Spotty

Below are a couple of pictures of my Tammy with the chickin pops, as she calls it. Fortunately it has not turned out to be too serious, probably because she had her vaccinations, and at least now she's had it and won't get it again. Still, it's not been pleasant for her and she's quite had enough of it now. Yesterday at around 11.30 I got a call to go and fetch her from the school because her teachers said she had chicken pox. I remember sending her to school with 3 small spots on her face near her nose, which I assumed to be little mosquito bites. By the time I fetched her she was covered in spots. Despite appearances she was her usual cheerful self and quite excited about her "chickin pops".

Tonight Tammy is sleeping over at her granny Bev because Liezel and I are out early tomorrow morning to hike up Lions Head. We're looking forward to it as a great bit of exercise in the fresh air outside of the gym for a change, though if I have my way I'll probably pop to the gym for a session on the squash court anyway.

Yesterday morning I mentioned I'm going to get a new squash racquet. Well after Liezel came home to relieve me of chicken pox duty (because I haven't had the pox, she has, and I really don't want to get it now!) I headed down to Sportsmans Warehouse and purchased an awesome new Wilson racquet. Took me a good half hour to decide on the one I like, and I absolutely love this racquet. I went to the gym and spent a full 2 hours playing squash, this thing is like a cannon and I felt like Rambo with a squash racquet! Hell yes I was knackered afterwards, especially as I'd had a few tough games with some other old bloke along the way, but I thoroughly enjoyed playing with my new toy! It's light and flipping fast!

So this evening after we dropped Tammy off at Bev's, Liez and I went down to Canal walk to do some shopping. I invested in a whole new range of clothing including some smart shirts, trousers, jeans and T-shirts. It's going to be fun paying off my Edgars account over the next 6 months to pay this lot off, but at least I'll have some cool new clothes to go with my hot new bod!

Now I just need a sexy hair cut.

After shopping we stopped off at Ocean Basket for our weekly treat, a break from the diet. It was a reasonably healthy meal, we both had grilled fish and 6 prawns with stir fried vegetables instead of chips. It was actually a very tasty meal, and goddamn it felt so good to eat a decent hearty meal like that again instead of the meagre rations I've been limiting myself to over the last 10 days!

I'm having my doubts about dropping down to 95kg by this coming Friday, I seem to be hovering around 99kg the last 2 days, probably because I'm countering the lost fat with new muscle, but I'm hoping to at least drop another 2 kg by Friday. I'll gym every day this week but I'll stay off the weights and just play squash and possibly cycle just to do fat burn and not muscle gain. After next weekend I'm happy to drop 1 to 2 kg a week until I get to around 85kg at which point I'll change tactics to maintain not going over 85kg in the long term. If I can do that at 80kg even better, but I'm being realistic.

9 years later

Today is my 9 year wedding anniversary with the best wife a man could wish for! Happy anniversary Liezel, you really are the greatest, you've made my life complete and worthwhile, you've been a wonderful partner to be with and an inspiration to be the best I can so you and Tammy can have the best in life! I love you as much as ever and I hope we have a long life together to look forward to!

Providing of course we keep on the right track of recovering our health and well being and maintaining it permanently!

Last night's workout at the gym was very intense! I played squash against some random regular who had me running around for half an hour that I'm surprised my heart muscle didn't freeze up and blow a gasket like a cars engine when you push it too hard. It was a brilliant workout, followed by a more sedate solo game just whacking the ball at the wall (as you do in squash) for a further half hour before some other angry people kicked me off because they'd been waiting so long! After squash I headed upstairs and worked my arms, shoulders, my sixpack and pumped my moobs. I pushed quite hard, thus the soreness today, but it's a nice sore! Maybe being our anniversary I'll get my wife to rub my moobs for me later!

I did also get slogged in the nuts by a squash ball. It wasn't pleasant!

This weekend I'm going to invest in a new squash racquet. The one I got from dad for Christmas was great and I've got good innings out of it, but it's a little warped from hitting the wall too often and it doesn't have a very nice balanced action and it's very slow. So I'm going to find a decent semi pro one with a powerful action and a bigger head. I'm very excited!

I also plan on getting some smart new clothes to accessorise the new look me. Maybe even a decent haircut and not the usual tennis ball look no.2 shave.

So this morning I got up and climbed onto the scale and got quite a surprise. Not so much by the numbers on the scale, but the fact that I could see my toes! I haven't seen my toes from standing upright in quite some time!

The numbers also took me by surprise. I was heavier than yesterday, at 99.4kg, that's 0.2kg up. But then I took my place on the porcelain throne and relieved myself of the smelly stuff, then climbed onto the scale again and I was down to 98.9kg. So that's 0.3kg down on yesterday, which is less than I'd hoped for but not a big panic as I'm sure I added weight in muscle yesterday. What did surprise me was my stint on the loo brought me down by half a kilo, I swear I didn't even eat that much yesterday! WTF!!!

Dinner last night was leftover chicken stir fry, again eaten late after gym and just before bed. Before gym I had 2 provitas with avo humus. This morning was a smoothie again.

Lunch today will be yet another salad, with fruit in between to snack on. And I have a small pack of lean biltong, which will serve as my protein for the day!

BTW, the reason I list my daily food is for the sake of my diet planners/lifestyle coaches Tamsyn and William, they want to know what I'm eating and this is how I'm telling them.

Well I better do some work. Have a good day all!

Perfecting the salad.

The great news of this day in my life is that I did indeed manage to break the 100kg backbone. This morning I clocked in at 99.2kg! That's 0.9kg down on yesterday morning!

Everybody whoop for joy for me!!Yippy!

My next immediate target is to get to 95kg by next Friday, that's 4kg to lose in a week which is a big ask, but also a big challenge and I'm going for it with guns blazing! 5 more sessions in the gym should do it in conjunction with my diet and the oceans worth of water I've been drinking! On top of that we have been duped into climbing to the top of Lions Head on Sunday morning at frikkin 8am! That means I gotta get up at 6pm ON SUNDAY MORNING to go out for a hearty dose of punishment, death by PT.... So don't anybody bloody dare tell me I'm not fukken serious about this "lifestyle change" because I'll kick your ass!
Just saying!

The reason I've set such a big goal for next Friday is it's Liezel's annual company Christmas party, and I want to go in there looking good and strong and handsome so my wife can be proud of her man, and so that Liezel's bitch of a boss can at least say she got klapped by a hunk!

Also I have 2 gigs on next weekend, and I've had enough being the stereotypical fat drummer unnoticed at the back of the stage! When I do my drum solo I want to see all the hot chicks in the crowd gawking at me wide eyed, nipples erect and licking their chops as they bitch-slap and claw their way to the front of the stage to be the first to shove their cleavages in my face! Of course only my sexy wife will be allowed near this drummer, much to the dismay of the ravenously randy crowd of hotties now queueing up for the toilet to relieve their frustrated hormones!

Lunch today, as if anybody gives a rats, was yet another bowl of food that would make any self-respecting rabbit proud! Lettuce, Rosa tomatoes, Israeli cucumbers, yellow pepper, cashew nuts, raisins, roasted seeds, mixed sprouts and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Very tasty salad, but not the best so far. Yesterday's with the avo was the best, I loves avo! Didn't use avo today because I know that Liezel already took her daily quota of avo to work as my avo humus made yesterday to snack on with pro vita.

Breakfast was an absolutely fabulous smoothie made from banana, paw-paw, low-fat yogurt, fat-free milk, raw jungle oats, that Future Life stuff, a spoon full of peanut butter, dash of honey, and a bit of water.

Dinner tonight is last night's leftovers of Liezel's stunning stir fry, which I'm looking forward to!

Anyway, enough of this kak, I need to plot my daily weights on a spreadsheet quickly before lunch break is over.

The best Avo Humus this side of Greece!

One last effort for the day to write a little blog just to say how knackered I am! Had a hectic workout in the gym, full 45 minutes of squash and I pushed myself, then went upstairs to the weights and circuit and did some legs and ass exercises. All that for an unfit overweight smoker is quite an accomplishment. But as shunted as I am I feel good. Will be stronger tomorrow!

Also Liezel made a delicious chicken stir fry for dinner which was spectacular, especially as I was so hungry by the time I got home from gym at 8.30 I was close to taking a bite out of my car's steering wheel on the way. On top of delicious (the stir fry, not the steering wheel) it was healthy, made with chicken breast fried up with onions, garlic, carrots, marrows, green peppers, green beans and mushrooms in a soya sauce with honey, served on a thin bed of brown rice. Admittedly I ate a slightly larger portion than the meagre pickings I'm supposed to eat on this diet, but I don't feel bad at all after a good day of diet and workout. In fact I feel fantastically fed right now!

But, that's not all we ate this evening. When we got home from work, before I took Tammy to her swimming lesson, we were both very hungry. So I made us a healthy little snack...

Wholewheat Pro vita's as the base, then I whipped up a delicious humus to dip the Pro vita's (un-buttered) into. My humus was made as follows:

Blended up a mixture of a can of chick peas, a large avo, 2 cloves worth of garlic, a little Veri Peri sauce, salt & pepper, lemon juice, and a splash of sesame oil and extra virgin olive oil.

Easy peasy, and I can't even describe how awesomely delicious it was, and still is. We only had 3 Pro vita's each with some of the humus on, the rest is in the fridge for another day.

I'll end this off by mentioning what a fabulously adorable and beautiful daughter I have been blessed with! Thank-you Jesus for the best kid in the world, she really is special, she owns my heart. My little peanut!

Nearly there...

... there being down in the weight range of double figures, not triple! According to our new bathroom scale this morning I weighed in at 100.1kg. I checked and checked again, true story! So by tomorrow I should be under 100kg for the first time in years, except briefly last year when I was gymming so hard for 3 months I lost around 5kg and got to about 98kg, which quickly shot up again over Christmas and beyond as my inherent laziness and greediness and affliction for the bottle took hold again!

In other words, this fat bitch aint gonna be so fat for much longer!

I've already noticed today I don't have to stretch so far to get to my keyboard because I can sit a little closer to my desk.

To be honest, this coffee with sweetener and fat free milk is taking some getting used to, but after drinking gallons of water constantly all day the little bit of flavour is very welcome!

There won't be another blog again today, I need to spend lunch time working on my photography course, it's falling way behind with all this health stuff, and I have to keep up the effort with the photography or it is not going to succeed! I have a lot of learning and work to do to learn to be a pro photographer, and at some stage work on setting up the business too, which has to include getting out and shooting to build up my portfolio which will be my primary marketing tool!

That said, if anybody reading this wants some photo's done of yourselves, your family, your pets, your shoe collection, your party of any kind, etc please let me know. I'm willing to work for free if it's a basic job or for cost price if there are costs involved. But this is a limited offer... once I get organised I will start charging competitive rates! But please note, if you want me to photograph yourself and whoever (or whatever) engaged in any explicit or sexual act the job will certainly not be free, but I'm open for negotiation!

Have a nice day!

Steamy windows

{I knew my scale is a bullshitter!}...

Unfortunately I will be breaking one of the will-power cardinal rules tonight - I'm eating dinner within 2 hours of bed! We went to the gym tonight after work and just got back at around 8pm after stopping at the shop on the way home. I've cooked a dinner of steamed green vegetables (peas, broccoli & baby marrows) and smoked haddock. That's it! Just wolfed it down. And I'm now knackered!

Liez and I have both said what an unsatisfying meal this has been, I just put some chilli sauce on my veg and some balsamic vinegar on the fish. It was dull and bland and not very enjoyable, in comparison to my usual culinary masterpieces!

We're going to have to make this diet thing a bit more creative or I fear we may fall off the wagon soon, Liezel before me for sure! (she's already trying to convince herself that a piece of cheese will be ok for an after-dinner snack!) We got a few recipes as part of the will power package, but we need to find a few more of these fat free low carb concoctions that are easy to make and don't require too many strange and expensive ingredients.

Anyway I'm not too worried at this stage, I'm making a huge and concerted effort to eat healthy foods in the right portion sizes and I'm working out hard and playing squash at the gym every day or two and I can feel it's already paying off so if I cause kak and eat something fattening like an avo or banana now and then I'm not gonna slit my wrists with disappointment.

On top of that I'm not even thinking about drinking! Even I'm finding that hard to believe! Yes I do get a craving now and then but for the most part I'm not missing the bottle and quite enjoying life without it. Maybe I'm not such a bad alcoholic as some people have convinced me to believe I am. But time will tell if I'll be on the receiving end of some "I told you so" gloating in the near future or if life will continue happily in the long term without the need to get shit-faced every second day and I can shove it in the crotch of my critics that I'm not an incurable drunk!

Time will tell...

That stop at the shop on the way home from the gym was to buy a new digital bathroom scale. R199 later I got home and tried it out, and lo and fucken behold - I'm almost 2kg lighter than I was this morning! Considering I had quite a weak workout on the squash court this evening and no other exercise today I don't believe that to be true! This morning I was 102kg, this evening I was 100.7kg! I tried it 4 times in different floor locations and exactly the same - 100.7kg!

So what now? Do I leave the original figures my old scale bullshitted me with or do I average down the previous figures by around 1.5kg lower? Because right now that weight-loss graph that William threatened me with is going to have a hell of a dip on the 18th October as if I ran 30km and fasted at the same time!

So anyway - tomorrow's weight loss agenda: banana & strawberry smoothie with fat free yoghurt and Liezel's new "Future Life" meal supplement stuff as a smoothie for breakfast (see how fucken complicated this is getting already!), salad for lunch again, chicken & vegetable stir fry with a little brown rice for dinner, with various fruit and maybe a few Big Mac's in between as snacks. Then gym again in the evening, got a squash court booked at 6.30 if anybody wants to join me.

Tonight I really didn't have the energy to push hard on the squash court. Dunno why, but I really didn't get into it enjoyably. Eventually I let Tammy onto the court with me and we bashed a few balls around lightly.

Well that's all for tonight. Hopefully this natural energy will start coming soon because right now I feel knackered with a belly full of vegetables!

One thing I will say though, I haven't had heartburn in over a week except mildly on Sunday after the roast chicken. That's a good sign because before I was suffering with severe heartburn constantly, sometimes so bad it was excruciating! I normally go through a 48 pack of Rennies in a week and copious volumes of Eno at night. Though I do have a suspicion the half litre of cheap whiskey every 2 days and the crappy fatty food may have had some contributing factors!

Good night okes!

New diet, new lifestyle, new challenges.

Yo yo yo wazup all my loyal readers and Noodle Fans! What's your news?

Mine is as follows: I'm shrinking!

Yes yes I know I'm going on again about my eating habits and this, now famous, diet and lifestyle change I've embarked on, and barking at!

So far so good, I had my bunny food for lunch, it was actually an awesome salad with the usual lettuce, tomato, cucumber with avo, cashews, roasted seeds, baked croutons and some balsamic vinegar. It was delicious!

Tonight, after gym, I'll make a dinner of fish & green vegetables, steamed! Sounds boring, but I will make it great! Maybe I'll even photograph it so you junk-food junkies out there can see how good healthy food can be!

The latest development in this bodily drama is Liezel and I went to see an old school mate last night who I last saw at school, 17 years ago. She (Tamsyn) and her partner in culinary crime William have this diet & lifestyle plan as their business (called Will-Power) which they kindly sponsored us for free (THANKS!) It's quite long winded so I won't go into much detail, I only have 5 minutes of lunch left, and I don't want to give their business away. I've promised to return the favour of a family photo shoot for Tamsyn and her daughters.

Basically it's not your usual crash diet based on a specific focus such as protein or calorie diets. It's a logical system involving a balanced diet, smaller portions and cardio exercise, and cutting out certain foods for a while to reach the first milestone, among other things. It's good for the body and importantly it's sustainable long term even after the ideal weight is reached. Apparently I should lose 30kg, which is a shitload of lard to shed!

Liezel and I spoke about it afterwards and we are keen and excited to take on this new challenge. It will certainly be tough because it fucks up our comfort zone and our long-time routines and bad habits, but we know it's for our own good and the rewards are worth the effort and we are going for it! Going like a Boeing! There like a bear.

I'm also amped to gym as often as I can, and just half an hour ago managed to nab a court this evening thanks to a cancellation!

Since last week Wednesday when I started this "change" seriously I have made a conscious effort to eat healthy for every meal, and with this new Will-Power plan mine and Liezels eating habits will become even healthier. I've been to gym 3 times since too.

Last Wednesday I weighed 104.5kg, this morning I clocked 102kg, and I can actually see and feel the difference already! It's great, I think I'm going to love the new me! Then you gonna see how vain I really can get, but don't worry I'm not an arrogant chop! It will just be nice to go out and feel great and not be constantly conscious about the walrus wrapped around my waist! Maybe the chicks will start noticing me again as more than just the great passing mass that's blocking out the sunshine. Not that I need to be noticed by the chicks, but it will be nice for my wife to think I'm some kind of hunk again and act accordingly!

I ate bunny chow.

It's not what you think!

In Cape Town and other SA places of cultural incest like Durban there is a popular and if done properly a highly delicious take-away meal called a bunny chow, or "Bunny" as it's affectionately known. It consists of a hollowed out loaf of bread filled with curry. I've have some awesomely delicious fatty lamb curry bunny chows that are to die for, and others that I nearly did die for, they were so bad. The good ones were great, but these things are cholesterol packed heart-stoppers that bring on heartburn that would make a volcano seem tame, not to mention ring-sting for days where soaking the loo paper in liquid nitrogen overnight doesn't cool your arse sufficiently.

But I've not had one of those in ages.

What I had for lunch today, for the first time in my life by choice, was a SALAD! Yes you read that right, I ate a fucking rabbit food (lettuce) infused salad that I deliberately and consciously prepared this morning with the intention of it being my sole lunch for the day!

And an even bigger shocker - I really enjoyed it! True story!

It was concocted (because I know squat about making salads!) with fresh lettuce chopped up (I can't stand big leafy plate sized leaves of lettuce shoved in my face to eat!), baby tomatoes, baked croutons, raisins, mixed roasted seeds, low-fat feta and some chicken breast. No dressing. It was actually flipping delicious; I wolfed it down and would have licked the bowl, had my colleagues not been around.

On top of that I had a fruit smoothie for breakfast! Dinner last night was chicken breast and steamed veg, and tonight it was seafood paella, both delicious and nutritious meals lovingly prepared by my wife! Liezel has actually cooked 3 days in a row, all healthy meals practically fat free (no oil, butter, cheese, etc used), and besides the BROWN rice in the paella no starches.

I must admit I'm very impressed, especially with her paella. I'm not normally a big seafood lover, but this was goooood!

Of course, being serious about this diet for as long as I can make it last, my portion sizes have also reduced dramatically. As I sit here I feel like I could easily heap another loaded plate of food, and the temptation to smother it in cheese is almost unbearable, but I won't do it! Just like I'm sitting here after 10pm on a Friday night stone cold sober! I've not had a drink since last Saturday. Admittedly this evening when I got home, before heading off to band practice, I had a serious craving for a drink, a bottle of whiskey... so far the determination is holding firm.

I must admit though, with this diet and smaller portions I am finding myself to be constantly mildly hungry, and I haven't yet stocked up on "healthy" snacks, because I don't have a clue what to get! Usually there's cheesy chicken sausages, or cheese to make toasted cheese sandwiches, or crisps, or fatty leftover braai meats, etc to chomp on. Now I'm lost!

Tomorrow we'll bash heads and figure out what to get and go get it. Yesterday I already spent R400 on fresh fruit and vegetables, fish & chicken. We just need to add to that for the meal planner for the week.

Ok enough bragging about my culinary challenges; if you've read this far I'm impressed, though you must be bored as a fly stuck in dry paint!

In case you missed my Facebook post earlier, today I've been suffering with seriously painful moobs. I've not been to the gym in 3 months, now I've been the last 2 nights in a row, my man-boobs took serious punishment with the bench-press, feels like I got smashed in the tits with a cricket bat! Hope they're sufficiently recovered by tomorrow, I've got a squash court booked at 9.45 am and intend to do a full workout after the squash. Check me dropping drumsticks at tomorrow night’s gig because my muscles are lame. Wouldn't that be a joke after all my bragging about this gig being a rocker!

Well that's enough babbling for one night, I'm off to bed. Sober. For a change! Tomorrow is going to be a great Saturday, no hangover to nurse!

Oh and btw - F**K this piece of S**T computer! Thank the monkeys I have been saving this blog to Notepad as I go along or I would have lost the whole thing because this useless PC is so damn slow it couldn't even handle saving via the browser, tried running a spell checker and it crashed. I'm really starting to hate this bloody thing; it's such a handbrake on progress!

"Please God let me win the lotto tomorrow!!!"

Ok I know that's mildly blasphemous and not going to happen, but it's worth a shot! Apologies for the rant! I just get furiously frustrated at the time wasted with this pile of electricity sucking scrap metal!

Time for change

The time has come to make some drastic, dramatic changes in my life... time to re-take control of my life, my health, my family's health and well-being, and my home! Time to take the bull by the horns (plural, please note), time to shape up or ship out, come right, however you care to see it; before death do I part!

Fact is it's time for change! Serious, life-changing change!

"What happened, who put a cracker up your arse?", you may be wondering. Well I've known for a while now I'm not the healthiest looking or feeling chop around but a long chat with my mother on Sunday night sparked that cracker up my arse and got me thinking quite seriously about my life and where it's going in terms of my health and lifestyle. Nothing she said to me was new to me, I've just been too lazy, drunk or hungover to take seriously the fact that I have been killing myself slowly with my lifestyle, though with good intentions of changing my ways at some stage or another, but "just not today, it's been a kak day and I need a drink when I get home, and a cheese sandwich!".

But no not just change with the drinking, as my alcoholism is no secret, but also with the crap I eat, the smoking, lack of exercise, and general unhealthy and lazy lifestyle!

I know I've had this photography thing going, and it's still going as seriously as when it started, it's given me something to focus on and at least make some constructive use of my semi-pickled brain. The progress with the course and the photography training in general has been slow going despite my efforts and intentions, a lot of time has been lost and wasted being drunk and hungover all too often. And of course there's the small matter of a family to attend to, let alone a home which has fallen by the wayside in it's running and maintenance, again thanks to the booze.

AND, yes you're right I did recently "give up the bottle", which I did wholeheartedly and determinedly, but like the previous few attempts it didn't last! I won't bother listing the reasons that justify sticking my head back in the bottle yet again because it will just be a list of futile excuses. And I'm not promising this time it's forever either, I've learned about making that commitment publicly and then going back on it sheepishly. But as always the intentions are there!

This time it's different in my mind because I have honestly realized that my lifestyle, not just my drinking, is going to kill me before I reach 40 if I don't make a massive U-turn on the direction I'm heading! But also, this time it's different because it's not just me making a futile attempt at major change and tackling it all by myself with few people aware, let alone giving a shit; this time I'm dragging my wife with me!

Family diet; cutting down portion sizes, cutting out snacks, cheese, bread, etc, and generally tackling a healthier eating lifestyle of which we still need to design a plan.

On top of that we are going to gym again. At least twice a week, EVERY week!

We have set ourselves a target, one which I think is quite generous, of each losing 5kg by Christmas. If we both get there we will reward ourselves with a holiday in January, if either of us fails then no holiday, and whoever doesn't meet the target has to sign up for a marathon of at least 15km in January! So far Liezel is keen, she said so with her dessert of cheese on toast and a bag of popcorn in hand last night!

I've stuck up a chart outside our bathroom whereby we will weigh ourselves every morning and log it to track progress and motivate each other if either slacks off.

Personally, I am setting myself a goal of reaching 90kg by February next year, currently I'm at 104.5kg. That's nearly 15 kg in 3 and a half months!

Also as part of this big health drive plan, we are going to put up a whiteboard in the kitchen and plan our meals, lunch and dinner, weekly, based on a set of healthy recipes. Each day's meals will fall under a roster which will also include planned activities for each evening, eg walk on the beach on Mondays, gym on Tuesdays (the whole family), Tammy's swimming on Wednesday, sort & fold & pack washing on Thursday, etc, something like that. We'll sit down and plan it out in the next few days. Our grocery shopping will be done weekly and according to the meal planner, which should work out cheaper than our usual random trolley loads of heart-stopping crap!

I am also now on a mission, as part of the plan and as a distraction to the booze, to catch up on all maintenance and DIY that needs doing around the house on weekends, like fixing stuff, clear and tidy my garage, get my garden looking like some sort of living garden and not a desert with 2 shaggy trees, install the intercom, etc. All stuff that could have been easily done over time already, had I not been rendered useless by hangovers at least one day of every weekend!

This all sounds great and glamorous and you probably don't believe a word of it. But I am dead serious, before I really am dead! All of this is for my daughter! The thought of what will happen to her if both her parents are dead because we didn't look after ourselves is terrifying, I can't have her grow up without parents, and I for one am going to make sure I see her grow up and live her life, and be a positive part of that life as the dad she adores!

Thanks mom for the kick in the chops that I needed! And thanks Liezel for the support!

Watch this space, soon you will see photo's of a family looking fit and healthy and happy!

The Socialite

Just a quick catch up blog to brag about how connected I'm getting on the web, and show off some old photo's of my Tammy that I recently revitalised in Photoshop. Apart from this blog and my famous Facebook account I have also started tweeting on Twitter, set up a Google + account, on which I have 1 friend so far. I've set up a LinkedIn account, which i need to populate with relevant info, and I've set up a Flickr account and Yahoo profile. The Flickr account is to upload photo's for those anti-social plebs who are not on Facebook so that everybody has an equal chance to be exposed to, and to adore my gradually improving photographic masterpieces!

The point of doing all this is part and parcel of my great big plan of becoming a professional (and hopefully famous) photographer and running my own business as such. All the social networking is intended to contribute to marketing the business through exposure and referral. Lately I have been spending a lot of time not only learning how to take pretty pictures but also researching the business side of photography including branding, marketing and presenting a professional presence.


As mentioned in the last post I've purchased web space and domains. I have not yet started working on the website purely through lack of time (and it doesn't help my wife keeps hijacking my PC every evening) though I have been giving it a lot of thought. It will start soon. There is lots to do and to plan for, but it will come!

In the meantime I can only continue to dream and fantasize of the day I can quit my dull menial day job working for a boss and an institution as an insignificant easily expendable (and replaceable) employee to work full-time on running my own successful business! How exciting and rewarding that will be! I know it will come and I'm sure I'll be good at it, but it's still a long way away because the bills still need to be paid and shit doesn't get any cheaper!

One thing I have realised is that I quite desperately need to invest in a decent new PC because my old Dell at home simply cannot handle what I need it to do. It lags and hangs constantly and takes ages to get things like photo-editing done! I have cleaned it up and formatted recently and it only runs a few programs, but it just doesn't handle. Unfortunately right now I can't afford a new one, so if any generous soul out there feels like investing in my future I could really use a powerful new PC! For that I'll not only pay back later when I can (through either cash or a professional photo package or a combination, I'm negotiable!!) but I'll make you famous with me!

Well, once again my 60 minute lunch break is over, I need to continue with my tasks before the sarcastic comments hit the back of my head!

In the near future I will list the links to my facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Twitter, Flickr, Wordperss blog and Website, and whatever else once I have some meaty profiles and portfolios to share.

Ahoy Mayties!

I'm afraid to say this blog and my enthusiasm for keeping it rolling has frizzled out somewhat along with my spare time lately! I have been spending a lot of time on my photography, between experimenting with the camera and post-production in Photoshop, and studying & researching every aspect of photography as a profession, a passion, and as a business. There are endless fascinating and highly informative resources out there and I'm absorbing as much information as my pickled brain can handle!

I'm also working on that Photography institute course, which I'm ashamed to say has been on the back burner for a few weeks since I completed Module 1 (and a Primer module) and submitted assignment 1, with an 80% result. The main reason was so that I could complete the study of my Nikon D7000 camera's user manual. It took ages to study and understand, but I got there in the end, completely impressed with the incredible things it can do that I never imagined a camera could do! Since then I've been a bit sidetracked with other research and experimenting, though last night I got some inroads into Module 2. Will do some more tonight when I go to bed. Making my iPad useful!

Another thing I've started concentrating on in earnest is starting to build the business. Today I purchased two web domain names and a website hosting package. In the next few days when it all becomes fully active I'll access it and set up the basics. Then I plan on beginning work on my website, which will effectively be a customised blog type website through Wordpress. See Wordpress is better than this blogging site (blogger.com) because my blog site is self hosted and maintained, I can run it off my own domain name, not myname.blogger.com, and search engine optimisation (SEO) is a lot higher with Wordpress meaning my site could reach a lot more people.

The website will be the portal to my business. For which I still need to design the catchy brand. The name is there already, I'm happy with it, the branding is going to be a challenge to design because I'm not a graphic designer and not-a-fuck can I afford a professional designer. So I'm just going to have to use my own brain, dust off my old web design skills (and update them of course), squeeze out some creative juices, and produce something that will be professional and unique!

Wish me luck!

But don't worry, The Daily Noodle will continue, however scarcely for a while until things calm down on the photography side. This is still my personal blog about personal shit where I'll bitch and swear and talk about food. The other blog will be my business. Of course it will have my cheeky and humorous personal touch, but it will need to be more professionally presented!

Right now I need to sort and file my latest photo's and clear up the iPad. We're going away for 3 days over the weekend to Dad's place at Witsand, so I need to get a lot done before then. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get a chance to get the car washed too!

The Pits rocking "V8 Thunder" with Sailor Jerry!

Last night the band I'm the drummer for, The Pits, performed at the Obz Cafe Theater in Observatory, Cape Town. The show was another top class Sailor Jerry sponsored rock & roll event called V8 Thunder, so named as the theme featuring some rather bizarre vehicles parked outside. From custom made weird looking bikes to very old rust-bucket cars done up with some modern features and noisy engines! I'm not quite sure what the point was as they were just parked out in the street all evening, though I believe it had something to do with the Garage magazine launch. Fascinating to passers and punters by anyway, some of whom were close to passing out by gassing as one of the big Harleys was being revved up with it's exhaust aimed into the front door of the venue. That was not pleasant!

Note: photo's taken with Liezel's little happy snappy. Quality is not too good, looks like ISO is set way too high, judging by the picture noise. I'll check it out for next time! I did also set up the camcorder to film the gig as usual, but I forgot to press 'record' when we started, so that didn't happen. Hopefully some of the pro-pics from the photographers with their big guns turns up soon.

The performances for the night were:

• The Black Orchid Burlesque,  a sexy and very entertaining ensemble of "burlesque teese" dancers strutting some great moves to music from I reckon the 1920's, and showing off some smoking hot nearly naked assets! Great show much enjoyed by the ladies and gents alike!
• The Pits. That's my band. We had a full 45 minute set planned which much to my dismay was cut short by two songs because we were running late, partly because it took Sven so long to go to the loo before the show! Besides that we played a fantastic gig to a large packed crowd who from what I could see past the bright stage lights were enjoying themselves and having a good dance. I had a blast on the drums, played one of my tightest sets ever working up a constant rain of sweat around my kit; as a band we were super tight and put on a great fun high energy up-tempo gig! Milli looked hot as always, the glamour of the band, rose amongst the thorns, and Sven was cooking up a storm, nearly bouncing the amps and other stuff off the rickety stage. I had to pull my kit back together after some of the songs, the way he was prancing around! Personally I rocked my socks off with all the juice I could conjure up, only dropped a stick once which I recovered so fast I doubt anybody noticed, and I got fresh blisters on 4 fingers to show for my effort. They don't bother me, it's like proud battle scars, and we'll probably take the usual 2 weeks off from rehearsal to recover! Bring on the next gig! I love it!
• Peachy Keen. These guys were just brilliant! They're a 5 piece rockabilly outfit, must be top of their game on the local scene because the entertainment they provided was second to none! Besides only half the band managing to fit on the incredibly tiny stage we had to work with (The Pits as a 3 piece only just managed to cling on, my drum kit hogged most of the floor space), they grabbed the audience by the balls and rocked them into a frenzy! The two girls in the band, the vocalists, provided excellent entertainment with their comments and banter between songs, while the drummer was excellent, sounding especially good as he was drumming on my kit! The Peachies were also launching their new music video on the night. My opinion: excellent, MTV quality professional production! Not that I'm a pro but the video does justice to the band! Very cool!
• Last up were The Great Apes. We have gigged with these guys once before at Mercury Live a few weeks ago. As usual they pulled off one of their high octane hardcore dramatic performances! These guys are the ideal headliners for a show like last nights because their high energy performance is loud and heavy but the music is distinctively full of character and great melodies. The vocals are brilliant, all the howling and aerobic breathing he does to warm up before the shows pays off in dividends. Jaeken is an animal on the drums, not surprising he trashes loads of sticks and his cymbals look like something has bitten chunks out of them, but he's tight and very entertaining to watch. He even replaced the sticks he borrowed and annihilated at the last gig, which I very much appreciated! Unfortunately Liezel and I didn't stay for the full Apes gig, we loaded up the drums and hit the road, home by 1am which is quite early for a gig night.

Milli on Bass

By the way, the smoke machine was KAK! Horrible bloody thing pumping that pollution directly onto the stage, which was already very hot and stuffy! What's the point of that stuff billowing into a small tightly packed venue anyway, it can't be healthy, and my lungs feel cooked today!

Normally by the end of a gig night I'm quite toasted on booze too, especially the after-set shooters (and free backstage Sailor Jerry) that gets shoved down my throat. Last night was different, I'm proud to say I only had 3 beers the entire night, 2 of which were low alcohol Castle Lights. I drank from a big bottle of sparkling water the rest of the night, and had coke with dinner. For dinner the wife and I went to the Obz Cafe restaurant next door after the rugby, which predictably the Springboks lost to the Wallabies, despite sporting the "most experienced" Springbok side in history! Pathetic really, embarrassing! Hopefully the guys will pull their cocks out their ears by the world cup!

Sven on gat & vox

Anyway, we had pizza in the restaurant, some the nicest pizza I've ever had! I had a lamb and butternut pizza, which I loaded with the chili and garlic they provided on the side, and finished the whole thing savouring every mouthful as is on a culinary adventure. Liez had a chili shrimp pizza, also delicious! We sat there for a while after dinner to kill time, that long laborious 4 hour stretch of time between sound check and the gig.

All in all the event was a great success, thanks to Sonja and Sailor Jerry Spiced rum for sponsoring and organising the event, and it was a great night out for the wife and I, while Tammy was at home having a party with her Granny Bev. She's really a great help coming to stay over and babysit whenever we need a babysitter!

I must mention that not one of my "friends" pitched up for the gig, despite numerous adverts and invites. It's actually fine, I see where I stand with people, and I'm ok with that. The only blind side is the other band members always manage to get a decent crowd of their friends and family to gigs, some of whom a regulars, and it gets a bit awkward when they ask how many people I have coming! Except my wife of course, my champion groupie and biggest fan, who's always at the gigs. And of course we can't forget lil Wayne, who's been to a couple!

There's talk the next gig will be a daytime gig in a few weeks time. Details to follow...

Band Practice

Band practice tonight was awesome! Awesome! Awesome! 6pm to 9pm on a Friday night, while the rest of the "world" my age is out partying and pissing it up I was rocking my c**k off on my sexy little fusion drums!!

That said I hurt my back lugging the hardware bag (around 100kg of metal) up the stairs and it caught on the wheelie bin as I yanked and a muscle pulled, which was ok at the time, but now it hurts like a m****rfu**er!

Normally on a Friday night I'm home doing the do with my cheap whiskey; not tonight! I had great fun on my kit tonight, did some shit I didn't know I could do! Tomorrow night's gig is going to be a killer! Watch this space for the vids, I will have my trusty old camcorder set up to record the gig! Sunday, rocking Sunday!

For all my effort I even broke a drumstick... the fabled (and my favourite) Vic Firth 7A's, the invincible's, I broke one tonight. But that's ok, I have 7 left for the gig, and that maniac Jaeken from The Great Apes will NOT bum more sticks from me! The last time we did a gig together (The Pits and The Great Apes, Mercury Live, a few months ago) this mad prick "borrowed" 2 of my drumsticks and systematically destroyed them on an already broken kit (his own), and shrugged it off. No mate, no chance!

Anyway I'm doing tomorrow's gig on my own kit, on at 10pm for around 45 minutes, a hard work set of awesome hard drumming worth about 2 hours workout on the squash court. Talking of which, I got a court booked on Sunday morning. Ouch!

I'm seriously excited for this gig! I've got fresh blisters on my fingers from practice tonight, but I'll rock tomorrow like a king, even if my fingers bleed (like they did at the last gig!)! Below is a few pics taken by claire Gunn at the last gig at Club Voom Voom.

Cold wet & gloomy in Cape Town...

...just the way I like it! The unseasonal summer we've had for most of this winter is really bothering me, I like winter to be WINTER! We expect it and prepare for it, I'd like to enjoy it before the sweltering humidity of summer bears down on us again! Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a comfortably warm summer too, even more enjoy the longer days and summery evenings, but it all has it's place!

That's enough about the weather. Being the 12th of August is now 12 days that I've been dry, nearly half a month. Not that anybody gives a shit about me and my problems, but I'm quite proud of this fact, and that it's not really bothered me too much yet. The dreaded withdrawal cravings from previous quitting hasn't afflicted my psyche yet for the most part, though admittedly there have been moments when the thought of sneaking off to my local boozer for a bottle of 3 Scotsmen has been a bit of a nag on my resilience, but I resisted. Honestly, I'm feeling better for it, my mood in general has improved and I can feel my brain starting to wake up again and re-load some of those dormant old memories that seemed to have faded into pickleness!

Last night my cousin Lauren popped in for a visit over some fish & chips. Lovely to see her again and catch up on news from the family up north. Especially my little old granny whom I've guiltily not spoken to in a while. I'll call her this weekend for a good long chin-wag. According to Lauren she's struggling with her health and also her memory sometimes. Shame, I so wish I could just pop in to see her regularly, she really is a special person, one of the few legendary icons we encounter in our time, and one of greatest inspirations of my life!

Anyway...

So I've now lost 2 days in a row of studying, much to my frustration. Last night we had a visitor, and the night before I behaved like a kid again. I've got this silly arcade style computer game that my dear mother introduced me to called Angry Birds. I sat down to have a quick 10 minute game when I got home and eventually got up after 10.30pm, way past my bed time, having wasted the entire evening on the highly addictive waste of time game, even practically ignoring my family. Yes I felt bad about that, but more so that I lost a valuable day of learning my photography. I've finished working through Module 1 of the course, now I need to tackle assignment 1, which is going to require some serious thinking.

And apparently assignment 1 is easy, compared to the rest. There is a closed group on Facebook for students and tutors on this course worldwide with hundreds of fellow students at various levels of the course, and the comments from the guys on the further modules and assignments seem to be sweating, though the photo's they are producing as they progress as stunning, which means the course is working and producing results! This excites me immensely, I can't wait to be taking stunning photo's in the near future because I have the technical skill to do so!

So long story short (OK too late for that), this weekend, by the time the Sunday night movie starts I'll hopefully have assignment 1 submitted. This in between a 3 hour band practice tonight and a big gig tomorrow night. My band (The Pits) is playing a show called V8 Thunder, we are one of great local 3 great bands playing, I think it's going to be an awesome gig. It's at Obz Cafe in Observatory, Cape Town. I'll blog about the gig afterwards.

Back on the monotonous drone about my photography, I have decided on my next purchases which will be fairly soon, in the next month or 2:

• Nikon has just released a new Prime lens, it's a 50mm, f1.8 prime and apparently it produces stunning results, and being a prime lens (fixed focal length) it's reasonably cheap. 
• A set of Kenko Extension Tubes. These basically turn a "standard" lens into a macro lens of the same quality as the standard by extending the focal length between the lens and the sensor. These combined with the 50mm prime will make for stunning close-up photography at a fraction of the price of buying a decent quality macro lens.
• Remote control shutter release.
• Lens pen for cleaning my lenses safely.

I also want to invest in a 2X teleconverter, basically an attachment that doubles the focal length of any compatible zoom, eg my 200mm will effectively become a 400mm. This is a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a telephoto lens, but at around R4000 it's a bit too expensive so will have to wait a while! Meantime I'll have to resort to hijacking mom of her great big 400mm job. Bet for certain the next big purchase as far as lenses go has to be a decent ultra-wide angle "fish-eye" (as I've mentioned before a few times). And don't forget the portrable studio kit!

Anyway, I need to head off home, load up the drums, and back to town for rehearsal!. I'll waffle on some more over the weekend!

Womens Day - just another public holiday!

Well it's actually a stunning day in Cape Town for a public holiday, one more of a seemingly endless supply of lazy days off work supplied by our esteemed government - leaders of the lazy and useless masses of this beautiful land! But hey, I'm not complaining! I don't enjoy my job anymore anyway, it's just a formality, so I'm quite happy to be where I am right now - in the comfort of my home on a Tuesday morning! Besides, there's light at the end of the tunnel, gradually getting closer as if the aperture is steadily opening one f-stop after another! Ha ha!

So it's a lovely day outside, crystal clear, the sun is shining, not a breath of wind, the air is crisp and fresh and it's clearly going to warm up later!

I was up early and on the squash court in the gym by 7.30 for one of those great solo games where I get into my game at a comfortably sweaty rhythm and get lost in my thoughts, plotting and planning and skeeming about the stuff I need to do in the near future! After a good workout upstairs in the circuit and a good old think with a few more great ideas in storage I headed home for breakfast.

Talking of food (as always) last nights dinner was some of my best ever toasted sandwiches, comprising of the steak left over from Sunday's braai, hammered flat and tender, stacked on a layer of gouda cheese, and topped with the last of the sweet potato and dad-style cabbage, with a dash of Bushman's Revenge chilli sauce on mine! Gross as it may sound it was frikking devine, and filling! I only had one sandwich, and just enjoyed the other one for breakfast, cruelly in front of Liezel and her mom as they didn't have their own leftovers!

Liezel's mom stayed here the last two nights, she was on Tammy duty yesterday because the schools were closed but us suckers had to work!

In case you're wondering what the hell I'm doing in the house behind my computer on such a lovely day, it's not going to be the whole day. Once Liezel and Tammy are clean and dressed (which could still take hours!) I'm going to pack them off to the Koeberg Nature Reserve for a picnic and a bit of sunshine. The snakes such as cobra's and boomslang apparently common in the reserve should still be hibernating so it should be safe for Tammy to jol around. Also a good chance to get some practice on the camera with the latest functions I've been studying.

I was up late again last night studying, I covered the rest of the manual ("professional") shooting modes (P, A, S & M) in detail, collaborating with functions such as ISO (light sensitivity), white balance, exposure compensation, etc. Now that I understand these functions in theory they make sense and I'm looking forward to experimenting, but I can see that getting the combinations correct to shoot the desired pictures in variable situations is going to take plenty of practice! What is for certain is that my days of pointing and shooting on automatic are for the most part gone. Sure auto has it's place, and I got thousands of good pictures with little effort in the past, but from now on every photo will involve some skill and the thought to plan and expose the image professionally for the best possible shot! I want every picture to contain it's own character and attraction, even a story!

I'm in love with photography and I am going to make this work for me! The prospect of someday quitting my boring menial job and the petty shit I have to deal with daily to work for myself as a succesful photographer is an exciting dream which I will work hard on until it becomes a reality!

Talking of my business, last night I was also researching specialised printing machinery to print on coffee mugs, clocks, mousepads, t-shirts, cushions, etc. I found a few potential sources to import equipment that does not cost the fortune I expected it would. Even just a coffee mug printer is a single value added attraction that could potentially be a decent earner! Eg, the mug printing machine costs around R7000. A single plain white mug is around R10, with printing inks, electricity, etc it should cost R20 at most to make a mug. 3 years ago we got coffee mugs from a school photographer as an added option at R60 per mug! We bought about 8. Do the math, at around R40 per mug profit (my estimate), do a couple of school shoots and the machine has paid for itself and then some! Add a few extra's like coasters, glass cutting boards, teddy bears with printed t-shirts, etc, just as the value added extras over and above the actual photo packages... I reckon I'm onto a good thing here! Providing of course I can put together a decent enough business plan to convince a bank to give me a loan big enough to get this all up and running with the necessary equipment! But that will come, I'm optimistic!

Anyway, in all my excitement I've given away enough of my trade secrets! There's not been much I have been good at in my adult life, but this is something I can be good at and will make a success of!

I've even got a couple of good ideas for a business name and branding style, but that will stay in my head. Sorry, I won't just give my business away before it starts!

Monday Blues...

I'm a bit grumpy at the moment because there are contractors in our tiny staff kitchen, all over the kitchen, they've been there all morning, apparently to install the plumbing for a new Dishwasher, and I can't get in there to make coffee. Why the hell they have to deconstruct and re-arrange the entire kitchen just to put in a pipe is beyond me. But I won't be arguing, this is the latest gadget commissioned by our monotone dictator, our resident Bulgarian architect, who I'm sure is a direct relation of Frankenstein, with amplification. She can be quite opinionated and hardcore, not one to do battle with because you will never be right, no matter how wrong she/it is!

Bark bark...

So yesterday evening after a whole day of studying I took a break and made a delicious braai with a steak and a pork Texan that was in the freezer. Massive pieces of meat, so we'll be having toasted steak sandwiches for dinner tonight, the thought of which has me licking my chops already! With the braai I did a large sweet potato wrapped in foil cooked on the coals, and a half a cabbage done the way my dad does it - in foil, sliced into inch-thick chunks with cheese, butter, salt & pepper and a sprinkling of brown onion soup powder between each slice, cooked on the coals. Damn it was so delicious, even Tammy had some! Also did a few braai-broodtjies. The whole meal cooked on the fire, simple and delicious! If my wife and my finances allowed I would only cook on an open fire, no matter the weather. Even back in London my mate and I used to braai, middle of winter, in the snow, standing around the fire in shorts and big bomber jackets with a cold beer in hand. The neighbours thought we were insane, peering at us nosily through their misted up windows overlooking our back yard. We were just normal South Africans!

I have to admit I broke the drought with a couple of beers last night. Sorry but I don't yet have the balls to do a braai without a beer. But it wasn't a piss-up, it was just a few well deserved beers after a determined weekend of studying. I've made good progress with the photography studies. I'm still only about a quarter of the way through the camera user manual, though I'm working through it in conjunction with a book I downloaded off Torrents last week, the "Nikon D7000 - From Snapshots to Great Shots", by John Batdorf. It's an awesome book. I didn't get much done on the Photoshop stuff yet, but I did make a bit more progress on the course material. My target is to complete module one and submit the first assignment by the end of the week.

Though at the moment I'm going through the "professional" shooting modes on the camera (Program, Aperture priority, Shutter priority and Manual), which is very interesting. I reckon pretty soon I will never use the automatic modes again, I'm going full manual! It's amazing what you can do with a camera like this when you know how to use it!

Anyway, tomorrow is a public holiday here in SA, I think I'll head out somewhere picturesque and have a good play with the camera. I need to give it a name, like boys often do with their toys, and other appendages. How about "Mike"? Named after the boxer. "Meet Mike, now smile dammit!"

Busy busy busy...

Like yesterday, I was up early and fresh this morning, with no after-effects from drinking the night before! Had some breakfast with a very cheerful Tammy, the little chatterbox had TWO bowls of wheetbix!

So last night I was up late studying the user manual for my new Nikon D7000. Damn it's a complicated peice of equipment, with dials and buttons and hundreds of functions that I've neither heard of nor knew that a camera was capable of doing! It's very fascinating and I'm excited to learn what all those thingy-majigs can do, I'm loving the gadget more and more as I get to know it!

Also last night I studied the user manual for the 18-200mm lens I got with the camera and got that waxed. And yes, I needed a manual to operate the lense, it's a bit more than a normal click-on and fire away job. It features the focus ring, zoom ring, zoom lock, distance measure, vibration reduction controls (x 2), removable petal-hood, and some complicated internal organry that is useful to know. I'm so glad I upgraded to this from the standard supplied kit lens!

The next lens I'd like to get is a full 180 degree ultra-wide angle fish-eye. But at around R9000 it will have to wait a while! Might just have to squeeze out a cheaper Macro before that.

Anyway, today I have a busy day planned. This morning, when my dear wife is eventually showered and ready, we're going down to Game at Bayside (Fukken hate that place, but it's the closest!) to get a proper office chair for this workstation. I can't imagine spending all the time I'm going to be spending at my PC sitting on this old garden chair, I'll have a walking stick and a hunch like that old fella from Notre Dame in no time.

Then it's nose into the studies. I'd like to try get Module One finished and a possible start on Assignment 1 before the 8pm movie, and get some more mileage into the user manual for the camera. It's a bible of 326 pages. With all my effort I've made it to page 40 so far, and that's the easy stuff! The next chapter covers scene modes, which are like pre-set settings for various shooting situations. My old Nikon D40x, and the newer very common D3100 has around 6 scene modes, my new D7000 has 19 creative scene modes, including portrait, landscape, children, sports, close-up, night portrait, party/indoor, beach/snow, sunset, dusk/dawn, pet portrait, candelight, blossom, autumn colours, food, silhouette, high-key, and low-key.

The third thing I'm now working on is a brilliant book I downloaded by the worlds leading expert on Adobe Photoshop, this one specifically geared to the latest version of Photoshop, CS5, specifically for photography. It's an excellent resourse with online references which I am using as a text book. I will be working through this and other Photoshop resources in parallel to my diploma course so that by the time the course is complete I'll be fully competent with Photoshop and related software so that post-production will be a breeze!

I have to say though, cracking the latest version of PS was not easy, took over an hour to get it fully activated! But it's working, and it's a brilliant program, and when I'm working professionally I will purchase a full renewable license.

So unfortunately my family is going to be getting used to not getting as much attention as before because I've got a lot of work over the coming months...

For now, I'm going to whip up some bacon & eggs and some hot coffee. Maybe by the time it's done my wife will be downstairs and ready.

Tick... tock... tick... tock...

Beef Ghoulashanoff and other stuff, with pictures

Not quite sure what to call this stuff, but it worked out blimmin well for a quick Friday night slap-together dinner. It started out as goulash, based on the recipe in my favourite old cookbook "Best Ever One Pot", a wire bound cheapo I found in the budget book section in Sainsbury's in London years ago. Believe it or not, I do often use recipes, though more often than not I stray quite far off the original recipe on a culinary adventure of my own imaginative creation, depending on what's in the pantry cupboard and fridge! Surprisingly most of my concoctions turn out rather delicious, by my own unusual standards anyway!

My dinner. Taken with the new Nikon D7000, no flash.

By the way, it's Saturday afternoon and I'm happy to say for a change I don't have a hangover! (Hooray for J.) It's now a week since I last touched alcohol (except the wine in last nights food, but that doesn't count!). Last night was the first real challenge on my quest to go dry because it's been for a long time now that I systematically drink myself stupid on a Friday night, unless I'm hungover from Thursday. Yes I missed my drink last night, but it wasn't unbearable. I got some stuff done on the PC and got an early night, and better yet was up early this morning, bright and fresh and not with a throbbing dehydration headache and the persistent need to sleep all day like most Saturdays. I got up with a refreshing bounce and was out early to get some banking done before the relentless Bayside Mall crowds arrived. Had a delicious breakfast with the wife at Dolce, picked up some hot, fresh cinnamon donuts, and was back home by 11 where Tammy was having a great time with her Granny Bev.

An even bigger challenge is going to be getting through tonight without drinking either. I won't drink, no question of that, but I am already craving a drink. The idea of a cold beer or a stiff whiskey & coke is very attractive as I write this. But I won't do it! If I can get through the weekend without too much withdrawal pains then the road ahead should be a lot easier. Well it works in theory, in my mind...

Ja anyway, as I was saying, this pot started out as beef goulash from the recipe, because I had goulash beef in the freezer. But as some of the ingredients were missing I flipped a few pages 10 minutes into preparation to the stroganoff page, and I didn't have all the ingredients for that either, so I combined the two, with the addition of wine and curry spices and some extra ingredients, and the result was yet another deliciously hearty meal that solicited more slurping and lip-smacking compliments than negative criticisms from the worlds harshest food critic - my wife!

( I really need to invest in a proper office style chair soon, this old plastic garden chair at my desk at home is seriously uncomfortable, exponentially so as the hours march on with my face stuck to the PC screen!)

Everyday I'm waffling... la la la...

So basically, this goulashanoff curry thing comprised of the following:

• One large onion, coarsely chopped and caramelised in a big-ass cauldron (I use my trusty pressure cooker) with some brown sugar and olive oil.
• While the onion fries, chop one green pepper (didn't have the red one the goulash recipe demanded) and a slice a pack of fungus.
• Meantime add the beef (cubed steak basically) to the onions and fry on a high heat.
• Add some spice. I added some dry chili powder, ground turmeric, paprika, and about a tablespoon of Woolworths Cape Malay curry spice. Some salt & pepper and a dollop of garlic paste. Mix well to coat the meat & onions and fry some more.
• Meantime peel some carrots, chop into wheels.
• Peel a few potatoes and cut into medium chunks, eg quarter a small potato. That sort of size.
• (The last 2 ingredients are my own addition not featured in either recipe, nutritious pot-fillers to make the food go further)
• Now add the peppers, mushrooms, carrots & potatoes to the pot. Give it a stir.
• Prise open a can of chopped, peeled tomatoes and lob it into the bubbling cauldron.
• Add a few sprigs of fresh thyme.
• Pour in about half a litre beef stock (in my case about half a litre of water from the kettle and an Oxo cube! LOL.
• Quickly chuck in around half a leftover bottle of the wife's wine while she's not looking and discreetly discard the bottle (which was a week old in the back of the fridge and probably forgotten).
• Close the cauldron lid and leave to cook on a low heat for an hour and a half.

"Chooka-train" along the edge of the pool.

At this point we headed off to take Tammy to her swimming lesson. She has really come on a long way with her swimming, and last night in particular she was more confident than ever, co-operating with the instructor happily, and she genuinely seemed to be enjoying herself in the water revelling in her new found confidence. She's not swimming on her own yet, but I reckon it won't be long now. She went a lot longer and further under the water than previously, and she seemed totally comfortable whereas before there was always a bit of drama and spluttering. We are very proud of the little froggy and very happy with the fantastic job that teacher Lindsay of Funki Flippers in Tableview has done with Tammy!

Enjoy the photo's (taken with my old Nikon D40x and the 200mm lens), the rest of the cooking to follow further down...

Chilling for a moment on the floating foam mat. Life's a beach in Tammy's world!

Splashy kicking practice.

The floating starfish - totally confident, happy as Larry, and providing constant entertainment with her stories.

After swimming and of course a marshmallow for the water-monkey we returned home for a chilled out Friday evening of good food & TV and some chocolate pudding for the girls (I don't like that shit!)

• Put a pot of water on to cook a pack of twisty pasta.
• Added a cup of thickening Maizena cornflour and water to the cauldron still simmering away cheerfully, smelling absolutely delectable!
• Plopped in another tablespoon full of garlic paste, pulled out the naked thyme twigs, and sealed the hatch to simmer a bit longer. Stirring every 5 minutes.
• At the end pour in a pot of fresh cream, turn down the heat, and cook for another minute stirring slowly until the sauce is nice and thick.
• Have a spoonful of the sauce to taste, muttering in satisfied delight.
• Dish up generously and enjoy watching the hungry family chomping away like Hungry Hungry Hippo's!

On another note, as you may know I've got a new camera. I haven't yet had a chance to go through the million-page user manual so I have only used it on automatic. Below is a pic I took of Tammy this morning eating breakfast in the sunlight shining through the window, and the first photo taken with the camera, a picture of my hi-fi in the office. Naturally the picture quality will improve as I get to know how to fly this camera and develop my photography techniques through my course and a lot of trial & error practice. Watch this space - more to come...