February 22nd - World Yoga Day

I’ve been having some back pain the last couple of years and was diagnosed with sciatica about a year ago. I chose to do very little about it apart from winge when it flared up a bit every few months. Then about 6 months ago, in September, I had a pretty traumatic fall down the stairs at home. When my GP sent me to A&E and they asked me what had happened I pretty much said ‘I’m sure there’s a more medically accurate term for it than this but I fell on my arse incredibly hard’. Long story short, I broke my tailbone and jolted the disk above. It was finally time to take my back pain seriously and do something about it.

A few weeks later I took up weight lifting and have been working on strengthening my core as much as possible. I’ve also started stretching semi-regularly using a app imaginatively called ‘Stretching Exercises’. It’s actually really great and a good mix of plain old stretching and yoga, I’ve recommended it to a few friends who have also started using it too. So today I got up early and did their Lower Back Stretching routine which is my go to.

As I already do this a few times a week it didn’t seem especially celebratory so when I got home tonight I decided to do some more yoga! One of the women I do weight lifting with had recommended a Youtube channel called Yoga With Adriene a couple of weeks ago so I decided to check it out. As it was kind of late and I don’t consider myself particularly good at yoga I went for this video:

It was pretty simplistic and not at all taxing so I’d probably pick something a bit more involved of hers next time. I was really into the message and pace of it and felt pretty chilled afterwards.

World Yoga Day...9/10 I normally only do one class once a week and then do a bit of stretching in the mornings but it always brings real positivity to my day and headspace. I should do it more often!

February 21st - Sticky Bun Day

I’m not a massive fan of sticky buns with the exception of cinnamon rolls because they’re amazing (but even that has more to do with liking cinnamon rather than the roll element). David went past the supermarket on the way home tonight and while he was there picked me up some traditional looking ones. We made and ate dinner and then once I was full I remembered that we still had to eat them.

As excited as I was I’d already been feeling a bit nauseous today before I filled up and couldn’t face eating a whole bun. I had a bite though so that I had had some on the appropriate celebration day and put the rest away for another time.

Sticky Bun Day...4/10 I’m not crazy about them. I’d rather use the calories on something a bit more exciting and wasn’t feeling something that sweet tonight.

February 20th - Love Your Pet Day

I love having pets but unfortunately my timeshare cat Bumble (who you may remember from such blog posts as Answer Your Cat’s Questions Day) is currently living his best life with my parents in the Cotswolds. As much as I’m into our long distance relationship I thought I maybe needed something a bit closer to home and low maintenance. I briefly toyed with the idea of getting a mouse or something rodent-y but figured that would be a bad idea for when Bumble is around. In the end I settled on...sea monkeys!! The best pet you can get on Amazon Prime.

I ordered them a couple of days in advance and when they turned up they came with a surprisingly large amount of instructions. Turns out they need a 24hrs period of water purification before you can add eggs so it was lucky I’d ordered them early enough so I could then put the eggs in today and start my sea monkey journey.

Today I waited all day until the 24hrs were up and then put the eggs in (I managed to spill some in my keyboard but as long as it doesn’t now get wet I think it’ll be okay)! They turned the water pretty murky and gross looking but that’s as much excitement as I got from them today. That’s okay though, sea monkeys aren’t just for Love Your Pet Day they’re for life, well their life which is approximately a month.

I now need to just leave them alone for a week to hatch and then start feeding them once a week (already got a reminder in my work calendar). I did a bit of research into what exactly they are and incredibly they are apparently ‘man made’.

“Sea-monkeys is the brand name given to a species called Artemia NYOS (named after the New York Oceanic Society, at whose lab they were made).

They were bred from different brine shrimp species, then marketed as ‘instant’ pets. They don’t exist in nature.

What made them ‘instant’ is the fact that this particular kind of crustacean reached a state of cryptobiosis (almost like cryosleep in sci-fi movies, where a body shuts down for a period of time) when frozen, dried completely, or deprived of oxygen. They then spring back to life again when conditions go back to normal, breathing through their feet and drifting towards lights (yeah, normal).”

— https://metro.co.uk/2018/04/30/sea-monkeys-long-live-real-7510061/

It slightly blows my mind that in the 50s humans genetically engineered a creature that doesn’t exist in nature purely as an amusement so that one day they could live on my desk. What a time to be alive.

Love Your Pet Day… 7/10 I haven’t had sea monkeys since I was a kid, when I vaguely remember they cannibalised each other until there was just one large one at the end, but I’m excited! Planning on posting sporadic updates as they hatch and progress.

Update: 23/02

• They’re alive, tiny specks but alive!

Update: 27/02

• Check out how many and how big they are!

February 19th - Chocolate Mint Day

Today I decided to spread the celebrating around a bit and made mint chocolate day a work thing. I went out and bought 3 different types of mint chocolate, Areo Mint Bubbles, After Eights and some Chocolate Mint Cream Biscuits from M&S. A pretty varied selection. Mid afternoon I put them out on the bookcase which is our traditional snacking area by the software departments and sent an email around pushing people towards them.  

It took a little bit of explaining of why I was doing it and canvassing opinions as it was the first time most people had heard about this blog. It was pretty unilaterally agreed though that a random mint chocolate day was a good thing and everything disappeared quickly.

The final scores of the mint chocolate were:

• 1st place: After Eights (7 votes)

• 2nd place: Areo Bubbles (5 votes)

• 3rd place: Mint Cream Biscuits (4 votes)

It was somewhat controversial that the Areo chocolates beat the biscuits and it may have come down to the fact that there were less biscuits so not everyone got to try one. There was a clear After Eight contingent from the get go though who held the lead the whole way through to the end.

Chocolate Mint Day...8/10 it was fun to celebrate a day with a bigger group of people than normal and almost everyone likes mint chocolate!

February 18th - Pluto Day

I have mixed views on Pluto. I grew up with it being the 9th planet and like many others felt a bit robbed when it was downgraded. At the same time though I find it really quite funny that it’s mainly Americans that are all het up over it because it was the only planet discovered by an American, Clyde Tombaugh. Which I learnt all about from the excellent BackStory podcast ‘Starry-Eyed - A History Of The Heavens’.

Clyde Tombaugh and his telescope!

It’s pretty hard to celebrate something so untangable and far away but I figured I could at least figure out where it was in the sky on Pluto day! I downloaded Sky Map on my phone and set about finding it. I spun about for a bit before I realised it might not actually be up in the sky for me. I found the Gallery built into the app and they had this pretty image of the ‘dwarf’ planet. I then used the ‘Find in Sky’ button and it spun me round to here:

It was pretty much directly under my feet! I spent a bit of time checking out some other planets and stars before I got too cold and headed in. I realised I could use it indoors too which for some reason hadn’t occurred but it seemed less fun so I gave up pretty quickly.

Pluto day...6/10. Interesting and I learnt way more about it than I knew before but not the most exciting day I’ve celebrated.

February 17th - World Human Spirit Day

This was an interesting day to try to celebrate. I’m not religious and never have been, generally I find organised religion pretty objectionable. I have in the past found though that religious people I know have a sense of belonging and community that has been at times missing from my life. Having a group of like-minded local people around and supporting you sounds great! Over the years I’ve heard a number of times that the Humanists are a great secular alternative but I’ve never explored it.

I Googled them and found their ‘How Humanist Are You?’ quiz so I took it…looks like I might fit in!

Since my views apparently so strongly aligned I decided to look up my local group. Turns out they’re right by my office. I asked to join the group and I’m hoping to go to one of their meetups soon!

World Human Spirit Day, it would be great to meet more people with similar views looking for a community in London. 8/10 would do my spirit some good.  

February 16th - Almond Day

Today has been Almond Day! I spent most of the afternoon and evening at my friend Miles’s flat cooling party (the opposite of a house warming as he’s moving out). On route to the party I went past the supermarket to pick up drinks and some almonds. I hadn’t given any particular thought to how I would celebrate once I had them and they stayed in my bag for a bit once I got there. A couple of friends have been following the blog since I started it and asked what today was so I told them and that I had almonds on me. We decided the best way to celebrate would be to get everyone involved. It took a bit of explaining to get everyone on board with why I needed them to eat almonds but everyone was intrigued and went with it. Jamie one of Miles’s housemates is really allergic to nuts so instead of partaking he agreed to take the photo and then we would all wash our hands before we went near him again.

Getting ready to eat them!

Eating them!

Right as we finished eating them and taking photos Nora came out of the bathroom and we realised we’d missed her. I took a seperate photo of her eating a celebratory almond and then put them away so no one killed Jamie.

Almond day… almonds are okay but celebrating almonds with friends is great, 9/10!

February 15th - Gumdrop Day

Today is Gumdrop day! I haven’t had a gumdrop in years partly because I was never a massive fan but mainly because I’ve been vegetarian for about 7 years. I don’t eat meat but I do very occasionally cheat and eat gelatine in marshmallows because they’re delicious and they make me happy. I figured if I’ll eat the occasional marshmallow I could eat a gumdrop and not feel too terrible about it. What a slippery gelatine slope.  

I went to the supermarket and it turns out there’s more types of gumdrop than I remember.

There was a 3 for £1.40 deal on which was pretty convenient so I bought all three types and decided to do a comparison test. I have friends coming round at the weekend to play boardgames so I figured I could eat one from each pack and then pawn the rest off on them. I got home and realised that I couldn’t do a straight comparison of whichever flavour was first out of the packet as some flavours are just not as good as others. Instead I dug through and pulled out a strawberry flavour from each pack and got to testing.

The results:

Fruit gums - Immediately became stuck to my teeth. Really firm texture and sticky, overall kinda gross. 2/10 ended up spitting it out.

Fruit pastilles - Okay this is a lot better! Soft enough to actually chew and the sugar on the outside is nice. 7/10.

Wine gums - Also good! A bit too chewy but the best flavour so far. 8/10

Averaging the scores above, Gumdrop day should be a… 5.66/10 but I’m going to round down for the gelatine factor. Overall score 5/10, there’s better candy and I wouldn’t buy again.

February 14th - Donor Day

For Donor Day I had a think about what I could potentially donate. I’m already an organ and bone marrow donor and have previously donated my hair so I was running out of things to give away. I had a look at look at if I would be able to donate blood today a week ago but I recently got my ears pierced so I’m not able to donate for 4 months (a few weeks of which is remaining).

(Aren't all piercings body piercings?)

I’ve been trying to donate blood for a while but I’ve had real problems with being able to get an appointment at a reasonable time. The whole system doesn’t seem to be set up to let people who work 9 - 6 jobs do it. On top of that I’ve had a few piercings and done some more exotic traveling over the last few years which has often meant I’m unable to give blood for a few months at a time. Ruminating on this I decided that the best thing I could do to celebrate today and make the biggest impact would be to make it easier for people to donate. Framestore has about 900 people in our building, that’s a lot of bodies full of blood, a percentage of which I’m sure would be eligible and willing to donate if it was easy to.

I had a poke about the NHS Blood and Transplant website and found that you can contact them to suggest a temporary donation venue. There’s quite a lot of criteria you need to hit but I think there’s a space in the office that would fulfil it. The next step was to see if Framestore would potentially be on board.

I heard back pretty quickly that they were. Going to do some more research soon and see if I can get this rolling!

Donor day… 10/10, if you’re able to it’s such an amazing way to give back.

February 13th - Tortellini Day

I used to make tortellini all the time as it’s a pretty cheap and very quick meal. For some reason though I’ve not made it in a few months so seemed like a nice thing to have again.
While I was waiting for water to boil I did some research into the origins of the pasta and came across The Learned Order of the Tortellini based in Bologna the home of tortellini and they take preserving tortellini tradition pretty seriously!

They have some pretty swanky outfits and wear fancy gold tortellini necklaces and tortellini shaped hats, if I lived in Bologna I think these would be my people.

Anyway that was enough history, time to do some cooking!

I ‘made’ the sauce by frying red onion and pepper and mixing in the premade sauce I’d bought. Added to the cooked tortellini and was done. Super easy!

And delicious! Tortellini day… 8/10 It’s a good meal and I should make it more often.

February 12th - Lost Penny Day

This seemed like a good day to celebrate, finding money is always nice! I was a bit concerned that I couldn’t guarantee that I would be able to find a penny though as by its nature it’s up to luck. I thought about it for a bit and decided the best way to celebrate would be to give other people the opportunity to celebrate by dropping pennies throughout the day.

I took a handful of pennies from my change jar and throughout the day when I was walking about dropped them. I felt pretty weird to be actively trying to drop money, I kept making a point of doing it when people weren’t nearby. I didn’t know how to explain why I was doing it if anyone was nice enough to point out that I’d dropped something.

Lost Penny Day… 9/10 I really quite enjoyed doing this today!

Update: One of the pennies stayed on my road for 5 days before it disappeared!

February 11th - Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk Day

The milk:

The spill:

The lack of remorse:

Not crying over spilt milk: 8/10. I like the sentiment behind this day, once something is done it’s done so why be hung up on it.

February 10th - World Marriage Day

David and I briefly discussed getting married today but both pretty quickly agreed that we’re not massively into the idea. I’m not a fan of marriage for a lot of reasons, the overarching misogyny, not wanting to be defined by my relationship to a man, not wanting to get married just because we’re at an age where it’s expected, basically I think it’s antiquated. I’m not saying I’d never do it but it would have to be on our terms and the institution doesn’t hold any real significance to me.

While we were on the topic though we did discuss our friends weddings coming up later this year. We have one in Cape Town in June and one in Vienna in August so we looked at the logistics of getting to both. They’ll both be a lot of fun!

World Marriage Day… 4/10 generally not for me, at least not now. Was good to starting working out our summer plans though.

February 9th - Pizza Day

I spent most of today on an airplane, swinging wildly between attempting to sleep and lamenting my lack of sleep (whilst eating sugar). 2hrs into what was close to a 15hr odyssey I was extremely ready to be home and envisioning collapsing on the sofa and ordering pizza. Long story short, we travelled a fair distance, it was long and boring yarda yarda.

On the very final leg of the journey I whipped into the corner store to buy some milk and bread. I was looking around for something else to buy to bump me over the £5 minimum when I realised they're now stocking Dr. Oetker Quorn pizzas! Plaistow, one tiny step closer to gentrification! (I thought we were going to be the first wave when we moved here but no one else followed 😢). I quickly weighed up the options, pizza of likely lesser quality but here or order pizza that will definitely be good but isn't here. I staring into a chest freezer blankly like a crazy women for the better part of three minutes trying to force my jetlagged brain to make a decision. Once I realised what I was doing I grabbed them, paid and bolted.

I finally got home and forced myself to stay up through the afternoon and evening and at a dinner appropriate time cooked the pizzas. They looked a bit bland so I added a bit of extra cheese and this is how it turned out!

It looked kinda meh and tasted kinda meh. Don't get me wrong it was totally fine, might even buy again but really nothing to write home about. I actually think their regular cheese pizza is better but it's nice to see more veggie options! I have to be honest though, this is all falling into the context of having had awesome pizza only a couple of days ago from a hole in the wall in LA so right now I'm being extra judgy.

Overall, Pizza day 5/10!

Also in the spirit of pizza day, Internet please enjoy this photo of my friend Mimi from our last holiday together...

February 8th - Molasses Bar Day

Luckily today I'm still in LA because I'm not sure that molasses is really a thing in the UK. I’m currently sat in the La Monarca bakery with David before we head to the airport.

We grabbed some waffley delicious lunch at The Waffle and while there I set about my plan of just Googling 'Molasses Bar Los Angeles' and seeing what turned up. All the hits were talking about Milk down in Fairfax but as we're heading to the airport that's really not the right direction. Next plan, searching bakery on Maps and seeing what was nearby. The first result a couple of blocks away was La Monarca and has great reviews! I scrolled through their menu online and spied...'PUERQUITO / molasses cookie'. Close enough!

So we've wandered over here trundling suitcases to find molassesy goods!

It smells amazing and they have all kinds of delicious looking things. Check these out...

So I had a look and they seemed to have everything apart from what I was looking for! They even have horchata cake. If I wasn't on a molasses based mission I'd be all over that. I asked behind the counter about puerquito and they were just about to bake a batch if we could wait 15 minutes. We checked how long we had until we needed to check in for our flight and yes, yes we did have 15 minutes spare, just. So here we are waiting... This lady just put them in the oven 😌

UPDATE:
COOKIES HAVE ARRIVED!!

UPDATE 2:
Cookies are super hot and soft but not what I expected. I thought molasses was like soft gingerbread? This is not that. It tastes more like treacle flavoured dough which isn't bad but it also isn't amazing. David seems to be more into it but I'm finding it kinda bland to be honest.

Molasses bars... 4/10. They're okay but there were other things in the bakery that would have been more my thing.

February 7th - Send a Card to a Friend Day

Since I found out a couple of years ago that you could order and send photo postcards anywhere in the world I've done it a few times. The beauty of being able to make your own postcards is that you can get a bit weird with it, which I have a tendency to do when sending them to my sister and cousin.

A few days ago David and I visited the Chinese Theatre and watched ‘Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse’ (which is amaaaazing!). While we were there we found a billboard ad thing that would take your photo and email it to you. We took one and I didn't really think about it again until today when I was looking to make a card to send my cousin Erin.

I've taken lots of photos this trip, some even good, but that wasn't what this card was going to be about. The closest holiday is Valentine's day so I themed it up and sent it.

Isn't it beautiful!

Send a Card to a Friend Day… 9/10 I love sending cards out of the blue!

February 6th - Frozen Yogurt Day

Today has been frozen yogurt day and I've been hanging out in downtown Hollywood so I figured fro-yo would easy to find!

We did a self guided tour along the main strip and along the walk of fame. Highlights included:

While we were wondering around I was keeping my eyes peeled for frozen yogurt figuring we'd just stumble across it. A few hours in I hadn't seen any anywhere passively so I thought I should check the menus of a few places. We were up by the Chinese Theatre and the only real place doing food was a Hooters. I figured that might be weird and funny to go eat some there so we went in...

...aaaand instantly bailed. The vibe is super weird! I didn't even stay in there long enough to find out if they serve frozen yogurt.

Next plan, the Internet! I had a look on Maps and apparently there are tons of places just off of the main few streets. I found one called Frog near to where we're staying that's open late and decided to hit it up on the way back. A few hours later we're ready to head back and I'm excited because at this point I've been thinking about fro-yo for about 10 hrs on and off despite the cold. Well I hit the jackpot! I am so glad Frog doesn't exist in the UK because I would be broke and live on a diet of just frozen yogurt, no joke.

It's a serve yourself kind of a deal with 10 different flavours of frozen yogurt and a massive bar of toppings and then you pay by weight.

I got a bit overwhelmed by the amount of choice and started sampling them all along with a random guy who was there and just as excited as I was. He was originally only interested in the sugar free options but this criteria very quickly went out the window once he discovered the cinnamon roll flavour.

I'm not going to lie, I ate a lot of samples. In fact I ate too many samples and gave myself some pretty bad brain freeze.

I had to take a breather and took the time to make my final decision. I went for a mix of, cinnamon roll, vanilla, dulce latte and ice-cream sandwich.

At this point David reminded me that I would be paying by weight. I had totally forgotten! He figured I had close to $20 but at this point I'd committed and I still needed toppings. I added New York cheesecake bits, dark chocolate drops and waffle cone pieces. Oh my glob. All I could think was…

via GIPHY

It was time to weigh it... And it was only $8.40. Genuinely a shock. I took it back to our AirBnB and ate more of it than I intended while watching Netflix and shoved the rest of it in the freezer for tomorrow.

Frozen yogurt... 9/10, this was seriously exceptional frozen yogurt but as a concept it loses a point for not being ice-cream.

February 5th - Weatherman’s Day

Today was an easy one to celebrate, the weather here is a bit crazy! LA is experiencing a bad storm, not by UK standards but the infrastructure for so much rain just doesn't exist here. We've spent the day walking along the beach from Muscle Beach to Santa Monica and it started out like this…

We sheltered for a bit and when it'd eased off we wandered out again. The rain here has been super heavy but very stop and start. We kept ducking into places to wait it out but a few minutes later it would have completely stopped. Needless to say we were checking the forecast all day.

By the second half of our walk it had cleared up a lot and we were even able to go sit in the sun on the beach. It turned into a really beautiful day!

Weatherman’s day… 5/10 it was kind of helpful to see when the weather was likely to be changing but knowing ultimately didn't really make a difference.

February 4th - World Cancer Day

Today has been Cancer day (slightly less cheery than these days normally are).

Last week I was hanging out with some girlfriends when it came up that one of them had recently had unusual pap smear results back. Not a huge cause for concern apparently but she was going through the process of getting it checked out further. What did transpire from the conversation though which was alarming to me was that in the UK women are supposed to start having them from the age of 25…

...and I've not had one!

I've moved around a fair bit the last few years and didn't sign up to a GP immediately when we moved into our current home so I guess I must have slipped through the net. All this had been weighing on my mind the last week but I hadn't actually gotten around to doing anything about it so Cancer day seemed like the day to sort it out.

I'm still out in LA but I figured if I called my GP at midnight my time they'd just be opening at 8am their time. I called a few times but unfortunately couldn't get through, getting in touch with them is often a real pain. (Hence not signing up to the GP sooner or chasing the whole pap smear thing earlier in the week.) Eventually I gave up by phone and tried to find an email address for the practice. No luck, but I did find that they have an online booking system. I booked a generic appointment for in a months time as that was the only option. I'll try and get through to them when I'm back home and make sure I can get the test done then.

World Cancer day… 6/10 it's not exactly been celebratory but it was a good prompt to get my butt in gear and organise this.

February 3rd - Carrot Cake Day

I'm not a massive fan of carrot cake generally, it's okay but I'd pretty much pick any other kind of cake over it. I vaguely remember my mum making it when I was a kid and just always being confused by the idea of putting vegetables in a cake when there's so many better things you can use.

While we were out and about today I kept an eye out for some so I could celebrate. We wandered around all day going to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the La Brea Tar Pits. We passed quite a lot of places to eat but nowhere that obviously sold carrot cake. We eventually ended up at the Farmers Market in The Grove in the evening where we found a small bakery stall that had some!

I bought a slice and we sat at the bar next door watching the Super Bowl while I ate it. An extremely American experience all round.

It was really good with lots of cinnamon and a pretty much even icing to cake ratio. One slice between two people was enough though as it was a bit tooth meltingly sweet.

Carrot cake… 8/10 unexpectedly good!