Entry #14: Don't Stop Me Now

I think that was the longest lurgy I've ever had. I suppose smoking cigarettes wouldn't have helped the situation, but I made an effort to get some extra sleep. I feel like I should enjoy smoking while we still have the legal freedom to do so, and quit once the change of legislation in England comes into force from July.

Although I'm not religious, I am using the period of Lent to cut down on salt and sugar. I'll still put salt on chips and may occasionally have a coffee with sugar, but apart from that my intake is greatly reduced. I have quite a responsible diet as it is, snack foods are not on my shopping receipts nowadays, but I am lacking in culinary skills. Definitely something I want to do this year is become more knowledgeable about food, so the meals I have are more varied, and food is more interesting and exciting and not just sustaining me as so often is the case.

Doing more with food has been a low priority because there are more important things for me to spend my time on, so long as I've had more food than I need stored away for consumption then I've not thought much further about it. A positive attribute prevalent in my family is an appreciation of fruit and vegetables, I eat a lot but don't consistently get my five-a-day. There is no vegetable I haven't liked but with fruit I really only buy apples and bananas. My preferred fruit juices are tomato and apple, and occasionally I'll have orange or vegetable. It occured to me a couple years ago I like orange juice with bits in.

If opening something requires much attention or hassle then I tend not to like it; Oranges and kiwi fruit are out. Why are so many things packaged in a way that unwrapping is like a Krypton Factor challenge? Mother Nature's annoying raw fruits aside, and easy to open cartons of their juice, I find so many things are packaged as if they weren't intended to be released: Toothbrushes and small electronics sealed in injection molded cases with really no obvious way of opening them, I always resort to scissors which is still difficult; CD cases shrink wrapped in cellophane, requiring me to somehow catch my nail under the overlap to peel it back or pierce a part if there's a gap to push through.

After difficult packaging there's excessive packaging. Open a box containing a big eletronic product and you'll have to then unwrap each of its contents, even the instruction manual, remote control and batteries. Boxes of individually wrapped chocolates are bloody annoying, inevitably turning into a tombola for remaining sweets as empty wrappers end up back in the box.

On Saturday I bought a couple CD's, one a classical compilation which was not wrapped in cellophane. I only got round to having my first listen on Tuesday night, and discovered the first of the four CD's is missing — I shall be back in Woolworths this Saturday. After Saturday's shopping with mum, I babysat my three-year-old brother. He was quite well-behaved apart from when I was trying to watch Dancing on Ice.

I've not been watching much television recently — even missing the past few episodes of Shameless and, even worse, several episodes of Coronation Street (Corrie Blog will help me get with the programme) — but Dancing on Ice is one programme I've been looking forward to watching each week. I think I've been so intrigued by it more than the celebrity singing and dancing competitions because overall I like its participants, presenters and production quality. ITV do a better a job of their live reality shows than the BBC.

After voting for Lisa Scott-Lee for another week, I flicked over to When Will I Be Famous?. I didn't like Graham Norton's presenting here. I think the script written for him doesn't match his character enough, so the attempts at humour felt so prefabricated and he seemed so focused on what he was to do next he wasn't paying attention to contestants' answers to his questions.

I voted for the acrobats 8 Storey, not just because they look so fit but I thought the prop-free acrobatics were amazing. I had to return to ITV for Dancing on Ice so didn't get to see the prize go to the “rock piping band” Red Hot Chilli Pipers. I can appreciate they won because their act was so original as well as entertaining. So my voting decision formed a minority there and then on Dancing on Ice too, because Lisa ended up in the skate-off and received the fewest votes from the panel in favour of Duncan James. Emily Symons must have a lot of public appreciation to have her skating faux pas overlooked again.

Another favourite programme at the moment is the Beeb's Dragons' Den, an encouragement for entrepreneurial minds. However, with all their money it's a shame the business tycoons haven't invested much in their official Web sites which—in my un-humble opinion—are of a poor standard. Peter Jones has his own idea-discovery programme coming soon, not on BBC but ITV — Tycoon. I'm hoping to do quite a bit of work on my own site this weekend, hopefully. I'm off to open a carton of tomato juice.

entry info

Entry #14, published on Thursday, 1^st of March 2007 at 22:02 local time (Swatch Internet Time @959 .beats)

Returning in 2008 ;-)