March 14th - Pi Day

For Pi day I could have done something mathematical and calculated π using some kind of creative method in a Matt Parker-esque style. That would have been more in the spirit of the day but I weighed up my options, I could do maths or I could eat. I decided to leave the maths to the experts. 

I Googled where to get pie near work as I had a new lunch plan. The best option that came up was Pieminster up on Leather Lane so I walked up there. There were a surprising number of veggie options available!

Okay so there were lots of veggie options on the menu but I’d gotten there after 2pm so the only actually available was the Heidi, not my first choice but it did sound good!

It was delicious but really heavy, I finished it and ultimately regretted it. Maybe I should have suck to maths.

Later on I watched Matt Parker’s 2019 Pi Day celebration which was a good one. I’m not sure it beat the year he measured Pi with pies though.

Pi Day… 7/10 both Pi and Pie are good!

I leave you with one of my favourite and weirder parts of the Internet...enjoy!

March 13th - Coconut Torte Day

Today was very exciting, not because I like coconut or particularly like torte, but because today was a self fulfilling celebration day! 

I had went out and had dinner with my sister at The Diner in Spitalfields. While we were out I lamented the fact that I wasn't excited by any of the days available or they'd be impossible to find in the time available. One of the ones I had ruled out was Coconut Torte Day, partly because I had no idea where to beginning finding / making one and partly because the image of it of Daysoftheyear.com looked kind of gross. 

I figured I'd probably celebrate Open An Umbrella Indoors Day when I got home.

Anyway, we ate, agreed we were all too full for dessert, were about to pay and leave when on a spur of the moment Clem asked to see the dessert menu. Lo and behold top of the menu, Chocolate & Coconut Torte!! 😮 Clearly I ordered it.

In my excitement I butchered this photo.

It arrived and looked nothing like I was expecting... It looked significantly better than the fluffy cream thing in the image above.

So how did it taste?... Not amazing to be honest. Fine, but not amazing. We shared it but still didn't quite manage to finish it. 

Coconut Torte Day... 6/10 by far the most exciting part was that the torte found me! 

March 12th - Organize Your Home Office Day

So I don't really have a home office, if I have to work from home I generally just work off my laptop at the kitchen table. I do however have a chest of draws in our hallway that we keep all our ‘office-y’ stuff in. I got home really late tonight so I'll be honest I didn't clean it for particularly long or particularly well. I organised some of the stuff that lives on the top and threw out some bits of scrap paper we had knocking about for some reason.

That all sounds well and good and doesn't look too terrible but what I'd been hoping to start tackling is lurking below. I have a drawer, a drawer of shame. I have no good reason to explain why it's so bad but it seems to have become the living embodiment of my procrastination and a metaphor for the often thinly concealed chaos of my life. One time I dreamt about the drawer.

It contains all the important paperwork in my life, contracts, payslips, rental agreements, loan details. Well let me rephrase, I'm hoping it does. I haven't seen any of that in a long time because it's a complete quagmire of loose paper and sustained disregard. About a year ago I squeezed in a few more sheets of paper and the bottom of the drawer fell out. That should have been the point that I dealt with it but instead it just bought me a few more inches of depth to fill. About 6 months ago that space ran out and I started putting things in David's drawer, I'm ashamed of tainting it.

One time me and my friend Jess agreed that over a weekend we would be adults and I would deal with the drawer and she would deal with the tax return she'd put off for 3 years. She successful dealt with it, did I do anything about my drawer? Fuck no!

So what makes me think that it's finally the time to tackle it. Well for one it's clean your home office day and two I recently watched 2 episodes of Marie Kondo so I now consider myself a bit of a cleaning expert. This drawer does not spark joy for me 😓  It's a bigger job that I can do in one evening so I'm planning to tackle it this Saturday but tonight was small start. It's time.

Clean your home office day… 5/10 I'm not thrilled about it but it's overdue.

UPDATE:

The following weekend has been and gone… it did not get dealt with. Maybe next week. Maybe.

March 11th - Napping Day

Today I got home quite early and was feeling rough with a headache. I'd been planning on celebrating Fill Our Staplers Day but, as exciting as that sounded, the opportunity to nap had presented itself. I made a last minute change of plans and crashed out on the sofa for a bit.

I slept for about an hour and woke up feeling awful. On paper I should love naps, I'm a big fan of sleeping, being cosy and I also generally don't get enough sleep so it would be a great way to top my hours up. But I hate them. I really hate them. I always wake up in a terrible mood and super grouchy. I don't know why, maybe it's because I hate waking up so much and the pain of going through that isn't worth it for less than 6 hours sleep.

Either way naps are the worst. Napping Day… 1/10, I regret having one.

March 10th - Packed Lunch Day

Today was a Sunday and I had to stay in and work from home so having a packed lunch didn't make a whole load of sense. Instead I decided to make one for tomorrow when I'll be in the office. I had some of the veggie cottage pie I made a few days ago leftover so I boxed it up and made a salad to go with it. It was pretty much just all the bits in the fridge that needed using up but that's not a bad thing!

I then put some dressing in a pot and some yogurt in a container for breakfast as I normally eat it at my desk when I get in.

I'm planning on going out tomorrow night so whatever I don't eat at lunch I'll have for dinner before I leave the office. I seem to be eating three meals a day at my desk too often at the moment. Packing it all up the night before is a good way to ensure I'm getting something healthy though and should save some money.

Packed lunches… 8/10, will aim to do it again this week and make a it habit as I've fallen out of the routine of it.

March 9th - Barbie Day

Hot on the heels of International Woman's Day comes Barbie Day. I was never allowed barbies when I was a kid, which was great of my mum, so they’ve never really held any real significance to me. Clearly Barbies are problematic and it would be easy to write a blog post that’s all ‘Barbies are bad for kids self image, they make women hate themselves, they set up unrealistic expectations, if Barbie was a real woman she’d have to walk on all fours due to her proportions, blah blah blah.’

What I thought would be more fun as today is a celebration day would be to come up with some new 21st century Barbies with David:

• White guilt barbie comes with a free Tibet t-shirt, dreadlocks and $73k in college debt

• Anti-vacs Barbie comes with an empty stroller

• Hipster barbie comes with non-prescription glasses, a septum piercing and a t-shirt for a band you've never heard of

• BREXIT Barbie comes with an Irish passport and a new job in Berlin

• Pageant mum barbie comes with the sash she won in 1988, a vodka tonic and a dance routine inappropriate for a four year old

• Botox barbie is just a regular barbie

• Serial killer barbie wears cute matching shoes and handbag and the face of another barbie

• Yoga barbie comes double jointed and with alignable chakras

• The 'Ivanka' barbie is just a regular barbie

• Ruth Barbie Ginsburg comes with a gavel and hip replacement, for a limited time only

• Tinder barbie comes with none of the physical attributes you were expecting

• Instagram influencer barbie comes with the perfect life and a Ken doll who just wants to eat already

• STEM barbie, rare collectable comes with no female coworkers and imposters syndrome

If any of these existed I would totally buy one and it would be my first Barbie!

Barbie day...9/10, had fun coming up with these!

March 8th - International Women’s Day

As a woman and proud feminist this seemed like an important day to celebrate and to do so I went to see Captain Marvel! Watching Marvel Studios' first woman-led superhero movie feels overdue, but it was pretty decent as a film. It’s ridiculous how few women's voices are heard in front of and behind the camera in the film industry. The Marvel universe has some brilliant female characters but up until now they’ve not had their own films so it’s great to finally see that beginning to change. I’m not surprised it’s brought in $455 million in its opening weekend and that there’s been such an appetite for a female led superhero film (after Wonder Woman it was pretty expected). It’s great to see it doing so well, I’m always nervous when a film like this comes out that if it’s not good it will be blamed on it being ‘feminine’ instead of any other possible reasons.

There’s already numerous articles and videos online dissecting Captain Marvel and it’s third-wave brand of feminism, the conversation generated around it is great to see. As undeniably important as normalising the rise of content like Captain Marvel is though I’m wary of being sold feminism. As a movement and political position it’s definitely in vogue at the moment and has become deeply commodified. As far as I’m concerned more debate, awareness and equality is all good but it’s important to be aware of what you’re being sold by who and why they are selling it. Profit driven companies like Marvel at the end of the day wouldn’t go near feminism if it wasn’t going to make them money. The shiny ‘girl-power’ brand of feminism on sale is wonderful but ultimately shallow. When Wonder Woman ran across the battlefield deflecting bullets and when Captain Marvel got all glowy fisted of course I was like ‘Fuck yes! Take my money’. Just like when I first saw the super cute t-shirts being sold everywhere that say ‘The Future Is Female’ and was like ‘Fuck yes! Take my money’... but well...it does distract from less ‘cool’ and I would argue more important women's issues like domestic violence, reproductive rights, FMG and period poverty to name just a few. Don’t get me wrong I’m going to keep consuming it all we just need to be aware to not lose the deeper aims and core fundamentals what what it means to be feminist and promoting of women's rights.

Diatribe over. Go watch Captain Marvel it’s a good film and the more people that see it the more female led films we are likely to get in the future.

As a final International Women’s Day celebration. When I got home I finally got round to putting the suffragette pin I got for Christmas on my coat, I’d been meaning to for a while!

All in all a pretty well celebrated day. International Women’s Day...9/10

March 7th - Plant Power Day

So I've been vegetarian for 7ish years now and I love cooking. I even think I'm pretty good at it!

I have two 'go to' recipes I make over and over again if I want to make a big meal, have people over or want to batch cool. The first is a mango peanut butter curry devised out of what was in my cupboard one weekend when I was broke and living right on Whitechapel market and had access to amazing mangos 6 months of the year.

The other is a veggie shepherd’s pie based on this recipe, which I decided to make today.

It's delicious and even meat eaters are into it. I make a bit of a bastardised version of it nowadays as I've tweaked the recipe over the years. The main changes are a layer of smoked cheese between the lentil mix and the mashed potatoes, so good. I omit the celery because celery is gross. The final change is that I sometimes make half the mash cauliflower instead of potato so it's a bit less carby which in my mind justifies the extra cheese, you totally can't tell the difference.

So today to celebrate I made a big pie and we then ate it! Simple as that.

Plant powered day… 10/10 it's my bag! There are so many good reasons to be veggie or just eat a bit less meat.

March 6th - White Chocolate Cheesecake Day

I knew today was going to be a good day! White chocolate and cheesecake are both excellent in my books. We have a friend staying with us for a week so it seemed like a nice idea to make a big home cooked dinner and dessert. After a quick Google I settled on this recipe (mainly because it said it would only take 15 minutes, spoilers: it lied) and got to work:

First I made the buttery biscuit base (link) using malted milks, one of the most underrated biscuits in my honest opinion.

We then pushed it into the bottoms of the moulds (which may or may not be old Gü cheesecake containers).

I whisked together the creamy ingredients and then (while I licked the whisk) put it on top of the biscuit mix.

Then blobbed strawberry jam in top and put in some sliced strawberries. The corner store didn't have raspberries but that wasn't a problem as far as I was concerned.

Look how nice they are!

So at this point I had white chocolate cheesecakes but the next instruction was 'Refrigerate for a minimum of four hours.' The recipe said 15 minutes at the top so I hadn't considered chilling time. They were pretty soft so I decided to listen and bunged them in the freezer for an hour as a compromise. I wasn’t intending to take them out of the dishes other than to eat them so I figured they didn’t need to be as firm.

An hour later we ate them and they were good!

White chocolate cheesecake day… 9/10 there's other flavours of cheesecake I'd pick over white chocolate but the fact that this was a slightly obscure flavour meant I had to make it myself which was fun and I hadn't done in years.

March 5th - Unique Names Day

This seemed like a good day for me to celebrate as I have an incredibly unique name, in fact I can confidently say I’m the only Emelia Fiell. My first name is really rare, I’ve never met anyone else with with same spelling and only direct relatives of mine have our surname. The theory is that it was anglicised a few generations back when my family emigrated to Canada.

My first name Emelia comes from my great grandma Emelia (which came up on namesake day) but not even she was an Emelia Fiell as she was in my father's maternal line. I had a look online at Baby Name Uniqueness Analyzer and for the year I was born I was one of only 53 babies called Emelia. The name has gotten more popular since 1990 though, moving from 2344th to 541st most popular girls name in 2017.

I then put my full name into GBG UK names to see if there were any other similar names in the UK. Apparently there aren’t!

Next stop I thought I’d try an American database, How Many Of Me, as there would be more people in it and my family name is from North America so possibly some relatives there that I’m unaware of?

Unsurprisingly there’s one or fewer Emelia Fiell’s but up to 122 Fiell’s! The estimate isn’t absolute and digging into the websites FAQs it seems to basically mean that at lower numbers it’s really hard to estimate so there could be a fair bit of variance. So I’m going to assume there’s less of us than 122.

The takeaway, yes my name is completely unique as suspected. In some ways it’s great...if you Google me, all you get is me!

I’m also the top ‘Emelia F’ on IMDB which is kind of cool in its own way, maybe one day I’ll be the top Emelia on it. On the other hand I’m often cautious of giving my full name to people as once you have that you can find out so much out about me online, it’s a double edged sword.

On the whole though Unique Names day...8/10 I really like having such a unique name and wouldn’t change it!

March 4th - International Scrapbooking Industry Day

I know basically nothing about the scrapbooking industry, it all seems rather niche but apparently it's booming!

“Scrapbooking — or “memory crafts” as the hobby is also called — has exploded in the past decade. According to the Hobby and Craft Association, the trade association for the craft industry, scrapbooking is now a US$2.5 Billion industry that is showing no signs of slowing growth. There are now over 3,000 scrapbooking stores nationwide in the United States, serving 25 million scrapbookers.”

— https://smallbiztrends.com/2004/07/booming-scrapbooking-industry.html

The obvious thing to do to celebrate the industry seemed to be to make a scrapbook.

We have ‘scrapboards’ in our living room above the fireplace which I love but they have become really busy and we still have a whole load of stuff we need to add from the last year.

I feel like a scrapbook should be something more contained than just the stuff we go to. I've been talking for ages about making one of a big trip we did round Scandinavian and Eastern Europe by land a few years ago now. I never got around to it though, mainly because most of the photos (including no joke 400 of one particularly precocious seagull) are on David's camera and somewhere on our hard drives and/or computers and need some serious sifting through.

To celebrate scrapbooking day I made the first step towards it and ordered a scrapbook and some sticky corner things from Amazon.

Doing a whole scrapbook in a day is too much but this is the first step. Once it arrives we can move into stage two… picking the photos and then after that getting them printed.

Scrapbook day… 5/10 I don't feel like I've celebrated particularly well but it's a good thing to get rolling and it'll be lovely to have it when it's finished.

Update:

1 month later we have not picked the photos out yet… Maybe next month!

March 3rd - Namesake Day

Today is a relatively easy day to celebrate as I’m named after my great grandma, Emelia Hamill. She was was my fathers, mothers mother. She was a proper pioneer women in Canada, full of stories of coming across the country in covered wagons and riding to school on a horse. She was also one of the toughest and warmest people I’ve ever known. She lived to 102 years old and I was incredibly fortunate to have her in my life for 18 years. A lot of people don’t get that long with their grandparents let alone their great grandparents.

I didn’t see her very often as she lived in Canada and I grew up in the UK but every year or so I’d go out for a few weeks and we’d spend time together. Right up until the end she was surprisingly spritely, even when she had to eventually go into a nursing home, and never lost her curiosity and interest for life and other people.

This is her with my grandma next to her and my dad (the smallest baby) in about 1958.

And this is her meeting me, her first great grandchild, at Christmas 1990. I would have been about 3 months old.

Namesake day...10/10, I love being named after her. My family is full of tough women and I like being connected with someone so wonderful through my name. Maybe one day I’ll have a great granddaughter named after me!

March 2nd - Old Stuff Day

We’ve have a friend staying from Vienna this week so we wanted to take him out to go see London today. Most of London is pretty old so it seemed like it would be easy to combine the two. My initial thoughts were we could go to either the Natural History Museum and look at dinosaurs (between 252 - 66 million years old) or to the Greenwich Observatory as I know they have a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite you can touch!

“Our meteorite is a large hunk of mostly iron with just under 10% of nickel. It was formed around the same time as our Sun and the Earth and after a leisurely tour of the Solar System as the centre of an asteroid, it came crashing down into southern Africa as the Gibeon Meteorite.

The Nama people used smaller bits of the meteorite for tools and countless chunks remained scattered over a large area. In 1836 Englishman J. E. Alexander collected samples and sent them to London. John Herschel confirmed they were indeed not of this planet.

We’ve sliced away one side of the meteorite so that you can see what it looks like inside and it has this beautiful pattern of metal crystals inside - those crystals only form if the metal has cooled over millions of years, just a few degrees every million years.”

— https://www.rmg.co.uk/see-do/we-recommend/attractions/touch-45-billion-year-old-meteorite

Both seemed like good options but Seb had been to the Natural History Museum before and going to Greenwich was a bit out of the way from other things we wanted to see. In the end we settled on walking along the South Bank but we would then cross over to North Bank at Waterloo so we could do the stretch between Cleopatra's Needle and the Tower of London. Both certifiably old things.

We went to Cleopatra’s needle, 3,500 years old, and I got this photo with it:

It was brought from Alexandria to the UK in 1878 and had a pretty horrendous journey across which included 6 men dying, the history of which is briefly mentioned on the four plaques.

A bit hard to see in the dark but they get the gist across of how it got here.

It’s also flagged by a couple of big sphinx statues. Quite the contrast to the London Eye behind!

We then walked east along the bank until we hit the Tower of London, 953 years old, one of my favourite places in London. So many momentous events have happened there and it’s intrinsically tied into the fabric of British history. Despite all the madness that has happened there over its history and the general scrum it becomes with tourists during the day now it was really peaceful at night and the daffodils were blooming in the moat. Really beautiful.

Old stuff day...9/10, I’m really into history and it was a great excuse to walk my favourite section of the Thames.

On the way back home from Tower Hill I saw this in the station for Dr. Seuss Day. Nice to see other people celebrating!

March 1st - Plan A Solo Vacation Day

I’m going to be taking 7 months off work next year to travel and hike in America by myself so taking a solo trip beforehand has been on my mind to do. I’m naturally a very social creature and am not particularly a fan of my own company which means I’ve never really done any solo travelling. If I’m going to be more or less by myself for 7 months I need to build up to it. Given that I’m planning on doing a fair bit of walking next year it makes sense to go do some walking here as my solo trip.

I’m planning on going to do Hadrian's wall at the end of summer and I’ve been chipping away at the London LOOP. They’re only a couple of some of the long distance footpaths in the UK so I had a look at the National Trails website to check out others.

There’s quite a few that are near-ish to London so one of those seems like the best idea. I had a read up on a few and have decided that the South Downs Way seems like the best option. I can start in Winchester (which isn’t too horribly expensive to get to on the train - a factor that ruled out some of the more northerly routes) and over the course of a few (well maybe 5 or 6) weekends work my way through it and finish at Eastbourne. Finishing at the sea sounds like a nice end to a long journey.  

For the first section I’m thinking about using one of the bank holiday weekends coming up and doing from Winchester to Queen Elizabeth Country Park which would be 23 miles. The first night I could go ~8.5 miles to Holden Farm Camping (only £10 if you’re doing the South Downs Way!). I was originally looking at The Milburys at Beauworth which is right on the trail and I wouldn’t have to camp but it seems to just be a pub now and I was slightly put off by the statuses on their Facebook page like this :/ :/

Not the most horrendous thing ever written but I don’t think I’d want to stay with people who think that’s a good idea to post on their official website/social media.

Second night I might be able to go another ~9 miles to Meon Springs it’s listed as having camping options but the website looks like it’s all gone a bit glamping now and doesn’t have any info about regular camping anymore. It doesn’t look like there’s a lot of other accommodation options in that stretch unless I stay at a B&B which would be £100, so pretty steep. Maybe I’ll check out if there any any AirBnB’s around. That would leave me with ~5.5 miles to do on the final day and then time to travel back home which looks like it could be very complicated. Google Maps is saying it’d be about 6 ½ hours on 3 buses, a train and then the underground. Apparently it would only take 4 minutes longer to cycle back! I might need to find a different end point or add an extra day and go further on to a better place to leave from.

That’s about as much research as I have head space to do today but it all looks very doable. I’ll just wait a bit till it gets warmer and I have a better idea of what’s going on in my calendar around that time and pick a weekend to go.

Plan a solo vacation day… 9/10, I’m looking forward to it.

February 28th - Chocolate Soufflé Day

There’s not a lot to say about Chocolate Soufflé day other than it was good but brief. A few days ago when I was at the supermarket I picked up a couple of Gü chocolate soufflés in anticipation of today. Since then every time I’ve opened the fridge they’ve stared back at me wanting me to eat them. We got home from work, ate dinner, banged them in the oven to cook and then ate them.

They were super goopy and delicious.

Chocolate Soufflé Day...9/10 really yum, would definitely have again.

February 27th - Pokémon Day

Pokémon day has been pretty easy to celebrate. Framestore is currently working on Detective Pikachu (which I’m super excited for) so the company is pretty all over Pokémon at the moment. When I got into work I was greeted by these:

Jess knew Pokémon day was coming up so she’d brought them in from home to live on my desk for the day. Adorable. While I was working today I watched the edit of our sequences. Obviously I can’t show anything but I can say that it’s looking great and link to the trailer:

It’s the film I’m most looking forward to that we’re working on this year.

The final Pokémon thing to cap off the day was on my commute home I fired up an emulator I have on my phone and played Pokémon Crystal. It was fun. Pokémon blue was the first Pokémon game I played when I was a kid and it’s pretty similar. I’ve sunk too many hours into this emulator over the last year which I why I hadn’t played it in a bit. I also beaten the Elite Four a while back and the game just hasn’t been as interesting after that. Check out my line up:

I wandered around for a bit, battled a few people, and then I was home, Pokémon day successfully celebrated.

Pokémon day...9/10 one of my favourite franchises.

February 26th - Pistachio Day

Instead of just eating some pistachios today I’ve instead leaned hard into the whole pistachio based desserts side of things.

At lunch I walked down to Paul’s on Fleet St thinking they would probably have pistachio macaroons as it’s a pretty traditional flavour for them. When I got there they had run out of normal ones but they did have one that was massive!

My face when I realised I would have to buy it:

I took it back to the office and split it three ways with Christina and Jess.

You can’t really get a sense of scale but that’s a dinner plate sized plate, each third was bigger than a normal macaroon and delicious.

I worked the rest of the day and when I got home realised that we had some baklava in the cupboard that David’s mum had given us for Christmas from Cyprus that would need eaten soon. One of the boxes was pistachio flavoured, it was meant to be…

Luckily they were individually wrapped so opening it didn’t mean we had to eat the whole lot within a few days as they were super sweet and syrupy. Oh and delicious.

Pistachio day… 9/10 it’s not a flavour I would normally pick but both things I had it in today were really good! I’ll probably eat more pistachio flavoured things in the future.

February 25th - Play More Cards Day

Today David and I got home very late about 10pm and were totally wiped out. We’d been planning on playing cards, I’m trying to find things we can do together that don’t involve staring at screens together as we both do enough of that at work. The puzzle we did for Puzzle Day was great for that but we finished a while ago and we haven’t gotten a new one yet.

We played one game of Kings in the Corner which is my favourite card game.

The rules for those who care are:

“Rules

Each player is dealt seven cards from the top of the deck. A game play “board” is then set up on the playing surface. Four cards are laid down, face up, in a plus pattern, with the remainder of the deck face down in the middle. In this fashion there should be a card north, south, east and west of the deck with empty spaces in the “corners”.

The player who takes the first turn is determined by each player drawing a random card from the deck; the player with the highest draw takes the first turn. If you are playing with two players, whoever did not deal the cards will go first. Alternatively, the person to the left of the dealer starts.

On their turn, a player may perform any number of the following moves, in any order:

1) attempting to discard from their hand by playing their cards in descending numerical order in a suit of the opposite color using the “foundation” cards as a starting point. For instance, if there is a four of clubs sitting on the playing board, a player can take a three of diamonds or hearts from their hand and discard it onto that four. Players can continue playing as many cards from their hand as are eligible for play in this fashion.

2) If at any time a player has a King in their hand they have to(during their turn) place it in one of the empty corners (thus the origin of the game’s name.) These corner stacks now become active in game play and cards can be played on them during turns in the same fashion as the normal game board.

3) Move an entire foundation pile onto another foundation pile if the bottom card of the moving pile is one rank lower and opposite in colour to the top card of the pile you are moving it onto.

4) Play any card from your hand to any of the original (N, E, S, W) foundation piles that has become empty (because the card(s) that were originally in it have been moved to another pile).

At the end of the player’s turn, they draw a card from the stock.

The first player to play all of his or her cards onto the board is the winner.”

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kings_in_the_Corner

I then messed around for a bit trying to perfect cutting a deck of cards with one hand which one day I will be able to do cleanly despite my tiny hands! After that it was time to crash out.

We didn’t play as much as I would have liked but given the circumstances it was still nice to make the effort and I enjoyed it. I’m leaving a deck of cards out by the kitchen table now so it might happen again! Play More Cards Day...8/10 I like the sentiment and it’s made me do just that.

February 24th - Tortilla Chip Day

When I think of tortilla chips I think of Doritos. I went to the corner store and picked up all the flavours they had available. Out of the possible 10 flavours available in the UK (according to the Doritos website) they had 4, not bad going for a tiny store!

Pleased with my find I set about figuring out which is my favourite…

The results :

• Cool original - good 7/10, no idea what the actual flavour is though

• Chilli Heatwave - 8/10, not too spicy at all and a slightly nice sweet flavour

• BBQ Rib - 6/10, slightly generic fake meat flavour. Fine but other meaty crisps are better

• Tangy Cheese - 6/10 - good but fairly generic tasting again

Overall on a single chip test Chilli Heatwave surprisingly came out on top but I think if I was to eat a whole bag I'd go with Cool Original! David then sat and ate most of the 4 remaining bags, his favourite is Tangy Cheese. I know I shouldn’t but I slightly judge him for it.

Tortilla Chip Day...8/10 I’m a fan! I like crisps but don’t eat them very often because I have a bit of a weird quirk around not liking to get grease on my hands. As Tortilla chips aren’t greasy I tend to get them over other types.

Also as it’s the appropriate day please enjoy one of my favourite tweets ever:

February 23rd - International Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day

Today we've had friends round to play board games and super conveniently our friends Whitney and Gordon brought along their dog Beans. He's super sweet, check out his little face.

He's getting on now but he's still surprisingly spritely, especially when there's treats about. As he's only a tiny dog he only gets tiny treats but boy is he a fan. I fed him a couple of them and we both thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Dog Treat Appreciation… I'd give it a 7 but Beans would give it a 10 so splitting the difference, 8.5/10!