smell that often fills our apartment (what must the neighbours think!). Husband liked them so much though, that he salvaged what was left of the burnt one (thankfully the main tray was not on the bottom so the rest cooked fine) and still ate it. 

[from here]

Today I made cornbread muffins, with ham, cheese and chives. Again I didn't take pictures because we ate several pretty quickly. So here's someone else's picture, which actually looks pretty much how my ones did (though to be honest, might were slightly overcooked in comparison). Pretty tasty, if I do say so myself.

Another thing that I've had a bit of time to do recently, is go running. As I mentioned last year, it is my aim to finish the couch-to-5k running program. I didn't do much last year, but have been running a bit more this year. I am now up to week 5, which is over half way. I'm enjoying running much more than I expected, and as such my friend and I decided the other week we would participate in the annual City to Surf run in Sydney - which is 14km. It is in August, so if I keep up the running it might be possible I can run a fair bit in it, but I'm still expecting a lot of walking to occur. We decided we must have awesome costumes for the event, so our plan is daggy 80s sports people, who've unfortunately been recently zombified and are therefore not running for fitness, but to chase other racers for their brains. I'm very glad I have a reason to re-wear my bloody shirt from the last time I was a zombie (see below). 

Again, I turned to google in the hopes of a picture, and there doesn't appear to be a zombie from the 80s dressed in sports attire. So, again instead of photoshopping I'll allow you to use your own imagination based on this combination of pictures, until August that is, when I will look like that! 

[p.s. the pic of not-me is from here]

So my questions to you are:

- What have you been cooking lately?

- Are you going in any running events this year?

- Have you ever done running and cooking at the same time?

Knees.

Unfortunately, my knees have never liked me. They are currently giving me grief just when I actually became determined to run regularly. However instead for the last week I've been walking around like an elderly person. It could be worse though, like back when I was in high school... (cue tinkling-harp-type music to imply that we are going back in time).

*WARNING: If you're squeamish, maybe don't continue reading. 

Something I was not expecting to think today:

"I should go for a run!" 

So I did. If you know me at all, you'll see why this is surprising. I am in no way a sporty person. I have been in the 'contemplation stage' for a couple of months though about running. I even installed the couch-to-5K app on my phone, and it's been sitting there unused for those months. It's also on my 30 things to do before 30 list to start and complete this programme. At least I can now say I've made a start, and completed day one:

Well let me tell you - I really didn't go very well. Lots of walking during the running phases occured. Also I saw someone chucking out a couch on the side of the road and was very tempted to give up and have a nap on it (a bit ironic considering the name of the running programme)! My other problem is other people - I went to the park and saw lots of skateboarders and didn't want to run near them in case they laughed at me. Hopefully I can get over that at some point.

However, I can say overall I liked it, and I do aim to try again. 

Do you run? Are you as terrible as I am (Please say YES)?!