15 - 22 Feb: Shop Local

This week was half term, and I mainly work in education so I thought I'd have a go at doing a shop local week, i.e. not going to a big supermarket in the car when I needed something.
I did pretty well... I had to go to jobs #1 and #2 on Monday, which means a commute across the whole county, so I decided to have a stop at the Co-Op to get my lunch rather than running into one of the expensive and ethically dodgy petrol station shops. I had coffee and cake in two local cafes: the lovely Vintage Cafe and The English Muse. Friend N and I went for a wander round the local shops and all the charity shops but I didn't actually buy anything... did pop in the greengrocers and come out with some purple sprouting broccoli though.
By Thursday it had gone a bit wrong as my bread from the start of the week had gone off and I did end up with a petrol station sandwich, oops... and on Friday I had to pop to Asda for a couple of things. On the other hand, I walked to my parent's house and we had home-made pizza for tea which seemed to balance it out a little.
 So next time I do this challenge, I need to plan better; pack a sensible lunch each day and also remember shopping bags so I don't end up needing carriers...

Next week: I'm going to do a 4:3 or 5:2 (need to have a think) week, with both eating habits and money spending...

8 - 15 Feb Red n Black

I wore red and black for a week. It wasn't too difficult, although some of my outfits for work got a bit same-same as I was limited in what I could wear depending on what I was doing that day.
I never got a proper photo of the final outfit when I was watching the Inhuman League bout, but I'm in the background of a shot so I clipped myself out (shame cos it was an ace outfit).
What I found most interesting was: no one really noticed! There may be people in  my new job who have only ever seen me wearing red and black  but then they will only have met me once or twice so won't have spotted it I guess. Will do again another time hopefully (maybe in my team's colours of green and black)... this finished a week ago and I've still got a laundry bin full of black t shirts! Was fun as a challenge, also fun to try to find ways to photograph as I don't possess a full length mirror (some blatant public place selfies happened here...)

ins kino

 at training (horrible toilets)

 this cardi was a charity shop find at the start of the week and actually got worn twice with different things!

 the junior-officer-who-would-die-if-this-was-an-episode-of-Star-Trek-dress

 Collectif cardi that was a January sales bargain

 when selfies go wrong... also I had trousers on here; this is rare!

 at the bout and a random shot of my legs when I got home...!

The Challenge is back on!

After I got off to a good start with the weekly challenge, I came up against a different kind of challenge: working full time (with my part time job on top) for the first time in 2 years left me with very little time to do anything extra. This being January, I then had a week when I needed to survive on nearly no money at all thinking I would get paid for some of this work at the end of it - I didn't; and then faced another week of very limited time and money. It wasn't much fun, but I suppose it was a challenge of a kind as I managed to get everywhere I needed to (usually on time), and feed myself - this partly thanks to very generous friends and family who helped out a lot. I also managed to keep up the 100 Happy Days challenge on Instagram, so I'm also proud of that. I did also do 15 minutes cleaning for most days on the first week, although I've had to do some extra cleaning to make up for the days when I was out of the house for about 14 hours!
So, upcoming challenges....
For the week before The Inhuman League's bout on 15 Feb I shall spend a week wearing red and black in honour of their team colours.
This week is already half way through so I think this is one where I shall try to do something nice for someone each day, especially to payback some favours that were done for me last week...

Some Instagram photos from my #100happydays

The first challenge in review

So I got to the end of my first week; meaning that I completed the first challenge. This was a lot of fun but also hopefully got me off to a good start for keeping these up from now on. My challenge this week was: Listen to different radio stations and stay away from Radio 1.

What I did: for the first evening I was online, so I found a list of UK radio stations broadcasting online and browsed through. I found out that local radio stations are pretty much the same everywhere... but it's really not that interesting to listen to stations in other areas for long; the novelty wears off pretty quickly, the music is all of a same same and other area's traffic news is of little use. I'd like to try listening to some international stations that broadcast online but finding something of interest takes more research time than I had online this week. Other evenings I wasn't in much, but I did take in some quality snatches of BBC6 Music.

The day that I worked from home I found it easier to concentrate with just music, so I mainly listened to Spotify and Last.fm, with some talking type radio on for doing the washing up etc.

In the car, I found Radio 2 best for the drivetime shows, and KCFM for the evening. I don't have pre-set buttons on the car stereo so I had to scan through the frequencies each time I wanted to change, so I did get in a listen to some things in between - mainly local stations. This week I worked a fairly normal 8-5 type week, but I often have days when I spend lots of time in the car both daytimes and evenings, so I will be trying some of these out again for a bit of variety.

Overall, I really enjoyed the other national BBC stations, mainly Radio 2 and 4 (I still can't think of any reason I'd want to listen to Radio 3!); I found them informative and entertaining. I learned loads of things - including that -40°C and -40°F are the same temperature (what?), listened to the surreal yet soothing shipping forecast while doing the laundry, heard some classic tracks and concentrated on in-depth news discussions. I also listened to some radio shows I'd only ever heard as podcasts before, notably, the Now Show on Radio 4 and some late night talkSPORT.

In other news this week, I undertook some amateur stargazing and fell in a ditch... and I started  the challenge 100 happy days. 

This week (10 - 17 January), I will be pretty busy, so the challenge is useful if not very exciting:
2 (or more) sessions of the 15 minute clean every day.

January 3 - 10: Listen to different radio stations

I listen to Radio 1 a lot. Most of the time. Even though I do like other stations, my default is to have on Radio 1 unless I have a reason to search out something else. However, I'm now older than its target demographic and it does irritate me more often these days!

I have at my disposal any online station I choose, a DAB radio and also online services for music and podcasts such as Spotify, Last.fm. So I will try a variety of things and hopefully my favourites will stay with me... and I'll hear a wider variety of music and ideas.

Let's go....
http://www.listenlive.eu/uk.html