Week 1: Cake B

The 2013 Great Office Bake Off has begun. Something to look forward to on a Monday for the next few weeks!

Week 1 kicked off with chocolate-banana muffins and cupcakes filled with jam and decorated with cream and strawberries. It was a tough choice - but after lengthy deliberations (and a second cupcake...), I picked the the cupcake as my winner.

Flying high

The Starflyer is set up as part of the Wonderground at the Southbank. It's quite a weird feeling when you are up there and looking down made me feel slightly sick... It's not very fast and it somehow doesn't even feel that high up either, it's just weird being in that position of not vertical nor horizontal.

And yes, the weather was fabulous again... Grey sky all day, but at least it wasn't cold.

Touch me to sleep

After what feels like forever, I finally had another massage booked this weekend. At a bargain price of just £20 - thanks to another Time Out voucher - this time at Dolls and DaddyO's in Clapham. The treatment room is in the basement of a pharmacy - which sounds a lot worse than it is. The room is nicely decorated in a 50s style with relaxing music, candles and all cosy. Ronnie is lovely and the massage was very relaxing. It was definitely on the 'soft touch'-side. While I usually prefer a bit of a firmer stroke, this was perfect for relaxing after a bit of a challenging week! I didn't want to get up after the 60 minutes and could have just stayed on the table for a nice little sleep...

The small touches

Last week I was invited to yet another (work) lunch. Unfortunately, I had to cancel due to too much work stacking up on my desk. What a lovely surprise when I then received the 'goody bag' in the post! Together with a note from the organizer, saying that they hadn't wanted me to miss out. Isn't that sweet?

smelling of lavender, the heart has found a home in my wardrobe

Time for some meat with meat

and way too little chips for that amount of meat!
and no worries, this was the platter for two ;-)

Feasting on back ribs and spare ribs and pulled pork and burnt ends and chicken thighs served with coleslaw (very nice and not the usual mayonnaise soaked affair) and fries at Bodean's BBQ restaurant (the Tower Hill branch). Most importantly in the company of a good friend.
So nice to have a good chat which made everything that's been going on last week seem half as bad.

Bunny S&P

Further proof (not that I needed any...) that I have been eating out a lot recently, is probably that it took me several months to replace my broken pepper mill... I finally went to John Lewis the other day and was standing in front of the shelf for quite a while - too much choice! The sales assistant wasn't of much help either, not least as he admitted to basically never cooking. When he asked me whether I cooked a lot, I did wonder whether that was a chat up line - or just sales talk.

Anyway, in the end I went for the cute bunny salt & pepper mills. More proof of how seriously I take cooking?!

and thanks to the magnets they'll always stay together

Empty headed

Well, not really. In fact work is really busy at the moment. But with this busyness comes a way of working from day-to-day - when I'm usually a much more forward planning person. I tend to over-think and over-analyze everything and with everything that is currently going on, it feels as if I just have enough mind-space to concentrate on the issues at hand. And just getting through each day at a time. Which is somehow quite helpful in staying in the moment.

Life is happening right now, while I am not making any plans.