busy, busy, busy

I have been meaning to write my blog for about a week and a half..I've just been so busy..lets see if I can remember what I was going to write.
The reason I've been busy.
I went on a "Finishing your thesis - defeating self sabotage" course at the beginning of last week. It was enlightening and was run by a couple of clinical psychologists from Flinders Uni. They run it down there regularly and have seen all personality types and self defeating behaviours and thought patterns. Your mind can be very sneaky. It was possibly the best course I've been on with respect to getting personalised training. They didn't lecture on general types, they asked specific questions and gave specific advice.
Anyway, thats why I've been busy. Having realised how I was mentally shooting myself in the foot, I am now writing from 9am to 12pm Monday through Wednesday, and doing anything else after that (Thursday and Friday I'm employed to do something else). It has to be real writing too, not fantasy writing. The definition of fantasy writing here is tidying tables and formatting things, changing fonts etc. Real writing puts down actual sentences that move you forward. I wrote 8 pages on Monday. Now of course I've caught up to my lab work so my real writing time is spent analysing all the sequence data I have produced, and writing down the results :)
Doing all this work in the am means that I then have lots of small, but not mentally taking, tasks to do in the afternoon - hence no time to blog.
The show/s
Its show time again and there were two this year. For those who haven't kept up on the Townsville gossip, there was a disagreement between the show organisers and the sideshow people as to the rental cost of space at the show this year, so the sideshow people had their own show elsewhere. I won't go into the various gossip and slander about what went on behind the scenes/who's at fault, as thats all it is and I really don't know for sure, but I went to the real show, being more interested in displays and competitions than in rides. It only cost $5 this year and felt much more like a country show that the Townsville one. Not crowded, fewer rides etc. I liked it but even the displays were fewer in number. There had been a lot of furor before the show and I think a lot of people were'nt sure what would be happening so they didn't enter this year. I think next year I might enter the cooking section. I did the usual look at the winning entries and think "I'm sure I could do better than that"...so next year I'll put my cake were the judges mouth is and know for sure.
Birfday...or Brithday as I usually type
On Sunday I will be exactly half way through my alloted years. Mum and Dad and I are going out tonight to Sizzlers to celebrate. Tomorrow My cousin and her mum and I will go somewhere else to celebrate. Sunday I'll be all eaten out and will give it a miss :)
Speaking of food
My diet finishes tonight. I should actually do another week for the few times I broke it for special occasions, but I also broke it almost everyday this week - and especially after the show.:S I think overall I lost 3kg. I had gotten down to 4kg off, but I was naughty too often. Now my plan is to eat reasonably sensibly for a month or so but increase my excersize (from almost none to the advised amount). If that doesn't lose a bit more, I'm going on the 7 day diet again. If I can get down to 70kg and stay there I'll be quite happy, and healthy enough to avoid diet induced diabetes. I have, over the last 3 weeks, ridden my bike to uni once a week - twice last week. This may not sound like much but is a huge improvement on not at all. I also mowed on Saturday - which I consider the equivalent of walking up castle hill, only with a benefit to other people as well. I also dipped my toe in the water with respect to castle hill climbing. Last week I parked at the top of Gregory street and walked up to the first castle hill park, where I used to leave the road and go up the goat track. Then I turned round and walked back down. I broke a sweat and felt my leg muscles working, just by doing the bit I used to do as a warm up/down. ZSigh, some way to go in the fitness stakes.
Vouchers
Tomorrow I will take my mother out to the Willows and buy her a new toaster with some of my shopping vouchers. The pop up part of hers has broken and the toast will keep cooking unless you manually remove it. There's almost a tradition in my family of giving my mother white goods as presents. She seems to appreciate them a lot more than flowers, though not as much as chocolates.