Mac Geek? Me? Yup.

Okay, so I admit it.  I’m a Mac Geek.

I’ve had two weeks where I’ve bought an iPod (Black, Classic, 80Gb), visited the Apple store in Glasgow and resolved to get Leopard as soon as it comes out.  For those who don’t know what Leopard is, don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you.

The fact is that Macs have made my life easier.  I had a rare moment a couple of weeks ago while writing an important proposal when my MacBook froze (ie crashed) and I thought I had lost an hour of pretty cogent, reasoned argument about why a company should choose Inigo.

I recovered my work, but I was a little shaken.  It was like the time when I realised that one of my favourite teachers at school was able to make mistakes.  It was a bit unreal and I didn’t want to admit to myself that Macs are really just cool PCs. 

Sorry Steve, I don’t like writing that, but it’s true.  Beneath the gloss, beneath the usability, a MacBook is still a personal computer, even if it’s not running on DOS/Windows.  Machines aren’t invincible.  To add insult to injury, my iPod crashed within a week of bringing it home, but that too is because it’s a machine.

We place far too much trust in machines, even cool ones that save us time and make things better.  It will be nice to spend a couple of weeks away where the only machines I’m trusting in are ones that run on rails.

Giving it all away

What happens when you finally get the chance to shift the workload, and share it a bit better?

Maybe I’ll do some new stuff.  There’s plenty of communications work that I can see needs doing.  But perhaps I can work out how to keep a bit more of a balance.  In the past, I felt compelled to do stuff because I ‘saw it needed doing’.  The last few months in particular have made me more wary, more keen to conserve energy for other things.

This evening we went to see the film ‘Ratatouille’ at the cinema.  It was funny, it was clever, all that great Pixar stuff.  But it was also about passion, about the things we love doing, and are good at, and doing those wholeheartedly.

I love cooking, so the film was a happy message as far as I was concerned.  But I also love writing.  Music.  Reading.  Being with family.  Going for walks in the sunshine on autumn days (as we did this morning with my parents).  Because there is time for these too.  There should be.  And thankfully, it looks like there will be.

One a day

It’s my new regime – although I’ve now broken it by starting a new post after already writing one.

Getting my laptop, I decided that moderation would help in my first forays online on my own computer.  So: one blog post a day.  One friend invite a day on Facebook.  All very sober and self-contained.

Except there are days when the writing juices flow a little more, and this seems a little constricting. But then, I think it’s probably good.  Having said I want to write more, and got myself a laptop to make myself do so, having some regular daily writing habits helps me get beyond any notion of writer’s block that I might have.

(It does happen.  But not much.  My last performance appraisal notes that I do ‘at times’ express myself in a rather lengthy way.  Perhaps the managers have just been tuning the rest of it out.)

Given that I’d like this writing game to be a longer term one, it’s probably good however to start with good habits.  I’m not sure that Facebook is a good habit, but at least it gets the fingers moving on the keyboard, which can be a problem in the morning.

So far, have NOT been looking at Facebook in the morning – far too tempting to keep checking it – but you know, should I manage to work from home and need to do some light typing to wake up to, it could be helpful…

I’m sure there’s other useful one a days that would keep me going.  I could learn a new word a day.  I used to write a new quote a day in my diary, when I kept a daily diary – although I didn’t remember them, I have to say.

Perhaps it’s worth continuing to do at least one nice writing thing a day that is just for me – beyond blogging etc.  I’ve started some ideas for a cookbook cum food memoir, and am adding new categories fairly regularly.  Maybe I’ll add a new category on the blog, and start it off there.

One a day.  One way to a writing habit.

Trophy wife or muppet?

It’s not much of a choice is it?  Hopefully neither, in my own case, but it makes for a good title.

The reason for mentioning this is a collection of mugs in a little shop which has just opened up on Canongate (lower reaches of the Royal Mile), with a cafe and a selection of goods.  This is great, given the large numbers of touristy shops on the Royal Mile and the limitations of trying to get more interesting cards or presents.

So, I check out their window displays on the way in to work.  Craftily, they do update them, and have a collection of mugs with these kind of titles on.  I’m quite tempted to get ‘darling mummy sausage’ for myself (I’m sure it’ll come in useful some day), but the selection is at least a little more interesting than wee angel/wee devil on the T-shirts in a shop further down the road…

It brought me to thinking who buys them, and for whom.  There are some mug messages where you kind of hope for the individual that they chose it themselves, and are being ironic.  (Dan had a tutor whose mug message was ‘old fart’.)   But clearly people must buy them for others – and should you be given ‘yummy mummy’, for example, hopefully you could feel slightly smug using this.

There’s also the category where celebrities wear t-shirts with other celebrities names on.  I thought this was quite fun when Nigella started wearing tight t-shirts that said ‘Delia’ on them, given how much celebrity cooks/chefs seem reduced to first name only.

A colleague at work has one of those ‘lines’ mugs ie with the sentence repeated.  Hers is ‘I must not kiss the boys’, which I understand was a wedding present.  At a time when our former director was enforcing a branded mugs only policy (ie with an office logo), she stuck to her guns and kept using her mug.  In this case, we had to applaud her intention to have a distinct identity, rather than a general one that was selected for her.

It’s tricky, this ‘identity on a mug/t-shirt’ thing.  Have been experiencing forms of it on Facebook, where you can compare and rate friends.  A school friend asked me to compare her to others, but the application then brought up a series of questions, where you had to rate other random combinations of friends as to which was likely to be more successful, sexy etc.

I felt I just couldn’t make any such comparisons, and skipped every one of the ones it brought up, but it still suggested that I had rated 10 sets of friends.  So I removed it pronto, and settled down to loading up favourite books on the Facebook application instead.

I then sent my friend a message, suggesting that she had certain skills in making microwaved custard.  You can’t get a mug for this yet, nor a t-shirt, but it’s surely just a matter of time.

The joy of leftovers

I promise I won’t write too many posts that start ‘the joy of…’ Because we know what the original was, and that’s one thing I won’t be writing about here…

But anyway, leftovers, because as ever, my mind turns to food, and what to do when there’s more ingredients in the house than are scheduled to appear on a menu that week.  (Yes, I do plan meals for a week.  It’s a lifesaver when you both leave work at 7pm and can’t make any decisions by the time you get home.)

Dan’s brain is well tuned to come up with completely new options.  I find I probably do better with a bit of input – in this case, a few assorted ingredients, around which I can turn out variations.  Many of the things I cook regularly – risotto, vegetable casseroles, omelette – are interesting to cook, and eat, at least in part because they aren’t the same every time.

So, today, this meant I could cut up and freeze a parsnip for future use (probably a risotto), make some carrot and caraway soup, and finally, the new recipe, make some pomegranate icecream…This because we took several attempts to buy cream for another recipe, Dan bought some and brought it home after we had then got cream elsewhere, so of course it had to be used up…and the Coop was kindly selling pomegranates cheap…etc.

I was chatting to a friend on Sunday about mammoth cooking sessions (yes, we’re both a little obsessional in our devotion to cooking), and the fun of actually cooking that flows from day to day.  By flow, this isn’t where the food is sliding off work surfaces or out of compost bins (hopefully), but where there is enough time to make use of leftovers.

I had a time like this around Easter last year, where I was meant to be gardening and painting.  In fact, the other family members did these, I cooked for them all, and everyone seemed to be happy…It felt like there was enough time to be a bit more flexible, experiment with new ways to use things, different leftovers suggesting new combinations, and so on.

I’m not sure why I have such a strong need not to waste things – it’s part of a generation’s advice that has (until relatively recently) seemed very out of date.  Now we’re all meant to be saving the planet by every small decision, being frugal with food, planning ahead, it’s actually quite trendy.  I think.  It’s strongly supported by Nigella, anyway.

In the meantime, talking to the same friend and her husband, we think we’ve come up with a new group for Facebook.  It’ll be ‘Look what bargain I got at the Co-op’, or something similar, as they heard through our breathless excitement at the treasures marked down day by day.  They are moving to another town, but will be near a Co-op.  What comparisons to come, eh?