Night Time

This is a wonderfully Gothic church clock tower, especially when lit up at night. It's Holburn West Church on Great Western Road and is (sadly) a great landmark of mine, on my route picking Alistair up from Working Late at Night in the Winter. It does cheer my car journey though.

Next to it is a lovely house which I fantasise about living in. Sometimes the current owners leave the front door open while going about their Perfect Family Life and I can see a beautiful Victorian staircase inside.

I will try and paint that sometime, too.

Hello Puddies

This weekend we are feeding a friend's two cats. This is a picture of cats I drew on my shopping list to remind me.
Actually so far we have only seen one cat (the other is presumably hiding somewhere). And the first cat gave me the evils the entire time I was there, probably thought I was a burglar or something.
Also, the cats are black but if I coloured them in you wouldn't see the wee faces.

That Forty Project

Serene facial, not disembodied zombie head, before you ask.
I'm pleased to report (for anyone who fancies trying) that regular running and a healthy diet will remove middle aged spread AND return your bum back up to where it ought to be. Well worth 1hr-ish of weekly suffering. I recently ran my first 5K and am now onto my 10K training programme!
A parallel strand of That Forty Project is a series of trips to that much feared venue The Beauty Salon. PureSpa is the most friendly and does excellent online deals. I've tried variously:
Back Massage: fantastic, really sorts out those crunchy malformed bits. Hot Stone Back Massage: soothing, but a sad lack of vigourous kneading so not so good as the basic massage.
Manicure: completely pointless with my manual job. Acrylic nails: too freaky as you can't remove it and have to put your hands in a UV lamp which made me think of hand cancer.
Pedicure: will awesomely transform your feet especially if you get the scary scalpel hard skin removal.
Facial; feels amazing, afterwards looked exactly the same as before. If Amy Pond thinks she has eye wrinkles she should see mine. Think I'll be spending that facial money on some lovely face cream instead.

Race Day!

As I have been wittering on about for a while, (and in my post about the impending 4-0) I have been training for the last 4 months towards running a 5k race.
5k is about 3 miles and is easy to walk, but hard to run. It was certainly a lot tougher than I thought. I worked up from running for one minute at a time, until I could run for 40 minutes.
I was so excited when race day came. The race was at Hazlehead Park in Aberdeen and it was a lovely fresh, sunny Autumn day.
After an excruciatingly embarassing 'warm-up' about 200 of us set off. Some zoomed away immediately, some jogged along and some just walked. Me and Alistair were about in the middle group (Alistair running slowly to stay with me.) After about 10mins, the dreaded energy drop set in, but soon lifted and we were beetling steadily along. We did two laps of the park and speeded up for a good pound towards the finish line. The feeling of elation and achievement as I passed under the inflatable arch (pictured) was colossal, I felt brilliant! We did the run in 35 minutes which was better than I hoped for. I could have gone faster but wanted to finish and not have to rest part way. My next project is a 10k next year...

Parklife

I've always lived near parks, and as a flat inhabitant, parks have been my gardens.
I also got married in my favourite park in Aberdeen; Duthie Park. This park is currently being restored back to its Victorian glory and I can see this viewing mound with flagpole from my house! I also like to go walking and running there.
My other favourite parks in Aberdeen are Albyn Place Gardens; an elegant urban garden with an amazing, enormous horse chestnut tree and Johnston Gardens; a Japanese inspired garden built in a rocky valley with ponds and bridges.
All are free and open to the public all the time. Visit your local park today!

Go-to Recipes

This evening I'm cooking pea and bacon risotto. Which I cook a lot. I was thinking about recipes that I cook all the time (so I don't even need a recipe). They're all easy comfort foods which are what I like to eat and cook. They're also all real carb beasts as one of my friends complained, on being served pasta with garlic bread. Hey, I like carbohydrates.

The Usual Suspects line up; Macaroni cheese, marinated chicken in pitta with hummous, chilli, butternut squash soup, beef bourgignon, risotto, quiche lorraine.

Do other people have things they always cook and any recommends for a carb loving woman in an inclement climate?

Whisky Tasting?

We went to Edinburgh to have a dinner and whisky tasting at The Whisky Society with my inlaws, brother in law and his girlfriend. I must admit, I was a bit nervous about this, thought it would be really po-faced and stuff.
Actually it was a great night out! The whisky society has a members only restaurant/bar which is in an old bonded warehouse in Leith and is very Victorian, lots of wood panelling. Food wasn't bog standard 'Scottish', I had beetroot risotto.
Anyway, to the whisky! We had three whiskies, (pictured on left) mild (Speyside?) woody/fruity (Highland?) and smoky (Islands). To my surprise I liked the smoky, peaty one best. Their whiskies aren't the usual branded ones and were pretty firey, coming in at about 50% alcohol. I'm proud to say I didn't splutter or cough once I had tried them undiluted though (unlike some of us...) There was a lovely barman who talked us through the tasting and about whisky in general. For instance, did you know most of the flavour comes from the type of wood in the barrel? I didn't. Think this could be a new vice, excited about trying more whisky soon!